‘Very deep,’ said Neil. ‘I’ve told you, sit tight and go where you’re sent.’
Keith thought differently. ‘Listen, we’ll look after her. Go and do your pilot training, and we’ll see to Gill. I promise we’ll make sure no harm comes to her or your baby.’
‘If I go off voluntary, she might lose the kiddy. If I sit, wait, and end up in the Fusiliers, my long face could be enough to cause a miscarriage. I can’t win either way.’
‘Don’t let anybody wearing a swastika hear you say that,’ Neil advised. ‘Now, get home and talk to her properly. You’re neither fish nor bloody fowl till you get this lot worked out. And we have to get that house ready for Miss Pickavance and—’
‘I’m gone.’ Jay walked out of the pub, almost colliding in the doorway with Mrs Elsie Openshaw. He blundered out into darkness, his head swimming after only two pints of Ireland’s nectar. He couldn’t carry on like this. That bloody doctor wasn’t worth the bloody ink on his bloody birth certificate, and that was an undeniable bloody fact. Was the rabbit dead, or was it still faffing about doing what rabbits did, which was getting pregnant themselves? The world seemed to be moving away from him. Sometimes, he felt as if he wasn’t really here, as if a thick blanket sat between him and everything else. It was weird. There was something he had to do, and he needed to remember.
He was fed up. If he turned right, he’d be on his way home; if he turned left, he’d be … he’d be going for Collie. Andy Crawford, better known as Collie because he always had a sheepdog, knew his onions. Then there was wotsername. Elsie Openshaw. He’d seen her a minute ago, and she’d been completely out of context. That was right, because Elsie had been in the taproom, and women didn’t go in there, as there weren’t many chairs and tables, since serious drinkers imbibed on their feet at the bar. He shoved his head through the door. ‘Mrs Openshaw?’ he shouted.
‘Yes?’
‘Will you stop here with Keith and Neil? I’ll pick you up on me way back.’
‘Your way back from where?’ Keith asked. He turned to Elsie. ‘Wait a minute while I try to get some sense out of him.’
‘You and whose army?’ Neil asked, his face deliberately grim.
Outside once more, Jay took a few deep breaths. He would get this sorted out if it killed him. That blinking doctor should have the sack. He was neither use nor ornament. The uselessness had started years back, and residents of several villages suffered as a result. As for ornaments, Jay had never seen one with such a big, red nose. The man was semi-retired, and he should be in a field with the rest of the worn-out horses who never did any harm.
‘Jay?’
‘Hello again, Keith.’
‘Where are we going?’
‘Eh?’
Keith repeated his question.
‘You’re going back in there to look after Mrs Openshaw. I’m going … I’m going somewhere.’
‘Where?’
‘Somewhere else.’
The words blood and stone paid a brief visit to Keith’s mind. Jay had shut up shop and was no longer open for business. ‘All right. See you later, then.’ He went back inside and bought Elsie a port and lemon.
‘What’s he up to now?’ Neil Dyson wanted to know. ‘I’ve had better conversations with cows and pigs at the farm. In fact, even the wife makes more sense than Jay.’
‘He’s confused,’ Keith said.
‘Confused?’ Neil took a swig of ale. ‘I’ve seen balls of wool in a straighter state after the cats have been at them. There’s something wrong with yon fellow.’ He slapped some coins on the scarred table. ‘Here, get Elsie another one of whatever that is while we wait for our fighter pilot to make up his mind where he’ll be landing next. Let’s hope he’s packed his bloody parachute.’
Elsie, who had come only to give Keith a letter from Miss Pickavance, was enjoying herself. She was sitting in a pub with free drinks, and she was needed. Keith Greenhalgh hadn’t called in for his mail today, and Elsie, who had recognized the copperplate writing of the new boss, had decided to follow Keith to the pub before going to bed. The message might be important, so she’d wanted to put it in his hand rather than through his letterbox. It was also a chance to eavesdrop, and she could never resist that temptation. And here she sat, on the cusp of something eventful; she could feel it in her bones. Against a background of conversations ranging from tupping through turnips all the way up to a war that didn’t seem to be happening, Elsie waited for the main event.
