The Leaving Of Liverpool (15 page)

Finally Tom gave an almighty groan, collapsed on top of her, then rolled on his side so that he had his back to her. There was another silence that went on for much longer than the first.

Eventually, Mollie spoke. ‘What’s the matter?’ she whispered.

‘You’ve done this before, haven’t you, Moll?’ His voice was hoarse and full of hurt. ‘It was the very last thing I expected from a girl like you.’

Mollie could feel her blood turning to ice. It was silly of her, unimaginably stupid, but she’d still considered herself a virgin. She’d thought of Tom as the first man she would sleep with, the first man with whom she’d make love. The times with the Doctor had been put to the back of her mind because they were too painful, too cruel and unwanted to occupy a fraction of her brain.

How could she explain all that to Tom? She felt so ashamed. He’d want to know why she hadn’t pushed the Doctor away or locked her door, yet Mollie didn’t know the answer to those questions. She’d actually thought it was her duty, that it was what all fathers did when they’d lost their wives. It was just something she had to put up with. It wasn’t until he’d touched Annemarie that it had seemed a sin of such enormous proportions as to be unforgivable.

‘I’m still waiting for an answer,’ Tom said gruffly.

‘
You
must have done it before to have known.’ It was the very worst thing to have said, but all she could think of at the moment.

He sat up in the bed and she could sense the anger emanating from him like sparks. ‘I bought a book on it, that’s how I know. I didn’t want to make a mess of things. I wanted tonight to be perfect, but now it’s spoiled. Oh, Mollie! How could you?’

Mollie didn’t reply. She turned over so she had her back to
him
. She felt cold, so cold, despite the mound of blankets and the thick eiderdown.

That night, she didn’t sleep a wink, and neither did Tom. At some time, he got out of bed and, when she looked, he was sitting in a chair by the window, looking out, his chin resting on his hands, a picture of dejection.

Daylight came, the gong sounded for breakfast. They didn’t speak to each other while they dressed and went downstairs, the first to arrive in the dining room. The sharp-faced landlady brought them bowls of unappetizing-looking porridge. Other people came into the room and wished them good morning.

‘Good morning,’ Mollie replied.

Tom didn’t say anything, just stared at the porridge with tears streaming down his smooth, boyish cheeks. ‘I love you so much, Moll,’ he said brokenly.

‘And I love you, Tom.’ She reached across the table and rubbed the tears away with her hand.

‘I don’t care what you did before I met you,’ he wept. ‘I’m sorry about last night. I shouldn’t have made a scene. It’s just that it came as such a shock. I thought, I thought . . . ’ He stopped, unable to go on.

People were staring. Mollie got to her feet. ‘Let’s go upstairs. I’ve something to tell you.’ It had to be done or their marriage would be spoiled for ever.

 

‘I’d like to kill him,’ Tom raged after she’d told him about the Doctor. He was walking back and forth across the room like a madman. ‘Policeman or no policeman, I’d like to bloody kill him.’ He stopped walking and looked at her sorrowfully. ‘Oh, Moll! Why didn’t you say anything about this last night?’

‘Because I was too ashamed, wasn’t I?’ she said tearfully. ‘I always felt as if it were my own fault.’

He sat on the bed and pulled her on to his knee. ‘That was the worst night of me life, that was.’

She stroked his crisp, brown hair. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘There’s nothing to be sorry about, luv.
I’m
sorry I jumped to conclusions.’

There was a knock on the door. Mollie made a face and went to answer it, to find the landlady outside with a tray, her face no longer sharp, but gentle and kind. ‘As you didn’t have any breakfast, I thought you’d like a pot of tea and some toast.’

‘That’s very nice of you, thank you very much.’ Mollie took the tray. She couldn’t have eaten a thing, but was dying for some tea. Tom, who had the appetite of a horse, would eat every crumb of the toast.

‘I hope everything’s all right,’ the woman whispered.

‘It is now.’ Mollie closed the door. Everything was fine and, from now on, it always would be.

