Duplicity (29 page)

‘We would like to print one each month for as long as you keep writing them,’ she was told on the phone. ‘As long as you keep up the standard of this first one.’

In due course, she received a cheque for £20, which became a regular monthly addition to the household income, and although Frank told her she should use the money for things for herself, she wouldn’t hear of it. ‘The pride I get every time I see my face looking up at me from a printed age under a poem I wrote is more than enough for me.’

His own heart ached with happiness at seeing her so happy, in spite of her handicap, and even better was to come. The publication sent on all the mail they had received in praise of her works, and as she said herself, ‘I’m proud of myself, you know that?’

He kissed the top of her silvery head. ‘And so you should be, lass.’

Many of their neighbours, and not so near fellow townspeople, came to congratulate her and tell her how much they enjoyed her poems, and she looked forward to each day now. Only on one occasion, as he got her ready to meet her fans, she murmured sadly, ‘I kept hoping Roselle would buy the mag, and write or phone me, but—’

‘She would if she knew, I’m sure she would.’

‘Aye, I suppose she would.’

But that was the only time she let her spirits down - as far as he knew, though he had the feeling that she had a little weep sometimes while he was out doing the shopping. He wished with all his heart that there was some way of finding where the Lewises had gone. If he knew, he would pocket all his pride and write to Roselle, pleading with her to get in touch. She was a kind-hearted lass, and she wouldn’t refuse.

Chapter Nine

Despite having believed that he would be able to cope just as well in New York as he had in Liverpool, Roderick Lewis was finding it hard going. Everybody seemed to be in too much of a hurry to stop and make friends; even the other members of staff in the huge building hardly knew more than one or two of the people on the same floor; even then, not particularly well. The usual acknowledgements made to anyone passing, or met in the lift, were a slight smile or an equally slight nod of the head.

He was beginning to feel depressed. He wanted company, someone to help to fill his evenings. He sometimes went for a walk, a different direction every time, but what thrill was there in sitting on a park bench by himself? Or looking in shop windows? He did venture a smile to anyone who walked past, but New Yorkers all seemed to be too busy to stop and speak. He wished that he had never left Cruden Bay. He wished - oh, how he wished -that he could hold Dilly in his arms again.

He became conscience of someone shouting, a woman’s voice, and opened his eyes to see a small child, little older than a toddler, running as fast as his podgy legs would carry him down the grassy slope, and heading straight for the lake. Not even taking time to look to see who was shouting, Roddy threw himself sideways into the path of the avalanche. The impact practically winded him, but he thanked heaven that his effort had not been in vain. The little boy, shocked, terrified, but obviously unhurt, began to yell at full pitch.

‘It’s OK,’ he assured him. ‘You’re safe now.’ Then, seeing the young woman racing towards them, he added, ‘Here’s your mummy, look.’

‘She’s … not … my … Mummy.’

Roddy’s brain clicked into gear. Not the child’s mummy? Had she kidnapped him?

Instinctively, he gripped the boy closer to protect him from this abducter. Just let her try to grab him. Just let her try!

‘Oh, God! Thank you! I never noticed he’d walked away. I was talking to my friend you see, and … oh, he could have drowned if you hadn’t stopped him.’

Her obvious concern made his resolve waver, but he kept his arms round the boy. ‘He says you’re not his mummy.’

‘I’m his nanny. His mother would kill me if she knew I’d been so careless.’

He had read of the violence in the Big Apple, but his mind could hardly get round this statement. ‘She’d kill you?’

‘Well, no, not really, but she’d fire me. I’d lose my job.’

The lovely, woebegone face won him over. This girl wasn’t a criminal. ‘I’m glad I managed to stop him.’

‘I don’t know how to thank you, though. I don’t have any money …’

‘I didn’t do it for money.’ He felt quite indignant that she could think such a thing. ‘I’ll have to be getting back to work now, but you’d better remember to take more care in future.’ He strode off, leaving her to clasp the boy against her.

