Frankie Marquez

This is a chapter, which also reads as a short story, from my unpublished novel The Blessed English Martyrs.

Frankie watched her Assistant Manager bounce across the shop floor. Too big for balletic leaps, he was doing a decent impression of being light on his feet. Satisfied that the slip and pen holders were fully stocked, he glided to the counter. He would not have been out of place in a chorus line, towards the back, but with a smile wide enough to make the people in the gods check him out in the programme.

‘Last chance Frankie,’ said Gavin Mercer. ‘Are you sure you don’t mind? I can still cancel. Beth will understand.’

‘You are going on that date, Mr. Mercer,’ Frankie replied. ‘How could I deny Beth the pleasure of your company?’

Gavin put a hand to his chin, waiting for a punch line and relieved when one did not arrive. He patted his pockets in search of his car keys and leaned on the counter to continue the conversation.

‘What do you think of the suit? I didn’t have time to have it altered, but it fits okay, don’t you think?’ He took a step back and attempted a pose.

‘Fishing for compliments?’ asked Frankie, but on seeing his shoulders drop she added ‘Beth will be impressed. A girl likes a man who makes an effort.’

‘But not too much,’ he said.

‘You’d better make an effort to be on time,’ she said, tapping her wrist. ‘You won’t impress her by hanging around here.’

Gavin turned on one foot and sprinted to the door. ‘You’re a star Ms. Marquez. You’ve got my number,’ he said, spinning a key ring around his finger.

In the six months she had worked at Robinson’s she had never seen Gavin so happy. She had learned all about his woes: how he had hated school; the ex-wife; being passed over for promotion; and in the quiet periods before lunchtimes and after the last of the evening races, he had schooled her in the ways of Star Wars. He shared his passion – other people might use the word obsession – for the film via a fan site he hosted, but had pulled a face and made excuses about the kind of people he might meet when she had mentioned a convention at the local arena. Gavin was the kind of boss who put himself on the late shifts and whose shopping bags were stacked with ready meals and potato-based snacks. Another thing she had noticed, when she had caught him unawares in the office or pacing up and down the pavement outside the shop, was a little-boy-lost look that she recognised from her brother. Of late, though, something had changed. Gavin had been terrified of a drunken bully who had twice invaded the shop looking for a fight, but he seemed over it now. So when he had asked Frankie how she would feel about locking up on her own, she hadn’t hesitated. Beth, about whom he had given little away, was clearly a good influence and Frankie didn’t want to be the one who stood in the way of true love. Or, and she couldn’t help shuddering as an image clouded her thoughts, lust.

An hour and a half before closing time, Father Gilligan sneaked in. The tent had gone from behind the church, but Frankie had decided to carry on attending mass. She wanted to ask him what had happened with the tent, but she didn’t feel she had the right to disturb whatever it was he was failing to hide behind his eyes. There were as many lost souls in betting shops as in churches, but still, who would have thought a priest would be the common denominator? What she should do, according to the company handbook and as her father would have told her, was point him to the Responsible Gambling leaflets. When he trudged out another hundred pounds worse off, she kicked a waste paper basket and grabbed a leaflet from the stand. She would slip it through the rectory letterbox after church on Sunday. Heading for the door to flick the lock, she heard a horn sound twice and she poked her head into the street. Two minutes later, she turned a key to set the alarm and crossed the road where a white Transit was idling.

‘A casa, senorita?’ Her father leaned out of the window of his van, his tight black curls picked out by the streetlights.

‘Papá! What are you doing here?’

‘Does an angel catch the bus?’

She loved the way he spoke Spanish with a Scouse accent and English at a breakneck Iberian tempo. As he stretched to open the door for her, she admired, for the thousandth time, the gold and black logo of a mallet and chisel and the smart lettering: Emilio Marquez, Master Carpenter. When she was a little girl, she had thought her daddy had had two names, although she could never understand why everyone called him Emilio and no one bothered with the more respectful Master Carpenter. She had got into an argument with a teacher over it, storming out of class in tears and refusing to budge from one end of a corridor. Her mother had not been impressed, but her Papá had tried the title on for size when he had arrived home in disgrace.

‘Pleased to meet you,’ he had said in the plummiest accent he could muster, ‘I am Master Carpenter.’

‘We’re picking Mum up,’ said Emilio, eyes on the road.

Frankie shifted closer to her father. ‘I didn’t know she was working tonight.’

‘They called her in. She was not happy.’

‘Poor Tesco,’ said Frankie, shivering a little. ‘Now they will know what it is to feel the wrath of Maggie.’

