Remember Me (16 page)

Maddy knew only too well that the Irish had long memories, well, some of them at any rate; Dan’s mother was a case in point. ‘But surely it doesn’t matter now, does it?’ she said. ‘Not to us?’

‘Of course it doesn’t,’ said her grandad. ‘Don’t mind me. I speak me mind, happen too much at times. I’ve told you; we liked your young man, Catholic or not. But it isn’t as if you’re going to marry him, is it?’

‘No indeed,’ added William. ‘I’ve no doubt he’ll be the first of many young men that our Maddy’ll bring home.’

‘Don’t say that, Father.’ Maddy couldn’t help
defending herself. ‘I’m not a flirt, you know. I happen to be rather fond of Dan, and he’s fond of me.’

‘Yes, I’ve no doubt about that,’ said William. ‘But you must take your time, love, that’s all I’m saying. You’re far too young to be thinking of settling down. Anyroad, you’ve got your career, haven’t you? Not the one I might have chosen for you at one time, but we’re real proud of you, all the same.’

Maddy glanced across at Faith, and she could see the concern and compassion in her stepmother’s eyes as she smiled at her. Aunty Faith understood perfectly how she felt even if nobody else did. She always would.

Chapter Thirteen

D
an was determined to waste no time before tackling his mother about the subject that was uppermost in his mind. He arrived back at Blackpool Central Station in the early afternoon and his long-legged strides, urged on by his determination, took him in a matter of minutes to the boarding house in Adelaide Street where ‘Mrs Anna Murphy…welcomes guests from all regions’.

He let himself into the house, dumped his bag in the hallway and walked purposefully into the kitchen at the back, where he guessed his mother would be washing up after the midday dinner. She was there at the large sink, her arms immersed almost to the elbows in soapy water, piling plates onto what already seemed a considerable mountain of crockery on the wooden draining board. Myrtle, their ‘maid of all work’ – waitress, chambermaid-cum-kitchen maid – stood at her side, wiping the plates with a striped tea towel before placing them on the pine table in the centre of the room.

‘Myrtle, would you please leave us alone for a few minutes?’ said Dan politely. ‘I have something rather important to discuss with my mother.’

‘Certainly,’ said the girl, quite deferentially, although she did not bob a curtsy as some maids had been trained to. After all, from what he had noticed, she had already become more than a little friendly with his brother, Joe, and so regarded Daniel as an equal rather than as the son of her employer.

‘And who do you think is going to wipe these pots if she disappears?’ Anna Murphy turned round indignantly. ‘You should mind your own business, my lad; gadding off for the weekend, then coming back and throwing your weight about.’

‘What shall I do then, madam?’ asked Myrtle, rather pertly, Dan thought.

‘Oh, go and find something else to do, I suppose. Go and make sure the dining room’s been left tidy.’ Anna turned to her son. ‘And I’ll thank you not to interfere in matters that are nothing to do with you.’

‘Like you interfered in mine, do you mean?’ retorted Daniel. What an appropriate opening she had given him, to be sure.

‘If you are still on about the way you have let me down by turning your back on God, then I’ve heard enough, Daniel. I told you, I wasn’t interfering; I was guiding you in the right direction. I’m your mother and I know what is best for you.’

‘And you thought it was best, did you, to steal my letters?’ asked Daniel, with an assumed politeness.

His mother turned a little pink, but, to her credit he supposed, she did not try to deny it or to bluff by asking him what he was talking about. ‘I thought it was for the best, Daniel,’ she replied. ‘I’ve told you, I do know what’s best for you. I always have…and I’ve got to do whatever I can to put things right when I can see that you’re heading off in the wrong direction.’

‘How dare you, Mother?’ He found that he was no longer able to contain his anger, and he was unable, also, to address her as Mammy, the childhood name that he and Joe had always used. ‘How dare you try to control my life? Where do you think I have been this weekend?’ She did not answer.

‘Go on, answer me,’ he persisted. ‘Where have I been?’

‘I should imagine that you’ve been to see her…that girl,’ said Anna coolly, but, he noticed, a little apprehensively.

‘Yes, you are quite right. I have been to see Madeleine Moon in Scarborough, a young lady I am very fond of. And who you so very nearly managed to…to get rid off. Because that is what you wanted, didn’t you, Mother?’

‘I thought it would be for the best,’ Anna said again, but in a rather less aggressive tone. ‘That sort of a girl… She’s not right for you, as well as…everything else.’

