The Corner House (15 page)

She walked down the stairs and set a blackened kettle to boil on the range. The doctor would have to be sent for. As far as the doctor was concerned, Eva’s
Sam would be just another piece of paper that needed signing.

Then there was this National Health thing. In spite of Churchill’s popularity as leader of a war-torn country, a Labour government was a possibility, and Labour would mean a Welfare State. Who would want a paid midwife when qualified doctors and suchlike were going to come free? Eva’s mother had been a midwife, had taught Eva all she knew. No Sam, no job, no reasons to get up in a morning. What was Eva going to do with her remaining years? Oh, but she was going to miss him. Even when sick, he had made her laugh with his wry comments and mimicry. ‘So you’re dead and I’m a relic from the last century,’ she mouthed.

Eva gazed around her rented home, the house in which she had been born, where she had nursed aged parents, where Sam had breathed his last not five minutes since. On the dresser, Mam’s pot spaniels shared space with two ceramic cottages and a cluster of photographs of Eva’s babies. Not everyone could afford photos, but there were at least two dozen framed portraits of features not yet completed, faces still to be visited by the lines of experience. Her babies. ‘You are playing God.’ Danny Walsh’s remembered voice was strident, almost angry. ‘Who’s the real mother? What if she wants the baby back?’

A sampler made by Eva sat above the fireplace. She remembered stitching away at the thing for months on end, being forced to undo and redo, getting criticized for untidy knots when she finished off a thread on the reverse side of her work. She’d kept going, though. All the other girls had moved on to cookery aprons and cushion covers, but Eva had
continued with letters, numbers, lazy-daisy-stitched flowers, cross-stitched border, her name in red at the top, ‘
EVA MALLINSON
1910’.

Seven years, she’d had with Sam Harris. For the first four, he had worked as a coalman, had brought in a wage to supplement Eva’s modest income. Coal had eaten its way into the corner of an eye, had distorted his lower lid. That had been the visible part, the easy side of things. The real war had waged inside Sam’s body, had laid him low for months on end. ‘You’ll suffer no more,’ Eva told the ceiling. ‘But I don’t know how to carry on without you.’ Black tar had lined Sam’s lungs. For a couple of years, he had coughed up coal, then, too weak to splutter, he had choked on what miners had chosen to term the Black Death, their own particular brand of plague.

Eva brewed tea, set out two mugs, put one away. She didn’t need to go running up the stairs with bits of rice pudding and tempting soups. She didn’t need to listen from the foot of the stairs, her own breath held while Sam rasped his way towards release. No-one needed her any more. She was surplus to requirements, neither use nor ornament, just another piece of extra dross on the planet’s war-scarred face.

Eva could not remember a time when she had not been an absolute necessity. Dad had died relatively quickly, but Mam, already bedridden when widowed, had lingered for years. Nursing was all Eva knew. She could cook a bit, sew a bit, though she hadn’t improved greatly since producing the sampler. Babies had been her whole life.

Playing God? Had there been an alternative, had there been a real set of choices? A decision made in
the twinkling of an eye, a torn newspaper, a scrap of blanket containing a scrap of life. Why was this so important now, so significant? She should have been running to a neighbour, sending for the doctor, washing Sam’s body while it remained easy and warm.

Birth and death, beginnings and endings. Eva felt strangely peaceful, as if there would be few more challenges, certainly none to match the one she had faced this very day. The man she had loved was gone, as was her job. She was going on fifty years of age, and she was finished. The sin she had committed – had it been a sin? – was excusable. She could die now. She could put an end to it, leave the policies next to the pot dog on the dresser so that someone would find them and use the money for a double funeral. There were two at a wedding, so why not have a double burial? But Eva knew that she could never strike herself down, because she possessed no special strength, no particular weakness.

Yet there remained one thing, one task that she must complete before getting much older. That baby. Katherine Walsh, daughter of Bernard and Elizabeth, was not Katherine Walsh at all. Apart from Eva, no-one in the world knew the full story.

She sipped tea, tasted nothing, waited for her brain to kick itself into gear. Ever the practical one, Eva Harris didn’t hold with whimsy. The feeling of unreality would pass soon, she reminded herself. After years spent delivering children, seeing them die, watching mothers fade away, she knew all about shock. Trauma often displayed itself as a terrible quietness, a placidity that could even finish off its victim. No, Eva would not kill herself. Eva would simply carry on getting work where she could, living
cheaply, spending little. There was no easy way out for people like Eva, folk with consciences and a sense of commitment.

