The Old House on the Corner Read online

  Rachel said she’d love to and was certain Grace and Eileen would too.

  ‘When are you off?’ Christopher asked.

  ‘The day after tomorrow, Monday.’

  ‘Have a great time, Titch. See you!’ He plonked a wet kiss on her cheek, got into the taxi waiting outside, and waved to her until he was out of sight.

  On Sunday night, Mrs Paige had a stroke and Rachel’s plans of going to university were shattered beyond repair.

  ‘Rachel, my friend, you can’t stay in this miserable place looking after your mother for ever,’ Grace cried. ‘You’ve already stuck it out for five years. You’re twenty-three, for God’s sake, and you’ve had no life at all. Oh, do be quiet, Sally.’ She gave the little girl tugging at her knee and demanding a drink an impatient shove. ‘I can’t hear myself speak.’

  ‘I’ll give her some cordial. Come along, Sal, into the kitchen, and you can help me pour it.’

  ‘Well, if you want it all over your shoes,’ Grace said petulantly.

  Rachel picked up eighteen-month old Sally and carried her outside. Sally helped hold the bottle of cordial and together they tipped some into the glass. Rachel filled it up with water.

  ‘See, dry shoes!’ she said cheerfully when she went back, depositing the child on the floor. ‘I’ll be glad when you’ve had that baby, Grace. You’re nothing but an old sourpuss these days. Poor Sal doesn’t know whether she’s coming or going.’

  ‘I know, Rach. I’m sorry,’ Grace said abjectly. She held out her arms. ‘Come to Mummy, sweetheart, and I’ll give you a nice big hug.’

  Sally stumbled into her mother’s arms, spilling drink on the way, and Rachel watched enviously as her slim arms slid around her mother’s neck. Grace had got married straight from university, her career as a teacher thrown to the winds when she’d fallen in love with Tom Ogilvie whom she’d met at a Manchester disco.

  Grace had noticed the envious look. ‘I wish you’d leave, Rach. It’s just not fair. Your mum’s being awfully selfish. Make her go into hospital if she’s not prepared to go of her own accord.’

  ‘I couldn’t possibly,’ Rachel said stubbornly. She’d had the same argument with Grace before, and with Eileen, though only in letters. Eileen was finding jobs in all sorts of out-of-the-way places, just as she’d always wanted, and meeting loads of attractive men. Christopher had also tried to persuade his little sister to leave.

  ‘You know how unsociable my mother is,’ Rachel said to Grace. ‘She couldn’t stand being in a ward with other women, being cared for by strange nurses.’

  ‘But she won’t even go for therapy!’ Grace wailed. ‘She doesn’t want to get better. She’s perfectly content to lie upstairs and be looked after by her long-suffering daughter.’

  ‘I’m not long-suffering,’ Rachel protested. ‘I’m quite happy most of the time. I love my job.’ She worked for Liverpool Corporation in the Tourist Office, promoting the attractions of the city to the world at large. Work wouldn’t have been possible if Christopher hadn’t sent money to pay for a nurse to look after her mother during the day. Nights and weekends, Rachel did it herself. It left no time for a social life. She didn’t tell Grace how boring and tedious these times were, or how much she disliked helping her ungrateful mother with bedpans and having to empty them afterwards. ‘And I’ve got you and Tom and Sally, haven’t I?’ she said instead, smiling. ‘Now there’s a new baby on the way and I’ll have him or her too.’

  Grace bent her head and began to pleat and unpleat the material of her voluminous maternity frock with her fingers. This was something her friend always did when she was about to convey bad news. With a sense of foreboding, Rachel waited for her to speak.

  ‘Actually, Rach, Tom has applied for a job in Canada – Vancouver. Lab technicians earn at least twice as much over there. We can buy a bigger house and it will be a much better life for the children.’

  ‘When will you be going?’

  ‘If Tom gets the job, in a couple of months.’

  ‘Tell Tom I wish him all the luck in the world, but I can’t say how much I’ll miss you all.’

