The Liverpool Trilogy (120 page)

He walked into the kitchen. Her dilemma had started here. There were eighteen cupboards and five drawers. This over-abundance of storage space had gone to Tess’s head, and she had spent
four days and a mint of money filling up every nook and cranny. There was now enough flour to furnish a bakery, the shoe-cleaning equipment kept company with tinned vegetables and fruit, while one
large unit at ground level was packed with fresh, ironed linen and a baited mousetrap. She needed a doctor. She needed a lie-down in a darkened room with a cold cloth on her forehead.

Where were the kids? Why were they always there when you didn’t want them, and out of sight the minute they were needed? Don returned to the hall and opened the front door. John Lennon was
cross-legged in his oriel bay, guitar across his chest, lips moving, quiff tumbling into his eyes. There was no sign of Anne-Marie, no sign of any worshippers just now. The lone Quarry Man,
oblivious to anything beyond his music, carried on with admirable dedication. If the lad would just put down the guitar and take up something sensible like plumbing, he would probably go far.

Anne-Marie had a second string to her bow these days. She was wont to visit Allerton, where she had discovered the home of one Paul McCartney. Paul, more conventionally pretty than his friend,
had the sort of face that would collapse suddenly. He looked younger than his years, whereas Lennon seemed older, but John’s bone structure would serve him better. According to Tess, that
was. According to Tess before she went doolally.

And she was very probably continuing to paint the carpet. ‘Why am I standing here thinking about a skiffle band? I’ve a wife gone mental in there.’ He picked up frying pan,
tins and rose bowl. It had all started so innocently. Failing to find a permanent home for an ornament was normal. But Tess had gone berserk. Dr Byrne had come up with some daft idea about
post-partum depression having turned to psychosis, but Anne-Marie was fifteen, Sean was eighteen, and Tess hadn’t seemed particularly odd after the births of her children.

Don stood in the doorway with peas, rose bowl and frying pan. The lad in the window across the road saluted him comically, and Don returned the favour with a tin of peas. Yes, Lennon was
probably all right, guitar or no guitar. He lived with an aunt who seemed very straitlaced, but at least there were no pans or peas on the front lawn.

Tess was waiting for him in the hall. ‘Waste of time,’ she told him. ‘You were right, but I thought it was worth a go – that carpet’s nearly new. The dye
didn’t take.’

‘Dye?’

‘Charcoal. But I think it’s more for clothes and stuff. Or chair covers and cushions.’

A shard of hope pierced Don’s heart. He still loved her. He loved two women. Molly was real, down to earth, a great laugh. This selfish piece of work he continued to adore. ‘Will the
meal be on time tonight?’ he asked.

Tess shook a finger at him. ‘Listen, Desperate Don. I’ve been a bit mithered in case you haven’t noticed. A house of this class takes some living up to. I’m still theming
the rooms.’

He had no real idea about what theming was, but he didn’t bother to ask for enlightenment. One worry went up the chimney with the rest of the smoke: she had used dye, not paint, on the
carpet. And, for a few seconds, he hid the other concerns behind more immediate problems. Would Molly want the house back? Could he really give up the generous physical warmth offered by her; was
he about to return and worship at the beautiful feet of his beautiful, cold wife? Separate beds—

‘Don?’

‘What?’

‘Will you teach me to drive?’

She had locked three children in a store cupboard for two hours. Her cooking was moving in the direction of Molly’s, her timekeeping was hardly Greenwich, and he still wondered about
marrowfat peas, a frying pan and a rose bowl. Put her behind a wheel? He’d need to find somebody to walk in front with a red flag. Oh, and a suit of armour. ‘Why do you want to
learn?’ he asked.

‘I’m not sure. A job of some kind, I suppose. When I let the flat above the shop, the tenant will look after the business. Littlewoods Pools wants people to pick up coupons from
corner shops on Saturday mornings. Johnson the cleaners needs collection points for dry-cleaning. That’s to stop launderettes like ours installing dry-cleaning machines. I don’t want
one. I don’t want people keeling over from breathing carbon tetrachloride, not in our shop.’

Don blinked. She’d been reading again. ‘Carbon who?’

‘Tetrachloride. It stinks. You can go unconscious just like that.’ She clicked her fingers. ‘Even in frost and snow, you have to drive with the windows open unless you want to
wake up on a slab. Newly dry-cleaned items in a confined space can be deadly.’

