‘Phil’s in Liverpool,’ Elsie said. ‘Visiting his mam. He, Nellie and Rob set off this morning. Seems they haven’t got back yet.’
Gill Collins blinked, picked up her child and changed the nappy. She wondered what Elsie and Gill were talking about. He was out. He went out every day and came back every day. No matter what, he always came back and made a thorough nuisance of himself. The clock ticked and hiccuped. It was old and slightly unpredictable. Jay was young and very unpredictable, and this clock had been his dad’s. ‘He was eccentric,’ she said to no one in particular.
‘Eh?’ Elsie placed a hand on Gill’s arm. ‘He’s still eccentric,’ she said.
Gill shook her head. ‘No. He’s dead.’
‘Who’s dead? Heck, yon lad’s not dead, love.’ Jean smiled reassuringly. ‘He’s in hospital with hypothermia and trouble with his sugar too, I shouldn’t wonder.’
Gill tutted. ‘He’s in Tonge Cemetery with a nice headstone. Italian marble, it is.’
Jean, thoroughly confused, did what all Lancashire women do when their environment deteriorates – she put the kettle on. When she thought about Fighter Pilot Night, she knew how silly and confusing men were capable of becoming. And when Jay was included in the recipe, there was no chance of anybody’s remaining on an even keel.
Gill continued. ‘After his wife buggered off, he lived over the brush with a woman from Fallowfield. He combed his hair across the big bald spot on his head, so he grew it dead long on one side. Every time the bloody wind blew, he looked like he should have had a frock on, because his hair streamed behind him – it was very, very silly. The clock’s nearly as daft.’
Jean and Elsie busied themselves with cups, saucers, milk and teapot. There seemed to have been a marked deterioration in the mental health of their hostess. According to Gill, Jay had been fixing a sink, but now he was dead and buried. Elsie suddenly stopped what she was doing. She stared ahead at nothing in particular before addressing their neglectful host once more. ‘Gill?’
‘What?’
‘Who are you talking about?’
‘Jay’s dad, of course. He gave us that clock, and it’s nearly as doolally as he was. He’s been dead a while now. No loss. Her from Fallowfield buggered off with the window cleaner, and that was that. We got the clock and that rocking chair, end of story.’
Elsie was growing tired. She lowered herself into a chair and took a long, hard look at Gill. The girl wasn’t mad; she was simply overloaded. The chattering was a distraction; she probably talked to the child and to herself most of the time. Yes, it was all getting Gill down. One baby might not seem much, but for a woman who had expected to be barren, it was clearly one too many. Gill’s dedication to Maisie, all the watchfulness, all the feeding and holding and worrying, came from guilt. I was the same, Elsie said silently. My kiddies were more burden than joy. She wanted Maisie till Maisie became a reality. But what could be done to help?
Jean Dyson drank her tea before excusing herself. She had daughters and hungry Land Girls to feed. Her husband was at the infirmary with Jay, and the chances of his finding transport home today were remote, so she would have to do his early morning jobs as well as her own. But, as she reminded herself inwardly, Willows folk stood by Willows folk, and Neil was doing what needed to be done, as must she.
Elsie stayed where she was. If she waited until Nellie came back, they could unite and tackle this lot together. But it was Jean who returned unexpectedly, slightly out of breath and with a message. She had met Miss Pickavance, and Nellie was not expected back tonight because Liverpool was being bombed again, a close friend of Mel’s had been hurt, and Miss P’s house in the city no longer existed. ‘She was going on about how she should have saved more photographs and her mother’s knitting. So as if we haven’t got enough with this one here, there’s another fretting in the big house. I swear, Elsie, the world is going to the dogs. And I’ve a meal to cook.’ She left the scene and ran home.
Elsie realized that without Nellie she was just half of something useful. Nellie would have found a way of making Gill Collins listen, whereas Elsie Openshaw didn’t know how to kick off. All those years of banishment were still telling on her; although she was now treated much the same as anyone else, her communication skills remained slightly corroded, despite the fact that Nellie had dragged her back into the realms of humanity. But Nellie wasn’t here. God alone knew when Nellie would be here.
‘Gill?’
‘What?’
