The Corner House (28 page)

‘Are you fit, then?’ asked Monty.

She noticed yet again how kind his face was and was glad to have a friend in this strange city. ‘I’m fit,’ she replied, though the rhythm of her heartbeat told a different story.

Monty hesitated for a split second. He had just caught sight of something in the girl’s eyes, a hardness, a flash of iron. She wouldn’t take much without a fight, this one. If she offered that expression to anybody round here, there’d be no danger for her, none at all.

Bernard Walsh dozed in a fireside chair. He was a contented man, a man who had done everything possible to keep his family safe and comfortable. The house in which he and his family had lived for the best part of a year was all he had promised to his beloved Liz.

Smiling through a thousand happy memories, he chose his favourite and relived his first day in Crosby, watched it like a film, remembering the script perfectly. As he nodded off, his wife’s voice spoke the opening lines.

‘I like it.’ Liz Walsh fluttered like a bird as she investigated her new front parlour. ‘God, you could fit the Coldstream Guards in here, horses and all.’

Bernard smiled benignly upon his wife. To please her, to keep the secret of Katherine safe, he would have crossed Niagara Falls in a colander, but all Liz had needed was a change of house. She would have preferred Bolton, he supposed, but she had got used to Crosby after a dozen visits. It was a good enough place, with a working flour mill, thatched cottages, homely shops and pleasant people. Outside, Katherine and the dog leapt about on ice-crisped grass, dashing from apple to pear trees, from greenhouse to gate. Yes, Crosby would do quite nicely.

Liz marched into the dining room, then round a small morning room and into the kitchen, Bernard hot on her heels. Next to the sink, a boiler of uncertain temperament spat water into radiators, while a tall fridge hummed its intention to care for leftovers whatever the weather. Laughing inwardly, the fishmonger enjoyed the pleasure in Liz’s face.

Bernard left his wife to her little celebration, walked through the hall and joined John Povey
outside. John Povey was a chemist and a character. His father, also a pharmacist, had lived and died in number 1, and John had just sold the large semi-detached house to the Walshes. The man ran a hand through greying hair. ‘If the boiler starts acting up, kick it,’ he advised the new owner. ‘If that doesn’t do it, contact me. I know a few good plumbers, you see.’

Bernard studied the man. He looked for all the world like something that had been shut away in a cellar with test tubes and potions, a mad scientist whose mission in life was to harness lightning or turn water to petrol, sand to sugar. ‘Are you married?’ asked Bernard.

The chemist looked at him vaguely. ‘No. I think I’ll send Harry Foster to look at your downstairs toilet – I don’t like the sound of that flush.’

It was Bernard’s turn to be confused for a split second. ‘
Caveat emptor
,’ he pronounced eventually. ‘You’ve already been very good to us, John. The caveat’s in the contract because I’ve bought this house as seen and I’m happy with it. My house now, lad. My house, my problems.’

‘Scotland Road,’ came the reply.

‘What?’

‘Your fish shop.’

‘Aye, that’s right.’

‘Bloody mess the Germans made of that.’ John fiddled with the gate, trying to make the hinges line up. ‘A lot dead, a lot alive and cursing. Decent people; they’ll look after you.’

‘They already do. I’ve been down there a few times and they can’t do enough for me.’

‘Salt of the earth, God bless them.’ The gate was a hopeless case, so John started on the fence. ‘I know a man who’ll replace this rotted section for you.’

Bernard sighed and gave up. It was like talking to the fireback, he decided.

‘The previous owner used to deliver,’ continued the chemist.

The fishmonger was beginning to follow the meandering path of his companion’s probably brilliant mind. ‘The owner of the fish shop?’ he offered.

‘I’ll call into your place of work,’ said John. ‘There’s a list of nursing homes, hospitals and so on – places where I’m responsible for medicines and herbal infusions. You’ll get the fish contracts if I put in the odd word.’

‘Thank you.’

‘Not at all.’ The pharmacist turned his back on the fence and looked at Father’s house. John Povey Senior had been a grand man, the sort of person who would have done anything for anyone. ‘I miss him,’ he mumbled.

‘Aye, we know that, lad.’

‘Chess. Every Thursday evening, we played. He died winning, of course. I’d just set up a supposedly undefeatable stratagem, and he died before I could move a single piece. Now, I’ll never know how that game would have worked out.’

