‘Gawd, let me shift that. You look like a mole’ Liz bundles the clothes into her arms and stands looking around for somewhere to move them to. She dumps them onto a chair already piled with newspapers. ‘I did have an ironing basket’ she grumbles ‘but it’s a space capsule on some command centre out back now. Geoff is a fool with that boy! That’s him’ She smiles fondly and nods at a photograph held to the fridge with a magnet. ‘Six he is now. That was taken in Florida. Supposed to be a postcard but they never got it sent. They went for their holidays. Wouldn’t get me on a plane going that far.’
‘Looks a cheeky little so and so’ Jessie comments with a chuckle. ‘What I wouldn’t have given for one like that. The spit of your Anthony.’
‘He is. Like a barrow load a monkeys, that one. Just like his dad were too’ she laughs. ‘They were here last weekend’ Liz surveys the room with a sigh ‘I haven’t caught up with myself yet’
‘You were going to tell me?’
‘Ah, yes…’ Liz sits at the table ‘Ernie’
‘I was a bit shocked I don't mind telling you’ Jessie puffs her cheeks ‘although….to be honest….I wouldn’t have been surprised to find out he’d had some sort of affair at some time or another. They’ve never really seemed a pair to me, not him and Evelyn, but there you go’ she says with a shrug ‘takes all sorts. But to be carrying on with someone for all that time? You could have knocked me down with a feather.’
‘I don’t know many details’ Liz admits ‘only that it was going on and had been for a while.’
‘They were together almost forty years!’
‘Crikey!’ Liz thinks for a moment or two ‘Yes, I suppose it must be. I forget how old I am sometimes and time don’t half fly doesn’t it?’
‘Does Ernie know you know?’
‘Shouldn’t think so. It was such a roundabout way I got to find out. Chance in a million I suppose you could call it.’
‘What happened, then?’
‘Well, you know I keep in touch with the family I used to work for before me and Geoffrey got married?’
Jessie nods ‘Children of their own now, I expect’
‘Grandchildren’ Liz chortles. ‘Told you time flew. Well, anyway, we write and keep up with our news, have done since they were at school. Not as regular as they used to like but two or three times a year I get a letter.’
‘That’s nice’
‘Lovely people. Well…let me see…’ Liz figures the timing on the table top with a finger, her mouth working silently. ‘…. That must be about fifteen years ago now…’ She looks up, satisfied with her reckoning. ‘We was on holiday and I said to Geoff…cos we were motoring from place to place, I says to Geoff I said ‘I know all round here’ and I told him that’s where I was working before and he says ‘Why don’t you look them up?’ Well, I thought to myself, the children have popped in to see me a time or two, so why not? They’d moved on, course they had but their parents were still in the same house. So I rung them up from a phone box’ Liz beams ‘They were that delighted! They was knocking on a bit and she were never in very good health.’ she adds. ‘Didn’t get out much so they were really pleased we’d thought of them. We had lunch and everything. Meant we never got to our next stop until late but we really did have a good day, catching up and everything.’
‘So how did this fit in with Ernie?’ Jessie presses.
‘Oh, yes…that’s what I was going to tell you wasn’t it? Photo albums.’ Liz gets up as the kettle comes to the boil with a piercing whistle. ’You know how they always come out when you’re having a bit of a chat about things?’ she has to shout to be heard until she has lifted the kettle from the hob. ‘Well’ she continues in the diminishing wail ‘Of course she wants to show me how the grandchildren are doing and the latest weddings and so forth and she’s pointing people out and I’m trying to get my head round who’s who and there he was!’ The teapot lid clatters into place.
‘Ernie?’
‘As large as life!’
‘So, Geoff knows as well then?’ Jessie asks, wincing as Liz crashes through the cutlery on the draining board looking for a clean teaspoon.
‘Nooo, you know what these men are like’ Liz waves a spoon triumphantly. ‘Get an album out and they all of a sudden discover an interest in the garden. He was outside.’
‘Did you tell her you knew him?’ Jessie adjusts the volume of her voice to the sudden temporary quiet.
‘I were that confused at seeing him with another woman, I kept me mouth shut until I found out what was what. For all I knew, I could be putting my foot in it good and proper’ She lifts the lid and stirs the pot vigorously.
‘It was one of the group photographs?’
‘No, if it’d been one of them, I shouldn’t have given it another thought. People do tend to stand next to people they don’t know in those. I might have been surprised to see him there but I wouldn’t have thought anything of it.’
She crosses to the doorway. ‘Geoffreeeeeee! You want a cuppa?’ she bellows and waits for an answer. ‘GEOFFREEEEE DID YOU HEAR ME?’
She turns back to a deafened Jessie ‘No, it was taken in a marquee at a reception’ she says, collecting three mugs from the drainer and pouring the tea. ‘You know the sort of thing, where the photographer goes from table to table taking the same photo ‘cept with different people in’ Liz puts one mug in front of Jessie and sits down with her own to continue her story. ‘Ernie and this woman had got their heads together, smiling away they were. He did look smart. Turns out that his lady friend was the bride’s auntie or somesuch!’
Jessie gapes. ‘And they were definitely together? No…that’s silly, I know they were now.’
‘I weren’t quite sure but I didn’t have to wait long to find out. She confided in me. Ever so funny it was. She was….not ashamed, I wouldn’t call it…but she was a bit shy about telling me. ‘Been together a long, long time, her and Ernest’ she said ‘…but they’re not married’. Nearly a whisper it was, like she was telling me some secret.’
‘Which she was…except she probably didn’t know it’ Jessie sips absently as she listens.
‘Well, I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know if she knew he’d got a wife at home!’
‘Difficult’ Jessie agrees.
‘So I didn’t say anything, just mumbled something and nodded like I’d done with the others but my mind was whirring away.’
‘You never felt you should say anything to Ernie?’
Liz shakes her head. ‘Was a time I might even have had a quiet word with Evelyn but it was directly after we got back that she got all hoity about us going away and leaving someone else to run the shop. I thought bugger it, if he’s happy, leave it be. I ain’t never said a word to anyone, not even my Geoff. He can be a bit loose tongued when he’s had a drink’ she explains.
‘George says she was very pretty’
‘She was more a match for him than that Evelyn, I can tell you that much. And the way she was looking at him’ she sighs. ‘Oh, it was lovely and they weren’t no spring chickens neither, not even twenty year ago. I can’t remember when the wedding was supposed to have been’
Jessie twists the mug between her hands on the table. ‘I was annoyed when George told me’ she says without looking up ‘I thought it was a dreadful thing to do when he had such a young family but all I feel now is sorry for Ernie.’
‘Me and you both!’ Liz declares. She clasps Jessie’s wrist. ‘You won’t say anything will you?’ she asks with a worried look on her face.
‘Of course I won’t. Much as I’d like to get back at Evelyn sometimes, Ernie’s got quite enough to put up with as it is and what would be the point?’
‘None now she’s gone.’
‘I just wish there was some way of letting him know how we feel’ Jessie sighs.
‘Sympathy, you mean?’
‘Mmmm.’
Milliwick Newsagents
The High Street
Chapter Three
