Mary Ann and Bill Read online

  ‘Yes, yes, I intend to.’

  He now said, ‘I can’t understand how he could do it under my nose.’

  Mary Ann went into the scullery and put the kettle on the gas and she stood near the stove for a moment and turned her face towards the kitchen door. She wanted to shout out, ‘It shouldn’t surprise you; anybody could have walked off with the garage these past few weeks and I doubt if you would have noticed.’ But of course she didn’t. That was over, over and done with; except that the corpse was still lying between them and nothing would be the same again until it was removed. And the only way to remove such a corpse was to talk about it, and that was going to be very difficult for them both.

  Chapter Fifteen: Patterns of Life

  ‘It’s a wonder you’re not struck down dead, Rose Mary Boyle. Eeh! I just don’t know how you can. Like me mam says, if you got paid for being a liar you’d own the world.’

  ‘I’m not a liar, Annabel Morton, and I’m not like you, thank goodness; I’m not a common, ignorant, big-mouthed pig!’

  ‘No, of course you’re not, you’re a common, ignorant big-mouthed idiot, that’s what you are.’

  ‘What is this?’ The cool voice of Miss Plum brought Annabel Morton round to face their teacher, and Miss Plum raised her head and said, ‘School hasn’t begun yet and you’ve started.’

  Rose Mary warmed suddenly to her teacher. ‘She’s always on, Miss Plum, she never lets up. She’s always at me and our David, isn’t she, David?’

  David made no response. He was still in a way suffering from the effect of Friday, having his ears boxed by Diana Blenkinsop, then being thrashed almost within an inch of his life, at least that’s what Rose Mary had told him had happened. But in any case the effects of the thrashing had caused him to be sick on Saturday, really sick; nervous tummy, his mam had called it. Then on Sunday his Granny McMullen had come. She had heard about him trying to cut somebody’s hair off. His granny heard everything; she was the devil’s mam, their Rose Mary said, and he could believe it. She hadn’t heard about the money he had taken, and for that at least he was thankful. But she had heard about all the money his mam was getting because Ben had died. She had wanted to know what his mam was going to do with it and his mam had said they were going to have a bungalow built at the bottom of the field.

  If he had known his mother was going to get all that money he would never have taken any from the till because yesterday she had given Jimmy the money he wanted for his share in the car.

  The money was making things exciting and he felt he was missing a lot having to come to school; and here was Miss Plum at them already. Well, if she wasn’t at them she soon would be; he could tell by the look on her face and the way she had shut up their Rose Mary.

  And Miss Plum had shut up Rose Mary, she had shut her up with one word, ‘ENOUGH!’ Then after a pause she turned to Annabel Morton and said, ‘You are not to call people liars, Annabel.’

  ‘Yes, Miss Plum,’ said Annabel meekly, before adding, ‘But she is, Miss Plum. Do you know what she said? She said her mam’s been left a fortune an’ she’s going to build a bungalow and going to give their house to Jimmy, who works in the garage. And she said her mother’s a writer and she gets lots of money from the Newcastle Courier…’

  ‘Well, she does, you! She does.’ Rose Mary was poking her chin out at the unbelieving individual.

  ‘That’s enough.’ Miss Plum’s voice was stern now, ‘And Annabel is quite right this time, you are lying, and you’ve got to…’

  Miss Plum was utterly amazed as Rose Mary slapped at her skirt and dared to say, ‘You! You’re as bad as she is. It’s true…’tis!’

  ‘Don’t do that!’ Miss Plum had caught the hand and slapped it twice. ‘You’re a naughty girl, Rose Mary; I’ll take you to the…Oooh!’

  Miss Plum couldn’t believe it was happening. Only the pain in her shin where David’s hard toecap had kicked her proved to her that it had happened. Rose Mary Boyle had slapped at her and David Boyle had kicked her. ‘Well!’ She seemed to swell to twice her height and twice her breadth. As her hands went out to descend on them they turned and fled.

  David was now racing across the school yard in and out of the children with Rose Mary hanging on to his hand, but just as they reached the gate he pulled her to a skidding stop. And there he turned and looked at the sea of faces mostly on his eye level, except the enraged countenance of Miss Plum. And it was to her he shouted one word, ‘HELL!’