  Mrs Paige lived for another two years. Rachel was working in her office in the Town Hall when the nurse phoned to say her mother had suffered another stroke and been taken into hospital. ‘It’s really serious this time, Rachel. I think you should prepare for the worst,’ she said.

  Three days later, her mother died, and Rachel was ashamed that all she could feel was a sense of enormous relief. Christopher paid for the funeral, but didn’t come, and neither did Peter, who sent a wreath: Rachel and the nurse were the only mourners.

  When she went to bed that night, she knew she wouldn’t be living in the cottage for much longer. Peter’s letter had arrived at the same time as the wreath. He had reminded her that the cottage belonged to the three of them and, just now, his business wasn’t doing terribly well. ‘I’m desperately in need of a new van and my house could do with a few improvements. Would you kindly have the property valued and put on the market as soon as possible?’ He felt sure that she, a single woman with no dependents, would easily find somewhere else to live. ‘Anyway, Rachel, a nice bedsitting room close to town would be far more convenient than the wilds of Maghull,’ he finished.

  The estate agent quoted an unbelievable figure for what he reckoned the cottage would sell for. The original sale documents had been with her mother’s papers and fifty years ago, the place had cost ninety-five pounds. Now it was worth almost five hundred times that much.

  Christopher wrote and said she could have his share of the proceeds – he was so angry with Peter that his normally steady handwriting literally shivered with anger. ‘That should be enough for you to buy a flat of your own, my dear Titch.’

  Rachel was glad to escape from the cramped house and start afresh somewhere new. As soon as the cottage was sold, she bought a pleasant little one-bedroom flat in Waterloo less than half a mile from the River Mersey and only a short distance from the station.

  She was twenty-five, free to lead her own life at last.

  Over the years, Rachel had grown in confidence. She would never be an extrovert, but had lost her shyness and made quite a few friends, mostly women. She had joined a chess club, gone to night school for a variety of subjects, visited the theatre and the cinema at least once a week with her female friends, was invited to parties and even threw the occasional one herself, although found this something of an ordeal. Every September, she spent a fortnight in Cyprus with Christopher.

  Her ambition remained the same as it had always been: to get married and have children. However, as the years passed and she approached her thirtieth birthday, having this ambition realized seemed less and less likely. Among the women she knew, she was the only one not married. She was quite resigned to the fact she was no oil painting, but always dressed smartly, wore make-up, and had her hair set every Saturday morning in George Henry Lee’s.

  Occasionally, a man would invite her out, but he rarely asked for a second date. Perhaps her anxiety showed – the longing for this to be the man, the one she’d been waiting for all her life, and her disappointment would be obvious as soon as she realized that this man wouldn’t do at all. Still, she remained convinced that he existed, somewhere, and all they had to do was meet and recognize straight away that they were made for each other.

  It didn’t exactly happen like that, but on her thirtieth birthday, she met Frank Williams and fell in love. She was never entirely sure if Frank felt the same, but he needed her and that would do.

  One of her friends had arranged a dinner party on her birthday. There were twelve of them altogether: five couples, Rachel, and a tall, slim, very presentable man with sandy hair and light blue eyes about the same age as herself. It often happened that an extra man was invited for Rachel. The man was introduced as Frank Williams and they were placed next to each other at the table.

  ‘What do you do?’ was Rachel’s first question. It always seemed the obvious thing to ask.
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  ‘I’m a car salesman. I work for Warwick Cars in town. We only sell the most expensive makes.’

  ‘I imagine you’d be good at that.’ He had a brash, open charm and an easy manner. ‘I bet you could easily persuade me to buy a Ferrari or something.’

  It was the right thing to have said. He proceeded to tell her that he was very good at his job, sold almost twice as many cars as the other salesman, and the manager thought very highly of him. He continued to boast throughout the first and second courses. Rachel realized he was trying to impress her and there was something in his eyes, a lost sort of look, almost frantic at times, which told her that, deep down, he was desperately unhappy and the boasting was a cover for his inadequacy or lack of confidence, something she completely understood.

