Secrets to Keep

CHAPTER THIRTEEN





‘What do you want?’

‘Fine welcome, I must say.’

‘If you were expecting a welcome, you came to the wrong house.’

‘Then it’s a good job I wasn’t. Go and tell yer mam I’m back. And, on yer way, put the kettle on.’

He made to shove past her but Aidy barred his way by blocking the door with her body. ‘I can’t tell Mam you’re back. She isn’t here.’

‘Then I’ll tell her meself when she comes back.’

‘She won’t be coming back. She’s dead. Shame it wasn’t you instead! Now, if that’s all …’ Aidy stepped back inside the kitchen and made to shut the door, but was prevented by a booted foot placed inside the step.

‘Not really going to shut the door on yer father, are yer?’

She spat back, ‘Father! That’s a joke, isn’t it? You stopped being a father to your kids when you walked out on us for the second time, nine years ago. Not that you ever were what you could properly call a father when you were living here with us. You never stayed around even to meet Marion.’

She flashed a glance at the man who had sired her. The last time she saw him he’d been a handsome man still, dark haired, tall and broad. These last years had aged him markedly, shrinking his once muscular body to skeletal thinness. He obviously hadn’t done well for himself as his clothes were as threadbare as those worn by the poorest around these parts. His face was haggard, grey hair greasy and straggly, and he looked to be in dire need of a hot bath and a shave.

Aidy snapped at him, ‘Why have you come back?’

Arnold Greenwood grinned sardonically at her. ‘Maybe I’ve missed you all.’

‘Well, we haven’t missed you, that’s for sure.’ She eyed him knowingly. ‘I take it you’ve no job, no woman to look after you, and nowhere to live? So you’ve decided to come back to the people who despise you after what you did to them, sooner than sleep on the streets or beg a place in the poorhouse?’

‘That’s about the size of it.’

Aidy glared at him murderously. ‘Over my dead body will you come back here!’

He shot her a warning look. ‘Now you look here, Ad—’

Her temper erupting she flared at him, ‘Don’t you dare call me by that name you insisted on giving me.’

‘In honour of my grandmother. You should feel privileged you were named after her.’

‘What! Damned, more like! She was a nasty, mean, spiteful woman nobody went near unless they absolutely had to. You only called me after her because you hoped she’d leave you a fortune – shame she hadn’t a pot to piss in, wasn’t it?’ Aidy paused long enough to give him a scathing glance. ‘You turned out to be very like her, didn’t you? Now, I’d be obliged if you’d remove yourself from my doorstep and shut the back gate behind you.’

Arnold had been fully expecting his reception to be exactly the one he’d received. After all, in view of his past behaviour towards his family, he in truth deserved nothing more. But desperate times called for desperate measures, and Arnold was a desperate man.

He’d fallen for Jessie Jackson the first moment he’d clapped eyes on her. What man wouldn’t have? She had been good looking, sharp witted, strong minded. She lit up a room the instant she entered it. At that time he’d been good looking himself and earning better money than many of his peers because he’d learned a skill. He seemed to offer her a promising future. He pursued Jessie and won her.

Arnold had enjoyed being a married man until their first child had come along. That, for him, was when the rot set in. He grew resentful of having no money in his pocket to call his own; loathed their offspring disturbing his peace and disrupting their sex life; grew bored and frustrated with the monotony of life as husband and father; found himself longing for the freedom of the single life again. So he upped and left it all behind, got himself a fresh start all round in another part of town.

For a while he enjoyed his single status again, having money to call his own, going from woman to woman. Then he got one pregnant, and to escape the wrath of her family, who were insisting he marry her, hid from them back in the bosom of his own abandoned family.

Jessie did not exactly welcome him back with open arms but, thankfully for him, his return coincided with what was for her a dire period in her life. She had just lost her job and her lodger; was in danger of losing her home. A bleak existence loomed ahead for her and Aidy. For a while Arnold tolerated life as a married man again, but it wasn’t long before once again he began to resent not having any spare cash. With two more young children to irritate him and disturb his peace, and another on the way, the single life beckoned him irresistibly. So he upped and left and got it back for himself.

He worked when he had to, didn’t when he found a woman besotted enough by him to keep him. Those women were always the good-time sort, usually married themselves but with husbands who’d absconded or died. But even those sort sooner or later wanted some sort of commitment from him. And Arnold wasn’t committing to anyone ever again. Besides, he was still married so wasn’t a free man anyway, and he certainly didn’t want any more children. As soon as hints about that topic began to be dropped, he was off.

The years seemed to pass like a click of his fingers and then, to his utter shock and surprise he awoke one morning to find himself a man of forty-five, with no home to call his own, hardly any possessions, his chosen lifestyle having ruined his good looks and physique; no job since he’d been laid off from his last one; no baccy for a roll-up nor money for a pint. And, to cap it all, his current woman, having realised he would never make an honest woman of her and fed up with funding him, was screaming blue murder at him to get up and get out or she’d fetch her strapping son around to bodily remove him.

