The Old House on the Corner (13 page)

‘I wish you’d used a duvet, Gran, like everyone else,’ Victoria complained.

The bedding took up four big plastic bags. ‘I suppose someone, somewhere will make use of it,’ she muttered, as she had done a dozen times that day when faced with drawers full of thick, lisle stockings, silky bloomers that reached the knees, lock-knit petticoats. One of Gran’s nighties actually had a Utility label inside and must have been bought during the war. Victoria had never known her wear it. Unlike the other, more practical nighties, this was plain black crêpe, long and slinky, with narrow shoulder straps.

‘I bet she got this for when Granddad came home from India.’ Granddad had been in the Army and had spent four long years away from home. She had pressed the nightie to her breast. ‘I can’t possibly give it away.’ Later, she put it with the ‘things to keep’ pile, which was growing ominously large.

Victoria stretched her arms. She felt tired and it was time to go to bed, but first she’d make some cocoa. The football books she’d promised Gareth Moran were on the kitchen table. Most were very old and she hoped he’d find them useful.

‘I liked him, Gran,’ she murmured wistfully. ‘I liked him an awful lot. And I’m sure he liked me.’

If only he wasn’t married. If only, if only …

Gareth was thinking about Victoria at the same moment as she was thinking about him. The Hamiltons were still
downstairs where they’d been watching television for the last – he looked at his watch – seven hours – seven very noisy hours – and he’d been thinking how nice it would be to live in a quiet house where people didn’t scream with laughter at every damn thing the telly threw up. Even the news could send the widow Joyce into convulsions. He wondered what his late father-in-law had died of and reckoned his brain had probably exploded from the noise made by his charmless wife. He must ask Debbie sometime.

Shit, it had been an awful day. He’d been hoping to get further on with his footy site over the weekend, but hadn’t had a minute, not until a few hours ago, when he couldn’t stand watching another old comedy programme on telly – it was on some digital channel that showed them one after the other, and even the ones he liked,
Seinfeld
, for instance, he’d already seen before – so he’d gone upstairs and switched on the computer. It was ages before anyone had noticed that he’d gone. Debbie came, hours later, and told him he was rude just to disappear, and he told her, rudely, that he was busy.

‘I don’t have a nine to five job like most people. I have work to do at home.’

‘Well, if that’s how you feel,’ Debbie had pouted, ‘I’ll leave you in peace to get on with it.’

‘Gee,
thanks
,’ he’d said sarcastically. Peace was at a premium in Hamilton Lodge. He couldn’t remember when he’d last experienced it. Then he remembered that morning, talking to Victoria Macara in her comfy old house with its comfy old furniture. It had been peaceful there. The time had flown by. He looked out the window and saw there was a light on upstairs in Victoria’s and wondered if she had finished emptying drawers. There’d been something awfully brave and
honest about her. She was tough, yet at the same time fragile. He hoped she would manage, all on her own, in New York. Perhaps they could email each other. He felt he didn’t want to lose all contact with Victoria Macara.

Rachel Williams was in bed on the verge of sleep. She’d taken a sleeping tablet. It had been a truly horrible day and the sooner it was over the better. Frank and James had come home and announced they’d had a pub meal and didn’t want anything to eat. Neither seemed to care she’d already made them dinner. Then James had gone out again and Frank had spent the afternoon watching a football match on television and Rachel watching for the Burrows and the Cartwrights to come back – it was ages before they did and they looked as if they’d had a great time. Sarah Rees-James and the children had spent virtually all afternoon in the Jordans. The younger Jordan boy had taken Tiffany for a ride around the square on the crossbar of his bike.

‘I’m being left out,’ Rachel whispered. ‘No one wants to know me.’

In number two Victoria Square, Marie Jordan was saying the rosary under the bedclothes, her fingers touching the beads lovingly before moving to the next. When she finished, she kissed the crucifix, and slid the rosary under the pillow.

She’d really enjoyed today. It was a long time since she’d felt like a normal human being. There’d been no need to look over her shoulder every few minutes, worried someone might be watching, wondering where they’d seen her before.

