The Liverpool Trilogy (13 page)

‘Our little Lizzie walked in next door, introduced herself to Moira, and after a few minutes—’

‘About five minutes,’ Paul interjected.

She waved her wooden spoon at him. ‘One more word from you, me lad, and you’ll be wearing this through your nose.’

‘Well, Simon walked in. He was doing all right till he fell over a chair. Staring at your daughter, Mrs Henshaw. And she was staring at him. It was electric, wasn’t it, Paul?’

But Paul was standing like a first-year infant school child, a finger to his lips.

‘They’re in next door’s garden now. Come on, Mums,’ Mike begged. ‘We know where the spy holes are.’ He dragged his mother into the garden. Somewhere, she had a carton of Sainsbury’s ready-made custard, just for emergencies. This was probably an emergency.

The three of them stood in a row, eyes pinned to knotholes in the fence. Lucy couldn’t help smiling. Her daughter and Simon Turner were seated on a padded swing with a canopy. There was space between them, but it was decreasing as she watched. A centimetre at a time, they edged closer to each other.

What the hell was she doing? She pulled her twins away from the fence. ‘Inside – now,’ she whispered.

‘What?’ shouted Paul.

She pushed him towards the house while Mike followed. When the door was closed, she rounded on them. ‘Why did I allow that?’ she asked. ‘That’s not who I am any more. I don’t do as I’m told.’

Mike agreed, and he said so. ‘But what did you think, Mums?’

‘Interesting,’ she replied. ‘But I shan’t buy a wedding hat just yet.’

Apart from a few rather explosive laughs from the boys, lunch proceeded in an orderly fashion until the first course was over. When Liz stood up to start clearing plates, Lucy asked her to sit down again. ‘About Tallows,’ she said. ‘I’ll come to the point right away. Someone wants to borrow it for a while. In fact, I offered, albeit provisionally, to lend it until I die, at which time the property will revert to the three of you, so I need your agreement.’

She told them about Diane and the Notorious Five, about the boy who had lived at the end of the lane, about his disappearance. ‘I went to see your dad in Bolton hospital,’ she explained. ‘And David was there. Yes, yet another doctor – I seem unable to escape them. It all appeared to fit, because I don’t want to leave Tallows empty, and I know my sister would have approved.’

They listened intently while she outlined the adult life of the friend she had mislaid over thirty years ago. ‘So it’s for the families,’ she concluded. ‘They need a break from time to time, a rest and a change of scenery.’

Liz dabbed her eyes with a corner of her napkin. ‘Then we do it,’ she announced. ‘Boys?’

They both nodded.

‘Thank you,’ said Lucy. ‘Now, you must change your permanent address to here – driving licences, college registration, banks and so forth. Your stuff will have to be taken out of Tallows, though I hope you’ll allow me to leave all toys for the children. My contribution will be that I shall charge no rent. Bills and running costs will be paid by the Timothy Vincent Trust.’

‘I took Dobbin and the dolls’ house to the safe place.’ Liz smiled through her tears. ‘We can get them back. I just thought they were valuable, Mother. But they should be enjoyed. Children are worth more than possessions.’

‘And you three are pearls. Some of the furniture can come here, because it will fit in very well,’ Lucy said. ‘The rest I shall auction in London – get the better prices. And David will be here this evening.’

Paul spoke in a stage whisper. ‘Is she blushing?’

‘I am not blushing.’

Liz laughed. ‘The lady doth protest too much, methinks.’

The twins rounded on their sister. ‘Oh, yes? What about you and the fellow next door? You were practically sharing the same shirt on that swing. He fell for you, all right. Over a chair and his mother’s walking frame.’

Mike chipped in. ‘Reminded us of
Brief Encounter
. It could have been brief – he might have suffered concussion.’

‘Leave her alone,’ Lucy ordered.

‘Mums, you’re as bad. You went all glassy-eyed whenever you said David’s name. And you’re not even divorced yet.’ Paul folded his arms. ‘This is going to become very illuminating, Mike. It seems we have a wayward sister and a delinquent mother.’

‘On top of all of which, you also have Sainsbury’s custard. You can thank your brothers for that, Elizabeth.’ Lucy left the table. She stood in the kitchen for a while, just listening as they quarrelled good-heartedly. ‘I am a fortunate woman,’ she told herself. ‘Except, that is, for the ready-made custard.’

The afternoon was supposed to be quiet, but it didn’t work out that way. For a start, there was Liz’s phone. It rang every few minutes and, in the end, Liz left the scene and sat in the garden. Simon Turner had returned to work at the Royal, and Lucy worried about patients, since one of their doctors seemed to be permanently engaged, as was Liz’s phone. She watched while her daughter giggled and blushed like a teenager. ‘Love at first sight? I doubt it,’ she said to an empty room. But she had never before seen her daughter in such a flap. She was like a thirteen-year-old with a crush on the head boy.