 

Finn showed Aunt Maggie the room in the cottage she would occupy for the next fortnight, helped Hazel put a sleepy Patrick to bed - he’d been too excited to sleep on the boat and the train - had a bite to eat, then made his way to the Doctor’s house to collect Thaddy and Aidan. His aunt was longing to meet them, but had no intention of going anywhere near the Doctor during her stay in Duneathly. ‘I’m too scared of what I might do to him if I saw him in the flesh,’ she’d said fiercely.

The Doctor’s house stood in the square next to that of Mr O’Rourke, the solicitor, on one side, and a tiny bank, which only opened two days a week, on the other. It was a solid, three-storey building with six rooms on each floor. Most of the ground floor was given over to the Doctor’s needs: a surgery, waiting room, an office full of files, and a study. There was also a large kitchen and a cloakroom. The family rooms were on the floor above. Long ago, servants had occupied the attic rooms, which had been empty for years when the Kennys first moved in. Finn had been the first to ask if he could sleep upstairs in a room with a sloping ceiling and a window from which you could see for miles and miles. Then Mollie had moved into the next room and Annemarie into another.

Finn noticed the dark-blue paint on the front door had begun to flake. He went inside to find the house uncommonly quiet and the place smelling musty and unused. He recalled the days when five children had lived there and the place was full of noise and laughter.

‘Dad,’ he shouted and, when there was no sign of his father. ‘Nanny, Aidan, Thaddy - is anyone home?’

Nanny appeared at the top of the stairs. She’d been an old woman when she’d looked after Finn when he was a baby and now she looked incredibly ancient, her eyes rheumy in a white face. Her flesh looked as if it had melted, like wax, and lay in deep, uneven creases on her cheeks. She wore a long black dress, a white pinafore, and a white kerchief on her head. ‘I sent the lads out, son,’ she said in a shaky voice. ‘I took them to play with the Patersons: their Cormac is in the same class as Thaddy at school.’ She began to descend the stairs, clinging to the banister, each step a terrible effort.

Finn rushed upstairs to help her down and took her into the kitchen where dishes were piled in the sink and the slate floor was badly in need of cleaning. He pulled out a chair and gently sat her down. ‘What’s wrong, Nanny?’

‘It’s your father, son. Wasn’t he flying as high as a kite last night, drinking whiskey as if it were water, shouting, and throwing stuff all over the place? It frightened the lads, it did. I was worried he’d murder us all in our beds. There’s no paraffin left for the lamps and we were stuck in the dark.’ Duneathly wasn’t connected either to gas or electricity. ‘If you’d like to go to his study, you’ll see the mess he’s made.’

Finn’s heart sank to his boots. It was as wrong as wrong could be for this fragile old woman to be left in the house with two small children and a crazy man, but what could he do about it? ‘Where is he now?’ he asked.

‘That I don’t know, Finn. He left the house early morning before the sun had risen, slamming the door behind him so hard that all the windows shook. I haven’t seen hide nor hair of him since.’ Since he’d arrived, Nanny was more her old self again.

‘Would you like something to drink, Nanny? A cup of tea perhaps - or would you prefer a glass of the hard stuff?’ She was partial to a glass of spirits now and again.

‘I wouldn’t say no to a nip of gin, lad, thanks all the same. It’s in the cupboard under the sink.’

They went into the kitchen. He found the bottle and poured half a glass. ‘Is there anything to go with it?’

‘I like it neat. I thought you’d’ve known that by now, Finn Kenny.’ Her rheumy eyes twinkled.

‘I don’t know how anybody can drink neat gin.’ He shoved the glass across the table and she seized it eagerly. ‘Is there a reason you can think of that sent the Doctor into such a state?’ he enquired.

She made a grotesque face and he remembered how Nanny’s faces used to terrify him when he was a child. ‘People are suspicious of him, son, and he knows it. He’s only seeing half the patients he saw before. He hasn’t had a receptionist since Mollie left, and he can’t get another soul to come and do the cleaning since Fran Kincaid walked out because she could stand the place no more.’ She nodded at the dishes in the sink, the dirty floor. ‘Everyone’s wondering why his girls disappeared the way they did, why you hardly ever come to the house, why Hazel never comes at all, not even to show him his first grandchild, why he didn’t go to your Mollie’s wedding.’ She put the glass down, having drunk half in a single mouthful and looking much the better for it. ‘How did the wedding go, by the way?’

