A Winter Bride (19 page)

‘This is what we want,’ said May. ‘Cutting costs is a priority. We’ll be giving these cocktails away. Though only on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, our quiet nights. Anything to bring the punters in.’

They worked their way through Daiquiris, Moscow Mules and Manhattans, working out just how little alcohol and how much lime juice and sugar syrup made a reasonable drink. By the time they started on the Champagne Charlies – a mix of champagne and apricot brandy – nobody was sober.

Johnny said it was time to go. He had a date tonight and wanted to shower. Nell wondered if perhaps he ought to order a taxi. ‘You might not be fit to drive, and the roads might be frosty.’

But May said if there was one thing about Johnny, it was that he was an excellent driver. ‘That’s one thing he does really well.’ She started to clear up, washing glasses, putting bottles away. ‘I’ll put the cocktail spirits apart from the normal spirits. We’ll be watering them down a little. Saving money, that’s the thing.’

‘Isn’t that against the law?’ said Nell.

‘Not when the drinks are free,’ May said. ‘Besides, who’s to know?’

‘I just think it’s wrong,’ said Nell.

‘Nonsense,’ said May. ‘It’s business and all’s fair in love and business. I’m not selling anything that isn’t what it purports to be. I’m giving away something that isn’t what it purports to be. There’s a difference. I’m not a cheat.’

Nell nodded. She was impressed. May was such an astute businesswoman, Nell thought her a wonderful role model. One day, she’d be like that.

She asked, as she dried the glasses, how Harry was. ‘He looks a little down these days.’

‘Oh, he’s got his worries. Who hasn’t? Life isn’t easy. If your life is easy, you’re doing something wrong. It’s overcoming the difficulties that make a man of you.’

Nell decided not to mention that she wasn’t a man and asked what Harry’s difficulties were.

‘Oh, just a little hiccup with the Inland Revenue. They think he hasn’t been paying enough tax. Well, nobody pays any tax if they can avoid it. My money is for the family, not the government. I don’t like governments and I don’t like politicians. I want my loved ones to benefit from my work. I mean, what does the government do with my money? It builds nuclear bombs. Well, that’s not on. Nobody asked me if I wanted nuclear bombs. I’m not paying for them. They can’t tax you on what they don’t know you have.’ May looked about the room, embraced it with a sweep of her arms. ‘All this is about love. My love for you, Harry, Alistair and Johnny.’ Her voice softened as she said that last name. ‘He needs this. He needs a mother to protect him.’

Nell said nothing. May was plainly on a roll.

‘These cocktails, this restaurant, the food, the wine, the singing, the plans for the future – it’s all for love. I love my family. This is what I do for my boys.’ She looked at Nell. ‘You know nothing about poverty. You know nothing about being hungry. Well, I do. I remember when we had no food and no money to buy food. Harry and me and us not long started out – hadn’t sold a car in months. I had two boys at the table and not a scrap to give them.’

‘What did you do?’ Nell asked.

‘I went out and stole two tins of beans and a pack of sausages. I’d do it again if I had to. I stole and it was love made me do it. So only my family gets my money. Nobody else. I work my fingers to the bone, charge reasonable prices and people go away happy. Same with Harry. He works all the hours God sends. And, when people drive out of his garage in a car, they’re happy. So maybe the car’s done a little more mileage than is on the clock, and maybe the rust has been glossed over and a few holes in the bodywork have been patched up with this and that, but the car’s shiny and smells of being new and they’re happy. That’s what Harry and me do – we make people happy. And we do it for love.’ She plonked a glass on the bar, filled it with gin and just a splash of tonic. ‘Love,’ she said, sniffing and wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. ‘Love, it’s all for love. I love my family.’

Nell stopped drying the glasses and stared at May, eyes aglow. This woman was marvellous. She was more that a businesswoman, she was the complete woman: a mother; a cook; a wife; a lover; a woman of many opinions and passions who gave her family everything she had. Nell wanted to be like that. She wanted to live in a big house, dote on her children, lavish money on clothes and food and furniture. She wanted to boldly start new businesses, come up with innovative ideas that would push them forward. She wanted to wear extravagant styles. She wanted to be May.

A car drew up outside. May perked up and smiled. ‘That’s Harry now, come to take us home.’

In bed that night, Nell said, ‘Your mother’s remarkable.’

‘Is she?’

