Mary Ann and Bill Read online

  ‘Busy?’

  ‘No, this is a new form of exercise; they say it prevents you from getting old.’

  She laughed softly. ‘You’re the type that’ll never grow old, Corny.’

  ‘Nice of you to say so, but you see before you a man literally prone with age.’

  She laughed softly. ‘When you feel like that it’s a sure sign you need a change.’

  ‘I’m inclined to agree with you.’

  ‘It’s a beautiful day.’

  ‘I hadn’t really noticed, not until a minute ago.’ He wasn’t used to paying compliments and the thought that he had done so brought the blood rushing to his face, but when she laughed out loud he knew a moment’s fear in case the sound carried upwards and into the house.

  ‘Do you know something?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You’re very, very nice, Mr Cornelius Boyle.’

  He lowered his eyes for a moment, looked at the spanner in his right hand, moved his lips outwards, then drew them in tight between his teeth before he replied, ‘And you know something?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You are more than nice, Miss Diana Blenkinsop, much, much more than nice.’ He dare not allow himself to look into her eyes; his gaze was fixed on her hair where it fell over her shoulders and rested on the points of her small breasts.

  ‘Dad! Dad! Where’s Jimmy?’

  He blinked quickly, his body jerked as if he had been dreaming and, turning his head, he looked at the face of his son peering at him from yon side of the car, and he said, ‘He…he’s about somewhere. In…in the yard, I think.’

  David did not say ‘All right, Dad,’ and run off; he still knelt on the edge of the well, his head inclined to one shoulder, and he gazed at his dad then at the other face beyond his dad.

  ‘Well, I must be off. I’m looking for Father. He hasn’t turned up yet; I thought he might be wandering around the works.’

  ‘I haven’t seen him.’

  Her face became still; her eyes looked into his. ‘We’ll meet again.’ Her smile showed all her teeth, like a telly advert. When her face lifted from his he watched her body unfold, he watched her legs as they walked away, then he turned again slowly onto his back and lay gasping for a moment.

  What was going to be the outcome of it? They were nearing some point of revelation. He knew it and she knew it. Dear God, what was he going to do? Mary Ann. Oh, Mary Ann. He wanted help. He thought of Mike, but Mike could do nothing more. There was no alternative, only his own reserves, and God knew they were pretty weak at the moment.

  ‘Dad!’

  He had forgotten about David and he turned his head towards him, saying, ‘You still there, what do you want?’

  ‘Can I help you?’

  ‘No, no. I thought you had a bad head?’

  ‘I have.’

  ‘Well, go out in the fresh air.’

  ‘Yes, Dad.’

  After David moved away he lay until he felt his stomach heaving as if he were going to be sick, and he crawled from under the car and went to the back gate and took in great draughts of fresh air. As she said, it was a beautiful morning, like a summer’s day; the world was bright, she was bright and beautiful and young, so young…Mary Ann was young, yet Mary Ann was like a child compared with her, because Diana had knowledge that Mary Ann had no notion of. Diana had a knowledge of men, what they wanted, what they needed. She was like a woman made out of history, all the Salomes, all the Cleopatras, all the essence of all the women who had made love their business.

  It was as he turned into the garage again that he saw Mr Blenkinsop at the far door.

  ‘Hello, there. Can I have a word with you, Corny?’

  Mr Blenkinsop was looking at him in an odd way and the sweat began to run down from his oxters and soak his shirt.

  ‘Yes, yes,’ he nodded his head quickly. ‘Would you like to come into the office?’ He led the way into his office and there he said, ‘Take a seat.’

  Mr Blenkinsop sat down on the only chair, but Corny did not perch himself on the high stool but stood with his back to his desk and pressed his hips against it as if for support, and as he looked at Mr Blenkinsop’s bent head his sweating increased, and he ran a finger round the neck of his overalls. Then Mr Blenkinsop raised his head and said, ‘I don’t like to probe into a man’s private life but this is one time when I’m forced to. I want to ask you what you know about Johnny Murgatroyd?’

