A Liverpool Song (12 page)

Marty shuffled out.

Thora threw back her head and hooted with laughter when the front door slammed. ‘Leave my house. Marginally better – that school’s done a lot for you, Andrew. Though your mam
talks a bit posh, doesn’t she?’

Andrew sank into the chair opposite Michael’s. Tears threatened, and tears shouldn’t belong in the repertoire of a boy who was almost thirteen.

Michael saved his new friend. Well, he hoped that Andrew would be his friend. ‘Was Dad drunk?’ he asked.

‘I’d say so, yes. His feet were smoking.’

Grief forgotten, Andrew blinked several times.

‘Oh, not again,’ Michael sighed. ‘Did you light the fire, Mam?’

‘No, your gran did. Said she were cold, a bit shivery. So Harry sits down with his whiskey, feet up on the fireguard, falls asleep. Your gran thought it was the sweat in his socks steaming
off. Well, that’s what she said, anyway. She wouldn’t care if he went up in flames as long as she got the rest of us out. Some days, I feel like giving up.’ She shook
rust-coloured curls. ‘I’ll make you some toast and tea.’ She went into the kitchen.

Michael and Andrew grinned at each other. ‘We seem to have strange families,’ said the latter.

‘Then we’re in the right place,’ Michael answered. ‘They’re all a bit doolally round these parts. Your dad’s bought this house, then?’

‘Yes.’

‘Are you rich?’

‘I don’t know, Mike. When the Crompton Way house sells, we’ll be a bit better off. Nobody mentions anything. But I think he’s using this house for a time-and-motion
kitchen. If the kitchens take off, he’ll move us a bit further up the road, but that’s just my opinion. He wants to live in Liverpool when I leave school.’

There was a slight pause. ‘Andrew?’

‘What?’

‘I like wood. I’d like to be a carpenter when I leave school.’

‘I’ll ask him.’

‘Ta.’

They ate their toast while Thora chattered. After a while, Andrew began to realize that the words were fading into the background. Mrs Caldwell was just another layer of paint or wallpaper, part
of his surroundings. He even drifted towards sleep . . .

Joe opened his eyes at last, and Emily was sitting there smiling at him. For a moment, he smiled back, before drifting once more towards the sleep that would mend him.
She’d been there; she’d stayed with him in the hospital, and that was all that mattered.

Emily Sanderson sighed her relief, picked up her bag and walked to the door of the ward. They’d told her the penicillin seemed to be helping, and that his breathing had improved, but only
slightly.

Slightly was better than nothing. And she had a son who needed her.

Martin Liptrott swept half a dozen glasses off the bar in the lounge of the Starkie public house. The landlord, who was not in the best of moods, told the drunken man that his
wife was sacked, since she hadn’t turned up for work that day. ‘And I want a quid for that glassware,’ he added. ‘Coming in here and smashing my place up – do you
fancy a night in the cells? It can be arranged.’

Marty blinked in an attempt to clear his vision. Betsy’s boss was tilting to one side, as were several customers, some shelves and a door. And all voices seemed so far away – was he
going deaf on top of everything else? ‘I shall pay thee,’ he cried. ‘I shall pay thee what she’s worth, which is nowt. She’s bloody left me. I comes home from me job,
and there she is – gone. Wardrobe’s empty, no money in the place, no dinner – nowt at all.’

The room fell silent. Or had he really gone deaf? No, he could hear his own voice. ‘Just a note saying she’d had enough, and that’s that. No meal on the table, no bath run to
get the stink of the bins off me. All her clothes gone except for some old bits, so I’m in a bad mood. It’s very upsetting coming home to an empty place and a missing wife.’

The landlord had heard it all before over the years, and he stood his ground. ‘I’m sorry, lad, but there’s no need for you to take it out on us. Forget the broken glasses, but
go home. I’m serving you no more, cos you’re drunk as a lord. Go on. We’ll see you when you’ve bucked up a bit, eh?’

Home? He had no home. On Thicketford Road, he noticed that the lamp posts had been breeding. Their number had doubled, and he wrestled with several on his way to the house that was no longer
home. She hadn’t kept it nice, but she’d fed him and washed his clothes after a fashion. Yet he couldn’t be a man for her, could he? She didn’t want babies, but she needed a
proper husband, and he wasn’t a proper husband.

‘What went wrong?’ he asked the post to which he clung. ‘Why was I made different? And why can’t I talk proper to a doctor about it?’ He belched, then deposited the
contents of his stomach on the pavement. He hadn’t eaten, so what came up was stale beer, and it was rank.

