‘Go after him!’ Millie urged.
Grant turned to his wife and said grimly as he went, ‘Look at the damage you’ve done now with your vicious tongue!’
Ava screamed and pointed at Teresa. ‘I didn’t have the little bastard; she did – my father’s whore!’
Millie, seeing Teresa buckle into a seat at the savage words, sprang over and shook Ava hard. ‘Don’t you ever call her that again.’
‘I’ll call her what I like,’ Ava wailed, half hysterical, pushing Millie away. ‘She ruined my life and my father’s. I wish I’d never set eyes on the pair of you!’
Grant strode back across the room. ‘Millie’s worth ten of you, you wicked woman.’
She spat in his face. ‘That’s right, stick up for her! You deserve each other, you’re both failures. Well, I’ve had enough of you all. I’d leave here tomorrow if I had somewhere to go!’
Grant said through gritted teeth, ‘And I wouldn’t stop you.’ Then he marched from the house without a backward glance.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
The uneasy harmony that had held the household together was shattered by the terrible rows of that winter night. Millie tried constantly to comfort Robert and explain about the past, but he spurned her attempts. He became increasingly wild and uncontrollable and resentful of them all, suspicious of any kindness Millie tried to show him. She felt deeply ashamed of the way he had discovered the truth of his parentage, and she turned to Grant for help. He was the only adult that Robert would trust, and while he disobeyed everyone else he would find solace in gardening with the man he still saw as his uncle. Meanwhile Millie worried about Albert too. His stammer grew worse as he withdrew into his own world and never mentioned his father, until Millie despaired at knowing what the boy thought about at all.
Ava went out with soldiers in open defiance of Grant, until he could stand it no more and moved out of the hotel, lodging with Walter and Ella. He would still come around occasionally to help with small joinery jobs or to take the boys out to play football at the Comrades’ ground, but he did not stay long. Millie missed his company.
The war dragged on and the hardships became greater, but somehow Millie managed. By 1943 the British were victorious in North Africa and she wondered whether Dan would be sent home, but no word had ever come from him after the unread letter she had thrown on the fire. She often wondered during her nights of insomnia what he had written to her and whether she had been rash to burn it. But whatever it had been, it could not have changed anything and she was determined never to be hurt by him again. She decided that a life without men was simpler.
All her time was taken up with keeping the hotel going and bringing up the children as best she could. She wanted nothing more now than to get them all safely through the war. Nancy Baker had taken her boys back to Tyneside once the threat of invasion had passed, but the Armstrong sisters were still with them. Postcards came from their father, but mostly they were addressed to Ava, and Millie secretly feared the girls might not be reclaimed should Gordon Armstrong ever return safely from sea.
The following year, when the talk was all of the expected second front and a British invasion of France, Robert turned fourteen and left the school he had been truanting from for the past two years. He talked so much of running away to lie about his age and join the navy that Millie feared he would.
‘Talk to him,’ she pleaded with Grant. ‘I think Ava’s put him up to this nonsense.’
To her relief, Grant secured Robert a job working as an apprentice in the joinery shop at the pit, and as the year wore on, Millie saw a gradual change come over the boy. He was no less surly or rude to her or Teresa, but his aggression towards Albert and Jack lessened. Perhaps because he felt like a working man in comparison with them, or because he realised that they shared the same pain over losing Dan as he did, Millie could only speculate. Still, it heartened her to see the boys getting along better.
On the other hand, they teased the timid Patience mercilessly, while Jack and Charity fought like cats and Millie was forever intervening to restore peace. Marjory still came to help out, but she had begun courting one of the ‘Bevin boys’ who had been drafted in to work at the pit, and Ella fretted that he would marry her and take her away to his native Somerset, so that she would never see her daughter again. To the relief of them all, the romance broke up, and the following year Marjory surprised them by enrolling as a trainee nurse and disappearing off to Newcastle.
Excitement grew that spring as the end of the war seemed possible, the Allies pushing into Germany in March while the Russians advanced through Poland. Then a package came for Millie that took her mind completely off thoughts of victory. It was wrapped in creased brown paper and tied with string, which she unknotted and saved. Taking it out into the blustery yard, she looked up at the pale April sky through the flapping washing and sat down on the low stool Grant had made for Jack when he was two. She was strangely apprehensive.
Inside was a note scrawled in pencil and a bundle of what appeared to be yellowing and musty newspaper clippings.
‘Dear Mrs Nixon, Sorry I haven’t wrote sooner. I looked these out for you an age ago, but then Mr Hardy was taken poorly. He died at Christmas. These bits belonged to our lodger Mr Mercer and I kept them in case any family could be found. He was a nice man and I wanted to do something for him. He died in 1930. He was cremated. Are you the woman in the pictures? I know he tried to find you once. Sorry I cannot remember very much, but I hope he was your father and that these bring some comfort. Yours faithfully, Mrs J. Hardy.’
