Memories Are Made of This (3 page)

‘Thanks for your advice, Josie,' said the priest, grabbing hold of the youth as he attempted to sneak out of the door. ‘But it's too late for that now.'

‘I must go,' rasped the young man, straightening up from the counter, ‘I've a boat to catch.'

‘I have to go, too,' said Jeanette hastily.

Father Callaghan blocked their way. ‘Not so fast, the two of you!'

‘Padre,' said the young man wearily, ‘I really do need to be somewhere else. I can't afford to miss the boat.'

‘And I have to get home,' said Jeanette. ‘I'll be skinned alive if I'm late.'

Father Callaghan hesitated. ‘You don't want to press charges for what happened to you, son? That's going to leave a scar.' He reached out and touched the young man's face. He winced and shook off the priest's hand.

‘I'll see a doctor, don't you worry. Thanks for the concern. Now, please, let me past.'

Father Callaghan hesitated and then moved aside. ‘Go! But if you're ever in Liverpool again and need help, you only have to ask here and they'll tell you where to find me.'

The young man gave a twisted smile and brushed past him.

Jeanette hurried after him. ‘You really will get that wound seen to, won't you?' she asked.

He gazed down at her as they stood in the rain. ‘I'm a big boy now, luv. I can look after myself.'

‘I'm not saying you can't,' she said hastily. ‘But men think they're invincible. Thanks for coming to my rescue. I'm Jeanette Walker, by the way.'

To her surprise, he lowered his head and pressed his lips against hers. The moment seemed frozen in time, until after several seconds he lifted his mouth. ‘Bye, Jeanette Walker. Maybe I'll see you again some day.' He touched her damp cheek with a finger and was gone.

Jeanette watched him cross the road. A bus pulled up on the other side and he vanished from sight. Where did he have to be that he could not delay long enough to have that wound attended to? And what was he thinking of, kissing her?

She felt a hand on her shoulder. ‘Come inside, Miss,' said Father Callaghan. ‘He's made it obvious that he doesn't want any interference from either of us and I want to speak to you.'

Jeanette said, ‘He didn't even tell me his name.' She sighed and pushed a strand of sodden hair inside her scarf. ‘I'd best be going.'

‘Hang on a little longer. You could be needed as a witness if you want justice to be done here,' said Father Callaghan, guiding her through the doorway. ‘The police have been called and should be here soon.'

She pulled away from him. ‘I have to go. My great-aunt will go mad if this gets back to her. She'll blame me for what happened. There's enough witnesses here to testify that Billy is guilty of GBH. If it's his first offence he'll probably get off with a warning and a fine. Whichever, I'd rather not have to go to court.'

‘That lad needs a taste of the birch,' said one of the women behind the counter who had been listening to their conversation. ‘It's all this rock'n'roll, it does their heads in. Jungle music, my fella calls it. I'll testify against him. Now what about your chips, girl?' she asked, changing the subject.

Jeanette rested her arms on the counter. ‘Make it fast and be sure and put plenty of salt and vinegar on them if you don't mind, please. I'm starving.'

The woman glanced at the priest and he gave a ghost of a smile. She shovelled the chips onto paper and then sprinkled them liberally with salt and vinegar before wrapping them in newspaper. Jeanette handed over the fare she'd been saving for tomorrow and stared at Father Callaghan. ‘You're not going to try and persuade me to stay, are you, Padre? You can't want me to get in to trouble with my family – and I'm a free citizen of this country.'

‘Go on, off with you!' he said abruptly, jerking a thumb in the direction of the door.

She smiled at him. ‘Goodnight!'

To her relief the rain had eased and she wasted no time making a hole in the steaming newspaper-wrapped parcel and digging out several chips. She ate as she strode to the bus stop, wondering where Peggy and Greg had gone. She hoped her friend was all right, but it looked as if she was going to have to wait until Monday to find out.

Her thoughts turned to the young man wearing the sou'wester. He had a bit of a cheek kissing her without a by-your-leave. Why had he done it? The kiss had made her feel weak at the knees. It would have been better if she had found the touch of his lips on hers distasteful instead of being set all atremble. She would probably never see him again.