At around ten o’clock, she’d gone to Sarah’s to make sure the children had settled down for the night. The
two older ones were asleep and Alastair was grizzling pathetically in his cot. Marie had dosed him with Calpol and changed his soaking nappy – she wished she could have afforded the disposable sort when Patrick and Danny had been babies. It was something his mother should have done, but the girl had looked dead on her feet. Besides which, she didn’t have much idea how to look after children. Until recently, she’d had a nanny who’d done everything, she’d explained earlier. There was a mountain of clothes in the kitchen waiting to be washed. Tomorrow, Marie would give her a hand, bring some of the washing home and do it in her own machine. Helping Sarah could well occupy her until Patrick and Danny started school when she intended to look for a job. She’d never been a lady of leisure and didn’t fancy it a bit. By then, Sarah would surely be able to cope on her own.

Marie was curious to know what had happened. Why had Sarah dispensed with the nanny? Why had she moved to Victoria Square? Where was the children’s father? She would never ask. She hated it when questioned about her own life. Even so, she felt curious …

Sarah’s mother was a timid little thing. She went around with a helpless look on her pretty face, which didn’t matter, because Daddy was the most capable man in the entire world. It was Daddy who paid the bills, told Mrs Wesley, the housekeeper, what they should have for dinner, went with Mummy to the supermarket to make sure she bought the right groceries. Daddy had interviewed the au pairs who’d looked after Sarah and her sister, Julia, when they were small, and he organized their schooling – they went to private schools, naturally, as there was no question of Robin Fitzgerald’s daughters being educated by the State.

Daddy didn’t go to work like most girls’ daddies. He had an office upstairs with a word processor and a telephone and he invested in things, bought stocks and shares and property. He’d once tried to explain what he did to Sarah, but she didn’t understand.

‘I’ll have to make sure you marry a rich husband,’ he’d chortled. ‘You’re not likely to get very far with your brains.’

Sarah was glad she took after her father, physically, at least. He was tall and blond, with the features of a Greek god – she wasn’t the only person to think that. Quite a few girls at school had a crush on him.

‘He looks like a film star,’ they would say admiringly when he came to collect her and Julia in his vintage
Bentley. Somehow, even in old jeans and a crumpled jacket, he managed to look smarter and more elegant than most other girls’ fathers.

While Julia was small and delicately pretty like their mother, Sarah was tall, fair-haired and striking. She was also very athletic, always winning at least half a dozen medals on Sports Day, Daddy watching from the side and frantically cheering her on. He bought a frame to put the medals in, adding more each year. When Sarah grew older, she captained the hockey team and twice won a cup when she represented the school in a tennis tournament.

When she looked back on her childhood, Sarah couldn’t remember a single unpleasant thing happening. The Fitzgeralds lived in a big old house that had once been a vicarage and was situated in the countryside halfway between Knowsley and St Helens. Daddy would take them shopping for new clothes in Liverpool or Southport. Anything they wanted, they could have, no expense spared. ‘We’ll be a long time dead,’ Daddy would say when he wrote the cheques, signing them with an arrogant squiggle, though she knew he was short of money sometimes when investments failed or stocks and shares fell when he thought they would go up. Or something like that.

But it didn’t get Daddy down. Nothing did. He just laughed his way through life, adoring his girls, loving his quiet little wife, enjoying himself to the full. In summer, the Fitzgeralds went on holiday to the South of France, always staying in the best hotels. Every so often, they threw a party and, when the girls were small, they went around with trays of drinks and refreshments and everyone said how very sweet they were. Dinner parties were held regularly and, as Sarah and Julia grew older,
they sat with the guests and Daddy started inviting scores of eligible young men. Although quite a few asked the girls out, they always refused a second date.

There was an insurmountable problem with all the young men: they weren’t Daddy. They were nothing like Daddy. They giggled, told silly jokes, were unsure of themselves, didn’t know how to treat waiters – Daddy was always firm, but charming, because that way you got the best service. It was the same in banks and shops. Daddy, with his wicked smile and engaging manner, always got his way. People rushed to serve him, whereas the young men had no idea how to behave and were either rude or servile.

Sarah and Julia decided it could only be because they were young, though they felt sure Daddy hadn’t been so callow in his youth and, as they couldn’t marry him, they couldn’t imagine marrying anyone.

