by Katie King
Try as she might, she couldn’t prevent an avalanche of tears, and quickly James left the room – well, a man would do, wouldn’t he? – while the nurse slipped in and quietly began to organise what looked like bandages and lint dressings. Peggy was grateful the nurse didn’t attempt to talk to her.
Soon after that, Gracie and Roger were in the room with her, the doctor having telephoned Tall Trees in the hope that somebody was there who could come and collect Peggy and Gracie. They helped Peggy stand and then waddle unseeing out of the hospital and over to Roger’s car outside, past all the nurses stocking up the medicine cabinets and the handymen putting the beds together and hanging curtains between them. In the car park Roger and Gracie gently helped her onto the red leather passenger seat as tears softly slid down her cheeks.
Peggy didn’t remember anything of the drive back to Tall Trees, she was so upset.
She was helped to lie down on a sofa in the front room, with two blankets over her, and she fell asleep. When she woke it was to find that a bed had been made up for her downstairs.
Dr Legard had been very firm, apparently. Peggy was to stay in bed until the baby was born. She could do it at Tall Trees, provided Roger and Mabel felt up to it. But if James caught Peggy up and about for any reason at all, she would have to be hospitalised. James had sounded so grave that although Peggy couldn’t remember much of the detail of what he had said, she knew she must do as she was told.
Over the next few weeks she wrote a barrage of notes to Bill. He sent two short cards back, saying he was missing her, but that she must rest in order to look after the baby and so he didn’t want to distract her by writing too much.
25th November 1939
Dear Bill,
Thank you for the card – it sounds as if you are rather enjoying yourself. I hope that Reece Pinkly isn’t leading you into bad ways! I’m really hoping too that things haven’t got too hairy for you as I guess you may well be abroad by now, and that you are being sensible and are making sure you look after yourself. I miss you, but it helps if I know that you like a lot of the people you are away with. I’d hate to think of you far from everything you know, with only some nasty people around you for company.
I am still confined to bed – it’s been nearly three weeks now – and I am getting used to it, and everyone is rallying round looking after me and being very kind. In fact, they are all so kind that I am not allowed to do anything for myself.
I did feel better once it was agreed that I could be looked after at Tall Trees rather than having to go into hospital, as I think that would have been more expensive than we could have afforded.
Mabel and Roger have been simply wonderful. They have moved me into a small parlour next to Roger’s study and I sit up in bed like Lady Muck all day. The door is kept open during the day so that I can hear what is going on (I can see into the kitchen if the kitchen door is open, and I’m close to the downstairs cloakroom), and Roger has brought the radiogram into my room and put a huge pile of books beside my bed, so I listen to the radio a lot, or I read (I had never, to my shame, read Middlemarch before, but I have really enjoyed it). They all come and sit around my bed later so that we can listen to the news from the BBC together, even though from all accounts not as much seems to be happening as we expected, although I daresay more is going on behind the scenes.
June Blenkinsop, the nice woman with the café where I was taking the money at lunchtimes, comes over in the evening too when she can, and Roger has rustled up a few mothers-to-be who also come and sit with me, and we knit and drink lots of tea together, although actually I find that I am losing the taste for tea – Mabel tells me she was just the same when she was pregnant with Tommy as it tasted foul to her.
So, although I am doing very little in the physical sense, the days are passing quickly as I am actually pretty much kept on my toes what with one visitor or another.
I do feel much better with the rest, to be honest, as my ankles have gone down and my headaches are much less now, and actually I am losing a bit of weight, which seems to be a good thing as you wouldn’t believe the size of me. Baby seems happy too as he or she has become much more active; I didn’t realise how little he or she was moving, but now I am quite often jolted awake with what feels like a well-aimed kick. James, the doctor from the hospital who started this off, tells me I should drink a half-glass of water every hour and now I’m used to this – I find I get thirsty if I miss an hour, and sometimes I have to have a whole big glass even if I have been drinking regularly.
I didn’t know, though, that it is possible to sleep as much as I do, and I am quite proud of the fact that if I want a nap then I seem able to sleep through anything, even the children playing – we have Larry here now, which brings the total up to four – or (horror!) practising their scales on the piano.
There’s not much news otherwise, aside from the fact that Larry had to have three baths before Mabel thought that he was properly clean, and that food rationing is going to be starting in the new year. It all looks very frugal. Bacon, butter and sugar are definitely going to be rationed, and then later it looks like meat, tea, cheese, eggs and a host of other things will follow. Mabel is looking very down – she loves to cook. And she loves her food!
The children are going to see Angela almost every day – I thought they’d get bored of it, but they don’t appear to have – but she is still unconscious, although James was telling me they think Angela is less deeply under as they seem to be getting a little response from bright lights being shone in her eyes. In fact, the news that the coma might be lifting slightly is making the children extra keen to talk to her as they feel they might be instrumental in her improvement, which actually may well be the truth.