The curtain rose some fifteen minutes later. Jay’s head appeared once more. ‘Keith, Elsie? Can you follow me, please? Neil, you stop here, or there’ll be too many of us.’
So Neil stayed, while the other two walked out of the pub.
Jay was ready for them. ‘Don’t start,’ he said to Keith. ‘I’m not in the mood. You walk up behind us. Mrs Openshaw can get in the back of Collie’s car with the dog.’ He left unspoken the obvious fact that no one else would fit on the rear seat once Elsie was established as cargo. ‘You may as well set off walking now,’ he advised his boss. ‘You’ll be a witness.’
Keith blinked several times. Life had taken on a surreal edge, and Jay Collins, handyman and occupier of the gatehouse, had appointed himself producer and director of this particular scene. One thing was certain. Gill would hit the roof.
Gill, clad only in her nightdress, was drinking cocoa near the fire when her husband walked in. Her ‘Hello, love’ died during its third syllable when two more people and a dog followed him into the room.
‘Don’t start,’ Jay repeated for the umpteenth time. ‘I’m not in the mood.’
Gill picked up a shawl and covered herself.
‘Lie down on that sofa,’ ordered Elsie. ‘Then I can see what’s what before this man of yours goes mad with worriting. He’s about as much use as a nine-bob note while he’s this way out.’
‘Bugger off,’ was the only reply Gill could manage as she turned on her beloved husband. ‘Listen, you. I know you’re bloody daft, but I don’t need a midwife, and I certainly don’t want a vet. Sorry, Collie,’ she told Andy Crawford. ‘I know it’s not your fault. This stupid article I married needs brain surgery. Have you brought your kit? Do him on the kitchen table. There’s a drill in the shed if you need help to get through his thick skull.’
‘I warned you,’ the vet said. ‘I don’t deal with humans, Jay.’
‘I do,’ Elsie announced. ‘She’s a good two months gone.’ She sidled up to Gill. ‘Just let me put a hand on your belly, love.’
Gill marched across the room and flung herself in a supine position on the sofa. Jay was in a bad mood? Murder sat in her heart while the local blabbermouth prodded her abdomen. ‘Well?’
‘There’s a babby in yon,’ announced Elsie. ‘Collie?’
The vet joined the unqualified midwife. He placed both hands on Gill’s belly and the smile on his face was answer enough. After listening to the sounds of her innards through an instrument usually employed on pigs and cows, he spoke to Gill. ‘You’ll farrow in about seven months, perhaps six,’ he announced. ‘And yes, Stephenson should retire—’
Everything stopped when Keith entered just in time to catch the suddenly legless body of a father-to-be.
Gill sat up. ‘See? See what I mean now, Keith? Bloody fighter pilot? He goes into shock because his wife’s expecting, so how will he manage with half of Germany up his back end?’ She stood up. ‘Put him on here, Keith. Elsie, get brewing tea, will you? Collie, toast some bread. He’s always hungry when he comes round after one of these carryings-on.’
The vet stood over Jay. ‘How often does this happen, Gill? Every day, once a week, or what?’
Jay’s wife pondered for a moment. ‘It happens, then it stops. He has phases. He can’t drink much beer or he goes peculiar, sort of white and shaky, and faints now and again. No pattern to it, except it’s tied up with food and ale. He passed out on our wedding day, showed me up good and proper, and he sometimes loses what I call his thinking-in-a-straig
ht-line if he hasn’t eaten enough.’
‘Does he drink a lot of non-alcoholic stuff?’
Gill nodded vigorously. ‘Water, tea and pop by the gallon. Why?’
Collie reminded everyone that he was not a doctor. ‘But I’m taking him to Bolton Royal tomorrow whether he likes it or not.’ Recent research had discovered that diabetes came in at least two types, and Jay, who was relatively young and on the thin side, seemed to be suffering from type one. Either his body was producing insufficient insulin, or his system was failing to make use of it. ‘He needs looking at.’ And if Collie should be proved right, Jay would not be serving his country in any conventional way.
The eyes opened. ‘What happened?’ Jay asked.
Elsie arrived with tea. ‘Drink this when you sit up,’ she ordered. ‘I’ve put sugar in it. Sometimes they need sugar. His breath smells like pear drops. Oh, yes. I’ve seen it all before.’
