Lovers and Liars (24 page)

‘Why was that then?’ The landlord took up a cloth and began to wipe the counter.

‘My family … the farm. They were my life.’ Michael recalled the pleasure of bringing in crops and gathering the harvest. There was no greater feeling in the world than labouring under the sun, stripped to the waist with the sun on your back and God’s green and plentiful land stretched out before you. ‘I expect you think I couldn’t work if I tried,’ he accused the two men, ‘but I’ve worked my fingers to the bone on that place, and never regretted a single minute of it.’

‘So why did you leave it?’ The landlord was cynical. He’d heard it all before, from vagabonds and dreamers, who lied through their teeth every time they opened their mouths. He observed Michael, with his filthy beard and grubby clothes, and wondered why this one should be any different.

‘Things just got on top of me.’

Michael mentally relived the events that had combined to bring him to his knees: the bad seasons and failing harvests, the inevitable debts that piled up out of his control, the awful worry of it all, leading to sleepless nights and a kind of madness by day. Then his mother’s passing – the burial of his stillborn son … his eyes filled with tears.

‘I thought I were man enough to deal with it all,’ he said in a choked voice. ‘Only I weren’t, or I wouldn’t be here talking to you, would I?’

The slight fellow with the tash regarded him with suspicion. ‘Under all that dirt and grime, you look able enough to work,’ he observed. ‘It might do you the world o’ good if you turned your hand to a day’s honest labouring. Make a bit o’ money. Get yourself cleaned up and find decent lodgings. You never know, you might eventually find it in yourself to go home and put things right.’

Michael angrily dismissed his suggestion. ‘What would you know?’ he growled. ‘You weren’t there! You know nothing.’

‘Well, I know what I see, and that’s enough!’ The big man felt no sympathy for him. ‘As far as I can tell, you’ve no damned right to feel sorry for yourself,’ he snapped. ‘Wasting your miserable life roaming the back streets, grubbing for food and talking of what you’ve lost, when there are good, hardworking men who would give their right arm to own a farm and have a loving family.’

Michael did not like the picture the other man was painting. ‘Like I said … you know nothing.’

‘Look at yourself!’ the fellow went on heedlessly. ‘You’re a disgrace. You smell o’ dog-piss and midden rubbish, and here you are, telling us you’ve got a farm an’ family to keep you warm, and you expect such as us to feel sorry for you!’

Narrowing his eyes, he gave Michael a suspicious look. ‘Or are you lying? Mebbe you don’t have a farm, or even a family, come to that. Mebbe you’re just a dreamer like the rest of us.’

‘I’m no liar! I worked the farm alongside my father. And I do have a family, just like I said.’ Michael lowered his gaze. ‘The best family a man could ever have.’ Shame engulfed him.

‘Oh, you do, do you?’ The slight fellow’s eyes glittered with hatred. ‘Well, aren’t you the lucky one, eh?’ Prodding Michael in the chest he said threateningly, ‘Well, I’m not so lucky, more’s the pity. I’ve got no family, y’see? There’s no farm neither. I eat, sleep and exist in a back room in some dingy lodging-house. Some days, I’m lucky to earn a crust by sweeping the streets, clearing away the muck that you and your kind leave behind. But I’ll tell you this much, my friend! I can walk down the street holding my head up high, ’cause I don’t beg nor steal from nobody!’

Momentarily silenced by the other man’s outburst, Michael quickly downed the dregs of his ale, and called for another.

‘You’ve had enough!’ Stirred by the slight fellow’s brave words, the landlord took the jug away. ‘What’s more, I don’t like the look of you, so I’ll thank you to leave.’

Seeing how the situation was worsening, Michael didn’t argue. Instead, he bade them good day and made his way out.

He walked awhile, then sat down on the bench outside the marketplace and began to wonder what it would be like to ‘go home and put things right’, like the fellow suggested.

‘I’m not ready to go home,’ he murmured. Made uneasy by the idea of walking back into Potts End, having to face the suffering his leaving must have caused, his courage left him altogether. One day he’d go back and ask Aggie for her forgiveness, but not yet.

Getting up from the seat, he began his aimless wanderings again. Yet in the turmoil of his mind he had not forgotten the incident in the alley. He recalled John’s kindness, and the words he had shouted after him. He found himself repeating them now. ‘ “The derelict site by the canal. You’ll find me there most days”.’