At sixteen, Julia left school with three GCEs and went to work in an antique shop owned by a friend of Daddy’s. When Sarah left two years later with a GCE in Art and
nearly
one in History, he found her an equally nice job in a big hotel owned by another friend. She was never quite sure what she was supposed to do there. She had her own office and people came to her with problems that she was never able to solve, often guests who wanted to complain about something. Sarah just gave them a big smile and said she was terribly sorry and they went away, apparently satisfied.

One day, quite out of the blue, when Julia was twenty-one, she fell in love. Gary Moss was small, very pale, with mousy brown hair and, although he had an interesting face and a lovely smile, he wasn’t remotely like their big, sunburned, outgoing Daddy.

‘How on earth did you manage it?’ Sarah asked her sister.

‘Manage what?’

‘Manage to fall in love with Gary?’

‘I don’t know,’ Julia replied, shrugging helplessly. ‘It just happened.’

Gary wasn’t remotely eligible. He and Julia had met at a party – someone else’s party where Daddy wasn’t able to choose the guests. A social worker, he earned scarcely enough to live on, let alone buy a decent house.

‘We’ll just have to buy an indecent one,’ Gary said with a grin when Daddy felt bound to point this out. He wasn’t the least bit over-awed by his future father-in-law.

‘I’m not in a position, at the moment, to help you out with a few grand,’ Daddy said stiffly.

‘I don’t wish to be rude, Mr Fitzgerald, but I wouldn’t have taken it if you were. I’d sooner provide for me wife meself, thanks all the same.’ Gary came from Liverpool and had a truly horrid accent.

‘Call me Robin.’

‘I know my wages don’t sound much to someone in your position, Robin, but they’re pretty average. Lots of people have to manage on much less.’

Daddy looked as if he didn’t believe it.

Julia’s wedding wasn’t as grand as her father would have liked. He was in one of his downward spirals, he explained. But things would soon buck up, he added, as cheerful as ever. By the time Sarah married he would be flush again, but for now they couldn’t afford to invite more than a hundred guests and would Julia mind if they had a buffet meal instead of a sit down one?

Twenty-five of the guests were from Gary’s family. Daddy was fearful they’d be frightfully badly dressed,
drink too much, swear, and throw food at each other, but Gary’s relatives turned out to be eminently respectable. His father was a toolmaker, whatever that meant, and his mother a social worker, just like her son. Mrs Moss wore a lovely blue boucle´ coat and a feathered hat that Sarah admired very much, until Mrs Moss took them off at the reception and she noticed they’d come from C&A and went right off them. She’d never been inside C&A, but understood it was frightfully common.

Julia and Gary went to live in a titchy little terraced house in an area of Liverpool called Fazakerley – such an awful name. ‘It’s like a dolls’ house,’ Sarah commented when she first went in. It was in terrible condition. The people they’d bought it from had been very old and it looked as if it hadn’t seen a lick of paint since the year dot.

‘You’ll have to get people in to decorate,’ Sarah said.

Julia just laughed. ‘No way, we couldn’t possibly afford it. We’re going to decorate the place ourselves.’

Sarah looked at her, shocked to the core. ‘You can’t
paint
things!’ Daddy always got a man in, or sometimes a whole gang of men, whenever anything needed doing on the house.

‘Oh, sis. You can do anything if you try.’

Sarah had no intention of trying. She vowed she would only marry someone who earned more than a hundred grand a year and that she would never so much look at a paintbrush.

Daddy’s fortunes didn’t improve as he’d predicted. Sometimes, unusually for him, he got quite tetchy, and Sarah guessed his fortunes were getting worse. He had to sell the Bentley and bought a silly little Mini that looked more like a toy than a real car. When she came home
from work at the hotel, she always went into his office to say hello, and would find him buried in papers or totting up figures on the calculator, too busy to speak. He might be on the telephone, his voice strange, wheedling almost, as if he wanted something badly off the person at the other end.

One day when she went in and he was on the phone, he sounded terribly cross. ‘For Chrissake, Alex,’ he shouted. ‘It was you who told me that the damn place was a surefire investment, a goldmine, I think you said. I put everything I had into it. I notice you got out quickly enough,’ he added bitterly. ‘You might have told me what was going on. I thought we were supposed to be friends, partners.’ He slammed down the receiver, noticed Sarah, and said, ‘Hello, Poppet,’ a trifle halfheartedly. ‘Daddy’s busy at the moment. I’ll talk to you later at tea.’