The twins had gone out to see something or other in Matthew Street, and both Turner girls had accompanied them. It wasn’t time to prepare for the arrival of David, so Lucy settled down with a book. But this was destined to be a rather less than peaceful Sabbath, as she found when she answered the front door bell. She didn’t get the chance to say anything, because one of the women who stood there filled the silence and the doorway immediately. She was roughly the same size as Shirley Bishop, but she was noisier.

‘I know it said Wednesday. But we can’t do Wednesday this week because of her and the wisdom teeth.’ Next to her, the short, thin owner of said wisdom teeth looked very miserable. ‘So that’s why we’ve come today, cos we wanted to be first. I said to Dee – didn’t I, Dee? – that we couldn’t miss the chance.’

It had been explained to Lucy that although she was doing quite well when it came to the interpretation of the local lingo, she would eventually meet people who spoke Dinglish. They hailed from a part of Liverpool labelled ‘the Dingle’, and had developed a language all their own. She guessed that the big woman wasn’t quite speaking Dinglish, because most of what she said was understandable.

‘Didn’t I say that, Dee?’

Dee nodded sombrely. ‘She did. She did say that, yes.’

The big woman carried on. ‘Mind, Sunday’s my lucky day, isn’t it, Dee?’

‘It is, yeah.’

Lucy wondered whether she might have fallen asleep during chapter five of her Thomas Hardy. Or had she slipped into some parallel universe where oddly shaped people with bad wisdom teeth knocked on doors on Sunday afternoons? ‘I’m sorry,’ she managed while the big woman drew breath. ‘Have you come to the right house?’

‘We would have come on Wednesday like it said on the thing in the shop window, only Dee—’

‘Yes, I got that bit. Please come in.’

When all three were seated, Lucy realized what was happening. ‘The advertisement for cleaners!’ she exclaimed.

The big woman looked at the lady of the house and shook her head as if in near-despair. ‘Who did you think we were, queen? Jehovah’s Witnesses? We’re domestic and commercial operatives, me and her. Professionals, like. Dee’s me daughter, and I’m Carol. We live together with her kids in my house down Stanley Road, but we can be here for breakfasts and then we can clean or whatever. Give us a try, love.’

Lucy cast her eyes over them. The big one looked as if she’d get out of breath if she made a bed, while the thinner woman was frail enough to be blown over in a light breeze. Perhaps if she rolled them together like a ball of Plasticine and cut them in half, they’d make two normal people? ‘So you’re experienced?’ she asked.

‘Very,’ said big Carol. ‘We’ve got references, and we’ll work a couple of days for no money, give you chance see what we’re like, like.’

‘Who looks after your children, Dee?’

‘Our Beryl,’ replied Carol, who seemed to be the spokesperson. ‘She can’t talk proper,’ she explained. ‘Our Dee, I mean. It’s her wisdom teeth.’

Lucy was trying hard not to laugh. ‘What about your husbands?’

Carol chewed her lip for a moment. ‘Dee’s was a window cleaner what fell off his ladder and died.’

‘Oh, I am so sorry.’

‘It’s all right – he was useless. Wasn’t he, love?’

Dee inclined her head.

‘Mine went to the chip shop on Thursday and never came back.’

Lucy blinked a few times. ‘But that’s three days. Have you told the police?’

‘Thursday 1998,’ came the reply. It was accompanied by a broad smile.

This was too much for Lucy. She fled into her bathroom, opened the cabinet and, once she had calmed down, brought a small bottle into the sitting room. ‘Tooth tincture,’ she said as she passed it to Dee. ‘I don’t know how much use it will be for impacted wisdom teeth, but you can give it a try.’

‘Ta, queen.’

Liz came in. ‘Hello,’ she said.

Big Carol’s mouth made a circle before she spoke. ‘Ar, ay,’ she said. ‘You’re dead fit, you are, girl.’ The ‘girl’ arrived as ‘gairl’.

Fortunately, Liz seemed to know that ‘dead fit’ meant pretty. ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘I’m going out, Mother. I shan’t be too long, just popping into Liverpool to have a look round.’

‘To the Royal, I take it?’

Liz blushed. ‘He’s on a split shift.’

‘My husband done them splits,’ Carol announced. ‘Till he realized he’d had his chips.’

Lucy grinned. Chips. Thursday. 1998.

‘Only with him, it wasn’t work,’ Carol continued. ‘Against his religion, work. It was women. There was me, his wedded wife, like. Then there was a fork-lift truck driver from Speke, a girl from Formby what did people’s hair in their own houses, and Barbie Bow-legs from next door.’