He paused, the merest whisper of a smile lighting his face. John Hanley, he thought with a tut. Whoever would have thought it, eh? And the burning question: Did
he
recognise
me,
I wonder?

Michael thought of all the places he’d been to all over Liverpool, and suddenly realised which site John had meant. In fact, many a time he had rested his weary bones in that old outbuilding.

As he moved on, John’s generous offer continued to haunt him. Now, when he was sinking so low he could hardly recognise himself, it was something to think about. But did he really want to see John in such close quarters?

Salmesbury was a small place, where everyone knew almost everyone else. John must be aware of his desertion of family and responsibilities. But then, as he recalled, John Hanley had been sweet on his Emily. So what was he doing here in Liverpool?

Thinking of Emily, his beloved daughter, with her sunny smile, her cheeky plaits and her love of life, Michael fell against the wall and began to weep. Afterwards, when the pain was eased, he squared his shoulders and walked on.

Suddenly he was overwhelmed with a need for his family.

But there was a way to go yet.

Part 4
June, 1907
Ghosts

Chapter 10

W
AKING WITH A
start, Emily scrambled out of bed.

Quickly putting on her robe, she went on tiptoe to the door and let herself out onto the landing, where she stood for a time, her ear cocked for the sound she was sure had woken her. Was it Grandad, having one of his bad dreams? She glanced towards his room. Or was it Cathleen?

She gave a long, weary sigh. Whoever it was must have settled down again. The house was quiet now.

Making her way along the landing, she wondered whether she really had heard a cry. I must have been dreaming, she thought. The first bad dream was some two years ago, the night after John had written to tell her he’d found somebody else. Since then, haunted by memories and regrets, she had forgotten what it was to sleep through the night.

As quickly and quietly as she could, Emily checked the child. Satisfied that she was all right, she then went on to check her grandfather. Thomas Isaac too, was sound asleep, his contented snores reverberating through the house. No problem there. She smiled; that dear old man was never a problem.

Now, as she turned away, she caught sight of something out of the corner of her eye. Moving nearer to the landing window, she peeped out.

There was a light on in what used to be the brick-built storeroom, but which Clem Jackson had recently claimed as his own private place. Unwanted and cramped in the farmhouse, and needing somewhere to take his long procession of women, he had turned the storeroom into his own little kingdom.

Emily was relieved that he’d put a distance between them. What she and the family really wanted, though, was for him to go away and never come back. He was a hated man. But that didn’t seem to bother him at all.

Sickened by thoughts of her uncle, she hurried back to her bedroom, climbed into bed and closed her eyes. But sleep was impossible. Her mind was too wide awake with troubled thoughts of John. In spite of him cruelly deserting her, she still loved and missed him.

Skewing to the edge of the bed, she reached over to the bedside cabinet, taking John’s note from the drawer where she had kept it since that day when Lizzie brought it to her. She didn’t open it immediately. Instead she held it tight to her breast, eyes closed and her heart beating fifteen to the dozen.

‘Oh, John! How could you do it to us?’ she asked softly. ‘How could you forget everything we meant to each other?’ Even now she found it almost impossible to believe that after all their dreams and plans, he could simply walk away, into another woman’s arms.

Hesitantly, she unfolded the letter and read it for the umpteenth time, her heart breaking all over again.

After a while, she returned the letter to its place, put on her robe again and went softly down the stairs to the kitchen.

Behind her, pausing in the doorway of her bedroom, Aggie watched her leave. Every night was the same; her daughter would pace the floor restlessly, wander round the house. ‘You’ve a lot to answer for, John Hanley!’ she hissed. ‘Leading her on, then dropping her wi’out the common decency to tell her to her face that you didn’t want her any more.’ Sending a letter was the coward’s way out.

Suddenly the face of her own husband came into her mind. For a moment the tears swam in her sorry eyes, and then they were gone, blinked away in anger. He and John Hanley were a right pair o’ cowards!

Yet, in the same way that Emily still loved John in spite of everything, she herself loved Michael.

Not a day went by when she didn’t look over the hills, expecting to see his lean, homely figure heading for Potts End. The prospect had warmed her many a night, but there was no doubt in her heart that if he walked through that door, at any time, she would welcome him with open arms.

