No Greater Love (61 page)

Marilyn panted behind. ‘Wait, man, I’ve got a stone in me shoe.’

Jo turned, hands on hips, her unruly red hair glinting like burnished copper in the October afternoon sun. ‘You were daft to buy them,’ she pronounced, watching her friend hopping along the pavement, one shoe in hand, fair ponytail bouncing. It was the one thing they differed over; clothes, Jo thought. She was content to run around in wellies and her brother Colin’s old gabardine. Shorts in summer, dungarees in winter were the only choices worth bothering about. Every Sunday her father tried to coax her into a dress for Sunday School at the Methodist Hall, and every Sunday she refused. Jo would deign to put on a tartan skirt whenever her Auntie Pearl returned from sea, but they were rare and special occasions. She would do anything for her beloved aunt, except wear a frock of course. Whereas Marilyn showed a baffling amount of interest in the latest craze for miniskirts and plastic clothing. But then her mother, Mrs Leishman, was a seamstress at the co-op and was doing a nice side-line at home, taking up the hems of fashion-conscious neighbours.

Jo linked her arm through her friend’s and pulled her into Dodds’ corner shop where they spent her sixpence on sherbet fountains and a piece of bubblegum each. Thanking the cheerful Mrs Craney, they sauntered out into the late sunshine, blowing large bubbles that popped in the sharp air.

‘Let’s gan to the park,’ Jo suggested, passing the end of Jericho Street where they lived.

‘Mam’ll be expecting us,’ Marilyn replied, unsure.

‘We’ll not stay long,’ Jo assured, steering her forward, ‘just pick up a few bits for the bonfire.’ She was reluctant to return too early, for Mrs Leishman would keep them in the house and fuss if they made a mess or knocked into her nest of tables and china ornaments. In her own house, she and Colin could leave things lying about or make crumbs on the bed without anyone telling them off. Her father did not seem to notice and she did not have a mother. Jo thought she was lucky that her mother had died so long ago she could not remember her, so it did not hurt. In fact she gloried in having one tragic parent who had died of a ‘weak heart’, as her father put it, while her friends had mothers who nagged at them to brush their hair and tidy the house.

Besides, she had Auntie Pearl, who, when she wasn’t sailing the world on a merchant ship, breezed in with exotic presents of painted camels and gaudy dolls and took them out to Carrick’s for tea. And there was Ivy Duggan, Mark’s grandmother, who lived in Nile Street down by the docks and opened her door and biscuit tin to all her grandson’s friends.

Thinking about Mark Duggan seemed to conjure him up, for as they took a short cut across the Green, they found him playing football with Colin and Skippy. All summer, the streets of Wallsend had resounded to the thud of ball on brick as boys re-enacted England’s four-two win over Germany in the World Cup. Jo ran forward and whacked the loose ball so hard her wellie flew off and hit Skippy Jackson.

‘Nick off!’ Skippy yelled and hurled the boot back at her. ‘Girls can’t play footie!’

‘Well I can,’ she replied, pulling a face at him. He had never been as friendly towards her since his year away in Australia. His parents had gone out on a £10 ticket but grown homesick so quickly they were back in thirteen months. Mark had nicknamed him Skippy after the TV kangaroo and now no one ever called him Billy. He took a swipe at Jo.

‘Leave her alone, Skippy man,’ Colin intercepted at once, but gave his sister a warning look. ‘Shouldn’t you be round at the Leishmans’?’

Jo gave him an evasive shrug. ‘We’re looking for firewood, want to come?’

Just then, the window of the house opposite flew open and old Ma West bawled out, ‘I’ve warned you lot about playing on there! Be off with you!’ Mark spun round, flicking the ball in the air, and headed it provocatively towards the angry woman. ‘Clear off, you little beggars or I’ll call the police!’ she yelled.

Colin, seeing their time had run out, picked up the ball. ‘Haway, we’ll go and look for firewood down the Burn.’ As they drifted off, chucking the ball between them, Mark turned, determined to have the last word.

‘There’s only one thing worse than you, missus,’ he shouted over, ‘and that’s two of you!’

Jo sniggered and caught Mark’s look. He grinned back and threw the ball at her. She caught it and ran ahead. ‘Race you to the park!’ she cried, giving herself a head start and hurling the ball back at her brother’s friend.

Mark took up the challenge, knowing that Jo always won the sprinting races in the Jericho Street games. She was fast, but her wellies slowed her down and they reached the park gates in a dead heat. They raced each other through the park and on down the dene, heading for their favourite tree. Hauling each other up into the branches of a horse chestnut, they prepared to shower the others with conkers when they caught up.