‘Be quiet, Elsie,’ Collie urged.
‘What?’ Gill’s antennae were on red alert.
Elsie ignored the vet and motored on, in her element now. ‘Could be suffering from the sugar diabetics,’ the queen bee pronounced. ‘It means injections and a special diet and a review at the hospital from time to time. This’ll be why you think he sometimes doesn’t make a lot of sense. They go funny and they smell of pear drops. So it’s not his fault, the way he carries on, love. If it’s diabetes, they do act a bit daft from time to time, and they can’t drink beer.’
Gill swallowed hard. ‘Will he die?’ she asked.
‘We all will,’ was Elsie’s smart reply. ‘But there’s a farmer over Harwood way who’s the same road out, and he copes. It just depends. The food you eat has to balance with the insulin you put into your body. It can be a bit hit and miss at times, but he’ll get there, love. See, there’s a fair whack more to it than the food you put in, because if you work harder than you did yesterday, you’ll burn more off. They always have to carry sugar or sweets or a biscuit. He … er … he won’t be a fighter pilot, Gill. But I reckon he’ll make a good dad. You’ll have to keep an eye on him, though.’
Jay, who had eaten a bit of toast, decided it was time to speak up. They were all talking as if he wasn’t here, and … Yes, sometimes he was here but not here. There was definitely something up, and it needed sorting.
Gill burst into tears, though she laughed through the fear. ‘Look at the cut of him,’ she sobbed. ‘He even steals my big moment when I find out I’m going to be a mam. Elsie, Collie, I’d like you two here at the birth. Not for me, I can manage, I’m sure. But you’ll have to hang about and catch this bugger when he keels over.’ She knelt on the floor and hugged her husband. ‘A baby, Jay. We’ve done it.’
Jay, whose blood was now better balanced, realized that his head was no longer full of Spitfires and Lancasters. There were times when he got fixated and angry, and there were occasions when he forgot the simplest things: a word, a name, a task that ought to have been automatic. ‘I don’t think I should drink black beer,’ he told Gill. ‘It turns me into a fighter pilot.’
She kissed his cheek. ‘We’ll get you right, lad. Me, Collie, Keith and Elsie, we’ll see if somebody can find a spare brain for you.’
Jay blinked. ‘What’s wrong with me?’
‘Nothing,’ she answered. ‘You’re just mad, that’s all. Join the club.’
Keith was by himself, because his usual assistant, one Jay Collins of Willows Gate House, Willows, Near Bolton, had gone to hospital with his wife, the vet and a collie dog. The dog would be left in the car, but Jay and Gill would be examined, one for diabetes, the other for pregnancy. Collie had expressed to Keith the private opinion that Jay would be kept in so that his condition could be monitored. ‘He’s probably got more sugar in him than you’d find in a pound of dolly mixtures,’ the vet had said. ‘And when it burns off, he turns into a rag doll. But don’t sack him, please. We have to look out for each other.’
Keith had no intention of sacking anyone, because Willows folk looked after Willows folk; it was their eleventh commandment. At least he knew now why Jay sometimes lost the plot. Furthermore, the lad shouldn’t be driving the car until he got straightened out, because what Collie termed a hypo could become the cause of death for several people. So Keith had to take over the chauffeuring job as well. He hoped Gill would be all right. She’d waited years to get pregnant, and she needed an easy time.
There were four bedrooms in the big house, all a decent size. Neil’s wife was coming in later, as she had washed bedlinen and towels, but Keith was in charge of furniture. Miss Pickavance, a very thorough type, had sent a rough drawing of the upstairs, so he knew how to allocate each room. The two slightly smaller ones were for herself and Mrs Kennedy, mother of Eileen, grandmother to the three boys. The lads were to occupy the largest front bedroom, while the second biggest was for Eileen and her daughter, who would visit whenever possible.
The beds were built, thank goodness. He and Jay had put them together yesterday, so today was mattresses, sheets and blankets. Wardrobes, dressing tables and drawers were all clean and in place, and a fire would be lit in every room, since the house, long neglected, had not been aired in years. Roofers had begun work on cottages and farms, as the new owner wanted every tenant to be warm and dry this winter. For too long, the estate had been an orchestra with no conductor, but she would tune them up and give out the sheet music. Whatever she undertook, she would throw herself in and do her level best, and Keith had known that after sitting with her for no more than a few minutes.
