She had felt the estrangement between her mother and father and was sorry, desperately sorry, because she had seen her mother’s happiness at bringing them together. But something had happened to change that, and Liselle would dearly love to know what it was.
She sipped her cold coffee and grimaced. Evander smiled at her. He looked at her all the time, and far from embarrassing her, she quite enjoyed it. It was the look of a man who really knew her for what she was.
‘Why is my mother so against you now?’ Her voice was low, with the same huskiness as his. Evander thought hard. Should he tell her?
‘I think I’ve a right to know.’
It could have been Kerry, all those years before. Wanting to be told about his family, his mother, his life.
‘Listen, child. Your mother and I ... Well, all I can say is I did something bad to her. Real bad. If I tell you, then you might look at me differently.’
‘I need to know. My mother has been there for me all my life. I know she drinks, and she can be selfish at times, but I really need to know everything. Everything to do with the three of us. It’s the only way I can ever really be myself.’
Evander nodded, seeing the logic of what she said. She was wise, this child of his. She had the same candour as her mother, and just a hint of his own mother, a woman who had brooked no nonsense from her big sons and even bigger, more aggressive, husband.
‘It’s a long story. It began when I got back to the States.’
He told her quietly and calmly about the life he’d had there, leaving out some of the least savoury parts but not ducking the truth either. He told it like it was. Until Liselle, in her imagination, could smell the dirt, feel the heat. Could feel the decline of this once proud man as he tried to pick himself up in a country where his colour was burden enough without being crippled. She could feel the stale enclosed atmosphere of each chocolate town he drifted to, his hands growing stiffer, his piano playing more laboured. His life descending on to a plane of poverty most English people only heard about. When he got to the part where he met Skip he faltered and Liselle poured him a glass of scotch, waiting patiently while he sipped it, gathering himself together.
All the time he spoke she was silent. She watched him, his hands moving unconsciously, face paling, growing grey and bleak. Body sagging in the big plush seat, he told her everything except the part where her twin cousins disposed of the Americans. He knew instinctively that was another part of the story he should keep from her. Like the parts where he played piano in cheap brothels to whores full of syphilis and cheap whisky. Some things were best left unsaid, even if they were the truth.
When he finished, Liselle stared at him for a short while. Her face held no hint of her thoughts at all. Her mind was like a closed book to him. Just as he wondered whether she was going to get up and walk out on him, away from him forever, she moved.
Kneeling in front of him she put up her sad, beautiful face. He saw what was inside her then, all the love and the need. She put her arms around his waist voluntarily, the first daughterly embrace. She put her forehead on to the rough broken hands he held in his lap and he felt the hot salty tears running over them. Awkwardly he gathered her to him, kissing the sweet-smelling hair, feeling his child for the first time, her delicate bones pulled against his heavy body.
Looking over her head as he held her, he felt his own tears then. For his daughter, for himself, and for Kerry. His beautiful Kerry who had taken everything he had to offer without a thought for herself or what her love could bring to her door. Yet he had brought her more trouble than she deserved. More trouble than she could ever have anticipated.
Yes, most of all he cried for his Kerry, the girl she had been, and the woman she had become. He had helped shape both, and he wasn’t proud of what he had created.
It had all started in that dirty room in Stepney. It ended here in a plush hotel in Mayfair.
His child knew it all, and still she wanted him.
Bernadette watched as Marcus walked out of the house in Hyde Park with the blonde. The girl, and she was only a girl, nineteen at the most, was tall and willowy, with thick heavy hair, cut in a page boy style, and startlingly long slim legs. Even wrapped up in a fur coat, Bernie knew she’d have big breasts. Bernie watched from a taxi as Marcus unlocked the passenger door of his car and the blonde caressed his arm as she spoke to him. Bernadette bit on her lip, feeling the rage building up inside her.
So this was the competition, was it? Well, it was competition she could well do without. Miss Bathing Belle 1947 was even more beautiful than she had dreamed and a tiny part of her could see what her husband was so attracted to. If she was working in the Hyde Park house she was an expensive brass. A very expensive, very young brass, but a brass all the same. She slept with men for money. Except Marcus, of course. He wouldn’t pay for a woman, he wasn’t the type. He was too bloody good-looking for a start.
