‘I DO ENJOY the Sundays.’ Harry had settled into Kathleen’s cosy home as though he had never left it. ‘I don’t have to leap out of bed and rush off to work, trudging the streets in all weathers. It’s good to take it easy and be with you and Tom.’ He glanced out to the garden where Tom was playing. ‘He loves it here,’ Harry told Kathleen, ‘and he loves you as much as I ever did.’
‘Ah, well now.’ Kathleen paused in her knitting. ‘We all know why that is, don’t we, eh?’
‘We don’t, but I’m sure you’re about to tell me.’ Harry so enjoyed these little banters between himself and Kathleen.
‘It’s because I make the best ginger biscuits in the world.’ With her face beaming from ear to ear, she looked like a mischievous child.
Harry played along. ‘You’re absolutely right!’ he exclaimed. ‘That’s what it is … the ginger biscuits.’
Folding her knitting, Kathleen laid it down and came to the kitchen window, from where Harry had been keeping an eye on Tom. ‘I reckon he’s got the makings of an athlete.’ Harry gestured proudly to where Tom was leaping backwards and forwards over the flowerbed.
‘Bejaysus! Will ye look at that!’ It was not the first time Kathleen had seen Tom performing his ‘athletic’ skills; but never over her precious flowerbed. ‘Sure, he’d best not flatten my dahlias,’ she warned hands on hips, ‘or he’ll have the makings of a thick ear, so he will!’
Banging on the window she called Tom inside. ‘Get in here, ye little divil.’ She crooked a finger at him. ‘I’ve a new batch o’ ginger biscuits straight out the oven. If ye don’t hurry, me and yer father will eat the lot.’
While Tom ran towards the cottage, the telephone rang inside, making Kathleen almost leap out of her skin. ‘Damn thing always takes me unawares,’ she complained, waddling over to the sideboard where she snatched up the receiver.
‘Who is it and what d’ye want?’ Kathleen had a way with words. ‘He’s right here, yes. You stay there and I’ll get him.’ Holding out the big black receiver, she nagged at Harry, ‘Will ye hurry up, there’s a man here, wanting to talk with ye.’
Smiling to himself, Harry duly thanked her and took the receiver. ‘Hello, Harry Blake here.’
There followed a short conversation, during which Harry nodded and agreed, then disagreed, and when he brought the conversation to an end, it was with a heartfelt ‘Thank you. We’ll talk again next week, yes, soonever I’m able to.’
‘Who might that be then?’ Kathleen was never backwards in coming forwards. ‘Sure it wasn’t trouble, was it? Only I thought the man seemed a bit sharpish, so I did.’
Harry was glad to explain. ‘No, that’s just his way. He always sounds a bit miserable, but he’s a good man, and an even better gardener.’
‘A gardener, you say?’ That puzzled her.
‘You recall I told you I’d managed to find someone to tend Sara’s little garden in the churchyard, in between me being able to get back and see to it?’
Kathleen nodded acknowledgement. ‘Of course – yes, I remember. So is everything all right?’
‘Apparently there was a bit of a problem with the cross and bird-droppings. He thinks it needs to be moved from under the trees.’
He relayed the gardener’s conversation. When emotion took hold, he paused a moment to reflect, thinking it strange how at times Sara seemed so very close, and other times he found it difficult to even recall her face. He thanked the Lord for the years he had shared with her on this earth, but in the same heartbeat he was angry that she had been taken so young.
When Kathleen saw him struggling with his feelings, she deliberately diverted his attention by giving him a little shake of the arm. ‘Just look at what yer budding athlete is doing now, the little tyke.’
Harry looked up to see Tom splashing about in the puddle left by the recent shower. Dancing and thumping his feet in the water, Tom was sending up huge showers of dirty water, which covered him from top to bottom.
Harry tapped on the window. ‘Tom! That’s enough!’
Excited and laughing, Tom glanced up.
‘What d’you think you’re doing?’ Harry demanded, ‘Inside … now!’
The minute Tom got inside the door, his legs and torso drenched from feet to chest, Kathleen grabbed hold of him. ‘Will ye look at the state of you!’ Wrenching off his shoes, she told him to ‘Take off the wet shirt and trousers. I’ll be away upstairs and get you some clean ones.’ Grabbing a towel from the sink-top, she wrapped it round his head, before marching off, loudly tutting, and pretending to be angry.