‘Aw, Francesca. Don’t talk about your mother like that,’ he said, clapping a hand over his mouth to hide his smile.

*

Emilio Marquez arrived in Liverpool on the Lazarillo, a cargo boat carrying oranges and tomatoes from Valencia, when the frenzy of Beatlemania was in full flow. They were supposed to unload, reload and ship out in three days, but a wildcat strike among the dock workers put paid to the shipping company’s plans. The Spanish sailors were stuck on the boat for a week and when the company was drawn into a financial dispute they moved to the Stella Maris Seamen’s Mission. Emilio was a young man, eager to save money and to send some home, but after hearing the older sailors’ tales of wild nights out in the city, his resolve faltered. One evening, having spent an afternoon pressing his best clothes and polishing his shoes, he dug some of his savings out of the sock at the bottom of his bag and caught a bus into the night. He weaved from one public house to another, rejecting what the English called beer in favour of brandy, which at least kept him warm. He revelled in the attention the local women thrust upon him and although he didn’t speak the language he recognised the name when they told him he looked like George Harrison. He thanked Jesus that he had hidden his curly mop under his sailor’s cap and expressed further gratitude to his Saviour when a girl with gloomy eyes and a formidable beehive fell into his lap.

Despite the hair, Margaret Highcock was not as bold as her workmates. She had indeed fallen into Emilio’s lap, cursing the high heels she had been persuaded to wear at the last minute. She tripped over a raincoat someone had abandoned to the mucky wooden floor, spilling her gin and lime and landing on top of the sailor in the cap. He looked as terrified as she felt, but amid shrieking and laughter from their companions, he had helped her to a seat with a gentleness that would haunt her for years. They managed to exchange names and she felt a thrill that, while all the other girls from Flanagan’s tannery called him George, she knew he was Emilio Marquez and that he pronounced his last name like he had a lisp. They swapped addresses one week later when the Lazarillo was permitted to sail for home. For the next three years they wrote each other rambling epistles which detailed their working days and family lives. Emilio, reliant upon a sailor who could read and write English when he was sober, wondered why she said so little about her mother. But he would not seek the answer through his intemperate interpreter. Maggie, who had never written anything other than formal letters, could not persuade herself to stop writing even though she ached with envy for the love that bled from his stories about the mother who steered the Marquez clan through the chaos of a rapidly modernising Spain; stories which she read over and over while sitting in the outside toilet at home, on tea breaks and on the bus to and from the leather works.

Maggie wasn’t sure how many miles lay between Liverpool and Valencia, but even if it had been ten thousand, that would not have been sufficient to describe the difference between Violet Highcock and Mamá Marquez. Maggie’s mother spent her days at the small table in their front parlour, staring, but not staring, out of the window. Crushed by a blackness that had taken root after the stillbirth of the last of her seven children, she was little more than a ghostly presence. Being the only sister of five brothers, maternal duties fell to Maggie and from an early age she cooked, cleaned and made sure her father and brothers went out into the world as spick and span as she believed her mother would have managed.

‘It’s the same for all the women in our family,’ Violet once announced, out of nowhere. ‘Once the little ones arrive it takes hold and you can’t do anything about it.’

By the time she was twenty-one, when Emilio turned up on her doorstep as arranged – his missives had developed a racy confidence – her bags were packed and a letter was left propped against the tea pot.

*

Many nights, while wrestling with her hair, Frankie would recall the one hundred strokes inflicted every bedtime of her childhood by Maggie’s brush.

‘You’ve got your father’s hair,’ her mother would say, often followed by ‘you don’t want nothing of mine.’

But what Frankie had wanted and still did was to feel her mother’s love. She had felt the sting of the hair brush on her wrist more than once; she had sensed the stares digging into the back of her neck; and she had been puzzled by Maggie’s jealousy whenever she had said ‘Daddy’s little girl’ as though it was a bad thing. She tried her best to shield her sister and brother from their mother’s coldness, and rejoiced every evening when her father came home from work, dragging sunshine into the house. It was he who had insisted that she take up her place at university; she’d had an offer to study locally, but recognising a sailor’s need for new horizons in his daughter, he had persuaded her to travel south.

‘We will be fine,’ he had promised her. ‘It’s time for my angel to spread her wings.’

Sitting by her father in the van, Frankie fixed her pony tail and checked herself in the rear view mirror. Where had Maggie found the strength to take a job in the supermarket, when she spent so much of her time avoiding all but her family? Was she punishing herself? She turned to her father, her eyes pleading for answers to her unspoken questions.