Food. He needed food. Abbot’s shop was closed, of course, and there was very little food in the house. She shopped on a day-to-day basis after work, but she hadn’t been to work
today. There’d be bread and cheese, he supposed. There might be spuds or an apple.

Well, she hadn’t gone off with Mr Sawdust, because he was in hospital. The woman at the desk had confirmed it, so where the bloody hell had Betsy gone? She would be with a man, of course,
somebody with better personal equipment and a job that didn’t make him stink of rotted fish and cabbage.

He opened the door. The silence hit him like a brick in a sock; it was dense, painful and dark. ‘Betsy,’ he called helplessly, hopelessly. ‘Betsy, come back. Don’t leave
me.’

Nobody wanted him. He wasn’t a man, so he wasn’t worth having. He sat on uncarpeted stairs, hugged himself and rocked back and forth like a child in its mother’s arms. He had
to eat, had to settle his stomach. Tomorrow, he’d be back on the bins, and he needed his strength.

‘Why does everything happen to me?’ he wondered aloud.

In the kitchen, which wasn’t much bigger than a scullery, he peeled spuds at a tiny table covered in cracked oilcloth. Behind him on a gas stove the chip pan bubbled. He cut his finger,
winced with pain and wiped blood on a crusty towel. It was amazing how a cut could be the last straw.

Hilda Bridges roused the neighbourhood at about eleven o’clock. The Liptrott house was in flames and, as she shared a wall with it, she, too, was threatened. When the brigade arrived, she
explained about Betsy, telling them that she’d gone away and not to bother looking for her. ‘He’s in there, though,’ she said. ‘I heard him clattering about. Drunk
again, I think.’

They doused the flames while their boss found the seat of the fire. It was another inebriate with yet another chip pan. He was at the top of the stairs. As the smoke cleared, the firemen saw him
hanging just for a split second before the rope snapped. The body tumbled down the steps and landed in the hallway.

A fireman sought a pulse, found no sign of life. ‘He’s gone,’ he said.

The chief checked just to be sure. ‘Sometimes I hate this bloody job,’ he said. ‘Still, no kiddies, that’s something.’ He went outside to check with Hilda Bridges.
‘No children, love?’

‘No.’ She said no more than that. The poor man was dead, and she allowed him his dignity. The details of the Liptrotts’ marriage could go with him to the grave as far as she
was concerned. ‘Will you look at my house and make sure I’m safe, please?’

‘Of course we will, love.’

Hilda put the kettle on. Tomorrow, she would write to Betsy. How did a person tell a young woman that her husband had killed himself? Hilda had been standing on the pavement, had seen him coming
down the stairs, rope round his neck, eyes wide open and bulging. ‘God have mercy on him,’ she whispered. ‘And on Betsy, too.’

Daniel Pope was several miles beyond angry. In fact, he nursed the suspicion that NASA might need to track the top of his head if it blew off. Even an hour in his private
basement gym followed by a hot shower and two black coffees had failed to revive him. He was literally fuming. His whole body glowed with temper, and he wouldn’t have been surprised if smoke
or steam had suddenly begun to emerge from bodily orifices.

The evil bitches had destroyed all his red wines, his clothes, and most of his photographic equipment. The wonderful wife had grabbed from a safe items that had been put aside for the future,
had taken their daughters and had buggered off. Helen. So docile, so sweet, so like her bloody sister once the outer layer was peeled away.

All because of Mariella, who had a mouth bigger than both Mersey tunnels and the bloody Grand Canyon. Women? More trouble than cats in a bed of nettles. He wanted to scream, but no one would
hear him, because his house was set in nine acres. His house. She would get none of it if divorce happened. God, he missed her. Even now, after all she’d done, he loved her. But there was
something wrong with him; he couldn’t leave women alone. He needed secrets; a life without subterfuge was beyond his comprehension.

What a bloody mess. The only garments he owned were those he had packed for Amsterdam, so he needed to go out for shirts, socks and underclothes, at least. Blinking females. They were all tears
and hormones and mood swings. Yet Helen had always been so quiet, so generous of heart. So confident he had been of her continuing and unconditional love, he had wandered on the wild side,
convinced that she would never find out, sure that she would forgive anyway, no matter what. Somewhere, his calculations had gone very wrong. There was a limit to her tolerance, and he should have
been made aware of that. She had married him under false pretences, but no law covered that area, did it?

