It had started to rain, so we walked back quickly to where my car was parked. On the way, he asked what was wrong with my mother.
“Flu. She’s almost better.”
“I was always kept well hidden from your family. I only met Declan by accident. Were you ashamed of me or something?”
“Of course not, silly. It’s them I was—” I stopped. All of a sudden I didn’t care if he knew every single thing there was to know about me. “Actually, James, my sister’s having a stall at a craft market tomorrow. Perhaps you’d like to come if you’re free.”
I was back at Flo’s, going through the remainder of her papers. For the first time, I felt the urge to hurry things along, to finish with the bureau, get started on the rest of the flat. I emptied out the contents of a large brown envelope. Guarantees, all of which had run out, for a variety of electrical goods. I stuffed them back into the envelope and threw it on the floor. The next item was a plastic folder containing bank statements. I leafed through them, hoping they would give a clue to how the rent was paid. If Flo had set up a standing order, it would explain why the collector hadn’t called, and also why there’d been little in the post—no electricity or gas bills, no demand for council tax. I admonished myself for being so negligent. I should have done this long ago, got in touch with the bank, sorted out Flo’s financial affairs.
To my surprise, the account was a business one, begun in 1976 according to the first statement. The current balance was—my eyes widened—twenty-three thousand, seven hundred and fifty pounds, and elevenpence.
“Flo Clancy!” I gasped. “What the hell have you been up to?”
I grabbed the next envelope in the rapidly diminishing pile. It was long and narrow and bore the name of a solicitor in Castle Street, a few doors along from Stock Masterton. My hands were shaking as I pulled out the thick sheets of cream paper folded inside, the pages tied together with bright pink tape. It was a Deed of Property, dated March 1965, written in complicated legal jargon that was hard to understand. I had to read the first paragraph three times before it made sense.
Fritz Erik Hofmannsthal hereinafter referred to as the party of the first part of Number One William Square Liverpool hereby transfers the leasehold of the section of Number One William Square hitherto known as the basement to Miss Florence Clancy hereinafter referred to as the party of the second part currently resident in the section of the property which is to be transferred for a period of one hundred years . . .
No wonder no one had called to collect the rent! Flo owned the leasehold of the flat in which she’d spent most of her life. My brain worked overtime. Fritz Erik Hofmannsthal!
It was Fritz’s laundry where Flo had worked; Mr and Mrs Hofmannsthal had spent a weekend on the Isle of Man every month for over twenty years.
“Oh, Flo!” I whispered. I went over and picked up the snapshot taken outside the laundry nearly sixty years before; Flo, with her wondrous smile, Mr Fritz’s arm around her slim waist.
I had no idea why I should want to cry, but I was finding it hard to hold back the tears. I felt as if I knew everything there was to know about Flo Clancy: the lover lost on the Thetis, the baby who had gone to another woman, the servicemen she’d made love to in this very flat. Now Mr Fritz . . .
Yet the more I knew, the more mysterious Flo became. I wanted to get under her skin, know how she felt about all the tragedies and romances in her life, but it was too late, far too late. Not even Bel knew the things that I did about her lifelong friend. I’m glad it was me who went through her papers, I thought. I’ll never tell another soul about all this.
Of course, I’d have to tell someone about the money and the property. It dawned on me that, under the circumstances, Flo would almost certainly have made a will.
Curious, I was about to go back to the bureau, when the front door opened and Tom O’Mara came in, his face, as usual, sombre and unsmiling, and looking like a dark, sinister angel in a long black mac.
I caught my breath, and half lifted my arms towards him as he stood staring at me from just inside the door.
“I’m neglecting the club because of you,” he said accusingly, “neglecting me family. You’re on me mind every minute of every day.” He removed his coat and threw it on the settee. “You’re driving me fucking crazy.”
“I’ll be finished here soon, then I’ll be back in Blundellsands.
You won’t want to come all that way to see me.”
“I’d come the length of the country to be with you.”
I wanted him to stop talking, to take me in his arms so that we could make love. I forgot about James, about Flo, Stock Masterton. All I wanted, more than anything on earth, was for Tom O’Mara to bury himself inside me.
