The Liverpool Trilogy (115 page)

‘You’d be prouder of me now,’ Rosh told the wedding photograph. ‘I’ll probably go back to work after the New Year. They’ll have a good Christmas, love –
Mother and I will make sure. But we’ll miss you so much. It just won’t be the same, Phil, but I’ll try my hardest.’

Phil had always made a drama out of carving on Christmas Day. When Kieran and Philly had been small, their dad had pretended to choose between them and the meat on the table. So a chase round
the house with a fork-wielding father had been normal. ‘I only want to see if you’re cooked. Just a little prod with the fork,’ he would yell as his children fled upstairs
screaming happily. He’d never done it with Alice, who had been born after a gap of seven years. Alice, when she did take something on board, treated it literally, and she might have been
terrified.

The door glided inward and revealed a huge orange cat. Winston had learned how to open doors. Well, some doors. Those that opened towards him remained a mystery thus far, though he was working
on the mechanics of the problem. Sometimes, he entered while still hanging from the handle, but this was always done with a complete lack of grace, as the action rendered him wide-eyed, yowling and
shaky. This time, he’d remembered to let go. He looked businesslike, tail ramrod straight and stiff, eyes on Rosh, who was the reason for his intrusion. He had come bearing messages, and was
doing what Anna always termed a briefcase job.

‘Hello, Winnie.’

‘Meow.’

‘What?’

‘Meee-ow.’

‘Is she?’

‘Mew.’

I am talking to a bloody cat here. Worse than that, I understand what he’s saying. This is definitely not normal. I am definitely not normal. I wonder if there’s a place for me in
a nice, quiet rest home for the terminally bewildered? Are there other people like me, crazy and aware of it?

‘MEEE-OW.’

‘Is she dressed?’

‘Mew.’

Under the dedicated supervision of Winston, Rosh pulled on her dressing gown and walked past the cat onto the landing where she found Alice dressed, but gazing quizzically at her shoes. They
were shiny-clean, yet Alice found them unacceptable. As the child studied her footwear, a frown creased her face.

‘Alice?’

‘Hmm, no.’

Well, that was a promising start. Rosh noticed that the left shoe was where the right should have been, and vice versa. While the little girl could complete a jigsaw in minutes, she remained
stumped by ordinary, everyday difficulties like shoes, odd socks, the wrong spoon, a piece of meat in her mashed potato.

‘Change over,’ Alice said before swapping the shoes’ positions. A huge smile decorated her pretty little face.

These were the Christmas gifts Rosh relished. Already, she had detailed drawings of buildings, and sums on paper. All twenty-six letters of the alphabet sat in a pile on Alice’s little
bedroom table, the same twenty-six on the wall, and Alice could match them. There was a brain, a good brain, but it was behind glass possibly frosted by Aspergers. Rosh was determined to break that
glass if it took her a lifetime. ‘Hello, Alice.’

No reply, but the shoes were the right way round on the child’s feet. And that was Rosh’s newest Christmas present, delivered prematurely, but valued all the more for that very
reason. Alice knew right from left; she was also displaying symptoms of knowing right from wrong, so the show was making its hesitant way towards the road at last.

The biggest gift had been offered by the school, where Rosh had been shown a sketch of the Victorian building, all false castellation, arched windows and scarred brick. Alice had produced this
from memory one wet playtime, but it wasn’t the main prize. Although the child appeared not to listen in class, her sum book was full of ticks. ‘She’s bright enough,’ the
teacher had said. ‘And we’re getting help. For two hours a week, her communication skills will be worked on. Oh, and she does better if she brings her teddy bear to school.’

‘She talks to him,’ Rosh had said. ‘And the cats. We have two, and the ginger tom seems to look after her.’

That was when she learned that Alice might need a familiar item with her for some time to come. ‘Hopefully, Mrs Allen, the articles will get smaller and less noticeable. But Aspergers
children often need to cling to something or other. With luck, hard work and a good following wind, she’ll be playing with the others within a year or two. I’ve had to allow the rest to
bring in a toy, because I don’t want Alice to stand out for the wrong reasons. But she is special. All your children are. Kieran will go a long way whatever he chooses to do, and Philly will
continue with music, I expect.’

‘They had a clever dad.’

‘And a good mother. Never forget that.’

