Laceys of Liverpool (53 page)

‘What are you talking about? What basic fact?’

‘That a brown-eyed couple can’t have blue-eyed children. It’s something to do with genes. I thought it was something everyone knew. Your Uncle Billy has brown eyes and so does your Aunt Cora – I remember noticing what a strange brown they were at your Fion’s wedding.’

‘Not everyone’s got a mind like an encyclopaedia, Vic,’ Cormac snapped. ‘People can’t be expected to know everything.’ He gulped. ‘Does that mean . . .?’

‘It means that if it’s true your aunt swapped you round with Maurice, you weren’t actually her baby to swap in the first place.’

‘Then whose baby am I?’ Cormac shrieked. A man had come into the lobby with a suitcase and was staring at him strangely.

‘Maybe the nurses got confused and put the two Lacey babies in the wrong cots in the first place,’ Vicky said sensibly. ‘Cora merely put you back in the right one.’

‘I’d love to believe that, Vic. Except – Mam told us this loads of times – it was hell on earth in the hospital the night I was born. There was an air raid and everyone was moved down into the cellar and back again. A woman was brought in who’d been found in the wreckage of her house about to give birth. I could belong to any bloody one.’

The man with the suitcase clearly thought he was sharing the lobby with a lunatic. He hurried into the dining room.

‘Oh, Cormac, don’t think about it now. Come home. But drive carefully. We’ll talk about it tonight over dinner.’

‘All right, Vic.’ His voice trembled. ‘I can’t wait to see you.’

‘Nor me you, Cormac.’

He replaced the receiver. Vicky had created more
questions than answers, but he felt better after talking to her. In fact, he felt better all round. He sniffed. The smell of fried bacon came from the dining room and he suddenly felt very hungry. Mistakes had been made when he was born, but what did it matter after such a long time? And perhaps, you never knew, Cora had put him in the right cot after all. If so, he had much to thank her for. After he’d eaten he’d give Mam a ring; he still had plenty of change. They’d hardly spoken since she’d gone to live in Birkdale in her posh new house. Then he’d go home to Vicky.

It made Alice feel dead peculiar to get out of bed, pull back the curtains, and be met with nothing but the sight of her own back garden and miles and miles of sky. Apart from the birds, there wasn’t a sound to be heard. She’d been used to coming face to face with a row of tightly packed houses across the street, hearing the clink of milk bottles, cars, voices as people went to work.

Every morning she found herself leaving earlier and earlier for the hairdresser’s, coming home later and later. Pretty soon she’d be sleeping there! What would it be like in the winter? She dreaded to think.

She missed having friends in the same street or the next one, the library and the post office being just round the corner, as well as every sort of shop a person could possibly need. Instead, she had to drive everywhere, even to Mass.

Bernadette claimed she wasn’t giving the bungalow a chance. She came to visit and ran her fingers along the cream worktop, looked out of the window at the pretty garden where Ruth and Ian were playing, and said, ‘It’s beautiful here, Ally. You’ll soon get used to it.’

‘I suppose so, Bernie. I’m trying hard.’ She sniffed. Bernadette was the only person who knew she hadn’t
settled in. ‘What have Cora and Billy done to me old house?’

‘I don’t know, luv, and I’m not likely to, am I? I can’t see them asking me inside.’ She regarded Alice sternly. ‘The trouble with you, Alice Lacey, is you’ve made a ton of money but don’t know how to enjoy it.’

Alice sighed. ‘I’d give it away, except no one will take it. Only Orla let me buy her a car.’

‘Talking of Orla, how is she? I haven’t seen her for a day or so.’

‘Driving everybody mad, including Micky, though he loves it. I wouldn’t have thought it possible for a woman in Orla’s state to get on so many people’s nerves.’

Maeve Adams felt the first twinge of what might have been a contraction soon after breakfast. Martin had just gone to work. She glanced at her watch, calmly made a cup of tea and waited for the next twinge. It came half an hour later and was stronger than the first. The baby was on its way!

Glancing at her watch again, she washed the dishes and was just making the beds when a wave of pain passed through her tummy that couldn’t possibly be described as a twinge.

She cautiously made her way downstairs, took the suitcase, already packed, out of the understairs cupboard and, in quick succession, rang for a taxi, the hospital in Southport to say she was coming, Martin at work to tell him he was about to become a father – should he be interested, that was – then her mother at the hairdresser’s. Finally she rang her sisters to let them know that the first of the four Lacey babies due to arrive that year was already on its way.

