The Would-Be Wife Read online

  To The Fishermen’s Wives

  Chapter 1

  Hull, 1967

  At six o’clock on a May Saturday afternoon, twenty-five-year-old Lynn Bradbury was in the middle of setting the table when the dinky little white telephone her husband Graham had just had installed started ringing again.

  Lynn answered it. ‘Hello? Hello?’

  All she heard was a click as the receiver went down at the other end.

  Graham poked his head round the door. ‘Who is it?’

  ‘Nobody. They never spoke.’

  ‘Probably a wrong number.’

  ‘A lot of people seem to be getting the wrong number, then. That’s the third time it’s happened today.’

  ‘Probably somebody wanting the people who lived here before us,’ Graham said. ‘Where’s Simon?’

  ‘I thought he was with you!’ Lynn glanced swiftly round a dining room littered with toys, then hurried to the kitchen, where she found their four-year-old trying to measure flour into a mixing bowl, and succeeding in getting most of it on the tiled floor.

  ‘I want to bake,’ he said. ‘I want to make gingerbread mans.’

  ‘It’s too late to make gingerbread mans. It’s tea-time. What a mess you’ve made, Simon!’

  He turned a pair of mischievous blue eyes on her and gave her a cheeky grin she couldn’t help returning. The flour was soon swept up and he played with his toys while Lynn made her best efforts with the cooking. Since she’d started working in ante-natal out-patients and had the luxury of regular hours the evening meal was her favourite time of day, when they could all eat together and enjoy a chat before Simon went to bed.

  The phone rang again later on, while she was lifting Simon out of the bath. ‘Who is it?’ she called downstairs.

  ‘It’s Kev. I borrowed his socket set. I’ll nip round to their place a bit later on and take it back.’

  ‘Go and have a pint, if you like. I don’t mind, as long as you’re not too late.’

  She heard Graham’s tread on the stair, and a second later he poked his head round the bathroom door. ‘All right, I might, but if I’m going out I’ll have to have a wash and a shave.’

  ‘We’ll be out of the bathroom in a minute,’ Lynn said, busily drying Simon and dressing him in newly ironed pyjamas. He looked irresistible. She took hold of him and gave him a hug then carried him off to bed and sat reading him his bedtime story, with noises from Graham, splashing about in the bath and croaking the lyrics of some corny love-song. He was nothing of a singer, Lynn thought with an indulgent smile. Lucky he only ever tried it in the bathroom.

  ‘Another story,’ Simon demanded. While reading it she heard Graham run downstairs and out of the front door. He was gone without a word.

  She closed the book and turned to Simon. ‘Night night. Time all little boys were in the land of nod.’

  He gave her a sleepy smile and threw a pair of chubby arms round her neck. ‘A kiss and a cuddle,’ he demanded.

  He smelled divine and Lynn felt such a surge of love for him she could have kissed him to death. She was glad he would be brought up in a better area than the Hessle Road of her own childhood, with its skyline of ships’ masts and smoke-oven chimneys where families lived on top of each other in warrens of tiny, close-packed terraced houses, the smallest and poorest with their front doors opening directly onto the street and their back doors opening onto a shared yard. The place was like an ant colony, always busy, never still, with ships constantly coming and going, and men landing or sailing. She had spent most of her childhood there, right in the hub of Hull’s fishing industry, and although she had always been happy, she wanted something better for Simon than Hessle Road and the aroma of the smoke houses on fair days, and the stench from the fish-meal plant on wet ones, and sleep disturbed by the din of steel-studded clogs on cobbles in the middle of the night, as the bobbers poured down Subway Street and onto the docks to unload the fish for market.

  No, there would be none of that for Simon, except maybe the scent of fish on rainy days. You couldn’t avoid that, even on Marlborough Avenue. But Simon would have a garden to play in, and room to breathe. There was a swing that would see plenty of action this summer and an old apple tree he could climb. Lynn could still hardly believe she was living in such a house, a home beyond her wildest dreams. Her father jokingly called it the family mansion – and it was in a perfect situation, with her best friend Janet living just round the corner in Richmond Avenue.