‘Did you have fun splashing about in the puddle?’ Seeing it from the boy’s point of view, Harry gave a conspiratorial wink. ‘I used to do that too.’
‘Is Kathleen angry with me for getting all wet?’ Tom handed his sodden clothes to his daddy. ‘She was tutting. She always tuts when she’s angry.’
Taking the towel, Harry dried his son off. ‘She’s not really angry,’ he promised. ‘As for the tutting, she can make herself tut any time she likes, just to fool you.’
Tom felt better for that, and when Kathleen returned with clean shirt and trousers, he had a wide grin on his face.
‘Oh, I see.’ Hands on hips, she demanded, ‘So, d’ye mind telling me what’s so funny?’
‘Nothing.’ Tom straightened his face.
‘So why were you grinning then, eh?’
‘I wasn’t grinning.’
Kathleen stared down at him with her fiercest expression. ‘Sure, I might be old in the tooth, but I’m not without a pair of eyes. You were grinning, so ye were, and don’t think I don’t know why.’
‘How do you know?’ Tom feared that Kathleen might have heard him and Daddy talking.
Raising her eyebrows, she gave Tom a kind of half-wink. ‘I think you were grinning, because you fancy you got one over on me, isn’t that so?’ She wagged a chubby finger. ‘Now come on, own up to it … you thought you’d got one over on me, did you not?’
The boy took a minute to consider that, and bold as you like he told her, ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Right! There ye go. The very minute me back’s turned, dragging me poor oul’ bones up them stairs, fetching clean dry clothes so you won’t catch your death, you go laughing and grinning and poking the fun at poor Kathleen. Shame on youse!’
‘I’m sorry, Kathleen. I am.’ Tom hoped she would not start tutting again.
Seeing the boy’s contrite face, and, out of the corner of her eye, Harry trying not to smile, Kathleen burst out laughing. ‘Yer a pair of mischievous divils, so ye are!’ She handed Tom the clean clothes. ‘Soonever you’ve got them on, you can help yourself to ginger biscuits in the pantry – no more than two, mind. There are others in this house who love the biscuits beside yerself.’
‘Bet I could eat them all if I tried!’
‘Aha.’ Kathleen’s finger was wagging fifteen to the dozen. ‘You’ll have me an’ yer father to deal with if ye do.’
When Harry nodded agreement, Tom laughed out loud and the atmosphere was magic. ‘Go on then young Tom, get and help yerself to a couple before I decide to put them up where you can’t reach!’
While the lad was helping himself to lemonade and two plump, golden ginger biscuits, Kathleen managed to steal Harry away into the garden.
‘I bumped into a certain someone yesterday,’ she quietly confided. ‘A certain someone you’ve been desperately trying to find.’
‘Judy!’ Shocked and delighted, Harry was laughing and hurting all at the same time. ‘You saw Judy?’
Her name came so naturally to his mind, especially after years of living with it, and then these past weeks he had made all kinds of enquiries regarding her whereabouts, but at every turn his efforts had come to nothing. He had even casually mentioned her name at the houses on his rounds. Same result. No one seemed to have heard of her.
Excited and thrilled, he was hardly able to believe that Kathleen had actually seen her. The questions poured out in a fast and furious torrent. ‘How is she? Is she well?’ Then, the most important question of all: ‘Is she happy and content, that’s all I need to know.’
Wisely avoiding a direct answer, Kathleen informed him, ‘We didn’t spend too much time together, just a kind of passing re-acquaintance. Judy was in a rush. She didn’t say much, but I’m afraid I told her she was far too thin, that she needed to eat more.’ Pursing her lips in that comical way she had, Kathleen slowly shook her head. ‘She has sadly neglected herself, if you ask me.’
‘What else?’ Harry was hungry for news of Judy. ‘Are you saying she looks ill? What do you mean, she’s neglected herself?’
‘It’s nothing to concern ourselves about, I’m sure,’ she replied reassuringly. ‘Young women these days have a tendency to eat like sparrows. Apparently they think it makes them look glamorous.’
Kathleen was loath to tell him of her very real fears for Judy. But there was one thing he had to know, so she now told him as gently as she could. ‘It probably isn’t what you want to hear, but Judy has been married … to Phil Saunders … for a good many years.’
