The Liverpool Trilogy (119 page)

‘Find him and get a doctor. This has to be dealt with.’

‘And if he tells the doctor what happened on our Reen’s wedding day?’

Paddy shrugged. ‘Doctors take that hippo-critical vow, don’t they? Like priests, they can’t say a word.’ Internally, Paddy was still struggling with the Christmas cards,
two from Michael, two from Finbar. The stamps had been franked in a town not far from Liverpool—

‘I think you’re wanted, Mam.’

‘Yes. Good luck, so.’ Paddy pinned a radiant smile to the lower half of her face. She greeted new people, took care not to ask after those who had failed to arrive. Ernie Avago
wasn’t here, of course. Ernie, God rest his bones, had been one of the very best.

The Christmas king and queen were chosen and given crowns and white-trimmed scarlet cloaks. These were the two whose birthdays fell closest to Christmas, and they took their place at the centre
of one of the large tables. A pianist played soft music, soup arrived, and the party was under way.

When the meal was over, a small choir came to sing for the diners. These children had been plucked from the ranks of a local Catholic school, and they sounded like angels. Paddy stood for a
while and gazed at the scene. In this room, the vulnerable smiled, sang and clapped. These were the bookends of life, the overture and the finale. How well they treated each other; how each group
rejoiced in the company of the other. She wanted to weep, but she wouldn’t. Paddy and Kevin O’Neil were the backbone of the family, a family that had lost four members, while two others
were at large and possibly not too far away. Emotion was best hidden. Only at home did Paddy and Kevin weep and support each other.

She offered up a silent prayer for her sons and her brothers, attaching a postscript for Finbar and Michael, her grandsons. Maureen also got a mention, because Maureen was going through hell.
Her brothers and uncles were dead, two of her sons were missing, and her husband was showing few signs of returning to the real world. Poor Maureen and Seamus were about to have a very sad
Christmas. ‘And God help our Tom,’ she concluded.

He’d seemed to be all right at first. Never comfortable about what he had been forced to do, Tom Walsh had pushed it all to the back of his mind, where it had festered, grown caustic and
burned its way through to his consciousness. No matter what anyone said, he insisted that he was a murderer. Lately, he didn’t even listen properly, and he never replied.

But Paddy could do nothing about any of it. As daylight began to fade, she waved off the coaches before joining in the big clean-up. While they scrubbed, Paddy and her helpers found two lower
jaw dentures, six pairs of spectacles, three gloves, all odd, a scarf, a wallet and four purses. ‘All we’re short of is five gold rings and a partridge in a pear tree,’ she told
the company. The collection was about par for the course, and all items were locked away securely. Next week, dock workers would arrive with descriptions of missing items, and all would be
returned.

Meanwhile, Maureen was trudging her way through the streets of Liverpool. By no means the biggest city in England, it seemed sizeable on one of the last shopping days before Christmas,
especially when a searcher went into every pub and every alleyway. She fought her way past many bodies, sometimes separating man from wife or mother from child, so high was her level of
anxiety.

Exhausted beyond measure, she gave up and went to look for a bus. He would probably be at home when she finally got back, since his inner compass still seemed to be in working order. Oh, God.
How was she going to get through to him? It was like trying to communicate with someone who had suddenly lost the ability to see, hear or feel. And her feet were giving her hell.

Then she spotted him. He stood where thousands of Liverpudlians had lingered over the years, arms on the railings, eyes staring out to the steely grey and angry river. He was at the Pier Head.
How many had come here for a good think, for a bit of space away from family, for a place in which problems might be thought through without interruption by spouse or by children? Often, there
would be up to a dozen or so gazing out at the river and towards the Irish Sea.

Maureen held back. There was something different about him. And it wasn’t just that he wasn’t rocking in that blinking chair. She couldn’t see his face, yet she knew he had
changed. Was he worse, was he better? Was he thinking about jumping into that seething mass of water?

A man close by was talking to Tom. What were they discussing? Maureen’s heart jumped before picking up speed. Surely Tom wouldn’t unburden himself to a stranger? The unknown man
displayed a limp when he moved, and one of his feet was in a built-up shoe.
Oh, God, please don’t let my Tom place himself in the hands of the law. Why can’t he talk to me? I’m
his bloody wife, you know. Sometimes, I wonder whose side you’re on, God. Just lately, you’re not looking after us.