She finished the chips and spotted a bus approaching, so she scrunched up the newspaper and stuck it in the bin attached to the bus stop. There was still no sign of a policeman responding to the call from the chippy, and for that she was glad. All she had to do now was gather her wits and courage and stand up to the old cow when she arrived home. Fingers crossed, Hester would be there to provide her with some support.

As Jeanette jogged up her street, she spotted the squat figure of her great-aunt silhouetted in the light of the street lamp outside her father's house. For Ethel to have left the warmth of the fireside on that rain-soaked evening meant that her mood was probably meaner than usual, and Jeanette slowed down, needing to get her breath back before facing the old woman. As a kid, Jeanette had prayed and prayed that she would inherit the genes that made her half-brother, Sam, as tall as their six-footer father, and her half-sister, Hester, a good five foot seven inches, but fate had decreed that she inherit her mother's genes.

Jeanette was glad she was no longer a kid because the odds were that Ethel would not clout her across the head. A couple of years ago she would have done, depending on whether the old woman had given any thought to whether the neighbours, hearing the tap-tap of Jeanette's heels on the pavement, were peering through the bedroom curtains.

‘Hello, Aunt Ethel,' she said, resisting the temptation to say,
What big teeth you have
!

Ethel made a noise in her throat and waited until her great-niece had walked up the step before poking her in the back with two sharp fingers that had enough force behind them to send Jeanette stumbling forwards so that she almost cracked her head on the front door.

‘What time is this to be coming in?' hissed the old woman, reaching over Jeanette and pushing the door wider. She thrust a hand in the girl's back and sent her flying up the lobby.

Jeanette managed to grab a coat hanging on the wall, preventing herself from sprawling on the bottom stair. ‘I told you and Dad that I was going to the flicks straight from work,' she cried.

‘I don't believe you've only been to the cinema,' said Ethel, her thin lips twisting. ‘Tell me the truth about where you've been.'

Jeanette forced herself upright, determined not to show her apprehension. ‘I was hungry so I went with my workmate to the chippy afterwards. I'm sorry I'm late,' she apologized, although doing so almost choked her.

Ethel prodded her hard in the chest. ‘You're not sorry at all, but you will be by the time I've finished with you. You've been with a lad, haven't you?'

Jeanette bit back an
Ouch
and wished her father was here to see how his precious elderly relative behaved when he was not on the scene. ‘I have not!' she gasped, wishing she had the guts to poke her back.

‘Don't lie!' Ethel thrust her face into Jeanette's and sniffed. ‘You've been drinking! You're this late because the pubs have only just let out.'

‘No, I haven't! Where would I get the money from? You take nearly all of it.'

Ethel gave her great-niece another poke in the chest. ‘Don't give me cheek!' Jeanette rubbed her chest. ‘You're weak and you're wicked, just like your mother. She was no bloody good for my nephew. A right flibbertigibbet! A spendthrift! Lazy! If she ran a duster over the furniture once a week that was as much as she did to keep the house tidy. It was a blessing when she disappeared – no doubt with a fella. She showed little love for you and the rest of this household, leaving the way she did.'

Jeanette exploded. ‘Shut up about my mother! If she left the way you go on about, then she would have left a note. Why can't you accept that, despite her body never being found, she was killed in the blitz? She was most likely blown to pieces.' Her voice broke on a sob and she thrust a hand against Ethel's bosom. ‘I don't want you speaking in that nasty way about my mother ever again! You wouldn't dare do it if Dad was here. He loved her despite all your accusations.'

Ethel's face turned puce and she grabbed Jeanette's arm. ‘You keep George out of this! He married her for convenience! I won't believe he ever told you that he loved her.'

‘He did!' lied Jeanette.

‘Then he was kidding you, just to make you feel better about her. It's upstairs for you, my girl, and you won't get out of that bedroom for a week!'

Jeanette ignored the threat. There was no way the rest of the family would allow her great-aunt to lock her in her bedroom for that long. ‘Let me go!' She tried to prise the old woman's fingers from her arm. ‘I need a drink of water and to go to the lavatory.'

