The Corner House (42 page)

Eva was making bread. The dough queued in a row of blue-rimmed enamel bowls in front of the fire, each container covered by a piece of white muslin. Jessica sat in a fireside rocker, her eyes fixed to the nearest bowl of dough, her thoughts several miles away.

‘A penny for them?’ Eva was preparing her one-pound and two-pound loaf tins.

Jessica turned her head slowly, as if she were in a dream. ‘What’s going on, Auntie Eva? What’s happening with Mam? She’s never in and she looks … she looks angry.’

Eva was in no two minds, though she could say nothing. Theresa had enjoyed Christmas, had been pleasant to everyone. The woman was flagging – on that score, there could be little room for doubt. But underneath the party spirit, another spectre had lurked, the ghost of knowledge, a soul fed by new and unpalatable discoveries. ‘It’s just all the change,’ replied Eva. ‘You know – coming home, giving her job up, looking for a house.’

Jessica swallowed. ‘Is she going to die, Auntie Eva?’

For the mother of a young girl to die was terrible, unthinkable. But for that girl to wait, watch and ruin her own life while expecting the event was a million times worse. ‘No, Jess. She’s tired and she’s—’

‘Got TB.’

Eva clutched at straws and caught one. ‘Eeh, she’ll have had that checked while she was in Liverpool. They’d not have let her work with old folk if she’d been infectious. As for her heart – she’s come this far, so she could go a lot more miles. Did I ever tell you about Sammy Pickering?’

Jessica nodded.

Eva carried on regardless. ‘Nobbut twenty-four, he were, when they told him his heart were nigh on its last beat. When I laid him out, that man had skin like a baby’s and hair as black as coal. Looked after himself, he did, and he lived to see ninety-seven. I’m not saying your mam’ll get that far, but if she slows down, she’ll have a few more years.’

Jessica had heard her mother’s coughing, especially during the nights. ‘Auntie Eva, I’ve done a terrible, terrible thing.’

Eva put down her tins and sat opposite Jessica.

‘Spit it out, lass.’

‘Mam’s been the spitting one, always coughing and spluttering.’

‘Go on.’

‘And she asked me if I was immune. I told her the doctor had said I’d built up a resistance to TB with having had a mild dose. She was satisfied with that, but she pushed her bed across the room and slept under the open window. In this weather, too. So I thought about it and … oh, Auntie Eva.’ Tears threatened.

‘Tell me, love. Please.’

‘I followed her.’

‘Oh.’ Eva paused, waited for more.

‘To the market. She was chatting to Mr Walsh on the fish stall, then they went outside to talk privately.’

Eva felt a cold, closed fist inside her stomach. ‘Just a chinwag, Jess.’ Just a chinwag about a stolen baby.

‘She went for a walk, then back to the market.’

‘A walk? Where to?’

‘Looking at things. Man and Scythe, the Olde Pastie Shoppe, the war memorial, Town Hall. Historical places. Like she was saying goodbye.’

‘She’s been away a while. She was enjoying her home town.’

Jessica gazed into a roaring fire. ‘Mam spent a lot of time with Mrs Betteridge. She runs a stall on the open market – pots and pans.’

‘I know the one.’

‘They drank tea, then talked. I came home.’

‘And what’s so wrong about that?’

The girl gulped back a sob. ‘He was driving his car up Derby Street. He stopped and asked me where my mother was.’ She bit her lip, bit back the frustrations. ‘I’ve always said I’d no idea, Auntie Eva. We’ve both told him lies about not knowing where Mam was. With all the coughing and the running about buying a house, I was worried. So I told him the truth. For the very first time, I said I knew where Mam was. He went looking for her. What’ll happen when he finds her?’

In Eva’s unspoken opinion, Theresa should be found. For a start, it was obvious that she was still pursuing the three men who had raped her. What on earth had she been saying to Elsie Betteridge? Elsie was a rough and ready type, a woman who liked a jar of ale, a natter and a dirty joke. But she had a big heart. More than once, Eva had been on the market when Elsie had shown her true colours. ‘Here, love, take this one off me hands, will you? I’ve had it that long it’s taking root.’ And some old girl had walked off with a free long mop and a big smile.

‘I didn’t mean to hurt Mam,’ said Jessica.

‘Of course you didn’t. Stop your worrying.’ Then there was the TB. Dr Stephen Blake, who had visited Eva over the years, had often said that a spontaneous remission was not unheard of, but Theresa had been
living in a city, not in the Swiss Alps. The woman wanted examining.

