The Devil Rides Out (3 page)

‘Remember when your Paul went missing?’

‘I got some corned beef,’ I said lamely, in the vain hope of getting a word in, and was acknowledged with a brief nod of both women’s heads.

‘Remember that terrible air raid when the bomb went off and half a ton of soot came down the chimney and covered your Sheila and Brendan in their cots?’ Rose said cheerily.

‘They looked like a pair of Al Jolsons,’ my ma replied, laughing. ‘but remember the mess! Soot everywhere.’

‘Yes, but we soon got it cleared up in the end,’ Rose said, getting up. ‘Where’s that corned beef? I’ll make your mam a little butty.’

‘It’s all right, Rose, I can do that,’ my mother said, pulling herself up off the sofa.

‘No you won’t, Molly, you just stay where you are, you’ve just had a bloody heart attack.’ Talk about the Friendly Ladies Society. I took a sly look at my ma’s face for any signs of annoyance or resentment that Rose had taken charge and was in her kitchen, but there was not a trace. Instead she drank her tea contentedly and continued her conversation with Rose by shouting from the sofa.

‘There’s a bit of piccalilli in the cupboard, Rose. If you fancy it. Help yourself.’

Making my excuses I went upstairs for a quick kip, leaving them to it.

Rose and her husband didn’t get on particularly well with Dot, our next-door neighbour and her husband George. They never spoke except to row. My ma was very friendly with Dot but if Dot saw her speaking to Rose, however briefly, then Dot would blank her for a couple of days for what she considered to be an act of treachery. If Rose ever called to the house then Dot would send my ma into purdah. This would last until something interesting occurred and then you’d hear the familiar knock on the wall which meant ‘quick, come round’. If Mary, who lived on the other side of us, appeared to be getting overly friendly, or ‘thick’ as my ma called it, with Rose and spent more time gossiping at the bottom of Rose’s steps than was considered acceptable, then my ma would view Mary with deep suspicion and consequently blank her. Sometimes nobody spoke at all as everyone was busy blanking each other, as if an order of Carmelites who communicated by slamming doors and banging windows had taken over the Grove.

‘You know that the ghost of some poor woman is said to haunt the Grove?’ my mum said, a little inappropriately, I thought, considering I was clinging on to the bedclothes like an electrocuted cat.

‘Who told you that?’

‘It’s true. Ask Rose Long if you don’t believe me. These houses are built on the site of an old quarry, Davies Quarry I think it was called. Anyway, it was around the early 1900s and this poor woman, she lived just at the back in Holt Road. Well, her son went missing and believing that he’d fallen into the quarry she went round there looking for him, frantic the poor soul was, like a woman possessed.

‘And? What happened then?’

‘Well, if you’ll stop interrupting, I’ll tell you,’ she snapped, momentarily dropping the funereal tones she’d adopted to tell her tale.

‘As I was saying, she was demented and ran around the quarry screaming, “Cuthbert, Cuthbert”.’

‘Cuthbert?’

‘Yes, Cuthbert. It was a very popular name in them days, like Cedric and Walter.’

‘Have you been reading
The Beano?
’

‘Don’t talk daft. Anyway, she fell into the quarry. Broke her neck and died later that night in Birkenhead General. Ever since, folk have claimed to have seen her spirit, staring in the window at them, looking for her little boy,’ she said, finishing this dramatic monologue with a theatrical shudder.

‘Lots of people. Mary, Dot, Rose Long, Aunty Chrissie. Proper doubting Thomas, aren’t we?’

‘Well, what happened to Cuthbert, then?’

‘Oh, him. He was found alive and well and playing in Mersey Park, the little tinker. I think the woman’s name was Ellen.’

Oh dear, she’d really succeeded in putting the heebie-jeebies up me now. I really wished I had the guts to go back to my own room but that was impossible at the moment as I knew in my heart of hearts that my bedroom – the same familiar room that my mother had decorated years earlier in violent shades of red and mustard to resemble Tara King of
The Avengers
’ apartment – the room I’d slept in for all of my eighteen years, had for the time being turned into one of the portals of hell and was best left alone.

‘Have you been taking drugs?’

‘No, I haven’t.’

‘Then what has you so terrified? It’s the DTs or Purple Hearts if you ask me.’

