The Invisible Cord Page 13

  Then there was Bill. Bill was the brightest of the lot. Bill had passed his ‘O’ levels with flying colours and even the masters at school prophesied that his ‘A’ levels were a foregone conclusion. In another year’s time, Bill would be heading for the university.

  … And Rance. Rance was his father’s right-hand man in the garage. He was a marvel with cars; that’s why he had left school at fifteen. If he liked he could have done as well as Bill. At least this is what Annie persistently said, and in his hearing.

  Yes, the McCabes had got on. And now they were thinking seriously of another move, to a bigger house in Westoe. Although Tishy and Bill would soon be at college, Rance showed no sign of leaving home. He had girls in plenty but their acquaintance didn’t last long. And then there was Kathy to consider. Annie decided that Kathy would have a better chance of meeting someone nice if they moved into Westoe, and she was anxious that Kathy should meet and marry someone nice, because she knew that Kathy, like Rance, needed to be taken care of.

  And with regard to Annie herself: both family and friends all agreed that no-one would believe that she was the mother of two strapping young men and two fine girls. Why, they assured her, she didn’t look twenty-eight, let alone thirty-eight! But when she looked in the glass Annie knew that such reckoning was fulsome praise. Nevertheless she also saw that she didn’t look her age. Surveying her unlined skin, clear eyes and abundant healthy hair, she would sometimes nod at herself and say, ‘Thirty-two, Annie, perhaps thirty-three. Long may it last.’

  She was standing in front of the mirror now trying on a new dress. Up till three or four years ago she hadn’t bothered very much with her own appearance, her time had been taken up with running the house, seeing to the children and trying to control Georgie’s increasing intake of liquor, besides keeping the accounts of the garage. But since she had passed the latter business over to Rance she had more time to give to herself and, what was equally important, money to buy decent clothes. She went to Binns now for her things, and her last two outfits had select name-tags attached to them.

  She was very pleased with what the mirror showed her at this moment, and then, as she often did, she thought of Tishy, and was attacked by a spasm of guilt. As at other times she saw now imposed on her reflection in the mirror the face of her daughter. How was it, she asked herself yet again, that the others were all so presentable, Kathy beautiful, Rance good-looking, despite his sullenness, and Bill, although not promising to be Rance’s height, at seventeen very attractive, his stocky body and blunt features giving him something which, she grudgingly admitted, was lacking in Rance; while Tishy, poor soul, had nothing to recommend her but her voice? It was this, her only asset, that also emphasised the difference between her and her brothers and sister still further, because even from a child she had spoken differently from them; the northern inflexion was less noticeable in her voice than in theirs, and she always pronounced her gs. That was why, Annie supposed, she had come out top in English. It was strange, she thought, that her daughter should speak so well when all her life she had listened to her father reiterating bloody and bugger.

  But what, after all, was a good voice when you looked like she did? Her face so thin, her mouth still made up of two straight lines, and her nose still as snubbed as it had been when a baby…And her eyes. Well, her eyes could have been bonny…No, that wasn’t the word, not bonny…attractive? No, not that either. Compelling? No. No, she could never find a word with which to describe Tishy’s eyes. But she remembered once when Tishy first went to the high school her rushing in one night saying her teacher had given her a book of poems to keep because she had read her poetry so well. And there and then she had sat down at the kitchen table and started to read, just like that. She hadn’t known she could read aloud; she knew she read a lot but she had never heard her read aloud. And in amazement she had listened to her saying:

  Woman much missed, how you call to me, call to me,

  Saying that now you are not as you were

  When you had changed from the one who was all to me,

  But as at first, when our day was fair.

  Tishy had looked up at her then and her eyes were full of tears when she said, ‘It’s called “The Voice”. It’s by Hardy, Thomas Hardy.’

  It was at that moment that she thought, her eyes are beautiful, but she had never seen them beautiful since for she had never read aloud again.