Ethel ignored her words and, despite all Jeanette's attempts to free herself, she could not loosen the old woman's grip and was forced up the stairs. Another shove in the back meant she almost fell into her bedroom. The door slammed behind her and a key turned in the lock.

‘You'll have to let me out in the morning!' shouted Jeanette, thumping the bedroom door. ‘I've work to go to.'

‘Don't think you can fool me, girl,' called Ethel through the wood. ‘It's your Saturday morning off and you'll spend it scrubbing floors.'

Jeanette dropped onto the bed, punched the pillow and swore. It was only possible for a woman like her great-aunt to be tolerated by her father because she was bloody crafty. George Walker had never lifted a finger in anger to any of his children and hated violence, so Ethel behaved herself when he was around and was saccharine sweet towards them. Not that it prevented her from saying things about their behaviour, but she said it in a way that made it sound like it was because she worried and cared about them. Sam had said on more than one occasion that he did not understand how his father could not see through her. Jeanette had even heard Sam wonder aloud how their father had managed to last so long in the police force with the belief that there was good in everyone.

Sam, on the other hand, believed firmly that some people were completely evil and that most people were capable of cruelty if circumstances conspired against them. Jeanette agreed with the latter, but never in a thousand Sundays would she have said it to her father about his mother's sister. Ethel had brought him up almost single-handed after his father had been killed in a terrible accident down at the docks where he was a fire bobby. His mother had been so traumatized that her nerves had been shattered and she had never recovered from the shock of it and had died when George was only ten years old.

Jeanette began to undress, inspecting her arms and chest for bruises. She presumed Hester was fast asleep, oblivious to her sufferings. She always went to bed early when she was on a seven-to-three shift in the morning. Jeanette only hoped that her half-sister was not cowering beneath the bedclothes, loathing herself because she was too cowardly to come out and see what all the commotion was about. Jeanette found it really odd that Hester did not think twice about confronting a criminal, but shrank from squaring up to Ethel. After all, she had been trained to defend herself and had even attempted to teach the much younger Jeanette some ju-jitsu.

As Jeanette dragged her nightdress over her aching head, she found herself resenting not being able to clean her teeth and having to use the chamber pot under her bed. If only she could discover some way of getting her great-aunt to alter her bullying ways, but she reckoned it would take a miracle. Ethel, like that Billy in the chippy, was too quick to use violence. It appeared it was embedded in her after years of being a prison wardress.

Jeanette wondered what had happened in the chippy after she had left. Had the police turned up and put out a search for her and the missing victim of Billy's attack? She hoped nobody remembered having heard her name spoken by Peggy. Her father would be so disappointed in her if it came to his ears that she had been involved in a fight.

During Jeanette's growing years, he had suffered from a misguided belief that because Ethel was a woman, she knew best how to handle both his daughters and had left disciplining them to her. A big mistake! She believed that sparing the rod spoilt the child. Jeanette knew her only option to escape her great-aunt's domination was to leave home. But with her current financial situation being what it was that was definitely out of the question.

That night Jeanette slept fitfully. Her dreams were filled with jumbled thoughts of her mother made up to the eyeballs, dressed in high heels, low-cut blouse and a short skirt, singing as she pranced along Lime Street. The next moment the scene changed and she was smothered beneath a pile of rubble after a bomb had exploded. The noise of it in her imagination startled her into wakefulness, and when she finally fell asleep again, she dreamed of the young man who had come to her rescue, bleeding and in pain, on a rusting old steamboat with a drunken captain jabbing a hypodermic needle in him. Only in the peculiar fashion of dreams, the drunken captain turned into her great-aunt, who locked her into a cabin, saying she was weak and wicked for lusting after sailors.

Jeanette woke in the morning to find herself struggling with the bedcovers and became aware of footsteps on the landing outside. Recognizing them as Hester's, she tumbled out of bed and hurried over to the door. ‘Hester, you have to let me out of here,' she croaked. ‘I'm as thirsty as hell.'