The years she stole, p.14
The Years She Stole, page 14
The woman in Narnia, the fancy dress shop, was either very flattering, very impressed, or trying to make a quick sale. Either way it worked. She told me I had a blank canvas face. Whereas up until now I thought I was a bit of a Plain Jane, she told me otherwise. What I had was the canvas on which any picture could be painted. ‘And that, lady,’ she said between puffs on a ciggie, ‘is a godsend to fancy dress.’ She said with the right outfit, the right wig and the right sort of make-up I could pass myself off as anything from a scullery maid to a woman of high office. I quite liked the sound of that, and for once I appreciated the face that God gave me.
At first I’d thought, rather over-dramatically I now realized, that maybe I’d dress up as an old lady and make out I’d been a pal of the deceased. I fancied myself in a white curly wig, lumpy tights, a nylon frock and some sensible shoes, doddering down the aisle with a walking stick and a best handbag. But with some simple advice from the smoking lady of fancy dress, I realized that with a simple pair of specs, a cap and a pretend ponytail, I was unrecognizable. And that would do for me.
Next, I had to find out exactly when the funeral was taking place. That was easy enough to do. Once I got home and leafed through the phone book for the number of the crem I phoned them up and did my doddery old lady voice and asked what time Muriel’s funeral was ‘on the morrow’. God knows why I said ‘on the morrow’; it sounded so wrong as the words left my lips, but the fella at the crem didn’t seem to mind, and informed me it was ten in the morning. ‘Better than ten at night!’ I quipped, over-egging it a bit, I must say. ‘I’m tucked up in my three-quarter by then at the resting home!’
Yes, I knew it should have been ‘care home’, but I was so pigging chuffed he believed I was an actual old woman, I got a bit carried away.
Ten on the morrow it was.
I planned that my name would be Janine, if anyone was to ask. But let’s be honest. When you go to a funeral and you see someone you don’t know, you don’t exactly bound up to them and go, ‘Hiya, how did you know the corpsified one, kid?’ Well, I knew I wouldn’t anyway. Janine, I reckoned, worked in Muriel’s local shop and loved serving her coz she was a laugh, and always came in for those little bottles of vodka. Or maybe she was a barmaid in a local pub? Hmm, I wasn’t sure what best suited her as I didn’t know how secret her drinking was.
The more worrying concern was, I had no idea where Muriel had lived. So if anyone did say, ‘Oh, which pub?’ or ‘Oh, which shop?’ I wouldn’t have the foggiest where I had worked, or rather, where Janine had worked.
This wouldn’t do.
Just in case.
Someone might ask.
And the last thing I wanted to do was arouse suspicion.
I kicked the bin over in the kitchen. I sometimes did that if I was in a foul mood.
I could wait till the morning. Ask Doug when he came round.
But that too might arouse suspicion. Why would I all of a sudden be interested in his mother-in-law and where she lived, etc.?
Maybe I could ask roundabout questions.
‘What’s going on in your life, cock?’
But Doug didn’t offer stuff up about his family. He knew it upset me. And he didn’t like to see me upset.
No. I knew what was coming. I got my cap on, my glasses and ponytail, and headed back off to the high street and towards the library. Again!
Janine asked if she could find any more local news articles about the recent car crash and the woman behind the counter was most helpful. Within fifteen minutes, Janine was sat at a desk reading all about Muriel Gatsby’s high jinks again, but this time looking for proof of where she lived. God, no wonder she was Vera’s mother; this woman sounded like a complete piece of work.
Janine made some notes in a notepad, taking it all in. Muriel lived not too far from me, truth be told. I wondered if Doug ever popped in to see her after deflowering me of my so-called innocence each morning. But then I remembered what Gwen had said about them both practically hating each other’s guts, so I decided that was unlikely. She was in her early seventies and had taken to the bottle after her husband had died from cancer five years ago.
God, you could learn a lot from a local rag!
