The Old House on the Corner (42 page)

Judy and Harry suffered the usual traumas of parents, nursing the children through chickenpox, measles, coughs and colds that hinted of something far more deadly, but turned out to be nothing of the sort. When Joe was eleven, he broke his arm playing football, and Sam acquired a squint at the same age and had to have an operation to put it right – Harry sat with him in the hospital throughout his first night, much to the irritation of the staff.

The shared agony of these incidents brought them even closer. These two wonderful human beings were the results of their love for each other. Harry adored them and talked of little else, boasting to all and sundry of his sons’ achievements at school or on the football or cricket pitch, boring his listeners silly and showing not even the slightest interest in
their
children.

‘People will start avoiding you,’ Judy warned.

He grinned. ‘I don’t care. If I run out of people, I’ll talk to myself in the mirror.’

Then the day came that sixteen-year-old Joe brought home his first girlfriend, Shirley. Harry waited until they’d gone then, to Judy’s utter astonishment, he said in a tone of voice she’d never heard him use before, a mixture of outrage and anger, ‘She was nothing but a cheap little tart. All that eye make-up! And I suspect her hair was dyed.’

‘She seemed quite nice to me.’ Shirley had undoubtedly gone to town with the eyeliner, but Judy
didn’t see that it mattered. ‘She’s only fifteen. Her and Joe aren’t likely to get married.’

‘I didn’t like her.’

‘She probably didn’t like you, either, the way you glowered at her. I just hope Joe didn’t notice. Really, Harry,’ she chided, ‘you’re going to have to be more tolerant. If Joe senses you don’t like Shirley, it’ll only make him want to go out with her more. Let him give her up in his own time – or she in hers.’

‘Our Joe would never go out with a girl I disapproved of,’ Harry said incredulously.

‘Oh, yes, he would,’ she assured him. ‘Would you have given me up if your father had disapproved?’

‘But you were perfect!’

‘Joe might think Shirley’s perfect – for the moment.’

Harry managed not to glower when Joe turned up with a succession of girlfriends, although always found something wrong with them. Judy began to wonder if there was a woman on earth good enough for his son.

‘At least our Sam’s got a sensible head on his shoulders,’ he muttered. ‘He’s more interested in enjoying himself than bothering with women at his age.’ Sam hung around with a crowd of young people of both sexes and appeared to be having a whale of a time.

‘He will eventually.’ For the first time, Harry was getting on her nerves. He was too possessive by a mile, too – she tried to think of a more appropriate word – too
involved
in his children’s lives, not accepting that they had to be left to go their own way, choose their own wives.

Joe was twenty-one and obviously smitten when he came home with Donna Nelson, four years older than
him, a severe looking woman with a permanent frown. Her jet-black hair was brushed smoothly back from a face that might have looked pretty had she ever smiled. Even Judy was faintly shocked when it emerged that Donna was divorced and had a two-year-old son.

‘I trust you won’t be going out with
her
again,’ Harry exploded the minute he had his son on his own.

Joe looked taken aback. ‘I’m sorry, Dad, but I don’t think that’s any of your business,’ he stammered. ‘I’ll go out with whomever I like.’

‘But she’s been married before: she’s actually got a
child
.’ Harry could hardly contain his anger.

‘Ashley’s a really great kid. You’ll like him.’

‘Ashley!’ Harry almost spat the word out. ‘What sort of name is that?’

‘Harry,’ Judy said warningly. An old memory surfaced and she recalled Leslie Howard’s character in
Gone with the Wind
had been called Ashley. She hadn’t liked Donna much herself. The girl was too abrupt, too surly, almost rude when she’d tried to be friendly. But if she was Joe’s choice …

It seemed that she was because not long afterwards, Joe announced that he and Donna were getting married.

Donna had a married sister with two children in their teens. Her parents were dead. At first, she rebuffed all Judy’s offers to help with the register office wedding and pay for a hotel so they could have a proper reception with rather more guests than the handful Donna envisaged. With great reluctance, she conceded it would be unfair not to invite Joe’s grandparents, his aunts, uncles, cousins, and a few of his friends, so Judy
booked a room big enough for forty at a hotel in Woolton.

‘I had a big wedding last time,’ Donna said sullenly, ‘and look at the way
that
turned out.’

Judy didn’t ask the reason why she’d got divorced. As long as Joe knew and was satisfied, she didn’t care.

