The Old House on the Corner Page 5
He shrugged. ‘It’s your house.’
‘So it is.’ She lit the cigarette, breathing in the smoke and letting it slowly out, as if it was the first ciggie she’d had in years. ‘What about you? What do you do?’
‘I was a miner, now I work in a hospital as a porter.’
‘Of course, the pit closed, didn’t it?’
‘I’m surprised you noticed.’
She blushed again. He was enjoying her discomfort. She shouldn’t have told him to grow up. ‘I couldn’t help but notice, could I? I’m a doctor too. I was suddenly inundated with miners’ wives suffering from depression.’
One of them could have been his own. Jean had been taking tablets ‘for her nerves’ for years. ‘What’s your name?’ he demanded rudely.
‘Quinn. Kathleen Quinn.’ She pushed the sandwiches in front of him. ‘I made these for you.’
He took a bite of sandwich. It was ham. ‘Got any mustard?’
She fetched a jar and put it in front of him. ‘It’s polite to say “please”?’
‘Mebbe I will when I grow up.’ The barb had hurt far more than the fine.
‘Wasn’t it rather childish to throw stones at a police station and assault the officer who tried to restrain you?’ she said coldly.
Steve held up his hands in an attitude of surrender. ‘As I said in court, it were ten years to the day that the pit closed. We were merely commemorating the fact. I suppose we could’ve laid flowers, wreaths, said prayers, sung a few hymns, but we weren’t exactly in the mood. Throwing stones seemed more fitting, as it were, though if we’d had a few sticks of dynamite, we’d have blown the bloody place up. Coppers weren’t exactly the miners’ best friends during the strike.’
Her lips pursed. ‘That was fourteen years ago.’
‘Fifteen, actually, but it seems like only yesterday to me and me mates.’
‘It’s time you stopped living in the past and moved forward,’ she said primly in the voice she’d used in court.
‘Except I’ve nothing much to look forward to.’ Steve lost his temper. ‘Can’t you ever forget you’re a magistrate? Is that all you ever do, give advice to people when you know nothing whatever about them? Mebbe you’d like a bit of advice yourself – unless anyone asks, in future, keep your opinions to yourself.’ He smeared mustard on a sandwich, shoved in his mouth, and nearly choked. He’d used far too much.
To his intense horror, two tears ran down Kathleen Quinn’s thin cheeks. ‘I wish I’d just driven away and left you in that ditch,’ she said. ‘It’s been a horrible day and you’re the last straw. Once you’ve finished that sandwich, I’d be obliged if you would leave.’
‘You couldn’t have driven away,’ he reminded her, rather more gently now. He was a sucker for tears. ‘Your back wheel was in the ditch, you were stuck. I’ll leave, don’t worry. You’d better fetch me shoes first.’ The black lace-ups would look daft with a tracksuit, but he wasn’t planning on prancing up and down the catwalk, not today.
‘They’ll still be wet. You can’t possibly leave in wet shoes.’ She rubbed her cheeks with the back of her hand and gave him a tremulous smile. ‘I’m sorry. It’s just that I had some upsetting news this morning. You were awfully kind, stopping and helping me like that. Finish the food and there’s more tea in the pot.’
She went upstairs for the shoes. Steve spread another sandwich with mustard, more sparsely this time. He felt very odd, almost drunk, as he sat there, waiting – no longing – for Kathleen Quinn to come back.
The telly was on when he got home. Jean was watching Countdown. ‘Oh, Steve,’ she cried tearfully, though didn’t get up. ‘I thought you’d had an accident.’ She noticed his outfit. ‘Where on earth did them clothes come from, luv?’
‘I did have an accident. I skidded a bit, then got stuck in a ditch, and only fell into the bloody thing when I tried to get out the car.’ He’d decided not to mention Kathleen Quinn or he’d be cross-examined about it for weeks. ‘Some chap in a lorry hauled me out. He loaned me his tracksuit and some other stuff.’
‘But where’s your own clothes?’ she wailed. As usual, she was turning the situation into a tragedy of Shakespearean proportions.
