The Old House on the Corner (9 page)

‘We could reserve one right at the top. The view would be magnificent.’

‘I dunno,’ he said again. She’d got hold of the details and the prices shocked him. ‘I just wish I could pay summat towards it.’ He was aware he sounded a touch sulky.

She dug him playfully in the ribs. ‘Don’t be silly. You would if you could, I know that.’

‘Yes, but I can’t.’ He hunched his shoulders uncomfortably. ‘I feel like one of them gigolos, if you must know.’

‘That’s true enough. I only want you as my own, personal stud.’ She giggled. ‘Let’s leave it for now. You’re obviously not keen.’ As they walked away, arm in arm, she said, ‘Steve, we have to live somewhere. We can rent a place if you prefer.’

‘That mightn’t be a bad idea. Once I’ve got another job, I can pay my share.’ He pulled her into a doorway and kissed her passionately.

‘Oh, God! I love you, Steve Cartwright.’ She flung her arms around his neck, saying recklessly, ‘Let’s do it here, in front of everyone.’

‘I don’t think that’d be such a good idea, luv.’ Right now, it was what he wanted more than anything in the world.

‘Why not?’ She pressed herself against him and he felt his body stir.

‘Well, someone might see us and we might get
arrested. We’d end up in front of a magistrate, and you know what I think about
them
.’

‘Then let’s find a hotel. I can’t wait till we get home. Anyway, Michael will be back soon. I don’t want to rub his nose in it.’

‘OK, let’s find a hotel.’ He couldn’t wait, either.

When he got home on Wednesday, an unsmiling Brenda was sitting in Jean’s chair in the living room. ‘Where’s your mam?’ he enquired.

‘In bed,’ she said curtly. His eldest daughter most resembled himself: big-boned, broad-faced, with long, wavy brown hair the same shade as his. She was the sort of woman people described as ‘handsome’. Nowadays, Steve wasn’t sure he liked her all that much. She had grown up a bit of a tyrant: with her kids, with Graham, her husband, and with her dad most of all. Only her mother, of whom Brenda was staunchly protective, saw her soft side.

‘Isn’t she well?’

‘You could say that. I’m not sure how you’d describe someone who’s just discovered her husband’s having it off with another woman. Don’t deny it, Dad,’ she said brutally when Steve opened his mouth to speak, although he had no idea what he was about to say. ‘Angie Curtis saw you in Huddersfield last Sunday, coming out of some cheap hotel, holding hands with a girl young enough to be your daughter.’

‘And Angie came and told your mother?’ He kicked the back of a chair. It was a nervous gesture rather than angry. ‘I was going to tell her meself one day soon. Why couldn’t the bitch keep her bloody gob shut?’

‘Why should she? Mam has a right to know. And it weren’t Mam she told, anyroad, it were me,’ his
daughter sneered. ‘And it were
me
who told our Mam. And you might like to know that, yesterday, I rang the hospital and nobody knew anything about you working overtime, so I borrowed Graham’s car and followed you home. It didn’t surprise me when you turned into some dead posh house and didn’t come out again for almost two hours.’

‘You should get a job with MI5, girl. You’d make a good spy.’ He was blustering, trying to cover his confusion. This was totally unexpected and he had no idea how to deal with it.

‘That’s not all I did.’ Brenda’s eyes were bright with spite. ‘I went to the town hall this morning and looked up who lived in the house: Kathleen and Michael Quinn. Our Maggie said there’s a Dr Kathleen Quinn at her surgery, so it seems you’ve picked a dead posh tart to screw, Dad.’

Steve’s heart sank to his boots. ‘Do your sisters know?’

‘Of course. Why, would you have liked it kept a secret?’

‘For now, yes. I told you, I was going to tell your mam soon.’

‘When?’ she demanded.

‘When I left for good.’

‘For good!’ Her eyes bulged. ‘You’re leaving Mam – for
good
?’

‘I would’ve thought she’d be pleased at the idea. I’ve been feeling a bit surplus to requirements over the last ten years.’

‘Don’t be daft, Dad. Mam’s gutted. And don’t you think it’s about time you went upstairs to see her?’ She jerked her head towards the stairs.

Jean was lying, fully dressed, on top of the bedclothes, her shoes on the floor, neatly side by side. She raised her
head when he went in and he saw her eyes were puffy with tears. ‘Steve. Oh, Steve! How could you do this to me?’

