‘You have?’ She raised her head to look into his face. Oh, he was so
nice
, her Zachariah. She knew he was still feeling a bit uncomfortable about Davey, and yet he had asked him to be first foot - the person who first enters the house on New Year’s Day bringing food or fuel. Tradition called for a dark man, but she knew it wasn’t just that that had made Zachariah ask Davey. It was his way of saying that everything was all right. ‘I do love you, you know.’ She smiled at him, her eyes soft, and she really meant it. ‘Very much.’
‘Just keep tellin’ me, lass, just keep tellin’ me. I can take all the spoilin’ I can get.’
Twelve o’clock seemed to be upon them before they realized, and as Davey was pushed out of the back door, a small sack of coal on his back and his arms full of bread and a small ham and the requisite bottle of whisky, by a tipsy throng, there were shrieks of laughter as they turned round and hurried through the kitchen and into the hall, where they all squeezed, shoulder to shoulder, as they waited for the ships’ hooters and the church bells to proclaim 1926. Rosie saw Peter Baxter had his arm round Flora’s shoulders and she hadn’t pushed him away, and that her mother and Joseph were holding Hannah between them, their gazes linked, but then the first hooter sounded, immediately followed by others, with the mantelpiece clock from the sitting room joining in as it chimed the old year away.
Annie was nearest the front door and as Davey knocked she opened it with a wide smile, saying, ‘Happy New Year, lad, Happy New Year.’ And then they were all kissing and hugging each other, treading on each others’ toes and laughing - or, in Flora’s case and also Jessie’s, crying - as they continued to embrace each other.
Rosie found herself clinging to Zachariah as though she never wanted to let him go, and she couldn’t have explained the consuming feeling of love and fierce thankfulness mixed with guilt and sadness, but she was praying silently, Thank you for keeping me, thank you for not letting me say anything to Davey, and don’t let him say anything to me. It will be all right if we don’t say anything. And then Sally prised them apart, saying in her own inimitable way, ‘All right, all right, you two, come up for air. Married for nigh on six months an’ you’re still like a pair of rabbits,’ and Rosie found herself laughing. There was no one in all the world like Sally for putting things in perspective.
‘Right, records or piano?’
Zachariah was appealing to the assembled company, his head on one side, and when the concerted cry of ‘Piano! Piano!’ went up, he bowed in the manner of an orchestra’s conductor and took his seat, beginning a medley of tunes that soon had everyone singing.
The bottle of whisky was long since empty, a third bowl of punch had been drained - and each bowlful had held half a bottle of gin deep in its innocent-looking pink fruity depths - and most of the beer had gone at five to two, when Rosie went out into the kitchen to make everyone a cup of tea. Peter had gone earlier, just after Flora had had a little cry on Davey’s shoulder about her mam and da, and Rosie’s heart had gone out to him. Beryl and Reginald had made their goodbyes just after one, but the rest had seemed set to make a full night of it when Zachariah had signalled to Rosie to make the tea.
‘Make it strong, lass.’ His eyes had been twinkling as he had nodded at Sally and Annie, who, arms round each other’s waists, were singing a tuneless rendition of ‘Who’s Sorry Now’ to their respective husbands, who were grinning inanely.
She smiled back as she inclined her head, and she was still smiling as she walked through to the kitchen. She stoked up the red glow of the fire before putting the kettle into its flickering heat, and fetching a tray from the big wooden dresser to one side of the kitchen door she put the six cups and saucers from her bone china tea set - a wedding present from Joseph - onto it. She only had six; the men would have to make do with the serviceable everyday set. After placing the teapot on the hob she spooned four good measures of tea into its brown depths, and, the kettle now boiling, mashed the tea.
It was just as she turned from the range with the teapot in her hands that something, some flicker of awareness, made her turn her head and look towards the small square window at the side of the back door, and it was only the subconscious memory of the agony of the hot tea splashing on her feet that prevented the same thing from happening again. The disembodied head was a monochrome of black and white, awful and terrible, and for the first time in her life Rosie knew what it was to be so frightened that she couldn’t move or speak. She stood clutching the teapot in both hands, the hairs on the back of her neck prickling and her eyes riveted on the pale face at the window, and then it was gone, and in the next moment there was a tap on the back door.