‘He was going to drive up and down until he found her.’

Eva smiled. ‘Eeh, you do talk lovely, sweetheart. That school’s turning you into a right nice young lady. Now, listen to me, Jessica Nolan. What will be will be. She needs help. Dr Blake’ll give her the once-over, make sure she’s fit. Leave it to him.’

Jessica inhaled deeply, as if trying to summon up courage. ‘He loves her, doesn’t he? Even after she ran away, he carried on loving her.’

‘Aye, I think you’re right there.’

‘She might marry him. I could be a bridesmaid.’

‘We’ll see.’ Eva checked her bowls and decided that the mix had risen sufficiently.

‘Who’s my real father?’

Eva steadied her hands and carried on with the job. ‘I don’t know,’ she said truthfully. Jessica didn’t look like any of them. Whoever had fathered her, this lass was Nolan through and through, good features, Irish skin, her mother’s eyes.

‘Everybody has a dad.’

Everybody came from an egg and a microscopic piece of male flotsam, and the woman was the nurturer, the incubator. Most men, good men, hung around to raise their children, working hard, caring for their wives, playing daft games with the youngsters. Dads were usually proud of their offspring, interested in their progress, their schooling. But sometimes, a child came from a hurried, cruel act, from a streak of slime left by an uncaring ogre. Such a child had only a mother. Theresa Nolan had separated herself from this poor girl, had gone after money on which a foundation might be built for Jess.
Jessica had enjoyed little parental love. Even the female, the one who should have been close, had abandoned Jess.

‘Who was it?’

Eva kneaded and rolled, kneaded, divided, and set the dough in her tins. ‘That’s not a question I can answer.’

‘Why?’

‘Because it’s not my place and I can’t tell you what I really don’t know, can I?’ It was probably Chorlton. According to Theresa, he had been the first. But who could say which of those creatures had produced the fastest swimmer, the winning ticket?

‘Will she tell me one day?’

Eva didn’t know the answer to that one either.

Jessica went out into the lobby, pulled on her hat and coat, wandered into the street. The snow had almost melted, leaving in its wake a few slag-heaps of greyish matter piled against walls. There were no children playing, no doors open. Everyone had remained inside to enjoy the fireside and indoor games. Most had sisters and brothers, most had someone who would listen and share a table to draw or make a jigsaw.

Irene hove into view, her pale, expressionless face framed by a red woollen scarf. She stopped and looked at her beautiful cousin. Mam liked Jessica. Jessica was pretty and clever and she never got told off for being a little rat. ‘What are you doing?’ Irene asked.

‘Nothing.’

Irene wiped a dewdrop from the end of her nose. ‘I’m going to see her.’ She nodded towards her mother’s house. ‘I don’t know why I bother, like. She couldn’t care less about me.’ She pondered for a
second or two. ‘We’ve not been lucky, have we, me and you? Mine knocking seven shades of the rainbow out of me, yours leaving you to Eva Know-it-all.’

Jessica shrugged. ‘Mam went to earn money and save up.’

‘She left you.’

‘She couldn’t help it.’

Irene shrugged. ‘Your mam ran away from the hospital. They’ll drag her back there. She can’t go piking about with TB. Folk with TB gets locked up.’

Jessica decided that Irene might know things. She had the sort of eyes that knew everything, glassy but wise, empty but hiding a huge store of secrets. ‘Who was my dad?’ she asked.

The older girl stared blankly at Jessica. ‘It were rape,’ she answered eventually. ‘That’s what your mam said, anyroad. Grandad didn’t believe her, so he threw her out. Mam says your mam was held down and forced, if you get my meaning.’

Jessica got her meaning. In a girls’ convent school, a rich seam of gossip seemed to develop about forbidden topics, dark whispers in grey corners of hallowed halls. While nuns floated along on a sea of prayer and self-denial, their charges investigated life to the full, bent, it seemed, on avoiding nunhood at all costs.

Irene was enjoying herself. She watched her cousin’s face, saw the pain and bewilderment. ‘You haven’t got a dad,’ she explained. ‘Mine’s no good, but I do know who he is. Mind you, we don’t know where he is. Good job, because Mam would kill him if she could catch him.’ The older girl delivered as near a smile as she could manage before marching off to do battle with the harridan who had borne her.