Of all her brother’s friends, Jo got on best with the restless, quick-talking Mark. He had always treated her like one of the lads, which was what she wanted, preferring to hang around with them than play ‘houses’ or skipping games with the girls in Jericho Street. Mark was cheeky and funny, his dark eyes full of mischief under a fringe of coarse black hair.

And she sensed that they shared something else, that the world saw them both as being slightly different. She was a girl without a mother, a tomboy set apart from the other girls. Marilyn was her friend because she lived next door and was easy to lead, but apart from her, all Jo’s friends were boys. As for Mark, he looked different from the rest of his family, leaner and darker-skinned. She had once heard Mrs Leishman say to Auntie Pearl, ‘That one’s touched with the tar brush,’ and had wondered what she meant. It sounded unpleasant and her neighbour had said it with that disapproving downturn of her mouth that Jo knew so well. But Mark was a Duggan, a fighter like his bad-tempered father and handsome older brother Gordon. He had a wild streak in him, as if a slow fire burned away under his laughing exterior and occasionally burst into flames, like the time he had bloodied Kevin McManners’s nose for suggesting Mark had been left on his parents’ doorstep by the gypsies.

‘I heard you got sent to Toddy’s room today,’ Jo said, swinging her legs to keep warm. Mark grunted and cracked open a horse chestnut. ‘What for?’ Jo persisted, interested to know what had annoyed the headmaster this time.

‘Set off a banger behind the girls’ toilets,’ Mark sniffed.

Jo looked at him admiringly. ‘Have you got any left?’

‘Aye, but I’m saving them to use on me dad,’ Mark said with a bitter little smile.

Jo felt a twist of unease in her stomach. She knew that big Matty Duggan, who worked off and on at the yards, had a ferocious temper and a large leather belt that he used on both his sons. Gordon, at fourteen, was growing tall and brawny, his hair touching his collar. He was at the grammar school and beginning to stand up for himself. But lately, Jo had noticed that the red weals on Mark’s upper legs were appearing more frequently and she felt he should be keeping out of his father’s way.

‘Why your dad?’ Jo asked.

‘To stop him hitting me mam,’ Mark said in a low voice that Jo could hardly catch.

Jo felt queasy. The last time she had called at Nana Ivy’s, Norma Duggan had been there, sitting smoking by the open fire with dark glasses on. Jo had wanted to laugh, thinking Mark’s mother was trying to be trendy. Her hair was always blonder and more lacquered than anyone else’s, her skirts shorter, her nails brighter. Jo had assumed the sunglasses with the sparkling winged frames were just the latest fashion. Only when Jo was leaving, munching one of Ivy’s rock buns, had she glanced back and seen Norma take off her glasses. One eye had looked closed and ringed with colour like Chi-Chi the panda at London Zoo.

‘Eeh, Mrs Duggan!’ Jo had gasped. Norma had quickly slipped the glasses back on and reached for another cigarette.

‘It’s nothing. I banged into the doorframe,’ she said quickly.

‘Looks sore,’ Jo had continued, glancing at Ivy to see what she made of it.

‘It’s not,’ Mark’s mother had snapped. ‘And it’s none of your business.’

Jo had felt rebuked and rather baffled that Ivy had remained silent. Mark’s grandmother usually had an opinion on everything, especially matters which went on in her own kitchen.

Now she scrutinised Mark’s brooding expression. ‘Did your dad give her that black eye?’ she asked. Mark nodded. ‘Why?’ Jo questioned.

He looked at her, his dark eyes angry and defiant. ‘Cos of me.’

‘What did you do?’ Jo asked, puzzled.

‘Nowt,’ Mark hissed. ‘Just for being the way I am.’

Jo didn’t understand. ‘That’s not fair on your mam — or you!’ she declared.

‘He’s not fair,’ Mark replied with a harsh laugh. ‘He’s a big bastard who’s going to get a banger up his backside if he carries on hurting me mam.’

Jo started to giggle at the mental image. ‘Send him into orbit!’ she laughed.

Mark glanced at her, then laughed too. ‘Aye, first man on the moon!’ he cried.

Jo, relieved that Mark’s dark mood was broken, fished out her sherbet fountain, bit off the liquorice top and offered him first suck of the tart, powdery sherbet. ‘Anyways, I think you’re canny, whatever your dad says,’ she said, with a bashful sidelong glance. She didn’t want him to think her soppy.