Sitting on a park bench a short while later, his bag with a few belongings at his feet, Arnold had pondered his options. It seemed he had only one. To go back to his wife and family again until he found something better.

Now he hauled up the sailor’s holdall at his feet, containing all his worldly belongings, slung it over his shoulder and announced to his eldest daughter, ‘The only place I’m going, lady, is inside this house. There’s nothing you can do to stop me moving back in and staying for as long as I like. It’s my name on the rent book, remember.’ He pushed his face into hers, a nasty twinkle in his eyes. ‘I’d watch yer step, if I was you. You’d better treat me with respect or I’ll have you out and those other brats of mine along with you. Don’t try and test me, I mean what I say. Now, move out me way.’

Without waiting, he shoved past Aidy, knocking her back against the door. He dropped his bag on the kitchen floor and proceeded through to the back room.

Bertha gawped wide eyed, seeing who their visitor was. ‘Talk about bad pennies! You’ve got some brass neck, showing your face here again.’ She shot an accusing look at Aidy as she followed him in, as though to say, You seriously allowed this man to come in, after all he’s responsible for? ‘So what are you doing here?’ she snarled at her detested son-in-law.

‘Same mouthy old bag you always were, eh, Bertha?’ he said as he plonked himself down in the nearest armchair to the range, kicking off his holed hob-nailed boots to rest smelly, dirty, sockless feet on the rail. He looked hard at her. ‘You seem like yer at home, so I take it yer’ve moved in since I’ve been away?’

She curled her lip in disgust. ‘It’s nothing to do with you where I live.’

‘It’s everything to do with me. My name is on the rent book.’

Bertha scoffed, ‘Might be your name on the book, but you ain’t paid the rent for years.’

Arnold Greenwood grinned sardonically at her. ‘Don’t matter. It’s my name on the book, so my decision who lives here or not. And I’ll tell you what I told yer granddaughter … you’d better show me some respect or you’ll all be finding yerselves out on the streets.’

If he could walk out on his wife and young family, leaving them destitute, then he’d have no compunction about throwing his aged mother-in-law out, thought Bertha. Regardless, the likes of that spineless creature did not scare her. She’d sooner be out on the streets than show him respect he didn’t deserve. She said icily, ‘I take it your current floozy’s chucked you out and yer’d no one lined up to take her place? Judging by the look of yer, yer’ve no money either, so coming back here is a better alternative than living on the streets?’

‘That’s exactly it.’ He smirked at her.

Bertha scowled at him darkly. ‘And here was me, hoping you’d got some terrible disease and had come home to die.’

He shot her a murderous look back. ‘I’ll warn you once more: show me some respect or you’re out. I won’t tell you again.’

Aidy shot over to her grandmother, leaned down and whispered in her ear, ‘Don’t push him, Gran. I’ve no doubt he’ll do what he says. If he did throw you out, you’ve only one place to go. And where you go, me and the kids go with you, ’cos we’re a family and stick together. All right?’

Bertha sighed in resignation. It was going to take her all her self-control to be civil to her son-in-law, but she’d have to or otherwise be responsible for Aidy, herself and the kids walking the streets until they found somewhere else to live. And she couldn’t walk anywhere at the moment due to her broken leg. Tight lipped, she nodded her agreement.

Aidy straightened up and said to her father, ‘I’ll see what I can find to make a bed up for you in the parlour.’

He gave a snort of disgust. ‘I’m sleeping on no makeshift bed in the parlour. I’ll be in me own bed, in me own bedroom.’

‘But that’s where me and Aidy sleep! Well … I do when I get this cast off me leg and can get back upstairs,’ Bertha told him.

‘Not any more. Better get yer stuff shifted. I’m tired, so after I’ve had summat to eat, I’ll be going up.’ He demanded of Aidy then, ‘What have yer got? I’m famished.’

Eyes black as thunder, she hissed at him, ‘Soup. Take it or leave it.’

A stony silence descended, the hostility in the air so thick it could have been cut with a knife. Aidy, still reeling from this unexpected turn of events, busied herself getting her father something to eat. She had not remembered him as the loving, nurturing sort, and her memory was serving her well. He hadn’t once asked for any information on how his family had fared since the last time he had seen them. Was not showing any grief at all to learn his wife had died during his absence. She worried how her brother and sisters were going to react to their father’s return, a man they didn’t know. And it was very apparent Arnold Greenwood meant to resume his position as head of the household, whether they liked it or not, due to the simple fact that it was his name on the rent book and he could use the threat of eviction against them all, should they not treat him in the manner he felt he was entitled to.

If he’d no job, it wasn’t likely he proposed to make any contribution towards his keep. Their budget was tight as it was. How she was going to stretch it further to cover feeding another, Aidy had no idea. But overriding all this was her worry about how he and her grandmother were going to manage to stay even slightly civil to this man they both believed had played a huge part in Jessie’s early death.