Although poor Angela has been having a terrible time, in fact as far as the other children are concerned, she has given them something that they can pull together about, as they plan things to talk to her about. Yesterday Connie and another girl from her class were allowed to play Angela a recorder duet, although Larry told me afterwards that Jessie had said that if there were anything that was going to make Angela want to stay asleep it was going to be enforced listening to a recorder duet, but I think that was more to pay Connie back for once saying in front of the others that Angela would stay asleep if Jessie didn’t stop telling her about his conkers!
Sorry that this letter is more about things that aren’t happening than things that are. Everyone is trying to keep me in the middle of what is going on, but actually I don’t think very much is happening these days.
All my love, darling Bill.
Peggy
PS I asked Roger to put my bed by the window as although this is chilly for me as the icy glass really does funnel the cold inside, it means that when my bedroom door is shut for the night and my light is out, I can open my curtains and stare up at the sky. I think of you a lot when I do this, hoping against hope that now and again we are both looking at that North Star at the same time.
PPS Do write soon – two lines on a card is better than nothing!
Peggy had worked hard on this letter to get the right tone, and it was much longer than she thought Bill would want to read, but it had felt very comforting to write and so she had let the words pour out of her.
It was over a week before Bill replied, and then it was only with another very short note that didn’t really say anything at all or even ask once about the baby.
Chapter Thirty-five
Proper winter weather came to Yorkshire on the first day in December, making Snake Pass over the Pennines impassable for days, the snow was so deep and the road so treacherous.
Bucky took up sentry position at the end of Peggy’s bed, his plump little black and white face telling everyone that it was far too cold to be outside other than for him to do the necessary, after which he would hurry back inside and straight up to his warm spot on top of the eiderdown.
Peggy begged Gracie to go around the shops to see if she could find some advent calendars.
Gracie managed to find four (Larry now having been installed in the box room, with Connie in one of the attic rooms upstairs, and with no apparent problems amongst the children with this latest change), and Grace had even persuaded the shopkeeper to give her a little off as she was buying so many.
Just before the children sat down to their tea, Peggy called them in to her and gave them each an advent calendar.
With a strange seriousness they opened the little cardboard window for the first day of December to see the festive illustration underneath, Connie saying that she thought they should each make a wish to mark the moment.
Peggy was certain that Connie and Jessie wished they could go home to Bermondsey. What Tommy wished for was harder to gauge – he didn’t appear, though, Peggy was relieved to see, as if he wished for anything naughty. And Larry looked as if he was caught between wishing for a less difficult father or a mended front tooth, the dentist having told him the day before that there wasn’t much that could be done right now, but that when he was grown up he could have all his top teeth taken out so that he could wear a denture to restore a normal-looking mouth.
The next day the four Tall Trees children, with Aiden in tow, crashed into the house in late afternoon and ran into Peggy’s room full of excitement. They had been at the hospital, and had tried to sing some carols to Angela.
James had heard their version of ‘While shepherds washed their socks at night’ and he had gone in to tell them that while she wasn’t yet conscious, Angela was starting to make some responsive signs.
James had insisted that they mustn’t read too much into this as coma patients could show characteristics that didn’t necessarily lead to consciousness, but he thought they would like to know the news.
And when Gracie went over in the evening it was to report back that Angela looked less still, and almost as if she might be about to turn over in bed of her own free will.
Peggy thought a less sceptical person might feel that the wishes made over the advent calendars might have had some influence, but she suspected good medical care and the little girl’s will to recover had more to do with her seeming improvement.
Gracie had a special sparkle about her these days, Peggy noticed, and when she grilled Gracie further she admitted that she had renewed her relationship with Aiden’s brother, Kelvin, even though he was away fighting. All the negative things Gracie had been quick to say about the Kell family now apparently forgotten.
Kelvin Kell had written Gracie a note that Aiden had given her at the Guy Fawkes bonfire it turned out, and already there was talk of them marrying.
Peggy quizzed Gracie over whether Kelvin was the baby’s father, and while Gracie didn’t exactly say he was, she laughed in a coy way and then left Peggy to draw her own conclusions.
‘Gracie’s not one for hanging around!’ Peggy said to Mabel later.
But Mabel was more circumspect than Peggy expected. ‘It’s probably wise for them not to wait, don’t you think? She’d feel dreadful if they did, and then he died before they could spend time together as man and wife.’
It was much too cold for the children to play outside very often, especially as none of them had long trousers, and so Peggy got into the habit of getting them into her room after school, where she could supervise activities such as Christmas-card-making, with the cards to be sold at the church’s Christmas Fayre, or else making Christmas decorations that would also be sold.
Connie got the point very quickly. ‘Is this your way of helping us think Christmassy things, Auntie Peggy, as we won’t be getting presents?’
‘More or less, Connie. I don’t think anybody this year is going to be spending much on presents, if anything at all.’
To everyone’s surprise, Larry proved to be quite knowledgeable about Christmas evergreens, and so Peggy made sure that she asked him lots about this as she had noticed that when Larry described his park keeper father teaching him about various trees and shrubs, it seemed to have been the one positive thing that father and son had bonded over during Larry’s childhood. Larry made Jessie, Tommy and Aiden brave the arctic blast for some brief trips out together, the children returning with fingers and knees blue with cold, with armfuls of holly, spruce and ivy, and once even with some mistletoe, which they then made into Christmas door wreaths or decorations for mantelpieces, while Connie used some of her hair ribbons to twist round the mistletoe so that it could be hung in hallways for cheeky Christmas kisses.