‘The chap said he’d leave them in the dry cleaner’s for me.’
‘Which dry cleaner’s, Steve?’
‘For Chrissakes, Jean! I can’t remember. Anyroad, does it really matter right now? I’m bloody freezing, and I’d like a cup of tea, not the third degree.’ He was pleased to note the girls weren’t there. They must have gone home to get the kids their teas. The thought had barely entered his head when the phone in the parlour rang. Jean went to answer it.
‘Yes, he’s home Brenda, luv,’ Steve heard her say. ‘Had some sort of accident. Oh, he’s all right, just chilled to the bone, that’s all. Ok, luv. I’ll see you later. I doubt if your dad’ll be going out again tonight.’
A few minutes later, Maggie rang, shortly followed by Sheila, then Annie. Jean more or less repeated what she’d told Brenda and, from what he could gather, all four were set on coming round that night, in which case, Steve decided, he’d call in the club for a pint.
‘Would you like more tea, luv?’ Jean asked when she’d finished telling the world and his wife about his accident.
‘Wouldn’t mind,’ he said in a surly voice. He shut his eyes, but couldn’t shut out his surroundings. He’d been sitting in the same chair in the same room for nigh on thirty years. The curtains had changed with each decade, the wallpaper, there was carpet on the floor when there’d used to be lino, but the furniture was hardly different. It had been bought new when he and Jean got married: two armchairs, a dining-room suite, no sideboard, because it couldn’t be squeezed into the tiny room. As the girls grew bigger, they’d objected to sitting on hard chairs to watch telly. Jean had reluctantly given in and let them use her precious parlour, sit on her precious moquette three-piece, to watch the new colour telly.
Money hadn’t been a problem in those days, not like now. Years ago, Steve had wanted to move out of the small, cramped terrace and buy a new house on the edge of the village, but Jean had refused. They’d had some flaming rows about it. She’d wanted to stay with her friends, her family, all living close by. Then, just to be awkward, once he’d lost his job, she’d suddenly decided she’d quite like a bigger house. By then the girls were in their teens, still sleeping in bunk beds for lack of space. There’d been more rows.
‘No one’ll give me a mortgage, not now,’ he’d told her, but Jean only heard what she wanted to hear. There was no point giving her the facts once she’d shut her ears to reason.
There was a photo on the sideboard of Steve and Jean’s wedding. He was twenty-one, she nineteen: a blonde, fairy-like girl, vivacious and full of fun. What had happened, Steve wondered, to turn her into the shapeless, pasty-faced, complaining woman she was now? Most miners’ wives had stood by their men when they’d been given the boot, supported them, gone out and got jobs themselves. With a bit of help, he might have pulled himself together sooner, not hung around the house for two years feeling useless.
But it wasn’t fair to put the blame on Jean for everything. ‘It’s time you stopped living in the past and moved forward,’ Kathleen Quinn had said. All of a sudden, he visualized her in the kitchen, her back to him while he admired her slim figure. She’d turned around and something had passed between them. He remembered Bert’s words again, ‘I wouldn’t mind giving her one …’
In his mind, Steve carried Kathleen Quinn upstairs to one of the bedrooms in her big house. Tenderly, he laid her on the bed and undressed her, slowly, taking his time, anticipation growing, wanting to hurry, yet enjoying the wait. He exposed her small, white breasts, kissed them, unpeeled her tights – by now, his hands were shaking – removed her pants, then stared at her, laid out on the bed like a sacrifice, waiting for him to take her.
Which Steve did, no longer tender, but roughly, urgently, losing himself totally in her soft, warm body …
‘That’s not true, Jean.’ He hardly listened while she railed at him, his mind preoccupied with Kathleen Quinn.
Steve worked regular shifts at the hospital, six in the morning until half past two. He arrived home from work a week later just as the telephone began to ring. He went into the parlour, picked up the receiver, and growled, ‘Hello.’
Jean appeared in the doorway, hands on hips, looking annoyed. She preferred to answer the phone herself. ‘Who is it?’ she demanded before he’d had a chance of finding out.