For now though, Emily needed her.

With that in mind, she followed in her daughter’s footsteps, down the stairs and into the kitchen.

Unaware that her mother had entered the room, Emily was standing by the window, arms folded, her gaze reaching across to Clem Jackson’s crude habitat.

‘All right, are you, love?’ Aggie’s concerned voice gentled across the room.

Startled, Emily swung round and for one revealing moment, her hatred of that man, the father of her own daughter, burned bright in her eyes.

Aggie saw it, and not for the first time, she was afraid. There was a certain look in her daughter’s eyes that went far beyond pure hatred, and it frightened her.

Quickly now, she crossed the room to see what it was that had disturbed Emily to such an extent. When she saw the light in Clem’s place, she grabbed the curtains and flung them together. Her brother had probably got one of his trollops in there. Lately, entertaining streetwomen was a regular thing.

Aggie looked at Emily; at the raw emotion still etched into her face. ‘What is it, love? What’s wrong?’

The girl grew nervous. ‘What do you mean?’ Just now when she’d been looking across at her uncle’s place, she was thinking about the day in the barn, when he had brutally possessed her. She hadn’t realised how, in that moment, the murderous intent she felt for him had been alive in her face.

Aggie took her by the shoulders. ‘I know you hate him,’ she said softly. ‘We all do. Only, it seems something more with you.’ She had to ask. ‘Did he ever hurt
you,
child? Has he ever made improper suggestions to you?’

Emily felt the blood rush to her face. ‘No!’ Shock and disbelief that her mother could ask such a thing made her lies all the more convincing to Aggie. ‘I blame him for coming between me and John. It was him who warned John off!’

She wriggled out of her mother’s grip and went to stand with her back to the wall, her voice breaking with emotion as she said, ‘I’ll never forgive him. Yes, I hate him! I hate the way he rules this family like the bully he is. I hate how he carries on his filthy ways in front of us all … in front of little Cathleen! And the pity of it is that there isn’t a thing we can do to stop him.’

‘All right, lass, I understand.’ Aggie was more settled in her mind now about the suspicions she’d harboured. But she had little reason to be content. ‘Come and sit down. I’ll put the kettle on, and we can talk awhile. But then you’ve to go back to bed and try to get some sleep. We’ve a deal of work to do on the morrow, and we’ll neither of us be capable of anything, if we don’t take care of ourselves.’

Good as her word, Aggie put the kettle on, made the tea and cut two small helpings of her best fruit-cake. ‘There y’are, lass.’ She set the tray between them. ‘Now then, what woke you out of your bed, eh?’

Emily shook her head. ‘I’m not sure,’ she answered, taking up her tea and slowly sipping it.

Aggie did the same. ‘One of your bad dreams, was it?’

‘I think it must have been.’

‘Dreaming about John Hanley, were you?’

Emily smiled up at her. ‘I can’t forget him, Mam. I still can’t understand why he did what he did.’

Aggie was straightforward as ever. ‘It’s like he said in his letter, lass. He just fell out of love with you and in love with someone else.’

Emily still could not accept it. ‘I find it so hard to believe. We loved each other too much. I could never love anyone else the way I love John.’ Her gaze fell away. ‘How could he do it, Mam? How could he just turn his back on me, after what we meant to each other?’

Aggie sighed. ‘I know it’s hard, lass, but it wouldn’t be the first time it’s happened and I’m sure it won’t be the last.’

Emily paused before asking, ‘Is that what’s happened with Dad, d’you think?’ She didn’t want to hurt her mother by raising painful issues, but her father had been gone so long, it was like he was never coming home.

Aggie was visibly surprised at her daughter’s pointed question. ‘I think he just gave way under the weight of debt and troubles,’ she answered simply.

Emily valued her conversations with Aggie, and never more than now. ‘If it had been another woman, would you be badly hurt by it?’

‘Aye, lass, I would.’

‘Enough to shut him out of your life for ever?’

‘Aw, love.’ Aggie smiled knowingly. ‘I’m not saying you should shut John out of your life. What I’m saying is this: he was the one who did the shutting out. You mustn’t spend your life waiting for him to walk in the door. He might never come back, and one day it’ll be too late for you to start again. You’ve had no word from him in years.’