Laceys of Liverpool (35 page)

He had no idea why he’d married her, Cora. He must have been pissed when they met, pissed when he proposed and pissed the day they got married – he could never actually remember saying ‘I do’, though his mam claimed he’d behaved impeccably at the wedding. Still, it had been done and it was a long time ago now. Billy had quite enjoyed his life, Cora or no Cora. He still did. Another woman mightn’t have let him do as he pleased, be so glad to see the back of him. Mind you, it would have been nice to have had a few more bob in his pocket. As it was, Cora took scarcely a penny off him, but he still had to rely on finding some poor woman like the one on his arm, desperate for company, poor cow, to keep his belly primed nightly with ale. He had no idea
where Cora got the cash from to keep things going and had never bothered to enquire.

‘Are we nearly there, luv?’ he asked.

‘Yes, Billy. It’s just round the next corner.’

The pubs had not long ago called time, otherwise there was no way Billy would have been out in the open, breathing in the fresh, warm air. They were approaching the Arcadia, a pub with such a wicked reputation that even Billy had never dared enter its doors, despite intimate knowledge of most of the ale houses in Bootle. A man and woman came out, arguing furiously. At least the woman was furious, the man appeared to be drunk, but not the boozy, mild sort of drunk that Billy knew. This geezer was paralytic. You could have cut off parts of his body and he wouldn’t have known. The woman gave him a shove. ‘You’re bloody useless, you are,’ she sneered. ‘I’m giving you a wide berth in future.’

The man collapsed on to his knees, wobbled, then crumpled into the gutter. His eyes, staring upwards, were glazed, unseeing. His face looked as if it had been made of stone.

‘Here, mate, let’s give you a hand,’ Billy said sympathetically. He leant down, put his hands under the man’s armpits and hoisted him to his feet. ‘Jaysus, you’re as light as a feather.’

The man’s head hung down, like a scarecrow’s, as if he too needed a pole to keep it straight. It wasn’t until they were face to face that Billy realised that the man he was supporting was his brother, John, whom he hadn’t seen in years.

‘Don’t tell anyone I’m here,’ John said to Cora next morning.

‘Not if you don’t want me to, luv.’

Cora was in her element. This was the man she had
desired all her adult life and now she had him under her roof, at her mercy, you might say.

She had never seen anyone so thin. No wonder Billy had been able to walk all the way from the Docky with his brother over his shoulder like a sack of coal. Last night they had conversed, she and Billy, for the first time in ages.

‘Look who I found!’ Billy said when she opened the door, him being unable to use his key, like. ‘It’s our John. I found him collapsed in the Docky.’

Billy looked upset. If things had been different he might have loved his wife and son, but his brother had been the only person he’d ever felt real affection for. ‘I’m taking him upstairs, to Maurice’s room,’ he said gruffly. He stared defiantly at his wife, as if expecting her to object, but Cora flew ahead to put clean, aired linen on the bed and open the window of the stuffy, unused room.

‘He hasn’t a pick on him,’ Billy said with unexpected tenderness when he laid John down. ‘Is there a spare pair of pyjamas?’

‘I’ll get some.’ When Cora came back, Billy was stripping John of his clothes. He looked as if he might object when Cora started to help, but must have decided two pairs of hands were better than one. John moaned once or twice as his clothes were removed and he was lifted into a pair of far too big pyjamas. Cora tucked the bedclothes around his waist.

‘What shall we do now, Billy?’

‘Leave him be. Let him sleep it off. He’s as drunk as David’s sow. He’ll have a head on him in the morning.’

‘He needs building up, Billy. He needs to stay in bed a week and be fed proper. He looks as if he’s been neglecting himself something awful.’

‘Do you mind if he stays?’

Cora shook her head vigorously. ‘I always liked your John. Alice hadn’t enough patience with him after the accident. I’m not surprised he left. Where’s he been living?’

‘I’ve no idea.’

‘I wonder if he’s still got that business of his?’

‘I don’t know, luv. I wrote to him twice at that place in Seaforth, didn’t I? But he didn’t answer. Mind you, that was years ago.’

They went to bed in their separate rooms. During the night Cora, even less able to sleep than usual, got up and went to look at their guest. The curtains had been left open to allow fresh air through the window and the room was brightly bathed in moonlight. She knelt beside the bed and gently stroked the damaged cheek, which by now was scarcely noticeable. The skin was no longer red and one side of the thin, sombre face was merely slightly more wrinkled than the other. Once he had more meat on him, it would be even less obvious.