The two men were shaking hands, and Tom was talking.
So you can talk to him, but not to me, eh? Wait till I get you home, you great big bundle of washing. Because that’s what
you’ve become, just a pile of shirts to be laundered and ironed. As a husband, you’re as much use as a guard dog with dentures. Right. Time I sorted you out.
Mentally, she pushed up
her sleeves and prepared for battle.

The stranger limped away a few seconds before Maureen’s arrival at the railings. She stood in silence next to Tom for a while.

‘Oh. Hello, love,’ he said.

That was an improvement, she decided. Three words. It wasn’t much, but she had to be thankful for small mercies. ‘Never mind “Hello, love”. I should be at Scouse Alley
helping me mother. That place’ll be like a bloody pigsty by now, and I should be pulling me weight. But no. I have to traipse all over town looking for you. I’ve had more words out of
our Seamus these past weeks. Where’ve you been?’

‘Confession,’ he replied. ‘And to see Greenhalgh.’

‘Who has confessions on a Saturday?’

‘A few churches do. But I knocked at the presbytery and spoke face to face, didn’t go in the box.’ He shook his head thoughtfully. ‘I can’t even remember the name
of the church. Might be St Columba’s. It got bombed and rebuilt.’

‘Right.’ She waited.

‘Anyway, I’ve got absolution. Special circumstances. We both finished up crying, me and the priest. He said I’m a good family man with a conscience and told me to think about
David and Goliath.’

‘Right.’ Maureen’s heart slowed to nearly normal.

‘You keep saying right.’

‘Do I? And you’ve been saying bugger all for weeks. It’s been me, just me talking. The only punctuation I got was from our Seamus, and he doesn’t always make full sense.
Imagine what he’s gone through. Me as well. It’s been no bowl of cherries.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘I should hope so.’ She paused. ‘Him with the game leg. What were you saying to him? And who is he?’

Tom moved his head and stared out at the Mersey once more. ‘Roy. Found me nearly crying in my beer. Good bloke. He just sat there for a while in the pub before asking what he could do to
help. So I told him to take me to a church that was nowhere near Bootle. He waited for me at the presbytery, then we came back here after a cup of coffee in Maggie Moore’s caff. I told him I
felt better, and he was glad.’

‘Good. Are we going home now?’

‘In a bit. Roy opened up and talked to me about his dad dying. He’d told his dad to die, and he did die. The dad was a bad man, but Roy felt as if he’d made it happen. The
police thought Roy had pushed him down the stairs or broken his neck after an accidental fall, but that was all rubbish. There’s this young widow he loves, and he hurts when he sees her,
hurts when he doesn’t see her.’ Tom turned and looked at his long-suffering wife. ‘And that was when I felt lucky, because I got my girl.’

Maureen blushed. At her age, she was in no fit state for blushing; it didn’t suit her one bit. For a start, it made her look drunk. The singing was not the only result of her infrequent
over-indulgence in the Guinness, since she also had a tendency to become flushed and somewhat luminous in the facial department. Tom had been known to declare in the past that they never needed a
torch, because they just followed his wife’s nose when she’d been on a bender. ‘I got my girl,’ he repeated. ‘And if this was wartime, you’d need a blackout
blind for that face. You’ve lit up like a Christmas tree.’

For answer, she clouted him with her handbag. He was well and safe, and that was all she needed to know. ‘Don’t go thinking anybody’s missed you while you went for your walk on
the dark side. And don’t go thinking anybody’s going to make a fuss of you, because you need a job for a kick-off.’

‘No, I don’t.’

‘You what? Do you think money grows on trees?’

Tom shook his head. ‘I told you I went to see Greenhalgh. Roy came there with me, too. Sound as a pound, that lad. Anyway, they’re giving me the new Bootle Co-op when they’ve
finished modernizing and fitting it. He said I was due for promotion anyway. I’m going to be the manager. It suits, because I have to build myself up first, and I don’t start work for a
couple of months. Course, he knew I’d been ill, but he thinks it was a chest infection that refused to shift. I have had that bad cough, so it wasn’t much of a lie.’

‘And all you needed was confession?’

He shrugged. ‘I’m not out of the woods yet, sweetheart. But yes, confession works. Forgiveness from a man of God is good liquor. One day at a time, eh? And we got Christmas cards
from the boys.’

‘So did Mam and Dad. Theirs came a couple of days later.’ She looked at him quizzically. ‘You noticed, then? You heard and saw?’

