That'll Be the Day (2007), page 15
part #3 of Champion Street Market Series
‘Yeah, I know, but I’m twenty-six now, not getting any younger.’
Judy laughed. ‘There’s plenty of time yet.’
‘I suppose so. Anyway if I ever start to get broody I only have to look at Mam and Ewan to see the mess marriage can bring. It’s hell on earth in our house at the moment.’
‘I thought you were happy to have your father living with you at last?’
‘It’s not quite so straightforward as it might seem,’ Lynda had said, and quickly changed the subject.
Tonight, Terry would have walked with her right to her front door but Lynda told him there was no need. ‘Look, this is your house here, and mine is just twenty yards away.’ Terry lived on Quay Street, along which they’d walked from the corner of Deansgate after they’d got off the bus.
‘More like a hundred yard dash along two more streets,’ Terry said. ‘I’m coming with you.’
She gathered his face in her hands and kissed him again, long and hard. ‘You’re a sweet boy but don’t fuss. I’m a big girl now. I can negotiate a couple of streets, do a hundred yard dash if necessary.’
‘Please don’t call me boy. I’m twenty, nearly twenty-one and I don’t care if there are a few years between us, I like you Lynda, and that’s all that matters.’
‘Oh, you’re right, it is. I didn’t mean to sound – well – so patronising.’
‘I know,’ he said, kissing her some more.
It was several moments later before Lynda finally broke away from him, her cheeks rosy and with not a scrap of lipstick left on her swollen mouth. ‘I’ve got to go. See you tomorrow. We’ll meet up for coffee in Belle’s caff at eleven as usual, right?’
‘Right.’
And with a cheery wave she turned and hurried away, aware of him standing at the bottom of Gartside Street watching her until she reached the corner of Grove Street. Here she turned and waved one last time, calling out that she was fine now before setting off to run the last few yards to Champion Street.
The night was dark with few stars and no sign of a moon to light her path, only the pale yellow glow from the old fashioned street lamps that had once been operated by gas but were converted to electricity before the war. Champion Street looked oddly naked with all the market stalls stacked away and a few stray chip papers blowing about. A chill wind made Lynda draw her coat closer about her and quicken her pace, though it didn’t quench the warm glow in the pit of her stomach.
But she felt less brave walking home alone than she’d expected. Maybe she was growing too used to having a regular escort? Lynda almost fell over her own front doorstep on a sigh of relief, pushed her key in the lock and flung herself inside. Home safe at last. What a softie she was!
Betty was waiting for her when she got inside, sitting with Queenie in her lap, and with her head in her hands. Ewan wasn’t in yet, and neither was Jake, no doubt off on the razzle together like a couple of daft teenagers.
‘What’s up?’ Lynda asked, but her mother quickly shushed her.
Betty shooed Queenie gently on to the floor then went to make hot cocoa for them both. They sat sipping it side by side on the sofa, the biscuit barrel between them. ‘He’s been at it again,’ Betty eventually confessed, her round face creased with anxiety.
‘At what?’
‘Me purse. There’s a five pound note missing. Last week it was two pounds and the Friday before that one pound ten shillings. I thought happen I’d miscounted, but there’s no mistake this time because I kept a careful note. He’s nicked it.’
‘Oh, Mam, you can’t be certain it’s him.’
‘Aye, I can, if only by the way he laughed for no reason when he saw me totting up the day’s takings. I work, and he steals and drinks, that’s how it’s allus been. I’m scared he might find my secret hoard, you know - me tin box what I keep under the floorboards?’
Mother and daughter both stared down at the green rug which hid Betty’s hoard.
‘Shouldn’t you move it then, if you’re worried?’
Betty frowned, looking deeply concerned, and Lynda put her arms about the soft cosy shoulders and hugged her beloved mother close. ‘We’ll think of something, somewhere safe to hide your stash. Don’t you and me always solve our problems in the end? Remember that time our Jake started stuttering in order to get attention. We tried everything under the sun, then we threatened him with some nasty tasting medicine and it stopped overnight.’