  The question came as such a surprise that Corny gaped for a moment, then said, ‘Johnny? Johnny Murgatroyd?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, as you say, a man’s private life is his own, but one hears things. What has he been up to?’

  ‘It’s not what he’s been up to but what he might be up to.’ The words were slow and meaningful, yet Corny didn’t get the gist of them until a thought struck him. Was he trying to tell him something about Mary Ann and Murgatroyd? The thought brought him from the desk and he stretched himself upwards before he said, ‘What do you want to say, Mr Blenkinsop?’

  ‘Well, it’s rather a delicate matter, Corny. I…’

  Corny felt himself bridling. He’d say it was a delicate matter; and what damn business was it of his anyway. He said stiffly, ‘My wife’s known Johnny Murgatroyd since they were children together. They lived next door to each other so to speak.’

  ‘Oh, I didn’t know that, but one hears things you know. Do you think there’s any truth in the rumour that he’s had a number of women, not girls, women, if you follow me?’

  ‘Yes, I follow you.’ Corny nodded at him slowly. ‘But as I said, and as you said, the man’s life’s his own, it’s nobody’s business except his and those concerned.’

  ‘Quite right, quite right.’ Mr Blenkinsop made a movement that expressed his understanding, and then he said, ‘I agree with you, a man’s life is his own and he can do what he likes with it, until it impinges on your daughter’s life, and then one sees it differently.’

  Corny had been standing straight, almost rigid, and now he brought his head down. It moved lower and lower and his eyes held Mr Blenkinsop’s for a full minute before he said, ‘Murgatroyd and Diana?’

  ‘Yes, Murgatroyd and Diana.’

  Now his shoulders were moving upwards again, taking his head with them, and he made a sound like a laugh as he said, ‘No, no, you’ve been listening to rumours, Mr Blenkinsop. Diana going with Murgatroyd? Never!’

  The laughing sound he made increased. There was an assurance about it until Mr Blenkinsop, getting to his feet, said, ‘I haven’t been listening to rumours, Corny; I only wish I had. She’s going around with him. She was at a dance last Saturday night with him. I went to the house where she is staying. They’re very nice people, he calls for her there. She was out with him all day on Sunday and she didn’t get back until turned one o’clock on Monday morning. She’s seen him every night this week and has never been in before twelve. Mrs Foster, the woman she’s staying with, was glad I called. She’s been a little worried, not because she knows anything against Murgatroyd but because she thinks he’s too old for her and,’ he pursed his lips, ‘not quite her class.’

  Corny was leaning against the edge of the desk again. He was staring down at his feet. Again he was feeling sick, but it was a different kind of sickness now. It was a sickness bred of shame, self-recrimination, and the feeling that only a man gets when he knows he’s been made a fool of, when he’s been taken for a ride, a long, long ride; when he’s been used, laughed at.

  Johnny Murgatroyd, the scum of the earth. And where sex was concerned he was the scum of the earth. Her father had said that she was out with him until one o’clock in the morning. Well, no-one could be out with a man like Johnny Murgatroyd and not know what it was all about. Oh, God! He was so sick, sick to the core of him. And not ten minutes ago she had looked into his eyes and promised him anything he had in mind to ask. Or had she? Had it just been his imagination? NO. NO. It had not been his imagination. He had been neither drunk nor da
ft these past weeks, but one thing he had been, and that was besotted by a cheap sexy slut.

  Mr Blenkinsop had been talking for some minutes and he hadn’t heard him and he brought his attention back to him again to hear him say, ‘Rodney wanted her to go to America and I think the only way to nip this in the bud is to send her packing, so to speak. Of course, her mother and I will miss her terribly but we can’t stand by and let her ruin her life. And you know young girls are very headstrong; when they get it into their head they’re in love they imagine they’ll die if they don’t get their way. Yet with a girl like Diana she’ll be in and out of love, if I know anything, for a good many years to come…I hope you didn’t mind me asking about Murgatroyd, but if there’s nothing you really know against him, well, that’s that.’

  Corny found his voice to say, ‘I only know he’s unmarried and women seem to like him.’

