The Corner House (9 page)

Roy backed away, hands held up, palms facing her in a gesture of submission. ‘I came simply to offer you marriage,’ he told her, the skin of his face tightening beneath a blush. ‘I was the one … the first … The baby is probably mine. I’m on a five-day pass, so we might just manage a special licence in the circumstances.’

Theresa felt the blood draining from her brain. She must not pass out. The fainting fits were never welcome, but now, while she and the child were so defenceless, Theresa Nolan was determined to remain alert. She gripped the quilt, inhaled deeply and stared at the intruder. ‘What?’ She could not believe her ears, didn’t want to analyse such nonsense.

‘To give the child a name, a father.’

‘You?’ The ensuing laugh was hollow.

‘The world doesn’t like illegitimates, especially in
these parts. She’ll need a dad. I could change your life.’

Theresa’s hackles rose, and all thoughts of fainting were banished. ‘You’ve done that already,’ she replied smartly. There was no need to be afraid. This man was pathetic, stupid, awkward.

‘But I want to make it right,’ he said. ‘I’m offering a solution.’ He swallowed, gulping noisily. ‘If I get killed, a wife will inherit my money, the shop and …’ His voice faded to nothing.

Theresa glowered at the man. Like his father, he was about five feet six inches in height. Like his father, he was oily, dark, almost creepy. She could imagine him serving at a counter in a few years’ time, hands rubbing together, demeanour obsequious as he pandered to the buyers of gold and gems. ‘You can’t put anything right,’ she said softly. ‘You can’t buy back time. You can’t wind the clock the wrong way and stick back all the missing pages from last year’s calendar. You’re just a big bully. A bully and a coward.’

He held his ground, but allowed her to continue.

‘There’s no way of unraping me.’ Shocked by her own words, she shook beneath the bed linen. ‘Yes, you were the first, but Jessica’s no child of yours. She’s mine. You and the other two pigs aren’t good enough to be in the same room or the same town as Jessica.’ Theresa nodded, the movement quickened by a rising bubble of hysteria. Was the man mad? Was she, too, insane? With deliberation, she chose her words carefully, kept her voice steady. ‘I hear you’ve all joined the army, so happen a few bullets will sort you out. Because I’m telling you now, Roy Chorlton, that if the Germans don’t get you, I will.’ She could not bite back the threat, was unable to retrieve words
that seemed to hang in the air like the threads of blue smoke from a just-fired pistol. Theresa calmed herself and fixed her eyes on Roy Chorlton. He would not attack her or kill her, because he was absolutely terrified.

Riveted to the spot, he saw the icy chill in her grey-blue eyes, the furious set of her lovely mouth. She was beautiful, tiny, with strawberry-blonde hair and delicate, childlike hands. Hatred seemed to glow from every pore, stiffening her body and hardening those wide-set, unavoidable eyes.

‘Did you hear me?’ she asked.

A shiver began at the base of his spine, an unstoppable, ice-cool thrill that climbed stealthily, cruelly, touching each separate vertebra until his scalp seemed to crawl with guilt and fear. ‘I heard.’ In that moment, Roy Chorlton understood the true nature of terror. The woman in the bed was closer than the enemy; she was real, visible, alive.

‘Do we understand one another?’ Her tone was conversational now. ‘I hope we do, Mr Chorlton.’

She was clever. She had prettiness and brain cells, a lethal combination. ‘At least I offered,’ he said lamely.

‘Don’t expect gratitude. I took bread and milk that night, carried food to a poor family. After meeting you, I got home with a great deal of pain, and blood on my clothes. You are the scum of the earth.’ Suddenly, she didn’t care. He was frightened of her, was standing like a rabbit in the glare of searchlights. ‘And your dad’s a joke. Your mam died on purpose, just to get away from him. Greasy, you are, both of you.’

‘I can’t undo it,’ he said lamely. ‘It was the brandy. My offer of marriage was genuine.’

‘No-one will marry you.’ This felt like a prediction, like something she foresaw in a crystal ball or in a pack of ugly tarot cards. ‘Now, get out before I scream the place down.’

A draught swept into the house, followed by the sound of a slamming door. ‘Brass monkey weather.’ These three words heralded the entrance of Eva Harris.

The jeweller’s son breathed deeply. When the small woman entered the kitchen, he took a step back and rested a hand on Theresa Nolan’s time-scarred dresser.

‘What do you want?’ asked Eva.

‘He wants to marry me,’ replied Theresa. ‘Full blessing, white frock, a bit of a ring bought cut price off his dad. Fancy that, Eva. A three-course dinner afterwards in the Commercial, free ale, even a drop of wine. I can’t wait.’ Relief flooded Theresa’s chest. Eva was here. Everything could go back to normal now, because Eva was the very personification of normality.