‘We’re not joking, you know. Jay is back in hospital.’
The younger woman glanced at the clock. ‘He’ll be home in a minute. Somebody would have told me if he’d been in the hospital.’
Elsie hung on to her temper. ‘We did tell you. Jean told you and I told you. You don’t listen, love. You don’t hear what people are saying to you.’
‘It’s just a joke,’ Gill insisted. ‘Like being a fighter pilot was a joke. He’s always pulling my leg. One of these days, he’ll pull it so hard that the foot on the end of it will kick the teeth out of his stupid gob.’
It was hopeless. It was also time for tea, especially for a woman who was breastfeeding. Elsie set to and made poached eggs on toast. While the two women were eating, Elsie noticed Gill’s eyes wandering from time to time to glance at the clock. ‘It gains, then it loses. That clock’s as much use as a rubber knife, but will he buy a new one? No. There’s an alarm clock upstairs, and I have to go all the way up there to make sure of the time.’
Elsie knew that the young woman was waiting for her husband. He got on her nerves, but he was part of the scenery, and he seemed to have disappeared.
Gill stared at Mr Collins Senior’s clock again. If the old fool’s son was pretending to be in hospital … if he was pretending to be in hospital, he would end up in hospital, because his insulin was here in the pantry. ‘Elsie?’
‘What, love?’
‘It’s not a joke, is it?’
Elsie shook her head. ‘Nay, I wouldn’t have shut King George’s post office for a joke. And Neil Dyson wouldn’t have abandoned Home Farm for a joke. He’s stuck down yon at the Royal Infirmary, and he’ll likely not get back till tomorrow. That means Jean and the Land Girls have all to do in the morning and no man to help.’
‘Oh.’
‘You can’t get to the infirmary now, Gill. But you can take the torch and go up to Miss P’s house, ask to use the phone, and the hospital will tell you how he’s going on.’
Gill stood up and blinked a few times. ‘What about Maisie?’
‘I’ll mind her.’
‘Oh.’ The young mother still didn’t move. ‘You were no good with your own kids, were you?’
Again, Elsie sat on her old self. ‘I’ve changed, Gill. We all have to change, you included. She’ll be all right with me. I promise.’
Thus it came about that Gill Collins left her baby for the first time. More significantly, after expressing milk so that Elsie could feed her, Gill allowed Maisie to be nourished by another while she was driven to the hospital by an acquaintance of Miss Pickavance. She needed to see the idiot she had married. He was a pest; he was also her husband and Maisie’s dad.
Tom and Marie had done a good job on their son. The hospital doctor looked Peter over, declared him to be disgustingly healthy and, after handing over medicine and some dressings for the wounds, invited him to leave the premises after resting for a further hour. Throughout his brief time in Outpatients, Peter communicated with his mother and with Mel, but not with his father. Tom, acutely aware that his son was deliberately ignoring him, made his way to the gents. When he came out, the girl was waiting for him in the corridor. ‘Ah,’ he blustered. ‘So this is where you pick up your men friends.’
Mel folded her arms, lolled against a wall and simply stared at him.
‘What do you want?’ he asked.
‘A bit of honesty would do, doc. Peter knows about you and my mother.’
He swallowed.
‘Beautiful, isn�
��t she? Of course, she married someone else.’
‘And your point is?’
Mel subdued her fears. ‘We’re young. But you’re not, and maturity doesn’t bring sense with it, or you wouldn’t have been running after my mother. So that’s you explained, eh? We’re too young? What was your excuse? Retarded? Daft? Special and with rules of your own?’ Her heart was doing a fair imitation of a jungle drum. She should not talk like this to an adult. As daughter of Eileen and a pupil of Merchant Taylors’, she had been educated in respect. But, as a product of Merchants, she had an advanced sense of language and a large vocabulary.
