by Anna Jacobs
Sam stretched out his hand to touch Ronnie’s hair and it got covered with red. “Save your strength,” he ordered. “Just hold on.”
“Promise me,” the shadow of a voice insisted, “promise me you’ll not hit her again?”
Sam felt a wetness on his cheeks and realised he was crying, he who’d not cried since he was a tiny lad. When he looked at Ronnie’s face, he could see death creeping across it. He’d seen it too many times to mistake it. Suddenly it was important that he do one last thing for the closest friend he’d ever had. “I promise,” he said.
Ronnie’s face lit up. “That’s my best mate. And,” he was struggling to speak now, blood frothing on his lips, but still he forced a few more words out, “write—tell Vi—my last thought was of her.”
“I will, lad, I will!” Sam found sobs tearing at his throat and didn’t even try to hold them back. When he blinked away the rush of tears, he saw that Ronnie’s face was very still—and very peaceful. It almost made him want to go wherever his mate had gone, because he had never felt so at peace in all his life.
He lay there weeping silently for a very long time before anyone came and rescued him. And he wept a lot in hospital, too.
“You’ve copped a Blighty one, lad,” a young doctor said, standing beside his bed one night, his face nearly grey with fatigue. “You’ll limp for the rest of your life, but I think the rest of you will recover, given time.”
And Sam couldn’t even raise the energy to care.
* * *
He was in hospital for a very long time, it seemed, and it wasn’t till a new nurse came along, a nurse with dark hair and greenish eyes—though they weren’t half as bright as Lizzie’s—that he began to pick up again.
“You know, you could go home if you had someone to look after you,” she said one night.
Sam, who hadn’t been able to sleep the night before for thinking about Ronnie and Lizzie and the whole bloody mess his life had turned into, just glowered at her. All he had left was his money, most of it still safely hidden, and what the hell use was that with no one to spend it on? What the hell use was anything?
“Well, I don’t have anyone. There’s only my wife an’ she buggered off and left me back in ’15.”
“Well, shame on her.”
“I’ll find her again,” he said quietly, expressing for the first time the determination that had been growing within him as he got better and became used to walking with a limp. “Lizzie’s mine and she’s coming back to me. I’ll find her and make her.”
The nurse frowned at him. “You’re not going to hurt her, are you?” For he was a large man and several times they had wondered if he was going to thump the orderly for nagging him into doing something he didn’t want to.
He let out an irritated growl. “I promised my mate as he lay dying not to thump her again so I’ll not hit her, but I’ll drag her back by the hair if I have to.”
“You must love her very much.”
He looked at her, with her la-di-da voice, her shining hair and pink skin, and the next growl was closer to laughter. “Folk like you call it love, I suppose. I just—she’s mine, you see, an’ she always has been.”
The nurse felt a glimmer of pity for the wife. He couldn’t be an easy man to live with.
* * *
When Meg saw Sam Thoxby limping along York Road, her eyes lit up and she hurried across the street to him, nearly getting run down by an omnibus in her hurry. She stopped to exchange insults with the driver, brandishing her fist and screeching at him, then clutched her bosom as another fit of coughing took her.
When it died down, she hid the blood-stained handkerchief hurriedly in her pocket and turned towards where Sam had been standing. To her disappointment he was nowhere to be seen. Funny, that. She’d thought he’d noticed her, but he couldn’t have.
Twice she walked up and down the main street, peering at the passers-by and rushing into one shop when she saw a head of ginger hair. But it wasn’t Sam so she rushed out again, afraid of missing him.
