A Strong Hand to Hold

by Anne Bennett

  Geraldine and Jan did think of it and instinctively shuddered: Jenny, seeing she had their sympathy, went on, ‘Linda was like a little mother to them, the next-door neighbour, Beattie, told me. There was just her and her mother, you see – her own father died when she was small, and then her stepfather was one of those left behind on the beaches of Dunkirk.’

  No need for them to know what sort of man Ted Prosser really was: Jenny wanted them both to feel sympathetic towards the young orphaned girl.

  ‘Oh, the poor wee thing,’ the kind-hearted Jan said. ‘And then to suffer like she did, being buried like that.’

  ‘I can see how you feel somewhat responsible, Jenny,’ Geraldine said. ‘And if she has no one else …’

  ‘She hasn’t,’ Jenny said. ‘The only one that would have taken her has eight boys of her own already and lives in a two-bedroom terrace house in Basingstoke. Beattie would have her like a shot, but she’s been bombed out herself and is lodging with her sister.’

  ‘So, you think it’s up to you?’ Jan said.

  ‘Yes. Do you understand why?’

  ‘Oh, indeed. I think the poor wee thing has already been dealt a bad enough hand in life.’

  Oh bless you Jan, Jenny thought, and turning to her sister she said, ‘What about you Geraldine?’

  Geraldine had been moulded by their mother. But this had touched on her protective feelings as a mother and she knew that were she to have been blown to kingdom come by a bomb, she’d not have liked either Jamie or Rosemarie to end up in an orphanage. ‘I can see how you feel sort of responsible for her and maybe it would be the charitable thing to look after her, at least for the time being. I’d hate one of mine to ever end up in an orphanage.’

  Jenny’s mouth dropped open in astonishment and she grasped Geraldine’s hand in hers. She knew Geraldine’s resolve would crumble before any opposition, particularly if it came from their mother. But to say she understood what Jenny was doing, and why, was a form of breakthrough. ‘I won’t forget how you supported me tonight,’ she said and both of the older women were moved by the passion in Jenny’s voice and they smiled at each other as the ‘All Clear’ blasted out its reassuring sound.

  EIGHT

  ‘What else can you do, cutie dear?’ Grandma O’Leary said to Jenny the following day. ‘The child hasn’t a one belonging to her. What are you to do, but offer her a place to lay her head?’

  ‘That’s right, Jenny. You can’t let her go into a home, not when you have the room,’ Peggy put in.

  The approval of her gran and Peggy washed over Jenny, healing her spirit that was bruised from the blistering argument she’d had that very morning when she’d reopened the topic with her mother and grandmother.

  ‘I’d have the wee thing here myself,’ Maureen went on, ‘if it wasn’t for my Gerry and this one here, tying the knot next spring. The small room will be empty, but I’ve a feeling it won’t be long before that’s in use as a nursery.’

  ‘Gran,’ Jenny said, as Peggy blushed.

  Maureen gave a gentle push to her future daughter-in-law. ‘You have to get used to things like that, my darling. You can’t be blushing every time I open my mouth.’

  ‘She’s awful, Gran is,’ Jenny said to Peggy. ‘And she’ll never change.’ In a way, she was a little jealous of Peggy and the closeness between her and her gran, but she told herself she was being stupid.

  She smiled across at Peggy as she spoke. The other girl was still recovering from the raid on the BSA. Gerry had been all for an early marriage, but both Peggy and Gran had been against it.

  ‘Mad galoots to want to marry in the middle of the winter,’ Maureen had said.

  ‘Anyway,’ Peggy added, ‘I’m not hobbling down the aisle with my ribs bound up and my hair in a state. Besides, Mammy and Daddy want a bit of a splash, wartime or not. I’m the first to be married in our family and Mammy says we’ll do it in style. If we’re too hasty, she says people will think there’s a reason for it.’

  So that had been that. Gerry had been overruled and the wedding was fixed for the very end of March 1941. According to Jenny’s gran, he’d been amazed at the fuss a wedding entailed. ‘What did you think, lad?’ she cried. ‘Did you think Peggy should put on a costume and yourself a suit, and the two of you could pop along to the priest, without a body belonging to you being there, as if you were going to the pictures?’