When his face fell, she did not have the heart to relay her belief that Judy was trapped in a hellish marriage; and that she lived in fear of her husband.
Indeed, the last thing she dared tell Harry was that his child had not been aborted after all, but as far as she could tell through Judy’s scant conversation, was being raised by none other than his old rival, Phil Saunders, who appeared to have been kept in complete ignorance of the fact that the child’s father was Harry Blake.
Nor could she speak of the other matter that had constantly nagged at her since seeing Judy again. Something about the nervous manner in which she fidgeted and fretted served only to strengthen Kathleen’s long-held beliefs.
After all these years, the old suspicions had returned with a vengeance. Just as before, Kathleen instinctively felt there was more to Judy’s childhood troubles than the latter was prepared to admit.
It all made sense.
Moreover, Kathleen suspected that Judy’s, deceiving Harry into taking their budding relationship that one step further, had had more to do with someone else than with Harry himself.
She recalled Judy’s words. ‘I was desperate … there was no one to help me.’
While Tom tucked into his ginger biscuits, Harry and Kathleen chatted about Judy; with Harry wanting to know every little detail. ‘Did she say how she and Phil got together?’
‘No.’
‘Or where she was living?’
‘Not a word, and I didn’t think to ask,’ Kathleen informed him. ‘We were just catching up on the years. By the time we got round to more personal things it was time for her to rush away.’
Harry wondered, ‘Do you think she might have rushed away on purpose?’
Kathleen had the very same impression, but did not relay her concerns to Harry. ‘Why would she do that?’
He shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I wasn’t there.’ A thought occurred to him. ‘Did you tell her that I was back?’
‘I did, yes.’
‘So, was it then that she decided to rush away?’
Kathleen answered honestly. ‘Come to think of it – yes, I do believe it was.’
‘So, was she excited, or did it seem not to matter that I was back?’
Kathleen gave her answer carefully. ‘When I told her, she fell quiet … sort of turning it over in her mind. And yes, I would say she did seem pleased that you were back.’
That put a smile on Harry’s face. ‘I wish I’d been there. These past weeks, I’ve tried so hard to discover her whereabouts, all to no avail. Oh, Kathleen! It would have been so good to see her again.’
His mood darkened. ‘You do realise, don’t you,’ he murmured, ‘Judy and I … well, we still have unfinished business.’
‘I do know, yes.’
Harry’s determination to track Judy down was heightened by Kathleen’s news. ‘I feel much more hopeful, now that we know she actually stayed in the area.’
‘Ah, but we don’t know that for certain, do we, eh?’ Kathleen pointed out. ‘She might live miles away. She might have made this one trip, to visit her childhood haunts. Maybe it was a goodbye trip. Maybe she never intends coming back. Have you thought of that?’
Kathleen’s main worry just now was Judy, of course, and Phil Saunders, whom she considered to be a bad lot.
As boys growing up, Phil and Harry were always healthy rivals, in football, tree-climbing, racing and swimming. There was nothing they did not compete for, the two of them both wanting to be the best, the first or the strongest. Then, when they got older and girls became a serious prize, the rivalry moved up a notch.
Judy moved into the street and from the very first, it was Phil who went after her. But it was Harry she chose, and from that moment the rivalry between Harry and Phil took a darker turn.
Phil had always been a brash, troubled boy, resentful of Judy’s choosing of Harry over him. So what now? What if the troublesome boy had turned into an even more troubled man? What if he and Harry ever met face to face, and he thought Harry was back to lay claim to his childhood sweetheart?’
Kathleen was troubled enough to relay her fears to Harry. ‘You know how Phil always felt about Judy,’ she reminded him. ‘Constantly hanging around, following the pair of youse, spying on youse. Like a fox waiting to pounce.’
Harry smiled. ‘Kathleen O’Leary! What an imagination you have,’ he chided. ‘Phil was a mate, that’s all. Okay, I’ll agree he had a thing for Judy, and yes, he did sometimes lurk about, but it didn’t really mean anything, other than he was a bad loser.’
‘No, it was more than that.’ Kathleen needed to make him see. ‘The trouble with you is, you’re far too trusting – always have been.’
Harry remembered. ‘Obviously, more so with Judy than with Phil,’ he remarked cynically.