In the end, she decided he must have gone home and turned in the direction of Maidham Street, feeling distinctly dizzy now. Eeh, those fits of coughing were getting worse. She’d have to get some stronger medicine from the chemist’s, she would that. No use going to the doctor’s. Doctors didn’t know anything, especially lady doctors like that Dr. Marriott. Meg wasn’t really ill, not her, she just had a bit of a cough. And it was better to be lean than fat, whatever Percy said. The lean ones lived the longest because they had less to carry round with them. She’d outlive him, with his ticky heart, and she’d probably outlive Lizzie, too. Meg scowled, as she always did at the thought of her eldest daughter, then smiled grimly. Well, she’d found out where that young trollop was living. Oh, yes. She’d fooled her family. That Polly had always been slow on the uptake. And now—now she was going to tell Sam where his wife was, as she’d planned to do.
When she fell over in the street, she clicked her tongue in annoyance, but felt so tired she just lay there for a while gathering her strength. Voices hummed around her and she opened her eyes for a moment. “Bugger off and let a poor widow woman have a bit of a rest,” she said, but the words came out in a jumble.
When she next woke, she was in hospital and there was a nurse fussing with the bedclothes.
“Oh, you’re awake, are you, Mrs. Kershaw? Let me take your temperature.”
Meg spat out the thermometer. “Wann—g’home,” she managed. What had happened to her voice?
“I’m afraid you can’t go home just now, dear. You’re not at all well. But we’ve sent for your son and he’ll be here soon.”
Percy didn’t arrive for another hour, by which time Meg was raging with frustration. She’d heard the nurse talking to a doctor who had come to peer at her a few minutes ago. On her last legs, indeed! What did they know about anything? She was just tired. And no wonder. She’d had a hard life, and no help from her three ungrateful daughters. Which reminded her of Lizzie. And Sam. It even made her smile for a moment—till the next nurse came along and pestered her to swallow something she didn’t want.
When he saw his mother, Percy stopped dead in shock. She had a shrunken look to her, as if she had suddenly become much smaller, and she was so thin she hardly made a bump under the neatly arranged covers.
“Just a few minutes,” the nurse told him.
Meg clutched Percy’s arm. “Sh’m,” she managed. “Gorra—see ’um.”
“What? I can’t make out what you’re saying, Mam.”
She would have shaken him if she’d had the strength. “Sh’m!” She tried again and at last the word came out clearly. “Sam!” Her fingers dug into his hand.
He stared down at her. What maggot had got into her now?
“Sam,” she repeated, her face twisting with frustration.
Well, why not humour her? The doctor said she was failing fast. A stroke, and she had lung trouble as well.
“Do you want me to fetch Sam to you, Mam?”
“Esss. Sam.”
He stayed a few more minutes, but she didn’t try to say anything else so he left.
* * *
Sam muttered in annoyance as someone knocked on the door. He limped down the hall and flung it open. “What do you want?”
Percy nodded a greeting. “Could I come in a minute? I—I want to ask a favour of you.”
Sam shrugged and led the way through to the kitchen, sinking into a chair because his mangled foot still hurt when he stood on it too long.
“How are you getting on?” Percy asked politely.
“All right. Seen any sign of your bloody sister?”
“No.”
“She’s not written to you?”
“No.” Percy didn’t say that she wrote regularly to his sisters. He had promised to tell no one that.
“What do you bleedin’ want with me, then?”
Percy cleared his throat. It had been silly to come here, but he had to ask. “My mother’s in hospit
al. She, er, wants to see you.”
Sam stared at him. “Well, I don’t want to see her.” He’d already seen her in the street, looking like a little black scarecrow, but had managed to avoid her.
“She’s dying.”
About time, too, Sam thought. “So? What business is that of mine?”
“She’s desperate to see you.”
Then it suddenly occurred to Sam that the old lady might know where her daughter was. If she did, she’d tell him, because she’d never liked Lizzie. “Oh, all right, then. You’ll have to go and get a cab, though. I can’t walk far yet.”
“Thanks, lad.”
Sam shrugged. “Well, we have to help one another, don’t we?” A picture of another dying face came back to him suddenly. He’d written to Ronnie’s wife from the hospital to pass on his friend’s last words, and received a tear-stained note in reply, thanking him for his trouble. And that was that. His best mate just wiped out.
