The Liverpool Trilogy (32 page)

‘Thanks for asking. Some of it’s shoe leather, but some of it works.’

‘It can regenerate up to a point.’

‘I know. Where is she? Did you say your name’s Simon?’

‘Yes.’

‘Where’s my Lizzie?’

‘In the shed with both our mothers. Lucy found out about the wedding, and she and . . .’ he decided not to mention David, ‘she and my mother decided to give us a little celebration. In fact, I’ve come to collect some CDs from upstairs, so I’d better be quick.’

Alan lowered his head. ‘I can’t come and see her. It wouldn’t be right. But when the party’s over, tell Lizzie I love her.’ He gulped. The word love had scarcely visited his vocabulary for a long time. ‘And tell Lucy . . . Just tell her I’m sorry.’

‘OK.’ Simon dashed off in search of music while Alan walked into the hall and let himself out through the front door.

He crossed the lane and stared at Tallows for a while. He had been a selfish bastard and was a selfish bastard to this day. He wouldn’t change, because it was too late, and the life he had lived had been too full of resentment. But clouds formed by alcohol had blurred his judgement. At least he was beginning to see himself for what he was. The old maxim about giving and taking was starting to make sense. If Trish Styles paid off his huge debt, the one for which he should be serving time, he would moderate his behaviour.

It was an elegant house. He heard his boys screaming in the woods, saw Lizzie in a mud-spattered party frock, watched them playing, quarrelling, enjoying a game of cricket, scarpering when a window shattered as a ball entered the house. All gone now. Line-dancing was to be the price, together with bingo and cards. He would probably moan about life, but he had to pay Trish back. There was no way in which he might recompense Lucy, but she’d taken her pound of flesh, hadn’t she?

Hiding behind a hedge, he sat down and counted what remained of his fortune. Give or take, it was about two grand. Trish had blue eyes. They were frightened blue eyes. This money would be used to take away a bit of that terror. In some strange way, the caring for and protecting of Trish was also a repayment to Lucy. It wasn’t going to be easy, but he could only do his best. He might rail against donkeys and tea dances, but by God, he would stick to her. Trish wanted stability, but so did he. The fool he had been needed to be left in the past, because he required predictability, a timetable of sorts and freedom from debts and worries.

When he reached Darwen Road, he saw her and waved. Her little face lit up like a child’s at Christmas. He got into the passenger seat. ‘Hiya, kid,’ he said. ‘Well, here I am. Told you I’d be back, what? Come on, let’s have a smile.’

‘Hello, love. Are we going home now?’

He shook his head. ‘No. We’re off to look at sapphires.’

‘Are we?’

‘You can’t be engaged without a ring. Don’t start blubbering, I’m not in the mood. Right. Town. It’s thataway.’

Trish composed herself. ‘Did you find them?’

‘What?’

‘The brooch and the watch.’

Alan slapped his head with the flat of his hand. ‘Doh,’ he uttered in the style of Homer Simpson. ‘See, if I’d been pissed, I would have remembered. Tanked up on whisky, I never forgot a thing. I was daft in other ways, like judgement in the broad sense, but I never forgot little details. My body’s not used yet to being without booze.’ He turned and looked at her. ‘Don’t let me drink, love.’

‘You join AA and I’ll join Al-Anon. We can do it. I know we can.’

‘We can and we will,’ he said. ‘Now, I’ve got a bit of money, and we’re off to the greatest jeweller in the north. Sapphires and diamonds. Then if we’re quick, we’ll be back in Blackpool for your blessed bingo.’ Yes, it was time to pay his dues in full.

There were only five of them at the party, but they managed to produce enough noise to make the place seem full. To be fair, it was full, because thirty large, heart-shaped balloons took up a great deal of space. When the helium-filled intruders became too great a nuisance, the inevitable happened. David was the first to inhale, and the Queen would probably have laughed herself sick had she been privy to his rendition of the national anthem.

Lizzie delivered an ultra-falsetto ‘Amazing Grace’, Moira blessed the company with ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’, while Lucy chose to murder ‘Morning Has Broken’. ‘That was bloody awful,’ David announced. ‘I’m not sure I can live with that.’

A silence followed. Lizzie approached her mother. ‘Mums?’

‘It’s not my fault,’ David said. ‘I’m only following orders. She told the world I was going to marry her, and she filled me in only yesterday. Sorry, Louisa.’

