“I’m glad you didn’t!” I hid a smile. “Does this mean you’re over your crisis?”
“I’m not sure, but for the first time in my life, I feel as if I have some connection with the real world, real people.
I’ve learned an awful lot this week. You wouldn’t believe the tiny amount single mothers have to live on, and I never knew the National Health Service was in such a state.”
All the way into town, he reeled off statistics that most people, me included, already knew. Only a tiny percentage of the population owned a huge percentage of the country’s wealth; revenue from North Sea oil had disappeared into thin air; privatisation had created hundreds of millionaires.
In the restaurant, a favourite one in the basement of a renovated warehouse, with bare brick walls and a Continental atmosphere, he didn’t show his usual interest in the food, I went to Ed’s place on Wednesday to watch a video. Did you know that in the Spanish Civil War the Communists fought on the side of the legally elected government? I’d always thought it was the other way round, that the Communists were the revolutionaries.”
I stared at him, aghast: he’d been to public school, followed by three years at university during which he’d studied history, for God’s sake, and he hadn’t known that! “What does your father have to say about your miraculous conversion?” I asked. “A couple of weeks ago, you were in the Young Conservatives.”
He frowned and looked annoyed. “My folks think it jolly amusing. Fop said he’s glad I’ve started to use my brain at last. My sister got involved with a group of anarchists at university, and he thinks I’ll grow out of it, like Anna did.”
Anna was married with two children and lived in London. So far, we’d not met. I sipped my coffee thoughtfully. I wasn’t sure if I wanted him to grow out of it. The trouble was, like his folks, I found the whole thing rather amusing. Although, no doubt, he felt sincerely about his newly round beliefs, he didn’t sound sincere, more like a little boy who’d discovered a rare stamp for his collection.
“Where shall we go?” He looked at his watch. “It’s only half past ten.”
All I could think of was a club, but James reminded me he’d gone off them. “I’ve just remembered,” I said, “We’re invited to a party in William Square.” It was Charmian’s son’s twenty-first.
“Great,’James said eagerly. ‘Let’s go.’
“But you’d hate it,” I laughed. “They’re not at all your sort of people.”
He looked hurt. “What do you mean, not my sort of people? You’d think I came from a different planet. I quite fancy partying with a new crowd. Wherever we go it’s always the same old faces.”
The same old middle-class professionals; bankers and farmers, stockbrokers and chaps who were something in insurance. Some of the women had careers, and those who’d given up their jobs to have children complained bitterly about the horrendous cost of employing cleaners and au pairs. I always felt out of place, just as I probably would at Charmian’s. I wondered if there was anywhere I’d feel right.
“We’ll go to the party if you like,” I said, but only to please James. After all, now he’d joined the SWP he’d have to get used to mixing with the hoi polloi.
Charmian looked exotic in a cerise robe with a turban wound round her majestic head. “Lovely to see you, girl,” she murmured, and kissed me.
Rather to my own surprise, I kissed her back as I handed over the wine James had bought in the restaurant for a ludicrous price because he couldn’t be bothered to search for an off-licence. I introduced him to Charmian, who seemed taken aback when he shook her hand and said, in his beautifully cultured voice, “How lovely to meet you.”
The Smiths big living room was packed, though several couples in the middle were managing somehow to dance to the almost deafening sound of Take That’s “Relight My Fire”. I met Herbie, Chairman’s husband, a mild, good-humoured man with greying hair who was circulating with a bottle of wine in each hand. “Our Jay’s around somewhere.” Chairman peered over the crowd.
“You must meet the birthday boy.” With that, she plunged into the fray.
I found a bedroom and left my coat. When I returned, there was no sign of James so I helped myself to a glass of wine and leaned against the wall, hoping Bel had been invited so that I would have someone to talk to.
A young man with a wild head of shaggy black curls and a fluffy beard came and stood beside me, his dark eyes smiling through heavy horn-rimmed glasses. “You look like the proverbial wallflower.”
“I’m waiting for my boyfriend,” I explained.
“Fancy a dance in the meantime?”
“I wouldn’t mind.” I felt rather conspicuous on my own.
He took my hand and led the way through to the dancers. There wasn’t room to do anything other than shuffle round on the spot.