  Then running again, almost flying, they scampered up the road and they didn’t seem to draw breath until they reached the bus stop, and there Rose Mary, gasping, stared at her brother, at their David, who had sworn a terrible word at Miss Plum. She, herself, had slapped at Miss Plum’s dress but their David had kicked Miss Plum, he had kicked her on the shin and made her yell; and then he had said that word.

  Quite suddenly the enormity of this crime and its penalty, of which she would be called upon to share, was too much for her and she burst out crying.

  David stood looking at her helplessly. He didn’t feel at all repentant, at least not yet. After a moment he said, ‘Here’s the bus.’

  She was still crying as they boarded the bus. It was their nice conductor and he said, ‘Hello. What’s up with you two? It isn’t ten minutes ago I dropped you. This day’s flashed by.’

  They didn’t answer, and when they were seated he came up to them and, bending down, said, ‘What’s happened this time?’ And Rose Mary, sniffing and gulping, said, ‘She called me a liar, Annabel Morton, and the teacher came and she took her part and…and I said I wasn’t a liar and I put my hand out, like that.’ She tapped the conductor’s coat. ‘And she slapped my hand.’ She paused and cast a glance at David, but David was looking down at his fingernail as it intently cleaned its opposite number, and raising her face further to the conductor she whispered, ‘He kicked her.’

  ‘He did!’ The conductor’s voice was laden with awe. ‘Go on.’

  Rose Mary closed her eyes and nodded her head and went to impart something even worse, placing her mouth near his ear, she whispered, ‘He swore.’

  He brought his face fully round to hers, trying to shut the laughter out of it by stretching his eyes and keeping his lips firm; then he said, ‘He swore, did he?’ Now his mouth was near her ear. ‘What did he say?’

  ‘…Hell.’

  ‘HELL!’ The conductor straightened up and cast a glance at the interested passengers around them, and his look warned them not to titter.

  ‘By! He’s done it now, hasn’t he?’ The conductor looked at David’s bowed head. ‘Once upon a time he never opened his mouth, did he? And now, by, he’s not only opened it, he’s using it, isn’t he?’ He was talking as if David wasn’t there, and Rose Mary nodded at him, then said, ‘We’ll get wrong.’

  ‘Oh, I wouldn’t worry.’ The conductor jerked his head now.

  ‘But we will; we’ll be taken to the priest.’ She turned her head swiftly to look at the man behind her who had made a funny noise, but the man’s face was straight.

  ‘What do you think he’ll give you?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The priest, when you’re taken to him?’

  ‘Likely a whole decade of the Rosary, I usually only get one Our Father and three Hail Marys.’

  Now the conductor turned abruptly away, saying, ‘Fares, please. Fares, please,’ as he went down the bus.

  He was a long time down the bus because everybody was talking to him, and some people were laughing. Rose Mary thought she would never laugh again.

  When they stood on the platform waiting for the bus to stop the conductor put his hand on David’s head and said, ‘You’ll do, young ’un, you’ll do,’ and David grinned weakly at him. He felt he stood well in the conductor’s estimation. For a moment he wished the bus conductor was his dad, at least for the next hour or so.

  When they entered the lane Rose Mary started crying again, and once more he took hold of her hand, a thing he hadn’t don
e, except when he pulled her out of the school yard, for a long, long time.

  When they came in sight of the garage he drew her to a stop and they stared at each other. Rose Mary was frightened. He was frightened, but he wasn’t crying. When she said to him, ‘We’ll get wrong,’ he made no reply, and they walked on again.

  It had never entered their heads to run anywhere else but home.

  When Mary Ann, having made the bed and tidied the room, went to adjust the curtains she imagined she was seeing things when she saw them hand in hand walking slowly across the drive towards the front door. She pressed her face near the window for a moment; then she turned and flew down the stairs, and as she opened the door Corny was approaching them from the garage, and they both asked the same thing in different ways: ‘What’s the matter? Why have you come home?’

  ‘Mi…Miss Plum, Mam.’

  ‘Miss Plum! What’s she done?’

