The Old House on the Corner (7 page)

‘You!’ he gasped. Bert Skinner had said she was a corker and now that Steve had a proper look he reckoned Bert was right. Her voice was different and she looked smaller, thinner, not so haughty, now that he was looking down on her and not the other way around. Her brown hair was shoulder length, very thick and wavy, making a perfect frame for her beautiful, delicate face: fine nose, perfect lips, high, moulded cheekbones. Her grey eyes were very large and rather sad.

‘I thought you recognized me earlier.’ After fining him a small fortune, she had the temerity to smile.

‘If I had, I’d driven right past.’

‘I hope you don’t expect me to apologize for what happened in court. You only got what you deserved.’

‘I hope you don’t expect me to be grateful for all this.’ He indicated the clothes, the coffee pot and a plate of sandwiches on the table. ‘Because I’m not. If you hadn’t taken your foot off the clutch, there’d be no need for it. By the way,’ he added childishly, ‘I prefer tea.’

‘Then tea you shall have,’ she said with a gracious wave of her slender white hand. ‘Sit down and I’ll make it. Have you warmed up after the bath?’

‘Yes,’ he said grudgingly. The kitchen had its own little dining area in an alcove in the corner. He sat on a padded bench in front of a dark oak table and thought how much Jean would have loved it. The room was about twenty feet square, modern, but made to look Victorian, like the rest of the house: oak units, copper pans on the wall, cream lace curtains suspended from a brass rail, through which the snow could be seen, falling heavier now. Lights gleamed underneath the vast array of wall cupboards, making the room look faintly exotic, more like a nightclub than a kitchen. An Aga kept the place comfortably warm. The music came from a small radio on the stainless steel draining board.

‘Do the clothes fit?’ Lady Muck enquired.

‘Where they touch.’

‘I thought as much. My husband has smaller feet and is much slimmer than you, that’s why I gave you the tracksuit, it stretches. I’ll fetch your shoes down in a minute and put them on the Aga to dry and find you an anorak or something to go home in.’

‘Ta.’

Her back was to him while she made the tea, and he was horrified to find himself admiring her slim ankles, her neat bottom, the way her hair flicked up at the ends
and how the lights made it appear more red than brown. He’d always considered magistrates to be barely human, let alone sexual beings.
‘I wouldn’t mind giving her one
,’ Bert had said.

She turned, caught Steve’s gaze, and the world seemed to stop as something indefinable passed between them. Apart from the hum of the fridge, the silence was total. Then, ‘Oh, dear,’ she said shakily when the tea slopped into the saucer. Blushing, she changed it for another. He guessed she wasn’t as sure of herself as she made out. His flattened ego raised its head a little. He’d been overawed, first by the car, then the house, and the fact she’d turned out to be Justice of the Peace, but the blush had shown she was just an ordinary woman.

‘What does your husband do?’ he asked.

‘He’s a doctor.’ She put the tea in front of him and slid into the bench opposite, rather reluctantly, he thought. ‘Do you mind if I smoke?’ She waved a pack of Dunhill’s at him.

He shrugged. ‘It’s your house.’

‘So it is.’ She lit the cigarette, breathing in the smoke and letting it slowly out, as if it was the first ciggie she’d had in years. ‘What about you? What do you do?’

‘I
was
a miner, now I work in a hospital as a porter.’

‘Of course, the pit closed, didn’t it?’

‘I’m surprised you noticed.’

She blushed again. He was enjoying her discomfort. She shouldn’t have told him to grow up. ‘I couldn’t help but notice, could I? I’m a doctor too. I was suddenly inundated with miners’ wives suffering from depression.’

One of them could have been his own. Jean had been taking tablets ‘for her nerves’ for years. ‘What’s your name?’ he demanded rudely.

‘Quinn. Kathleen Quinn.’ She pushed the sandwiches in front of him. ‘I made these for you.’

He took a bite of sandwich. It was ham. ‘Got any mustard?’

She fetched a jar and put it in front of him. ‘It’s polite to say “please”?’

‘Mebbe I will when I grow up.’ The barb had hurt far more than the fine.

‘Wasn’t it rather childish to throw stones at a police station and assault the officer who tried to restrain you?’ she said coldly.

Steve held up his hands in an attitude of surrender. ‘As I said in court, it were ten years to the day that the pit closed. We were merely commemorating the fact. I suppose we could’ve laid flowers, wreaths, said prayers, sung a few hymns, but we weren’t exactly in the mood. Throwing stones seemed more fitting, as it were, though if we’d had a few sticks of dynamite, we’d have blown the bloody place up. Coppers weren’t exactly the miners’ best friends during the strike.’