  ‘No, of course not,’ Gerry lied. ‘But does she really need a fancy dress and bridesmaids? Don’t you think it’s a bit unpatriotic?’

  ‘No, I don’t,’ his mother had snapped. ‘In this mad world, where the innocent are dying daily, what is unpatriotic about wanting to give the girl a good send-off on her wedding day? Would it help the country any if it was hidden away as if it were something to be ashamed of?’

  Gerry had no answer for his mother, but really it didn’t matter. Unpatriotic or not, Peggy was having a wedding dress she could be proud of, and at least three bridesmaids.

  ‘Have you decided on who you’re going to have?’ Jenny asked Peggy. She knew two were Peggy’s sisters and presumed another would be a cousin, or friend of the family.

  ‘You,’ Peggy said to Jenny with a brilliant smile. ‘Will you do it?’

  ‘I’d be honoured to,’ Jenny said, touched that Peggy should even consider her. ‘What about fittings and measurements and things?’

  ‘Leave it a wee while,’ Peggy said. ‘There’s no rush.’

  ‘No, except I’ve got time on my hands now. The hospital doctor said I wasn’t to think of going back to work yet. It’s mad, I feel great and I’ll end up murdering my mother and grandmother if I’m home much longer with them.’

  ‘Look on the bright side cutie,’ Maureen said. ‘At least it gives you time to visit the wee girl in hospital.’

  Jenny sighed and said, ‘I suppose it does. I’m on my way there now. She doesn’t get many visitors, you know – it’s too far for her friends to go. Her teacher has been up once, and Beattie pops in, but that’s it really.’

  ‘I’ll take a wee dander up to the hospital myself,’ Maureen said. ‘The days must hang heavy on her.’

  ‘I’ll go along with you,’ Peggy said.

  ‘You’ll not,’ Maureen said. ‘What will his lordship say if I let you go gallivanting?’

  Peggy laughed. ‘Visiting a sick child is hardly gallivanting,’ she said.

  Jenny left them arguing amicably over it and made for the tram.

  Linda was feeling very low when she saw Jenny enter the room, but she tried to smile, because she was grateful to the older girl for making the effort to visit her. Jenny came almost every day. Linda hadn’t really believed she would, but she hadn’t let her down, even though it was a trek to Steel House Lane from Pype Hayes.

  ‘Hi. How are you today?’ Jenny asked.

  Linda shrugged. ‘All right.’

  ‘I got you some comics,’ Jenny said.

  ‘Thanks,’ Linda said flatly.

  Jenny took Linda’s hand. ‘I suppose you get bored?’ she said sympathetically.

  ‘What d’you think?’ Linda snapped, snatching her hand away. Almost immediately, she was ashamed of herself. It would serve her right, Linda thought, if Jenny didn’t come again. The thought of long days stuck in this place without the other girl’s visits to look forward to made her eyes fill with tears.

  Jenny knew Linda was depressed; Matron had warned her about it. She decided to get straight to the point.

  ‘Linda,’ she said. ‘When you’re well enough to leave hospital, would you like to move into my house?’

  Linda’s eyes opened very wide. ‘Your house!’ she repeated. ‘Live with you, you mean?’

  ‘That’s right,’ Jenny said.

  The other girl’s eyes shone. ‘You mean it, really and truly?’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘That would be great.’

  ‘It won’t be for some time, you know,’ Jenny said.

  ‘I know, I don’t care. I was worrying ab
out where I was going to live,’ Linda said. She studied Jenny for a minute or two and then said, ‘What about your mom?’

  ‘What about her?’

  ‘Won’t she mind me coming to live with you?’

  ‘No, of course not.’

  Linda was lying back on the pillows watching Jenny, and she suddenly said, ‘She will though, won’t she? Your mom ain’t happy about it, I can tell.’

  Jenny opened her mouth to voice another denial, when Linda suddenly said, ‘I know when you’re lying. Your eyes dart about all over the place.’

  Jenny laughed and said, ‘All right then. My mother isn’t all that keen, to tell the truth. But she’ll come round.’

  ‘I don’t care if she doesn’t,’ Linda said. ‘If I had to choose anyone to live with, it would be you, and as long as you’re happy about it, that’s all I’m bothered about.’

  And Jenny put her arms around Linda and gave her a hug. She knew all the rows with Norah were worth it, to give Linda something to smile about at last.

