River Deep (12 page)

Turning, she noticed Sheila standing in the doorway, a tray of steaming mugs in her hands.

‘I’m sorry, She,’ she said, crossing to take the tray, ‘but you’ll be retiring a bit earlier than you thought. At least I know
you
kept your pension going.’

And they all sat round the table sipping tea in silence and exchanging glances.

Maggie watched the warm water run in rivulets over her hand as she rinsed the mugs out. She’d had to leave the oppressive gloom of the bar, leave the sight of her parents holding each other’s hands across the table, facing silently the suddenly terrifying black future. Even Sheila had remained silent for once, smoking her cigarette with diligent concentration. What Maggie couldn’t understand was why it felt like her fault when she hadn’t even been here? Then she realised why. If she had been here, things might have been different.

‘He died two years ago, my Bill.’ Sheila appeared in the kitchen doorway, making Maggie jump. Bill was Sheila’s estranged husband, but why bring him up now? Maybe it was the shock, Maggie thought.

‘Would you like a brandy, She?’ she asked. ‘I think we can still run to that.’

Sheila shook her head and sat down at the table, lighting another cigarette in one fluid movement. ‘Of course we never got divorced, did we? He didn’t have any family or friends. None that would go near him, anyhow, the miserable old sod.’ She paused, smiling grimly. ‘It was three weeks before anyone found his body, fallen down the stairs. Quite far gone by that time apparently. Caused a bit of a stink, and his yuppie neighbours went round to complain. Saw him through the letterbox.’

Maggie opened her mouth but Sheila stopped her.

‘He’d been living in that house all his life – it was his parents’ before his. Nothing special. Just a terrace – three bedrooms and a cellar. Little yard out the back. I prefer modern myself, like my flat. It might be small but it’s got all the mod cons.’

Sheila looked at Maggie’s expression of slight alarm.

‘Of course, as his wife I got the lot, didn’t I? It came as a bit of a shock, I can tell you. I heard he’d snuffed it, but it was a shock when I heard about the money. Two hundred and seventy-two thousand pounds.’ Sheila smiled. ‘The bastard paid out in the end. I bought my place with some of it, and I gave a bit away to the East End Women’s Shelter. I thought that’d really rub him up the wrong way.’ She smiled. ‘That left over a hundred thousand, give or take.’

Sheila looked at Maggie.

‘You’ve been like a daughter to me, Maggie. When I first came to this old pile of bricks it was all right, I got by. But when you and your family came, well, I was pretty low then, and you all gave me something to look forward to. I was part of something again, you made me feel like part of your family. I really felt that.’

Maggie smiled and put her arm around Sheila’s shoulders.

‘You
are
part of the family, and I know what you’re going to say, She. But we can’t take your money. You’ll need something to fall back on, especially now.’ Maggie looked at her seriously, her eyes brimming. ‘Sheila, you’re a wonderful woman, and the best and dearest friend to us, but there is no way we can take your money. None. I’m just relieved to know that you’ll be all right.’ Sheila shook her head, slamming her hand down on the table.

‘But I don’t need it, Mag. I own my place. I got myself a good pension. What I’m trying to say, Maggie, is that all that money … well, I was leaving it to you in my will.’

Maggie opened her mouth and found that nothing would come out.

Sheila nodded her head in the direction of the bar. ‘I thought those two wouldn’t need it because, well, let’s face it, we’re all going to kick the bucket around the same time, and as for Jim, well, I think giving him any cash would be another excuse for him not to do anything with his life. It had to go somewhere, so why not to you? I want you to have it.’

Sheila’s eyes were suddenly bright with tears.

‘Whenever I think of my little one, the little girl I lost, I see your face. You know I love you don’t you? Silly old fool.’ Sheila shook herself. ‘Anyway, it turns out that despite the fags I’m in good health. Blood pressure is fine, heart’s fine, lungs fine. I might be around for another thirty years yet.’

Maggie covered Sheila’s hand with her own. ‘I bloody hope so,’ she said, her voice tight.

‘Well, I’d rather see you do something with it now, while I’m still here, than have you all suffer when there’s no need.’ Sheila cupped Maggie’s face in her hand. ‘What I’m saying is, if you think it’s worth investing what’s coming to you in this place, then you can have the money now.’

Maggie looked at her in silence, unable to think of a single thing to say.