She had learned something else that day. Alice’s condition was thought not to be curable, though the behaviour it produced could be improved in certain cases to a point where it might be
virtually unnoticeable. In certain cases. Alice wasn’t a case, she was a human child with talent, likes, dislikes, needs, and even some naughtiness. The naughtiness was the item in which Rosh
invested most hope. The child reacted. In order to react, she needed to have been involved, however peripherally, in a situation near to her. And she was definitely relating to her big brother and
to her older sister.

Winston was having a wash. Alice, all bright and clean in her school clothes, watched him. ‘Clean your teeth,’ she told him before going downstairs.

A mental picture of Winnie and a toothbrush made Rosh giggle. She didn’t want to think about toothpaste. Winston and a tube of extruded white dental cream might prove a lethal
combination.

Breakfast had begun. Alice had her egg, her special spoon, the statutory battalion of six soldiers, and a cup of milky tea. The older two were eating Gran’s special porridge with thick
cream and a soupçon of golden syrup, while Rosh and Anna had toast.

Anna was in full flood with one of her thousands of tales about life in Mayo. ‘So Patricia – she was your granddad’s sister, and some called her Paddy – had one of her
daring and unusual ideas. Sure they were only babies at the time, but they had a problem to solve. She thought if they hid their ganga’s clothes and work boots, he would stay in the house and
there’d be no more explosions in the sheds. None of them had many clothes to spare, so this seemed sensible enough. Well, Holy Mother on a Friday, he hit the roof in temper. There he was in
long underwear with the flap at the back, and an old shirt from before the turn of some long-ago century, and he ranted and raved like a madman.’

‘So what did they do?’ Philly asked.

Anna laughed. ‘Your granddad and his sister ran for the hills, but got tired after a few minutes. When they came back, there was Ganga in a woman’s frock and coat, old wellington
boots on his feet, going about his brewing as if nothing had happened. Ah, he sounded wonderful, God rest his bones.’ She nodded for a few seconds. ‘I wonder could we find Patricia? She
was with the last lot of Rileys to come over, you know. If she’s still in Liverpool, it shouldn’t be too hard. I’d like to meet her. She was my husband’s favourite sister,
backbone of steel, heart of gold.’

‘Weren’t they all supposed to stay together?’ Kieran asked.

Anna shook her head sadly. ‘Some went away for work, some married and moved, and I believe a few crossed the ocean for Canada and America. Then the ganga died, so no one was in charge.
Lovely big family like that, all split up without thought, without . . .’

Rosh put a hand on her mother’s. Only Rosh could hear the pain. ‘All right, Mam.’ At times like this, the name Mother seemed a bit formal. Rosh was Anna’s sole surviving
child. Miscarriages, stillbirths and neo-natal deaths had left the poor little woman devastated. She had one healthy, strapping girl, and all the rest were . . . ‘Eat your egg, Alice,
there’s a good girl,’ Anna said, her voice less than steady.

‘You’ve four,’ Rosh told her mother. ‘Me and these three of mine.’

Alice chewed on a buttered soldier. ‘And Winston and Lucy. Six.’

‘What about Teddo?’ Rosh asked.

She was awarded a withering glance. ‘Teddo not walking, not talking,’ came the reply from a child who lived on the edge of autism.

‘Cats don’t talk,’ was Kieran’s offering.

‘Meow,’ Alice said. Thus she achieved the last word. Breakfast was over, and she went to clean her teeth.

A disobedient tear wandered down the older woman’s cheek. ‘Well, that’s us told, but. Didn’t I always say she’d come right? That child arrived in the world old and
in a very bad mood. When she was born, she gave me the dirtiest look I ever got in me whole life. It was as if she knew me already, knew what a nuisance I am.’

‘Impossible,’ commented Kieran the scientist. ‘No one can be born knowing what a nuisance you are. That’s something that grows on a person like warts. I was at least four
before I worked you out, Gran.’

Rosh squashed a grin. ‘Go on now. Teeth, then you take Alice to school, Philly. Make sure you hand her over to someone sensible, preferably a teacher.’

The older children left the room.

Someone knocked at the door. Immediately, the whole of Anna’s little body stiffened. ‘I’m out. No, I’m dead, and you’re waiting for the undertaker to fit me with a
nice wooden jacket. Or I’ve emigrated to be with our Dan in Philly-delphi-o. London? Christmas shopping? North Pole, South Pole, up the pole?’

‘Oh, Mother.’