“Do you live round here?” I asked politely. I’d never been much good at small talk.
“Next door, basement flat. Do you still live in Kirkby?”
“You know me!” I never liked coming across people from the past.
“We were in the same class together at school. You’re Millie Cameron, aren’t you?”
I nodded. “I’m at a disadvantage compared to you,” I said. “I don’t recall anyone in class with a beard.”
“I’m Peter Maxwell, in those days known as Weedy.
You can’t have forgotten me. I usually had a black eye, sometimes two, and an inordinate amount of cuts and bruises. The other lads used to wallop me because I was no good at games. Me mam wasn’t slow at walloping me either but she didn’t need a reason.”
“I remember.” He’d been a frail, pathetic little boy, the smallest in the class, smaller even than the girls. There never seemed to be a time when he wasn’t crying.
Rumour had it that his father had been killed during a fight outside a pub in Huyton. I envied his ability to talk about things so openly: there’d been no need for him to tell me who he was. Maybe he knew my own history. It had been no secret that Millie and Trudy Cameron’s father hit his girls.
“How come you grew so big?” I asked. He was only as tall as I was, about five feet eight, but his shoulders were broad and I could sense the strength in his arms.
“Turned sixteen, left home, found work, spent all my spare time in a gym, where I grew massively, but mainly sideways.” He grinned engagingly. “Having developed the brawn, it was time to develop the brain, so I went to university and got a degree in economics. I teach at a comprehensive a mile from here.”
“That’s a tough job!” I admired him enormously, particularly his lack of hang-ups.
“It helps to have muscles like Arnold Schwarzenegger,” he conceded, “particularly when dealing with bullies, but most kids want to learn, not cause trouble. Now, that’s enough about me, Millie. What are you up to these days?
If I remember rightly, you married Gary Bennett.”
“I did, yes, but we’re divorced. I’m a property negotiator with Stock—”
Before I could say another word, a young woman in a red velvet trouser suit pushed through the dancers and seized his arm. “There you are! I’ve been looking everywhere for you.” She dragged him away, and he turned to me, mouthing, “Sorry.”
I was just as sorry to see him go—it had been interesting to talk to someone with a background similar to my own.
I spotted James, deep in conversation with a middle-aged couple. He seemed to have forgotten about me. I felt a bit lost and made my way to the kitchen where I offered to help wash dishes. Herbie shooed me away with an indignant, “You’re here to enjoy yourself, girl.”
By now, the party had spilled out into the hall. I went out in the hope of finding Bel, but there was no sign of her so I sat on the stairs and was immediately drawn into an argument over the acting ability, or lack of it, of John Travolta.
“He was great in Pulp Fiction,” a woman maintained hotly.
“He stank in Saturday Night Fever,” someone else said.
“That was years ago.” The woman waved her arms in disgust. “Anyroad, no one expected him to act in Saturday Night Fever. It was a musical and his dancing was superb.”
The front door opened and a man came in, a tall, slim man in his twenties with a pale, hard face and brown hair drawn back in a ponytail. He wore small gold gypsy earrings and was simply dressed in jeans, white Tshirt, and black leather jacket. There was something sensual about the way he moved, smoothly and effortlessly, like a panther, that made me shiver. At the same time, his lean body was taut, on edge. Despite his hard expression, his features were gentle: a thin nose, flaring wide at the nostrils, full lips, high, moulded cheekbones. I shivered again.
The man closed the door and leaned against it. His eyes flickered over the guests congregated in the hall. I held my breath when our eyes met and his widened slightly, as if he recognised me. Then he turned away, almost contemptuously, and went into the living room.
“What do you think? What did you say your name was?” The woman who had been defending John Travolta was speaking to me.
“Millie. What do I think about what?”
“Didn’t you think he was fantastic in Get Shorty?”
“Amazing,” I agreed, still preoccupied with the man who’d just come in.
For the next hour I barely listened as the discussion moved on to other Hollywood stars. Someone brought me another glass of wine, then James appeared, gave a thumbs-up, and vanished again. I contemplated looking for the man with the ponytail to find out who he was—but I had left it too late: the front door opened and through the crowd I glimpsed him leaving.