He glanced at Theresa, realized yet again what a looker she was, a woman any man might be proud to call his own. He cleared his throat. ‘I was just trying to … to make it right, to do the decent thing.’ He wished with all his heart that he had not developed a conscience of late. It was the war’s fault, he told himself determinedly. Well, the war and his father going on at him about endless blackmail, endless payments. Oh, he didn’t know what he thought, couldn’t work out why he was here.

Eva’s chin had dropped, and she closed her gaping mouth with a loud snap of porcelain dentures.

As he looked at the girl in the bed, Roy realized that he could do no right in this house. Theresa
Nolan was beautiful and she was furious. ‘I’ll go,’ he mumbled. Indignation brewed and simmered in his chest. She was a mill girl, an urchin; she should have been grateful for his proposal.

Eva retreated, allowing him to leave the room.

‘And don’t come back,’ called Theresa just before the front door slammed.

Eva Harris sank into a chair. ‘Well, I’ll go to the foot of our stairs,’ she said softly. ‘What were all that about?’

‘You tell me,’ answered Theresa. ‘And I’ll give you a medal.’

Danny Walsh’s breath preceded him by several inches, iced air hovering like a single plume of cloud in the dark frost of a February morning. At six o’clock, stallholders and shopkeepers stood around the railway sidings, some battering arms across chests to keep the blood moving, others hunched over the meagre glow of a hand-rolled cigarette. The Fleetwood train was late, was probably floating about on ice-scalded tracks somewhere between the coast and Bolton.

‘All right, then, Danny?’ Bob Hewitt stamped across the goods yard, a balaclava drawn low over his eyes, high beneath the end of a frozen nose.

‘That you, Bob?’

‘Aye, who did you think it were? Jack the Kipper?’

Danny shrugged. It could have been the abominable snowman, because the only recognizable parts of Bob Hewitt were his voice and a pair of hairy nostrils. ‘Train’s late,’ commented Danny unnecessarily.

‘How’s yon babby of your Bernard’s?’

‘Fine. Coming on a treat, she is.’ The cuckoo in the nest was beginning to thrive.

‘We’ll need no ice today for keeping fish,’ grumbled Bob. ‘Blood’s fair froze in me veins – I can hear it cracking every time I shift. Any colder, they can shove a stick up me nethers and sell me as an ice lolly.’

‘Not sweet enough,’ chuckled Danny.

A rumble heralded the advent of a fire-breathing monster with its cargo of fish and ice. The sidings came to life, LMS fish porters leaping forward to jump aboard as soon as the train ground to a screeching, slippery halt.

Danny and Bob Hewitt, whose fish stall was a few feet from the Walshes’, claimed their prizes, heavy wooden crates bound by metal bands, each container weighing at least ten stones. ‘Jesus,’ cursed Bob through the wool of his balaclava, ‘I don’t remember putting me name down as a pack mule.’ He rubbed his back with a gloved hand. ‘I thought I were that cold as I’d feel nowt, but me back’s fair shattered.’

Carriers struggled past the two men towards a convoy of vehicles, everyone moaning and puffing against the weight of their burdens. Lorries piled high with boxes shuddered to life in preparation for delivery rounds covering shops all over Bolton and its surrounding villages.

Danny and Bob sat in the van. Bob, a well-known character, continued to live up to his reputation. ‘I feel like retiring,’ he grumbled. ‘Too hot in summer, fish going off, ice melting. And winter’s like a bloody life sentence. I fancy a nice little village pub, good ale, cheese butties, meat pies, no fish.’

Danny shifted into first gear and drove slowly out of the sidings. Bob Hewitt and fish were like salt and vinegar – doomed to a lifetime partnership. ‘Listen,’ he said. ‘You and Ernest Openshaw won’t get buried.
You’ll end up pickled like a pair of giant mussels. We’ll keep one jar at the Ashburner end and the other in the New Street doorway.’

‘I’d rather get cremated,’ laughed Bob. ‘Or buried in a nice plot up Heaton, couple of rose bushes, a gradely marble headstone.’

‘With a cod’s head carved in it,’ concluded Danny. He couldn’t imagine Bolton fishmarket without an Openshaw, a Hewitt or a Walsh. Year in and year out, the same families collected, delivered, filleted and sold tons of fish. Kids left school, joined their fathers’ firms, became absorbed into the daily routine in the twinkling of an eye, or so it seemed.