However, the fact remained that there was one woman without whom he couldn’t possibly manage, and she happened to be his wife. Aside from loving her above all else, he knew that Helen was
a trophy, a living, breathing tribute to his success. Her beauty and natural elegance were a boon as far as business was concerned. At conventions and social events, she was the best possible
advertisement for Pope the Jeweller. How could he attempt to explain her sudden disappearance? She’d met someone else? She’d gone to convalesce due to severe postnatal depression? Once
the truth came out, as it inevitably would, he would look a fool. And that was something he knew he would never bear. ‘I’m a diamond full of flaws,’ he said. ‘Too many
carbon deposits to be useful.’ Was he beginning to know himself? Was he?

Oh, wonderful – here came the troops. They should have brought pipes and drums, then he might have heard them coming. Heck, this was all he needed. Helen’s father, Sofia and another
female were closing the doors of Andrew’s Merc. She wasn’t with them. Bugger it, why had he been such a fool? He’d sacrificed his marriage for a quick fumble with another woman.
Well, there’d been more than one . . . But lots of men managed to win forgiveness, and Helen was almost compliant in her attitude. Would she come back? How could a woman who loved him so
devotedly suddenly hate him so thoroughly? And all because of a few words from the mouth of an Amsterdam whore? She should be forced to listen to him, at least.

Another car swung into the driveway. ‘Oh, goody,’ Daniel breathed. ‘We have a quorum with a three-line whip to boot.’ Kate’s husband, Richard Rutherford, had
arrived to complete the bench. This judgemental legal bore would think Daniel deserved everything that was coming to him. It could mean divorce, of course. Unless he managed to get to her and wear
her down, she would not be coming back. Just an hour. If he could spend just an hour with her . . . Someone else could do the travelling and the buying; he was willing to go so far as to promise
never to leave the country again. But this wall of people would stand between him and his right to have a conversation with his spouse. It wasn’t fair, because he was seriously
outnumbered.

He opened the door. Sofia had brought her mother. Daniel could tell from the older woman’s face that she knew he’d tried it on with her daughter. What a mess he had made of his life.
Damned fool, he cursed inwardly. For a few short spells of pleasure, he had given up the most beautiful, loyal wife on earth. And she had turned – by hell, she had turned.

When the rather less than welcome visitors were all in the house, Richard spoke. ‘Stay away from her.’ He didn’t need to name the ‘her’. ‘If you follow her or
trouble her in any way at this stage, we’ll get a court order. Should you break the terms of said order, you will find yourself in trouble. Prison could be a possibility.’

‘Because of your contacts?’

‘No, because of yours. Harass your wife, and I’ll have you restrained like a crazy man.’

‘In this hall, a small town could eat,’ Anya Jasinski declared. ‘One man in house this size while people sleep in streets? This not right.’

Daniel Pope looked up as if seeking guidance. All he needed now was someone of a liberal frame of mind, as he seemed to have representatives of the extreme right and extreme left here already.
‘What do you want?’ he asked the nanny.

Her mother looked him up and down. He could feel her opinion of him sweeping over his person.

‘My clothes and personal belongings,’ Sofia snapped. ‘My mother will help.’ The two women walked up the glamorous, curving staircase.

Even now, Daniel ran a practised eye over them. Sofia was cute, but her mother was a little firecracker, still pretty in her forties.

Richard and Andrew remained in the hall with their prey. ‘I want my wife and children back,’ Daniel pronounced. ‘You have no right to remove them, no right to tell me what I
can and cannot do where my family is concerned—’

‘Helen removed herself and the children last night,’ Richard said, his tone annoyingly calm. ‘We had no hand in it. I was at home looking after Philip and Rosie. Our
father-in-law was at his house trying to train a mad dog. Kate admits freely that she was here, and she was glad, because Helen fell apart before her eyes. You wounded her beyond
measure.’

‘My children,’ Daniel repeated. Mad dog? Where did a mad dog fit into the recipe? Was this a time for jokes? ‘Sarah and Cassie are mine.’

‘Girls?’ Andrew’s eyebrows were raised. ‘Mere females aren’t good enough for you. You were already coaxing Helen into trying again for a son. The sex is in the
sperm, as you probably know already. You are making female babies. Helen’s eggs, like those of every woman, are gender neutral. If there is a fault, it’s yours. As for your philandering
– well, everyone but my daughter knew about it. Helen has limits. When she erupts, the world shakes. You made a move on Helen’s sister, and Kate has spoken up about it at
last.’