‘I’ve had your clothes cleaned, Mr Cartwright.’ Kathleen Quinn spoke in her magistrate’s voice, cool and detached. ‘Would you like to collect them? I can have them delivered if that’s what you’d prefer.’
‘No, I’ll collect them. Tomorrow afternoon, about three?’
‘I’ll see you then.’ The line went dead.
Jean was standing over him, waiting for an explanation. ‘That was the cleaners,’ he said. ‘My things are ready to be collected.’
‘Will you have to pay?’
‘Of course I’ll have to pay,’ he said impatiently. ‘It’s a cleaners, not a bloody charity.’
‘Where is it, the cleaners?’
‘Huddersfield,’ he grunted.
‘I’ll come with you. I want to take that cardy our Maggie gave me for Christmas back to Marks & Spencer’s. It’s too small.’
Steve hunted wildly around in his mind for a reason to turn down this perfectly reasonable suggestion. ‘I’m going straight from work,’ he said. ‘It’d hardly be worth your while if I came home first to collect you. Why don’t you go to Huddersfield on the bus, make a day of it?’
She frowned, then her face cleared. It would seem she found the suggestion acceptable. ‘I’ll go tomorrow. I wouldn’t mind a day out for a change. But if that’s the case, I might as well pick up your cleaning.’
‘You don’t want to be carting that lot around, it’d be too heavy. Anyroad, I thought I might take the opportunity of calling in the Job Centre, see what’s going.’
‘We could meet up for a cup of tea and I could come home in the car.’
‘Best not, luv,’ he said easily. ‘If there’s anything decent, I might be a while, filling in forms and stuff. Best you make your own way home on the bus.’
The snow had almost gone, the temperature having risen a few degrees over the last few days. The soil in the fields was black against the stark patches of white that still remained and the roads were wet and slushy.
When Steve left the hospital, he drove like the wind, water spitting from the tyres. He was unfolding, becoming someone else, experiencing emotions never felt before, or at least not for a long time – when he was younger, perhaps, much younger.
He turned into her house, noticed it had a name on a board tacked to a tree: Threshers’ End. He was wondering where the name had come from, half expecting to see a couple of dead threshers lying amongst the trees, when he arrived at the front door, got out of the car, and rang the bell.
It was quite a while before she answered, wearing a bathrobe and a towel tied around her hair. ‘You’re quarter of an hour early,’ she said shortly. ‘I thought we’d agreed you’d come at three.’
He hadn’t thought that time mattered all that much. ‘Sorry,’ he said humbly. ‘Me watch needs a battery and the clock in the car don’t work.’
She stood aside to let him in. Their arms touched as he brushed past. She closed the door, stood with her back to it, looked at him. There was longing in her grey eyes and she was breathing heavily, as was Steve himself. He reached for her, rested his big hands on her waist, and pulled her towards him. She came willingly and didn’t protest when he undid the belt of the robe and began to caress her damp, naked body. Nor did she protest, when he picked her up and carried her upstairs, as he had done so many times over the last few days in his imagination.
But making love to a flesh and blood Kathleen Quinn was immeasurably, indescribably better than it had been in his dreams. He touched, and kissed, every intimate part of her, while she did things to him that Jean wouldn’t have countenanced in the days when they used to make love. Not that he gave much thought to Jean that afternoon in Threshers’ End.
When it was over and they lay naked on the bed, side by side, utterly sated, she said shyly, ‘That was wonderful, thank you.’
‘It were bloody marvellous. Thank you.’ He’d just shared something that could only be described as magnificent with a woman he hardly knew.
‘I’ve been thinking about you,’ she whispered, ‘ever since last week, wanting us to do … what we’ve just done. When I phoned, I was dreading you’d tell me to have the cleaning delivered.’
‘No way.’ He turned on to his side and stroked her hair, dry now, and all mussed. Her lips were swollen from their lovemaking and there was a bruise on her shoulder. ‘What would your husband say if he knew?’
‘He’d be upset. What about your wife?’
‘She’d bloody kill me and if she didn’t manage it, me daughters would pitch in and finish me off.’