She turned to Lucy. ‘Barbie knew I was going to kill her, like, so she buggered off to buy chips as well. Never seen her since. She’s one you could recognize a mile off, because her legs have different postcodes. If she played football, she’d be useless in goal.’

Lucy howled with laughter. She curled in a ball on the seat of her large armchair, arms hugging her body against the pain. She would have to see other candidates on the stated day, but these two were a female Laurel and Hardy – the entertainment value was beyond price. She looked up and saw her daughter in hysterics, tears pouring down her face.

A twinkle in Carol’s eye spoke volumes on the subject of triumph. She waited for Lucy and Liz to calm down. ‘So. Will you give us a trial after this one’s had them teeth dug out? She’s thirty, by the way. I’m forty-nine plus VAT. I can do a day on me own, if you like. But we’re a team, usually. I can lift anything, and she’s like one of them Hoover attachments what can get into small spaces.’

Liz stood behind her mother’s chair. ‘Have either of you thought about going on the stage?’ she asked.

‘Only the landing stage when there’s a couple of Norwegian ships in. You can make a fortune out of them sailors. I’m kidding, love.’ She spoke again to Lucy. ‘We’ve been cutting down the jobs,’ she said. ‘The motor’s on its last wheels, so we’re trying to get a couple of clients nearer home. We’ve a suite of offices to clean in the evening and, if we get you, that’ll be nearly enough. Won’t it, Dee?’

‘Yes, enough,’ Dee replied.

Liz fled. Sitting in her Micra, she repaired her makeup and thanked God that Mother had come to Liverpool. Well, the fringe of Liverpool. No one should go through life without making contact with Scousers. They changed things, made stuff happen. And stuff was certainly happening, because she had seen a guy once, and was chasing him already. Liz was not a man-chaser. She had her fair share of friends in London, but there had never been anyone special. After swallowing her fear, she switched on her satnav. She didn’t know Liverpool, but she would soon learn . . .

Inside the house, life was slightly calmer. Big Carol had been born in the Dingle, but she’d bettered herself by moving up to Bootle. ‘They talk a bit more posher down Stanley Road,’ she said. ‘And the shops down Bootle is all right. Then there’s the Strand – Marks and Spencers, supermarkets, shoe shops – all sorts.’

It was decided that the trial would take place the next day, but without Dee. ‘She’s going to look like an ’amster with its gob full,’ Carol said. ‘So I reckon the Monday after for her. She’s in too much pain now, and she’ll be rotten once they’ve dug the buggers out. Oh, and another thing. Never put your address in a shop window. All kinds read them notices, and they’ll know you’re well off if you’re advertising for staff.’ She grinned. ‘So I took it out of the window for you.’

There would be no more applicants, then. This was a very clever woman, and Lucy was developing a fondness for her already. As for poor weedy Dee – only time would tell. ‘Dab that stuff on your gums, Dee,’ she advised. ‘It tastes awful, but it may give you a bit of relief.’

At last, a real smile was delivered by the thin woman. ‘What’s your name?’ she asked.

‘Henshaw. Lucy Henshaw.’

‘What do we call you?’

‘Erm . . . boss? No, Lucy will do. Or Mrs Henshaw if you’re more comfortable with that.’

The pair gazed at one another. ‘What do you think, Dee?’

Dee shrugged. ‘I can’t think, can I? They’re going to put a pewmatic drill in me gob and dig for bloody coal, Mam.’

Carol addressed Lucy. ‘We’ll use your first name, if that’s OK.’

‘Certainly.’

There then followed a questioning session about household equipment and brands of cleaning products. Carol and Dee would bring their own materials, which was why they were a quid an hour dearer than other so-called cleaners. ‘We do inside and out, but not gardening or outdoor window cleaning. That’s ever since her Harry fell off his perch. But we’ll keep your paths nice. We do washing, ironing, cupboards, fridges, freezers, cookers and some plumbing.’ Carol smiled happily. ‘I done a course at night school. Dee’s good at darning and mending, but we usually do that at home. I do electrics, but not gas. I’m not Corgi registered yet.’

They left Lucy with the impression that she had been interviewed. She seemed to have passed the test, anyway. As their van drew away from the front of the house, she read the legend on its side. CAROLANDEE SERVICES UNLIMITED. So they were registered, and they paid their taxes. They were also cutting down on work, so she would get the best out of them. And they might do for Moira as well, once Shirley Bishop had shuffled off to the Lake District. It shouldn’t take much to get Carolandee to give up the evening cleaning of offices. They wanted workplaces that were close together, and Moira was just next door.