A Lesser Evil - Lesley Pearse [46]
He said that Molly had been quite pleasant. She admired Angela’s new hair ribbons, asked if she’d had a good time, and then in an aside to Dan claimed that Alfie hadn’t meant to hurt his daughter. She said he was burned by the hot tea and lashed out involuntarily.
Yet Fifi found Dan very subdued that evening, hardly saying a word. He rarely talked about his childhood, but he had once told her that right up till he was about ten, he believed that his mother would come looking for him one day. He said that he would drop off to sleep every night thinking about how pretty and kind she would be and the wonderful life they would have together. Fifi guessed that the day’s events had reminded him of that, and perhaps other things he’d never told her.
She didn’t want to upset him further by trying to get him to talk about it, but she hugged him tightly.
‘I was really proud of you today,’ she said. ‘You were so considerate of Angela’s feelings. And so controlled with her parents.’
‘It took me a long while to learn how to do that,’ he admitted. ‘Right up till after I’d done my National Service, I used to lash out with my fists at anyone who upset me, and it didn’t take much. It was my first boss, after the Army, the bricklayer I was apprenticed to that got me out of it. He took me to a boxing club and let me loose on a punch-bag. He was a really tough man, brought up in the slums of Glasgow, so he knew what he was talking about.’
‘A father figure,’ Fifi said reflectively. ‘According to Mrs Jarvis, Alfie Muckle learned all his nasty ways from his father. I wonder what Angela will turn out like?’
‘Her mother,’ Dan said sadly. ‘She’ll go off with the first man who asks her, almost certainly another vicious animal like Alfie, and she’ll bring another brood of unloved and neglected kids into this world.’
‘Don’t!’ Fifi exclaimed, tears springing to her eyes. ‘You didn’t end up like that, so it isn’t a foregone conclusion.’
‘If it hadn’t been for my old boss and other men I worked with, I probably would’ve,’ he said dourly. ‘They were all hard men, but they were proud of their building skills and believed that nothing was of value unless they’d worked for it. They loved their wives and families too, I saw a softness in them when they boasted about them. So I began to look up to them rather than wide boys who lived on their wits. Then I met you, and all at once I felt as if I was the luckiest man alive.’
Fifi thought of her parents and their feelings about Dan. She supposed that if they could see Dale Street and people like Molly and Alfie Muckle they’d be even more convinced that he was intent on dragging her down.
‘The luck was all mine,’ she said, smiling, and kissed his cheek again. ‘You are the best thing that’s ever happened to me.’
The following morning, while Dan was out getting the Sunday papers, Yvette Dupré called unexpectedly carrying two cushions.
‘I ’ope I am not intruding,’ she said. ‘But I wanted to geeve you these as a little welcome present.’
Fifi was so touched and surprised she hardly knew what to say. The cushions were simply beautiful, pale green ruched silk, the kind she’d only ever seen in glossy magazines.
‘They are so lovely, what a kind thought,’ Fifi gasped, running her fingers over the intricate ruching. ‘Did you make them yourself ?’
‘Why, of course,’ Yvette said with a faint blush of pleasure. ‘I like to do this, it is, how you say?, my ’obby. I ’ope the colour is right for you.’
‘I haven’t got much of a colour scheme yet,’ Fifi said, and invited Yvette into the living room. ‘I’ve been intending to replace those awful curtains, but I haven’t seen any ready-made ones yet that I like.’
‘If you find some material I will run them up for you,’ Yvette said, wrinkling her nose at the hideous orange curtains. ‘You must not spend much time looking at these, they are so ugly.’
Fifi said she couldn’t trouble Yvette to sew curtains for her. Yvette said it would be a pleasure, even whipping a tape measure from her pocket and measuring the window.