All he could feel was impatience. He had no intention of saying he was sorry, because he didn’t regret a single thing. ‘What did you expect, Jean? We’ve not been man and wife in a long while. I’m not exactly made of steel. All I can say is, it’s a wonder it didn’t happen sooner.’

‘You should’ve said summat, luv,’ she cried. ‘We could have worked things out between us.’ Her nose was running, badly. He gave her his hanky and she wiped it with a trembling hand.

‘I remember saying quite a lot when you turned away from me, refused to let me touch you, but you’ve forgotten.’

She turned, buried her face in the pillow, and said in a muffled voice, ‘I’m nearly through the change, so there’s no chance of me falling pregnant. We could do it now, Steve. We could do it tonight. I wouldn’t mind.’

He stared at the crumpled figure on the bed. It was years since Jean had given any thought to her appearance. Her thick tights were wrinkled around her ankles, her swollen hips encased in a shapeless skirt, her blouse torn under the arms. The hair that had once gleamed a pretty blonde had turned to dull grey and was cut sensibly short. There was no style to it and she only wore make-up when she left the house. He’d grown so used to it that he no longer gave it any thought. She was his wife. She was Jean, and this was the way she was.

‘It’s a bit late for that,’ he said gruffly. ‘I can’t turn meself on and off like a bloody tap.’

‘Brenda said Angie told her the girl you were with only looked half your age,’ she whispered into the pillow. ‘I can’t compete with someone like that.’

‘She’s forty-two, only seven years younger than you.’ Despite himself, he was beginning to feel sorry for her. He would sooner she ranted and raged, attacked him, than face him with her tears.

‘I want to die,’ she sobbed. ‘If you don’t stop seeing this woman, Steve, I’ll kill meself.’

A few days later, Steve’s supervisor called him into his office. Ken Crook was an ex-sergeant major in the Marines, a hearty, red-faced man in his sixties whose job would also shortly disappear. Lately, Steve had spent most of his time loading equipment and furniture into vans, there being hardly any patients left to push around.

‘Sit down, son, close the door,’ Ken said when Steve entered the room that was hardly bigger than a cupboard. He grinned amiably. ‘Seems like you’ve been a naughty boy. Either that, or someone’s got it in for you.’ He threw a letter across the desk. ‘That came this morning.’

‘Dear Sir,’ Steve read, ‘This is to inform you that Mr Steve Cartwright is having an affair with a married woman. Yours faithfully.’ There was no signature, nothing to say where it had come from, although he recognized Brenda’s sharp, pointed writing and felt a flood of bitter anger.

‘Short and to the point, eh!’ Ken guffawed. ‘Well, all I can say is, good luck to you, son. What people do out of working hours is none of the hospital’s business. Anyroad, there won’t be a bloody hospital by the end of the month. We’ll all be out of a job.’ He gave Steve a lewd wink. ‘I only wish it were me having the affair.’

Kathleen’s husband and one of the doctors in the surgery where she worked had received similar letters. ‘Michael already knows and Dennis Burke asked if I was sleeping with a patient. Once he realized I wasn’t, he
didn’t care.’ She shuddered delicately. ‘But it’s horrible, Steve. Last night, the phone went twice, but there was no one there.’ She went on to say she’d taken the opportunity of giving in her notice. ‘It might be best if we moved away from Huddersfield and lived somewhere else. If we stay, I doubt if that malevolent daughter of yours will give us any peace. What do you think?’

He didn’t tell Jean what Brenda had done. Jean was a broken woman. Day after day he would come home and find her in bed, her face haggard with weeping, telling him that she loved him, pleading with him to stay. She’d had her hair permed, bought a couple of nice frocks, but it only made her seem even more pathetic as she tried to compete with his beautiful Kathleen.

He wanted to leave, find himself lodgings of some sort, while he waited for his job to come to an end and his life with Kathleen to start, but it seemed cowardly to shirk the small amount of responsibility he had left.

For some reason, the girls kept well out of the way. Perhaps they thought that, left alone with their heartbroken mother, his own heart would be touched and he’d stay. Although the guilt was piling on him, choking him, the idea of staying with this sad, weeping woman didn’t enter his head. He was too much looking forward to being with Kathleen, although when they were together, his mind would be pre-occupied with Jean, who’d make herself ill if she didn’t pull herself together. It reminded him of the business with the new house. She hadn’t wanted one when the money was there, but all hell was let loose when she demanded a house and it was too late. Now she was doing the same thing with her husband.