‘Sheila, I can’t. This is … it’s too much. It’s too easy. It’d be like having this Christmas fairy dropping in a few months early and …’ Maggie stopped. ‘It’s an incredible gesture, but it’s too much.’

Sheila stubbed out her cigarette and folded her hands.

‘It’s not too much,’ she said grimly. ‘It’s not enough. It’s not enough for all the times he beat me, all the times he broke me, all the times he … It will never be enough.’ Sheila looked into Maggie’s eyes. ‘If I’d married someone else, if I’d been born a few years later … But you and your family have given me the life I thought I’d never have. If you care about me, Maggie, about everything I went through, you won’t throw away a chance that I never got. Not because you think it’s too
easy
, anyway. Not because of that.’

Maggie felt a tear trace its way past the corner of her mouth.

‘OK,’ she said, pushing back her chair. ‘Let’s go and have that brandy and see what Mum and Dad say.’

A few moments later, Keith and Marion were listening to Sheila’s plan with open mouths.

‘All right Mum, Dad!’

Jim greeted them heartily and slapped his sister on the back.

‘All right sis?’

Maggie glared at him.

‘Why the long faces, as the barman said to the horse?’

Maggie turned her back on him. ‘She, you have to think this through a little more. You know how much you mean to me. Are you really sure? Whatever happens, you know we’ll get by. We don’t need your life savings to do it. You’ve been the best friend to me, so I can’t just take your money lightly. Not as there’s a very good chance we’ll lose it all!’

Sheila pressed her lips into a thin crimson line.

‘You’re not taking it, I’m giving it you. I’ve made my mind up and I won’t be shifted. You show me what you can do, my girl, you make me proud. Now talk it over while I go on my break. I’ll be back before the lunchtime “rush”.’ Sheila bustled out, leaving silence and shadows in her wake.

‘Bloody hell! Has Sheila just given us some money?’ Jim looked after her. ‘How much?’

Maggie turned to look at her younger brother. Tall and blond like her father and quite heavily built, she had never understood his seemingly limitless appeal to women. Maybe it was her parents’ money, which he spent with a compulsive disregard for where it came from. She turned to her parents.

‘I have to go after her and talk to her. I don’t think she realises what she’s just offered!’ Maggie said, and grabbed her bag as she headed for the door, leaving her family struggling to catch up with the morning’s roller coaster of events.

‘Sheila! Sheila, She!’ Maggie shouted, finally halting Sheila’s fast-paced walk on the last shout. She stopped in her tracks and turned around, lighting a cigarette as she waited for Maggie to catch up with her. Maggie was out of breath when she arrived.

‘I thought I told you to talk it through with your mum and dad?’ Sheila said as if she’d asked Maggie to choose whether or not she wanted chips for tea.

Maggie shook her head and fell in step beside Sheila.

‘I’m nipping into Boots, I need some new lippy, so you’ll have to keep up with me,’ Sheila told her.

‘How is it,’ Maggie struggled to breathe, ‘that you’ve smoked forty a day for God knows how long and are still as fit as a fiddle?’

Sheila blew smoke out of her nose as she considered the question.

‘It’s probably the whisky,’ she said. ‘It’s probably pickled my lungs, and maybe the ciggies have smoked my liver. Either that or it’s my genes. We’re a long-living family. My Aunty May was a hundred and four when she passed.’ She gave Maggie a quick once-over, the exact kind she used to give her when she was checking she had her school shirt tucked in and had taken her dangly earrings out. Marion had never known what the school dress codes were, and even if she had she wouldn’t have presumed to enforce them. ‘Now, why are you here and not indoors talking things over with your parents?’ Sheila demanded.

Maggie shrugged. ‘I never talk things over with my parents,’ she said. ‘Dad would say something like, “You know what’s best for you, Maggie, don’t worry about me even though I’ve got high blood pressure and the stress is nearly killing me.” And Mum would say, “life is a river, and we are but leaves carried along by the current” or some such crap, and—’

Sheila cut across her as they headed into the chemist’s.

‘You should show your parents more respect, young lady. All right, they’re not going to win business people of the year, but they are good people. They only want the best for you and Jim. Sometimes I think they’re much too easy on you both. Especially Jim.’

Maggie made a face of disbelief behind Sheila’s back as she examined a range of lipsticks.