* * *
The Sister didn’t want to let them in. “It’s not visiting hours,” she declared, hands on hips.
Sam gestured down to his injured leg. “I can’t walk so well since I copped this in France. Couldn’t you just make an exception, for once? I promise you we won’t make any noise.”
She pursed her lips, then let out a long breath. “Oh, very well. But only this once. And only one of you at a time.”
Percy sighed. “I’ll wait here for you.”
Meg jerked into wakefulness as Sam sat down beside the bed. Not until she had hold of his arm did she believe it was him, because she’d seen her Stanley a little while ago and he was dead, so she must be feverish. But Sam’s arm was warm and solid.
“What can I do for you, then, Mrs. Kershaw?”
She tried to laugh, but only a gasp came out. “’Swhat I c’n do f’you.”
He just frowned.
“L’zie.”
“Ah!” He leaned closer. “Do you know where she is?”
She nodded. “Murforth.” The word came out all jumbled, so Meg tried again, and this time he repeated it correctly after her.
“Whereabouts in Murforth?”
She tried to say the street name, but her tongue tied itself in knots, so she drew it out on the warm palm of his hand, letter by letter.
“Right. I’ve got that. Willow Street. What number?”
She drew that out, too.
He leaned forward to grasp her shoulder. “Thank you, Mrs. Kershaw. I’m very grateful.”
She lay back on her pillow, beaming at him, then flapped her hand and tried to tell Stanley to get out of her way but he wouldn’t leave. He kept pulling at her arm, wanting her to go with him. She sighed and gave in, as she always had done when Stanley was determined about something.
Sam waited for her to open her eyes again, then something in the stillness of her face made him realise that the old bitch had just gone and died on him. “Nurse!” he yelled. “Nurse, come here quick!”
* * *
Eva went to Overdale for her mother’s funeral and felt absolutely nothing except relief as she watched the coffin being lowered into the ground. Beside her, Polly was calm and tearless, looking thoughtful rather than grief-stricken, for she had heard about her mother calling for Sam and couldn’t understand why.
Only Fanny Preston was there, apart from the family, because Meg had alienated her neighbours one by one over the past year or two. When they were walking home, Fanny, who was a bit overawed by how posh Eva talked, mumbled an excuse and went off back to Bobbin Lane, to her own house.
The family sat around drinking cups of tea and eating the sandwiches Polly had prepared. When Johnny, now thirteen, had filled his belly, he went off to visit one of his friends, and then Ned took Polly to catch a train home.
Eva made no attempt to catch an early train, because she wanted to have a heart-to-heart with her brother, who had sacrificed so much for his family. “What are you going to do with yourself now, love?”
He shook his head, too tired to think straight. He still kept expecting to hear his mother wailing about something, or flying into a tantrum, or erupting into one of those dreadful coughing fits which had punctuated the last few months. “I don’t know. It happened so suddenly. I haven’t got used to it yet.”
“You can have a life of your own now, marry perhaps.”
“No.”
“You’re only twenty-eight. You’ll meet someone and—”
“No!” Suddenly he had to share it, having held it inside him for too long. “There is someone only she loves another fellow.” He shrugged. “You can hardly blame her. I’m no film star. And with my heart…”
“You know the doctor told you that if you took things easily, you could live a perfectly normal life.”
He just shrugged, his expression bleak, his eyes looking inwards.
“Who is she?”
“Doesn’t matter.”
Eva laid one hand on his. “Oh, Percy, I’m sorry. So very sorry.”
He roused himself to smile at her, squeezing her hand in reply. “I’m used to it now. When are you going to find yourself a fellow? Pretty lass like you. They should be queuing up at your door.”
It was her turn to shrug. “I don’t want to get married. Look what happened to our Lizzie.”
“Fellows aren’t all like Sam Thoxby. And any road, he seems different since he got back. Why, he even came to see Mam in hospital when I asked him.”