Betty chuckled at the memory. ‘But Ewan Hemley isn’t a seven year old child, and getting rid of him will take more than a spoonful of cough mixture. He’s got to go, Lynda, or there’ll be blue murder done in this house, and then where will we be?’
Next morning, at eleven, Lynda was waiting as promised in Belle’s caff but it was Alex Hall and not his son who came to meet her.
‘Terry asked me to come and apologise for his absence but he’s had to stay home today. After you left him last night someone jumped him and gave him a real going over. Beat him up so bad the poor lad is covered in bruises. He looks like he’s gone nine rounds with Tommy Farr.’
‘Oh, my God, is he all right? Who would do such a thing?’
‘I don’t know,’ Alex said, a frown of anxiety etched into his face. He sat down opposite her and thoughtfully sipped his frothy coffee. ‘Probably some nasty little tyke out of his skull on booze. But when I find him, Terry won’t be the only one seeking retaliation.’
‘Are you sure he’s all right?’
‘He’ll live but he’s got some badly bruised ribs. I’ve told him to go to the doctor but will he listen?’
‘Can I go and see him during my dinner hour? Maybe I can persuade him to go.’
Alex grinned at her. ‘You seem to have got it as bad as him.’
‘Maybe I have,’ Lynda admitted, a sheepish smile hiding her concern. ‘And when you find out who did this terrible thing, give him one for me too, will you?’
Lynda spent as much time as she dared with Terry, promising she’d buy herself a packet of crisps later to make up for missing her dinner. She couldn’t stay nearly as long as she would have liked as she was working on the chocolate stall this afternoon, to give Lizzie Pringle a break.
‘Who was it, did you see who hit you?’
Terry shook his head. He was strangely quiet, clearly not keen to talk about the experience which Lynda could quite understand. ‘I thought he might not stop, that he’d go on till he killed me.’
‘Oh, Terry, don’t say such a thing. You must have been terrified. I can’t bear to think of it.’
‘Why, would you miss me if anything happened to me?’ He gazed up at her with such hope and adoration in his eyes that she chuckled softly at him.
‘If you weren’t covered with such horrendous bruises I’d think that maybe you were deliberately trying to make me feel sorry for you.’
He grinned then, a rather crooked, one-sided sort of smile but at least with some warmth to it. ‘You could kiss the bruises better, and I’ll kiss yours. I’d have no objection to that.’ Lynda readily did as he asked and they both felt considerably better by the time she got up to go.
Terry held on to her hand for a long, telling moment. ‘No matter what, Lynda, nothing and nobody can change the way I feel about you.’
Lynda failed to pick up on the hint that the beating up might have something to do with their seeing each other. She was too keen to ask another question entirely, a teasing note in her voice. ‘And how do you feel about me, exactly, Terry Hall?’
‘I’ll tell you some other time, when I don’t feel like I’ve been kicked all over by an elephant.’
‘See that you do. I shall hold you to that promise.’
Chapter Twenty-One
Helen was lying sprawled on the bed, one linen sheet only half covering her naked body, the curve of her breasts enticingly on view. Leo found he could hardly bear to look at her, as if for some reason he felt ashamed of what they’d just done together, and of her willingness to do it all over again. She’d been the one to initiate it, as was so often the case these days, taunting and teasing him until he’d been quite unable to resist.
No matter how prickly their relationship in everyday life, there seemed to be no problems between them sexually, and, knowing himself to be a good lover, powerful and demanding, Leo had never felt his manhood threatened in any way if Helen should choose to take the lead.
Today, however, had been different. He wasn’t able to concentrate on her needs at all, wasn’t really with her as his mind was elsewhere, seeing a different face altogether.
He even found himself half listening for his mother. Not that Dulcie would ever simply walk in upon them, being far too polite and middle-class for that, but she would often tap on the door and whisper through the pale oak panels as if wary of disturbing them even as she did so. It infuriated Helen to the point of distraction and made Leo jumpy, as he was now.
He was only too aware that relations between his wife and his mother were far from easy. Only the other day Dulcie had approached him, suggesting it was perhaps time she returned home to Lytham, but he could tell that her heart wasn’t in it.