  Her marriage to Graham hadn’t turned out too badly, she thought, in spite of its impoverished start. She’d passed her nursing finals after Simon was born, while they were living in a cramped flat, and in just a few months she would be sitting her midwifery exams. Graham was doing well at the pharmaceutical company he was working for. Things were starting to look up, and with a mortgage and the help of a deposit from Lynn’s father they’d moved into this wonderful house.

  ‘Dead money, paying rent – besides, you get tax relief on a mortgage. You’re never going to get tax relief on your rent, are you?’ Graham had boasted to his old school friend Kev, who still happened to be renting.

  Yes, she’d definitely picked a winner with Graham, and now he’d had a promotion it would be plain sailing. No more worries about money, and next weekend would be the first bank holiday she’d had off in years, thanks to her three months’ placement in ante-natal outpatients. They could do something as a family on one of the days, and spend the rest of the time working on the house and garden.

  The whiff of expensive aftershave that met her on the landing smelled pleasantly masculine, but she soon found that Graham had left his less pleasant odours in the bathroom. The floor was strewn with his dirty underwear and a pair of disgustingly cheesy socks, lying like two skunks amid a liberal sprinkling of talcum powder. With a little snort of annoyance she picked them up and holding them at arm’s length dropped them in the laundry basket, then tidied the shelf littered with his shaving tackle. He’d put himself to a hell of a lot of trouble just to go out for a pint with Kev, and when Lynn turned the tap on to clear the basin of his shavings she discovered he’d run all the hot water off as well. She flicked the immersion heater on, and while the water heated again she went downstairs to tidy up and lay the breakfast table for morning, cursing Graham’s mother for bringing him up to be such an inconsiderate slob. There would be none of this when Simon got married. She’d make sure her son was properly house-trained.

  Half an hour later she stripped, looking critically at herself in the long bathroom mirror while waiting for the bath to fill. A short crop of glossy dark hair, dark eyes and eyebrows, rosy cheeks and red lips, she looked a picture of rude health, altogether Graham’s ideal of womanhood, he often told her – pallid, insipid blondes left him cold. But she was becoming too much a picture of health, she thought, grimacing at the sight of a belly that had a bit too much of the pot about it. That was the result of contentment – she’d look like a little Buddha if she wasn’t careful, and overweight women held no attraction for Graham. Resolving to go on a diet, Lynn climbed into the deep, Victorian cast-iron bath and soaked for an hour, topping up the hot water a few times before getting out, tired and relaxed and with all her irritation soothed away. She would have a cup of cocoa and flick through a magazine for half an hour and then go to bed. Hard luck for Graham if she was asleep before he got in – he’d have to manage without getting his leg over, for once. It had been a long day, and she was too tired to wait up for him.

  Chapter 2

  ‘You knew what he was before you married him,’ Lynn’s mother insisted, the following Friday afternoon. ‘Janet told you he had a reputation. “Be careful,” she said – “he’s had more girlfriends than most blokes have had hot dinners.” I re
member you telling me. He was noted for it. I tried to warn you then.’

  That was Nina Carr’s usual line, Lynn thought. She’d always known; she could have told you – except that it was hardly ever true. She looked at her mother through puffy, bloodshot eyes, taking in the new way she’d made up her face with blue eye shadow and black eyeliner flicked up at the eyecorners, just like Lynn applied hers, except her mother had used far too much mascara and the black didn’t really suit her. With her blue eyes and blonde hair a paler shade would have looked better. And that new mini skirt! A mini skirt – at her age, pushing fifty! How some middle-aged women try to ape the young ones, she thought – and it never works. Desperately hanging on to youth, when they’d be better dressing their age and acting with a bit of decorum – acting like middle-aged mothers, in fact. She might have dropped a hint to save her mother the embarrassment of making herself look ridiculous, but now was not the time.