  ‘She wouldn’t believe us.’

  Mary Ann bent down towards Rose Mary. ‘She wouldn’t believe you? What did you tell her?’

  ‘About everything in the school yard. Annabel Morton called me a liar, and a pig, and then she told Miss Plum what I’d said and Miss Plum said I was lying an’ all. And I didn’t mean to slap her, Mam, I didn’t; I just touched her skirt like that.’ She flicked at her mother’s hand now. ‘And she slapped me, she slapped me twice. And then David…’ She turned and looked at her brother, but David was looking up at Corny, staring up at him, fear in his eyes again, and Corny said, ‘Yes, well? What did David do?’

  Rose Mary waited for David to go on with the tale, but David remained mute and she said, ‘He only did it because she slapped me, Mam, that’s why.’

  ‘All right, all right,’ said Mary Ann patiently, ‘but tell me what he did.’

  ‘He…he kicked her, and he said…’

  ‘You kicked Miss Plum?’ Mary Ann was confronting her son, and David looked at her unblinking but said nothing.

  ‘How could you, David?’

  ‘He only did it because she was hitting me, Mam.’

  Mary Ann took in a deep breath and Corny let out a slow one, and then Mary Ann asked of her daughter, ‘What else did he do?’

  Rose Mary’s head drooped slightly to the side, her eyes filled with tears again, she blinked and gulped but couldn’t bring herself to repeat the terrible thing their David had said to Miss Plum, and so Corny, looking at his son, asked him quietly, ‘What else did you do, David?’ And David looked back at his father and said briefly, ‘Swore.’

  Corny moved his tongue round his mouth as if he were trying to erase a substance that was sticking to his teeth, and then he asked, ‘What did you say?’

  There was quite a pause before David said, ‘Hell!’

  ‘…Hell?’

  ‘Uh-huh!’

  ‘Why?’ Corny felt he had to pursue this, and seriously, but David went mute again, and Rose Mary, now that the worst was over, quickly took up the story. ‘He grabbed me by the hand and pulled me away from Miss Plum and it was as we were going through the gate he turned back and he shouted it at her.’

  Both Corny and Mary Ann saw the scene vividly in their minds, and simultaneously they turned away and Mary Ann said, ‘Come along, come upstairs.’

  They had hardly entered the room when the phone rang and, Corny picking it up, said, ‘Yes?’ and Jimmy answered. ‘It’s the schoolmistress. She wants to know are the bairns back.’

  ‘Put her on.’ Corny now looked at Mary Ann and she reached out and took the phone from him; then with her other hand she waved the children out of the room, whispering, ‘Go into the sitting room, I’ll be there in a minute.’

  ‘Mrs Boyle?’

  ‘Yes, this is Mrs Boyle.’

  ‘Have the children returned home?’

  ‘Yes, they’ve just got in, Miss Swatland.’ Mary Ann’s voice was stiff.

  ‘I suppose they’ve given you their version of the incident?’

  ‘Yes, Miss Swatland.’

  ‘They were very naughty you know, Mrs Boyle. Of course, being twins it’s understandable that they’ll defend each other, but in this case they were very, very naughty. Do you know that David kicked Miss Plum?’

  ‘I understand that he did.’

  ‘And that Rose Mary slapped her?’

  ‘I don’t think Rose Mary slapped her. She made a movement with her hand at her skirt; there’s quite a difference.’

  There was a short silence on the line now, then Miss Swatland said, ‘Rose Mary has a vivid imagination, Mrs Boyle. This isn’t a bad thing unless it gets out of hand and then there’s a very thin line between imagination and lies.’

  ‘Rose Mary wasn’t telling lies, Miss Swatland.’

  There was a gentle laugh on the other end of the line. ‘Oh, Mrs Boyle you don’t know what Rose Mary says at school, what she said today. I understand she said you had come into a fortune, and you were giving your garage boy your house and building a bungalow, besides which you were writing for The Courier, and on and on.’

  ‘Which are all true, Miss Swatland.’

  There was a longer pause now, and the sound of whispering came to Mary Ann and she glanced at Corny and inclined her head towards him.