‘She’s trying to change,’ he said, rubbing a cloth around the steering wheel.

‘I know Papá,’ replied Frankie, ‘but why here, where there are so many people?’

Emilio folded the cloth and jammed it between the dashboard and windscreen. ‘She wasn’t always like this.’

‘When you met her, she worked at Flanagan’s and had lots of friends,’ said Frankie, reeling off the beginning of a story she knew by heart.

‘Yes, that’s what I thought. We were so young...’

‘And three years later, you came back for her. Knocked on her door,’ Frankie paused, waiting for Emilio to complete the sentence. But for once, the narrative took a different turn.

‘She didn’t invite me in to meet her mamá.’

‘You didn’t meet Granny Highcock?’

‘No. Not for one year.’

Emilio considered his daughter and chewed at his bottom lip. Even now, it was not his place to tell Frankie about his mother-in-law’s early death. She had died long before her granddaughter was born, and to his children she was merely a woman in a photograph standing next to a man in a uniform. He pushed his hands into his seat and exhaled. ‘Here is Maggie.’

Frankie shuffled closer to her father, as her mother, a stick insect in a black trench coat, climbed into the van.

‘You couldn’t bring the car,’ said Maggie through her teeth. ‘Turning up in this bloody van.’

‘Hi Mum. How was work?’ asked Frankie, moving forward to peck her mother’s cheek.

‘Work is work,’ said Maggie, dodging the kiss. ‘Too busy on Friday nights.’

‘I came straight from the yard,’ said Emilio.

‘After picking up your princess.’

‘And here we all are,’ said Frankie. ‘Are we calling in to Lucky’s on the way back?’

‘Better get some for the other two,’ said Maggie, ‘and I’ll have cod. Make sure it’s lightly battered.’

From her place in the queue at Lucky’s, Frankie could see that her mother, cheek flattened against the van window, was at least nodding in response to Emilio’s chatter. When Frankie reached the front, Anne Chen mouthed ‘for your mum?’ and set about dipping a cod fillet in batter. Anne and Frankie had been friendly during their teens, but when Frankie went away they hadn’t kept in touch. Now that she was back, they’d spoken in the street a few times and exchanged news whenever Frankie popped in for chips.

‘Just finished?’ asked Anne, pointing to the Robinson’s uniform.

‘Graveyard shift,’ nodded Frankie. ‘Dead on Fridays.’

‘Lucky you,’ smiled Anne, ‘I’m here until chucking out time.’ She handed Frankie a carrier bag and winked. ‘Extra large portion for your dad.’

Emilio warmed the plates while Frankie worked around her mother to lay the table. Maggie, who had not removed her coat, was examining the tablecloth.

‘Put the oven on low,’ she said without lifting her head. ‘Sofía’s taken Matty into town. They’ll be late.’

‘Want some bread, Mum?’ asked Frankie, butter knife at the ready.

‘You can do me a piece,’ Maggie replied.

‘None for me,’ said Emilio, patting his stomach.

‘Oh Papá, there’s nothing of you. He’s still got it, hasn’t he Mum?’

Maggie wrenched her eyes from the table. ‘Get changed before you sit down. You’re not a Robinson in here; you’re a Marquez,’ she said to Frankie, scowling at the uniform.

Two minutes later, Frankie tumbled down the stairs in a thick woollen jumper and leggings, ready to tightrope through supper with Maggie. They ate in a silence punctuated by Emilio’s tuneless humming and his wife’s disapproval. A door opened and closed and Frankie’s younger sister Sofía burst into the kitchen.

‘He’s done a runner again,’ she announced.

‘Matty,’ said Maggie, jumping from her seat.

‘He had a scrap with Ella. I knew I shouldn’t have taken him.’

‘Have you tried his phone? Em, try his phone.’ Maggie gripped the back of the chair, finger bones straining at her flesh. Emilio removed his phone from his trouser pocket.

‘Course I have Mum. He never answers. Just like you.’ Sofía peered through the oven door and asked ‘Can I have some of these?’

Frankie ran upstairs and came down with a carrier bag which she left on the bottom step. Emilio was having no luck calling his son.

‘I’ll find him,’ Frankie said. ‘I’ll have to take the car.’ She collected the carrier on her way out.

Maggie called after her. ‘Bring him straight home.’

Matty was slumped against a wall in the school playground, sitting between a set of goalposts painted onto the bricks the year that Everton won the league championship. Frankie hissed at him through the railings.

