‘Have you ever done, you know, the thing Micky did with Orla to make her have the baby?’
‘Lord,
no
!’ Fion gasped. ‘Have you?’
‘What? And end up living in the Lavins’ parlour with people sitting on the bed watching telly while you’re trying to sleep? No, thanks, I wouldn’t dream of it. You’d have to be mad.’
‘Perhaps our Orla
is
mad!’
‘Perhaps. Though I wouldn’t mind
kissing
Micky Lavin,’ Maeve said thoughtfully. ‘He’s a dish.’
‘What’s a dish?’ enquired Fion, who wouldn’t have minded kissing Micky Lavin either.
‘Someone who’s dead gorgeous. Montgomery Clift’s dishy, and Frank Sinatra.’
‘Neil Greene’s dishier than both of them,’ Fion said.
She fancied kissing Neil even more than she did Micky Lavin.
In mid-afternoon Mr and Mrs Lavin arrived at the hospital, laden with fruit and flowers, and accompanied by four of the children. Visiting time was almost over. Before a nurse could complain there were too many visitors around the bed Alice left, promising to return that night.
Outside, the morning’s drizzle had become a steady downpour and she wished she’d brought an umbrella. She stood in the rain and wondered whether to go home or to the salon. She didn’t feel like doing either. Her nerves were on edge after the conversation with Orla. It worried her that the girl would refuse to see sense and eventually Micky would snap. There was only so much a person could stand. So far, Micky had been dead patient. But he wasn’t a saint.
If only she could talk to someone – her dad or Bernie, but they’d be at work for hours yet.
She could talk to John. He might not agree, but it was every bit as much
his
problem as it was hers. Anyroad, despite the way he’d acted with Orla, he had a right to know he’d become a grandfather. And she wouldn’t wait till tonight. She’d do it now while she was in the mood, go round to the yard and see him. You never knew, his attitude might change if he could be persuaded to see Lulu, who was without doubt one of the loveliest babies ever born. It was a pity the poor child had been blessed with such a dead silly name.
Alice had only a vague idea where the yard was situated: somewhere in Seaforth not far from the playing fields. Benton Street rang a bell. For some reason John had always discouraged them from going there. She caught the tram to the terminus in Rimrose Road,
walked under the railway bridge and emerged in Seaforth.
The first three people she asked had never heard of Benton Street, nor a firm called B.E.D.S. The fourth, a woman, had an idea the street was near the playing fields.
‘That’s right,’ Alice said eagerly.
The directions were complicated. Turn right, then left, then right again at a big pub the woman couldn’t remember the name of. Go half a mile down Sandy Road, turn left at a greengrocer’s and Benton Street was the second turning on the right, or it might be the third.
Alice got wetter and wetter as she negotiated the complicated maze of streets. She thought about giving up, but decided she couldn’t, not after having made it this far.
She was soaked to the skin by the time she turned into Benton Street and hoped John had a towel so she could dry herself. A wooden sign with B.E.D.S. painted on it was attached to a pair of tall iron gates, just round the corner in a place called Crozier Terrace, a cul-de-sac with no more than ten tiny houses either side.
Her heart sank when she tried the gates and found them locked. Surely John didn’t lock himself in! Behind the gates a two-storey building had a light on upstairs. It was probably the office. Alice rattled the gates in the hope of attracting her husband’s attention, but to no avail.
Disappointed, she turned away. After coming so far! She wondered where he could be. Maybe he’d gone to the timber yard for wood. Alice frowned. If that was the case, what was that smart green van doing parked inside the gates? Did it belong to John? It looked new, but he’d never mentioned having a van. She noticed a wire strung across the street attached to the top half of the building,
the office. He hadn’t mentioned having a telephone either.
‘You’ll find him at home, luv.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
A woman had emerged from one of the tiny houses in Crozier Terrace. She was sensibly shielded from the rain in a plastic mac and hood. ‘Mr Lacey, he’s gone home to see his missus. I saw him pass me winder less than ten minutes ago.’
‘You can’t possibly have!’ John had never been known to come home during the day. Anyroad, he’d have to go the other way, down Benton Street, not past this woman’s window. There was no way out of Crozier Terrace.
‘Please yourself, luv.’ The woman shrugged. ‘But I don’t doubt the evidence of me own eyes. You’ll find Mr Lacey in the end house, number twenty.’