The taxi driver rolled himself another cigarette and coughed loudly, annoying her.
‘You finished here yet, love?’
Bernadette snapped at him, ‘No, I bloody well ain’t. I’m paying you, so just shut your trap and wait ’til I tell you where I want to go.’
The taxi driver, used to getting all sorts in his cab, just shrugged.
‘All right, love, no need to get out of your tree.’
Bernie fumed silently. If she was the tall blonde the cabbie would be wetting himself with excitement. He wouldn’t talk to Miss Long Legs Strawberry Blonde like that. He’d sit here ’til bleeding doomsday if she was in the cab.
Two-faced bastard! They were all two-faced bastards. Especially Marcus. Oh, especially him. The futility of her anger made her more annoyed. The snow-covered streets annoyed her. The fact that the tall blonde bitch was even breathing annoyed her.
‘Take me back home. NOW!’
The girls were due in. Presents had to be wrapped. What a Christmas Eve this was turning out to be. As they drove she thought about Marcus and the girl. Sorry now she had seen the competition because she wasn’t sure what to do about it. How could a woman in her forties hope to compete with that? She might be the mother of Marcus’s children, might run his house, might share his bed. But she knew that as far as sex went, and she meant real sex, the kind of sex they had enjoyed those first years before the children had arrived, that was long gone. Now he lay on her for a while, told her he loved her, disposed of his seed inside her, always hoping she would get pregnant and give him a son, then he was snoring gently, no doubt dreaming about the strawberry blonde with the long, oh so long, legs.
Bernadette paid the taxi man without giving him a tip. She paid him and waited for her change, enjoying the feeling of having something over him. He pushed the change into her gloved hand roughly, giving her large house a final sneering appraisal as he drove away. She knew what he was thinking. Living in that place and not even a tip on Christmas Eve! She knew it would be his Christmas story up the pub with his mates, and at home with his wife and family. The house would get bigger with each telling until everyone thought he’d dropped her off at Buckingham Palace.
She walked up her drive, depressed, deflated, and more than anything ashamed of her actions towards the cab driver. It was Christmas Eve and she should have given him a tip. But it was Christmas Eve and she was forty-two and her husband was strupping a young girl.
That was the difference.
She opened the front door of her house to pandemonium. Rebecca and Delia were fighting in the hallway. Delia, always the volatile one, had Becky’s hair in her hand and was yanking it. Overcome by her day, Bemadette swiped the two of them with her large black leather handbag. She swiped them mercilessly, their tears and screams barely reaching her.
Holding the bag up menacingly, she shouted, ‘Get out of my sight now, the pair of you.’
Delia opened her mouth to argue and got another painful swipe from her mother’s bag.
Bernie took off her coat, hat and gloves and dumped herself into a seat. The tree was glaring at her and she felt an urge to get up and drag it from its pot and destroy it. Destroy it and everything in the house that was remotely connected with Christmas.
The dinner was nearly ready to be served and Briony and Tommy poured drinks for the assembled family. Everyone was there, and Molly, a subdued Molly, watched the black man, as she still thought of Evander, sitting with Liselle and chatting amiably to her. She shuddered every time she looked at him. It weren’t natural, she kept telling herself. But she kept her peace, knowing she was there on sufferance.
The twins chatted to Tommy and Marcus, business talk that seemed just about acceptable at the gathering as far as Molly was concerned. Kerry was drinking heavily and alone, barely bothering to answer Bernadette when she spoke to her. Delia and Becky sat on the floor like a pair of young foals, all long legs and ankle socks. Molly wished Abel was here, but he had to watch his mother. Mrs H was coming down to dinner the next day, but Molly decided she might go up for a visit before that. The drinks in this house were stingy this year. Hers was like cat’s piss.
Rosalee sat beside Briony, a weak rum punch in her hand. Briony noticed she had difficulty in holding the glass and took it from her gently, holding it to her lips. Rosalee sipped it and Briony smiled at her.