  And of the four of them, Tishy was the most stubborn. Whatever she thought was right out it would come, and no arguing would change her opinion. The things she said at times startled her. None of the others talked as Tishy did, not even Bill; although she had heard her and Bill discussing things which were beyond her. Only last week they had been on about ghettoes and protest marches and the rights of the individual, as if everybody they knew was in prison. That discussion had nearly ended up in a row for Rance had turned on them, saying, ‘For God’s sake, shut your traps, the both of you, you make me sick!’ It was then that Tishy had come out with one of her irritating wisecracks. ‘One day,’ she said, ‘you’ll take ill and they’ll find you’ve got an abscess on the brain and when they open it up it’ll be so full of ignorance it’ll be a record.’

  On this particular occasion she had caught hold of Rance’s uplifted arm even while she knew that he wouldn’t dare strike Tishy, knowing she would have turned on him like a wildcat.

  Annie had always been puzzled about Tishy’s attitude towards her elder brother. She could have understood it if her frustration had been turned on Kathy for, since she was a baby, Kathy’s looks had emphasised her own plainness. But she had never been nasty to Kathy, and she had always had an open affection for Bill.

  Over the past weeks Annie’s feeling of guilt with regards to Tishy had increased for she found she was looking forward to the late summer when Tishy would leave home and go to the training college.

  Thinking of her now she said to herself as she tried to get a back view of her dress in the mirror, ‘I must get her well rigged out, smart things, good cuts; her figure isn’t bad, but it could be better.’

  At this moment the door opened and she started slightly as Georgie came into the room.

  ‘I didn’t hear you come in.’

  He looked at her for a moment, then walked to the bedside chair and, dropping onto it, stretched his legs out before saying, ‘You know I wish I had a penny for every time you’ve said that to me over the years. I’ve got feet like a corporation horse—’ he wagged them from side to side—‘I can hear them clop-clopping even in me stocking feet. The trouble with you is your mind’s always on some damn thing or other.’

  She looked back at him through the mirror and asked, ‘Do you like it?’

  ‘I’ve seen it afore, haven’t I?’

  ‘No, you haven’t seen it afore.’

  ‘Aye, it’s all right.’

  ‘Oo…h!’ she groaned. Then, her eyes becoming fixed on his through the mirror, she asked, ‘What is it, something up?’ And she had turned to him before he answered, ‘Aye, there’s something up; it’s our Rance.’

  ‘Our Rance?’

  ‘Aye, our Rance.’ He brought bitterness into the name. ‘Mr Phillips came into the garage this mornin’ and after I’d filled him up I just put it to him nicely. “Do you want to settle up your bill?” I said.

  ‘“Bill?” he said. “Why, you’re gettin’ a bit sticky, Georgie, aren’t you? You’ve never asked for me bill afore. I settled up last month; I never let it run more than two months.” Was my bloody face red! I didn’t know what to say. I said there must’ve been a mistake. I’d take a look at the books again, perhaps it hadn’t been entered. But that didn’t pacify him very much ’cos he left, sayin’, “Then you want a new bookkeeper, don’t you?” And away he went, an’ it’s my bet he won’t be back again.’

  ‘Did he have a receipt?’

  ‘Aye, he says it’s home and he’s goin’ to bring it along. By the tone of his voice he’ll push it under me bloody nose…W
ell, I looked at the book again and there it was, nothing down. Three months owing for petrol and twenty-five quid for repairs.’

  ‘What did our Rance say?’ Her voice was quiet.

  ‘I’ll tell you what our Rance said.’ He got to his feet now. ‘Our Rance said he couldn’t understand it. Aye, he said, he had given Mr Phillips a receipt and he had put the money in the till. Why he hadn’t taken it off the book he just didn’t know.’

  ‘Well then he’s explained it. Don’t you believe him?’

  ‘Look woman, I may not be so bloody hot on figures but if he had put that money in the till wouldn’t the balance have been a bit on the heavy side at the end of the week? Two months’ petrol and twenty-five quid for repairs would have tilted the weekly check-up wouldn’t it?’

  ‘But you don’t always check up at the end of the week.’

  ‘No, I don’t, I leave it to him most times, but once or twice lately I’ve had a check up on me own, ’cos now I’m goin’ to tell you somethin’, Annie. This isn’t the first time I’ve suspected him.’