‘What “sort of a girl”? I’ve told you before,
Madeleine is an extremely well-brought-up and most charming girl. By “everything else” I suppose you mean that she is not a Catholic. Well, no, she isn’t, but I was made to feel most welcome by all her family this weekend. I will be seeing her again, quite soon, and if you think for one moment that anything you can do will split us up, then you are wrong, Mother.’

‘Don’t be so silly, Daniel!’ Anna had managed to regain a little of her confidence. ‘You are not twenty-one. You are not even twenty yet, and until then you are under the control of your parents. You can’t get married without our permission.’

‘Have I said anything about getting married?’ replied Dan. ‘The word has never been mentioned. What I want – and what I am going to have – is the freedom to go out with a girl of my choice, or several girls if I so wish. That is what most young men of my age do. But as it happens, Madeleine is the only one that I want. I have not asked her to marry me, if that is what you are thinking. We haven’t discussed the future, not the distant future, that is, although I do believe that she and I will have a future together, and I believe that she thinks so too. Did you really imagine, Mother, that I wouldn’t find out about what you had done?’

Anna shrugged a little sheepishly. ‘I suppose I hoped she might forget about you, or think that you had forgotten her. It can’t last anyway, Daniel. She’s a showgirl, isn’t she? All over the place, a different
town each week. She’s sure to meet all kinds of young men. Do be sensible, love.’ Her voice was taking on a wheedling tone now. ‘You’ve never been out with a girl before, have you, because of…well, because of the way things were, so you’re bound to be fascinated by her. She’s very pretty, I must admit…’

‘And you think I’m so shallow as to be captivated by a pretty face, do you? Madeleine is not only beautiful, she is kind and considerate and warm-hearted, and I happen to believe that she is the girl for me.’

‘Well, we shall see,’ replied Anna, quite calmly.

‘Yes, we shall see, Mother, as you say. But you won’t be seeing me for very much longer. I always believed that I could trust you, and it’s come as a great shock to me to find out that I can’t.’

‘But I didn’t mean… I’ve told you, I thought it was for the best,’ pleaded Anna.

Dan went on as though he hadn’t heard her. ‘So I have decided that I am going to leave and find somewhere else to live. I have already had the chance of somewhere else and I feel, to quote your words, Mother, that it would be “for the best”.’

‘But you can’t… You’re not twenty-one. You can’t just go and do as you please.’

‘Oh, I think you will find that I can, Mother,’ replied Daniel. ‘Let’s do this sensibly, shall we? We don’t want the whole town knowing our business, do we? Talk it over with Daddy. I think
you will find that he will agree with me.’

It was Mr Grundy, Dan’s employer, who had already offered him a place to live, should he ever need it. The elderly shopkeeper had been aware of his assistant’s preoccupation and guessed that something was troubling him. Dan had confided in him that he was not too happy at home at the moment – not the whole story, though, out of loyalty to his mother – and Mr Grundy had suggested, at once, that it was high time he got round to making more use of the rooms above the gentlemen’s outfitters. They were used mainly for stock, although at one time they had been rented out to a young couple who had left to move into a small house when their first child arrived. So there was already a small kitchen, as well as a cubbyhole with a sink and lavatory. It would be an easy matter to move the stock to the smaller of the two remaining rooms, and convert the larger room into a bed-sitting room.

When Dan returned to work on the Tuesday morning he told Mr Grundy that he would be pleased to take up his offer and to move in as soon as it was possible.

Jonas Grundy was delighted, just as he had been when the young man had asked, a couple of months previously, if he could work full-time at the shop instead of part-time. He and his wife, Emmeline, were now in their late sixties, and Jonas was coming, more and more, to regard Daniel as the son
he had never had. He and Emmeline had courted for many years before marrying at the age of forty. They had both had elderly parents to care for and had, therefore, left it too late to have a family of their own. They lived in the house that had belonged to Emmeline’s parents, in the district known as the Raike’s Hall estate, within easy walking distance of the shop on Church Street.

On Wednesday afternoon, which was half-day closing for the Blackpool stores, Jonas accompanied Daniel to a second-hand saleroom where they purchased the necessary items to furnish a bed-sitting room. A fold-away bed, a small oak dining table and two chairs, a bookcase and two easy chairs, somewhat shabby but clean and comfortable. The room was already carpeted, and Mrs Grundy was only too pleased to be able to supply the young man with some of the more essential smaller items: crockery, cutlery, towels, bedlinen and a few cooking utensils. During a marriage of nearly thirty years she had acquired far more things than she needed.