‘All right, Rosalee?’
‘Bri ...
Bri
...’
Her voice was lower than usual. She held her right arm to her chest, her expression pained.
Briony decided that as soon as Christmas was over she was taking her sister back to the Mile End Hospital and getting her the once over by Dr Matherson. He liked Rosalee and was good with her. She wasn’t right, and Briony wondered if maybe her sister was getting her change. Maybe it was coming early? She seemed to sweat an awful lot lately, as cold as it was out, and she seemed to be bloated around the face though she was losing weight. Her arm seemed to pain her as well. There was something not right with her.
Briony kissed her face gently and Rosalee smiled, looking more like her old self.
Briony’s eyes strayed to Tommy, her own personal present. Together they made one hell of a team. There was a knock at the front door and she got up to greet Mariah. Now everyone was here they could sit down to eat.
‘Come in and get your coat off. We’re eating soon. Have you been to the houses, is that why you’re late?’ Briony raised an eyebrow and Mariah laughed.
‘Well, let’s just say I had a quick peep! It’s always a busy night and I thought I’d give the girls a bit of moral support.’
‘You’re coming to Midnight Mass, I take it?’
Mariah slipped off her coat and displayed a white and gold evening dress that was gaudy and tight and much too young for her. ‘Of course. If Mary Magdalene was good enough for old JC, I’m sure I am.’
Briony laughed at the blasphemy, though she wouldn’t have if anyone else had said it.
Bernadette was quiet and Briony found her eyes straying to her throughout dinner. She hardly ate anything, and there was a tracery of fine lines around her eyes that was more pronounced than usual. She wished Bernie would smarten herself up. It wasn’t as if she had no time, everything was done for her. She could spend time on herself if she wanted to.
She watched Bernie watching her husband. Putting two and two together, she sighed. Marcus had played away from home for years. Bernie knew, she had discussed it with Briony on more than one occasion. But it had never really bothered her until now. She had always been sure she was the main recipient of his affections and that had been enough. Briony had once offered to put the hard word on him and Bernie had laughed. Marcus was too damned good-looking for his own good, she had said. It was natural women would want him, and that was OK with her as long as he stuck to the brasses and was discreet. Briony had admired her sister then. She wondered what had changed and decided to keep her eye on Bernie. If she could help, then she would.
The twins were chatting with Evander. Briony watched them. It was funny, but the more they saw of him the more they liked him. They could listen to his tales of America for hours. Probing for details about the country, about the way of life there, the cars and the clothes. The States fascinated them.
At ten the dinner was nearly over, with just dessert, coffee and brandy to be served. Briony was pleased with the way the meal had gone, but troubled by the different undercurrents. Tommy caught her eye and winked and she winked back saucily.
Bernadette saw the exchange and it depressed her beyond measure. Everyone treated her with contempt. Everyone.
It was just so unfair. She had tried to be respectable, she had tried to be good, and what had it got her? Nothing, that’s what. Her husband was having sexual gymnastics with a girl young enough to be his daughter, her sister, a sister who was a madam of all things, had her old beau back. Even that drunken Kerry, Miss Golden Voice, was sitting around the table with a bloody great black man who had fathered her child. Her illegitimate child at that! Now he was treated like visiting royalty and Bernie was overlooked as usual. Overlooked and made to feel like a joke. All of them, Rosalee included, had made a hash of their lives in one way or another, were not even respectable, and here she was, the only one to be wedded lawfully, and she had all this on her plate!
The old Bernie was resurfacing with each passing second. The Bernie who was jealous of everyone - her sisters, her friends, anyone. Who wished bad on the whole world.
St Vincent’s church was jam packed as it was every Christmas Eve. Most Irish men did what they called their devotion, Christmas, Easter and the Apostle Saints days, and without fail Ash Wednesday and All Souls.
In the front pew Briony held Rosalee’s hand and pointed out to her, as she did every year, the wooden pieces of the nativity. Rosalee listened with the same rapt attention as she did every year. When the priest finally arrived, all the grubby altar boys were in place, some smelling suspiciously of cigarettes.