Laceys of Liverpool (26 page)

Alice tried not to worry too much as the hours passed and still Fion didn’t come home.

The hotel was called St Jude’s, merely a large terraced house amid a long row of identical properties. It was spotless, but cleanliness was its only good point, unless you counted the strong smell of disinfectant that pervaded every nook and corner. Fion had never seen such a miserable room as the one in which she had just unpacked her case, transferring the clothes on to wire hangers in the wardrobe. A bottle-green candlewick quilt with bare patches covered the double bed and the heavy curtains were the same gloomy colour. The walls were possibly gloomier, a pale, muddy brown. There wasn’t a single picture or ornament, just a dressing table and tallboy, that didn’t match each other or the wardrobe. The floor covering was cheap and shiny, and boasted a faded rug beside the bed. She hadn’t exactly been expecting luxury for 12/6d a night, but this was soulless, infintely depressing and suprisingly cold, considering it was such a lovely warm day outside.

‘I’ll go home tomorrer,’ she said to herself. ‘I’ve made me point, staying away a whole night.’ She would give Mr Flynn his twenty pounds and his suitcase back.

When she arrived at Euston, she had contemplated catching the same train back, but something had prevented her, she wasn’t sure what. Shame, perhaps, at the idea of running away and returning home the same day. Orla would laugh her head off, Maeve would disapprove, even Cormac would be cross with her for upsetting Mam. And poor Mam was probably doing her nut. She shouldn’t have mentioned Neil in that note. After all, your mother having an affair wasn’t a justifiable reason for leaving home. Neil was only being kind, asking her to the dance. And Mam had offered to do her hair and buy her a new dress. She was even closing the salon two hours early so they’d have time to shop.

Fion looked at her watch: seven o’clock. She’d taken
ages wandering around, trying to pluck up courage to enter a hotel, and had chosen this one because it was called after a saint, though she’d never heard of Jude and he mightn’t even be a Catholic saint. Then she’d taken just as long sitting on the bed and trying to pluck up more courage to go out. It was twelve hours, almost to the dot, since she’d walked out of Amber Street. She shivered, feeling very odd and out of place in this miserable, anonymous room.

It was too early to go to bed because she wouldn’t fall asleep for hours. She glanced from the bed to the door and decided she couldn’t possibly stay in, not on such a beautiful evening. She’d have a wash first, but remembered she’d forgotten to bring soap and a towel, a hairbrush, lipstick, her toothbrush.

Fortunately there was a linen towel as stiff as cardboard folded over the sink and a tiny slab of yellow soap. Fion splashed her face, and rubbed her finger on the soap and cleaned her teeth. It tasted dreadful. After changing into one of her frocks, she ran her fingers through her hair, collected her bag and left to explore London.

There was a notice behind the front door announcing,
THIS DOOR WILL BE LOCKED AT
10.30 p.m. Fion was about to leave, when the door marked
RECEPTION
opened and the woman who’d taken her money poked out her head.

‘Have you read the notice?’ she demanded.

‘Yes, thank you.’ She was a horrible woman, all sharp corners, even on her face.

‘Well, just make sure you remember. I don’t open the door to no one after half past ten.’

‘I’ll remember,’ Fion said politely, wondering what on earth she was doing in this strange city, being spoken to by a strange woman as if she were a piece of dirt, when she could have been at home. She must be mad.

Outside, a huge, glittering sun hung low in the sky.

This was the same sun that was setting on Amber Street the day before when she’d been on her way to the salon. Things had changed so much since then.

Fion made her way back to Euston Station, then wandered along Euston Road, which was busy with traffic, though there were few pedestrians. She came to a road full of shops, all closed, naturally, though there were more people around. It was called Tottenham Court Road, she noticed as she crossed towards it, and it was very long.

At the end she reached a busy junction where a man was selling newspapers, shouting in what could have been a foreign language for all the sense it made. There was a cinema with a large queue outside, several cafés and a stall offering souvenirs of London: mugs and tea towels and replicas of London buses. People were pouring up steps from the bowels of the earth. Fion rounded a corner and found herself in Oxford Street.

She’d heard of Oxford Street. She must be in the very epicentre of London. Regent Street was probably not far away and Piccadilly Circus. Returning to the kiosk, she bought a map of London, despite it being a waste of money. After all, she was going home tomorrow. She noticed the film on at the cinema was
War and Peace
with Henry Fonda and Audrey Hepburn, which she’d planned on going to see with Mam when it came to Liverpool.

There was a self-service café at the top of Oxford Street. Fion went in for something to eat and to study the map – she must have lost pounds today, all she’d had was Horace Flynn’s tea.

After she’d devoured two ham sandwiches and drunk a pot of tea, she found Piccadilly Circus on the map and began to wander towards it, pausing frequently to stare at
the beautiful clothes in the very expensive shops. Regent Street was particularly grand and even more expensive.

The sun was setting lower now, casting sharp black shadows across the street, and the pavements were crowded with pedestrians, some wearing evening dress, obviously off to nightclubs or cocktail parties or theatres, or wherever people went in London on Saturday nights. As she passed a place called the Café Royal, a big, black car drew up and two women alighted, both wearing long satin frocks and smelling richly of perfume. One woman had a white fur cloak draped round her shoulders, which Fion thought was showing off a bit, as it was far too warm a night for furs.