There was nothing wrong with her, he decided. She was eccentric, no more than that. She wanted a posh house because she’d spent her infancy in a freezing, uncomfortable gypsy caravan.
Depression arrived when she became fearful of returning to penury. ‘Tess?’

‘Yes? I’m going down the chippy. What would you like, Mr Steak Pudding?’

‘Steak pudding and peas.’

She stared hard at him. ‘Did you mention peas before?’

‘Two tins,’ he answered.

‘Squirrels,’ she said as she pulled on a coat. ‘See? You still want steak pudding. I didn’t need to ask.’

‘I like a choice.’ Squirrels? Oh, God. What was she on about now? What the hell was the connection between bushy-tailed rodents and two family-sized tins of Batchelor’s
marrowfats?

‘Did you want to ask me something, Don? Only I don’t relish the idea of being in a big queue at the chip shop.’

‘No.’ He’d been about to ask her whether she still had any feelings for him, but it didn’t seem right now, not with squirrels as part of the equation. The equation.

She left the house. Don set plates to warm in the oven. Equation? What the hell was he up to? Was he trying to work out her state of mind and heart before deciding which woman to keep, which to
let go? If the first one was broken, would he move on to the other one, who was older but in working order? It was a bit like measuring one car against another: best transmission, best engine, best
bodywork. He was the selfish one; he was the bloke behaving like a spoilt child who had to get his own way.

Sean and Anne-Marie arrived together. Don told them their meal would be here shortly, and they ran upstairs. Elvis Presley roared from the Dansette in Anne-Marie’s room, doors slammed,
water ran. They were home.

He set the table: knives, forks, salt and malt vinegar. Why was there a mousetrap in the clean linen cupboard? Was this enough to make him run away into the ample bosom of a woman with a
ukulele, two dogs and some tropical fish? ‘I am not a good man,’ he whispered. ‘I’m not being fair.’ He owed Molly. Yet his love for Tess had burgeoned anew over
recent weeks. ‘I want to have fun with my own wife,’ he mumbled. ‘I want to communicate with her.’ And he should never have taken Molly’s money.

Tess came in. She was all smiles, paper bundles and dandelion and burdock. ‘What’s up with your face?’ she asked.

‘Why is there a mousetrap in with all the towels and tablecloths?’

‘Don’t answer a question with a question. You’re not an Aquarian.’

Don scratched his head. ‘You what?’

‘Aquarians answer questions with questions. They’re geniuses. It said so in
Woman’s Realm
.’ She straightened her spine. ‘I am Aquarius. I’ll have a new
carpet for my birthday in three weeks . . .’ Her voice died. ‘What’s the matter with you?’

He shook his head sadly. ‘I think I love my wife.’

A corner of Tess’s mouth twitched. ‘Warm your feet before getting in my bed,’ she ordered. ‘And don’t expect full service till I feel more settled.’ She
sniffed. A bitter wind had made her nose wet. ‘I’ve gone . . . different.’

‘Yes, we noticed.’

‘No, you didn’t,’ she whispered. ‘Early menopause. What would you know about that sort of thing?’

A curtain seemed to move at the front of Don’s mind. She hadn’t wanted more children. She was Catholic. Precautions were sinful . . . Bloody religion. Not for the first time, he
cursed the rod made by humanity for its own back. Holy Moses? He should have left the bloody tablets where they were instead of taking two between meals.

‘Sit,’ she said. ‘Eat,’ she ordered.

‘Did you mean it?’ he asked. ‘About warming my feet first?’

‘Shut up, the children are coming.’

‘Tess?’

‘Be quiet.’

They rolled in, the son almost clean, the daughter shining like a new pin.

Tess folded her arms. ‘You,’ she said to Anne-Marie, ‘can get back up the stairs and turn that din off.’

‘But it’s Elvis,’ the girl cried.

Don cleared his throat. ‘John Lennon waved at me today.’

‘No!’ Anne-Marie dropped into a chair, ignored her mother and stared at her dad. ‘When?’

Elvis ground to a blessed halt upstairs. ‘About half an hour ago,’ Don said. ‘Bit of a wink with it, too.’

‘And what did you do?’

‘Waved back. Nearly took my eye out with a tin of peas.’

Anne-Marie blinked. ‘Why a tin of peas, Dad?’

‘Oh, shut up and eat,’ Tess ordered.

They shut up and ate.