It was a while since both families had gathered together for a big occasion. Judy’s heart swelled with a mixture of love and pride when, in March 1983, she sat in the front row of the register office and watched Sam, the best man, hand the ring to his brother. Joe was the taller of the two, over six feet, lithe and graceful. He always looked a touch aristocratic with his long, thin nose and high cheekbones. At twenty, Sam was still very boyish, solidly built, with a lovely open face that always seemed to be set in a grin. She’d never had a favourite, but Sam had always seemed more vulnerable and easily hurt than his brother and she worried about him more. These two young, handsome men were her sons and her love for them was absolute.

She would have enjoyed the wedding more if it hadn’t been for Harry’s scowling face, all because his son was marrying a woman he objected to. It was so unlike him. Usually so good-natured and free with his smiles, she realized that when it came to the boys, another side to her husband emerged, one that she hadn’t known existed.

Fortunately, nobody else seemed to notice: even Donna, in a smart white suit, melted slightly at the reception when showered with so many kisses and good wishes for the future. She seemed particularly taken with Sylvester, who told her she reminded him
of Louise Brooks, one of his all-time favourite stars of the thirties. Ashley, her little boy, was very sweet, dark like his mother and very well behaved – until he was noticed pouring champagne over the remainder of the wedding cake and eating it with a spoon. ‘I’ve made a pudding,’ he explained.

Judy was glad when Donna said, ‘What a clever thing to do, sweetheart, but it might make you sick.’ She’d dreaded that she might smack the child.

The day wore on. At six o’clock, the newly married couple left for their honeymoon in Brighton. Judy hadn’t realized they were taking Ashley with them and thought it rather nice, but Harry’s face darkened even more. ‘It’s not natural,’ he mumbled. He’d had too much to drink, which was a first. ‘Why couldn’t Donna leave the boy with her sister?’

‘I don’t know,’ Judy sighed. The room had been booked until ten. She was wondering how she would get through it with Harry in such a horrible mood and was glad when he went to talk to his father. She’d always imagined the boys’ weddings being very different, her and Harry united in their delight that their sons had found wives they loved, but this wedding had been a bitter disappointment.

She noticed Sam was sitting by himself, a lonely figure. He’d miss Joe no longer living at home. They’d always been the best of friends.

‘You look sad, love,’ she said, sinking on to a chair beside him.

‘I’m tired. Joe’s stag party didn’t finish until four this morning. I suppose I
am
a bit sad too,’ he conceded. ‘It’s not every day you lose your brother.’

‘Never mind, you’ll be next.’ Judy patted his knee.

There was a long pause before Sam said, ‘I don’t think so, Mum.’

Just five words, said in a quiet, steady voice, yet there was something about the words, or it might have been the voice –
too
steady,
too
quiet, too
positive
– that made the hairs tingle on Judy’s neck.

‘I’m sure you will, son.’
Please
say you will, another voice inside her shrieked.
Please
say you don’t mean what I think you mean.

‘No, Mum, I won’t.’ He looked at her compassionately, knowing that what he was saying would break his mother’s heart. ‘I like women, but I’ll never marry one. I’m not attracted to them, not in the way our Joe is to Donna. I prefer …’ He left the rest of the sentence unsaid.

Judy finished it for him. ‘Men?’ There was a quiver in her voice and waves of nausea were washing over her.

Sam nodded, his face crimson with embarrassment.

‘Oh, Sam! Oh, my dear boy.’ Her beloved son, was a … She refused to even
think
the word. ‘What’s to become of you?’ she wailed.

‘It’s not the end of the world.’ He took her hand and squeezed it hard. ‘Please say you don’t hate me, Mum.’

Suddenly, he was her little boy again needing the comfort of his mother’s arms and soft words. ‘Of course, I don’t hate you, Sam,’ she said fervently. ‘I love you with all my heart and I’ll never stop loving you until the day I die.’

‘Ta, Mum.’ He was still squeezing her hand, as if he needed her reassurance. ‘I’d sooner have not told you in the middle of the wedding,’ he said soberly, ‘but a few people today have said, “you’ll be next,” just like
you. It doesn’t matter about them, but it does about you and Dad. I don’t want you expecting me to bring a girl home one day and announce we’re getting married.’

‘Do you want me to tell your father?’

‘If you wouldn’t mind. I’ve been meaning to tell you for ages, but I didn’t know how to begin. What do you think Dad will say?’