She’d only moved there in the first place in an effort to force her stubborn husband into retirement. She was much happier here, in the city. He was delighted to see that she was meeting up with old friends again, had rejoined her church groups and was living a much fuller life. Why would he condemn her to life alone in a silent bungalow?
It certainly didn’t trouble Leo having his mother live with them, it was a large enough house for them not to intrude upon each other. Unfortunately he couldn’t persuade his wife to share this viewpoint. He’d suggested they make a separate flat for Dulcie, with her own kitchen built into the old conservatory, but Helen wouldn’t hear of it.
‘What, ruin our lovely home? Over my dead body.’
He was rarely allowed to forget the long-drawn-out war that was raging between the two women in his life. Mostly it was conducted in polite undertones, Dulcie treading on egg-shells with Helen cutting the frosty atmosphere with her famous barbed remarks. Occasionally tempers would erupt and he’d hear doors being slammed and voices raised, although rarely his mother’s. He was more likely to find Dulcie sniffing into her hanky while Helen was the one who had the tantrum. It was all very troubling.
Nevertheless he’d be fooling himself if he said that his mother was the only concern occupying his mind at present. If he was too preoccupied to be interested in their love-making today, the cause lay in quite another direction altogether.
Ever since that moment when he’d rescued her son from the bullies he couldn’t get Judy Beckett out of his head. Nor later when he’d talked to her at her stall and she’d made those enigmatic remarks about not disobeying her husband. He remembered how she’d first introduced herself by identifying herself through him. Yet she was clearly a talented artist so why did she have so little confidence in herself? And why should the woman matter so much to him anyway?
‘It’s all right, Dulcie is asleep,’ Helen was saying, guessing his thoughts, at least partially. ‘I heard her snores on my way back from the bathroom.’
‘She’s a very light sleeper, particularly since my father died.’
‘But we aren’t dead, we’re still very much alive, and I need you Leo. Don’t you need me?’
‘Of course I do, I’m just a bit down that’s all. Not only because I’m worried about Ma but I still feel swamped by grief, so sad that my father died before ever we’d bridged our differences. I can’t seem to properly relax.’
‘Utter tosh! That happened months ago and it’s long past time you got over it. Come here, I’ll soon make you feel much better.’
She rode him hard, bringing him to the peak of fulfilment, but then he flunked it at the last moment, hating himself for this show of weakness.
Desperate not to admit failure, Helen scrambled to her feet and stood above him on the bed, naked and proud, wanting him to see every inch of her finely toned body. ‘Don’t tell me this doesn’t set your blood pumping?’
She smiled down at him, cool and calculating, laughing softly as she saw the effect she still had on him. And of course her brazenness produced the desired effect.
Leo pulled her down beneath him, and, determined to rid himself of this other image haunting his consciousness he drove into her with a greed that shocked and repulsed him even as the blood roared in his ears and the sweat slicked his body. Helen was like a wild cat in his arms, biting and licking, spurring him on to greater heights.
When it was over she turned from him to coolly walk away, presumably to wash the smell of his sweat from her lovely body as she always did. There were never any post-coital cuddles with Helen. Talking was never part of their love-making. Sex, so far as she was concerned, was all consuming, not to be interrupted by soft words or romantic discussions.
Instinct told him that making love to Judy Beckett would be very different.
The thought of love making was not, at that precise moment, high on Judy’s list of concerns. She sat amongst the remnants of her slashed canvasses and wept. How could he do this to her? How could Sam be so cruel, just so that he could get his own way?
Even Ruth, not the most sentimental of girls and deeply loyal to her father, sat grasping her mother’s hand in speechless horror.
The child should have been in bed, of course, but she’d heard the row and the crashes, heard her mother run upstairs in a flurry of panicking sobs. The moment Sam had left the house, slamming the door behind him, she’d crept up to the loft to see what was going on.
‘Oh, Mummy, all your pretty flower pictures have been spoiled. And that one of me and Tom in the back garden. He’s ripped that too. Why would Daddy do such a terrible thing?’