‘Yes. She told me that everything she does, she does—’

‘For love,’ said Alistair. ‘Oh God, she gave you the love speech.’ He pulled the blankets over his head. He squirmed remembering it.

‘I think it’s wonderful,’ said Nell. ‘She works her fingers to the bone for her family. For love of the family.’

‘Did she mention not paying taxes because the government used her money to build bombs?’

‘Yes,’ said Nell. ‘I think she’s right. Except it’s illegal not to pay taxes.’

‘Too true,’ said Alistair. ‘Did she mention stealing two tins of beans and a pack of sausages?’

Nell said that she did. ‘Endless amazing devotion. She risked everything for you.’

‘The first time I got pocket money I bought beans and sausages and went to that shop and put them on the shelves. I think stealing is wrong. I think just about everything my mother does is wrong.’

‘But she does it for love. She does everything for love. I think it’s wonderful don’t you?’

Alistair sighed and said he didn’t. ‘I think the woman loves too much. I think she loves to love and doesn’t know the guilt it causes. I never asked to be loved that much. It’s embarrassing. It’s tiring. I feel weak just thinking about it.’ He turned away from Nell, pulled the blankets over his head, shutting her out, and tried to sleep.

Nell settled herself into her sleeping position and pulled her pillow down so it met the top of the sheet and eliminated all draughts. She didn’t sleep. She didn’t want to, not yet. She had plans to make. In a year, maybe two, she’d be managing a restaurant. She had to make a go of this; she had to prove to May, a woman she now found inspirational, that she was worthy. She wondered what she’d wear when the day of the new job came. A suit, she thought. The sort of thing Doris Day wore in
Pillow Talk
, business-like but feminine. And a hat, a neat perky, witty number that would perch nicely on the side of her head, ‘A hat,’ she said out loud.

Alistair heard and turned, but couldn’t think of anything to say on the matter of hats.

Nell said, ‘Do you think we ought to ask Carol to go? We could give her the money for the deposit on a flat of her own.’

Alistair didn’t answer. He liked having Carol here. He had someone to talk to in the evenings. He loved his niece. He loved watching her grow, listening as she started to speak, watching her wonder at the world. When she discovered a butterfly, he felt he was discovering one too. He thought the child a marvel and didn’t want her to leave. So rather than reply, he let out a soft snore and pretended to be asleep.

Chapter Twenty

Born With a
Disadvantage

The phone woke them. Alistair jumped from bed, ran to the kitchen and answered it. Phone calls that came in the night never brought good news.

It was May. Johnny had been in an accident. ‘His car’s a write-off. He drove it into a tree. He’s broken his leg and several ribs. They had to cut him free. His beautiful face is all swollen and bruised. I think he’s broken his jaw. He’s lucky he didn’t break his neck.’

‘You’re at the hospital now?’ asked Alistair.

‘Yes. How did you know?’

‘Because you’re sounding sane.’ May only fell apart in private. She’d wait till she got home before she started weeping.

‘How well you know me. You’ve got to come. I need you here.’

Alistair said he was on his way.

He found May sitting on a plastic chair in the corridor outside the ward. Her handbag was on the floor beside her. She had her hands folded in her lap and was staring at the wall. She looked suddenly unusually small. Her face, stripped of its usual enthusiasm, looked gaunt. He sat down next to her, took her hand and squeezed it. ‘How are you doing?’

‘Bearing up,’ she said. ‘They’ve set his leg and his jaw. He’s sleeping now.’

Alistair asked if his brother had been drinking.

‘Cocktails,’ said May. ‘Him and Nell and me were testing out which ones we’d serve.’

‘Ah.’

‘I told him not to drink them. “Just taste,” I said. But no he knocked them all back. He’s like that. Never knows when to stop.’

Alistair suspected this wasn’t true, but that May had made it up to ease her conscience. He thought it was likely she’d encouraged Johnny to drink, but by now she’d have convinced herself she’d told him just to taste. In time, when Johnny’s accident became part of family lore, it would be true. There would be no doubting the story the way May would tell it. He looked round.

‘Where’s Dad?’

‘Sleeping,’ said May. ‘He’s had an awful day. Hours and hours with the accountant planning what to say to the tax inspector at the meeting tomorrow. Now this.’ She sighed.

Alistair didn’t ask why his father had a meeting with his tax inspector. Instead he asked May how long she’d been here.