  The news of where the orphaned Linda Lennox would live when she was finally released from hospital, soon filtered through the estate. Many thought that Norah O’Leary might be a stuck-up cow and her mother too, but their hearts were obviously in the right place to open up their home for a child. Jenny never told the true story, but let people believe the decision was one her mother had made.

  To Dr Sanders, who knew the type of women Jenny’s mother and grandmother were, it seemed out of character for them to offer an orphan a home, especially a tough cookie like Linda Lennox. He was worried about the whole situation, and knowing they’d have no privacy in Jenny’s house to talk, he waited for her in the car park one evening as she left the hospital. He made the excuse he’d been visiting a patient and Jenny was certainly glad to see him. The winter’s day was raw and cold and inclined to be foggy. Her feet throbbed and she had no wish to stand at a freezing tram stop for hours on end.

  She slipped gratefully into the car and with an impish grin said, ‘We’ll have to stop meeting like this.’

  ‘If you say so,’ Dr Sanders said in the same vein. ‘I could always let you out now, if you’re worried about your reputation.’

  ‘Don’t you dare,’ Jenny cried. ‘It’s lovely to be chauffeured home like this.’

  ‘Then sit back, enjoy it and shut up.’

  ‘Yes, sir!’

  The doctor drove in silence down the darkened city streets for a moment or two. He’d noticed the exhausted pallor of Jenny’s skin as she sat beside him, and guessed it was the trek to the hospital wearing her out. But he knew Jenny well enough now to know it would do no good to mention it. Instead he said, ‘Are you looking forward to Linda coming to live with you?’

  ‘How do you know about it?’ Jenny asked. ‘I’ve never mentioned it and it’s only just been decided.’

  ‘Jenny, I work on the estate,’ he reminded her. ‘The story is on everyone’s lips.’

  ‘Well,’ said Jenny, recognizing the truth of his words, ‘the answer to your question is yes and no. Yes, I’m looking forward to having Linda’s future settled, and she’s happier than she’s been for a long time.’

  ‘But?’ prompted the doctor.

  ‘It’s my mother and grandmother,’ Jenny burst out. ‘They’re so against the child.’ She chewed her thumbnail anxiously and then went on, ‘Between them, they’ve given me hell for years. I’d hate them to do the same to Linda. I mean, I won’t always be there to protect her.’

  ‘Then, is it wise of you to offer her a home at all?’ Dr Sanders asked.

  ‘Maybe not. But what’s the alternative?’ Jenny asked. ‘A children’s home? Indifferent foster-parents? At least I do care for her and she cares for me. And she’ll have all the rest of the family.’

  ‘But your mother …?’

  ‘Mother and Grandmother refuse to discuss it,’ Jenny said.

  ‘What if they refuse to have her at all?’ Dr Sanders suggested gently.

  ‘Oh God. That would really break Linda’s heart,’ Jenny said, and added after a second or two, ‘but Mother won’t do that.’

  ‘How can you be so sure?’

  ‘Because if she did that, I’d leave home and she knows it.’

  ‘Where would you go?’

  ‘I’d join the WAAFs,’ Jenny shrugged. ‘I wanted to right at the start of the war, but all the family said it was my duty to stay and look after Mother. If she said Linda definitely couldn’t come, I’d be off.’

  ‘Aren’t you under-age?’

  ‘I’m twenty,’ Jenny said. ‘And Anthony joined up at eighteen, but if Mother and Grandmother do kick up, I’d just wait. I’ll be twenty-one in April. It’s not long, and I can do what I like then.’ She looked out at the drab, blacked-out city centre. ‘Linda on the other hand, is still only a kid; she needs to be with people who will take good care of her. How else will she ever cope with the tragedy of losing her family?’

  Dr Sanders didn’t know. The same question had been nagging at him. Linda’s physical injuries would heal, of that he was certain, though it would take time. But the mental scars would take sensitive handling. The best cure he knew for what ailed Linda was love, the kind that Jenny had for her. He said, ‘Jenny, would you like me to talk to your mother?’

  Her reaction surprised him. ‘Oh, God no. That would make her worse.’

  ‘Why?’ he asked, genuinely puzzled.

  ‘She hates doctors,’ Jenny said.