She had been arrested several times for drunk and disorderly behaviour and wasn’t meant to have her grandkids in the car that day, but she had picked them up from school as a surprise and taken them for a ride, which is when she’d hit an empty bus which was returning to the depot. The kids had come out pretty much unscathed, but she’d not been wearing a seat belt and had hit the windscreen and hey presto. Bye bye Muriel.
I didn’t like Muriel.
Well, she didn’t like my Doug.
And what she’d put them kiddies through. I mean, face facts, I was no fan of Abigail, but them kiddies could have been brown bread as well.
Oh, I had to get to this funeral quick smart. And see what a train wreck this Vera must really be, having had a mother like that.
I was beginning to feel very confident about me and Doug’s future.
Very confident indeed!
That night I dreamt I was at the funeral. But when they brought the coffin in it all went a bit loopy. I looked to the back of the crem and saw some pallbearers carrying a huge silver platter. And on top of the platter was Vera, in a swimsuit, microphone in hand, singing, ‘Have you met Miss Jones?’
I woke up in an oddly confusing sweat, then couldn’t get back to sleep again.
Obviously I was very excited about what lay ahead.
Chapter Ten
Oh lordy.
Lordy lordy lordy!
What were you thinking, Shirley?
Shame on you.
SHAAAAAAAAME on you!!
And I really did feel ashamed.
Okay. It was a mistake. And nobody’s fault but my own. I’ll hold my hands up. Both of them. I should never have gone to that stupid funeral. What was I thinking? I should never have put on that stupid disguise and gone to the funeral of someone I’d never even met just because I wanted to find out more about the orphaned daughter. My love rival. My nemesis. It was one of the worst decisions I’d ever made, if I was honest.
And let’s face it. Honesty had nowt to do with my appearance at that crematorium, I’ll admit it. I even went in bloody disguise.
Disguise!
Though even if I said so myself, that disguise was pretty bloody good, actually.
And my gut instinct had been right. No-one asked why I was there. No-one was interested, full stop.
Which was pretty annoying because . . .
Oh, I could barely bring myself to even think about it . . .
Which was pretty annoying because against all the odds, and in complete contrast to what Gwen had told me . . .
Doug had gone to the service.
Yup, siree sirah, Doug was there as he lived and breathed, in full-blown Technicolor, as they said at the flicks.
Which is more than could be said for Muriel, of course.
Dead as a doornail, dead as a dodo, dead as you like Muriel. Muriel who pooed in Gwen’s walk-in wardrobe and would poo no more.
My heart had done the rumba in my ribcage when I saw that Doug had walked in behind the coffin, cradling a sobbing Vera in his arms. That’s how it felt, anyway. It rattled around like those dancers on Come Dancing, shaking all over the dance floor in their sequins, all hand-stitched. For my part, all I wanted to do in that moment was run. But I couldn’t. That way I’d definitely draw attention to myself. I couldn’t exactly gasp, ‘Sorry! Wrong funeral!’ I was stuck there. For the duration. I was trapped. Caged. No way out.
It was like someone had superglued my backside to the pew.
I had to gasp for air a bit. Hopefully the folk either side of me just thought I was overcome with emotion. But it was too much for me to handle. How long was I going to be trapped there for? This was the worst mistake in my life!
The sweat was peeling the skin off me, I felt tingly and prickly all over and I couldn’t for the life of me get my breath. I actually envisaged dying right there and then at the funeral, but the only thing that stopped me was the fear that when I did, they’d rip off the disguise to give me mouth to mouth and Doug would find himself flummoxed. And, even in death, I didn’t want to make a holy show of myself. So I stayed alive.
Eventually I calmed down. My breathing returned to normal. And I began to wonder if what I had experienced was more of a panic attack than impending doom. Eventually I felt almost relaxed. Especially when I realized Doug wasn’t going to spend the whole service turning round to see who was there.
Fortunately it wasn’t a very long funeral. Muriel’s life hadn’t been that interesting. And there was only so much positive spin you could put on a woman who was pissed behind the wheel and drove into a bus. The vicar said something about the bus driver being full of humility and forgiveness, which had really made Vera wail, but other than that Muriel’s life really hadn’t amounted to too much. There was talk of her finally being reunited with her husband. There was the twenty-third psalm. Some old crumbly did a poem about not having really died, and just having gone to the room next door actually.