Cora breathed a kiss on the thin lips of the man she had always wanted, then went through his pockets, the jacket first. He had three pounds, ten shillings in a wallet, along with a photograph of a fair-haired girl and a separate one of three young children, none of whom she recognised. There were some grubby business cards, including several for B.E.D.S. In another pocket she found a packet of ciggies, a lighter, a dirty hankie, a bunch of keys. His trouser pockets held nothing but change. She rubbed the material between her thumb and forefinger: good quality, but it smelt sour and was badly in need of dry-cleaning.

John was still asleep when his brother went to work next morning. Cora kept popping her head round the door, but it wasn’t until midday that she found him staring vacantly at the ceiling. His head, his arms, lying
loosely on the covers, were in exactly the same position as the night before, as if he hadn’t the strength or will to move them. His eyes turned fractionally when Cora went in, but showed no surprise. He didn’t appear particularly bothered where he found himself.

‘I was wondering where I was,’ he whispered. ‘How did I get here?’

‘Your Billy found you on the Docky and carried you all the way back. Would you like a cup of tea, luv?’

‘I think I might, thank you, Cora.’

She put extra milk in the tea so it wasn’t too hot, and had to support his head with one hand and hold the cup for him with the other. It gave her a feeling of intense satisfaction to have John Lacey so dependent on her.

When he’d finished he said, ‘Don’t tell anyone I’m here.’

‘Not if you don’t want me too, luv,’ Cora assured him.

That afternoon she made him bread and milk, and fed it to him with a spoon. By the time Billy came home he was sitting up, propped against a heap of pillows, smoking a cigarette.

‘I didn’t know you smoked, mate,’ Billy remarked.

John shrugged. ‘I started years ago.’

‘How are you feeling?’

‘Exhausted,’ John said thinly.

‘What were you doing in the Arcadia, mate? It’s a dump.’ Billy regarded his older brother with concern. He’d missed John badly since he’d left Alice and had been hurt when his letters hadn’t been answered. He found it upsetting to see this once strong, vital man lying like a shadow in the bed. Billy had been raised with the dictum ‘Why can’t you be more like your brother’ constantly in his ear. Mam had made no bones about the fact she liked John best, that she was proud of him,
whereas Billy was the family black sheep, the failure. Now it seemed their positions had been reversed and it made Billy feel uncomfortable.

‘I can’t remember going to the Arcadia,’ John confessed. ‘In fact, I can’t remember anything much about yesterday.’

‘Been on a bender, eh!’

‘One bender too many, I’m afraid.’

Billy chuckled, though there was nothing to laugh about. He put his hand over his brother’s thin one, slightly embarrassed. ‘What’s up, mate? How did you get yourself in such a state? You look like shit.’

‘I feel like shit.’ John took a long puff on the ciggie. ‘Things happened, Billy. Things I’d sooner not talk about.’

‘Whatever you say. Where are you living these days? What’s happened to that company of yours?’

‘I still do a bit of business – I’ve been living in the office for quite some time.’

‘I’d’ve come and seen you if I’d known.’

John gave a curt nod of appreciation, but Billy had the odd feeling he wouldn’t have been welcome and the even odder feeling that he wasn’t particularly welcome now, that John would much prefer to be alone.

‘You’re looking well, though, Billy,’ John said with an obvious effort. ‘There’s enough fat on you for both of us.’

Billy patted his monstrous stomach. ‘It’s the ale.’

‘You always had a weakness for the ale.’ John’s mouth curved drily. ‘I didn’t have any weaknesses, did I? I was the perfect husband, the perfect father, a good provider for me family. Then this happened’ – he pointed to his face – ‘and I turned out to be weaker than most men. Another bloke would have taken it in his stride and got
on with things. I let it ruin me life instead. Nothing’s been the same since.’

‘It was a brave thing you did that day, John.’ Billy had had little experience with conversations of this sort. There was a break in his voice when he said, ‘There’s hardly another man in the world who would have tried to save that sailor. You should have got a medal.’

‘They offered me a medal, but I turned it down, just like, in a way, I turned Alice down, as well as me children. I was determined to suffer and I wanted everyone to suffer with me.’