Judy was struggling to steady herself. She felt as if she might actually vomit as she looked at the wreck of months of hard work, but the last thing she must do was to allow her children to hate their father. ‘Daddy lost his temper. People do bad things sometimes when they’re angry, like when Tom broke his fire engine by flinging it at the wall that time when I told him to put it away.’
‘Is Daddy angry, because you didn’t close down your stall? Doesn’t he like you doing so well?’
Ruth was far too astute for her own good and at least deserved an honest answer. ‘He thinks I should stay at home and be a better mother to you and Tom, and I suppose he’s right.’
‘I said he wouldn’t like it,’ Ruth agreed, her small face thoughtful. ‘I could always make the gravy in future, would that help?’
‘Oh, Ruth, this isn’t about gravy, sweetheart.’ Ruth never ceased to surprise her, one minute being deliberately difficult and objectionable, the next as soft-hearted and kind a daughter as any mother could wish for. She was growing quickly into a typically confused adolescent, and Judy had no wish to have her caught up in the back-fire between two warring parents. ‘Daddy just wants me to concentrate on being a good mum.’
‘Can’t you do both?’
‘I thought I could, but perhaps I shouldn’t have tried. Perhaps he doesn’t think my pictures are any good.’
‘I like your pictures, Mummy,’ Tom said, rubbing the sleep from his eyes as he came into the room.
‘Tom, you should be in bed asleep.’
‘I couldn’t because of all the shouting. Are you going to paint new ones?’
‘I don’t think I can,’ and when a tear trickled down Judy’s cheek, it was Ruth who wiped it away.
‘I think you should, Mummy. You think so too, Tom, don’t you?’
The little boy nodded, then clambered up onto his mother’s knee, not quite able to understand all the nuances of the discussion but anxious to show that he cared. He stroked his mother’s cheek. ‘I love you, Mummy, even if Daddy doesn’t.’
‘Daddy does love me, sweetie. You mustn’t think that. He’s just . . . concerned, that’s all.’
Ruth said, ‘But you mustn’t give up your painting. Remember when I didn’t get picked for the netball team and I said I wasn’t going to practise any more? You told me that would be wrong because God had given me a special talent to run and catch a ball, and I should use it. And look, they picked me for the team this year, didn’t they?’
Judy could hardly see her daughter’s face for the tears in her own eyes. ‘Yes, my darling, they did indeed.’
‘So there we are then. You’ll just have to paint better pictures next time, and make him see how important they are to you. We’ll explain to Daddy that you have a special talent, and that’s why you have to paint.’
If only it were so easy, Judy thought, hugging her children close.
Helen returned from the bathroom looking immaculate, as cool and enticingly beautiful as ever. She lay upon the bed with the clear message that she was sufficiently refreshed to start all over again, should Leo wish to. For some reason her very eagerness revolted him.
Leo stood staring blankly out of the window into the darkness of night, seeing nothing of the street beyond. ‘I’m thirty-six years old, my father is dead, my mother increasingly frail, and it’s long past time I justified my own existence. I feel as if time is running out for me too.’
A chuckle from the depths of the bed behind him. ‘Don’t talk silly, darling. You’re a man in his prime.’
He half turned to glance at her over his shoulder, savouring the pale outline of her shapely figure in the shaft of moonlight that slanted in through the window. This was how she had always appeared to him, like a moon goddess: distant, remote, untouchable unless she allowed him the privilege. He half smiled, still distracted by his own thoughts. ‘I’m growing older by the day. We all are. Beautiful though you undoubtedly still are, my sweet, you too are not immune to the passing years.’
Helen stiffened, dragging the sheet higher. ‘What a horrible thing to say. Are you implying that I’m growing old and ugly?’
Leo chuckled. ‘I wouldn’t dare.’ He came to sit beside his wife, taking her hand in his to stroke the long elegant fingers. ‘But if we are to have a family, it should be soon. I’m trying to say that time doesn’t stand still.’ Even as the carefully chosen words were spoken he felt her hand jerk away from his.