She must be mad. Alice watched the woman walk away, then gave the gates another shake. Still no one came. She was about to walk away herself but, feeling curious, went down Crozier Terrace to number twenty. She took a step back and looked it up and down. It was a perfectly ordinary house, identical to the others, with pretty, flowered cretonne curtains. There was a vase of dried leaves in the window. The front door and the sills were painted maroon.
The woman had been talking nonsense. She couldn’t possibly be right. On the other hand, how could she possibly be wrong? She’d referred to ‘Mr Lacey’. She lived within spitting distance of the yard, so she must know John well. And another thing, Alice’s heart began to pound painfully in her chest, it was John who insisted on maroon every time he painted the outside of their house in Amber Street. She would have preferred bottle green herself.
‘His missus,’ the woman had said. ‘He’s gone to see his missus.’
‘But that’s
me
,’ Alice said aloud. She wondered if she should go home,
run
home, forget the house, what the woman had said, just wait for John tonight and tell him about Orla. She would never mention having been to the yard. Perhaps it would be best not to know whatever secrets might lie behind this door.
But she
had
to know. She would never rest until she did. There was still a chance that the woman had got things wrong, that it was another man who looked like John who’d passed her house. Except she’d called him Mr Lacey.
Maybe there were two Mr Laceys and they were similar!
Alice took a deep breath and knocked on the door.
After a few seconds it was opened by a young woman, heavily pregnant, with lovely soft fair hair. Through the door Alice glimpsed a simply but comfortably furnished parlour with a plain brown fitted carpet – she’d always fancied fitted carpets in her own house. There was something wrong with the young woman’s face – she had a hare lip. Without it, she would have been extraordinarily pretty. A tiny girl, little more than a baby, clung to her leg and Alice felt herself go cold. The little girl could have been Orla at the same age. The young woman smiled, but didn’t speak.
‘John Lacey,’ Alice said in a cracked voice. ‘I’ve come to see John Lacey.’
‘He’s upstairs.’ A little boy appeared. He had his mother’s fair hair.
‘Would you mind giving him a call, luv.’ Alice still retained a shred of hope it was another man entirely upstairs.
‘Dad!’ the boy obediently yelled.
‘Who is it, son?’ John’s voice called.
‘A lady.’
There were footsteps and John came to the door. Alice, sick to her soul, was presented with the perfect picture of domesticity: the little girl, so like Orla, the boy with the fair hair, her husband, John, his arm laid casually round the shoulders of the pregnant woman.
When he saw Alice his face hardened and she glimpsed hostility in the brown eyes. He bundled his family out of sight, came outside, closed the door.
But by this time, Alice had already reached the end of Crozier Terrace and was running, racing, flying home. She didn’t stop until she reached Amber Street.
Alice lay curled up in the armchair, knees pressed against her chest. There was something terrifying about her blank, staring eyes in a face that had lost all trace of colour. She looked like a ghost. Every now and then her body convulsed, as if she was about to have a fit, and the sobs that emerged fom her pale lips were strangely subdued.
A frightened Cormac had begun to cry, something he had hardly ever done when he was little. Maeve was visibly shaking.
Only Fionnuala, who could always be relied on to act sensibly in a crisis, managed to remain calm. ‘What’s wrong, Mam?’ She shook her mother again and again. ‘Mam, what’s wrong?’ But Alice seemed incapable of understanding, let alone providing answers.
‘Perhaps our Orla’s baby has died?’ Maeve suggested.
‘Or Orla herself?’ Cormac’s lip trembled.
‘No,’ Fion said. ‘She would have told us. No, it’s something different from that. She’s had a terrible shock.’
Cormac managed to crawl on to his mam’s knee, which he still did occasionally, despite the fact he was
eleven and at grammar school. ‘Mam!’ He tenderly stroked her face. ‘Oh, Mam!’
‘Maeve,’ Fion commanded, ‘make a pot of tea. That might bring her round.’
Maeve hurried into the kitchen to put on the kettle. ‘Should we fetch someone?’ she asked when she came back.
‘Who?’ Fion asked simply. ‘Anyroad, there’s no need to fetch someone, she’s got us. You know what I think we should do?’
‘What?’
