Who's Sorry Now (2008) (43 page)

‘I want to do so much more,’ Marc groaned, pulling her roughly into his arms. ‘I hope this trial comes up quickly and my lovely sister is sent home soon, then we can get married and I can show you in every possible way how much I love you.’

He made a pretty good attempt right then, in the empty market hall, leaving Patsy all tousled and flushed. Then they walked slowly home, arms wrapped about each other, trying to hope for the best but each lost in their own sad thoughts.

Chapter Thirty-Nine

The heat of summer with its lazy days of eating ice cream and browsing amongst the stalls was over. Christmas was still too far distant for the market committee to have started putting up fairy lights or the big tree which by tradition stood in the small square. The air was filled with typical autumnal scents of chestnuts roasting and hot baked potatoes, home-made chocolate from Lizzie Pringle’s Chocolate Cabin and the rich tang of oranges from Barry Holmes’s stall.

A cold north-east wind blew in through the big double doors of the old Victorian, iron-framed building. It whistled round folks’ legs and made old ladies shiver and think longingly of their own firesides as they swiftly filled their shopping baskets with onions and potatoes, a few leeks and carrots from Holmes’s Fruit and Veg, and a couple of chump chops from Ramsay’s Butchers to make a nice lamb hot pot for tea.

Thomas was sitting in Belle’s Café enjoying a bacon butty, as he so often was at this time of a morning. He had his copy of
Sporting Life
spread out on the blue-checked tablecloth before him, happily reading about likely winners for the two-thirty when a familiar voice at his elbow rudely interrupted his contentment. ‘I thought I’d find you here.’

He was so startled he nearly knocked his mug of tea flying but managed to catch it just in time. ‘Mavis, I didn’t see you come in.’

His wife folded her arms across her corseted chest and looked down her long nose at him. ‘Why would you, when you’re too busy feeding your face?’

‘A man has to eat.’ Nevertheless, Thomas set down the bacon sandwich, unwilling to continue partaking of his breakfast beneath her eagle eye. ‘Were you wanting summat?’ he bravely enquired.

Thomas was surprised to note that she was wearing a different coloured lipstick, a soft pink shade instead of her usual dark crimson. And her sagging cheeks, marred by a few overlarge freckles, had been coated with a thick foundation cream instead of the usual dab of her favourite Goya face powder. It turned her face a sort of dull orange.

Mavis settled herself in the seat opposite, which surprised him even more. She set her handbag on her lap, folded her gloved hands on the table and regarded him with the kind of expression he could recall his old primary school headmistress giving him when she’d caught him climbing out of the classroom window one day, hell-bent on escape. He had a great longing to do something similar right now.

‘I thought we’d have a few words.’

Thomas felt completely at a loss, wondering which particular words she might have in mind. He couldn’t think, offhand, of anything he’d done wrong of late to offend her. Hadn’t he been keeping well out of her way?

‘I can take no more of this daft nonsense.’

Thomas didn’t move a muscle.

‘I decided it was long past time I put my foot down,’ she said, and then she smiled at him.
 

At least he assumed it was a smile. It had been so long since he’d witnessed such an expression on his wife’s face that he couldn’t be entirely certain.

‘I was wondering when you were thinking of coming back home?’ Mavis spoke through a mouth set so tight it seemed as if the question had been torn unwillingly from her lips.

‘Eh?’ Not an intelligent response, but the only one Thomas could come up with right at that moment.

‘I thought with winter coming on ...’ She left the sentence unfinished. They both did. Thomas certainly had no inclination to predict where this conversation might be heading.

Blinking rapidly, Mavis took out her lavender-scented handkerchief and blew her nose upon it, leaving the tip of it all red and with a smear of orange foundation on the linen fabric. Then she dabbed at her eyes and gave a loud sniff. If it had been anyone else performing these actions Thomas would have said the woman was close to tears, but this was Mavis.

He cleared his throat, since some reply seemed to be expected of him. ‘I don’t quite understand what yer on about? I’m quite comfortable.’

‘You can’t possibly be comfortable. You can’t spend all winter living in that hut,’ Mavis snapped. ‘It wouldn’t be right. And what will folk think?’

‘Folk can think what they like, I don’t much care. And it’s a shed.’

Mavis glowered, but seeing that she was making no progress she remembered how she’d promised herself to be patient with him, how strangely silent the house was without him. There seemed no purpose to her life any more, no focal point to her day without a husband to cook for, or tidy up after. She even resented the fact that her daughter-in-law was doing his washing for him.

However infuriating Thomas might be, he was still her husband. They were man and wife, bound together through life for better or for worse. And if she would have preferred a bit more of the former and a bit less of the latter, well, that couldn’t be helped. It was a wife’s duty to grin and bear her lot, whatever that might be. But she couldn’t bear the silence of waking up alone in that house any more, that was certain

She reasserted the smile. ‘It’ll do your chest no good at all. You’ll get bronchitis again.’

‘I might, I might not. I’m sure I can cope. Anyroad, I’m staying put.’

Now she was deeply troubled, for he didn’t seem in the least concerned. What on earth could she say to persuade the daft fool to see the error of his ways if he didn’t care about the gossip permeating through the market about their quarrel, nor even about his own health?

But Mavis knew well enough who to blame for this state of affairs, this late rebellion in her normally docile husband.

‘Staying put indeed. We shall see about that,’ she said, putting away her handkerchief and closing her handbag with a loud click.

Belle Garside was talking to Sam Beckett from the ironmongery stall while he ate his egg and bacon breakfast. She had her arms folded, pushing up her magnificent breasts above the low-necked blouse she wore. And while she fluttered her eyelashes and flirted outrageously with him, as she so loved to do since Sam was a good looking bloke, she was keeping half an eye on the little scene taking place in the far corner.
 