Tom shook himself, gracefully, like a cat. “I think I’m in love with you, but I don’t want to be.” He wiped his wet brow with his hand. “I feel as if I’m under a spell. I want to keep away from you, but I can’t.”
“I know,” I murmured. I didn’t like him, I couldn’t talk to him, he was hard, unsympathetic, a crook. But I felt drawn to him as I’d been drawn to no man before.
We made love in a frenzy, without tenderness, but with a passion that left us both speechless and exhausted.
When I woke up next morning, Tom was still asleep, his arm around my waist. I wanted to slip away, escape, because I was frightened. Instead, I turned over and stroked his face. His green eyes opened and stared into mine and he began to touch me. We were locked into each other. There was no escape.
Flo
1962
Sally and Jock’s son, Ian, died as he had lived; quietly and bravely and without a fuss. He was sixteen. The funeral took place on a suffocatingly hot day in July and the crematorium chapel was packed. The mourners stood and knelt when they were told, their movements slow and lethargic, a sheen of perspiration on their faces, their clothes damp. There were flowers everywhere, their scent sweet and sickly, overpowering.
Flo was at the back, fanning herself with a hymn book.
She hated funerals, but who in their right mind didn’t?
The last one she’d been to was for Joanna and Jennifer Holbrook. Joanna had passed away peacefully in her sleep, and the following night her sister had joined her.
But at least the twins had managed more than four score years on this earth, whereas Ian . . . She averted her eyes from the coffin with its crucifix of red and white roses.
The coffin was tiny, because he’d grown no bigger than a ten-year-old and every time she looked at it she wanted to burst into tears.
She wished she’d asked Mr Fritz or Bel to come with her. She knew hardly anyone except Sally and Jock.
Grace, their daughter, was a cold, aloof girl, who’d always resented the care and attention bestowed upon her invalid brother. She was in the front pew next to her dad, looking bored and not the least upset. She wasn’t even wearing dark clothes, but a pink summer frock with a drawstring neck.
The woman on Grace’s other side, who was kneeling, her head buried in her hands, must be melting in that black, long-sleeved woollen frock, she thought. Then the woman lifted her head and whispered something to the girl.
Martha.
Oh, Lord! She looked like an ould woman, her face all wizened and sour. She might well have achieved the coveted title of Mrs before her name and a lovely daughter but, if her expression was anything to go by, it had done nothing to make her happy. Or the nice new flat in Kirkby that she’d moved into a few years ago when Elsa Cameron had stuck her head in the gas oven and ended her tragic life. Perhaps happiness was in the soul, part of you, and it didn’t matter what events took place outside. Some people, Martha was one, were born to be miserable.
“I’m happy,” Flo told herself. “At least on the surface. I make the best of things. I’m happy with Mr Fritz, and me and Bel still have a dead good time, even though we’re both gone forty—but I don’t half wish we were twenty years younger. I’d love to go to the Cavern, I really would, and see them Beatles lads in the flesh.”
She was vaguely aware of someone genuflecting at the end of the pew. Then the person knelt beside her and whispered, “Hello, Flo.”
“Hugh!” She flushed with pleasure and patted his ami.
He was twenty-three and, as far as Flo was concerned, the finest-looking young man on the planet: tall, slender, with a gentle face, gentle eyes and the sweetest smile she’d ever seen. His hair had grown darker and was now a dusky brown, only a shade lighter than his father’s, though it wasn’t curly like Tommy’s. He was mad about music and haunted the Cavern; she always listened to the charts on the wireless so she could talk to him on equal terms.
“I thought you couldn’t get off work?” she said softly.
He’d served an apprenticeship as an electrician and worked for a small firm in Anfield.
“I told them it was a funeral. They couldn’t very well refuse. Ian was me friend, he taught me to play chess.
Anyroad, I promised Kate I’d come.” He nodded towards the front of the church, and a girl in the row behind Sally and Jock turned round as if she’d sensed someone was talking about her. She had the Clancys” green eyes and silvery hair, and Flo had the strangest feeling she was looking at her younger self in a mirror.