The house took on a lovely fragrant smell, and the newly made front-door wreaths were left in the cool of the front porch so that they wouldn’t dry out and spoil before the fayre.
Mabel had Tommy play the piano most evenings, and she schooled the children in a variety of carols so that they could go carol singing in the run-up to Christmas.
As Peggy wrote to Barbara, it was a reasonably content and productive time. Everybody seemed to be pulling together, and while everyone hoped they were somewhere else or that things were different, they all got a certain satisfaction in making the best of a bad hand of cards.
The Christmas Fayre was a turning point, as all the children felt for the very first time that they were actually becoming friends.
Since the scrumping, and then Tommy’s return from his grandmother’s and Larry moving over to Tall Trees, they had all been on best behaviour, and had been more or less intent on going through the motions of being good children.
But without them noticing it, several weeks of acting as if they were friends and making sure nobody upset anyone else somehow tipped over into real life.
On the morning of the fayre, Roger happily watched the children setting up their trestle table, which they covered with some red crêpe paper that Gracie had managed to scavenge, and upon which they then artfully displayed their evergreen decorations and door wreaths, some of which were plain and some of which had some branches highlighted with white paint onto which silver glitter had been sprinkled before the paint had dried. Connie and Gracie had been up late the previous evening hard at work making some extra Christmas cards and these were arranged along the front of the table.
‘Well done, all of you, well done – you’ve done us proud,’ he exclaimed proudly, clapping Tommy on the back, who beamed widely at his father’s pride.
Connie thought how much nicer Tommy was now that Roger and Mabel were making sure they paid him a little more attention. Roger shook Larry and Aiden’s hands as a thank you, and saluted Connie, and there was something so sunny on this frosty morning about Roger’s smile that all of the children couldn’t help but grin back. Roger then said he had to leave them as he was going to be Santa Claus for an hour, Mabel and Tommy having made him a make-do Santa suit from the roll of crêpe paper, with some sheets of ordinary paper having been painted black for his boots, belt and buttons, and his beard being an old pale grey favourite from the amateur dramatics costume box that Mabel had whitened by giving it a thorough dousing in Cussons lily of the valley talc.
Unfortunately Bucky had been nearby at the time Mabel was wielding the talcum powder in the kitchen, and he had had a sneezing fit, prompting Gracie to say she wouldn’t be giving Bucky lily of the valley cologne any time soon but she might try honeysuckle. Bucky could only stare up at her in reproach, much to Mabel’s amusement.
In fact, there was a general feeling of goodwill swirling about that never really left the children that day. Therefore, when Mabel said to them as she inspected their table of wares at the fayre, ‘The last one to sell something is a ninny!’ they all became quite boisterous in their attempts to attract the circumspect shoppers, Harrogate being well known (according to Gracie) for having people who ‘knew their onions’, which eventually Connie worked out meant that they were thrifty shoppers who wanted value for money.
Connie and Jessie modelled their sales techniques on the market traders they had seen in the East End, but it was Tommy who stole the show by managing to sound more cockney than they – he really was very good at a whole range of performing
skills – by yelling, ‘Roll up, my lovelies! Oggie, oggie, oggie! Here’s some ’olly, ’olly, olly!’, and then promising any lady shoppers that if they bought some mistletoe then Santa would most certainly be asking for a kiss after his glass of sherry and mince pie.
Within half an hour every wreath and card had been sold, and a bashful Larry had even been kissed on the cheek under the mistletoe by a red-cheeked elderly woman he had sold it to, who had joked that she wanted to see if the mistletoe worked on someone as old as her, Connie being unable, despite Larry’s blush, to prevent herself by saying to the woman, ‘You’d better test it then!’, the savvy shopper duly clasping hold of Larry and delivering a smacker to his cheek.
‘Thank goodness that’s the last of the mistletoe,’ said Jessie to Larry a minute later, and as Larry nodded the two shared their first-ever proper smile together.
It was a contented and quite spent gaggle of children who made their way back to Tall Trees to tell Peggy all about it.
Peggy laughed when she saw how tired they looked. ‘It’s not yet noon! You poor old things, you.’
Several days later, on the twentieth of December, the atmosphere at Tall Trees went from ecstasy to gloom in less than an hour.
The ecstasy began when breakfast was interrupted with Roger having to go to his office to take a telephone call. He’d walked to pick up the receiver with an expression that said of course it was time the telephone rang – he was eating, and so as often as not, that was his lot in life.
A minute later he bounded out of his study, calling, ‘Lo, there is good news!’
James had rung to say that Angela had woken up, and while not yet fully conscious, the signs were good, although the children should give her a day or two before visiting, just so that she could get her bearings after such a long time in a coma.
The children jumped around in happiness, even Tommy and Larry.