When her cup was emptied, Eva took a small enamel bowl and filled it with water. Strange how the tools of laying-out echoed so perfectly the tools of lying-in. Cotton wool, towels, a bar of soap. The only difference lay in shaving equipment, because Eva’s husband would meet his Maker clean-faced and tidy, no shadow of beard, no straggle to his moustache.

As she washed Sam’s limp form, she sent up a prayer to the Almighty, begging Him for strength and mercy. Sam wanted burying, so that was the first thing. Afterwards, the other business must be done, the action that Eva had postponed again and again for going on five years. There would be no immediate need to inform Liz, but Bernard must be told. Circumstances might well arise, occasions on which Eva’s secret might explode of its own accord. Best to warn him, then. Forewarned was forearmed.

Bernard Walsh raised an arm and lifted a rabbit from the steel bar above his counter. He handed it to his sister-in-law, then turned to greet the next customer. It was poor little Eva Harris, newly widowed, dressed in black. Poor little Eva reached over and pointed to a pair of kippers. They weren’t the same with margarine, but she’d have to manage. And anyway, the kippers were just an excuse, because she had far too much on her mind to care about food and suchlike.

‘How did it go?’ asked Bernard.

The tiny woman raised a shoulder. ‘How do they all go? Prayers, a church filled with neighbours – even them I’ve never got on with turned up. I felt
sorry for the gravediggers. It must have been like digging into iron with a teaspoon, the ground were that hard. Still, if the sun had come out, it wouldn’t have made any difference. Sam’s gone and that’s the top and tail of it.’

Bernard wrapped the kippers. ‘Sorry I couldn’t get there.’

‘That’s all right. Life has to go on, as they say.’

She hadn’t been crying. Bernard scoured the lived-in face, found no tear-tracks, no sign of emotion. But her eyes looked empty. Eva was a very mobile woman, always on the dash, forever talking and waving her arms about. Her eyes were usually all over the place, missing nothing, taking in all that happened around her. But today, she was … blank, like a page waiting to be written on. ‘Are you all right?’ he asked feebly.

Her mouth smiled, though the rest of her face remained sombre. ‘I have to talk to you before it’s too late.’ Sam hadn’t reached far past the fifty mark. What if Eva died tonight with a guilty secret to her credit?

Bernard’s heart seemed to miss a beat. ‘What about?’

Eva stared at him, said nothing.

‘Important, is it?’

She nodded just once.

With fingers whose tremblings owed nothing to the weather, the fishmonger removed his apron, pulled on a jacket and a flat cap, then asked Pauline to hold the fort for ten minutes. Something momentous was about to take place – he felt that in his bones. Answers. Did he want them? The questions had been damped down, ignored, yet never completely forgotten.

He followed Eva into Ashburner Street and towards deserted stalls on the open market. He stopped walking when she stopped, placed his back against the corner of a stall, steadied himself and waited. It was a good job that the general market was closed, or this place would have been seething like an ant colony.

‘You’ll have to get out of Bolton,’ she told him baldly. ‘And I’m not messing, Bernard.’

‘Eh?’

‘If you hadn’t moved up Bromley Cross way for the duration, there could have been blinking murder before now. The road things have turned out, we’ve been lucky this far. But we don’t want no trouble starting up, lad.’

Bernard scratched his head, dislodging the cap and setting it further back on his large head. ‘Trouble?’

‘Spitting image,’ mused Eva aloud. ‘Identical, two for the price of one, both from the same egg. I always hoped they’d be the other kind of twins, them as looks nowt like one another.’

His heart pounded anew.

Eva sighed, raised her head to heaven for a brief second before continuing. ‘When Liz had that stillbirth, I cried me eyes out. I knew how desperate she were to have a baby. Thank God she’s had no more pregnancies, because the lass isn’t built for breeding.’ She paused, chewing her lower lip. ‘Theresa Nolan passed out after Jessica were born. Right in the middle of a good, strong pain, she went absent without leave on me. I were stood there waiting for the afterbirth, and … Oh, God help me.’

Bernard closed his eyes against the truth, though his ears continued to function well enough to get Eva’s drift. ‘And Katherine came instead?’

Eva inhaled sharply. The emotional dam burst suddenly and poured down her face in twin tracks. ‘I knew, you see. I knew she couldn’t … I mean, one were enough … one were too many … her heart’s not sound.’