Bernard stared into the road, pretending not to see a tear being dashed from John Junior’s eye.

‘We never know how anything ends, do we?’ mused John Povey. ‘We play the game with the pieces we have and we never guess the outcome. The proof of everyone’s dispensability lies with the grim reaper. People force themselves to work while ill, convinced that no-one else can fill their shoes. But there’s always a pair of size nines ready to jump into our footwear.’

Bernard felt the chemist’s grief, wanted to reach
out and touch his arm. Being a man was sometimes a burden, because only women were allowed to offer a shoulder at times like this. ‘Would visiting us do any good?’ he asked.

John looked into Bernard’s round, open face. The man who had bought Father’s house was already on John’s list. Occasionally, one met a person who had always been an old friend, a new man or woman whose goodness precluded all need for introduction or potted histories. ‘I’d be delighted to come,’ he replied.

‘And we’ll be glad to have you.’

Knowing that Bernard spoke the truth, John Povey clapped a battered trilby onto his shaggy head and set off for home. Home was in Walton. He lived a solitary life, just a very tolerant cleaning lady and several stray felines, most of which had moved in while he wasn’t looking.

Bernard leaned on the wonky gate and stared across the road.

‘Nice, that house over there.’

He turned, found Liz at his side. ‘Aye, that’s the Corner House. John said it was built by a sea-captain in 1926.’

‘Worth a few bob,’ commented Liz.

‘Aye, it might be.’ In reality, the Corner House was no larger than number 1, but its detached status probably added to its value. The house’s ‘eyes’ were bright and studded with sections of stained glass. ‘Proper leading,’ said Bernard. ‘Every little pane separate – look how the light bounces off all over the place. There’s not another house exactly like that one anywhere in the world. It’s a one-off, is that.’

‘I’d love to get inside,’ commented Liz. ‘Just to be nosy, see what’s what.’

‘Yes.’ Bernard knew that it was silly to fall in love with another house, especially so soon after buying number 1. But the Corner House looked so happy, so welcoming with its open-arched porch and its setting of laurel and holly. One day, Bernard promised himself. One day, he and Liz would see the interior.

The pair waved as John Povey departed in a cloud of blue smoke. ‘He wants his exhaust seeing to,’ commented Bernard.

‘And his shirt collar turning,’ said Liz. ‘And a square meal now and again wouldn’t do any harm.’

‘We’ll feed him up,’ answered Bernard. ‘Come on, lass, let’s get the rest of our worldly goods inside before it goes completely dark.’

Inside the house, a grandfather clock, a camphor wood chest and a lovely old bureau spoke volumes for John Povey’s generosity. ‘Use them in good health,’ he had told the new owners. Liz sighed. The Walshes’ own belongings looked lost in a place of this size. They needed a proper dining table with carvers, some easy chairs, sofas, bookcases, display cabinets. ‘Like trying to furnish the Albert Hall,’ she told the parlour fireplace. The house wanted brass candelabra, some Staffordshire dogs, a couple of nice vases.

Bernard slid a tea chest across the parquet. ‘There’s a good second-hand furniture shop on Scotland Road,’ he informed her. ‘One of the few places still intact. Some pretty bits and pieces in there, love. We’ll get your house filled, never worry.’

Liz gave him a huge smile. ‘You couldn’t have picked a nicer place for us, Bernard. You were right enough – it was time for a change. And Katherine’s bedroom is marvellous.’ The little girl’s room had a door in one corner, a low opening which led into the
roof space above the attached garage. With electric light and a proper sprung floor, it promised to be an excellent playroom.

Bernard experienced a feeling of near-perfect contentment as he and his wife carried the last of their belongings up the pathway of number 1. The chances of Katherine coming face to face with Jessica Nolan were now negligible. Here, in North Liverpool, the Walsh family was almost forty miles away from poor Theresa Nolan and her problems.

‘Bernard?’

He swung round. ‘What?’

‘Thanks.’ Liz looked up and down the road, watched a coalman delivering a hundredweight, saw people scurrying home from work or from shops that were ready to close.

‘What for?’ he asked.

‘For all this.’ Liz swept a hand across the pebble-dashed frontage of her new home. ‘And most of all, for our Katherine. I couldn’t have made her on my own, could I?’

The fishmonger embraced his wife, glanced upwards and caught sight of his daughter’s face at an upstairs window—

‘Bernard?’ Liz shook her husband’s arm. ‘You’ve fallen asleep again.’