‘He’ll blow his top at first, but he’ll soon get over it,’ Judy said confidently.

She didn’t pluck up the courage to tell Harry for another week, by which time he seemed to have recovered his good humour and was smiling again. They’d been to her in-laws for a meal. Mr Moon had talked about retiring from the shop in the near future. ‘Your Sam’s turning out to be a darned good photographer. Why don’t you make him a partner when he’s twenty-one, like I did you, and I’ll disappear from the scene?’ Sam had taken a photography course at the art college – Joe had shown no interest and had chosen hotel management as a career.

‘Will you?’ Judy asked when they got home. ‘Make Sam a partner, that is?’

‘If he wants. You don’t think he’s too young?’

‘You managed OK at the same age.’

‘I suppose I did.’ He yawned and stretched his arms. ‘Is Sam home?’

‘He went to a disco. He’ll be ages yet.’

‘Oh, well. I think I’ll turn in.’

Judy took a deep breath. ‘Before you go, there’s something I want to tell you. It’s about Sam …’

She thought he took it very well, kept saying, ‘I see,’ from time to time, his face devoid of expression
when she repeated what Sam had told her at his brother’s wedding.

‘I see,’ he said again when she’d finished.

‘Are you all right about it?’ she asked anxiously.

‘What do you think?’ He went to bed without another word and she had no idea whether he was all right about it or not.

Harry was already up when she woke next morning: Sunday, she remembered, when she heard church bells ringing in the distance.

She went downstairs and found him and Sam seated at the table in the breakfast room. ‘Good morning,’ she said cheerily. ‘Did you have a nice time at the disco, Sam?’

Before Sam could answer, Harry sneered, ‘Yeah! He danced all night with his boyfriends.’

Judy’s blood ran cold. ‘What a terrible thing to say!’

‘It’s the truth.’

Sam said quietly, ‘As it happens, it’s not the truth.’ He turned to his mother and she could have wept when she saw the grief in his dark blue eyes. ‘Dad’s just chucked me out, Mum. I’ll pack my stuff in a minute and be on my way.’

‘You’ll do no such thing,’ she snapped.

‘This is
my
house,’ Harry said in a grating voice, ‘and I’m not having a bloody pansy living under
my
roof.’

Judy gasped. ‘What on earth’s got into you, Harry? You’ve changed out of all recognition. Sam is your son. How can you possibly throw out your own son?’

‘Sam’s no longer my son. I thought Joe was bad enough, marrying a divorced woman with a child when he knew that I, his father, was dead against it,
but this!’ To her surprise, he began to cry. His shoulders heaved. ‘I don’t know what the world’s coming to. Everything’s going wrong.’

Judy made no attempt to comfort him. It was his sheer pigheadedness that was making everything go wrong. They still could have continued, a perfectly normal family, accepting Joe’s choice of a wife, accepting Sam for what he was, if only Harry could have understood he didn’t
own
his sons. They weren’t puppets and all he had to do was pull the strings and they would dance to his tune.

‘I’ll go, Mum.’ Sam heaved himself wearily to his feet. ‘It’s for the best.’

‘But where?’ she cried.

He shrugged. ‘I don’t really know.’ He seemed about to cry himself.

‘Go to Gran and Granddad Smith’s. They’d love to have you and there’s plenty of room. I’ll give them a ring, shall I?’

‘Please, Mum.’

Harry must have been listening. ‘You’re not to tell them,’ he said hoarsely. There was a look, almost of fear, in his eyes. ‘You’re not to tell
anyone
what you are. I’m too ashamed. I couldn’t stand it. What Joe did was bad enough. But you, you’re beyond the pale.’

Judy ignored him. ‘After I’ve rung, I’ll come upstairs with you, love, help you pack a bag.’

Half an hour later, she stood at the window, palms pressed against the glass, and watched her son walk away. Although the bag she’d helped him pack wasn’t particularly heavy, he carried it as if it contained a ton of bricks; his shoulders curved like an old man’s. She felt her heart contract and wanted to rush after him,
fetch him back, but that just wasn’t on, not with Harry the way he was.

‘He’ll be all right,’ he said from the door.

‘No, he won’t. I’ll go and see him later.’

‘I’d sooner you didn’t,’ he said stiffly. ‘I’d sooner you had nothing more to do with Sam. He’s no longer a member of this family.’