That’s another one less, then. Working girl, the sort that spreads disease. Trouble is, a courting couple decided to park nearby, and I couldn’t bury the corpse.
So it’s been all over the papers, locals and nationals, and the cops are worrying about the rest who’ve disappeared. On top of that, my boss is ill. If he dies, what’ll happen to
me? For ages I’ve worked in that shop. Oh, and I’m a maniac. Unspeakable things have been done to ‘that poor girl’s body’. Don’t make me laugh, Mr Editor;
unspeakable things have been done to and by her for years . . .

Seamus had a book. It was a valued possession, not for general consumption by common folk, not available to be borrowed, glanced at or even breathed on. He guarded it fiercely,
kept it under boxes and short planks of wood, visited it only when sure that nobody was looking, and he absorbed it like a bear sucking honey from a comb. He always carried a torch, of course,
because it was dark in the shelter. For the first time in his life, the son of Maureen and Tom Walsh was learning happily from a book. It was brilliant, informative, and it would change the lives
of everyone in the family. The lad had plans that would reshape the world, and he was keeping every card close to his chest, because no one could be trusted.

Wearing the air of a man who had just discovered a whole new continent, Seamus developed a frown and a habit of walking or standing with his hands clasped behind his back. ‘Thinks
he’s Prince Philip,’ Paddy had been heard to opine. ‘Gone big-headed. We’ll be having to get his school caps made specially to fit if he carries on so. He’s
cogitating, so he is. We must watch him.’

The Thoughtful One kept his book in the reasonably dry Anderson in his sister Reen’s back garden, because Reen never went in there. Andersons reminded folk of the bad times when Germany
flattened Bootle, and few people wanted to think about the war. The shelters were now used for storage of gardening tools and bicycles, though children sometimes played in them when it rained. This
metal shed had become Seamus’s library, but it held just the one slim volume. He never corrupted the shelter with homework. Oh, no, this was too precious a place for multiplication, division
and catechism, because it was an area set aside for real and useful learning.

Reen and her husband had no children yet, and they lived in the O’Gara prefab, since the O’Garas now had a proper house with an upstairs. The boy’s relationship with his sister
had improved, though he wouldn’t look properly at the wedding album. There were three pictures of him and the horrible hat, and that was three too many in his opinion. Even the bride giggled
when she looked at the images of her little brother. Perhaps the poor imitation of a sailor’s headgear had been a stride too far, but she wouldn’t throw the photos away. Perhaps she had
a plan for when Seamus was older. She would show them to his friends, and he’d be doomed to a lifetime of
Hello, sailor
. ‘And I’ll kill her,’ he muttered frequently.
‘Making a show of me in front of all them people.’

The young hero in Seamus’s special book was Harry Burdon Jr, PI, and its author was American. Seamus didn’t want Mam, Dad, Gran or Grandpa to see the book, because it was the source
of the lad’s grand ambitions, and adults should not be allowed to encroach on a boy’s ideas. Grownups never approved. All they did was moan about difficulties, because they hadn’t
the imagination to do anything about anything. Why they didn’t attempt what he was about to try he could not work out. There might have been a row, he thought. Perhaps Gran had laid into some
people with that sharp tongue of hers and they had run away. He wasn’t running away. Oh, no. Seamus Walsh was on a mission, and nothing would persuade him to abandon it. Though if Gran found
out, he’d possibly end up in the scouse with the rest of the cheaper cuts.

Harry Burdon was a private detective. He was Junior because his dad had the same name, and Junior’s dad was a policeman in New York. Seamus did not have the advantages of Junior, as there
were no coppers in the family, but the Harry Burdon Junior Private Investigator story had become his textbook. Nothing was impossible. Young Harry had found kidnappers, thieves and shoplifters, so
he was definitely role model material.

However, Junior had further help, some of it of questionable quality. His assistant, Beanpole, was a long, thin person who did everything wrong, though he sometimes got it right by accident.
Beanpole was probably in the book to make people laugh, but it would be nice to have someone to talk to in real life. The trouble with real life was that school friends and young neighbours were
soft. Seamus failed to find one who might just own the staying power. The task he planned to undertake was massive, and he didn’t want any babies clinging to his apron strings.

Burdon Junior also got tips from his unsuspecting dad. It did not occur to Seamus that a seasoned New York cop should notice that his son was carrying on like Sherlock Holmes with a tall, thin
Watson either by his side or stuck head first in an oil drum somewhere.