He abandoned his dream, looked around his fully furnished home, saw Liz’s Staffordshire dogs, her vases, the new dining suite. ‘We did right coming here,’ he said.

Liz laughed. ‘Been dreaming again, have you?’

Bernard scratched his balding head and smiled. They were safe. Theresa Nolan was miles away and all was well.

There was certainly plenty of work to be done. Theresa rose at six o’clock, prepared a hasty breakfast, tidied her living quarters, then set forth to tackle the day’s business.

The day’s business was a strange mixture, to say the least of it. There was what Monty Sexton termed the ‘kosher’ side, which involved the cleaning of rooms where retired sailors slept and the daily turning out of communal facilities on the ground floor. Theresa did no manual work, but she was responsible for the supervision of a score of women who cooked, scrubbed and polished for several hours each day, including Sundays.

The ‘girls’ did not rise until well past noon. They had their own attendants, a pair of withered women who kept the younger prostitutes’ garish settings as clean as possible. Theresa found all the women daunting. The working girls bartered their bodies to make a living, while the older pair were raddled, their wrinkled faces seeming to express all that they had been through, as if life had left its map across cheeks, foreheads and necks.

There was no boss. Theresa collected money from the two old dears and passed it on to Monty Sexton. Monty added to this amount rent collected from the old sailors, then placed it in a poste restante box at Liverpool’s main post office.

The job description was rather vague. The invisible bosses had listed Theresa’s duties on a card fastened to the inside of her own door. She was instructed to take charge of staff, to check the well-being of resident seamen, and to ‘ensure that all business carried out in Jutland House was handled efficiently and discreetly’. Monty had informed Theresa that she must keep a weather eye on the
ladies of the night and their customers, so Theresa found herself occupied from dawn until well past midnight, though she did manage to grab a few hours in the afternoons. Her day off was Sunday, and she could also take time ‘whenever necessary and suitable’ for her own rest and recreation.

After a fortnight, she was beginning to know the score. The battalion of cleaners, cooks and bottle-washers was made up of decent, hard-working people, so Theresa was able to leave them more or less to get on with things. Two or three times a day, she visited the retired sailors, listened to their tales, made sure that they were comfortable and that a doctor was sent for whenever necessary.

Gradually, she began to push herself into the lives of the girls upstairs. She wrote down their moans, negotiated a truce when an argument erupted and, surprisingly, found herself enjoying their company. Although the admission came as a shock, Theresa was forced to take on board the knowledge that most of the women were decent, that they had morals of a sort, that they saw their work as necessary and vitally important.

Maggie Courtney was Theresa’s favourite. She was much older than the rest, a jolly, large-breasted Irishwoman with bright blue eyes and impossibly red hair whose shade varied in accordance with the amount of henna used. ‘I haven’t got nothing catching,’ she told Theresa one Thursday afternoon after they collided in a doorway.

‘Sorry,’ muttered the new housekeeper.

‘It’s all right. I’m used to it. Here, have a seat.’ She opened her door wide, swept some nonsensical underwear from a chair and beamed upon her visitor. ‘Give us your hand,’ she commanded.

After a short pause, Theresa complied with the order.

Maggie studied the right hand, grabbed the left, turned both over. ‘I see you’ve had an interesting life up to now. Been sick, have you?’

Theresa nodded.

‘You’ve had a few illnesses.’ She stared into Theresa’s eyes. ‘Your mam dead?’

‘Yes.’

‘Your dad?’

Theresa raised her shoulders. ‘Dead.’

‘I think he’s still around. In the spirit world, but not at ease. Probably a bad bugger.’ She sat opposite Theresa and shuffled a pack of cards. ‘Cut,’ she said. ‘Into four piles.’

‘I’ve work to do, Maggie—’

‘Just cut. It won’t take long.’

Theresa cut.

‘Now, I’ve to do the heart of the matter, your present, your past and your future. These are tarot cards. A sailor friend of mine brought them back from America. They’ve been blessed by an American holy man, a proper one.’ She nodded swiftly. ‘They call them Indians, but they’re not. They’re the real American people and they’ve been treated like shit.’

Theresa flinched at the language, then ordered herself to get used to it. It was just as well that she hadn’t brought Jessica anywhere near this den of iniquity, she told herself yet again.