Laceys of Liverpool (31 page)

The thought cheered her up somewhat. It gave her a reason for getting out of the house. She’d go now.

Cora went into the hall and lifted her camel coat off a hook. It was twelve years old, but good quality and she wouldn’t have dreamt of buying another until it wore out. She pushed her small feet into a pair of stout suede boots that were even older than the coat, then tied a scarf round her head. For some women, appearance was everything, but Cora didn’t give a damn. She fastened the buttons in front of the full-length mirror. She was fifty-one and looked neither younger nor older. Not a soul in the world would have given her a second glance.

The woman in Lacey’s who was doing her hair was called Enid. Cora would suit it shorter, she said. It would give it more texture and she’d look like June Allyson. ‘She’s a film star,’ she went on in response to Cora’s
puzzled look. ‘She was in
Little Women
and
Executive Suite
.’

‘I don’t get to the pictures much.’

‘Don’t you, luv? Me, I go at least three times a week.’

Cora said she’d prefer to stick to just an inch off, thanks all the same. She was about to add sourly that she had more important things to do with her time than go to the pictures three times a week, but remembered she wanted to pump the woman for information. This proved easy when she mentioned she was an old friend of Alice whom she hadn’t seen in years. ‘How’s her kids getting on? Four she had, didn’t she? Three girls and a boy – he was almost exactly the same age as me own lad.’

‘In that case your lad must be round twenty-one, like Cormac. It’s his birthday today. He’s a smashing lad – I sent him a silver key meself. We’re all going to his party tonight.’

‘And where would that be?’

‘You know Hilton’s Restaurant on Stanley Road? Well, it’s in the room above. There’s at least fifty of us going. Alice has invited all the staff and Cormac has asked some friends from school and university. Did you know he’s at Cambridge, luv? He’s taking Chemistry, if you’ll believe.’ The woman couldn’t have sounded prouder had Cormac been her own son. ‘After he’s got his degree, he’s going to stay and get more letters after his name. When he leaves he’ll be called doctor.’

Cora waited until eight o’clock before stationing herself across the road from Hilton’s, a large restaurant well known as a venue for wedding receptions and parties. It was situated on the corner of busy Stanley Road and Greening Street. The double-fronted downstairs was in darkness. She could hear the noise of the party upstairs, the music and the chatter, the laughing and the singing,
from all this way away, despite the passing trams and other traffic.

Why was she doing this, cowering in a doorway on a freezing cold night in December, listening to other people enjoying themselves? Because this night had been stolen from her, she told herself. This night should be
hers
. It should be
her
throwing the party for Cormac.

She waited a good hour, huddled inside her coat, stamping her feet, her gaze fixed hypnotically on the lighted upstairs windows opposite. There was no way she’d see a thing from here and she wanted to know what was going on. Spots of ice blew against her face as she crossed over and went down Greening Street to the side door of the restaurant where people had been going in. Hopping from one foot to the other, she stood hesitantly outside before pushing the door open, though she didn’t go in. Narrow stairs led upwards and the noise here was deafening, a whooping and stamping of feet, as if people were doing some strange sort of dance. Cora had never been to a dance.

Dare
she go in? Sneak upstairs, just peer through the door, so she didn’t feel totally excluded from Cormac’s twenty-first?

Well, even if she was discovered, she was unlikely to be chucked out on her ear. Alice would never be rude. Fion would have been, except she wasn’t there. The woman in the salon said she was still living in London.

Cora crept upstairs, making not a sound in her crèpe-soled boots. To her left at the top there was a Ladies and a Gents, a kitchen and a door marked ‘Office’. The whoops and stamping came from behind the door to her right.

Someone – it was Bernadette Mitchell – was coming out of the kitchen carrying a birthday cake with the candles already lit, too concerned with watching her feet
in case she tripped over to notice Cora, who shot into the Ladies, heart thumping.

The music and the stamping suddenly stopped. There was utter silence for a minute, then ‘Happy birthday to you, Happy birthday to you, Happy birthday, dear Cormac . . .’

They loved him. Everyone loved Cormac.

Cormac, Maurice. Maurice, Cormac. The names chased each other around Cora’s brain. She’d thought she was doing a good thing all them years ago, but she’d done a bad one. If only she’d left things as they were, it would be Alice with a lad in Walton jail, not her. If only she could go back twenty-one years and put everything right.