‘Matty! Get over here. I’m not climbing over this fence.’

He flapped an arm towards his sister and eased himself off the ground, lumbering towards her and stopping at the chain link fence that separated them. His knuckles were grazed and bloody; there was a cut on his forehead.

‘Jesus. Did Ella do that?’

He shook his head. ‘What did Mum say?’

Frankie reached out to put her hands over his. ‘She’s worried about you. We all are.’

‘I can’t come home like this. Look at the state of me.’ He stepped back to show her his ripped shirt and a small tear in the hip of his jeans.

‘Come on over and get in the car. We’ll fix you up.’

She texted Emilio while Matty climbed over the iron gates. His chin flopped into his chest while Frankie rubbed at his hands and forehead with baby wipes.

‘Grab that bag from the back seat,’ she said. ‘There’s a clean top for you. I didn’t think you’d need trousers. Where’s your coat?’

He shrugged as he reached behind her.

‘What happened with Ella?’ she asked while he changed his shirt.

‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘She’s too clingy.’

‘You should be so lucky.’

‘I know. I just can’t handle anyone getting close.’ He put his head in his hands and turned to his sister. ‘I’m like her, aren’t I?’

She stroked his head and ruffled his scalp. ‘We’ve all got a bit of Mum and Dad in us. But you’re you. I can see Dad in you. Maybe if you spent a bit more time with him, you’d see that too.’

‘No. You’re like Dad. You see the good in people, even Mum; you make the best of things. You came back when you didn’t have to.’ He shielded his eyes from the headlights of a passing car.

Frankie started the engine, but didn’t move off. ‘I couldn’t bear thinking of you three...’ she tailed off. ‘Come on. Look sharp. They’ll be waiting up.’

Matty sniffed, pulling all the air in the car into his lungs. He rolled his shoulders.

‘Alright then,’ he said. ‘I saw whatshisname, your geeky boss, in the Unicorn. With some woman. They were all over each other.’

‘You see,’ said Frankie, putting the car into gear, ‘there’s hope for us all.’

Maggie was alone at the kitchen table when Frankie walked in, having bungled her brother straight up the stairs. ‘What was it this time?’ she asked.

‘Something and nothing Mum,’ answered Frankie. ‘You know how it is.’

‘I do,’ said Maggie, standing up and moving past her daughter into the hallway. ‘Your father’s gone for a walk.’

*

The following week, Gavin Mercer had his hair cut by an expensive barber in town. The barber also shaved off Gavin’s beard and recommended a brand of aftershave that Gavin had never heard of. Newly shorn, he darted around the betting shop, whistling and engaging the regulars in as much conversation as they would tolerate. One morning he came in wearing the same socks – you wouldn’t have two pairs like that – as the day before. Frankie sensed he was waiting to beg another favour. She watched him make his way around the tables, straightening chairs and refolding the newspapers. He restocked the pens and checked the window display. When there was nothing left to tidy or rearrange he meandered to the counter.

‘What are you doing Friday night?’ he asked her.

‘Oh Gavin, I’m not sure it’s appropriate.’

‘Sorry?’

‘You’re my boss. And besides, I thought you were already dating. If you think I’m going to do the dirty on Beth...’

‘No, no. Not at all,’ he stammered.

‘Can you not tell when I’m joking? I can do Friday night again. Little old me, on my lonesome.’

Friday came and Gavin left at seven thirty, bequeathing the shop a wave of aftershave so pungent that a tracksuited teen playing one of the terminals dropped a coin onto the floor. This unlikely lad looked familiar, but Frankie could not place him. She didn’t think he was a regular and after his luck ran out he circled the shop and leafed through the Racing Post before taking a seat in front of the TV screens. He stretched his legs and folded his arms as though content to kill time and keep warm before heading off into the night. When Father Martin came through the door, the youngster craned his neck to look outside before returning his gaze to the screens. The priest took a pen from a holder and sat in front of the evening racing cards. After ten minutes he brought a fistful of scribbled slips to the counter. Frankie had a hot chocolate waiting for him.

‘Thanks Frankie, you’re a saint,’ he said.

‘Not me, Father. Isn’t that more your line of work?’

‘You would think so,’ he said, looking down at the three twenty-pound notes he was sliding under the glass. He wasn’t sure whether he should mention the lad he’d seen hanging about outside, in luminous yellow trainers and scrolling through his phone. He’d seen him on the swings in the park with the one now sprawled in front of the greyhounds, but having nowhere to go wasn’t a crime.