‘I see you’ve had an elrig hanging round your stall.’ Bob Hewitt’s tone was deliberately casual, while his eyes seemed to be concentrating deeply on the architectural merits of Bolton’s deserted heart.

‘She’s not a girl, she’s a woman,’ replied Danny.

‘How old?’

‘Thirty.’ Danny turned a corner rather quickly, causing Bob to rattle slightly in his seat.

‘All right, a namow,’ answered Bob once his equilibrium returned. ‘Not bad looking if you like ’em thin. I hear as how meat’s sweeter near the bone. What’s her name?’

‘Pauline Chadwick. Works for Maurice Chorlton. And don’t start asking stupid questions and jumping to daft conclusions, because there’s nowt going on.’

‘I never said there were.’

‘Right.’ Danny steered the van through a slight skid and towards their destination. ‘We’ll have to keep an eye on the lads today,’ he advised his passenger. Danny was referring to the younger members of fish dynasties, boys who served their time by
unpacking and preparing cod and hake for elders and betters. ‘One twist of a gutting knife, they could lose a finger and feel nowt.’

Bob sighed heavily, then rubbed the resulting steam from the windscreen with a gloved hand. ‘Change the subject if you must,’ he invited pointedly. ‘Who cares about you and your new lady friend, anyway?’

Danny ignored him and thought about the long day ahead. There was just one hot water tap in Ashburner Street Market, a single outlet at which young men queued with buckets to obtain a mere gallon of insurance against frostbite. In weather such as this, the buckets’ contents would cool within minutes. It was a hard life, yet Danny had known no other. ‘We should have more hot water,’ he commented gruffly. If he talked about water, Pauline Chadwick might just escape without further discussion.

They pulled into the market’s huge doorway, waited until Bolton Refrigeration and Palatine Dairies had unloaded blocks of ice whose usefulness was questionable on this occasion.

Bob Hewitt beat his hands together. ‘You know, Dan, there’s been more women had their eyes on you than I’ve had cod-and-chip dinners.’

Danny tapped the steering wheel.

‘Have you never noticed?’

‘What?’

‘The road they look at you.’

‘Can’t say I have.’

Bob chuckled. ‘Have you got your name down for a dog and a white stick?’

‘No.’

Bob shook his head. ‘As old as you are and you still
don’t notice the come-on even when it bites you on the nose.’

Danny turned his head and looked at Bob Hewitt. ‘You worry about your dripping nose and I’ll see to my own.’

The passenger sniffed. ‘She likes you. She flutters when she sees you.’

Pauline Chadwick was not a flutterer. Pauline Chadwick was a nice young woman who worked for a Scrooge and looked after a virago called Edna Greenhalgh. In spite of the cold weather, Danny tugged at his collar as if seeking cool air. Tonight, he was going to walk into the spider’s web; tonight, he would be sitting down at a table on Tonge Moor Road with a decent woman and an unknown quantity whose reputation preceded her like the stench of rotted mullet.

‘Danny?’

‘What?’

‘Are you blushing?’

‘Shut up, Bob.’

Bob shut up.

Number 301, Tonge Moor Road was a mid-terrace with a tiny front garden, an iron gate and a square-panelled door from which the number three hung drunkenly next to its two companions. A cut above the warrens of Daubhill and Deane, Tonge Moor houses had decent red-brick frontages, reasonable curtains and bits of leaded patterns on windows. As well as these privately owned homes, the road boasted a library, a cluster of presentable council dwellings and a corner Co-op next to some smaller shops.

Danny stopped at the gate. Behind the door, a
promise of poached egg and haddock beckoned, but his mouth was not watering. ‘She doesn’t take to people easy,’ Pauline had informed him. Why was he here? Why hadn’t he made an excuse?

He bit his lower lip. Taking Pauline to the Man and Scythe for a shandy had seemed innocent enough. In fact, she had instigated that first expedition, had asked him bold as brass while he was busy wrapping two steaks of silver hake. Was he being introduced as a prospective replacement for the dead husband? Danny swallowed and felt the Adam’s apple rasping against his inner throat. Marriage. Now, that was a big step. Women wanted things. They wanted talking to, wanted fussing, bunches of flowers, ironing boards, new blouses for Christmas and bonnets for Easter.

Daniel Walsh sidled off towards the corner and sheltered in the doorway of Lever’s Grocery. If Pauline came through to her front room, she would doubtless see his van, but he needed to think. He should have thought before setting out, should have thrown their Bernard out of the little room behind the fish shop to give himself a chance to consider his position. Bernard had laughed his socks off, of course. ‘Bring her home, our kid. Let’s be having a look at her before you take the plunge.’