“A leopard doesn’t change its spots.”
They were both silent for a moment, then Eva said very quietly, “I think Lizzie’s going to go away once the war is over.”
“What do you mean—away?”
“Australia or America. Somewhere he won’t be able to find her.”
“You and our Polly have never told me where she is.”
“Because you might have let something out by mistake. If Mam had found out, she’d have told him.” She hesitated. “If I told you now, you wouldn’t tell him, would you?”
“Never! He doesn’t deserve a nice lass like our Lizzie. Even if he has changed, I’d not trust her to him again.” Percy swallowed a sob. “I’ve never forgotten—never—what she looked like in hospital after he’d bashed her. And how unhappy she was after he stopped her running away with Polly.”
“She was coming to me, you know. And if she had come, we’d have got her away, Alice and I.”
“You’ve always had more sense than me. So—where is she?”
“At Murforth. Working in munitions.”
“So close!”
“Yes.”
“I could go over and see her, then.”
“If you were careful that no one was following you, why not?”
“Eeh!” His eyes filled with tears. “That’d be the best start to next year I could get, seeing our Lizzie again.”
* * *
Christmas Eve was one of the nicest times Lizzie could remember. All the girls who had no family got together and had a party. She drank two shandies and felt tiddly, for she had no head for booze, and as they sat round the piano singing, she thought of Peter, whose last letter had said very definitely that he wanted to see her after the war, that he wanted to help her do something about “the problem standing between us.” There was no future for them—Lizzie acknowledged that even if he didn’t—but still it was nice to be wanted by a good-looking man, a Captain now. And if things were different, well—she sighed at the thought—there was no one she’d want more.
Suddenly she had had enough noise, so she slipped out while they were still singing and made her way home alone, enjoying the crisp, frosty night and the hard twinkle of stars shining down from an almost clear sky. Mrs. Bailey was away, staying with her daughter who had just had another baby, and the other lodger had gone home to her family for a couple of days, so Lizzie had the house to herself, for once. Which made a nice change.
As she was opening the door, she felt a sudden awareness of someone standing behind her and turned to see her worst
nightmare come true. “Sam!” The word was a whisper, then she fainted clear away.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
On Christmas Eve, Blanche finished her meal, then laid one hand on her sister’s and said quietly, “Don’t you think it’s about time you told Mr. Cardwell about the baby? It’ll start showing soon.”
Emma stared at her. “You know, then?” She had begun to wonder, with time passing and Blanche saying nothing.
“We live very closely together, dear. You’ve missed your monthlies the last few times and you’ve been looking distinctly queasy some mornings, though you’ve tried to hide it from me.”
“Oh, Blanche, I was so frightened to tell you!”
They stared at one another for a moment, then Blanche got up and went to put her hands on her sister’s shaking shoulders. “Did you think I’d disown you?”
“I thought—thought you’d despise me. Be ashamed of me.”
“You’re my sister, the only relative I care about. If you’re in trouble, then I’m here to help you. The question is, what are you going to do? You haven’t told him yet, have you?”
“No.”
“I thought not.”
“He has a right to know.”
Emma stared down at the tablecloth, making patterns in the crumbs on her bread plate. “But what can he do? He already has a wife and family.”
“He can help you financially at least. It’s his child, too.”
“I’ll write to him after Christmas, I promise.”
“Good. But even if he doesn’t see his way to helping, we’ll work things out. We can manage on my annuity and our savings for quite a while, then I could look after the baby if you went back to work and—”
At that, Emma let the worries slide off her shoulders, put her head down and sobbed her heart out. She’d been carrying this burden for two months now and it was such a relief to share it with someone.
When her sister had stopped weeping, Blanche guided her upstairs and put her into bed. “What you need now is rest. Set your worries aside until after Christmas. We’ll sort it all out then.”
At the door she turned to smile. “Actually, I’m rather excited about becoming an aunt.”