If it had been a more amenable parting Dan would have asked his mother for help with equipping his new home, but under the circumstances he knew it would not be advisable. Nor did she offer to do so, although she was well aware of what was going on around her.

‘What has brought this on?’ Thomas Murphy asked his wife. ‘Our Daniel moving out?’ It was
Thursday evening and the two of them were relaxing for a little while in their private sitting room. In a few moments Anna would go and attend to the visitors’ supper requests. This had formerly been one of Daniel’s tasks, but he no longer took any part in the running of the boarding house.

‘He’s told me about it,’ Thomas continued, ‘but he wouldn’t say too much, only that he thought it was time he had a little place of his own. And Jonas Grundy wants somebody living above the shop for security reasons, at least that’s what Dan says. But I reckon there’s more to it than that. There’s summat he’s not telling me.’ He looked keenly at his wife. ‘You and Dan have had a bit of a falling-out, haven’t you?’

‘Well, sort of.’ Anna shrugged. ‘It’s something and nothing really. It’ll soon blow over, I’m sure. But I thought it might be better if he went his own road for a while. I’ve talked till I’m blue in the face, but he won’t listen to me, he’s that stubborn.’

‘So…are you going to tell me what it’s all about?’ asked Thomas.

Anna sighed. ‘It’s about that girl, you might know.’

‘You mean…the one that we saw in the show at the North Pier? Aye, I remember that he’d got friendly with her. That’s what caused all that upset a couple of months back, isn’t it? But I thought it had all fizzled out. We’ve not heard anything about her lately.’

‘Yes, I was hoping that we’d heard the last of her, but no such luck. That’s where he was last weekend, in Scarborough, chasing after her. Didn’t you realise that’s where he might have gone?’

‘No, I never gave a thought to the girl. I thought happen he’d gone to visit a schoolfriend. I don’t believe in prying too much, Anna, into what the lads are doing. They’re both old enough – and sensible enough an’ all, I reckon – to know what they’re about.’

‘Huh! Then I’m afraid I don’t agree with you. It’s up to us to guide them, especially if we think they’re going astray. And that’s what I thought Daniel was doing, mooning around after that girl. I tried to put a stop to it, but…’

‘But what, Anna?’ He looked closely at his wife’s face. She had gone rather pink and there was a wary look in her eyes. He guessed that she had been interfering and not for the first time either. ‘Come on, Anna; tell me what you’ve done.’

‘I thought it was for the best, Thomas, really I did. And that’s what I told Daniel, but it’s only gone and made things worse than ever. That’s why he’s moving out…’

‘What have you done?’ he asked again firmly, but quietly because he could see his wife was close to tears. Tears of guilt, maybe, but he didn’t want to be too hard on her. She was hot-headed was Anna, stubborn and determined at all costs to have her own way. He had known that, of course, when he
married her, but he had fallen in love with the red-haired, high-spirited and passionate girl; and nothing that she had done since, wrong or ill-advised though it might have been at times, had caused him to regret his decision or to alter his deep affection for her.

‘She wrote to him, that girl,’ she said, ‘from Scarborough. ‘And…and I found the letters,’ she added quietly.

‘What do you mean, you found them? You mean…you kept them from him? You didn’t give them to him?’

Anna nodded. She was silent for a few moments, then she said, ‘I thought he might think she had changed her mind about him. A few weeks went by…and I thought it was all going to be all right. But then he went to see her, and he found out. And that’s why he’s leaving home, because he’s angry with me…’

‘And I can’t say I blame him,’ said Thomas. ‘That was a wicked thing to do! You should be ashamed of yourself!’ At that moment he felt angrier with his wife than he had ever been. Anna always had to be right and would ride roughshod over anyone who got in her way. But it hadn’t worked this time, and he was glad. ‘It was a despicable thing to do, and to your own son. I just hope he can find it in his heart to forgive you…sometime; although it might take a long time, Anna.’

‘But I love him,’ insisted Anna, with tears in her
eyes. ‘I tried to make him see that that was why I did it. I still think he’s done wrong to turn his back on God, the way he has done. And it’s her, that girl, who’s the cause of it all.’