Millie gulped as she leafed through the faded papers. They were mostly cuttings about Dan’s performances at Gateshead Vulcans, some with team photographs. But there were others: a newspaper picture of her and Dan at a civic reception, another of them on a team charabanc trip, and a birth announcement about Edith. Millie’s heart twisted to think that her father had known about his granddaughter. How he must have longed to see her! she agonised.
She delved further to find two dog-eared postcards sent from Graham in France, and wrapped in a screw of tissue paper was a tie pin that she remembered her mother giving her father one birthday. So pathetically little to mark anyone’s life, Millie thought in distress, yet she was overwhelmed at what these small tokens told her. Her father had never completely turned his back on her as Teresa had always said. He had followed her life from a distance, only plucking up the courage to contact her when it was too late and they had gone from Newcastle. If only she had been there when he had called! Millie cried inwardly. She would have given anything to have seen him one last time, to have talked together and forgiven each other for past hurts, to have seen him hold his granddaughter.
Picking up the precious evidence of her father’s love for them, she rushed to find her mother, tears streaming down her face.
‘Whatever’s the matter?’ Teresa demanded. But when Millie showed her the contents of the parcel, Teresa was lost for words. For a long time she fumbled with the collected treasures in her lap, shaking her head in disbelief, then she reached for Millie, hugging her quickly so she could not see the tears that flooded her eyes.
‘Oh, poor man!’ she whispered. ‘Would that things could have turned out differently!’ And they cried together for the life they had lost and could never recapture. When Teresa gained control of her emotions once more, they talked quietly about their early life in Craston with Ellis and Graham, touching on things they had never spoken openly about before. Millie was able to tell her Grant’s story about Graham, and they hugged each other again, brought closer than ever by the sharing of their long-smothered feelings.
‘That gives me great comfort to think our Graham was highly thought of,’ Teresa admitted. ‘All those times they called him a coward,’ she shuddered, ‘said it was my fault, that I must have passed on my weakness to him, it was in the blood.’
‘I never believed them,’ Millie comforted. ‘That’s not the way I ever saw him.’ Teresa gave her a grat
eful smile, but Millie could tell something still burdened her. ‘What is it, Mam?’
Teresa confessed, ‘It’s cruel, but I’ve never been able to accept Robert because he wasn’t Graham, because he didn’t look like him. I foolishly hoped that he would, poor lad. I’ve so much to feel bad about – what with the way I’ve neglected him, and the hardships you’ve been through. Maybe I should have stuck with your father . . . ?’
‘Don’t, Mam,’ Millie stopped her. ‘There’s no point wishing things that can’t be changed. You did what you thought was best for me at the time and I couldn’t ask for more than that. As for Robert, you’ve still got time to make things up with him.’
‘Aye, you’re right.’ Teresa smiled wanly. ‘Thank you, pet.’
***
Learning the truth about what had happened to her father brought Millie a new peace of mind that she had not enjoyed for years, and she noticed how her mother seemed less fraught and made a real effort to be kind to Robert. Teresa forced her stiff and arthritic body out of bed early each morning to make her son’s breakfast before he went off to work, and only Millie guessed at the pain she put herself through to do so. Robert made little comment, but Millie could tell that it pleased him to be fussed over, for Ava no longer paid him any attention. While Robert’s relationship with his mother grew and deepened, Ava seemed to resent his presence as the manifestation of her father’s weakness for Teresa.
Instead Ava had transferred her attention to the pliant Patience, passing on her old Picture Posts and taking her to the pictures as she had once done for Robert. Patience was obliging, whereas Charity was noisy and spoke her mind, and Ava had no time for her. Patience was quiet and industrious and wanted to stay on at school, while Charity fought with the boys and lived in a pair of dungarees that Millie had made her out of old curtains.
But even Ava’s squabbling and petty favouritism could not dampen the feelings of euphoria when news came over the radio one Tuesday in early May of the German surrender to the Allies. People dashed out into the streets to share the news and hug their neighbours, while the children rushed around helping to build a bonfire, and that night fireworks went off and the pubs stayed open in celebration.
That weekend Millie had them all decorating the dining room and laid on a victory tea, begging and borrowing rations to put on a spread for their friends and neighbours. She felt a great sense of relief that things could now begin to get better, the threat of death and war lifted and the thought of their daily hardships diminishing. When Churchill resigned and an election was swiftly called, Grant was enthusiastic about the chance of a socialist government.