‘Perhaps there’s time to put things right yet. Alice is still on her own.’

John didn’t answer. Cora came in with a bowl of home-made soup and announced Billy’s tea was ready downstairs.

Cora was disappointed when John insisted on feeding himself. She sat on the bed, watching. ‘There’s jelly and custard for pudding,’ she said when he’d finished.

‘Maybe later. Thank you, Cora. You and Billy are being very kind. Where’s Maurice, by the way? Isn’t this his bed I’m in?’

He mustn’t have known Maurice had been in jail. Cora wasn’t about to tell him now. ‘He wanted his independence. He’s got his own place. It’s in Opal Street, over Lacey’s, as it happens.’

Later, Billy came back upstairs and Cora went down. For the first time in years, Billy didn’t go to the pub. John softened slightly and the brothers reminisced, reminding each other of things that had happened when they were children. Billy had the most to say, his voice was the loudest. His laughter boomed through the normally silent house, awakening it.

Cora sat with the television on, but the sound turned down, listening, planning tomorrow’s menu and the
other things she’d do. She’d get John’s suit cleaned – his shirt and underclothes were already washed and ironed, his tie sponged. She’d ask if he’d like some books from the library. Unlike his brother, John Lacey had always been a reading man.

John couldn’t possibly have been looked after more tenderly and efficiently. ‘You should have been a nurse, Cora,’ he said when, after seven days of cosseting and being fed bland though nourishing meals, he felt up to coming downstairs for his tea.

It was possibly the first time in Cora’s life that she had blushed. ‘You just needed a bit of building up, like,’ she mumbled. ‘You’d let yourself go.’

‘I’ve been letting meself go for years.’

‘There’s no need for it any more,’ Cora assured him eagerly. ‘You can stay with us for always. There’s plenty of room.’ It would be one in the eye for Alice when she discovered her husband was living in Garibaldi Road. Cora had promised not to breathe a word, but it was bound to get out some time.

‘We’ll just have to see,’ John said, lighting a ciggie.

A few days later John announced he felt like a walk. Cora accompanied him round the block, proudly linking his arm. By now, August had turned into September and the air felt cooler. The flowers in the gardens smelt as sweetly as wine. She sniffed appreciatively. Normally, she never noticed such things.

‘I enjoyed that,’ he said when they got back to the house. ‘I might go again tomorrow, further afield.’

‘I’ll come with you.’

‘That would be nice.’ His face was filling out, his suit already fitted better. He looked dead handsome, she thought. He had yet to smile, but John Lacey was a
dignified, serious man, not much given to laughing and smiling. She wished there were a way of getting shot of Billy, so there’d be just the two of them left in the house.

She bought John a shirt because he only had the one and Billy’s swam on him. It had a striped body and a white collar. ‘The man in Burton’s said it’s the latest fashion.’

‘Cora! You’ve made me feel dead embarrassed.’ She could tell, though, that he was pleased. It was probably a long time since a woman had made a fuss of him, got him a prezzie.

‘This is very smart. I’ll wear it tonight.’

‘Let me iron the creases out first.’

Billy said John looked like a stockbroker or a solicitor in the shirt and addressed him as ‘Sir’, while they ate their tea. When the meal was over John announced he was going out. There was someone he wanted to see.

Cora’s blood turned to ice. She knew for certain he was going to see Alice and her heart seethed with jealousy. Something told her he intended asking Alice if she would have him back.

‘Will you be long?’ she asked when he was ready to leave, hair combed, freshly shaved, wearing the shirt
she’d
bought.

‘I’ve no idea, Cora.’

Alice was sitting with her feet on a stool. She’d had a busy day, but then all her days were busy. It was something of an anticlimax to enter the unnaturally quiet house. The emptiness always reminded her of her two missing children. Where was Fion? she wondered fretfully. Why didn’t she come home, if only to visit? And she worried constantly about Cormac. At least she saw him from time to time, but something had happened
to him that she didn’t understand. He appeared withdrawn, almost sullen, yet he was a lad who’d always looked upon the world with such obvious delight.

She hadn’t been home long when, much to her relief, the back door opened and Bernadette yelled, ‘It’s me.’

‘Put the kettle on while you’re out there,’ Alice yelled back. ‘How’s me dad and the kids?’ she asked when her friend plonked herself in an armchair with a deep sigh.