‘Yes.’

Again, she swiped his arm with the bag. ‘Why didn’t you answer me?’

‘Because I didn’t want you to see a grown man cry. I couldn’t talk about anything. Just give me a chance, Maureen. I feel as if somebody’s waved a magic wand, but the
miracle might not last.’

It would last, she decided when they climbed on the bus. She would make sure it bloody well lasted. The vehicle was packed with people and Christmas shopping, so she and Tom had to stand. They
hung on to leather straps provided for that purpose. His right hand sought her left and clung to her until they reached their stop.

When they alighted, he got the third blow from her handbag. ‘What’s that about?’ he asked.

‘Holding me hand on the bus. People must have thought we’re having an affair, because husbands and wives don’t hold hands.’

He grinned for the first time in weeks. ‘Did any of them on the bus know you?’

‘Some might have.’

‘And if they knew you, they’d know me, and they’d know we’re married. If they didn’t know us, who cares?’

‘I care. It’s not natural. Married people don’t even talk to one another on a night out.’

‘Sad,’ he said before dragging her into his arms. Although the daylight was meagre and few people were out and about, she battered him yet again with her bag. He was a good kisser,
but she was still going to kill him later. He probably thought he was on a promise, and he could think again. He was a great kisser, though . . .

It started with the rose bowl. A squat item in mottled pink glass, it was topped by a circle of wire with holes to help arrangements of short-stemmed blooms to remain stable.
For several days following the move to Menlove Avenue, the article popped up all over the place. It travelled from landing windowsill to kitchen, to front living room, to dining room, to the main
bedroom, to Anne-Marie’s domain.

Don told himself it was nothing to worry about. Tess had always been fussy. She could go through half a dozen books of wallpaper samples without finding anything good enough for her. But when it
came to the carpet . . .

He stood in the doorway, his jaw dropping, forehead creased in a frown, hands employed to steady himself by pushing against the jamb. A dart of pure terror pierced his chest. ‘Tess?’
he managed eventually. On her hands and knees, she looked over a shoulder and smiled at him. ‘I thought if I started in the bay and worked backwards, I wouldn’t end up painted into a
corner.’

‘What are you doing, love?’

‘Painting them out. You don’t like them; I don’t like them any more. So they’re going. No skaters’ trails, just all grey.’

Don swallowed hard. St Faith’s Infants’ School was still in a state of recovery from deep trauma. Tess, in charge of costumes and props, had accidentally locked everything in the
wrong storage cupboard. Alongside the manger, kings’ crowns and angels’ wings, three terrified children had been entombed. They had suffered nightmares ever since getting out of jail.
Tess wasn’t right.

Meals were strange. They were also served at some very odd times. Don’s mother’s rose bowl was currently on display in the centre of the front lawn alongside a frying pan and two
tins of marrowfat peas. She wasn’t just unhappy; she was absolutely crackers. ‘Tess?’

‘What?’

‘You don’t paint carpets. You take them up and buy new ones.’

‘Waste of money,’ was her reply.

There were times in life when a person didn’t know what to do. This was one of those times. ‘The paint will come off the carpet, Tess. It might never dry properly, because it’s
meant for wood, not wool. You can’t carry on like this.’

‘Like what?’

‘Like what?’ he repeated. ‘Like locking kids in cupboards, cutting up your best curtains for King Herod’s cloak, painting carpets, putting tinned veg on the
lawn—’

‘What?’

‘You’ve two tins of marrowfats, a frying pan and my mam’s rose bowl out there.’

‘Stop fussing over nothing,’ she insisted. ‘Anyway, I must get on.’

He watched her getting on. There was no point in trying to count, but there had to be more than a few thousand trails on a carpet of this size. Although the background was grey, the trails were
multicoloured, and she was painting over each one with a fine brush dipped in the contents of a tin marked
Charcoal
.

Three weeks, they had lived here. Sean, who had been on the brink of leaving their previous home for a place of his own, seemed to be settling. Anne-Marie, with a new bedroom fit for a princess,
was deliriously enchanted. When she wasn’t dressing up, washing her hair or painting her face, she was walking casually up and down the avenue outside John Lennon’s house. So determined
was her blasé demeanour that she stuck out like a Blackpool tram on Southport beach. But Don’s daughter’s madness was temporary and hormonal; Tess’s was in a class of its
own.