Jessica saw Irene going into the house, noticed the
statutory entrance fee of ten Players clutched in Irene’s disappearing hand. ‘Oh, heck,’ muttered Jessica. Dr Blake had probably found Mam. Mam would be hauled back to Williamson’s, would be prodded and photographed and shoved in a freezing room.

The whole concept was terrifying. Had Mam travelled home to die? Was there really no dad to come along and rescue Jessica from Ruth McManus’s clutches? Alive, Mam had a say in where Jessica stayed, but … No, it didn’t bear thinking about.

Jessica Nolan went back to Auntie Eva’s to comfort herself with new bread, plum jam and a roaring fire. When a person was only twelve, she had no real say in anything important.

Drinnan’s was at the top of Cannon Street, a corner building, slightly wedge-shaped. A row of tables flanked the Derby Street side, affording occupants a view of the road and its ongoings. Theresa gazed through steamy glass and watched a brewery horse on his way home after carting beer. Soon, there would be no horses on Derby Street. Lorries were all the rage these days, noisy, rattling monsters spluttering and backfiring all over the place, blue smoke pouring from exhausts.

She turned slightly and looked at Stephen Blake. He was tidier, scarcely older, quite handsome. There was a slight cleft in the square jaw, while his eyes remained as eloquent as ever. Whatever she had felt for him during her stay at the sanatorium remained very much alive. Was this love and did it matter? Still clumsy, he rattled coins in his pockets, jangled a spoon in its saucer, almost upset the cutlery tray. Smiling in spite of everything, Theresa looked
through the window again, watching another horse slip-sliding its way to stables on the icy road. She must not think about Stephen Blake. The man was too close for comfort and she longed to touch him, to make sure that he was real.

He was buying coffee and biscuits, was probably preparing the inquisition. It was no longer of any consequence. She should keep her mind on Jessica and on … the other business. A gun in her handbag. She was sitting in the best ice-cream parlour for miles with a pearl-handled, loaded lady’s gun. She calmed herself by thinking about her savings. Even if the three men didn’t pay up one last time, Theresa had enough to buy the house, enough to leave Jessica in reasonable comfort. Katherine was fine. Katherine was a member of a proper family. She was loved, educated, well dressed and well fed. Theresa continued to fantasize about murder. About three murders. And her insides were weak and fluttery because the one she loved was here, was struggling against the possibility of spilled coffee. Strength, firmness of resolve – how she needed those commodities.

‘There we are.’ He placed the cups on the table, went to fetch a plate of biscuits.

Theresa sighed, hoping that this fine doctor would give her some time, some leeway. She had to follow through what she had started, needed to stand in control in front of her attackers and … At this point, when she reached the ‘and’, her thoughts occasionally lost their clarity. She wanted to kill, to deliver three bullets into three blackened hearts. Stephen should go away. Stephen softened her, made her falter.

He sat down. ‘How have you been?’

Too tired to argue, she spoke slowly and clearly. ‘I have a cough, but no blood. I get exhausted and my limbs ache. Sometimes, my hands and feet are a bit blue and numb.’

He nodded encouragingly.

‘I had to go.’

‘Did you run from me?’

She shook her head, lowering her eyelids in case the lie showed. He had not been the reason, though he had sat on the edge of her decision, had probably tipped the scales. ‘No. I wanted to work, to leave something for Jessica. I needed to make use of the years instead of lingering palely in some hospital.’ Theresa raised her chin and forced herself to look at him. He remained attractive, to say the least, had probably struggled to give up the drink. ‘I helped to run a seamen’s mission in Liverpool – I was the housekeeper. It wasn’t a terrible job and it paid well.’

‘I see.’ He drank some coffee, grimacing. So, she had worked, had saved every penny for the child. He frowned into his thick, white cup. ‘How do these people manage to believe that we all want this stuff made with boiled and burnt milk?’

‘I can’t imagine,’ she replied.

He cleared his throat of the thick substance. She was still beautiful: too lovely to look at. Her near-transparency terrified him.

‘Will you report me?’ she asked.

He thought about that. ‘I don’t know. You need testing again – for your own good.’

She nodded. ‘Give me a month, please. I’m buying a house for Jessica. She’ll be living there with a friend of mine – Maggie Courtney.’

‘Oh.’ He stirred the coffee, dragging off a layer of half-set skin. ‘And where will you be?’

In prison or worse, she replied inwardly. For his ears, she answered, ‘In your hospital, I suppose.’

At last, he managed to look her in the face. ‘I never forgot you.’