The Ladies was a large room that doubled as a cloakroom. Two sides of the walls were full of coats, and there were two lavatories. Cora went inside one and closed the door. She pulled down the seat to sit on. They were singing ‘For he’s a jolly good fellow’ now. Alice was probably hanging on to his arm, looking gormless. She didn’t deserve Cormac for a son.

Oh, it wasn’t
fair
!

There was a sudden rush of women into the Ladies. They kept trying Cora’s door. ‘Who’s in there?’ someone said. ‘They’ve been ages.’

A few minutes later there was a knock. ‘Are you all right?’ It was that bloody Patsy woman who worked for Alice.

‘Yes,’ Cora replied gruffly.

The Ladies emptied. The music started again, quieter now, romantic music. She imagined the lights turned low and everyone dancing, and wondered if Cormac had a girlfriend with him.

Not long afterwards the women returned to collect their coats. The party must be over. From their
conversation, they’d had a dead good time. After about fifteen minutes of bustle there was silence. Alice hadn’t been in for her coat, Cora would have recognised her voice. Unlatching the door, she came out to find only a handful of coats left on the hooks and wondered if she could make it from the lavatory to the stairs without being seen, otherwise she might end up being locked in the building all night.

There was no one in the kitchen. Cora had reached the top of the stairs and was about to creep down as quietly as she’d come, when she noticed the door to the big room was open and there was still music, very faint, so faint that it was almost drowned out by the noise of the traffic outside.

She paused. At the far end, Orla and Maeve were dancing with their husbands: that no-mark Micky Lavin and the one who had a good job at the hospital, Martin. Danny and Bernadette were standing by a radiogram, sifting through records. Cora edged closer until Alice came into view. She wore a lovely bottle-green dress with a fluted hem and was sprawled on a chair, legs stretched out in front, clearly worn out. But Cora didn’t think she’d ever seen such a look of perfect contentment on a face before. Alice quite literally glowed. Her face seemed to be exuding darts of electricity and Cora felt her own face prickle, as if from tiny electric shocks. Her sister-in-law was experiencing the happiness that was
her
due, the happiness that had been denied her all these years.

She edged closer, her eyes searching for Cormac. He appeared, inch by inch, bending over Alice. He wore black trousers and a white shirt that looked too big for him, she thought. It was all bunched up round the waist where it was tucked inside a narrow belt. He might have started off the evening with a tie, but wasn’t wearing one
now. The collar of the shirt was open, emphasising his slender neck. Cora’s heart missed a beat. He looked dead handsome. He and Alice were laughing together about something. The whole scene looked like a painting of Happy Families. Then Cormac suddenly reached out and stroked Alice’s hair.

Something snapped in the watching woman. Her head felt as if it was full of smoke: thick, black smoke, that swirled around and got hotter and hotter.

By now, Maurice would have kipped down in his cell. ‘Lights Out’ would have been called. Everywhere smelt of pee, he claimed. The food was awful. After a few months, Cora had stopped going to see him. She didn’t know what to say and the other visitors were scum. She felt ashamed, mixing with them. She wasn’t sure if she wanted Maurice back home. She wasn’t sure if she loved him any more.

This
was her son, her lad, the fruit of her womb, this fair-haired, clever, extremely dashing young man.

‘Drat!’ Alice had kicked something over. A glass of wine. The liquid spilled like blood on to the polished floor.

‘I’ll get a cloth from the kitchen.’ Cormac began to hurry towards the door, towards Cora, the son towards his mother. God must have arranged for that glass to be knocked over.

Cora backed up so that she was in the kitchen when Cormac came in. He jumped, startled. ‘Aunt Cora! I didn’t know you were here. Why don’t you go in the big room with me mam?’

She fixed her eyes squarely on his neat, good-looking face. ‘You’re mine,’ she said in a deep, passionate voice that she didn’t know she possessed.

‘I beg your pardon?’ Cormac said courteously.

‘I said, you’re
mine
,’ she continued in the same
unnatural voice. ‘The night you were born, I swapped you round for Maurice. I went for a walk in the hospital. Everyone was asleep, ’cept me. When I came to the nursery, Maurice was in the cot marked Lacey 1, and you were in Lacey 2. I changed you round.’

Cormac was actually smiling. ‘Don’t talk rubbish, Aunt Cora. I don’t like to be rude, but I’ve never heard such ridiculous nonsense.’