Her lips pursed. ‘That was fourteen years ago.’

‘Fifteen, actually, but it seems like only yesterday to me and me mates.’

‘It’s time you stopped living in the past and moved forward,’ she said primly in the voice she’d used in court.

‘Except I’ve nothing much to look forward to.’ Steve lost his temper. ‘Can’t you ever forget you’re a magistrate? Is that all you ever do, give advice to people when you know nothing whatever about them? Mebbe you’d like a bit of advice yourself – unless anyone asks, in future, keep your opinions to yourself.’ He smeared mustard on a sandwich, shoved in his mouth, and nearly choked. He’d used far too much.

To his intense horror, two tears ran down Kathleen
Quinn’s thin cheeks. ‘I wish I’d just driven away and left you in that ditch,’ she said. ‘It’s been a horrible day and you’re the last straw. Once you’ve finished that sandwich, I’d be obliged if you would leave.’

‘You couldn’t have driven away,’ he reminded her, rather more gently now. He was a sucker for tears. ‘Your back wheel was in the ditch, you were stuck. I’ll leave, don’t worry. You’d better fetch me shoes first.’ The black lace-ups would look daft with a tracksuit, but he wasn’t planning on prancing up and down the catwalk, not today.

‘They’ll still be wet. You can’t possibly leave in wet shoes.’ She rubbed her cheeks with the back of her hand and gave him a tremulous smile. ‘I’m sorry. It’s just that I had some upsetting news this morning. You were awfully kind, stopping and helping me like that. Finish the food and there’s more tea in the pot.’

She went upstairs for the shoes. Steve spread another sandwich with mustard, more sparsely this time. He felt very odd, almost drunk, as he sat there, waiting – no longing – for Kathleen Quinn to come back.

The telly was on when he got home. Jean was watching
Countdown
. ‘Oh, Steve,’ she cried tearfully, though didn’t get up. ‘I thought you’d had an accident.’ She noticed his outfit. ‘Where on earth did them clothes come from, luv?’

‘I
did
have an accident. I skidded a bit, then got stuck in a ditch, and only fell into the bloody thing when I tried to get out the car.’ He’d decided not to mention Kathleen Quinn or he’d be cross-examined about it for weeks. ‘Some chap in a lorry hauled me out. He loaned me his tracksuit and some other stuff.’

‘But where’s your own clothes?’ she wailed. As usual,
she was turning the situation into a tragedy of Shakespearean proportions.

‘The chap said he’d leave them in the dry cleaner’s for me.’

‘Which dry cleaner’s, Steve?’

‘For Chrissakes, Jean! I can’t remember. Anyroad, does it really matter right now? I’m bloody freezing, and I’d like a cup of tea, not the third degree.’ He was pleased to note the girls weren’t there. They must have gone home to get the kids their teas. The thought had barely entered his head when the phone in the parlour rang. Jean went to answer it.

‘Yes, he’s home Brenda, luv,’ Steve heard her say. ‘Had some sort of accident. Oh, he’s all right, just chilled to the bone, that’s all. Ok, luv. I’ll see you later. I doubt if your dad’ll be going out again tonight.’

A few minutes later, Maggie rang, shortly followed by Sheila, then Annie. Jean more or less repeated what she’d told Brenda and, from what he could gather, all four were set on coming round that night, in which case, Steve decided, he’d call in the club for a pint.

‘Would you like more tea, luv?’ Jean asked when she’d finished telling the world and his wife about his accident.

‘Wouldn’t mind,’ he said in a surly voice. He shut his eyes, but couldn’t shut out his surroundings. He’d been sitting in the same chair in the same room for nigh on thirty years. The curtains had changed with each decade, the wallpaper, there was carpet on the floor when there’d used to be lino, but the furniture was hardly different. It had been bought new when he and Jean got married: two armchairs, a dining-room suite, no sideboard, because it couldn’t be squeezed into the tiny room. As
the girls grew bigger, they’d objected to sitting on hard chairs to watch telly. Jean had reluctantly given in and let them use her precious parlour, sit on her precious moquette three-piece, to watch the new colour telly.

Money hadn’t been a problem in those days, not like now. Years ago, Steve had wanted to move out of the small, cramped terrace and buy a new house on the edge of the village, but Jean had refused. They’d had some flaming rows about it. She’d wanted to stay with her friends, her family, all living close by. Then, just to be awkward, once he’d lost his job, she’d suddenly decided she’d quite like a bigger house. By then the girls were in their teens, still sleeping in bunk beds for lack of space. There’d been more rows.