‘Throw cold water on her. She’s having a fit of some sort. I saw it once in the pictures. It’s either water, or slapping her face and I don’t know about you, but I couldn’t bring meself to slap our mam. I prefer the water idea. She’s already soaking from the rain, so it won’t exactly hurt her.’
‘Shall I fetch a bucketful?’
‘A cup will do.
You’re
the one who wants to be a nurse, Maeve Lacey. You should know about these things. Cormac, mind out the road, there’s a good lad, we’re going to throw a cup of water on our mam.’ Fion dragged her brother off Alice’s knee when he appeared not to hear.
‘You do it.’ Maeve handed Fion the water.
‘You’re going to make a hopeless nurse.’ Fion took a deep breath and threw the water in her mother’s face.
Alice screamed and violently shook her head for several seconds. ‘Oh, my God!’ she screamed again when she saw three of her children standing anxiously over her. ‘What have I been saying?’
‘Nothing, Mam. All you did was sort of cry.’ Although relieved to see her mother all right again, Fion felt suspicious that things were being kept from her. Why
should Mam be worried about what she might have said? ‘Has Aunt Cora been at you over something?’ she asked.
‘No, luv.’ Alice held out her arms and the children fell upon her. They might find out one day what their father had been up to, but they’d never hear it from her. She hugged them fiercely. ‘I love you. I love you so much it hurts. Now, if someone doesn’t make me a cup of tea soon, I think I’ll bust.’
‘The kettle’s already on, Mam,’ Fion and Maeve said together and disappeared into the kitchen. Cormac, with his mother all to himself, snuggled his face in her shoulder.
Alice felt dead ashamed. She had only a vague memory of being in the chair, having lost all grip on reality. There’d just been that awful feeling you had when you woke up from a horrific dream, unsure whether it was true or false. For the first time in her life the dream had turned out to be true. Perhaps her brain and her body had been fighting against the truth, praying for the dream to turn out to be just that, a dream.
John! Till the end of her days she would never forget the look on his face, as if she were a trespasser on his happiness. It would have been far preferable if he’d just walked out of Amber Street, left them. But to set up another home, with another woman, other children!
Fion and Maeve came in with tea on a tray and a plate of digestive biscuits. ‘Is Orla all right?’ Fion demanded.
‘She’s fine and the baby’s lovely.’ Alice realised she’d have to explain the hysteria. Now seemed the time to tell them their dad wouldn’t be coming home. ‘I went round the yard to tell your father about Orla and we had a big bust-up. He’s not coming back.’
‘But what about us?’ Cormac wailed. Fion and Maeve didn’t appear particularly upset.
‘We never got round to discussing you, luv. I know’ –
she had an idea – ‘you can telephone him from the salon, arrange to meet somewhere.’ She hoped John would be nice to the son he’d once loved so much, that he wouldn’t regard him as a trespasser as he had done his wife. She remembered the other little boy and wondered what his name was. ‘Son,’ John had called him. ‘Who is it, son?’
‘A lady,’ the child had replied.
It would be easy to cry again, but not now, not with the children there. She’d already frightened them enough. Cormac was still on her knee. She hugged him hard. He adored his dad and would miss him more than any other member of the family. Well,
this
family, she thought drily. From now on, John’s other family would have him all to themselves.
‘She looked so pretty, so nice,’ Clare wrote quickly in her neat, precise hand. She started to weep again. ‘I feel terrible. So should you,’ she added, underlining the ‘you’.
‘I do,’ John said in a heartfelt voice. He did indeed feel terrible, but he also felt very hard. He couldn’t get Alice’s shocked white face out of his mind, but there was no way he would let her spoil things between him and Clare.
Clare was writing again. ‘We should have lived further away. It was always dangerous here.’
‘We’ll move as soon as possible.’ He didn’t want Danny Mitchell or one of the girls coming round to make a scene. They could yell at him all they liked, but he wasn’t prepared to let Clare or his children be subjected to abuse, though he had a feeling Alice would keep things to herself. She’d be too ashamed and embarrassed to tell anyone, not even her dad or Bernadette.
He wondered aloud why she’d come to the yard in the first place and Clare wrote, ‘Perhaps your daughter has had her baby?’
John smiled and stroked her swollen belly. If that was the case, it was possible he would become a grandfather and a father again within a single week.
‘You should go to see the baby.’ Clare supported the stumbling words with a movement of her hands, as if shooing him out of the house.