‘How many daughters do you have?’
‘Four.’ He didn’t mention his seven grandchildren. Right now, he felt too young to be a granddad. ‘Have you got any kids?’
‘A son, Conrad. He’s twenty-one and lives in Denmark.’
‘You don’t look old enough to have a son of twenty-one.’ He’d thought her in her mid-thirties.
‘I’m forty-two,’ she said surprisingly. ‘The reason I was so upset last week was because Con had rung that morning to say he’d just got married. I felt gutted, not being there, the mother of the groom, that sort of thing. He’s emailed since and it turns out that no one else was there, just him and Lydia. They did it on impulse. Mind you, it still hurts a bit.’ She sniffed. ‘Would you like some tea?’
‘I wouldn’t say no.’ He liked the idea of being with her in the kitchen, knowing her as he did now. He got out of bed and began to pull on his clothes. Kathleen lit a cigarette and watched. ‘Is this where you sleep with your husband?’ he asked, and wasn’t surprised when she said the room was a spare. There were no clothes around, no bits and pieces on the dressing table, just a glass tray on a lace mat. It reminded him of a room in a hotel, dull and unlived in. While he buttoned his shirt, she stubbed out the cigarette, reached for the robe and slipped it around her narrow shoulders. She stood in front of the mirror and tried to calm her untidy hair with her fingers.
‘When can I see you again?’ he asked. ‘Tomorrow?’
She looked at him through the mirror and they shared another of those inexplicable moments. ‘I’m on duty tomorrow. I run the Well Women Clinic in the Merryvale surgery every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Tuesday and Thursday mornings, I’m in court and Saturday, my husband will be home, but he plays golf on Sunday afternoons. Can you come then?’
He and Jean usually went to tea with one of the girls on Sunday. He’d make an excuse, he’d lie, cheat, do anything if it meant seeing Kathleen Quinn again. ‘Sunday it is,’ he said.
‘Come after lunch.’ Her eyes glowed, as if she could already imagine them in bed together. ‘If the garage door is closed, it means Michael’s still here, but I’ll phone if he’s not going – it would take something like an earthquake to make him miss his golf.’
‘Don’t phone,’ Steve said quickly. ‘Me wife always answers. No, I tell you what, let it ring twice, then put the receiver down. It’ll be a signal not to come.’
Kathleen sighed rapturously. ‘I can’t wait till Sunday.’
‘Neither can I.’
That was just the beginning of their life of deceit and lies.
He was working overtime, he told Jean, when he started coming home two or three hours late on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons.
‘I hope they’re paying you,’ she said sourly. He gave her an extra ten quid a week as proof, leaving himself seriously short.
Sundays were more difficult to explain away. There were only so many times he could say he didn’t feel up to it, that he had a headache, that there was something going on at the club. In the end, he just flatly refused to go, causing ructions. Tea with his daughters had become an institution. They took it in turns: Brenda was the first Sunday in the month, Maggie the second, and so on. Steve had never enjoyed them. His four sons-in-law, all in their twenties and with decent jobs, constantly offered him advice on how to turn his life around, make money, train for this and train for that, start up a business of his own, Jean nodding in the background, making derogatory remarks: ‘He’s just an old stick-in-the-mud. You’ll never get our Steve to change his ways.’
He was fed up being the object of so many people’s attention, being told which way to jump. Kathleen liked him the way he was and she was the only one who mattered. Jean hardly spoke to him because of the Sunday tea business, but he didn’t care. He sang under his breath as he pushed trolleys up and down the hospital corridors, began to use aftershave, showered every night, wore his best shirt for work every Tuesday and Thursday. It might look suspicious, but he didn’t care about that, either.
‘Michael knows about us,’ Kathleen said on Easter Sunday afternoon after they’d made love. They’d been seeing each other for two months and it was getting better and better with each time.
‘How?’ Steve asked, startled.
‘He just guessed. He said I looked different, that he’d never known me look so happy.’ She nestled against him. ‘I am too, so happy I could cry.’
‘What’ll happen now?’ He’d die if he couldn’t see her again.