  ‘Good Lord! Why?’

  ‘I suspect, and so does Gran O’Leary, that it’s because our family doctor knows what a fraud she is and has probably told her so. Listen,’ she went on, ‘Mother is supposed to suffer from severe arthritis. Now I know she’s not half as bad as she makes out, as I’ve seen her myself, walking around the house quite normally when I’ve spied on her through the window. Yet when I’ve gone into the house minutes later, she’s groaning, with a blanket placed over her legs.’

  It wouldn’t have been the first time a patient had exaggerated their ailments, or even invented them altogether, Dr Sanders thought. It had always flabbergasted him that some people would do that. His predecessor, Dr McKenzie, said that such people usually had psychological problems which were just as real and important as their imaginary physical ailments. However, Dr Sanders had neither the time nor the training to delve into people’s minds and he knew Jenny O’Leary well enough to know she was not lying. ‘We must try and break down this animosity to the medical profession in your mother,’ he said. ‘What if she ever needs a doctor one day?’

  Jenny shrugged. ‘She hasn’t yet,’ she said. ‘But I suppose she might. After all, she’s getting older and Grandmother is older still.’

  ‘Let me come and see them and talk to them about Linda.’

  Reluctantly, Jenny agreed, but in the event she needn’t have worried. Dr Sanders was respectful and charming to the two older ladies, complimenting them on their youthful looks and figures, before mentioning Linda’s name. Then he told them how he admired their selfless decision to offer her a home with them. Eileen and Norah were flustered. Flattered beyond measure at the young doctor’s praise of them, they hesitated to lose his good opinion by telling him they didn’t want the girl near them, let alone living with them.

  Instead, they found themselves saying, ‘It was the least we could do.’

  Then Dr Sanders spent time commiserating with Norah’s disability and discussing the modern treatment and tablets now used to alleviate the symptoms of arthritis. Norah was pleased he’d taken an interest but said she didn’t think there was much could be done for her. ‘I’ve been a martyr to pain all my life, Doctor, and that’s the truth,’ she said and Dr Sanders was sympathetic.

  ‘For a doctor, he appears to be quite a pleasant young man,’ Norah conceded after he left. ‘At least he cares, not like that old charlatan we had before.’

  Eileen agreed with her daughter, but Jenny said nothing. It was amazing, really, that they liked him; they liked
so few people. The kindly smiles and greetings Eileen had received, once word got round about where Linda would live, had been firmly rebuffed.

  ‘But why?’ Jenny had cried when she’d been told.

  ‘Why?’ Norah snapped. ‘We don’t want people to become familiar, that’s why.’

  Linda was waiting impatiently for Jenny to come. She had something special to tell her: the doctor had said she could go and spend a few days at Jenny’s for Christmas.

  Further operations were planned in the New Year. The New Year was aeons away, but Christmas wasn’t and Linda knew she wanted to spend it with Jenny more than anything in the world. She was much happier about going, now she’d had visits from Gran O’Leary, and Peggy who spoke with a much stronger Irish accent than Jenny’s. Peggy had told her she’d been injured herself when the BSA was hit, the same night her lot had copped it. They both said when she lived with Jenny, she could visit them anytime, for sure they were only two streets away.

  Even Jan and Geraldine had been up to the hospital on separate occasions to make the acquaintance of the child Jenny had spoken so passionately about. Jan thought Linda a lovely and brave wee girl; she had sat beside her for an hour and talked to her easily about her mother and brothers and the better place they’d all gone to.

  Jan told Jenny her heart had been sore for the child who hadn’t even a vestige of faith to hang on to. ‘She needs you, Jenny,’ she’d said. ‘She’ll give you love and gratitude for the rest of her life.’

  ‘I don’t want gratitude,’ Jenny had said. Years later she was to remember those words, but at the time they were said, she meant them. But she did want love. She craved it as much as Linda did, and she knew there was a special bond between them.

  Geraldine thought Linda was too quiet – sullen, she called her – and not quite their sort. ‘But I thought I might as well see her, seeing as you’re quite determined to bring her here to live,’ she said. ‘But I’ll tell you now it won’t work,’ and Jenny realized her sister had been got at. Her brave words in the Anderson shelter the day she’d come home from hospital had been torn apart by their mother.