She hadn’t been aware she was holding her breath but now, as she drew the air deep into her lungs and stumbled to the table, setting the teapot down with shaking hands, she felt as though she had been swimming underwater.
When the knock came again she forced herself to move noiselessly to the door, one hand instinctively pressed against her stomach in an unconsciously protective gesture, and with her face close to the wood she said, ‘Yes, who is it?’ but made no effort to unslide the bolt.
There was a moment’s silence and then, ‘Shane. Shane McLinnie.’
Shane McLinnie? She took a step back from the door, her hand going to her mouth and her fingers half covering her nose as she pressed hard against her flesh. He had come here? Out in the open? He had actually dared to knock on the door? It had utterly thrown her, and now she half turned towards the hall and the sitting room beyond, before turning back again to the door. What should she do?
‘I’ve come to see if me mam an’ da want a lift home.’ His voice was ordinary and cut through the spiralling confusion, causing her body to sag and her eyes to shut tightly for a second. Of course, Mr and Mrs McLinnie, that was all it was. But the relief was only temporary. In the next moment her eyes opened wide as the numbness that had taken hold of her reason was swept away by the voice in her head saying, You know exactly why he is here and his mam and da have nothing to do with it. It would be sheer foolishness to open the door when she was alone in the kitchen.
‘Rosie?’ He wasn’t shouting but she didn’t have to strain to hear what he was saying. His voice had always had a very clear, penetrating sound to it. ‘Open the door, lass. This is New Year’s Day.’
She knew what day it was and at last her brain was working. ‘Go round to the front of the house, Shane, and I’ll get your mam and da for you. I don’t open the back door this time of night.’
There was a long pause and then, ‘No? It opened well enough earlier.’
‘I didn’t say it didn’t open, just that I don’t intend to open it now.’ Her heart was thumping with the implication of his last comment, but now was not the time to take him up on it. He
wanted
her to know he was watching her, all along he’d wanted it. That was the reason for his visits to the Co-op. But she wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of knowing how much it bothered her. ‘Come round to the front and I’ll tell your mam and da you’re here.’
She fairly flew into the sitting room and such was her entrance that everyone stopped talking and looked at her, which was not how she’d wanted it to be. She forced a smile saying, ‘The tea’s on its way,’ before looking straight at Annie and adding, ‘Shane’s arrived to give you a lift home.’
‘Shane?’ If Rosie had said the Grim Reaper Annie couldn’t have been more surprised.
‘He’s coming to the front. He . . . came to the back door, but I asked him to go round to the front.’ Rosie didn’t offer an explanation as to why and no one asked her, but Zachariah and Davey rose as one, and then, when there came the sound of a sharp rat-a-tat-tat on the front door, Rosie caught hold of Zachariah’s sleeve as he made to brush past her saying, ‘Please, please, it’s New Year’s Day. He’s only come to pick his mam and da up.’
Why the hell had he come here tonight? Annie’s head was spinning with the effects of the punch but she knew she had to act fast. Zachariah was no fool, and Shane had said enough that night when he’d first come home to let them know he’d had some sort of run-in in the past with Rosie’s husband. By, just when she’d had a lovely evening and all, she’d really been enjoying herself. ‘I’ll go, lad.’ Rosie was still holding on to Zachariah and now Annie’s tone suggested it was perfectly normal to have someone hammering on your front door while the occupants of the house had a tussle inside. ‘An’ we’ll be straight off, it’s late. Come on, Arthur.’
Arthur McLinnie lumbered to his feet to join his wife who was already in the hall, and Rosie and Zachariah followed her, Rosie saying, ‘Thank you, Mrs McLinnie, I’m sorry,’ as she helped the old woman into her coat, Zachariah holding Arthur’s in readiness.
Annie didn’t prevaricate or pretend she didn’t know what Rosie meant. She looked straight at Rosie and said, ‘It’s me that’s sorry, lass, heart sorry, an’ on New Year’s Day an’ all. Thank you for a lovely evenin’, lass. You an’ all, lad.’ And then, her voice sharp, ‘Come
on
, Arthur.’