Lucy held her head high. ‘I love him,’ she told her daughter. ‘I loved him when I was ten, but he was like a brother. Diane and I used to pray for a little brother, you see. But David’s not a brother any longer. Actually, he is longer, because he was a shrimp of a kid.’

‘So, you were as quick as we were, then.’ Liz grinned and waved a finger. ‘Mother, you can’t possibly be sure in so short a time. I’ll bet that was what you wanted to say to me and Simon.’

Lucy shrugged.

‘Did you open my bedroom door? Did you see us together with no clothes on?’

‘Yes.’

‘Ah, it wasn’t a dream.’ Liz turned her attention to David. ‘You’d better look after her, young man. I have raised my mother to a very high standard, and she doesn’t mix with riff-raff. Can you feed and house her? Can you keep her in the manner to which I have allowed her to become accustomed?’

He nodded and mumbled something about industrial cleaners and an oven with a missing door.

‘She’s used to ovens with a full complement of doors. Why industrial cleaners?’

David laughed. ‘Because even the dog was complaining about the squalor.’

‘Where is he?’ Liz asked.

‘Playing with the children next door. He loves kids, but he’s never eaten a whole one.’

Lucy stepped in. She warned her new son-in-law to hide all his clothes, because Liz would wear them when her own were dirty. She told him to employ a cleaner, since Liz’s idea of domestic hygiene was a square foot of visible carpet and a pair of matching socks.

Simon sighed. ‘I know. She already put me in the shabby picture. We’ll be fine. What can I say? Someone has to take her off your hands. You don’t want to be lumbered until she has to be auctioned off on eBay, one previous owner, buyer to collect. You wouldn’t get much unless you threw in a set of pans and a food mixer.’

Moira was happy. She was in the company of family and friends, was pleasantly drunk and, if she could hang about for a few more years, might become a grandma. Liz had declared her intention to live in London, to work only in Britain, probably as a waitress or an office temp, since good actors were ten a penny, and it was time she became minimally domesticated. They were hoping to live in London, since Lizzie’s dream had always been a tall, thin house with a long, narrow walled garden. For the time being, they would use her one-bedroom flat, and yes, she would have to be tidy.

‘My mother’s grinning like an ape,’ commented Simon.

‘She’s expecting.’ Lucy sat next to Moira. ‘She’s expecting a grandchild.’

Lizzie made an explosive sound. ‘Give us a few minutes, Moira.’

Lucy, too, was strangely happy. The young couple looked right together, sounded right, probably were right. There was a kindness in Simon that shone from his eyes – he must have inherited that quality from his mother.

The other reason for Lucy’s contentment sat at the opposite side of the room, confectioner’s custard spilled on his shirt, a silver horseshoe dangling from a ribbon round his neck, while a party hat folded from a page of the
Financial Times
sat at a rakish angle on his head. He was counting his famous rubber bands. Lucy smiled. He had not grown up. Please God, he never would.

*

Richard was having trouble coming to terms with isolation on the family front. He was in contact with patients and medics on a daily basis, did his house calls, and spoke to reps from pharmaceutical companies, but he remained a needful man. A house without Moira in it was a ship abandoned. His girls were never in, his son had disappeared, and a terrible picture of the future was developing before his eyes.

It didn’t look good. He missed Lucy. The thought of her sleeping next door, with or without David Vincent, was torture. The knowledge that she wasn’t within reach was worse. He loved two women. One had been in his life since the 1970s, the other for a couple of months. Moira was the one who kept his feet within touching distance of the ground, while Lucy had now become a torment who haunted his dreams both day and night. His wife was dying, and the gorgeous female who had bought Stoneyhurst would never be his.

He stepped out of the shower and pulled on a robe. Sometimes he was ashamed of himself; on other occasions, he told himself he was normal, marginally oversexed and very lonely. Moira had always been happy to listen and advise, but her health was deteriorating, and he didn’t want to hurt her any more. Lexi was threatening to do just that, to break the heart of a wife who remained loved at a level that could not be understood by someone Richard thought of as a mere tart. So Tom Rice was trying to keep tabs on her, but he was temporarily out of action due to an ankle injury. Richard trusted Rice and only Rice, so he had to wait for the man’s health to improve.