‘There is a huge difference between Judy and Phil Saunders,’ Kathleen told him firmly. ‘Judy may have had reasons we don’t as yet understand, while Phil Saunders was always a born villain, out to get whatever he wanted, in whichever way possible.’
Harry was struck by Kathleen’s hostility. ‘I thought you liked him back then,’ he said. ‘What’s made you change your mind? Was it something Judy said?’ He bent his head forward and lowered his voice. ‘Kathleen, please. If Judy said anything to you about Phil, I’d like to know. Did she?’
Kathleen shook her head.
‘So, is there anything that Judy discussed with you, and that you haven’t spoken of – anything you think I should know?’
‘Oh, bejaysus, will you stop firing questions at me!’ Kathleen sensed that she might treading on dangerous ground. ‘If Judy said something I believe you should know, I would tell you, wouldn’t I?’
Harry took a long look at her. ‘I hope so,’ he said, his voice serious. ‘I sincerely hope you would not take it on yourself to keep things from me; things that affect Judy; things that might give me a clearer picture as to her wellbeing.’
Thankfully, before Kathleen was made to give an answer, Tom came running up. ‘They’ve all gone!’ He looked pale, his mouth ringed in crumbs and his cheeks puffed out as though he had a whole batch of ginger biscuits in there.
‘Good Lord above!’ Kathleen was horrified. ‘You’ve never eaten the entire lot of them, have you?’
Tom grinned and nodded, then he threw up all over the floor; causing panic. ‘Harry, quick! The mop and bucket are out the back!’
Grabbing Tom in her arms, Kathleen rushed him to the sink where she turned him upside down and patted his back, until in a mangled heap, the rest of the biscuits shot out of his mouth.
There followed a flurry of activity and another bout of sickness, before Tom was bathed, put into his pyjamas and secured in the armchair with a blanket tucked round him. ‘I can’t believe he ate all the ginger biscuits.’ Harry finished cleaning the floor and sat with his son, while Kathleen dialled the local doctor.
‘Well, it was either Tom, or The Invisible Man!’ Kathleen declared. ‘And I can’t see anybody else being sick around here, can you?’
She listened, then she answered, then she listened again. ‘Yes, I’ve done all that; and now he’s washed and wrapped up warm as we speak.’
After a moment she replaced the receiver, advising Harry, ‘We’re to watch for him sweating too much, or getting too hot. Keep him wrapped up and a bucket under his head, and let him have as much water as he can drink.’
‘You are never to do that again,’ Harry chided. ‘Do you understand?’
Tom nodded. ‘All right, Daddy.’
Kathleen tutted and tutted. ‘And there was me, thinking I might have a fresh-baked ginger biscuit with my hot cocoa tonight.’
‘I’m sorry, Kathleen,’ Tom moaned. ‘I’m really sorry.’
‘So am I,’ she said, giving him a big hug. ‘But it doesn’t really matter. All that matters is that you’re feeling better. Okay?’
Tom gave her a bright, winning smile. ‘Okay!’
Later, when Harry came down from taking Tom up to bed, he fell exhausted into the armchair. ‘Now then, where were we?’
‘We were talking about Judy,’ Kathleen answered. ‘But as far as I’m concerned, the conversation has run its course, simply because there is nothing more I can tell you.’
‘Are you absolutely certain about that?’ Harry was not altogether convinced.
‘Sure, haven’t I already said so?’
Harry leaned back in the chair to consider Kathleen’s comments. Pondering for a time, he went back on their conversation repeatedly, before sitting up again to announce, ‘I can’t leave it there. I won’t rest until I find her and talk with her. Like I said, the two of us still have unfinished business.’
In the light of Harry’s rigid determination to track Judy down, Kathleen made no comment, but there was a certain little instinct that constantly nagged at her and would not go away. It had to do with Judy’s obvious anxiety. This was certainly connected with Phil Saunders, and possibly something else – or someone else – though Kathleen could not be sure.
In truth, she had no way of knowing the whole story.
One thing was certain though.
The more she recalled her meeting with Judy, the more that little instinct tugged at her conscience.
Someone, at some time, had messed with Judy’s peace of mind. Someone cruel and cowardly from way back – even before Phil Saunders.
Certainly someone other than Harry!