‘Wh - what’s the hurry?’
Arthur was definitely the worse for wear, his state emphasized by the fact that Davey and Mick were at his elbows steadying him as he lurched along the hall. Annie waited until he was beside her before she opened the front door with a wide flourish, as she said, ‘Oh there you are, our Shane. A lift home, so Rosie tells me? An’ there we was gettin’ our coats on as you turned up on the doorstep.’
In all the time Shane had had the car she and Arthur had only ridden in it twice, and it had hurt Arthur, she knew it had. But now Annie could have killed her husband as he piped up behind her - the drink making him brave and bringing out the bitterness which had been lurking beneath the surface - ‘An’ to what do we owe the honour of ridin’ in me lord’s fancy motor then, eh? Sky caved in or somethin’?’
Shane had had a smile on his face when Annie first opened the door which had faded somewhat on the realization he wasn’t going to be allowed across the threshold, but now, as his father finished speaking and no one said a word, his face was straight. He looked at them all, his mother with his father just behind and to the side of her, Davey and Mick still holding Arthur up, and Rosie and Zachariah just behind the three men, Zachariah’s arm round Rosie’s waist. He could see Rosie’s mother and sister with the bloke from the Co-op, and Sally, whom he knew to be Rosie’s friend, in the hall just outside the sitting-room door, with Flora framed in the doorway. They had been having a good time. He knew it from what he had gathered as he watched the house for the last three hours or so, but he would have been able to read it in their flushed faces anyway. There had been coming and going, laughter, noise, and at midnight the house had fair rocked with their jollity, and all the time he had been out in the freezing cold skulking about like a damn pimp on a bad night.
As his gaze moved over each face, it came to Shane that they were all linked by the very things he had been on the outside looking in on all his life: affection born of familiarity; friendship; genuine warmth and love, they were all there to a greater or lesser extent.
And there was his mother at the head of the bunch with her great fat body like a fleshy barricade to stop him entering the hallowed portals. The thought stabbed at him, causing his eyes to narrow. She was a strong woman, his mam, and not just in her body either. Normally, in any other woman, such an attribute would have brought a grudging respect if nothing else, but with his mother it merely reinforced the resentment and dislike that was at the base of his feeling for the woman who had given birth to him. And in that moment, in a flash of insight, he suddenly became aware that what she was doing in the flesh she had done in the spirit from when he was a little lad. She had always kept him on the outside, at a distance from herself, his father, his brothers. She had always allowed him so far and then no further. Why?
Why?
His thoughts made it impossible for him to bring a smile back to his face as he said, his voice cool and penetrating, ‘Well? Do you want a lift or not?’ He was speaking to his mother but his eyes flickered to Rosie, and it was then that Annie actually pushed at him, saying, ‘ ’Course, lad, ’course, never look a gift horse in the mouth, eh? An’ take no notice of your da, all right? He’s had a few.’
‘Looks like you’ve all had a few.’
He had almost smacked Annie’s hands off him, turning on the path to see Davey and Mick still helping Arthur - whose legs were completely gone - down the step, and the general movement had brought Rosie and Zachariah, their arms now entwined, onto the threshold. Rosie was twenty-three weeks pregnant and in the last couple of weeks the mound in her stomach had become definite proof of this, but with the light behind her, and the silhouette of her body shown clearly through the thin wool of her dress, her changed shape was highlighted even more.
Shane stood as one transfixed. Annie hadn’t told him Rosie was expecting a child - knowing how he felt about her Annie had decided least said, soonest mended - and in all the times he had seen her outside the Co-op she had been dressed in outdoor clothes which had concealed her condition. His discovery gave him the biggest shock of his life. He stood as though in a trance, the blood draining from his face, and the emotion filling him was actual revulsion. He had accepted that she had used Zachariah for her own ends, he could understand that; money could enable you to put up with almost anything. But that she had allowed him to plant his
seed
in her. Him, that runt, that cripple! And his voice expressed his repugnance, along with his curled lip and narrowed eyes, as he looked straight at Rosie and said, ‘Looks like you’re fulfillin’ your end of the deal. You’ve got some guts, I’ll say that. A husband’s one thing, but a bairn that’s a freak--’