A Liverpool Song Read online

  ‘I’ll do her for slander.’

  ‘Will you? She’s married to a top barrister. Now, go to bed and leave me alone.’ He switched off the phone.

  Applause from the doorway made him turn. ‘Stay,’ he told the dog, who took no notice whatsoever and bounded over to the two girls, who bent to pet him. After all the untruths like ‘Good dog’, and ‘Who’s a lovely boy?’ the girls came into the room. ‘So he’s looking for her?’ said Kate.

  ‘And you. He thinks you did all the damage.’

  Kate shook her head. ‘No, it was madam here. She was bloody magnificent.’

  Andrew cleared his throat. ‘Don’t swear in front of Storm. He has enough bad habits as it is.’

  Helen dug her sister in the ribs. ‘See? I told you your warped humour’s inherited. Daddy never spoke a great deal, but every sentence was a killer.’ She sat on the floor. ‘What have I done, Storm? What have I done?’ The dog licked her face till she giggled. ‘Such a soppy article you are.’

  ‘Why the dog?’ Kate asked.

  ‘It dashed in during a thunderstorm, undernourished and afraid. It stayed. Eva wasn’t best pleased, but I’ve never seen her best pleased. And what we have here is just seven months’ worth. God knows how tall he’ll be full grown. I wonder if we could get his legs shortened?’

  Kate shook her head. ‘The NHS won’t touch it, so you’d have to go BUPA. Is Storm a member?’

  ‘No, but I did a good job on the vet, so I play on his gratitude. What do you think? Three inches?’

  Helen sighed. ‘I have a dead mother, two daughters and no son, an errant soon to be ex-husband, and the father from hell.’ She looked hard at him. ‘She is definitely your daughter.’

  Kate hooted with laughter. ‘Listen who’s talking. You might be slow to boil, but once you get there, you are bloody dangerous.’

  ‘No swearing,’ mouthed Andrew silently while pointing to the dog. He raised his voice to normal level. ‘I have to say, Helen, that the destruction of good wine is sacrilege. But he deserved it. Right. Toast and drinking choc with squirty cream, or double brandies all round?’

  They opted for toast and chocolate squirties. Helen needed her thinking head, while Kate wanted to sleep without the promise of a headache in the morning. ‘Did you text Sofia?’ Kate asked.

  ‘Yes. She’s going to pick up her things tomorrow and get a taxi to here. Thank goodness her English is a sight better than my Polish. She says she isn’t afraid of him, but she might put 999 on speed dial. Lovely girl. She’s marvellous with the children.’ Tears threatened, and she blinked them away. ‘Oh Kate. I am so going to miss the man I thought I had.’

  ‘I know. But you needed to find out for yourself, love. If I’d told you during your pregnancy or just after Cassie’s birth . . . unfortunately, you got the awful truth while you’re still weakened anyway. Look at me, babe. I know you love your job, but get a portfolio. You should be on the front of magazines.’

  ‘Don’t talk daft; you know I’m thirty.’

  ‘And you know you’re beautiful.’

  ‘OK, but I’m not taking my clothes off. He was my husband, so that was different.’

  ‘Hmm. It certainly was. I’m glad you left the reminder next to the wedding photo.’

  Helen almost laughed. ‘He wanted me to be an advertisement for the shops. All a woman needs is Pope’s jewellery – that sort of thing. I would have been veiled digitally, though not by him, the self-elected camera expert and purist. Well, if he uses that picture without paperwork signed by me, I’ll go for the jugular.’

  ‘Because you won’t sign.’

  ‘Spot on, Kate.’

  They sat in a row on the floor, daughter, father, daughter, dog opposite and staring at them as they ate toast. They compared squirty moustaches. ‘Oh look,’ cried Kate. ‘It’s Mr Sanderson, OBE. Such a dignified man. Did you know he’d just retired?’

  Helen forced herself to eat. She was feeding a baby, so the knots in her stomach had to be ignored. He was home. Tomorrow, poor Sofia had to face him on her own.

  ‘Helen?’

  ‘Yes, Daddy?’

  ‘Do you want me to go and help your nanny tomorrow?’

  Was he reading her mind? ‘What if he hits you?’