‘On your own again?’ he asked Frankie.

‘Doing a favour for a friend, who may or may not be on a promise,’ Frankie said, feeding the priest’s slips through the machine.

‘The course of true love?’ said the priest. ‘Never runs smooth though, does it?’

The boy in the tracksuit was watching them while fiddling with his phone. The priest pointed a finger over his shoulder.

‘Do you know him, Frankie?’ Father Martin whispered.

‘Mmm, not sure,’ she replied, ‘not from here. Maybe from school?’

The teenager stood and walked to the window. They watched him leave. Less than a minute later, the boy in the yellow shoes charged in, hood pulled over his head and mouth covered by a football scarf. He shouted something as he lunged towards the priest with a blade glinting under the strip lights. It was the kind of knife a scout would carry in his belt, the priest thought, as his neck was locked into the youth’s elbow. The robber barked at Frankie before she could remember the panic button under the counter.

‘Keep your hands above the counter or I’ll cut him.’ He held the knife in front of the priest’s face, the blade shaking back and forth and threatening his hostage’s nostrils.

‘Don’t!’ said Frankie. ‘He’s a priest. Leave him be!’

‘So what? Give it to me,’ the boy said, waving the knife at Frankie.

‘What?’ she asked. ‘I can’t hear you through the scarf.’

He looked up to the ceiling for a moment, and pulled the scarf away from his mouth.

‘Money. Give me the money!’ he shouted.

‘Take that knife away from his face,’ she countered.

But he tightened his grip around the priest’s neck as Father Martin garbled a prayer.

‘Shut up. Tell him to shut up!’

The boy’s voice was weakening, Frankie thought.

‘Callum Riley? Is that you? Come on Callum. You know me. Frankie. Matteo’s sister. You can’t rob me. You’re not robbing me.’

The door opened and Emilio walked in. Callum Riley released his grip on the priest and sat on the floor. His arm flopped to his side and the tip of the knife caught on the carpet. He let it drop. Emilio walked up to the blade and toed it away from Callum, who did not react.

‘Papá,’ said Frankie, ‘go and pull the latch on the door and turn the sign around.’

She unlocked the security door and came out from behind the glass, pointing her father towards the priest. She squatted in front of the young robber. His head flopped between his knees and he stared at his shoes.

‘What’s this all about Callum?’ He didn’t seem to hear. ‘Callum,’ she said, shaking his knee, ‘you’re not like this. This isn’t you.’ She pulled the hood from his head.

‘What would you know about me?’ he asked.

‘What about your dad?’ she tried. ‘What’s he going to say when he hears about this?’

He traced a shape in the carpet with his finger. ‘It’s nothin’ to do with him. He can’t help.’

‘Help what?’

‘I need money.’

‘What for?’ asked Frankie. ‘Have you left school? Don’t you have a job?’

‘What? Do you think I’d be here, doin’ this...?’

‘But how is this going to help?’

‘Who’s going to give me a job?’

‘Francesca. The police?’ Emilio interrupted.

A punter intent on a last-minute flutter tried the door. Callum sprung to his feet. Frankie snatched his arm. They held their breath until the rattling ceased.

‘No police, Dad. No police, Callum,’ said Frankie.

‘What are you going to do?’ asked the boy.

Frankie looked at her father.

‘You keep going on about needing an apprentice, don’t you Dad?’

Father Martin tried to stand. His legs wobbled. ‘Sounds like the boy could do with a break, Emilio,’ he said from the floor.

All eyes turned to the Master Carpenter.

‘You know Bobby? Bobby Riley?’ said Frankie.

‘Bobby’s son,’ said the priest, clapping a hand to his forehead.

‘Please, Mister Marquez,’ said Callum. ‘I can work hard. I’m sure I can.’

Emilio threw up his hands and announced ‘I need a brandy,’ and with that it was settled.

Emilio didn’t get his brandy for another two hours. After driving Callum home he delivered Father Martin back to the parish house. As they passed the school playground, neither man spotted the other boy from the betting shop, who was hiding under a window. Emilio returned to Robinson’s to find Frankie cashing up with Gavin, who had been snatched from his night of passion. Emilio kept watch from his van until they came out, plans made and stories straightened. When they got in, Maggie had long gone to bed. They sat in the dark in front of the television, sipping brandy and saying nothing. Leaning forward to pour a final drink, Emilio saw that his daughter was clutching a white envelope.

‘What’s that?’ he asked.

‘Winnings,’ she replied. ‘Can you believe one of Father Martin’s bets finally came in?’