‘Since six this evening. Sitting here smelling that hospital smell, worrying and waiting for the doctor to come and tell me what’s happening.’

‘I think it’s time we took you home,’ said Alistair.

‘I’m not going home. I need to be here in the morning when Johnny wakes.’

‘I don’t think they’ll let you see him till visiting time.’

‘There’s no visiting time for me. I don’t do visiting times. Soon as he wakes I’m going into the ward to see him.’

He draped her coat over her shoulders and took her arm. ‘You’ll do what you’re told. You’ll go home and get some sleep.’

She didn’t resist. She walked with him to the car park, and insisted he drive her home. ‘I’m too upset to drive. Leave your car here. You can pick it up later.’ She gave him her keys.

‘What are we going to do about Johnny?’ she asked. ‘He was born with such a disadvantage.’

‘He was?’ This was news to Alistair.

‘Oh yes, he’s beautiful. Not like us people who have ordinary faces. His is perfect. That’s why I called him Johnny. He needed an easy name, but one that was also romantic. His beauty might be ruined now. Glass from the windscreen. He’ll be scarred.’

It started to rain. Alistair switched on the screen wipers and said that scars heal.

‘Yes, but they leave their mark. You and me were blessed to be born ugly. If you’d been beautiful you’d never have become a lawyer.’

‘I think I would have.’

‘No. Coping with beauty would have worn you out.’

Alistair said he hadn’t known being beautiful was exhausting. ‘Anyway, I don’t think I’m ugly. Plain, perhaps, but not ugly.’

‘Yes, plain,’ said May. ‘I saw that the minute you were born. I was so relieved.’ She looked out at the rain. ‘I like being in a car at night. The streets are empty. Everyone is sleeping and I’m out here, safe and warm and nobody knows I’m here. I get a little respite from my worries.’

‘If you paid your taxes you wouldn’t have so many worries.’

May said she always had worries. ‘If it’s not one thing it’s another. You get one dilemma sorted out and you think, well that’s that. I can get on with living now. I can have a little peace of mind. Then another thing comes along and whams into you. Life is never ordinary. Life is full of whams and bumps. When does all this whamming stop?’

‘When you start paying taxes.’

‘I already pay taxes, just not as much as those in power think I should. But that’s their problem.’

Alistair said nothing. He wasn’t prepared to argue with May about governments, politicians, nuclear bombs and taxes. He’d done it often before and not once had he won.

He pulled up outside the family house, got out of the car and went round to help May climb out. She leaned on him as they walked to the front door.

‘You’re a good man,’ she said. ‘I sometimes wonder how that happened. I’m sure it had nothing to do with me.’

Once inside, she said she was going straight to bed. ‘Too tired to make a cup of tea. Too tired to drink one. But you help yourself to anything you find in the kitchen. You’ll stay here tonight. The bed in your room is made up. It’s always ready for you.’ She kissed his cheek and started her slow climb up the stairs to her bedroom.

Alistair went to the kitchen, put on the kettle and leaned against the unit waiting for it to boil. Why did he have a mother like May? Why couldn’t he be the son of some quiet, gentle soul like Nell’s mother – a woman who delighted in her ordinariness and demanded nothing more than the odd visit when she’d take pleasure in dishing out plates brimming with egg and chips? He sighed, made a pot of tea and carried it to the kitchen table.

There was no point in going to bed; he wouldn’t sleep. How familiar it was here. He listened to the house. He knew well every click and shift and small movement. These noises had been part of the soundtrack of his childhood. He remembered lying in his darkened bedroom as a boy and being comforted by the sounds of water in the radiators, the creak of the stairs, the windows rattling and the low murmur of his mother and father talking. Back then, he’d wait till May and Harry had gone to bed, then he’d creep downstairs to poke through the drawers. The details of his parents’ life had always fascinated him.

It was almost Pavlovian; he heard the same old noises, and his mother and father were asleep upstairs. He got up from his chair and started to do what he’d done as a young boy. He rummaged. He wondered what he’d find if he had a look around tonight. Maybe, he thought, there’ll be no evidence of recent dodgy dealings and my making a stand has made a small difference. He ignored the recipe drawer where May put cuttings from magazines and newspapers, and started towards the drawer at the far end of the kitchen. The dreaded drawer, May called it. It was where she stuffed all the bills and other things she didn’t want to think about. He could hardly open it. Slips of paper, envelopes, and letters tumbled out.