‘Don’t you make faces behind my back,’ Sheila said without turning a hair. ‘I mean it. Your parents are my very good friends, and if you ever took the time to get to know them properly you’d realise what good friends they could be for you too.’ She smeared a streak of orange on to the back of her hand.

‘Yeah, well, surely a child shouldn’t have to make the effort to get to know her parents, and anyway I do know them! I know them better than anyone!’ Maggie said, a touch petulantly.

‘You know them the way you did when you were a child, waiting for them to turn into some TV version of what parents should be. Now you’re an adult you should try to get to know them again, as people. They love you more than anyone else ever will, you know.’

Maggie somehow doubted it. Maybe her dad did – but her mum? She supposed her mum did love her, but she loved everyone, so it didn’t seem to count.

‘Perhaps,’ Maggie said by way of reconciliation. ‘But for me to take on The Fleur? It would be a big step Sheila – a huge one. It wouldn’t be a job I could just give notice on if it didn’t work out.’ Maggie thought of her hopes to be back with Christian again one day soon. If she took on The Fleur then they’d never work together again. ‘I’d be tied to
them
,’ she said, referring to her family, ‘for the foreseeable future, maybe for ever. It could be kind of … claustrophobic …’ Maggie trailed off as Sheila held up the back of her hand for inspection. It was covered in a rainbow of glistening lipsticks.

‘I quite like that browny one,’ Maggie said after a moment’s consideration.

‘Well, it could be a bit claustrophobic, yes, if you insist on treating your family like strangers. Or it could be a chance for you to get close to them. It could also be a chance for you to do what
you
want to do for once, instead of bowing to Christian’s whims all the time. For you to finally get on your own two feet and show the world what you’re made of.’

Sheila selected the browny-red lipstick and handed it over the counter to the assistant.

‘If you’ve got the guts and the gumption to do it, that is.’

She paid, and pocketed her purchase.

‘Maggie, you’re a bright girl. No one knows that more than me. Who was it who used to sit with you when you were doing your maths homework, pretending I was helping you when you were working it all out by yourself!’

Maggie smiled at the memory of cold afternoons, mugs of sweet tea, toast and Sheila bent earnestly over her exercise book.

‘It’s more than they ever did,’ she said.

‘ “They” were trying to run a pub,’ Sheila replied. ‘It took a lot of adjustment. You couldn’t see how hard it was for them then. Anyway, you’ve worked your socks off to get where you are now. I don’t think you realise how much you did for Christian, how much he depended on you for Fresh Talent. I bet if you sat down and thought about it, you’d find you know a lot more about running a pub and bar than you think.’

Maggie imagined herself standing behind the newly refurbished bar of The Fleur greeting Christian with a radiant smile as he walked through the door, awestuck by the improvements and her success.

‘Maybe …’ she said, warming to the vision, ‘but Sheila, this is all a bit much to take in. It’s all so fast, coming on top of Christian and me. To find out that you were leaving me all that money and that you want to just give it me now! – it’s incredible. Are you sure? Are you sure you want me to have it? You might have a cousin somewhere, or perhaps you should give it all to the shelter? I bet they could use it.’

They arrived just short of The Fleur and Sheila stopped dead, causing Maggie to stumble a little as she tried to stop with her.

‘I don’t want no cousin I’ve never heard of, let alone met, getting it, and I gave some to the shelter before. Maybe that would be the noble thing to do, Mag, but it wouldn’t feel right. You, your mum and dad and Jim have been a huge part of my life for the last twenty-five years. There was a long, long time before that, Mag, when I didn’t have a life. I didn’t have
anything
except regrets and unhappy memories. All of you mean the world to me. I don’t want it to go down the pan for you all. I want you to have a chance to be successful.’

Sheila paused and looked up at the greying, flaky exterior of the pub.

‘Maybe it
would
be too much for you. Maybe it’s not fair asking you to commit to something like this, because you’re right – you couldn’t just walk out on it, even if something better came along. If you don’t want the responsibility, then all right. We’ll leave things as they are.’ Sheila leant forward and gave Maggie a quick kiss before heading into the bar. ‘You know best, Mag,’ she said with half a smile. ‘After all, life is a river.’

Maggie grinned as she watched her going, then, turning on her heel, she crossed the road and headed towards the park and the lakes.