  ‘Oh yes, yes.’ Mr Blenkinsop was walking out of the office now and he smiled over his shoulder at Corny and said, ‘There’s no doubt about that. He’s a very, very presentable man, but I don’t want him,’ his voice dropped and he repeated, ‘I don’t want him for a son-in-law, you understand?’

  Corny understood. He also hoped in this moment that Mr Blenkinsop would get him for a son-in-law. He hoped Murgatroyd would in some way manage to marry Diana Blenkinsop, and by God it would serve her right.

  ‘Well, I must get off now, but thanks, Corny. You really don’t mind me having asked you about him?’

  ‘Oh no, not at all.’

  ‘Thanks. Goodbye.’

  ‘Goodbye, Mr Blenkinsop.’

  He returned to the office, and now he did sit on his stool and he supported his slumped shoulders by crossing his arms on the desk. And in this moment he felt so low, so belittled there was no hole so small that he couldn’t have crawled into.

  Mary Ann opened the sideboard drawer and took out a pair of binoculars. They had originally been used by some naval man but now looked very much the worse for wear. She had picked them up in a second-hand shop about two years ago, around the time that Corny was taking an interest in birdlife to while away the time between passing motorists. He had said to her one day, ‘You wouldn’t believe it, but I’ve seen ten different kinds of birds on the spare land this morning. I couldn’t make out half of them, only to see that they were different. You can’t get near enough to them. What you want are field glasses when looking at birds.’

  She had said, ‘I’ll get you a book on the different types of birds; you can get them in that small series.’ She hadn’t thought about the glasses until she had seen them lying among some junk in a dirty-looking shop in a back street in Newcastle. She had been amazed that she had been asked three pounds for them, but she had paid it, and Corny had had a lot of fun out of the glasses. That was until the stroke of luck came, and he had never touched the glasses since. But she had. She had used these glasses day after day over the past weeks, round about dinner time, because it was at dinner time that Diana Blenkinsop sauntered over the spare land. When it was fine she had her lunch out there on the knoll; even when it was raining she would saunter down the field, past the derelict old car that the children played with, down to where the land rose to form the knoll, and where, Mary Ann knew, the men, as they sat munching their bait, would be able to see her plainly standing silhouetted against the sky.

  As time went on it was a compelling urge that made her take up the field glasses. She always seemed to know the time when the figure would appear from the side of the half-erected car park. This sprang from the same instinct that told her when Diana Blenkinsop was down in the garage. She seemed to be able to smell her there. The feeling would bring her to a stop in the middle of some job and carry her to the front room, to the side of the window, and as sure as life a few minutes later she would see the tall, lithe figure sauntering across the drive.

  She stood now to the side of the scullery window and lifted the glasses to her eyes. Yes, there she was already ensconced, and she must have had her lunch because she was sunbathing. She was lying spreadeagled like a body being sacrificed to the sun.

  She was brazen, utterly brazen. Mary Ann’s lips tightened. She looked all legs, bare legs. Oh, men! Couldn’t Corny see what she was?

  Her attention was now brought from the knoll to the derelict car and the figure that had just emerged from the shelter of it. It was David. When she realised that her son was going towards Diana Blenkinsop there entered into her a deeper note of bitterness. Even children were attracted to her. Not Rose Mary. No. No female would be. When she saw David drop onto the ground she screwed up her eyes and refocused the glasses. What on earth was he doing? He was crawling, up the side of the knoll, right behind the prone figure.

  What…on…earth…was he up to? Perhaps he was playing a game? He was going to give her a fright.

  When he was within less than an arm’s length of Diana Blenkinsop she saw him stop, and then her heart almost ceased to beat when his hand, holding something in it from which the sun glinted as if from steel, moved towards the head lying on the grass.

  She gripped the glasses tightly to her face as she cried, ‘David! David! Don’t! Don’t!’ The next minute she saw Diana Blenkinsop spring to her feet and hold her head. Then David turned and ran down the hill, and Diana after him.

  Now she herself was flying down the back stairs, through the yard and onto the open space behind the garage, there to see Diana Blenkinsop belabouring David about the head and shoulders.