‘No one’ll give me a mortgage, not now,’ he’d told her, but Jean only heard what she wanted to hear. There was no point giving her the facts once she’d shut her ears to reason.

There was a photo on the sideboard of Steve and Jean’s wedding. He was twenty-one, she nineteen: a blonde, fairy-like girl, vivacious and full of fun. What had happened, Steve wondered, to turn her into the shapeless, pasty-faced, complaining woman she was now? Most miners’ wives had stood by their men when they’d been given the boot, supported them, gone out and got jobs themselves. With a bit of help, he might have pulled himself together sooner, not hung around the house for two years feeling useless.

But it wasn’t fair to put the blame on Jean for everything. ‘It’s time you stopped living in the past and moved forward,’ Kathleen Quinn had said. All of a sudden, he visualized her in the kitchen, her back to him while he admired her slim figure. She’d turned around
and something had passed between them. He remembered Bert’s words again, ‘
I wouldn’t mind giving her one
…’

In his mind, Steve carried Kathleen Quinn upstairs to one of the bedrooms in her big house. Tenderly, he laid her on the bed and undressed her, slowly, taking his time, anticipation growing, wanting to hurry, yet enjoying the wait. He exposed her small, white breasts, kissed them, unpeeled her tights – by now, his hands were shaking – removed her pants, then stared at her, laid out on the bed like a sacrifice, waiting for him to take her.

Which Steve did, no longer tender, but roughly, urgently, losing himself totally in her soft, warm body …

‘Here’s your tea, Steve. By the way, did they take your photo in the court? Steve, wake up.’ His shoulder was given a hard poke. Now that she had got used to the fact he was alive and well, Jean was back on the attack. ‘You don’t realize what a terrible afternoon I’ve had,’ she said querulously. ‘I was worried sick, wondering where you’d got to. Why didn’t you telephone? You’re a very selfish man, Steve Cartwright, no thought for anyone but yourself.’

‘That’s not true, Jean.’ He hardly listened while she railed at him, his mind preoccupied with Kathleen Quinn.

Steve worked regular shifts at the hospital, six in the morning until half past two. He arrived home from work a week later just as the telephone began to ring. He went into the parlour, picked up the receiver, and growled, ‘Hello.’

Jean appeared in the doorway, hands on hips, looking annoyed. She preferred to answer the phone herself.
‘Who is it?’ she demanded before he’d had a chance of finding out.

‘I’ve had your clothes cleaned, Mr Cartwright.’ Kathleen Quinn spoke in her magistrate’s voice, cool and detached. ‘Would you like to collect them? I can have them delivered if that’s what you’d prefer.’

‘No, I’ll collect them. Tomorrow afternoon, about three?’

‘I’ll see you then.’ The line went dead.

Jean was standing over him, waiting for an explanation. ‘That was the cleaners,’ he said. ‘My things are ready to be collected.’

‘Will you have to pay?’

‘Of course I’ll have to pay,’ he said impatiently. ‘It’s a cleaners, not a bloody charity.’

‘Where is it, the cleaners?’

‘Huddersfield,’ he grunted.

‘I’ll come with you. I want to take that cardy our Maggie gave me for Christmas back to Marks & Spencer’s. It’s too small.’

Steve hunted wildly around in his mind for a reason to turn down this perfectly reasonable suggestion. ‘I’m going straight from work,’ he said. ‘It’d hardly be worth your while if I came home first to collect you. Why don’t you go to Huddersfield on the bus, make a day of it?’

She frowned, then her face cleared. It would seem she found the suggestion acceptable. ‘I’ll go tomorrow. I wouldn’t mind a day out for a change. But if that’s the case, I might as well pick up your cleaning.’

‘You don’t want to be carting that lot around, it’d be too heavy. Anyroad, I thought I might take the opportunity of calling in the Job Centre, see what’s going.’

‘We could meet up for a cup of tea and I could come home in the car.’

‘Best not, luv,’ he said easily. ‘If there’s anything decent, I might be a while, filling in forms and stuff. Best you make your own way home on the bus.’

The snow had almost gone, the temperature having risen a few degrees over the last few days. The soil in the fields was black against the stark patches of white that still remained and the roads were wet and slushy.

When Steve left the hospital, he drove like the wind, water spitting from the tyres. He was unfolding, becoming someone else, experiencing emotions never felt before, or at least not for a long time – when he was younger, perhaps, much younger.