At one o’clock, the party was still going strong. There were sounds of a fight from the living room, and Herbie emerged holding two young men by the scruff of the neck and flung them out of the door.
By now, I was tired of Hollywood and longed to go home. I searched for James and found him sitting on the floor with half a dozen people who were all bellowing at each other about politics. He’d removed his jacket and was drinking beer from a can. I didn’t like to disturb him when he appeared to be enjoying himself so much.
Nevertheless, I fancied some peace and quiet and knew exactly where I could find it.
William Square, bathed in the light of a brilliant full moon, was quiet when I went outside, though the silence was deceptive. Women, barely clothed, leaned idly against the railings, smoking and waiting for their next customer. A car crawled past, then stopped, and the driver rolled down the window. A girl in white shorts went over and spoke to him. She got in, the driver revved the engine and drove away. Two dogs roamed the pavements, casually sniffing each other. In the distance, the wail of a siren could be heard, and in the even further distance, someone screamed. A cat rubbed itself against my legs, but ran away when I bent to stroke it.
Suddenly, a police helicopter roared into the sky, like a monstrous, brilliantly lit bird. The noise was almost deafening.
It really was a war zone, as George had said. I ran down the steps to Flo’s flat. To my consternation, I saw that the curtains were drawn and the light was on, yet I could distinctly remember switching off the light and pulling back the curtains the last time I was there. Perhaps someone, Charmian or Bel, had decided it would be wise to make the place look lived in. But there was only one key, the one I held in my hand right now.
Cautiously I unlocked the door. It was unlikely I’d come to any harm with fifty or sixty people upstairs. I opened the inner door and gasped in surprise. The man with the ponytail was lounging on Flo’s settee, his feet on the coffee table, watching the swirling lamp and listening to her record.
“Who are you? What are you doing here?” I snapped.
He turned and regarded me lazily, and I saw that his eyes were green, like mine. His face seemed softer than when I’d seen him upstairs, as if he, too, was under the spell of the blurred shadows flitting around the room and the enchanting music.
“I never thought I’d do this again,” he said. “I came to leave me key on the mantelpiece and found Flo’s place no different than it’s always been.”
“Where did you get the key?”
“Off Flo, of course. Who else?” His voice was coarse, his Liverpool accent thick and nasal. He was the sort of man from whom I’d normally run a mile, and yet, and yet . . . I did my level best to hide another shiver.
“You still haven’t told me who you are.”
“No, but I’ve told you why I’m here.” He swung his feet off the table with obvious reluctance, as if he wasn’t used to being polite, and stood up. “I was a friend of Flo’s.
Me name is Tom O’Mara.”
Flo
“Tommy O’Mara!” Martha’s voice was raw with a mixture of hysteria and horror. “You’re having a baby by Tommy O’Mara! Didn’t he go down on the Thetis?”
Flo didn’t answer. Sally, sitting at the table, pale and shocked, muttered, “That’s right.”
“You mean you’ve been with a married man?” Martha screeched. Her face had gone puffy and her eyes were two beads of shock behind her round glasses. “Have you no shame, girl? I’ll never be able to hold up me head in Burnett Street again. We’ll have to start using a different church. And they’re bound to find out at work. Everybody will be laughing at me behind me back.”
“It’s Flo who’s having the baby, Martha, not you,” Sally said gently.
Flo was grateful that Sally appeared to be on her side or, at least, sympathetic to her plight. A few minutes ago when she had announced that she was pregnant, Martha had exploded but Mam had said quietly, “I can’t stand this,” and had gone straight upstairs, leaving Flo to Martha’s rage and disgust. The statement had been made after tea deliberately, just before Albert Colquitt was due when Martha would feel bound to shut up.
After Albert had been seen to, she might have calmed down a bit, but Flo knew that she would be at the receiving end of many more lashings from her sister’s sharp tongue.
“It might be Flo having the baby, but it’s the whole family that’ll bear the shame,” Martha said cuttingly. She turned to her youngest sister, “How could you, Flo?”
“I was in love with him,” Flo said simply. “We were going to get wed when Nancy got better.”
“Nancy! Of course, he married that Nancy Evans, didn’t he? Everyone used to call her the Welsh witch.”