‘Perfectly, Nanny.’ He wrinkled his nose. ‘I don’t think much of her new husband, he’s too big for his policeman’s boots by a mile, but Hazel and Aunt Maggie both liked him.’ He hadn’t realized his father had sunk so low in the eyes of Duneathly.

‘I wouldn’t mind seeing Maggie while she’s home.’

‘I’m sure she’d love to see you. Maybe you could meet one morning in the tea shop.’

Nanny’s eyes narrowed. ‘So, Maggie’s not prepared to come to this house, either. I have a good idea why, Finn, though I promise never to share it with a soul. Mind you, there’d be no need; most people have arrived at the same conclusion of their own accord.’

Finn sighed. It was all getting a bit too much for him. ‘What time will Thaddy and Aidan be home?’

‘Mrs Paterson said she’d bring them around seven. But Finn,’ she put a creased hand on his arm, ‘I don’t fancy another night like the last one. It’s not meself I’m worried about, but the lads. If you could’ve heard the way your father carried on last night, you’d know what I mean.’

‘I wonder where he is.’

‘Sleeping it off somewhere, I reckon. He must’ve had the devil of a hangover.’

Finn looked at his watch: nearly half past six. His brothers would be back soon. The cottage was much too small to take another three people: he’d just have to spend the night here. ‘I’ll stay, Nanny,’ he promised. ‘I’ll just go home and tell Hazel. I won’t be long. And I’ll bring some paraffin back with me for the lamps.’

Before leaving, he looked in the Doctor’s study and discovered a cracked and empty whiskey bottle on the floor, books strewn all over the place, a chair upturned, and a pool of vomit just inside the door. He tried very hard to feel some pity for his father, but found it impossible.

Nanny knew Finn had the ability to sleep through an earthquake. She’d said she’d wake him if the Doctor came home and started carrying on again, but when he opened his eyes in his old bed in his old room it was already morning and the sun shimmered around the familiar curtains. In the distance, a cock crowed. He went down to his father’s bedroom, but the bed hadn’t been slept in, and he wasn’t in the study or any other room in the house. He was beginning to wonder if the Doctor hadn’t taken it upon himself to run away, like his girls, when there was a knock on the front door.

It was Willy Keen from Old Mill Farm to say that Dr Kenny had been found floating face down in a pond on the farmer’s land.

‘No one knows how long he’s been there,’ he said respectfully, removing his cap and holding it tight to his chest. ‘There hasn’t been anyone round that way for a few days.’ He made the Sign of the Cross. ‘May your ould da rest in peace, Mr Kenny. He was a fine doctor, no matter what people might have said to the contrary.’

 

Levon wasn’t sure if it was fear he could see in her big, violet eyes or a wild impatience for the whole thing to be over, for the baby to be born, so that she would have no more to do with it. She hadn’t acknowledged the child in her womb, not once, in all the months since the doctor had announced she was pregnant. She rebuffed all Tamara’s attempts to talk about it, just turned away or left the room, her face set tight, her pretty mouth a straight line.

He’d engaged a trained midwife, Mrs Sarkadi, for when her time came, not wanting her to go into a hospital for two reasons: first, he was concerned that the strange surroundings and strange people would upset her: second, she was no more than a child herself and there was a chance that questions might be asked about the father, questions that only Anne could answer. The exact date of the child’s arrival was unknown, but the doctor had estimated it would be sometime in September.

That summer, Levon had passed the Bar exam and was now legally entitled to practise as a lawyer in the state of New York. He’d rented an office on the Lower East Side and had already acquired a few clients, but, once September came, he’d taken to coming home earlier and earlier, when he should have been staying later and later in order to find more clients to add to his list. He was anxious to be there when the baby came.