  It wasn’t until the sweet arrived that he asked a question about herself. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, looking embarrassed. ‘I’ve been rattling on about myself all this time. I always do that.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter. It was all very interesting.’ She went on to describe her job and where she lived, told him about Christopher in Cyprus and Peter in Plymouth, that she visited Christopher once a year, but hadn’t heard from Peter in ages. ‘I send him a Christmas card every year, but he never sends one back.’

  He looked shocked. ‘That’s awful. Families should stick together. I had a brother and sister but, when my father walked out, my mother put us all into care. I’ve never seen either of them – or my mother – since.’ His mouth trembled slightly as if the memory upset him.

  ‘You poor thing,’ Rachel said sympathetically. ‘That’s even more awful.’

  He shrugged. ‘I’m always envious of people with close families.’

  At the end of the evening, he asked her out the following Saturday.

  ‘I’m afraid I can’t,’ Rachel began, but before she could continue, Frank burst out with, ‘You found me boring, didn’t you? I’m hopeless at parties. I never know what to say and all I do is talk about myself. I’m sorry you had such an awful evening.’

  ‘I had a lovely evening,’ she cried. ‘What I was going to say was, I can’t see you Saturday, I’m going to the theatre, but I’d love to go out with you another day.’

  Six months later, on a freezing cold day in December 1980, Rachel Paige and Frank Williams became man and wife.

  ‘What’s this?’ Frank picked up the daily paper and waved it at her.

  ‘It’s a newspaper,’ Rachel replied.

  ‘I know that,’ he said impatiently. ‘But you’ve finished the crossword. I was going to do it later.’

  ‘I’m sorry, love, but we’re about to go to bed. It would have been thrown away in the morning.’

  ‘Still …’ He shrugged and looked sulky, and Rachel realized she must never finish the crossword again until the paper was ready to go in the dustbin and Frank wouldn’t know, just as she never read a certain sort of book in front of him, or watched programmes on television that he couldn’t understand. She stuck to light romantic novels and only turned on the television for games shows, soaps, and films that couldn’t possibly be described as ‘heavy’.

  They’d been married for ten months. Frank wanted them to have a perfect marriage and perfection meant not having a wife who was cleverer than he was. Rachel didn’t object. She was quite happy to play along because she loved him. He’d been badly damaged as a child, moved from one foster home to another, and had an idea in his head of what married life should be – him as the head of the household, a submissive wife, a nice home, children. In another two months, their first child would be born and he’d spent months turning the second bedroom into a nursery fit for a prince or princess.

  The baby in her womb gave a couple of sharp kicks and she uttered a little cry. ‘It’s very active tonight,’ she gasped.

  Frank was kneeling beside her in an instant, his irritation over the crossword forgotten. ‘Are you all right, darling?’

  ‘Yes, but I think I’d like to go to bed. I’m rather tired.’

  ‘I’ll give you a hand upstairs.’

  She went up and down the stairs a dozen times a day unaided, but let him help her to the bedroom, feeling the comfort of his arm around her waist.

  ‘Would you like some warm milk?’ he asked.

  ‘That would be nice,’ she said gratefully, knowing how much he enjoyed being an attentive husband. It was how a perfect husband in a perfect marriage should behave.

  James arrived seven days before Christmas, a beautiful, healthy baby, very content. Rachel felt almost dizzy with love when she first held him in her arms.

  Frank was the proudest of fathers. He took champagne and an expensive box of cigars into work. Margot, the receptionist at the showroom, brought Rachel a lovely basket of flowers. The staff had taken a collection and she’d delivered them herself so she could take a look at James.

  ‘According to Frank, there’s never been a baby like him before.’ She smiled at Rachel. ‘I’ve never known him so happy as since he married you. All we hear from him is, “my wife this”, or “my wife that”, and now you’ve got a baby, there’ll be no standing him. I understand the next one’s going to be a girl, at least so Frank ses.’

  As Frank had predicted, Rachel’s second baby was a girl: Kirsty, born a year and a day after her brother. She was smaller, paler, less content with life than James, but just as beautiful.

  Rachel’s family was complete. She felt like an actress who had slogged away for years before becoming a star. Now she was putting everything she had into her role as a wife and mother and was happy beyond her wildest dreams.