‘You don’t normally get delirium tremens from half a pint of cider, which by the way is all I’ve had tonight,’ I told her, trying to muster what was left of my dignity.

‘Oh, don’t you now? You’re very knowledgeable on the subject all of a sudden, aren’t you?’

‘And I certainly haven’t taken the Tardis back to the sixties to get myself some Purple Hearts either.’

‘Oh, haven’t you now, Mr Smarty Arse?’

‘No.’

‘Then why are you behaving like a bloody great wet nelly then, too scared to sleep in your own bed?’

‘And I’ll tell you something else,’ my ma said, picking up where she’d left off earlier, ‘since the Henshaws sold up and moved on you can’t get a decent bit of boiled ham for love nor money.’

I sat up again, forgetting my fears momentarily to turn and look at her, amazed at her ability to switch from the ghost of Ellen to George Henshaw’s boiled ham.

‘Anyone can boil a ham,’ she went on, ‘but it requires great skill to do it properly and when all’s said and done George Henshaw was a master of his craft. You won’t taste boiled ham like his again in a hurry, more’s the pity.’

I wanted to answer her but stunned confusion had rendered me momentarily speechless. It appeared that my father’s death had softened her attitude towards everyone but me. I asked her what had brought on this change of heart towards George’s ham and if she remembered the sniping matches she’d indulged in over the years with his wife.

‘What are you talking about?’ she asked, her voice rising towards the high dudgeon level. ‘I was a valued customer of theirs for years, we got along fine, thank you very much,’ adding, as if in proof of her loyalty, ‘I was in their Christmas Club, for God’s sake.

‘I could just go for a nice slice of his ham right now, on a nice floury bap from Stubbs with a scrape of mustard and a nice cup of tea.’ Everything was suddenly ‘nice’. The two Valium must have kicked in.

I quickly reminded myself that the reason I was in my ma’s bed in the first place was because I was terrified to sleep in my own in case
The Exorcist
got me. I was less terrified now, still scared, but at least my hair was no longer standing up on end. However, I didn’t think I was quite brave enough to go downstairs and face the back kitchen just yet and considered suggesting we leave the cup of tea till the morning.

‘Well, go on then,’ she prompted. ‘What are you waiting for? The dawn?’

‘You don’t want tea at this hour of the morning, surely?’

‘I know why you won’t go down and put the kettle on. You’re scared, aren’t you?’

‘No.’

‘You are! You’re terrified, admit it.’ She was like a cat with a mouse.

‘I’m not.’

‘Then kindly tell me what the bloody hell you’re doing in my bed?’

‘Shh, keep your voice down, Dot-Next-Door will hear you.’ I didn’t want her knowing I was sleeping with my mother.

‘Well, honest to God,’ she crowed, leaning across the bed and giving me a little shove, ‘you should be ashamed of yourself at your age, scared of ghosts. Don’t you know that the dead can’t hurt you, it’s the living you’ve got to worry about? Now get down those stairs and put the kettle on and mind out for Ellen.’ Reluctantly I crept out of the room and felt for the landing light in the dark, holding my breath and resisting the urge to run for cover.

I went for it and ran down the stairs, moving quickly into the front room and turning the light on as I went, not daring to look left or right as I made my way to our freezing kitchen.

By the light of the fluorescent tube that I normally hated but was now extremely grateful for, as it illuminated the tiny kitchen like a football pitch, I quickly filled the kettle, lit the gas and put it on to boil. So far I’d managed to avoid looking out the window and into the darkness of the back yard by busying myself with the complicated process of putting teabags into mugs and getting the milk out. But however hard I tried to free my mind of all matters spiritual, I couldn’t ignore the unsettling feeling that I was being observed from the shadows of the yard – and then, typically, right on cue, the lights inexplicably went out, plunging the kitchen into darkness and rooting me to the spot, terror-stricken.

I was aware that the pounding sound I could hear was my heart furiously beating and the tidal wave of blood rushing to my ears, and as my eyes slowly became accustomed to the moonlight I could see to my horror that, quite clearly, something that looked very much like a face partially covered by a white caul was staring in at me. I screamed, or at least I opened my mouth but nothing seemed to come out. The ghost of Ellen might have mistaken me for ‘The Scream’ by Munch.