He was kept extremely busy that afternoon, and had no time to dwell on what had taken place during his lunch break. The journey back to his lodgings when he finished work for the day was fraught with battling through home-going crowds and standing in a packed subway train. Then, in the dining room of Mrs Flynn’s boarding house, there was no peace to think; an argument had arisen between the two Norwegians and the two Irish boys who never seemed to be happy unless they were involved in some sort of confrontation. It wasn’t serious, of course, always sounded much worse than it was, but it was useless to try to blot it out.

At long last, however, he went up to his room, and stretched out thankfully on the bed. Now he could think about what had happened earlier. That young nanny had been a really nice girl, and he shouldn’t have been so cold towards her. He hadn’t even asked her name. She wasn’t a New Yorker, though, not with that English accent. He couldn’t place it, but she wasn’t from Liverpool, he was sure of that. The Scousers had a distinctive tongue that he would recognise straight away. He’d worked there long enough, hadn’t he?

She wasn’t from the north-east of England, either, not a Geordie nor a Yorkshire Tyke.

He wasn’t so sure about Manchester, nor Birmingham, they each had their own ‘speak’. She had a lovely soft voice, though, and he couldn’t help noticing the dimple in her left cheek, nor the way her silken fair hair curled on her shoulders, nor her divine blue eyes.

This thought came to an abrupt end as it dawned on him he had never noticed so much about any other girl at their first meeting. It could be their only meeting, came the next, unwelcome barb. Then his spirits lifted again. Perhaps she would come back to the park to look for him - or was that too much to expect?

He could hardly wait for the next morning to pass, making several mistakes because his mind was on planning what he would say to the nanny if she did turn up. It was quite difficult. He’d had no practice in chatting up a girl. The only girl he had really spoken to was Dilly, and that was in the dim and distant past. The untouchable past. The forgotten past. Yes, it had to be forgotten.

At 12.30 he rose and walked out, speaking to no one, as usual. None of the other young men had ever made an effort to let him join in their conversations at break times, and he had always steered clear of any girls. None of them would want to have anything to do with him, anyway; they had made that quite clear. He was a hick from the sticks, as far as they were concerned. A numpty with ideas above himself. A tall, ungainly Scot they couldn’t understand. Although he thought he was speaking in perfect English, with no trace of accent, it seemed to be Double Dutch to them, and they had no interest in him. Well, good luck to them, he thought, as he walked out onto the sidewalk.

See? He was already Americanised. He didn’t even think ‘pavement’ any longer.

Roddy would have been astonished, and gratified, to know that several of the girls were thrilled by his broad vowels and the way he rolled his R’s. The only reason they had made no advances to the tall, broad-shouldered Scot was his cold manner towards them. They had no wish to be publicly snubbed.

He stopped on the way to the park to buy a filled bagel and a can of Coke, and then headed for the bench he had been sitting on the day before. He didn’t normally go there two days running, but this wasn’t a normal day. At least, yesterday hadn’t been. Finished his snack, he leaned back and closed his eyes. That was when the magic had worked for him before, but twenty minutes later he had to admit defeat. Bundling up his rubbish, he stood up and dropped it in the nearest trash bin. He didn’t feel downhearted - a little disappointed, that was all. He wasn’t beaten yet. There were plenty of other days to come.

Roselle was pleased to hear Dyllis mentioning her office manager more and more often. It probably wouldn’t lead to anything, but at least Mr Richardson was taking her mind off Roderick, which was a good thing. Roddy, however, although he was keeping his promise to write more often, didn’t seem to have any friends, male or female. If only he had stayed in Liverpool she could have kept an eye on him each time he came home, but he was at the other side of the world now and anything could happen to him.

She still couldn’t understand why he had agreed to go to New York - nor, come to that, why he’d gone to Liverpool, in the first place. What drove him on to move about like that? If he’d stayed on in Aberdeen, he would eventually have got a promotion, and the same went for Liverpool. He had never given the impression that he had itchy feet, so why? It seemed that both her children were destined to end up as loners, and they had been so friendly to everybody when they were younger. Even Helen Milne used to remark on that.

Roselle’s mind transferred to her old neighbour, as it had often done over the fifteen years since they moved to Cruden Bay. She had banished her guilt for not keeping in touch, by secretly sending a Christmas card every year, but she wished she had the guts to defy Brian and send a proper letter with her address in it. She needed someone to talk to, an older person who could help her to understand her children. She needed Helen.