So, this was Kate Colquitt. She’d been at St Theresa’s Junior and Infants’ school when Flo last saw her, that hulking great lad, Norman Cameron, never far from her side. Sally was right to say she’d grown into a beautiful young woman. Kate twitched her lips at Hugh, almost, but not quite, in a smile, because this was, after all, a funeral. The man kneeling next to her must have noticed the movement. He twisted round and gave Hugh a look that made Flo’s blood curdle, a look of hate, full of threats, as if he resented his companion even acknowledging another man’s existence.
Norman Cameron, still watching over Kate like an evil guardian of the night.
Everyone stood to sing a hymn: “Oh, Mary, we crown thee with blossoms today, Queen of the Angels and Queen of the May.” It wasn’t May and wasn’t appropriate, but it had been Ian’s favourite.
Flo saw Norman Cameron find the page for Kate, as if she was incapable of finding it for herself. She felt concerned for the girl, although she hardly knew her. Sally said Norman wanted them to get married and Martha, anxious as ever to meddle in other people’s lives, was all for it. Kate had managed so far to hold out. She was working at Walton hospital as an auxiliary and wanted to become a state registered nurse.
“Norman’s had a terrible life,” Sally had said, only a few weeks ago. “No one could have had a worse mam than Elsa, yet the poor lad was inconsolable when she topped herself. I feel dead sorry for him. But he makes me flesh creep, and he’s so much in love with Kate it’s unhealthy.
You’d think he owned her or something.”
“She should find herself another boyfriend,” Flo said spiritedly. “Try and break away.”
“I reckon Norman would kill any man who dared lay a finger on her.”
“Lord Almighty!” Flo gasped.
The hymn finished, the priest entered the pulpit and began to speak about Ian. He must have known him well because his words were full of feeling: a bright, happy lad who’d borne his illness with the patience of a saint and had almost made it to adulthood due to the selfless commitment of his parents. The world would be a sadder and emptier place without Ian Wilson. Heaven, though, would be enriched by the presence of such a pure, unsullied soul . . .
Flo switched off. Any minute now, he’d start telling Sally and Jock that they should feel privileged their child was dead and had gone to a better place, where he was, even now, safely in the arms of God.
The priest finished. Flo buried her head in her hands when it was time for them to pray. The soft whisper of the organ came from the grille in the wall, the sound gradually growing louder, but not enough to hide a slight whirring noise. Flo peeped through her fingers and saw the curtains behind the altar open slowly and the coffin slide out of sight. The curtains closed and there was an agonised gasp from Sally as her son disappeared for ever.
Jock put an arm around her shoulders, and Flo imagined the little curling red and blue flames licking the coffin, spreading, meeting, then devouring it and its precious contents, until only the ashes remained.
“Don’t cry, Flo.” Hugh offered her his hanky.
“I didn’t realise I was.” She pushed the hanky away.
“You look as if you might need it yourself The service over, they went outside, where the heat was almost as great as it had been in church. When everyone stood round the display of flowers, which were laid out on the parched grass, the blooms wilting rapidly in the hot sunshine, Flo kept to the back. She could see her own wreath, irises and white roses, and would have liked to look for the flowers that Bel and Mr Fritz had sent, but didn’t want to come up against Martha, particularly not today.
Hugh was talking to the bereaved parents. He shook hands with Jock and kissed Sally’s cheek, very grownup, very gentlemanly. Nancy O’Mara had raised him well. If she’d been there, she would have felt as proud as Flo. He came over. “I have to be getting back to work.”
“I’ll be going meself in a minute, after I’ve had a word with our Sally.”
He looked surprised. “I thought you’d be going back to the house.”
“You’re not the only one who has to be at work.”
“In that case,” he said, trying to sound casual, “I’ll give you a lift part of the way.” He had a car, his pride and joy, a little blue Ford Popular.
“That’d be nice, luv. Ta.”
What was she supposed to say to Sally? “I’m dead sorry, Sal. I feel terrible for you. He was a lovely lad. I don’t know how you’ll cope without him.” After a few stumbling phrases, she threw her arms around her sister. “Oh, Lord, Sal, you know what I mean.”
“I know, girl.” Sally nodded bleakly, then grabbed Flo’s arm. “Sis, I want you to do something for me.”
“I’ll do anything, Sal, you know that.”
“Make things up with our Martha.” She shook Flo’s arm impatiently. “There’s enough misery in the world without adding to it when there’s no need. Martha would be overjoyed if you two were friends again.”