Kathleen had been writing after vacancies advertised in the medical press. There was, as always, a shortage of
doctors, and replies usually arrived by return of post inviting her for interview.

‘Where would you like to live?’ she asked. ‘Brighton, Broadstairs, the Isle of Wight or Liverpool?’

‘Liverpool,’ Steve said instantly. It was a working-class city and he’d prefer to live amongst his own kind, not in some toffee-nosed, middle-class area where he’d feel out of place.

‘Good.’ She looked pleased. ‘There’s a job in the maternity department at the general hospital. I’ve worked with mothers and babies before and I loved it. I’ll ring them later, arrange an interview.’

Steve’s hospital was now a ghostly place, empty of patients and beds. He spent his last day playing cards and drinking with a group of men who, like him, had been made redundant. The atmosphere was a mixture of gloom and bravado, as they discussed what they do with themselves on Monday when they would normally have gone to work. Most were off to the Job Centre that they’d been haunting for weeks without success.

‘What about you, Steve?’ someone asked.

‘It’ll be the same for me,’ he said. He didn’t mention the Job Centre would be in Liverpool. Kathleen had got the position she was after, starting the beginning of August. They would stay in a hotel while looking for somewhere to live. He’d booked a taxi to take him to Threshers’ End first thing in the morning – he didn’t want Kathleen collecting him from the house.

But before any of these things happened, he had to say goodbye to Jean, something that he was dreading.

She was downstairs for a change when he got home, wearing one of her new frocks. The red-rimmed eyes in the waxen face made her look a bit like a clown and he
felt a surge of pity. He could smell something delicious baking in the oven. ‘I’m making a steak and kidney pie,’ she said.

‘Ta, luv.’ He sat in his old chair, while she stood in the kitchen doorway, looking at him, wiping her flour-covered hands on her apron.

‘You’re a very good-looking man, Steve.’ Her voice was low and tired. ‘I remember how proud I felt when we got married. I only noticed recently that you’ve hardly changed a bit. No wonder that woman fell in love with you.’ Her hands dropped to her sides. ‘I’ve let meself go, haven’t I? I stopped making meself pretty. It’s just that I felt so sure of you. I didn’t think it mattered how I looked.’

‘It wasn’t that, Jean,’ he muttered.

‘I know what it was and I’m sorry. I didn’t think that mattered either.’

He didn’t reply, worried that he’d say too much and it’d end up in a row. Later, he ate the pie, said how nice it was, and stayed in that night, saying little because there was little left to say, watching telly, when he’d meant to go the club for a last drink with Bert and Fudge and the other lads. It was just that he didn’t like to desert Jean on their last night together.

At ten o’clock, when she was engrossed in something on the telly, or pretending to be, he went upstairs and put a few clothes in a bag; a spare pair of jeans, underwear, and a couple of shirts. Jean could take the rest to one of them charity shops. There were enough around these days. As an afterthought, he included his best suit. He’d need it when he went after jobs. He put the bag, out of sight, in one of the unused bedrooms.

When he returned downstairs, Jean was making
cocoa. ‘Would you like a snack of some sort, a sandwich?’

‘No, ta.’

‘I’ll turn in after I’ve drunk this.’

‘I’ll be up later,’ he lied. He had no intention of going to bed. He’d sleep in the chair. Jean had started turning to him during the night, putting her arms around him, whispering his name, while he pretended to be asleep. It was much too late for that, and he didn’t want it to happen again on his last night.

When he woke, aching all over, bright sunlight was pouring through the window and the birds were singing outside. The clock on the mantelpiece showed ten past seven. The taxi would arrive in fifty minutes. He stood, stretched his arms, and gave himself a good wash in the kitchen, shaving in front of the tiny mirror on the window sill. When he looked, it was only half past seven. Opening the kitchen door, he strolled down the narrow strip of lawn and imagined his girls playing on the grass when they were just kids, four pretty frilly figures batting balls to one another. He remembered putting up a length of rope, turning the grass into a tennis court, pretending it was Wimbledon.

There was a shed at the bottom where he’d occasionally gone for a bit of peace and quiet when the girls got older and had their boyfriends round and the house been turned into a disco.

‘There you are, skiving again,’ Jean would say in a bitter voice when she found him. He thought she’d hated him, but it turned out she’d loved him all the time, just not bothered to show it.