But for some reason Brian had forbidden any correspondence. She couldn’t explain why he had taken such a dislike to their old neighbour; no, not a dislike, more a distrust. That was it, a distrust - but why? What had Helen ever done to him? She’d been so good when Dilly had meningitis, and she had helped out in so many other ways.

There was one thing, though. Roselle had considered this several times but it always seemed too far-fetched. Still, it had been immediately after Helen had spoken about her son being a policeman in Northern Ireland that Brian had first mentioned that his firm was transferring him to Aberdeen; almost as if he’d been taking himself (and family) out of harm’s way. He had admitted once, of course, to embezzling money, but surely not enough to warrant this apparent panic of being found out. It didn’t seem likely, anyway, not after all this time, and especially not for a paltry hundred pounds.

With Roddy in America, a weight had lifted from Brian Lewis’s mind. If his son and daughter had still been in constant touch with each other anything could have happened.

From what he had noticed before, Dilly had been the force behind their attraction - she hadn’t cared who saw them holding hands or looking at each other in that lovey-dovey manner - whereas Roddy had obviously tried to cover it up. He had accepted the fact that it just wasn’t possible, and had taken himself out of harm’s way. Good for him. Maybe, with temptation no longer present, Dilly could let herself get involved with some nice young man - maybe even that manager she kept speaking about. He seemed to be quite friendly towards her, by what she said, maybe even attracted to her, and she seemed to be leaning towards him a little. It was a start, wasn’t it? If she did fall in love with this Richardson fellow and marry him, the family would be in no danger of landing in the hellish scandal that would erupt otherwise.

He could breathe easier, with no further repetitions of the searing nightmares he had had for so long. His Roselle would lose that haunted look and be a more loving wife to him. Apart from their son being at the other side of the Atlantic, they would be an ordinary, normal family again.

That was his sole reason for doing what he’d done all those years ago. Of course, he hadn’t planned everything. One part had just happened!

Dyllis could hardly believe what was happening to her. For months, years, she had dreamt of being with Roddy, of them living together away from all who knew them, having his darling babies, twins like themselves, one boy and one girl. Over the past few weeks, however, she had been thinking quite a lot about Mr Richardson - Neville, though she could never call him that to his face.

The one random lunch date had developed into a weekly event, and today, just before they split to go their separate ways back to the office, he had looked at her quizzically.

‘Dyllis, would you care to accompany me to His Majesty’s Theatre next Monday night? A friend gave me two complimentary tickets and I am sure you would enjoy it - a new production of
Carousel.’’

Taken utterly by surprise, she said, ‘Oh, I’d love to, Mr Richardson, but I can’t. You see, I’d miss the last bus home. I live in Cruden Bay.’

‘But that’s not a problem,’ he smiled. ‘I’ll book you into a hotel for the night.’ He must have mistaken her astonishment for doubt, because he hastened to add, ‘Nothing nasty, Dyllis. I’ll see you to the door of the hotel and leave you, I promise.’

It was too much for her. She couldn’t refuse a night in a hotel as well as a visit to the theatre - she had never been to a hotel or a theatre before - but she couldn’t tell her mum and dad. They wouldn’t believe that any man would arrange a hotel room for a young woman and not take advantage of her. She would need to find a more acceptable way to explain an overnight stay, but she could surely manage that. Giving it no more thought, she said, shyly, ‘Thanks, Mr Richardson, I’d love to.’

A huge beam transformed his craggy face. ‘Great, I look forward to Monday then. But can’t you manage to call me Neville? At least, out of the office.’

Even his last four words rang no alarm bell in her head. She could understand why a man in his position would prefer not to advertise his new liaison with a minor member of staff - very minor.

At breakfast the next morning, she put out a tiny feeler, a kind of preparation for what she intended to say when she got home that night. ‘I told you about the girl that started working with us a few weeks ago? Her name’s Aimee - spelt A-I-M-E-E - Riddler, and she’s kind of chummed up with me. She’s a nice girl, a year younger than me, but we get on great. I think Tracy Little’s a bit jealous.’