  ‘I shall take my guard dog. Well, guard pup.’

  It was then that Helen had a fit of hysteria. She fell about laughing at the moustaches, the salivating animal, the memory of what she’d done to Daniel Pope’s belongings, the idea of Daddy and Storm acting tough. Laughter became tears, tears turned to hiccups, and Storm ate what was left of her toast.

  Kate jumped up and shook her sister. ‘I’ll slap you hard, Helen.’

  She calmed down slowly, but the hiccups remained fierce.

  Andrew observed. They’d probably been like this since childhood, dependent on each other. He had worked, Mary had worked, but he had to start from now, because clocks and calendars had no reverse gears. ‘When you’ve got your diaphragm into some kind of order, give me the address of your nanny, then text her and say I’ll pick her up at about nine.’

  ‘Are you taking the dog?’ Kate asked.

  The dog in question woofed.

  ‘Shut up,’ his master ordered.

  Storm woofed again.

  ‘No, he can stay here. Storm remains a work in progress, not fit for Neston. But he has a detached residence of his own in the back garden. I’ll stick him in there with bones and toys. You should shop for food, Kate. Helen, lend your children to Eva. She may even smile.’

  The girls went off to bed. Andrew sat with his dog. ‘Four beautiful women in my life now, Stormy. No space in the house, and you and I are the only blokes. Kate will leave, but the rest will stay for a while. In your basket. Go on. See you in the morning.’

  It was an icy-blue day, scarcely a cloud in the sky and a definite nip in the air. Andrew, having left chaos behind, was glad to escape in his car. Sarah was screaming because she had woken in an unfamiliar room, and Cassie had joined in to keep her sibling company. Held in the unusually tense arms of her mother, the baby was not a happy bunny.

  ‘You’re running away again,’ Andrew accused himself. Eva had not yet arrived; let her take up the slack when she got here. Andrew was a man on a mission, and a man on a mission should not be held up. Kate, too, had disappeared into the bowels of Sainsbury’s, where she had a list as long as an arm. She would leave this afternoon, as she had a family in Woolton, and Richard had done his fair share of late.

  He found the house on Southport Road in Bootle. It was a neat semi with an apron of grass at the front, some pretty borders and an old car in the driveway. He knocked on the door.

  A woman approached. He could see her through the frosted glass, and she was shouting, in a foreign language, something or other to someone or other in one of the rooms. She opened the door. ‘Hello,’ she said. ‘You are father of Mrs Pope?’

  ‘Yes. Andrew Sanderson.’

  ‘My Sofia, she is not liking the man, the Mr Pope. He is saying to her things she not repeat to me, her mother. He is animal.’

  Andrew offered no reply.

  ‘I am Anya Jasinski.’ She shook his hand, her expression solemn. ‘My daughter Sofia, she will be here shortly. I cannot introducing you to my husband, because he die.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Yes, is bad. We come here for better life, he was builder. But heart stop very sudden, he gone. Now, I clean for job and my Sofia, she is nanny. She like very much Helen and children, but not the mister.’

  ‘Helen left him, Mrs Jasinski. She’s staying with me in Blundellsands. Does Sofia keep a lot of things in Neston?’

  ‘No, she have little. But Helen kind and gave her some things and sewed them right for her. Altering I think is word.’

  ‘Good. Then come with us to ease your mind.’

  ‘This is OK I come?’

  ‘Oh yes.’

  ‘I get coat.’

  While Anya got coat, Sofia appeared. ‘Mr Sa
nderson?’

  ‘Hello, Sofia. Yes, I’m Helen’s dad, and you will be living in my house for a while. Helen and the children are already there.’

  ‘Good,’ she said. ‘Her husband is a pig, but I said nothing, because she was pregnant, then Cassie came. I will sit in the car.’

  It occurred to Andrew that he was collecting females. He now had Kate, Helen, Sarah, Cassie, Sofia, Anya and, of course, Eva. Kate would leave today, but he and Storm would continue outnumbered. Did he mind? No, he found himself strangely content. Perhaps he might start now to become a daddy and a granddaddy.

