The Loner (10 page)

Beth greeted them with a nod. ‘I hardly recognised you without your childer,’ she told the woman.

‘When I’ve got my hands full with them, I never have time to make myself look nice,’ Patsy replied. ‘I’ve roped our Lenny in to look after the kids. That’ll bring him down to earth with a bump!’

She turned to her husband, who returned a wry little grin. ‘Yes,’ he agreed, ‘it won’t hurt the cocky young devil to know his place…keep him from getting above himself, if you know what I mean?’

Beth said in his defence, ‘As I recall, your son looked a sensible, capable sort.’ Lenny was a well-built boy with a mop of dark hair and a wary look in his eye. ‘I imagine he’ll cope with the children very well.’ Bidding them good day, she moved on, feeling put out, somehow.

‘I don’t think that woman gets on too well with her eldest son,’ she confided in Tom. ‘I heard her going at him hammer and tongs that day at the house, and now they’re talking as though he’s a ruffian who needs to be kept under control.’

Tom was his usual self. ‘None of our business,’ he said, and the subject was closed.

There was a smattering of other neighbours, most of them Joseph’s friends and old workmates, and others who were attending out of curiosity. There were also a number of younger men; these were Don’s colleagues from the workshop, men who knew of Rita’s reputation but never lowered themselves to be acquainted with her or betray Don. Together with their wives they were here to support the bereaved family, and show their respect. In Don’s absence, they tried to represent him. The poor fellow would be devastated when he found out. It was a thoroughly bad do all round.

The others, the men who had used Rita and fought over her like dogs over a bone, they knew well enough to stay away.

‘Poor devil.’ Tom shook his head. ‘So he’ll not know his wife’s gone and his son missing?’ As he went in through the church door he kept his eyes peeled.

They shuffled into the pews and everyone got settled. ‘Did you see anything of Davie?’Judy whispered to her mam. ‘Is he here, do you think?’

‘No, lass. Or if he is, I for one didn’t see him.’

But the boy was there, crouched beside a huge woman in a pew to the rear of the church, where a large pillar cast a shadow. Scruffy, and thinner than ever, he strained to hear the priest’s opening words.

A few moments passed, and then Joseph and three other men were bringing Rita in, and everyone stood and bowed their heads, or made the sign of the cross on themselves. For Judy, sitting with her family, it was a deep and sobering experience, for she had never attended such an event before. For Davie, in the shadows, it felt like his own death.

The service was all too brief. They sang the hymns and they listened to the beautiful sermon, based on the words of wisdom from Ecclesiastes, and they prayed for eternal peace for the soul of Rita Adams. And then it was over, and they were all filing out again.

As she emerged into the daylight, Judy was anxiously scanning the area for Davie. But he was nowhere to be seen. ‘It’s no use looking for him, lass.’ Beth saw how anxious she was. ‘The lad did all he could for his mammy while she was alive, and there’s no more for him to do here.’

Knowing how Judy felt, the woman did not want to dash all her hopes. But sometimes, forever hoping for one thing means you will never get another, and that was not what she wanted for her daughter.

‘I’m sorry, love,’ she told Judy gently. ‘I reckon your Davie is long gone by now.’

Having witnessed the conversation, Tom saw the sadness in his daughter’s eyes and he wanted her away from this place. ‘Come on, you two. We’ve paid our respects, so let’s make us way home, eh?’

Beth was surprised. ‘Are we not going up to Pleasington Cemetery then, to witness the burial?’

Tom shook his head. ‘No need for that,’ he replied in his no-nonsense manner. ‘We showed up at the church, and to my mind, we’ve done our duty. Now, let’s be off. I’ve umpteen jobs waiting to be done back at the farm.’

Judy remained on the look-out for Davie. In her heart she knew he was here somewhere, hiding.

‘DAVIE!’ Out of breath and fast losing him, Judy put a spurt on. But there was no chance of her catching up, and Davie made no sign of jumping off the vehicle. He had watched the service from the back of the church and hid while they put his mammy onto the hearse, and now he had to go with her and lay the wild posies he’d collected. Moreover, he needed to know where she lay, so he would never forget.

‘GO BACK!’ Davie’s voice carried on the wind. ‘Don’t forget I love you…and tell my grandad I love
him
!’

As the distance between them grew wider, Davie let their images soak into his memory; his beloved father and grandfather, and Judy and her family, the kindest people he had ever known. And he wondered how he would manage without them. There was no telling where he might end up or how long he might be gone, and whether he would ever come back to this place, where he had known both contentment and unhappiness in equal measures.

For now though, his future was not something that concerned him, because only an arm’s reach away, his mother lay lifeless, gone from his sight and from his life forever.

His father had been crippled by the burden he had carried for too long, and there was a real possibility that he might never see him again. But the boy wanted to see him. He needed to tell him the way of things, and how neither of them were to blame. At this moment in time, he longed for his father’s presence, more than at any other time in his entire life.

Yet even as he whispered Don’s name, his eyes on Rita’s coffin, the piece of paper that his daddy had given him, with the precious contact name on it, fell out of his trouser pocket and was immediately whisked into a hawthorn hedge by a passing gust of wind. And there it lay wedged, unread, while the elements, seasons, and myriad hedge-dwelling creatures reduced it to a sodden scrap. And father and son were lost to each other, unless a kinder wind might blow them back together.

‘Come on, sweetheart’ Beth came forward to slide a comforting arm round her daughter’s shoulders. ‘Your dad’s waiting to take us home.’

‘I couldn’t give a sod how shocked they were!’ Ron’s mood had darkened. He wished he hadn’t taken time off from his job as a tram-driver to come here. But if they wanted to butter up old Joseph, they had to play the game.

Patsy dug him in the ribs. ‘Hey, you know what?’

Scowling, he swung round. ‘What?’

‘I were just thinking.’ A sly grin crept over her features.

‘Oh, I see.’ Thinking himself lucky, his passion rose. There was no one around, and it excited him, the thought of taking her here, on so-called sacred ground. ‘Want some, do you?’ he said huskily, and slid his hand under her skirt.

‘Get off, you randy sod!’ She pushed him away, and blew smoke in his face. ‘I were just thinking about them Make peaces, being shocked at what we said about Lenny.’

‘So what?’ Impatient, he started the car engine.

‘Well, just you think about it.’ She smiled, a look of devilment on her face. ‘If they knew the truth, they’d have something to be shocked about, wouldn’t they, eh?’

‘What are you getting at, you silly moo?’

Nervously glancing about, Patsy lowered her voice to a whisper. ‘It’s as well they don’t know the truth – about Lenny, I mean.’

Ron snorted. ‘You’re right. Mind, it would be a real treat to see the look on their faces.’ Glancing at Tom’s car as it travelled slowly along the lower lane, he shouted at the top of his voice, ‘That’s summat you didn’t know, you miserable buggers – the truth about the lad. Oh yes! Put the cat among the pigeons, that would.’

‘Shut your bloody trap!’
Patsy warned him. ‘Just keep it buttoned! If the truth got out, we could end up in jail.’ She punched her husband hard on the shoulder. ‘You’d do well to remember that.’

As they hastily departed for home, the hitherto jovial atmosphere was quickly replaced by a moody silence, punctuated by the wheezings and bouncings of a vehicle that was well past its prime.