  Frank had felt uneasy, even a touch resentful, that the sale of Rachel’s flat had provided more than half the money for their house. She’d wanted to tell him not to be silly, but had quickly learned that Frank couldn’t stand criticism, at least not from her. ‘Don’t be silly’ was one of the worst things she could say.

  ‘It means we won’t have a huge mortgage to repay,’ she said gently, and he’d had to accept the fact, albeit grudgingly, that she was bringing more wealth into the marriage than him, when he considered it should be the other way around. He wasn’t quite as good a salesman as he’d claimed the night they’d met: some weeks the commission he earned was quite small and money would be tight.

  They’d bought a new semi-detached house in a village called Lydiate, not far from Maghull. They had to pass the cottage where she’d been born to reach it and the first time Rachel had been astonished to see that it had been demolished and a large, detached, Tudor-style house had been built in its place. It had a name on the door, Three Farthings.

  ‘We’ll live in a house like that one day,’ Frank promised when she pointed it out.

  He wouldn’t let her do anything in the new house, apart from watch while he laid carpets, put up tiles in the kitchen and bathroom, began to turn over the black soil in the garden in readiness for a lawn. Like her, he got an enormous amount of pleasure out of simple things, like seeing the washing blow on the new clothesline for the first time, or admiring a picture that had just been hung on the wall.

  Everyone on the new estate was very friendly. Almost every morning, Rachel was invited to a neighbour’s house for coffee or she invited them to hers. They babysat for each other, so Rachel and Frank often managed to see the latest films once they considered the children were old enough to be left.

  Frank was the most popular of men, particularly with women. When they were in company, he would single out the most attractive one and flirt with her outrageously, compliment her fulsomely, until he had the woman eating out of his hand. It didn’t bother Rachel. It was her who Frank would hold in his arms that night, her whom he needed. She was his prop, the mother of the children he adored, the person who had given him the self-confidence to flirt, who was responsible for banishing the hurt, frantic look in his eyes that had been there when they’d met on her thirtieth birthday.

  James started school, then Kirsty. Rachel joined the Parent-Teacher Associat
ion and helped raise funds for various school causes. She was in her element, organizing fètes, Christmas bazaars, cheese and wine evenings. Grace wrote from Canada and asked if she’d become a cabbage.

  Have you stopped using your brain? Are you still the same person who read Proust and Goethe at school? The one who dragged Eileen and me to the Playhouse whenever there was a Shakespeare play on? Your letters are full of Frank and the children, nothing about you. Has Rachel Williams become an entirely different person to Rachel Paige? Me, I did a refresher course and have started teaching at last. Sally loves drama school and Kim still wants to be an astronaut. I don’t see much of Tom since the divorce – the kids go round to his place these days. There’s a new man in my life, but I don’t know yet if he’ll become a permanent feature. His name’s Joe and he teaches at my school. I suppose you know Eileen’s in Brazil living with an American journalist who’s got a wife back home …

  Perhaps she had become a cabbage. She no longer wanted to read Proust or watch Shakespeare. Frank and the children were enough and she couldn’t think of a single other thing she wanted. Once, she would have been envious of Eileen, but now felt only pity for a woman nearing forty who was still wandering the world, unable to settle, sleeping with married men. If Eileen wasn’t careful, she would soon be too old to have children. As for Grace and Tom getting divorced, words failed her. ‘We just grew apart,’ Grace had said in one of her previous letters.

  ‘No commitment, that’s what it is,’ Frank said, shaking his head, when she’d shown the letter to him. ‘Not like us, eh?’

  The children were growing up so rapidly it scared her. James started comprehensive school – in another few months he would be twelve. Another year, and he would become a teenager. Kirsty was ten, double figures, but already behaving more like an eighteen-year-old with her clumpy shoes, short skirts, and skimpy T-shirts. She was nagging her parents to have her ears pierced, but Frank put his foot down. ‘Over my dead body, Kirsty,’ he threatened. Rachel found lipstick and mascara hidden in her dressing-table drawer, but didn’t say anything.