‘It’s not nonsense, luv. It’s true,’ Cora insisted hoarsely.

He laughed. ‘Things like that aren’t allowed to happen in hospitals.’

‘They happened that night. There was a raid. It was like hell on earth, women and babies all over the place: in the cellar one minute, in the wards the next.’ Cora clutched his arm, but he shrugged her away.

‘This is going beyond a joke.’ His voice had become icy cold. ‘I’m sorry about Maurice being in prison, Aunt Cora, but it doesn’t mean you have to spoil
my
twenty-first for me.’

He thought she was saying things out of spite! ‘Oh, luv,’ she cried. She reached for him, but he moved away with an expression of distaste. ‘I don’t want to spoil anything, I just thought it was time you knew the truth. I told you, it was bedlam in the hospital, nurses rushing around like lunatics. There was this emergency. Alice wasn’t shown her baby till next morning, when they gave her you ’stead of Maurice. It’s not your twenty-first till tomorrer. It’s Maurice who’s twenty-one today.’

It seemed as if the reference to the birthdays, trivial in comparison with the other things she’d said, had sewn a seed of doubt in Cormac’s mind. He went as white as a sheet. ‘Just supposing,’ he said carefully, ‘just supposing there’s a grain of truth in what you’ve said, what on earth would possess you to do such a wicked thing?’

Cora smiled slyly. ‘Because I thought Maurice looked the better bet, but it turned out I was wrong.’

‘Jaysus!’

She felt slightly uneasy at the sight of his gentle face contorted with horror and disgust. Perhaps she should have approached it differently, or at least thought things through before she opened her big mouth. Perhaps it would have been best if she’d told Alice first. Alice knew the way things had been that night and would have been easier to convince.

‘Cormac!’ Alice shouted. ‘Where’s that cloth?’

‘Won’t be a minute, Mam.’ His face had cleared, become devoid of expression. ‘I don’t believe you. You’re just making trouble, something you’re very good at, going by past experience.’

‘Just take a look at yourself in the mirror, son,’ Cora said softly. She’d upset him badly, which was only to be expected. She felt a surge of sympathy that made her body ache, but no way was she going to deny that what she’d said was true. She’d already suffered enough for that one silly mistake. ‘It’s never crossed anyone’s mind to notice, but you’re the spitting image of me, your mam – the same shaped face, the same little hands.’ Alice had long, thin hands, John’s were broad. She held out her own hands, spreading the small fingers, regarding them impassively. ‘See, son.’

For the first time in Cormac’s life his legendary calm deserted him. ‘Don’t you dare call me “son”. I’m not your son. I’d sooner die than be your son. I want nothing to do with you.’ He could hardly speak. The words came out thickly, as if his tongue had got too big for his mouth.

Cora chewed her bottom lip. She didn’t like seeing her boy in such a state, but what had she expected? For him to throw himself into her arms? All this must have
come as a terrible shock. ‘Why don’t we get Alice out here?’ she suggested.

‘Does Mam
know?
’

‘No, but it’s about time she did.’ She thought Cormac was about to hit her. He reared over her, pushed his face in hers. ‘Don’t you
dare
breathe a word about this to me mam, d’you hear? It would kill her. I don’t want anyone else to know. Do you hear me, Aunt Cora.
I don’t want anyone else to know
.’

‘But,’ Cora began, disappointed, because she wanted the whole world to know that
this
was her son: Maurice, the jail bird, belonged to someone else.

Then Cormac put his small white hands round Cora’s scraggy neck and began to squeeze. ‘If you tell another soul, Aunt Cora, so help me, I’ll kill you. I swear it. No matter where I am, I’ll come back and kill you stone dead.’

She was gagging. ‘Leave go, son. I won’t tell a soul.’

He removed his hands. ‘You’d better not,’ he said threateningly. ‘And don’t, don’t ever call me son again.’

With a sense of perverse pride, Cora realised that soft, gentle Cormac, who everyone thought wouldn’t have hurt a fly, who had never been heard to raise his voice in anger, meant every word. She herself had killed, a long time ago, two people. A chip off the old block, she thought. He’s his mammy’s son, that’s for sure. She sighed happily. Cormac knew the truth and that was all that mattered. One of these days he’d come round and learn to love his mam.