  When all three travellers were settled in the car, he realized that he had not so much a backseat driver as a backseat chatterer. Anya didn’t like the tunnel. She wittered in Polish when the car entered the darkness, praised the Lord when they emerged at the other end. In fractured English, she exclaimed over everything she saw.

  ‘She doesn’t get out often,’ Sofia whispered from the front passenger seat.

  ‘This I am hear,’ said the Voice.

  ‘Her English is improving,’ Sofia said.

  ‘This I am also hear, too.’

  Sofia looked over her shoulder. ‘Mama, if you have also, you don’t need too.’

  ‘Am I need three and four?’

  Ah, humour. Andrew managed not to grin. It was clear that he had walked in on a conversation that had gone on for months, if not years. Helen was waiting until Cassie was ready for nursery, at which point Sofia would take a course in teaching English to Polish people. She would do well. According to his daughter, Anya had arrived in England knowing just ‘yes’ and ‘no’. Sofia was a good teacher.

  They reached the ‘better’ side of the Wirral, and Anya entered an ecstasy of oohs and ahs that were recognizable in any language.

  Sofia opened her mobile phone and pressed a number. ‘I am coming for my things,’ she said tersely. ‘No, I have no idea why that was done to your clothes. My mother is with me, as is Helen’s father. What? No, no, she is not here. She is in the house of a friend. When I reach your house, you will not come near me, you will not touch me, you will not speak to me, or I shall tell my mother in Polish about what happened. No. It wasn’t nothing. Or if it was nothing, that was because I threatened to kick you in the bollocks.’

  Andrew decided that his younger companion’s English was beyond the merely good.

  ‘What means bullocks?’ Anya asked.

  ‘Young cattle,’ Andrew replied.

  ‘Ah. These I did not see in field.’

  Andrew found himself wondering how many of Daniel’s shrivelling testes would be needed to fill an egg cup, let alone a field. The man would be sorely diminished in the eyes of his colleagues, his fellows at the golf club, the people of Neston. The whole world loved Helen; the jewellery community adored her. She was one of those rare women who could do justice to pearls. Whenever Lancashire or Cheshire Life took photographs at functions, she was placed at the front and in the centre. Well, Daniel had certainly been careless with his greatest asset.

  Thornton Hall hove into view.

  ‘This is hotel?’ asked the Voice.

  ‘This is the Pope mansion, Mama.’

  ‘In there could live a whole village, Sofia.’

  ‘Yes, it’s a good house, Mama, but a bad man.’

  ‘I see.’

  They rolled up the gravel drive. If the disturbed chippings scratched his Merc, Andrew would be sending a bill to this creature. He switched off the engine. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘Onward Christian soldiers, marching as to war. Come on, ladies. Let’s rescue Sofia’s clothes.’

  Four

  Andrew didn’t want to move house. He was used to Crompton Way. This ring road, named after the inventor of the spinning mule, was home, and how would Toodles accept the shift to a different part of this huge town? Cats were acutely aware of their place in the world, and the achievement of that position involved a precise and complicated scientific process.

  It took months for a feline to mark its borders, to learn where was safe enough to lie in sunshine, or climb a tree to a point from which it might descend with dignity and without the help of the fire brigade or screaming residents with stepladders. Cats made friends and enemies, and such contacts were vital in the delineation of territorial rights. It wasn’t fair. She was just settling down, and she was only a kitten. What if she got lost? What if she tried to find her way back here and got run over by passing traffic?

  ‘Toodles and I don’t want to go,’ Andrew told his mother. ‘Chorley New Road isn’t my idea of fun. And why move from a semi to an end of terrace? It makes no sense. I think Dad’s losing his grip.’

  ‘Darling, it will be right on top of your school and very close to my work. It makes sense for both of us. And it’s by no means an unpleasant house – bigger than this one.’

  ‘I’ve no wish to live near school. And there’s no garden. Toodles likes a garden.’

  ‘So do I, Andrew. I have plans to brighten up the yard with some colourful pieces of Victoriana. We’ll have plants climbing over a mangle, flowers in dolly tubs and zinc baths – it will be fine. I’ve even thought of old mirrors to make the space look bigger. It was bigger, actually, until the kitchen was extended. But oh, yes, I have several plans. Your father’s building a beautiful kitchen for us.’

