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Chapter 8

Chapter 8

Frank nodded. All his good humour deserted him. For a while he stared at the sea, which was now swallowing a bloated, reddish moon. "Love!" he exclaimed. "What a terrible, destructive thing it is! There's Kathleen, not yet eighteen, not old enough to understand one hundredth part of it it's perverted her moral judgement ... all the values we've struggled to teach her. Yet who am I to talk! It's going to destroy me, too." yet already

HEY DOCKED AT Liverpool the following noon, Thursday. Kathleen and her mother caught the first train to London and, having had almost no sleep the night before, slept all the way, arriving stiff and sore and ready for a proper bed. Frank and Michael caught a later train but travelled at different ends of it. It arrived at Euston close to midnight. Moments after he alighted he caught sight of Lawrence skulking behind a pillar. "She's in the second class, at the back," he told him in passing. "I wouldn't take no for an answer, if I were you."

Michael found Lawrence standing there with his jaw still open. "Catching flies?" she said wearily. "What are you doing here? As if I didn't bleeding know! Why do I bother?"

Lawrence pointed at the barrier, where his father was just surrendering his ticket. "D'you know what he said to me as he swept by? He told me you were farther up the train for an answer." and he said I wasn't to take no "Ohmigawd!" She dropped her bag and slumped

wearily upon it. "What?" he asked, filled with sudden concern for her. "What's been happening?"

"Oh, piss off!" she said, in a voice barely above a mumble. "I'm sick to the back teeth with your lot." "Michael?" he cajoled. "My darling?"

"No!" She closed her eyes as if in pain. He touched her shoulder hesitantly. "Whatever anyone else may have done, surely you know that I mean you no harm?"

"No one means me any harm. D'you think that makes it easier for me?" She stared around listlessly, the anonymous crowds pressed on, ignoring them both. "That day your mum kicked me out - I should have gone straight down the shirt factory and asked for work. Or the Star and Garter, pulling pints. I should have gone on the game. Anything! The worst day's work in my life was standing there, just waiting for you."

"You're hungry," he said confidently. "I'm a bit peckish myself. Let me buy you some supper." She stared at him in amazement. "Didn't you hear me?"

He grinned and blew her a kiss. She shook her head but could not suppress the first twitchings of a smile. "My God, you're like the froth on a pint of Whitbread's," she said glumly as she rose, first on one leg, then on the other, groaning and favouring her hips like an old woman. "Come on, then."

"You know the worst thing about you?" she asked after they had gone through the barrier. "What? There's too much choice."

"You think you're going to beat me. You think

you're going to wear me down. But you won't, you know. I can be just as stubborn as you." "The Holborn will still be open. I've never taken you there, have I."

In the cab he seized her hands and pressed them to his lips; she could feel him trembling. "I love you, Michael," he told her. "I think of you night and day. You're all the world to me."

"Do they do a good steak and kidney pie at the Holborn?" she asked.

He lifted one of her knuckles to his eyelid, where he managed to scoop just enough water to call it a teardrop.

"Oh, Larr-ee-ee!" she exclaimed in a perfect mixture of anger and compassion.

"I can't help it," he replied. "Every minute we're apart I'm miserable. I can't do anything without relating it to you. I go through the manifest of a dirty little tramp steamer at East Wall and I think, Oh, wouldn't Michael love to be here!"

She pushed him away brusquely, but she laughed, mostly with relief. "You can never be completely serious, can you." "Can you?" he countered.

She said nothing.

"People who can be utterly serious," he said, sitting up and pulling his glove back on, "are really just a little bit immature, don't you think? Neil, for instance. I mean, if there were gold diplomas for solemnity, he'd sink his ship with them. And yet there's something not-quite-grown-up about him, don't think?"

you "You know what I think about your brother, Neil." "Well, that was a case in point, wasn't it." "And what about your dad? He can be solemn

enough when he wants." "I used to think so. But now I believe it's all tongue in-cheek. Or mostly, anyway. The look in his eye when he passed me just now!" Michael said nothing.

"He's certainly changed since they made him captain of the Pride of Liverpool," he went on. "I know you hardly saw him when you worked at Highbury New Park, but surely the other servants told you

what sort of man he was?" "D'you know Kathleen's read all your diaries?" she

asked suddenly. "Eh? What's that got to do with it? Oh - immaturity. I see." He sighed, and then the full implication of her announcement struck him. "I say little swine! All of them?" has she? The

"So she claims."

He dug her craftily in the ribs. "And she told you. Well, of course, she would, wouldn't she! Since you're the star of them." He chuckled. "So you and she have say been discussing me, eh? Well, well now. I must s that bucks a fellow up, don't you know."

They drew up at the Holborn Restaurant then, a huge edifice on several floors. At that hour of the night, or early morning, it was full of theatre people - from both sides of the lights gentlemen of the press, and contented revellers stoking up for the long journey home. Lawrence and Michael took a small table in an alcove on the second floor, which was noticeably less crowded than the others.