  ‘I thought he’d changed,’ she wailed, sounding pathetic even to herself. Pathetic and stupid. But Graham had given her good reason to think he’d changed. He’d sworn that she was the love of his life. She was the most beautiful girl he’d ever laid eyes on. It had been love at first sight. She was the one he’d been looking for all his life. None of his other girlfriends could hold a candle to her. He’d sown all his wild oats, he said. He was ready to settle down and she was The One, the one he’d chosen to be the mother of his children. The sweet nothings had been poured into her ear in an endless stream, and Graham had finally proved his good faith by getting her in the family way and then marrying her – much against his mother’s wishes. Against her mother’s wishes come to that, as Nina had made plain when Lynn had told her they were getting married.

  ‘I’m not ready to let go of the last chick in my nest just yet!’ she had said, and meant it.

  ‘You’ve still got our Anthony,’ Lynn had consoled her.

  ‘I haven’t. Our Anthony flew the nest when he went to sea. He’s hardly ever here, and when he’s supposed to be at home he spends more time with his mates than he does with me. When you’ve gone, I’ll be sitting in on my own all the time, except for a couple of days every three weeks, when your dad’s ashore,’ her mother had protested. ‘What sort of a life is that?’

  How times change! These days Nina Carr seemed to have washed her hands of motherhood altogether and was busy making a stab at being a teenager again. Lynn lit another cigarette, and inhaled deeply.

  Nina shook her head. ‘He picks his time, don’t he? The week before Whit – the first bank holiday you’ve had off work since you started midwifery training. You should be going off somewhere, enjoying yourselves as a family, but he’s buggered that up, hasn’t he? And you want to stop smoking so much, it’s bad for you.’

  ‘You smoke.’

  ‘Not as much as you. You’ve no sooner put one out than you’re lighting another one up. Anybody’d think you were trying to kill yourself with cancer. And you’ve eaten nothing all week.’

  Lynn had only just dried her eyes, but fresh tears swam up at the vision her mother’s words conjured, of herself with cancer, wasting away on her deathbed, saying her final farewell to poor little Simon and leaving him an orphan with his mother dead and father absconded with some floozie he’d met on a course. The scene was so heart-rending she sucked frantically on her cigarette, desperately drawing nicotine and tar-filled smoke past that awful lump in her throat and deep into her lungs.

  Nina softened her approach. ‘Well, he’s had a week of having to get his own meals, he should be ready to listen to reason by this time. Anyway, it might not be as bad as you think. You might be jumping to conclusions.’

  ‘What?’ Lynn choked. ‘I pick the phone up, and as soon as I speak it goes down at the other end – not once but half a dozen times. And then he answers it, and an hour later he’s off out – with his socks and underpants full of talcum powder and his face stinking of aftershave – and then he stops out all night? And then on Sunday I pick it up again, and she’s got the brass neck to ask to speak to him? My husband! How much jumping did I have to do? Conclusions were smacking me in the face – apart from the fact that he more or less admitted it. He could hardly deny it when she’s chased him all the way from Leeds and booked herself into the Royal Hotel just to be available to him. The Royal!’

  Lynne’s mother thoughtfully smoothed down her mini skirt, as if trying to cover a little more of the long expanse of thigh she was not yet used to revealing. ‘Well,’ she said, slowly, ‘she’s chased him and she’s in a hotel – but it doesn’t mean she’s caught him. He probably stopped at Kev’s for the night. Anyway, it’s too late for you to bale out now – you’ve got our Simon to think about. And Graham belongs to you – you’ve got the marriage lines to prove it. He’s yours. You’re not going to let her waltz off with your property, just like that, are you? Get round to that hotel and send her packing, if she’s not already gone.’

  Lynn had imagined she’d be welcomed with open arms at home, but without coming straight out with it, her mother was making it clear that she’d rather not have her life littered up twenty-four hours a day with her daughter and grandchild. Lynn dabbed her eyes again. She managed to restrain her crying at work, because at work she had plenty to distract her – but at home, Graham’s treachery was all she could think about. Five solid nights of gushing tears ought to have rusted up the waterworks, but they were flowing as well as ever.