  Miss Swatland was speaking again. ‘Well, you must admit, Mrs Boyle, such things don’t happen in the usual course of events, and when a child relates them one is apt to think they are exaggerating, to say the least. Miss Plum wasn’t to know of your good fortune.’

  ‘Miss Plum could have thought there may have been some truth in the child’s prattle. It isn’t unheard of for people to win the pools, is it, although I haven’t won the pools. And I think when a child is using her imagination, even when there isn’t any truth as a basis, it doesn’t help her to be told she is a liar.’

  ‘Miss Plum has a lot of small children to cope with, Mrs Boyle…’

  ‘I’m quite well aware of that. Well, she’ll have two less in the future, Miss Swatland, because I’m going to take the children away.’

  ‘Oh, that is up to you, Mrs Boyle.’

  ‘Yes, it’s up to me, Miss Swatland. Good day.’

  ‘Good day, Mrs Boyle.’

  Mary Ann put the phone down and looked up at Corny, and Corny said, ‘Take them away? But where will you send them?’

  ‘Her to the Convent, and him to St Joseph’s Preparatory.’

  As he turned away from her and walked towards the window she said quietly, ‘We can do it between us.’ Then going swiftly to the sideboard drawer, she took from her bag an envelope and went to his side and handed it to him, saying, ‘That’s for you. You won’t be able to actually get the money until it goes through probate, but it’s just to let you know that it’s yours.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Open it and see.’

  He looked at her a full minute before he did as she bade him, then when he saw the solicitor’s letter he bit on his lip and handed it back to her, saying, ‘I can’t take it.’

  ‘Corny! Look at me.’

  He looked at her.

  ‘We…we’ve always shared everything and I won’t spend another penny of the money unless you take half. I mean it. That’s to go straight into your personal account when it comes through. It’s not going into the business, it’s for you to do as you like with. I don’t want you to put any of it towards the bungalow, and I won’t, that’s to come out of the business. You always intended to build a house, didn’t you?’

  He had his head bowed deep on his chest and he said, ‘Mary Ann.’

  She didn’t answer him, she waited, but he seemed incapable of going on. When she saw his jawbones working and the knuckles shining white through his clenched fists she turned away and said, ‘What about us going down to Fanny’s this afternoon? We’ve never been for ages.’

  It was still a while before he answered, and then he said briefly, ‘Aye.’

  ‘The…the children would love it, and there’s something I want to give her.’

  Ag
ain she went to her bag and took out another envelope, and as she looked at it she said, ‘It’s wonderful to be able to do things you’ve dreamed about.’

  He half turned his head towards her, his eyes still cast down, and she looked towards him and said, ‘It’s fifty pounds. They gave me an advance. Oh, I’m dying to see her face when she…’

  ‘Oh God!’

  She watched him swing himself round from the window and go to the chair by the fireside and, dropping into it, bury his face in his hands, and when he muttered thickly, ‘Coals of fire,’ she could say nothing, only stand by the table and press her hands flat on it and look down on them and wait.

  Corny squeezed his face between his hard palms. She was going to give his granny fifty pounds. Nobody, not one of her ten sons and daughters she had alive, or any of her offspring, had ever given her fifty shillings, except perhaps himself—he had always seen to his granny—but Mary Ann was going to give her fifty pounds; only she would have thought about giving her fifty pounds; only she would have thought about saying I’ll not spend a penny of my money unless you take half. And he had been such a blind and bloody fool that he had let his thoughts and feelings slide from her. For weeks now there had been superimposed on her a pair of long, brown legs and a face that he had thought beautiful. In this moment he couldn’t imagine what had possessed him not to see through the slut the moment he clapped eyes on her, but the point was he hadn’t. Instead some part of him had gone down before her like dry grass before a fire.

  For days now he had been consumed with shame, yet he kept telling himself that nothing had happened, not really. He hadn’t been with her, he hadn’t kissed her, he hadn’t even touched her. That was funny. He had never once touched her hand, yet he was feeling as guilty as if he had gone the whole hog, and he knew why, oh aye, he knew why, because deep in his heart he had wanted to. Mary Ann had sensed this and nothing would be right between them until he could tell her, until he could own up.