He gave her a strange, intense look, then took the yellow package. ‘Ta,’ was all he said, as he sucked sherbet up the liquorice straw. When he handed it back, they sat in companionable silence, each thinking their own thoughts. Jo put the straw to her mouth and felt it sticky and warm where his mouth had been. She let the sherbet tingle her tongue and froth in her mouth. Why had Norma Duggan pretended she had walked into a door when her husband had hit her? Jo puzzled. She should have told old Ivy, for she was Matty Duggan’s mother and Jo was sure she would have given him a telling-off. Instead, Ivy had been drinking tea and smoking cigarettes, thinking her daughter-in-law had merely walked into a door. Either way, Jo decided, they should have taken it more seriously; called out the doctor or gone to that clinic in the newly opened Forum. Wearing sunglasses wasn’t going to make it better, Jo was fairly sure.

Still trying to fathom the behaviour of grown-ups, she felt a nudge from Mark, who whispered. ‘Here they come! Get ready. Fire!’ Mark threw the ball on top of Colin and the two of them began to shake the branches of the tree frantically, loosening a shower of conkers and leaves on their friends below. In retaliation, Colin and Skippy hurled sticks at their hideout and Marilyn screamed with excitement as she chucked conkers back at them. Skippy attempted to reach them by swinging on a lower branch, which snapped under his weight, landing him in a puddle of mud.

‘You can tell he’s Australian,’ Mark teased. ‘Can’t stay the right way up, can you, Skippy man?’

After that, as dusk fell, they shinned down the tree and hunted around for firewood and conkers, filling their pockets with the smooth gleaming nuts. Between them, Colin and Mark carried Skippy’s long branch, while Skippy used a piece of old fence as a bat, throwing up conker husks and hitting them into the twilight. As they entered Jericho Street, they could see Mrs Leishman standing in her slippers in a pool of electric light at her door, looking anxiously up the street.

‘Eeh, we’re for it now.’ Marilyn grimaced and started to quicken her step, her new white shoes scuffed and mud-splattered. The boys swiftly melted into the gloom with their firewood, heading down the back lane to where the bonfire was being built.

‘Cowards!’ Jo called after them, refusing to hurry.

‘Is that you, Marilyn? Joanne?’ Mary Leishman barked. ‘What time do you call this? You’ve had me worried sick. Where the devil have you been?’ There was a screech as they passed under the street lamp. ‘Look at the state of you! You’ll take those off your feet, Joanne Elliot, before you come in here. I’ll not have you trailing mud through my house. Marilyn! You’ve ruined those shoes…!’ She administered a sharp slap on her daughter’s bottom and pushed her through the door.

‘It was Jo’s idea to go down the Burn,’ Marilyn wailed as her mother continued to scold.

‘You could’ve been got by some bad man like that Ian Brady they’ve just put away for murder,’ she berated.

‘I’ll be off home then, Mrs Leishman,’ Jo called after them, recognising it was time to retreat. ‘Dad’ll be home shortly.’ She dived past the neatly scrubbed doorstep and the illuminated net curtains in the front window and rushed for the safety of her own front door.

‘Don’t think I won’t have words with your dad, mind!’ Mary shouted. ‘You’ll not go leading my Marilyn astray again, do you hear?’

‘No, Mrs Leishman, sorry we were late. Ta-ra.’ Jo waved and darted indoors. She slammed the door behind her and fumbled for the brown electric switch, kicking off her wellies at the same time. The hall light flickered and came on, sending a dull yellow glow from under the dusty fringed lampshade. Throwing her coat over the brown banisters, she padded along to the kitchen. She was met by the warm glow of the banked-up fire and the comforting smell of cinders and ham soup, old toast and vinegar. Her father had a passion for polishing their ancient table and cumbersome sideboard with vinegar, saying that was how Jo’s mother had always treated them. Jo thought it would be quicker to use the new spray polishes that Mrs Leishman was forever brandishing, yet she preferred the smell of vinegar on mellow wood.

Jo busied herself setting the table for tea, stirring the large pan of soup that had been simmering all day on the old range and filling up the kettle. They were the only household she knew of who still used a black range; everyone else had gas cookers.

‘Don’t trust gas,’ her father would say, ‘it’s unstable,’ as if it were a person to be wary of and not let inside the house. ‘That range has done us proud – I remember me granny cooking broth on a stove like that.’

Colin would mutter to Jo, ‘Aye, and I think we’re still eating it.’

Jo laughed now as she stirred the pan again, feeling a thick sludge of lentils and barley sticking to the bottom. It was true the soup pan rarely got a clean-out; her father just seemed to add a bit of what he fancied to it each day. His other specialities were lamb hotpot and rabbit stew, but these too often metamorphosed in time into ‘Granny’s broth’. What Jo loved best were his scrambled eggs and rice pudding, both of which he had learnt from an Indian cook when he’d been in the Merchant Navy. They were spiced with nutmeg and cinnamon and were the most exotic variety served in Jericho Street.