Er. I don’t think that was strictly true. Pretty sure she had died, love. It were in the papers.
And yes, she was about to go through to the next room. Coz that’s where the burning furnace was.
Then the crumbly sat down.
And that, really, was that.
As the curtains were drawn and some nondescript music played over the tannoy I held my order of service to my face, all coy like a woman in a crinoline in olden days Paris, hiding behind her fan. I couldn’t risk Doug clocking me.
But of course the awful thing, the horrible thing, the thing I really could have done without, was that yet again – just like at Barnes Wallis – I was under the same roof as my beloved and – order of service or no order of service – he just hadn’t twigged.
I wanted to scream, I’M HERE, DOUG! YOUR BIT ON THE SIDE! YOUR COURTESAN! YOUR FANCY PIECE! YOUR TOYGIRL! I’M HERE BROAD AS DAYLIGHT!
But he just hadn’t realized. And that hurt. Really hurt.
Okay, so I looked completely different from usual. Okay, so he had no reason to expect me to be there – and probably just as well. But that intrinsic pull that I always thought would spring up whenever we were in the same space was completely absent. Yet a-bloody-gain! His focus was solely on her, his wife. Rightly so, you might have said; it was her mother’s funeral after all. But this was not the picture of sad family life he painted to me on his daily visits. This was the ultimate show of strength. I could hear folk in the congregation passing comment.
Isn’t he great?
They’re so well matched.
And after everything Muriel said about him.
Bless him.
Look at him.
Yeah all right, I was looking. And it was knocking me sick.
Vera. Always the bride. Never the bridesmaid.
I’d not been surprised when he’d phoned the night before and told me he’d have to cancel his visit next day as he was feeling under the weather. I’d almost said, It’s okay, Doug. I know you’re burning the alkie tomorrow. But I kept schtum and told him I understood. Even if I knew he was lying. Even though I wanted to say, I’m onto you, Sonny Jim. Even though he was old enough to be my dad. I kept my counsel, because that was what good girls did. For I had decided I’d be a good girl. Because good girls always won. Didn’t they? They had to.
I would make sure they did.
I kept hearing that voice in my head. Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady.
I’m a good girl, I am!
I used to love that film. Sat in of a Saturday or a Sunday afternoon, me, Mam and our Josie, loving the frocks, loving the songs. Mam knew all the words.
I’m a good girl, I am!
Once the service was over I made a sharp exit before Doug could turn round from his front-row seat and realize I might have been there. I hurried away from the crematorium in as sober a walk as I could. It was almost a trot. I didn’t want to run to draw attention to myself. I took the first bus that came to the stop outside and, even though it was going in completely the wrong direction for me, I stayed with it to the end of the journey. Just in case.
Just in case what? Just in case he saw me and twigged? Twigged that I was obsessed with his wife, the competition?
Just in case my cover was blown?
Just in case he saw me and said, What the hell are you in that rig-up for?
But there was a bigger fear. Just in case he saw me and said, Do you know what, Shirl? It’s over.
Something was making me feel like he was slipping from my grasp. Something was making me feel like I was always going to play second fiddle to her headline act. It was a feeling I was used to, let’s be honest. I had always lived in the shadows while our Josie shone in the limelight. But Doug had led me to believe that one day I’d be the star of his show. And now I was appreciating this might prove unlikely. Did I really want to be the other woman, the kept woman till the end of my days? Vera had already won on so many levels. She had his ring on her finger. She had the kids. Maybe one day he’d get bored of me and turn his attention to somebody else he met by the outdoor pools at Butlin’s. It might only be a matter of time. Was I heading for the knacker’s yard when I was only eighteen years of age?
I knew there were other men out there. I knew there were better men out there. But for some reason, he was the one I wanted. He was the one who’d first shown an interest, first shone the light on me. He was the first ever man to see me naked and make love to me and tell me I was beautiful and make me feel good about myself, and that had to count for something. It had to. And if it didn’t then I would make sure that it did.