  ‘What! Our Rance? Don’t be silly. Don’t be stupid, man. Our Rance! It would be like cutting off his nose to spite his…’

  ‘Oh, no, it wouldn’t; he doesn’t happen to own the bloody garage, does he?’ His words were slow as were the movements of his head. ‘And another thing I’m gona tell you, somethin’ that you don’t know, somethin’ that I should’ve told you a while back but knowin’ how you worry your guts out over one and another of them, him in particular, I kept it to meself…He’s at the gamblin’ lark.’

  ‘Our Rance!’

  ‘Oh, bloody St Patrick! Stop repeatin’ our Rance. Aye, our Rance. Get it out of your head, lass. He was never meant for the priesthood or the monastery. He’s got faults, and as I see them, bloody big ’un’s. Of course, for you the sun shines out of him. You’ve wiped his backside for years.’ He was walking up and down the room now. ‘The others could go to hell, me included, as long as…our Rance was all right.’

  ‘That’s not fair, that’s not fair. I’ve treated them all alike.’

  ‘Like hell you have! I could flay the living daylights out of Bill, but let me lift me hand to Rance and all hell was let loose. Well now, face up to it, your wonderful Rance has been fiddlin’ me books, our books, so he could sit in at nights at Connelly’s. And what’s more he’s got in with the right bunch, Pete Cullender and Maurice Boulder an’ that lot.’

  ‘Pete Cullender!’ Her voice was a mere whisper now. ‘You mean the Cullender that was in the papers last week?’

  ‘Aye, the one and the same Cullender who was in the papers last week.’

  ‘He wouldn’t, not our Rance.’

  ‘Aw, for God’s sake!’ He was bawling now, and she hissed at him, ‘Stop it! Keep your voice down; do you want the whole street to know?’

  His voice lower, he leant towards her, saying, ‘It won’t be only the street that’ll know, it’ll be the town if he keeps this up. You’ll have to speak to him. He won’t listen to me, I’m only his bloody father; but you tell him from me that his bloody father knows what he’s up to, an’ let me find out one more thing and he’s out. Do you hear? I mean that, he’s out on his arse. Well now—’ he tugged both sides of his coat together, pulled in his lips and ended, ‘Having said that I’ll have some tea,’ and he walked out of the room leaving her standing staring at the door.

  Rance. Rance. Rance fiddling the books. She couldn’t believe it. Well, if she didn’t believe it Georgie must be making it up. But she knew her husband well enough to know that it would be impossible for him to make up something like that against his own son. Yet the relationship between him and Rance had always been strained. Up till Rance was fifteen he had lathered him for his misdemeanours and she had to admit he had been justified. The last lathering he had given him was after the schoolmaster had asked to see them both and told them that Rance was running a small gang of shoplifters who operated on a Saturday morning between the market and King Street. They hadn’t been able to believe their ears, at least she hadn’t. Thankfully the matter hadn’t got into the court, for which clemency they had to thank the fact that one of Rance’s henchmen was the son of a man of some influence in the town. On that occasion she had thought that Georgie would kill him, and perhaps he might have if she hadn’t thrust herself between them and taken some of the blows from the leather belt which were meant for the boy.

  The idea of Rance going into the garage was not only to provide him with training towards a career but in order that Georgie could keep an eye on him. And apparently he had up till now, for there had been but one incident over the past few years, and this she had never got to the bottom of. She hadn’t told Georgie of it, and when she had confronted Rance and demanded why a man called Bilby should come to the door and tell her that if he didn’t keep away from his daughter he would do for him, he had answered, ‘Aw, my God! Would you believe it. It’s her he should be doing for, not me; she’s still at school an’ I can’t walk down the street for her.’

  ‘Where does she live?’

  ‘Sunderland Road.’

  ‘But what do you have to do along Sunderland Road, you don’t go that way?’

  ‘I met her when I went to meet Alec comin’ from the tech. He knew her, he said she was bloke barmy.’

  ‘But why should her father pick on you?’

  ‘Don’t ask me. God! The things folk get up to, they would hang you!’