Bernard opened his eyes, reached out and dragged the sobbing woman into his arms. He stank of fish, but he couldn’t have cared less. His own tears fell into Eva’s black felt hat, the one she kept specially for funerals. The smell of mothballs mingled with the tang of raw cod. She’d be needing a good bath tonight, would little Eva Harris.

She snatched herself away from him. ‘It were just so quick. I shoved the second kiddy in the front room, wrapped her up in whatever was to hand – paper and a bit of blanket. When Theresa came round, I got a neighbour in and ran up to yours, said Liz were still in labour. Told lies, I did. It seemed so right at the time, so sensible.’

Bernard mopped at his face with a crumpled rag.

‘No, that’s not true,’ said Eva. ‘It weren’t even a question of right or wrong or sensible – I just did it.’

‘Automatic. You never even thought.’

‘That’s it. Sometimes, there’s no chance of thinking and wondering what you’re doing and why you’re doing it. All I can say is that I must have acted from a place inside me.’ She inhaled deeply, shuddering against a rising tide of sobs. ‘They’re identical, Bernard. Absolutely the same as one another. Like I said afore, I were hoping they’d be separate – you know, there’s fraternals, twins as don’t favour one another, even if they’re both boys or both girls. But Jessica and Katherine are identical. Just imagine if they met in town, or if—’

‘They’re in the sanatorium, Theresa and Jessica.’

Eva shook her head. ‘Not for ever. And don’t tell me you’d never noticed. You must have seen it, must have looked at Jessica and wondered.’

Bernard rubbed at his chin. ‘It’s never registered. But now as you come to mention it, there is a resemblance.’

‘Resemblance? Good God, man, are you blind? Do your specs want changing? Theresa keeps Jessica’s hair short, but that’s the only thing that comes to my mind. Same big blue eyes, just a shade or two difference in their hair colour. Stands to sense they’ll meet some time if they’re both in Bolton. My heart’s been in my mouth whenever your Liz and Katherine have come visiting Pauline and Danny. It only needed for Theresa to walk into your shop …’ She shook her head in dismay. ‘Don’t you be stopping on at Derby Street when the war finishes, lad. In fact, you’d be better piking off to Manchester or Bury.’

Manchester? Bury? Bernard was Bolton born and bred. ‘But we’ve always been here. It’s not easy, upping sticks and moving like that. Liz won’t wear it.’ He stared long and hard at Eva. ‘I’m not telling her. She really believes Katherine’s ours. I can’t just march Liz off up Bury Road and tell her we’re starting fresh, either. She’s not stubborn, but she knows her mind. And I daren’t push her near the edge again, Eva. You remember how she was when ours was born not breathing.’

Eva shook her head slowly. ‘Aye, it’s a bugger. But if you really want to keep Liz in the dark, you’d best put space between you and Theresa Nolan.’ She pondered for a moment. ‘Isn’t she on the bright side, your Katherine?’

‘She read at three, if that’s what you mean.’

‘Is she in front of all the rest at school?’

‘Aye, she is.’

‘Then she mun get catered for. You’re not a poor man, Bernard Walsh. Send her to a gradely school, somewhere special. I reckon Liz’d move to Russia if she thought it were in the kiddy’s interests. I don’t know much about these public schools and suchlike, but—’

‘She’s not going boarding, Eva.’

‘In that case, you’d best shift near to one of them there preparation schools, them that gets children ready for posh learning – French and all that kind of stuff they might just find a use for. Senior schools are usually nearby, so she wouldn’t need to sleep at school if you played your cards right.’

Bernard scratched his head again, then pulled the cap over the chilled forehead. ‘Where, though?’

‘They’ve got them in Liverpool, I think,’ said Eva.

‘Liverpool? Who wants to move to bloody Liverpool?’

‘You do,’ snapped the small woman. ‘For a kick-off, they eat a lot of fish, do Liverpudlians. Then there’s Katherine’s education and Liz’s peace of mind. Not to mention your own, of course. Start sending for them brochures and tell Liz you want the best for that little girl.’

Bernard shuffled about on the spot, his weight shifting from one foot to the other while thoughts skittered about in his mind. Liverpool? Bernard knew Ashburner Street Market like the back of his own hand. He knew every fishmonger in Bolton, every stallholder, every porter down at the sidings. His mates at the market – Bob Hewitt, Ernie Kershaw, Les Pickering with a limp from the Great War and a sense of humour worth bottling. A pasty and a
gill in the Wheatsheaf, a florin each way on a horse, bets taken behind the big weighing scales near the New Street end, somebody watching out for the bobbies.