Martin Edwards: All the Lonely People

He took a full audio tape to his secretary, whose desk was in a glassed-in cubicle they called the typing pool. It was Lucy’s lunch break and she was listening to pop music on Radio City. Her grey eyes filled with concern. “You look terrible,” she said.

“A late night and a lousy morning, that’s all.”

As she was shaking her head in gentle reproach, Jim looked in and said, “Lunch?”

Harry joined him outside. “Thanks, but I’m busy today.”

“You’re worrying about that woman, aren’t you? Take it from me, she’s just not worth it.”

“Let me be the judge of that.”

“Do me a favour. Coghlan may play at being a businessman, but he’s still a crook and Liz had her eyes open when she shacked up with him. That’s how she is, old son. Give her an outfit by Zandra Rhodes plus a fortnight on the Cote d’Azur and she won’t worry too much about where the money came from.”

Harry grunted and walked towards his room. At his retreating back, his partner fired a parting shot. “You should have divorced her long ago, can’t you see? Start afresh, it’s the only way.”

Slamming the door behind him, Harry sat down to work again. But his concentration had gone and he was reduced to shuffling the papers around on his desk. Liz had not lost her capacity to strip him of both emotion and common sense. His fear that Coghlan might have hurt her, his sense of utter powerlessness, had started to stretch his nerves.

By two o’clock he could no longer ignore the hunger pangs. He wandered out to the Ancient Mariner’s, a corner cafe near the waterfront where buxom girls who couldn’t care less about cholesterol served thick wedges of ham with eggs and mugs of steaming tea. Harry listened to the waitresses’ chatter about lovers past and present, jealous friends and trouble at home. Perhaps all our problems are the same, he thought, it’s just the packaging that differs.

While paying for the meal, something occurred to him. Liz had a part-time job; she might simply be working. Outside, the rain had turned to sleet, but he folded the collar of his coat and hurried in the direction of Harrington Street. The Freak Shop was sandwiched between a wine merchant’s and a florist’s full of drooping daffodils. One window of Matt Barley’s emporium was filled with distorting mirrors, Hallowe’en masks and a rail of fancy dress costumes. A display of just-about-legal porn videos, exotic lingerie and thigh-length leather boots crammed the other. Harry didn’t know how Matt had persuaded Liz to help him out this last time. An up-market fashion shop might have offered at least the surface glitter for which she yearned — but going back to a dump like this, run by a temperamental dwarf? He shook his head, unable to fathom it.

In any event, she wasn’t here today. A handwritten card on the door said that the Freak Shop would be closed this afternoon. The truanting schoolkids who were pressing their noses to the glass, admiring the naughty nighties, could goggle to their hearts’ content. Further down the road, he paused for a moment outside Mama Reilly’s. But there was no reason to go inside and it was time to return to Fenwick Court.

Back at New Commodities House, Suzanne’s sheikh had presumably got his woman and the switchboard girl was now tackling a thousand-pager about sex in Hollywood. Without looking up, she said, “Your lodger — sorry, your wife — called again. She said she’d be out this afternoon, but she hopes to see you tonight.”

Relax, Harry told himself, nothing’s gone wrong after all. Coghlan isn’t a teenage hoodlum: losing Liz wouldn’t be the end of his world. Follow Jim’s advice and don’t look back. Yet like a client urged to be calm in the witness box, he found it easier said than done.

He chain-smoked his way through the rest of the afternoon and rang the flat a couple of times without result. Shortly before six, Jim came into the tiny room.

“I’m off to the match.” An F.A. cup-tie at Anfield, already twice postponed due to the snow last week. “There’s a spare ticket here. Ronnie can’t make it. Want to come?”

“No, thanks, not tonight.” Ridiculously, the tone of the invitation, too deliberately casual, irked him: it resembled a treat for a matrimonial invalid.

His partner’s face was a blank. “Suit yourself. I’m in tomorrow.”

Since the break-up of his marriage, Harry had developed a habit of stopping off at the Dock Brief on his way home. In the absence of Liz there was no need to break the routine. The pub was tiny and invariably packed to overflowing. Above the counter was a sign which said in GOD WE TRUST — ALL OTHERS PAY CASH and its walls were covered with photographs of Liverpool in days gone by: the old Lyceum, Exchange Station and the overhead railway known universally as the dockers’ umbrella. The real name of the place was the Anchors Aweigh, but its popular title was ingrained into city folklore and seemed appropriate to its mix of customers: professionals and businessmen at lunchtime and in the early evening, ship-workers and assorted locals as the night wore on. As he often did these days, Harry outlasted the other men in suits, propping up the counter whilst in the background deals were struck and pint pots occasionally shattered.

As Harry drank, questions about Liz’s whereabouts swam around in his mind. Where had she been all day and would she be waiting for him at the flat when he got back in? The alcohol didn’t help him to find any answers and in the end he banged the glass down and pushed through the melee round the bar out into the drizzling night.

The walk to Empire Dock took ten minutes. In the lobby, he ran into Brenda Rixton, the woman who lived next door. She had been chatting with the porter, but joined Harry as the lift arrived. Although he wasn’t in the mood for casual conversation, there was no escaping it.

“Miserable evening, isn’t it? And turning so cold, too!”

“Sure is, Brenda.”

“That’s better! At last you’ve dropped that Mrs. Rixton nonsense. Neighbours ought to be on first name terms, don’t you agree?”

Within the enclosed space, her perfume was overpowering. Harry hated lift travel and the lack of a sensible place to focus his eyes. Unwillingly, he looked straight at his companion. She was tall, almost his height, with fine blonde hair and a willowy figure encased within a pink sweater and matching slacks. Although she was in her forties, Harry reckoned, she had the inquisitive smile of a young girl who is anxious to know everything. Only the fine lines etched into the skin around her blue eyes hinted at age and a loss of innocence.

With gentle irony, she said, “I gather you’ve taken a lodger.”

Liz must have been amusing herself again. He forced a non-commital smile.

“I met her this evening when I got back from work,” said Brenda, adding, “I admire your taste. She’s extremely attractive.”

They had arrived at the fourth floor. Stepping out, Harry found himself saying, “That’s no lodger, Brenda, that’s my wife.”

“Your wife? But I thought…”

“Yes, well, she has a strange sense of humour. We’re separated, but she may be around for a couple of days till she sorts herself out.”

“I see,” said his neighbour, although her baffled expression made it clear that she did not.

They stopped at her front door. “Mustn’t loiter,” said Harry with fake breeziness. “Plenty of paperwork to tackle, I’m afraid.”

She wagged her index finger. “All work and no play. It isn’t good for you.”

He was already unlocking his own flat. “Goodnight, Brenda.”

Tonight no Liz awaited him. Her return must have been brief. He could detect no signs that she had eaten here, but in the bedroom he almost fell over a couple of heavily strapped suitcases left behind the door into the hall. There was a carrier bag full of cosmetics and odds and ends of clothing bought from George Henry Lee’s. So she planned to use the flat as a hotel for one more night at least. But where was she now? He changed into a sweater and jeans and flicked the television on. A choice of a repeated sitcom or snooker, a chat show or a documentary on AIDS. He groaned and went to examine the contents of his fridge freezer.