It was too late, anyway. A mischievous light shone in Kieran’s eyes as he delivered Mr Eric Holt to the women in the kitchen. Mr Eric Holt was slightly taller than Anna. The famous cap
twisted in his hands as he addressed the two women. ‘Sorry. If I’d known you weren’t dressed, Mrs Allen, I wouldn’t have . . . er . . . Mrs Riley, I
didn’t—’

‘We’re going now,’ Kieran shouted from the hall.

Rosh went to see her children off. When she closed the front door, she noticed a deafening silence throughout the whole ground floor. He was probably still standing there, torturing the cap in
work-worn hands. Well, Mother had to deal with her suitor, so Rosh ran upstairs to dress herself.

She took her time. Underneath all the bluster and harsh words, Anna Riley was as soft as putty. It would take her a while to tell him to bugger off, because she never set out to hurt people. Or
perhaps it wouldn’t take long, because this time Anna Riley was like a coiled spring; one touch, and she could jump. Such behaviour might be unexpected, but Mother’s unpredictability
was predictable. She seldom behaved quite as people thought she might.

Meanwhile, Anna was sitting at the table with her jaw almost on the plate. ‘Why ever on God’s good earth did he ask you, Eric? What in the name of mercy did you do to deserve such a
request? I’m shocked right through to the middle of meself. Roy seems to be such a sensible man. Mind, we’ve not seen him in quite a while.’

The visitor shrugged slim shoulders. ‘I was only having a quick look at me Brussels, thinking I could bring some home soon and give them out to people for Christmas. I say looking, but it
was still nearly dark. And Roy has the plot next to mine, and he walks over bold as brass and asks me. Well, no. He wasn’t as bold as brass. In fact, he was a bit strange, like a puppet
talking all on one note, no expression in his voice.’ Eric sighed and rubbed his chin. ‘He was odd, as if he was in shock. It’s good money he’s offering, as good as any wage
from factory work, but my stomach turned over.’

‘I’ll make a pot of tea. Stay where you are while I think on things.’

She rattled about and thought on things. The thing she concentrated on mostly lived across the street. It had survived a massive heart attack and was now in need of care. ‘Why you,
though?’ she asked again.

‘I was there. Anybody with any sense was still at breakfast, but Roy often goes to the allotment before work, and I’ve not much else to do unless somebody has an odd job for me.
I’m not one for lingering in bed half the day. It’s a life wasted, that kind of carry-on.’

Anna mashed the tea and brought it to the table. ‘Let that brew,’ she advised. ‘Joseph Baxter needs a trained nurse.’

Eric swallowed nervously. ‘Roy won’t let any woman near him. It was a bit . . . a bit embarrassing, really, because he told me some terrible stuff about what his dad had done to his
mum. Then he asked me to let him know soon, and off he buggered. I stood there for that long, I was near froze to the spot. In fact, when I started to walk home, one of me wellies was stuck in the
ice.’

This man was a pest, yet Anna loved his Scouse humour. ‘But I still have to ask you again, Eric – why you in particular?’

‘Ambulance driver, Liverpool 1942.’

‘And what’s that to do with the price of fish? I answered phones two nights a week through the war, but that doesn’t make me a telephone engineer. Does he think changing gear
and steering in a straight line makes you fit for a nursing career?’

‘Me and the crew saved a couple of lives, and I don’t mind washing folk and popping in to see if they’re comfortable, but him? I’d sooner look after a rattlesnake.’
Eric accepted a cup of tea. ‘I’m ready for that. In fact, I’m probably ready for morphine.’ He took a mouthful of the cup that cheers as long as you haven’t just been
asked to look after a monster. ‘I needed that tea, Mrs Riley.’

‘Anna.’

‘All right. Anna.’

She sat opposite him once more. ‘What’s your problem? Just tell him no, you can’t because you’ve jobs to do.’

‘I can’t. Poor lad’s had it rough all his life, what with the leg, his mam dying young, and being left in the company of that bloody – excuse me – bastard of a
father. It’s just twelve noon till six, weekdays only. I can still get to my plot in the mornings and at weekends.’

‘And you’ll be a rich man, so. But money’s not everything. Look. My Roisin’s a friend of Roy’s. Let her find out what state the old man’s in. Or go and take a
look yourself.’

‘I’m a coward, aren’t I?’

‘No. Oh, dear me, no. He’s a special kind of bad. Let Rosh get to know exactly what’s involved. I know this much – Roy swore he’d never have him back in the house.
Roy owns the place, you see. But he’s too soft-hearted to see even that bad swine on the streets. The lad will have no peace till Joseph Baxter’s six feet under.’