Mavis had been aware of the other woman’s interest for some minutes, and, getting briskly to her feet, marched right over. ‘If you think I don’t know what’s been going on then you’ve another think coming. I’m no fool, so don’t take me for one.’

‘Excuse me?’ Belle said, confused by this unexpected attack, coming quite out of the blue.

‘It’s about time you got an husband of your own, if you can find one, instead of pinching other folks.’

Two swift steps took her behind the counter where a large pan of Heinz baked beans was bubbling on a small stove. Mavis grasped it with both hands and before anyone could stop her, deposited the entire contents on top of a range of apples pies, custard tarts and cream cakes set out on a glass shelf.

‘I’ll give you beans of toast,’ she said, thrusting the hot pan into Belle's trembling hands. ‘You’ll find
your
toast burned to a crisp if you ever lay one of those scarlet finger nails on my poor husband again.

‘And as for you,’ Mavis said, turning her ire on the man in question. ‘You can get off home this minute, you daft lummock, before I really lose my temper.’

‘By gum,’ Thomas said to the gaping diners. ‘What a woman!’

Amy couldn’t understand it. Mavis had changed. Her usual dour expression had vanished, her whole demeanour seemed to have been transformed from glum and over-critical to sunny and what could only be described as happy. Amy had never heard her mother-in-law singing before, but she did that all the time now as she hurried off to do her shopping following her usual daily visit. She’d even managed to sit for a whole half hour chatting without once finding fault. Amy wondered if she was ill, or if she was growing senile perhaps, as old folk often did.

But then she discovered that Thomas was happy too, and no longer living on the allotment.

‘What’s happened to your mother and father?’ she asked Chris one day. ‘Your mother’s like a dog with two tails. She came and collected all your father’s washing the other day and told me he was back home now and that she’d be doing it herself in future. Not only that, but, according to Thomas, she’s waiting on him hand, foot and finger, which she always said she’d never do. She’s even letting him watch football on the new telly. What’s going on?’

But Chris only grunted from beneath lowering brows, which was the biggest puzzle of all. While his parents seemed to have resolved their matrimonial difficulties, Amy discovered that she’d acquired a whole new raft of her own, and she couldn’t, for the life of her, understand why.

Chris had never been so unhappy in his life. It was all true, what that anonymous letter had said. Amy did indeed have a fancy man. He’d seen the bloke with his own eyes. But what should he do about it? Should he confront her and demand to know what was going on, or hope that it would all blow over and she’d come back to him?

And did he still want her if she’d betrayed him with another man? Chris groaned. What he wanted was for it not to be happening at all.

In the days following that dreadful discovery, he seemed to be walking around in a dream. He couldn’t concentrate on anything, couldn’t think. He certainly couldn’t talk to Amy properly, could hardly bear to even be in the same house with her. He would go and sit in the bakery in the dark, with his head in his hands in total despair, or go for long walks alone along the canal tow-path, talking to himself like a man demented.

Once or twice he’d caught her writing something but when he asked what it was, she’d pushed all the papers out of sight, flushing a guilty pink, which inflamed his suspicions still more. Was she writing him love letters too, on
his
kitchen table?

What should he do? What
could
he do if she no longer loved him?

And why was she doing this to him? Why had she done this terrible thing? That’s what he couldn’t work out. Why would she want to? What had gone so badly wrong with their marriage that she would even think to look at another bloke? He’d managed, albeit with difficulty, to provide her with a home of their own to live in, one he and his dad had done up and improved as best they could. Of course, he hoped to find her something a bit better one day, but at least they now had the privacy they’d always craved.

And they had little Danny. He worked hard, handed his money over every week, so where had he failed her?

Was it in the bedroom department? he wondered with a pinch of guilt. Amy was a lovely young woman with a healthy appetite for loving. Chris considered all the times when he’d put her off, when they’d been interrupted, even in their own home, by his mother.

Had he been wrong to allow Mavis to march in whenever she chose? Should he start locking the door? Should he tell his mother to knock, or to stay away altogether unless invited? Nay, that would cause ructions, yet more trouble just when his parents seemed to have patched up their differences.
 

Yet if he didn’t do something, he’d lose his lovely wife whom he adored.

She was always talking about politics and world affairs, teasing him because he didn’t join in her debates. Did she want him to be more a man of affairs? Chris wasn’t sure if he could manage that. He thought of the beatnik type clothes that she’d started to wear. Did she find him boring? Did she see him as dull and predictable?

And who was this other bloke, anyroad? That’s what he needed to know. Where had they met? They’d seemed very cosy together, really quite close, even intimate by the way he’d held her face and teasingly growled at her then ruffled her hair. The pain in Chris’s chest intensified, a physical band of iron clamping his heart.

Amy had betrayed him, cheated on him with another man.

He started, jerked out of his thoughts as Susie Southworth, the sixteen year old who served behind the counter in his baker’s shop came marching in with a mug of tea.

‘Morning, I thought you’d be gasping for a cuppa by this time,’ she said, rewarding Chris with her wide, beaming smile.

Susie was bright and cheerful and very pretty with fluffy blond hair and big blue eyes. As she set the mug down on the scarred surface of his desk, Chris allowed his gaze to travel over her neat little figure, her pretty face. She was wearing a tight-fitting white blouse which emphasised her pert young breasts, and a short black skirt beneath her apron that showed off a pair of shapely legs.

Maybe he should give Amy a bit of tit-for-tat. That would make her sorry. It had been a long time since he’d chatted up a girl, couldn’t ever remember needing to with Amy. They’d just fallen for each other on sight.
 

Chris smiled at the young girl. ‘You’re looking very pretty this morning, Susie.’

The girl looked slightly startled, saying nothing as she set down a plate of biscuits.