Apart from the war, life was looking up. But there was one other niggling worry: the timbre of Eileen’s letters had changed slightly. It was almost as if she had placed a sheet of frosted glass over the messages, creating a small distance between herself and him. She wrote a great deal about Crosby and Blundellsands, about the old woman with whom she and Mel would be lodging, and about a family named Bingley. The husband was a doctor, the wife a homely type who ran the local WVS, and both children were pupils at Merchants. Eileen, too, was going to help occasionally with a different arm of the Women’s Voluntary Service, because Tom had introduced her to some committee or other in town. Tom. The name seemed to jump out from the page every time he looked at it. She mentioned him so casually; too casually.
He sat on the bed that would be Eileen and Mel’s. She would sleep here, breathe here, dream here. Would she dream about Tom with the homely wife, the qualifications, the good job? Was she about to offer herself to a married man? If Keith could feel a pang of jealousy at the thought that these windows might have the privilege of misting over with the exhalations from a mouth he needed to kiss, hating Tom Bingley was going to be a very easy task. He was being silly, and he knew it. Eileen Watson was a virtual stranger, yet he was allowing himself to become tangled up in thoughts of her that would probably take him nowhere.
Jean Dyson arrived. She stood in the doorway, hands on hips, mouth set in a grim line. ‘What happened?’ she demanded. ‘And why was my Neil left out of it? He sat in that pub waiting for someone to tell him what the hell was going on, but he never found out, did he?’
Keith rose to his feet. ‘It was Jay’s show, not mine. I wasn’t doing the choreography. Collie Crawford and Elsie Openshaw confirmed that Gill is pregnant, then Elsie decided that Jay has diabetes. So they’re all at the infirmary, dog included, which leaves just you and me to get this place ready. And now you know as much as I do.’
It was Jean’s turn to sit down, though she used the dressing table stool. ‘Bloody hell. No aeroplanes for him, then.’
‘No.’
‘Can he work?’
‘Probably. Whatever happens, I think Miss Pickavance will look after him. She’s not the type to penalize somebody for getting ill. She’s too decent for that.’
‘I hope so. For long enough, it’s been me and Neil at Home Farm, Jay and Gill at the gatehouse, you down on the Edge. Gill’s supposed to be housekeeper when the house is up and running, but can she do it
with a passenger? She wasn’t supposed to be able to have kids.’
Keith shrugged. With Jean and Neil, with Gill and Jay, there was no holding back, none of the social awkwardness that often existed between the sexes. Pregnancy and other delicate matters didn’t belong in the public domain but, between friends, all was fair. ‘She could carry well, Jean. Conception was the problem, but she might not have a bad time while she carries. There’s no way of knowing, is there?’
Jean studied her companion for a few moments. ‘I’m amazed you never got wed. You’ve a lovely nature, Keith Greenhalgh, and I reckon some poor girl’s missed out on a happy life.’
‘Set in my ways. A bit of a bore most of the time. I have my breakfast, work, get a snack, do my crossword, work, light a fire, have my tea and read the rest of the paper. Floors get swept twice a week, and I flick a duster round on Sundays, wash the kitchen floor, get—’
‘Give over. You left one thing out.’
‘What?’
She smiled. ‘You read your letters from that young woman me and Neil never saw, the one who came with Miss Pickavance.’
Keith laughed. ‘Just a friend who likes writing. I enjoy writing letters, too.’ He swallowed. ‘In fact, I think she might have met someone in Liverpool, so you can cross that name off the non-existent list.’
‘Aw. I am sorry, lad.’
He was sorry, too, but he mustn’t let it show. He had to check on the kitchen, the woodshed, the coal. There were brass and silver to be polished, crockery to be rinsed of dust, furniture to be rescued from the imprisonment of protective coverings. Normally, he would be working in a supervisory capacity only, but with Jay and Gill at the hospital, he and the home farmer’s wife had been forced to step into their roles. They made up all the beds, and Keith laid a fire in each room. ‘Right,’ he told his companion. ‘And that, as they say, is that. Time for a break, love.’
The Liverpool Trilogy Page 45