  His indignation with regard to this incident had reassured her he wasn’t in the wrong, but all the indignation he might show with regard to the present affair wouldn’t prove his innocence to her for she had only to think back over the last few months. The fine gold wristwatch he suddenly sported. Came by it second-hand, dirt cheap, he had said. The new suit that she knew now had never come from Burton’s. And then there were the odds and ends in his room: that real leather briefcase, not plastic like Bill’s and Tishy’s; those two silk shirts that he had supposedly bought at a sale in Newcastle, again dirt cheap.

  The old feeling of sickness began to churn in her stomach. She’d have to speak to him; more than speak to him, go for him, and she hated going for him. He had only to look at her in that particular way with that look he kept only for her, that look that always seemed to cry out for love, and she was undone.

  When she had discovered that she had a deeper feeling than mere toleration or affection for Georgie, it hadn’t detracted one iota from the feeling she had for her elder son; in fact her feelings towards the boy had seemed to deepen as if to prove to him that her love for his father was in no way derived from that which she had for him.

  ‘Mam.’ The door suddenly opened and Kathy put her head round. ‘Can I come in?’

  ‘Yes, yes, dear.’

  ‘What’s the matter with Dad? Somebody’s going to get it if I can read the signs. He’s got his billy-goat look on. You two been at it?’

  ‘No, we haven’t been at it, miss. What do you want?’

  ‘Oh, nothing, nothing.’ Kathy shook her pretty head and her pony tail swung from side to side. ‘I was just going to give you details of my latest suitor, that’s all, that’s all.’

  In spite of herself and the way she was feeling, Annie laughed and said, ‘What! Another one?’

  ‘Oh, this one’s different. This one will suit the house in Westoe. Oh yes, yes.’ She now strutted up and down the bedroom while Annie took a comb from the dressing table and drew it through her hair.

  ‘What’s his name?’

  ‘Mr Percy Rinkton.’

  ‘Never-’eard-of-’im.’

  ‘Well, from what I know you certainly will soon; he wants to come and see you…or Dad.’

  Annie swung round and they looked at each other, and Kathy made a deep obeisance with her head. ‘Yes, yes, he’s that kind of a fellow, everything above-board.’

  ‘Well, that’s a change.’

  ‘What do you mean, that’s a change? All my boys are above-board.’

 
‘You want your ears boxed.’

  ‘I want a new dress.’

  ‘You’ve got some hope; you’ve had three already this year.’

  ‘I’m a growing girl.’

  Looking through the mirror at her daughter’s quickly developing bust, Annie nodded and said, ‘And how!’ And at this they both laughed. Then Annie, her tone serious, asked, ‘Well, what about this fellow?’

  ‘Ever heard of Doctor Rinkton?’

  ‘Yes, yes, I’ve heard of Doctor Rinkton.’

  ‘Well Percy Rinkton is Doctor Rinkton’s son. No kiddin’. No kiddin’, Mam.’

  ‘We’re flying high all of a sudden. How old is he?’

  ‘Twenty-odd. What do you think of that, a man?’

  Annie turned fully round now and looked at Kathy and said seriously, ‘Yes, a man; and you want to be careful. Have you been seeing him?’

  ‘I’ve spoken to him—’ she pursed up her mouth and screwed up her eyes and counted on her fingers—‘one, two, three, four times. I first saw him at a dance, St Patrick’s do. But be prepared to receive the first shock, he’s not a Catholic. The second time I met him was when I got off a bus. I lurched into him. The third time was in Phillips’s bookshop, you know, at the bottom of Fowler Street. He was buying books; he looks a bit bookie. And the fourth time was this very day. He was waiting for me coming out of school. Stopped me at the corner and very precisely asked when I was going to leave school, and I told him as soon as ever I possibly could ’cos I hated it.’

  ‘Oh, Kathy, you didn’t!’

  ‘Honest I did. I did. And anyway, as I’ve told you before, it’s no use keeping me there. I haven’t any brains; I’m not like Tishy, I’m all bumf.’ She gave a lift to her bust, and again they were laughing, leaning against each other now. But after a moment Annie chastised her, saying, ‘You’ll get your ears boxed one of these times, me girl, for the things you say. But go on.’