  No tigress could have covered the distance quicker and, tearing her son from the enraged girl, she cried, ‘You! You great big useless hussy, take that!’

  She’d had to reach up some distance to deliver the blow, but such was its force that it made Diana Blenkinsop reel backwards and she stood for a moment cupping her face before she cried, ‘How dare you! HOW DARE YOU!’

  ‘You say how dare I? You have the nerve to say how dare I? And you beating my son?’

  ‘Beating your son?’ Diana Blenkinsop was spitting the words at Mary Ann now. ‘Yes, and I’ll beat him again. Just look. See what’s he’s done.’ She lifted the front of her hair to show a jagged line about six inches from the bottom and two inches in width. ‘He was cutting my hair off, the horrible little tyke.’ She was glaring down at David, and David, from the shelter of his mother’s waist, slanted his eyes up to her and clung tighter to Mary Ann.

  ‘Whatever he did, you’ve got no right to lay hands on him; you should have come to me.’

  ‘Come to you!’ The words held deep scorn. ‘And what would you have done? You can’t control any member of your family from your dog upwards. Your children take no more notice of you than your husband does.’

  Mary Ann found difficulty in breathing, and her words came as a hissed whisper through her trembling lips. ‘You cheap, loose individual, you!’

  There was a slight pause before Diana said, ‘You had better be careful, but whatever I am, I can lay no claim to commonness.’ Her lip curled on the word. ‘There’s a difference, Mrs Boyle.’

  At this point she raised her eyes from Mary Ann’s face to the small garage door and her head wagged slightly as she watched Corny come and stand beside his wife. He was looking at her as he had never looked at her before and he said quietly, ‘Yes as you say, Diana, there is a difference between cheap and common, yet some folks can be both.’

  As Diana stared into the face that was almost on a level with her own, she knew that her power over this man was gone. He had likely heard about Johnny. Oh well, what did it matter? The sea was teeming with such fish. She said to him, ‘Your son tried to cut my hair off.’

  Corny cast a swift glance down at David; then looking back at her, he said, ‘Did he now!’

  ‘Yes, he did now.’ She mimicked his inflexion, then added, ‘And your wife struck me.’

  ‘Oh, she did, did she?’ Now he looked down at Mary Ann. But Mary Ann did not return his glance; she was staring at the girl, sensing something had happened, even before thi
s incident, between her and Corny.

  ‘Yes, she did. She’s keeping true to type, the backstreet type.’

  Corny took a step from Mary Ann’s side as he said grimly, ‘I’ll have you remember it’s my wife you’re talking about.’

  ‘Oh, la-la! Aren’t we becoming loyal all of a sudden! You must have lost your amnesia. How does it feel to remember you’ve got a wife?’

  Corny’s arms were stiff by his sides, his muscles tense, his fingernails digging into his palms. He was getting all he had asked for, and more. God, how could he have been so blind! Could it be that just over an hour ago there was some part of him that had loved this hussy? Aye, he’d have to admit it, some part of him had loved her; not in the way he loved Mary Ann but in a way that was like a craving for drugs, or drink. And now there was nobody in the wide world he hated as he did her.

  He watched her coming nearer to him, her eyes fixed scornfully on his. She passed him without a word, but when she came to Mary Ann she paused slightly, and looking down at her, said, ‘I should give him back his trousers, it might help him to find out whether he’s a man or not.’

  Mary Ann was in front of him, hanging on to his upraised arm. The trembling of his body went through hers. She did not look up at his face but kept her eyes fixed on the arm she was holding, yet she knew that he was watching the figure moving towards the small door in the garage. When she felt he could see her no longer she released her hold, but still not looking at him she said under her breath, ‘You’d better come upstairs…and you an’ all.’ She put out her hand and pulled David towards her, and with him by her side she walked slowly forward. But she had covered more than half of the open space before she heard the crunch of Corny’s steps behind her.

  In the kitchen she was glad to sit down; every bone in her body was shaking. She did not know whether it was with anger or relief; anger at the things that girl had said, or relief at the knowledge that whatever had been between her and Corny was finished, dead.