‘Good luck, sis,’ Orla sang. ‘As for me, I do believe me bump’s starting to show a bit.’

In the taxi, she took deep breaths all the way. The driver assured her he’d once delivered a baby on the back seat, so there was no need to worry if it came early. Maeve worried all the same. The contractions were getting closer and more painful with each mile.

‘You look very calm.’ The nurse smiled when she walked into the hospital, the taxi driver coming behind with her case.

‘Well, I don’t like to make a fuss.’

The labour was swift and very painful, but still Maeve didn’t make a fuss. She just gritted her teeth, took more deep breaths and got on with it. Her little boy was born within the hour. He weighed eight pounds, three ounces.

‘He’s beautiful,’ said the midwife.

‘All babies are beautiful,’ Maeve said serenely. ‘Can I hold him? I’ve been waiting nearly thirty-six years for this.’

‘Only for a minute, dear. We’ve got to get you sewn up. You need at least three stitches.’

Maeve was propped against the pillow, her baby wrapped in a sheet and placed in her arms. He felt big and warm. He was real. He was a real, live baby, with real hands and feet and perfect little fingers, a snub nose, a tiny rosebud mouth, hardly any hair and sleepy blue eyes. And he could move. He could wave his hands and wriggle his body. He could make a noise, the sweetest sound she had ever heard, a squeaky croak. And he was hers! Maeve Adams was a mother at last. Her calm deserted her and she burst into tears, just as Martin walked into the delivery room, slightly dishevelled, his tie crooked and his usually neat hair on end.

He stood at the foot of the bed, looked at her, then at the baby. ‘So, you’ve done it,’ he said in a voice devoid of expression.

‘Yes, I’ve done it, Martin. This is our son. I thought we might call him Christopher.’ Maeve wiped her eyes with the corner of the baby’s sheet. ‘Isn’t he beautiful?’

Martin edged closer. ‘He’s got no hair.’

‘Lots of babies are born without hair. It’ll soon grow. Would you like to hold him?’

‘I’m not sure. I might drop him.’ He came closer still. ‘He doesn’t look like either of us.’

‘There’s plenty of time,’ Maeve said placidly. ‘I thought he looked a little bit like Grandad.’

‘He’s got my mother’s mouth.’ Martin suddenly sat on the edge of the bed and gathered his wife and his new son in his arms. ‘Oh, Maeve, I’m so
scared
,’ he said hoarsely. ‘I’m scared you’ll love him more than me, that he’ll take my place in your heart. I’m scared to love him myself in case he dies, babies do sometimes. What if he’s unhappy at school, gets bullied? What if he goes off the rails when he gets older, the way your cousin, Maurice, did? Or he runs away like Fion? How must your mother feel about Orla? We’re going to worry about him for the rest of our lives and I don’t think I can cope.’ He began to cry. ‘We were so happy before, darling. Why did you have to spoil everything by having a baby?’

‘
I
wasn’t happy, Martin, and I suspect you weren’t either. No, don’t argue.’ She put her hand over his mouth when he opened it to speak. ‘We cared about such trivial things. Our baby’s
real
. Oh, yes, he’ll be a worry, but the world would come to an end if everyone stopped having babies because they were scared of the future. If your parents and mine had felt like that, neither of us would have been born. As to loving him more than you, I’ll love him differently, that’s all. You’ll find the same.’

The door opened, the midwife came in and clapped her hands. ‘Would you mind waiting outside, Mr
Adams. I’m about to sew your wife back together. I’ll take baby into the nursery and you can admire him through the window. There are more visitors outside who can’t wait to see this lovely little chap.’

Alice was in the corridor with Bernadette and Fion. A few minutes later Orla and Micky arrived, Orla proudly displaying her bump. Then Martin’s parents, and later on his sister and his niece. Cormac came with Vicky. By then, Maeve had been wheeled into a ward, exhausted but extremely pleased with herself.

Martin felt dazed as he was hugged and kissed, his hand was shaken, his shoulder punched, and he was congratulated so many times he felt as if he must have done something uniquely remarkable to deserve such approbation.