He tried to conceal a smile. Always, always, Eileen Watson, now Greenhalgh, would own a huge piece of his heart, and here she came again. The tilt of the head, determined chin, pert little nose, mouth good enough to eat— He cleared his throat. Like her mother, she could wrap any man round her little finger. ‘Look at it another way, Mel. Love’s an illness. Especially at the beginning when hormones collide and confusion reigns. Throughout life, we meet people we desire. Fourteen’s a bit young to be considering permanence.’ He could still taste the kisses he had stolen from Eileen …
She favoured him with a dazzling smile. He liked her; he wouldn’t kick her out of bed. Like her mother, Mel was acutely aware of the effect she had on men. ‘We’re old in our heads, Dr Bingley. And look at me – strong as a horse, stubborn as a mule and feisty as a polo pony on its day off. New blood. A bit of working-class backbone to inject into the equation. You don’t want to be all Blundellsands and Crosby, do you? Get a bit of spirit in your genes.’
Tom glanced at the ceiling as if seeking inspiration. ‘No one of fourteen can possibly know who he or she will marry.’
‘Then you’ve no worries, have you?’
She was quick, he had to give her that much. ‘You are old enough to bear a child.’
‘But not daft enough.’
‘Catholic?’
‘Debatable. There will be no contraception, because there will be no fornication. Is that plain enough?’
She was her mother all over again, and Peter was going to be a lucky tyke. ‘Those feelings overwhelm. The urge to connect completely may become too strong.’ No way would he be able to resist this one. But he wouldn’t get the chance, and he was happy now with just Marie. Wasn’t he?
‘We’ll manage. Now. Are you going to behave yourself, or shall I set my gran on you? She’s wonderfully fierce.’
Tom loved Marie. He had dragged her out of a pit created in childhood, had learned how to conduct himself in order to make the relationship work, and he no longer regretted the marriage. But his peripheral vision still held images of this child’s mother, and he was glad that she was going away in the New Year. Mel, however, would be hanging around. ‘You leave me no option, Amelia. Your grandmother has already given me grief, so I shall just have to do my best to accept my very young son’s fiancée. I still find the whole thing ridiculous, though.’
As they walked back to the small room in which Peter was resting, Mel slipped her arm through Tom’s. ‘Please don’t fight me,’ she begged.
‘Because I’d never win?’
‘Something like that, yes.’
After she had withdrawn her hand, Tom’s arm tingled for seconds.
In another hospital just under forty miles away, a second young man lay. He would not be going home after an hour’s rest, because his core temperature remained below average, while diabetes added to the problem. Warm saline and a heated bed did their slow work while specialists tested his blood.
A door swung inwards. ‘Blood’s as flat as a pancake,’ the sister shouted.
Neil and Gill were sent away while flat-as-a-pancake was dealt with.
‘Do they mean dead?’ asked Gill.
Neil shook his head. ‘Nay, he’s just out of sugar, that’s all.’
‘Oh.’ She chewed her lip. ‘So what will they do?’
‘They’ll fill him with the stuff.’
‘It’s rationed.’
The farmer failed to prevent a smile. ‘They’re not going to pour a two-pound bag of Co-op’s best granulated down him, love. It’ll be like water and it won’t be much. They’ll drip it into his blood.’
Gill sat very still and stared into the future. It shouldn’t be like this. She had the child she’d always craved, a decent home if she could be bothered to clean it properly, a husband exempt from the forces but with a job, and lovely people around her. ‘Neil?’
‘What?’
‘You know how he gets on my nerves?’
He nodded.
‘How can I cope? And have I had a nervous breakdown?’
Difficult questions. He had to think hard before answering, because this woman would probably hang on every word. Of late, she had scarcely listened to anyone, but she was certainly concentrating now. ‘I don’t know about nervous breakdowns, Gill, because I’m not a doctor. But I do remember Jeanie after she had our Patty. Every time I spoke to her she bit my head off. I used to read in the shippon with my cows. Then one day she was right again. We’ve always argued, but we don’t let the sun go down on a quarrel.’ He didn’t need to tell Gill about his and Jean’s wonderful sex life. That didn’t continue in every marriage, so Gill needed to find her own way home for part of the route.
‘So I could be out of flunter because of Maisie?’
‘Oh yes. Definitely.’
So that was the answer to some of it. ‘And what about him in there?’ she asked.
Neil shook his head. ‘You have to look at it this way, Gill. Part of it could be his illness. He was diabetic for a long time before it was noticed. Again, I have to say I’m not a doctor, but I’ve heard Elsie Openshaw say that diabetics get moods. You’ve a choice. You can stay with him or leave him.’ He refused to add the fact that Jay was fighting for his life just yards away.