  ‘And you’ve just got your house; you’ve hardly been in it a month – and that lovely kitchen the last lot had put in. And that built-in double oven! You’re not going to let her take all that off you, are you?’ Nina demanded, blue eyes flashing as she worked herself up into a frenzy. ‘I’d rip her bloody head off and shove it up her arse before I’d let her get away with that.’

  Lynn laughed through her tears. ‘You talk ridiculous, Mother.’

  ‘What’s ridiculous is sitting around here when you ought to be at home, fighting your corner. Get back there before it goes any further, and make him see where his duty lies. He’s got a family to consider now. I’ll come with you.’

  After nearly a week with her mother, Lynn was beginning to think that returning to her adulterous husband might be the better option. He had tried to stop her leaving, but Lynn had refused to listen to his pleas and his excuses and had stormed off with Simon in too much of a hurry to pack enough clothes.

  ‘Where is Simon?’ Lynn started. ‘He’s gone quiet, all of a sudden.’

  ‘He’s up to something.’

  The two women looked at each other, then raced upstairs to find him playing with the stuff on Nanna’s dressing table. He backed away from them with his face plastered with her new lipstick and reeking of Chanel No 5, trying to hide the new cut-glass perfume spray he’d pulled apart behind his back.

  Nina was not amused. A glance at her mother’s face, and Lynn’s heart sank at the thought of living there permanently with a four-year-old who couldn’t keep his fingers out of anything.

  ‘All right,’ she said, snatching the perfume bottle and pushing the rubber pipe back onto the gilded metal tube. ‘I’ll go round and see him, this minute. You’re not coming, though. You’ll have to keep Simon here. I don’t want him upsetting, if there’s a row.’

  Chapter 3

  There was a nip in the air when Lynn started the long walk from Boulevard, passing gardens bursting with May flowers unheeded, wrapped in a grey world of her own. On Marlborough Avenue her own front garden was overflowing with beautiful perennials planted by the green-fingered former occupants, but they made no impression on Lynn. She had her key ready in case Graham was out at his mother’s or Kev’s, or with the voice on the phone. The cast-iron gate gave its usual warning creak as she opened it and went in, and half a dozen steps took her across the small front garden to the heavy, green-painted front door. It was locked, just as she’d thought, so she let herself in – and almost jumped out of her skin when Kevin Walsh came bounding out of the sitting room w
ith mouth open and eyes popping, falling over himself to get to her.

  ‘What are you doing here, Lynn?’ he almost shouted.

  She stared at him in astonishment. ‘I live here, Kev. Have you forgotten? Where’s Graham?’

  ‘Out,’ Kev said, even louder than before.

  Lynn walked towards the stairs, but Kev got there before her and blocked her way. In the same bellowing voice he said: ‘I wouldn’t go up there if I were you.’

  Lynn heard a scuffling sound upstairs and glanced upwards, too late to see anything. She looked intently into Kev’s eyes for a moment. ‘Get out of my way, Kev.’

  Kev didn’t move, so Lynn pushed him aside and ran up the grand staircase with its lovely wooden spindles and mahogany banister rail, and into the bedroom she shared with Graham. There was neither sight nor sound of him. What there was was another woman’s make-up and jewellery laid out on her dressing table, another woman’s nightdress on the bed, and a suitcase full of another woman’s clothes on the stool under the sash window. Lynn stood still for a moment, hardly able to believe her eyes, then quicker than thought she strode across the room and threw up the sash. Out they all went, one after the other. First the contents of the suitcase then the nightdress, and then everything on the dressing table was swept off to go flying after the rest until garden, hedge and street beyond were festooned with items of seduction – skimpy knickers, sheer tights, lacy bras, mini skirts and low-cut tops, make-up, perfume and jewellery. That done, Lynn slammed the sash down and went back onto the landing. Kevin Walsh was still at the bottom of the stairs, still looking upwards with his sweaty hand still on the polished newel post.

  ‘Where is he, then?’ Lynn demanded.

  ‘Out. He’s gone out.’

  ‘Huh!’ Lynn checked Simon’s bedroom and the spare room, and then tried the bathroom. It was locked. She hammered on the door and got no response.

  ‘Open the door. I know you’re in there!’