  He had plans, too. He wanted to locate Heathfield Farm, work in the fields, get to know the people who lived there, the lie of the land, why his mother was out of touch with her family—

  ‘Andrew? You seem preoccupied these days. You’ve scarcely touched the piano. I can’t remember when I last heard you practising.’

  He was preoccupied. It would soon be time to return to school, and he was planning to be far too busy for school. In his opinion, the most useful parts of education bore no relation to chalk, blackboard and desiccated masters in scruffy gowns and worn-out shoes. Those men floated along corridors as if they were visitors from a distant and very different planet where knowledge grew on trees, though it could be analysed only by the precious few. And the precious few hovered on clouds of academia until brought to earth by the needs of unimportant schoolboys.

  ‘Andrew?’

  ‘It is definitely boring,’ he pronounced. ‘I learn more out here than I do in the hallowed halls of Bolton School. It’s so stuffy and serious and seriously simple.’

  ‘Only because you’re far too clever for it. Learn the virtue called patience.’

  ‘They don’t teach that. It’s not on the curriculum.’

  Emily laughed. ‘Life will teach you patience, son. It’s something we collect over years like cigarette cards. It will arrive.’

  Dad was a dictator. He should grow a moustache, adopt a funny walk and become the Führer, because he simply made a decision, and everyone was expected to follow his lead. ‘You don’t want to move, Mother. I know you’d rather stay here. Why don’t we get a vote? Is there no chance of democracy setting foot inside our family?’

  Emily shrugged lightly. This son of hers was too clever for his own good; he spoke like an adult, demanded to be treated as an adult. ‘Your dad has his reasons, and I’m sure they’re valid.’

  ‘Because he was beaten up by that man?’

  ‘Not just that. As I said, it’s a larger house. Up a nearby side street, there’s a building he can rent as a garage, and it will take even the biggest van for carrying his furniture. The house has a better kitchen and bathroom, four bedrooms, beautiful fireplaces, the sort that have been thrown away by stupid people – it’s a nice place, very solid and well constructed. Another point – it’s near many of his clients. Most of them live in the better houses further up Chorley New Road.’

  ‘But this is a nice house, Mother.’

  ‘The move is what he wants, Andrew.’

  ‘What about what we want? Don’t we count? Don’t we have a say in the matter? My best friend’s just round the corner.’ A thought fell into his mind. Dropped from nowhere, it bounced into and out of his mouth witho
ut allowing time for processing. ‘Where are your friends?’ he asked. ‘Over the hills and far away?’ He wished he could bite it all back, especially the last bit. It had sounded like mockery, as if he were mimicking the answer she had given to him when he’d asked about her provenance. Sometimes, he went too far.

  She put down the pie whose uncooked crust she had been trimming. ‘Right. Sit down and I’ll tell you. Not the details; the bare bones must suffice for now. I suppose you’re old enough to need and deserve some degree of explanation about my past.’

  He sat.

  ‘I am from a farming family. My parents wanted me to marry someone with land, and they refused absolutely to accept your father, who was a penniless orphan. After the army, he decided to train as a carpenter, and I admired his determination. Your father does nothing by halves; it was always plain that he would excel in his chosen field. You inherited that trait, so be grateful.’

  ‘Where did you meet?’

  ‘Oh, it happened quite by accident. He was on a picnic with friends, and we got talking. After that, he came up to . . . to the farm regularly. Mother and Father rejected him out of hand, and I didn’t want them to push me into a marriage just to gain acreage. I ran away, met my sister a few weeks later, and told her I was married. She said all but Great-aunt Celia had disowned me. And that, as they say, was that.’

  ‘Great-aunt Celia left you the piano?’

  ‘Yes, she left the piano to me. Now, Andrew, please be aware that I have no regrets. My marriage isn’t perfect, but I feel better about it than I would have had my parents had their way. I saw myself as just another item in a dowry, as if I were being swapped for four camels, a donkey and a new tent. The whole thing was too Middle Eastern for my liking. As for my friends, they are scattered to the winds; we were educated privately, and the other girls were boarders from all over the place.’