‘Where would I go?’
‘No idea.’
A lonely tear found its way down Gill’s cheek. ‘He makes me that mad, I could kill him.’
He had to do it. Shock sometimes worked where kindness failed. ‘You may not need to.’
Her head shot round to face him. ‘What did you say?’
‘He’s not out of the woods, sweetheart.’
Gill shot out of her chair like a bullet from a gun. She wasn’t having this. If young Phil Watson hadn’t gone to Liverpool, her daft swine would have been all right. She stopped in her tracks and walked back to Neil. ‘Why did you carry him all the way to Home Farm? Why didn’t you take him into Four Oaks and get him dry there? Happen he wouldn’t have caught his death of cold if you’d—’
‘It was locked, Gill. There’s been a bit of light-fingering going on, and after Jay had finished they locked up before going back to work. Home Farm was the nearest.’
‘Oh. Sorry.’ She fled once more.
Back in Jay’s room, she surveyed the people surrounding the bed. ‘Is he all right? He’d better be, or you’ll have me to answer to if he turns his toes up.’
‘Gill?’
‘What?’
‘Shut up.’
But she was riled. ‘He’s got a little daughter, not even weaned yet. It’s not his fault he fell in the trough. If you got his diabetes right, he wouldn’t be lying in ice-cold water, would he?’
‘Gill?’
‘He’s only thirty-four. That’s no age to—’ She stopped and blinked several times. None of this lot knew her name, but someone kept saying it.
‘I am not dying before I have a cup of tea.’
‘For God’s sake,’ cried the ward sister. ‘Nurse, will you fetch this person a cup of tea?’ She spoke to the person’s wife. ‘We had to hang on with nil by mouth until we checked his kidneys, but we’ve had him on a drip. All I can say to you, love, is I hope you take him home soon, because he’s driving us round the bend.’
‘He does that,’ Gill replied. ‘There’s no cure.’
At last, she was alone with him. He looked so small in the bed, s
o thin. ‘Get yourself right,’ she ordered. ‘And shape up, will you? Be a clown just on Fridays down at the pub.’
‘Yes, miss.’
‘Stop doing stuff when you’re tired.’
‘Yes, miss.’
It was hopeless, and she knew it. But she also knew she wanted him alive. And she would learn to love him again if it killed her …
Fourteen
‘Wake up, you dozy, wonderful woman.’ Keith stroked her face with a forefinger. She felt like a peach, smooth and soft, but downy. Her hair gave off the aroma of spring flowers, and if he wasn’t careful he’d end up on a dusty, forgotten bookshelf with the rest of the romantic poets, because he was certainly becoming daft enough.
This gorgeous woman had caused many changes in him. She had made him younger, happier, less careful, more inclined to read Keats, Wordsworth and even a bit of Shelley. The worries of the previous evening had left her tired, so he would cheer her up a bit in a minute. Well, he would try. One of her best qualities was her inclination towards natural happiness. ‘Come on, Chuckabutty. Wake up and talk to this rather pleasant young – youngish – man.’
Eileen yawned and opened one eye. ‘On a scale of one to ten, how safe am I?’ He was hovering, elbow bent, head resting on a hand. The devil was visiting those beautiful eyes again, and his left eyebrow was slightly raised. When that item relocated itself, people should lock up their daughters and root round for chastity belts. ‘Man the bloody lifeboats,’ she sighed. ‘Get women and children off this ship.’ He was working his way up to something, and it was breakfast time. ‘Well?’ she asked once more. ‘How safe am I in your company, sir?’
Keith considered the question. They were in bed. They were in bed together. He was stark naked, as usual, while she was wrapped in a hideous dressing gown that looked as if it had been cobbled together by a visually challenged person whose only available fabrics were army surplus items. ‘If I can get you out of that horse blanket, you’ll be about as safe as a rabbit with the business end of a gun up its nose. Well? Are you going to carry on lying there all enigmatic and silent? I can do enigmatic and silent, but I won’t be still. In fact, I may come over rather vigorous.’
The Liverpool Trilogy Page 62