But how?
How could I do that?
Looked like it was time to up my game.
Doug had his own business. It was something to do with providing the parts for catseyes in the middle of the road. He had told me, but I’d forgotten what it was. Blimey, I could be useless sometimes. Like when I couldn’t remember if he’d told me Vera was a big fat lump or not. You’d have thought I’d remember that kind of thing. Oh Shirl, you daft apeth.
Catseyes. He ran a company that made a bit of them. For the roads. The bit that lit up perhaps, that showed you which way to drive when it was dark. Maybe he made those bits.
I did know he had a couple of Portakabins in an industrial estate between Oldham and Rochdale. And his surname was on the side of those Portakabins.
That, he’d say, was his empire.
He had men working under him and lots of business contacts.
Sometimes I dreamed that that empire would one day be mine.
I could do his touch-typing. His filing. Answer the phone.
Just putting you through . . .
And yet.
And yet.
I had this sense of foreboding. Call it woman’s intuition, call it what you like, but I sensed all would not be well in the future. I remember when our Josie’s pet rabbit Gnasher died and she started having nightmares and then was found sleepwalking on Tiberton Street singing ‘Hi Ho Silver Lining’ and had no idea why she was doing it. Mam said the woman from the Chinese laundry’s hair went white overnight when her twin sister died. You see, grief did funny things to people. And people did funny things with grief. No doubt Vera was going to be no exception.
I kept seeing this image of her in a cowshed, milking a cow. Coz oh boy, was she gonna be milking this one! She’d be more demanding of Doug’s time, I just knew it, and he’d have to do whatever she said coz let’s face it, when your missus had just lost her mam, you had to show willing. I totally understood that, I just didn’t think it was fair. I’d waited in the wings long enough. He’d sworn to me that he’d leave her one day. Was the date of that day going to be: the twelfth of never?
I felt like I was going mad. I couldn’t think about anything else. My work was suffering, even I could see that. I stopped getting As at secretarial college, I was slipping to Bs. Everybody knew summat was up. I felt there was so much rubbish and information and thoughts and fears bubbling about in my head, I had to speak to someone.
I spoke to our Josie.
I felt bad, like she didn’t have enough on her plate already.
She’d come round to mine for a meal and a bottle of pop. She was trying not to drink now she were pregnant with the baby. I was cooking my old favourite: a tin of condensed tomato soup with a tin of tuna and a tin of peas in it, served with this new-fangled invention they’d just brought out – oven chips. She still hadn’t gone back to Mam and Dad’s and was stopping with the Bob Carolgees lookalike, so she was glad to get out from under his feet, truth be told.
I told her everything I knew. I mean, there wasn’t much. I told her I’d seen his wife at Barnes Wallis and she was pretty. I didn’t tell her I’d been round with my Pretty Lady products and interrogated the neighbour, then dressed up and gone to a funeral to keep tabs on her. I only told our Josie I’d found out that Vera’s mam had died and it had been in the papers and I felt like she had the upper hand. Josie just sat there shaking her head.
‘You’re not gonna like what I’m going to say, Shirl.’
‘Say it anyway, I can be the judge of that.’
‘Well, it’s not good, is it? Him with another woman. And he lied and said she were horrible. And now you know she’s not. Is he really gonna chuck it all away to risk everything with you?’
I shrugged, even though I knew the answer was a resounding no.
‘What d’you reckon I should do, Josie?’
‘I hate to have to say it but . . .’
‘What?’
‘Get out. Get out now. Show him who’s boss.’
‘But he bought me this flat.’
‘You’ll find another. And you’ll meet another bloke. One who’ll treat you right.’
‘But what if I don’t? What if he’s the one?’
‘He’s not the one. There’s no such thing as the one. Oh, there’s someone but . . .’
‘There won’t be . . .’
‘Shirley, there’s someone out there for everyone. Even you. They just might not be the John Travolta in shining armour we all had planned for us selves.’