He dried his hair. Moira had accepted his dalliances with women of sense and social acceptability, but she would never forgive him for Lexi. Had she met the working girl in other circumstances, Moira would have been polite, even supportive, but street women were for other men, those who didn’t give a damn for their own health or for their families’ peace of mind. ‘I bet Moira knows anyway,’ he told the towel. ‘I can’t go on like this. Something in me is going to give.’ Never before had he felt so angry and inadequate. Lexi had to be frightened off. She couldn’t destroy his career, but she might well hasten the death of a woman who deserved a more tranquil life, however short that span might turn out to be.

‘I want to kill the bloody woman,’ he said as he shaved. ‘I’d love to break her scrawny neck. Hurry up, Tom Rice. I need to be told what she’s up to.’ One thing was certain. He wanted to stop the Lexi business before Moira came home. He had only days.

The smell hit him as he descended the stairs to the ground floor. On the doormat,
The Times
, Moira’s
Daily Mail
and assorted items of post failed to cover completely the stuff from which the stench emerged. It was dog excrement. Loosely wrapped in the pages of some gaudy magazine, it had spilled across an area of several square feet, and Richard felt his gorge rising. A doctor was used to unpleasant odours – they were part of life, and certainly an element in death – but this was different. It was deliberate, foul and sickening. Had Moira been here, she might have fallen in it. And the stairlift people were coming today, as were patients.

Should anyone trouble to ask in times to come when he had actually snapped, he would surely nominate this moment. A woman of absolutely no significance had done this to upset him, and to damage Moira. Temper rose, underlining his need to vomit. He ran to the downstairs bathroom and relieved himself of bile, since his stomach contained no food. The bitterness of gall was a clear reminder of his hatred for Lexi. All sense of proportion was deserting him as he cleaned up the dog mess in order to open up for morning surgery. It had seemed so small a thing, that brief dalliance with a shop girl. But she was evil. Like many cancers, she needed to be excised for the greater good.

He used almost a full bottle of Domestos, and the area near the door stank of it, but it was an acceptable stench. The bloody woman had even deprived him of his crossword, and he could only hope that nothing of significance had arrived in the mail, most of which was now on fire in the back garden. He scrubbed his hands until the skin glowed before rubbing in an anti-bacterial gel. There would be patients soon, and life had to go on. Up to a point, that was.

Shirley arrived. She mentioned the smell, and he told her he had spilled a sample taken from a patient. ‘Can’t be too careful,’ he said as he walked into his area of work. A secretary entered the scene, the phone began to ring, and Richard stepped into his role. Doctors Shipman and Crippen visited his mind, but he sent them on their way when notes and coffee were delivered to his desk.

He dealt with pregnancy, an irritable bowel, two cases of chronic depression, asthma, and a plethora of coughs and colds. But in his mind he was punishing Lexi, and many patients were surprised because for once he issued sick notes as if they were confetti.

Last of all, he gave an audience to a female who was not on his books.

Carol Makin sat, and the chair groaned in protest. ‘I seen it,’ she announced.

‘You seen – I mean you saw what?’

‘That Litherland Lexi putting something through your door.’

The silence that followed was deafening and long. ‘Oh,’ he managed at last.

‘Listen, doc. You know how people tell you stuff what you can’t tell nobody?’

He processed the sentence before nodding.

‘Me and our Dee has to be like that, because we’ve looked after some famous people, and professionals like yourself. Now, all I know is this – where there’s Litherland Lexi, there’s trouble. If you need me and my daughter to give you a hand, say the word.’

‘Right.’

Carol leaned forward, and the chair complained again. ‘Even her own family doesn’t want nothing to do with her.’ Carol didn’t like Richard much, but he helped the sick, and Lexi helped nobody but herself. ‘So think on,’ she added. ‘We’re next door, and we’ll be looking after your house and Moira when Shirley leaves.’ She stood up.

He imagined that the chair breathed a sigh of relief. ‘Thank you,’ he said carefully. ‘But there’s nothing for you to worry about. She’s mentally ill and beginning to imagine things. They have it on the medical grapevine that she may well be suicidal due to repeated infections of a sexual nature. Even royalty’s had its mad members as a result of syphilis. Now, I haven’t told you any of that. Miss Phillips joined my list, and I sent her to someone better qualified to deal with her particular ailment. She took the rejection badly, because in her head she’s had a close relationship with me. I shall telephone her doctor as soon as you go. Do not approach her. And I am trusting you, Carol.’