She found she had arrived at Piccadilly Circus, which was drenched in golden sunshine and throbbing with life. The steps around the statue of Eros were crowded and neon lights flashed palely in the evening sunshine. Fion glimpsed a Boots chemists, still surprisingly open. She went in and bought the toiletries she’d forgotten to bring, which made a big hole in her money. Then she dodged through the traffic towards Eros, climbed a few steps, and sat down between an elderly couple with a small dog and a young man with a haversack at his feet. The dog, on a lead, came waddling towards her. She stroked it and the couple smiled. ‘He won’t bite,’ the woman said. ‘Lovely evening, isn’t it?’

‘Lovely,’ Fion agreed and found herself smiling broadly for no reason, conscious of a strange mechanism behind her eyes making them sparkle brilliantly. She gasped and excitement coursed through her body like an electric shock, accompanied by a feeling of enormous triumph. Maeve might well be a nurse and Orla have four children, but neither had ever made it to London on their own. No one she knew had sat on the steps of Eros
on Saturday night, breathing in the heady atmosphere, the
foreignness
of it all.

The young man beside her thrust a bar of chocolate in her direction. Fion took a square and muttered her thanks. It was dark and tasted bitter. It turned out the young man, like the chocolate, came from Belgium. He spoke only a few words of English and Fion didn’t know a word of French, so communication was limited, though very pleasant. He left after a while, saying something about a youth hostel. Fion remembered she had to be back at the hotel by half-ten. Somewhat reluctantly, she started back. She’d probably walked further than she’d thought and had better give herself at least an hour. According to the map, the steps leading down to the bowels of the earth that she’d passed several times were stations on the London Underground. The system looked very complicated and this wasn’t the time to try it out for the first time.

She would disentangle the workings of the Underground tomorrow and hoped it would be a nice day to explore the further wonders of London.

Fion entirely forgot that tomorrow she had made up her mind to go home.

While Fion was on her way back to the hotel, in Liverpool in the flat above Lacey’s hairdressing salon Alice and Neil Greene were having an argument, something that didn’t happen often. They usually got on exceptionally well. Had things gone as planned, Neil and Fion would have been at the dance by now.

They were in the parlour, fully dressed, sitting separately on each side of the empty fireplace. Alice had flatly refused to go to bed. She’d come for one reason only, to tell Neil their relationship must end.

‘Just because Fion found out?’ His jaw sagged.

‘No, of course, not,’ Alice snapped. ‘Well, yes, in a way, I suppose it is. If Fion found out, then so can other people. I’m surprised we’ve gone a whole five years without anyone finding out before.’ The trouble was, time had flashed by. It was half a decade since she’d confronted her husband in Crozier Terrace and discovered he was leading two lives, yet it felt like only yesterday. ‘She must have heard us, Fion, last night when we were upstairs. Remember I said I thought I heard the door close?’

‘Hmm.’ Neil stared at the ceiling, then said casually, ‘Why don’t we get married?’

‘Oh, don’t be stupid, Neil,’ Alice said more brutally than she intended. ‘In case you haven’t noticed, you’ve already got a wife and I’ve got a husband.’

‘Babs regularly asks me to divorce her. You could divorce your husband; you’ve got enough grounds.’

‘Oh, yes, and have me dirty linen washed all over Bootle. I’d look a right fool, wouldn’t I? Me husband sets up house with another woman, has another family. What would people think?’

Neil said gently, ‘Is that all that matters to you, Alice? Your reputation, what people think? Surely happiness, yours and mine, comes first?’

‘I wouldn’t be happy, knowing people were laughing at me behind me back,’ Alice replied. ‘And what about me kids? I’ve never told them what their dad got up to. They think he just left home, full stop. I’d sooner they never knew. They’ve already been hurt enough, particularly Cormac.’

‘In other words there’s no hope for us.’ His face looked very drawn all of a sudden. ‘I suppose it’s no use asking you to come away with me so we can live together somewhere else?’

‘No use at all, Neil. I belong here, with me family.’

‘Have you ever loved me? You’ve said it enough times.’

‘I
do
love you, Neil.’ But not enough to get divorced. Even if the divorce went through without a public scandal, she wasn’t the type of woman who got rid of her husband. She’d married John for better or for worse. They were joined together in the eyes of God for ever and a day. ‘Oh, luv,’ she said, more gently now, ‘I shouldn’t have let it go on for so long. I’ve been wasting your time, preventing you from meeting someone else. Even if there was nothing to stop us, I would never marry you, Neil. You’re too young, I’m too old and I could never bring meself to meet your family, not with me speaking the way I do. I’d like you to marry someone young enough to give you children. Mind you, if word got round you were getting divorced, you’d lose your job. You work in a Catholic school, remember.’

Neil almost laughed. ‘I suppose that means I’m stuck with Babs for the rest of my life.’

‘Unless you get another, different kind of job, I suppose it does.’

‘So, this is the end?’

‘No, luv, it’s just the beginning. It’s been very nice, but we’ve been wasting each other’s time all this while.’

‘I certainly haven’t been wasting
my
time and I would have described it as more than just nice,’ he said drily.

‘Oh, Neil, so would I!’ Alice ran across the room and threw herself on to his knee. ‘It’s been truly wonderful, I’ll never forget you, but all good things have to come to an end.’

He kissed her softly. ‘Not necessarily, my darling.’

‘This good thing has, Neil.’

‘Do you have to sound so sensible?’

‘It’s about time one of us did. I’m almost glad our
Fionnuala found out. It’s made me see things clearly at last.’