The men decided there was just time enough to wet the baby’s head before the pubs closed. On the way out, they passed the nursery, where Martin paused and looked at his son lying wide awake in his cot. By God, he was a magnificent baby, far superior to every other one there. He longed to pick him up and cuddle him. He caught his breath. In another week’s time, Maeve would bring him home and he could pick up his son whenever he pleased.

‘What it is to be a Lacey!’ Vicky remarked to Cormac on the way back to St Helens in his car. ‘There’s always something going on. If there isn’t a new baby, or several new babies, in the pipeline, then someone’s getting married or a party’s thrown for no reason at all as far as I can see. All my family’s ever celebrated is my parents’ silver wedding. We merely went to dinner on my twenty-first because there weren’t enough people to make a party.’

‘We have funerals too,’ Cormac said soberly. ‘I think there’s one on the cards in the not too distant future.’

‘I hope not. Your Orla looks as if she could live for ever. What’s coming next? Whose baby is due first, Fion’s or Orla’s?’

‘Neither. Lulu’s due in October. At least that’s when she’s coming back to England. The other two are expected to make an appearance about a month later. By the way,’ he said, changing gear, ‘you forgot about the wedding.’

‘I didn’t know there was a wedding. Who’s getting married?’

‘I can’t tell you yet because the woman hasn’t agreed.’

‘You mean, there might not be a wedding?’

‘Not if the woman doesn’t agree.’

‘You’re talking in circles, Cormac,’ Vicky said patiently. ‘Is she having trouble making up her mind?’

‘No, it’s more a matter of her not having been asked.’

She laughed. ‘Then why doesn’t the man ask her?’

‘D’you think he should?’

‘Of course he should, if he wants to marry her.’

‘In that case, Vicky Weatherspoon, will you marry me?’

‘I beg your pardon!’

‘You heard, Vic.’ He grabbed her knee, removing his hand immediately when they had to turn a corner. ‘I want you to be my wife and I desperately hope you want me for a husband, because I can’t live without you.’ He looked at her sideways. ‘What do you say?’

‘Yes, I’ll marry you, Cormac.’ She was amazed her voice sounded so sensible when she really wanted to scream with delight. It was the question she’d been aching for since the day, years ago, that they’d first met. In her wildest dreams she never thought he’d ask. Now he had and she would savour the words for the rest of
her life. She would have preferred the surroundings to be more romantic: a candlelit restaurant, champagne and for Cormac to have gone down on one knee. Maybe in real life that didn’t often happen.

‘When?’ he demanded. He was grinning. He looked incredibly happy and all because Vicky Weatherspoon had said ‘yes’.

‘Before all the babies are due so everyone’s sure to be there. Say September.’

‘September it is. We’ll buy an engagement ring on Saturday. What sort would you like?’

A round one, she wanted to say. Any sort of stone. In fact, a piece of string would do. ‘A diamond solitaire,’ she said dazedly.

‘What will your folks have to say?’

‘Oh, they’ll be thrilled.
I’m
thrilled.’ She turned to him to explain exactly how thrilled she was that they were getting married, to tell him how much she loved him, always had, always would, but something prevented her. She merely pressed her shoulder against his and said nothing. Theirs would be an unequal partnership. He looked happy, but there’d been something casual about his proposal, as if he had taken for granted what her answer would be. They were comfortable together and, on his side, there wasn’t the passion he’d clearly felt for Andrea. He hadn’t told her that he loved her. There was still time for that, but Vicky knew he would never love her as much as she loved him – it might embarrass him to know how much. She would have to hold back a little, stay calm, be cool, match his emotion with her own.

Despite this, Vicky’s heart throbbed with a dazed, exultant happiness. Before the year was out she would be Mrs Cormac Lacey and, whatever the circumstances were, she couldn’t wait.

The three sisters had never been so close. Every afternoon Fion and Maeve, with baby Christopher, would arrive in Pearl Street to sit with Orla and gossip, play cards for pennies, swap jokes – Orla had learnt some that were very near the knuckle during her time on the road. Fion laughed heartily and Maeve winced.

Micky had given the backyard a fresh coat of paint and a set of white plastic garden furniture had fallen off the inevitable lorry accompanied by a red and white striped umbrella. Baskets of flowers hung on the walls. There was a tub of hydrangeas in each corner. On sunny days the women sat outside – it was like a pavement café in Paris, Orla said once. Micky grinned foolishly before escaping to the pub for a drink, as he was inclined to do when the house was taken over by three women and a baby.