‘They’ll never reject Mr Churchill,’ Teresa ridiculed the idea, ‘not after what he’s done for the country. The Tories are bound to win.’
‘It’ll depend on all those being demobbed,’ Grant replied, ‘and what sort of world they want to come back to. If it’s anything like the last war, they’ll be expecting a lot. Only socialists have the vision for a better post-war world.’
Teresa rolled her eyes at Millie. ‘And when are you going to stand for Parliament, Grant Nixon?’
He grunted. ‘They’d not have a Bolshie like me.’
Millie looked up from her mending. ‘You don’t know till you try. I think you’d make a good politician, your heart’s in the right place.’
Grant gave her an embarrassed look as he left with Jack to help in Walter’s garden, and said nothing.
Millie sighed at her mother, putting down the trousers she was unhemming for Albert, thinking how tall her son had grown in the past year. He had just had his fourteenth birthday and left school, despite her wanting him to stay on like Patience. But he had a job at the pit with Robert and was eager to start work.
‘They grow up too quickly, don’t they?’ she commented. ‘I can remember so clearly being Albert’s age. I was fourteen when we came here, remember?’
‘Yes,’ her mother agreed, ‘but at least it’s a different world for them now. There’ll be more opportunity now the war’s over. At least Robert and Albert have escaped the fighting; we should be thankful for that.’
‘Aye, you’re right,’ Millie mused, ‘and there’s Patience staying on at school and wanting to be a teacher or work in a government office. It’s grand to think of it. I hope her father will let her carry on her schooling once he’s home.’
Teresa regarded her closely. ‘And what will you do if Dan turns up here once he’s demobbed?’
Millie felt her pulse thud in agitation. ‘I’ll not have him back, Mam, not after all this time. I feel stronger without him and I don’t want to go through all that pain over him again. He can visit the boys, but he’ll not live here again. I’m not his wife and he has no claim on me,’ she said brusquely.
But secretly Millie could not help imagining what it would be like to see Dan again. He had hurt her deeply, but a small part of her hankered after seeing him, wanting the past to be erased. She could not admit this to anyone, least of all her mother, but she sometimes dreamed of their days in Newcastle and knew that losing Dan was something she might never get over. But busy as they were rebuilding the hotel business and adapting to having the two boys working shifts, she did not realise quite how much Albert had been affected.
As summer turned to autumn, he grew uncharacteristically argumentative and aggressive towards his family. At first Millie thought it was the strain of starting work at the pit, which left all the new boys physically exhausted. But one night he came home drunk. Millie laid into him, shocked by the smell of beer on his breath and his bad language towards her.
‘You said you’d been to the pictures!’ she cried. ‘You’re a disgrace. You remind me of your father!’
The words were out before she could stop them, but Albert looked as if he had been stung. He lurched over to the sink and threw up. Millie went to help him, washing his face and pulling off his clothes, thankful that her mother had gone to bed.
Albert looked at her with haunted eyes, his face a ghastly white. ‘I’m not like him,’ he slurred. ‘Don’t say I’m like him!’
Millie made him sit down. ‘This is not like you – drinking and swearing. What’s really the matter?’ she asked him.
Albert leaned forward, buried his face in his hands and began to weep. ‘I h-hate him,’ he sobbed. ‘Hate him for what he’s d-done to you – to all of us.’
‘You mean your father?’ Millie asked quietly.
‘Aye,’ Albert sniffed. ‘I thought he’d come b-back and see us. I’ve always thought he’d turn up when the war ended just to see how we were. But he doesn’t care about us – he’s never even written to me.’
Millie put her arms around her son, her heart breaking at his desolation. She should have known how badly Albert would have taken to not having Dan around, for of all the boys he had adored his father the most. He had striven the hardest to please him at everything, especially football, yet often his father had seemed not to notice. Dan had always said that Robert would be the one to play professionally one day, and Millie had seen how this had only made Albert the more determined to improve. At least with Dan gone the pressure on her son to strive for the unattainable was removed. She was secretly relieved that Albert’s obsession with football had waned, for it was not a life she would wish on him.
‘Wherever your father is, he still cares about you,’ Millie assured him. ‘It’s just between him and me that things have changed. I could never take him back – he’s not mine to have. He belongs with another woman. But if you want to see him I won’t stop you.’
Albert wiped his face and gave her a fierce look. ‘I d-don’t want to see him. I don’t care if I never see him again!’
Millie was taken aback by his vehemence, but said no more. Instead she got him to bed and let him sleep on in the morning instead of accompanying her to church with the other children. Neither of them referred to the incident again, but Millie took Grant aside and asked him to keep an eye on the boy.
‘You co
uld get him involved in your politics or debating,’ she suggested, ‘anything to take his mind off his father.’
Grant said he would be pleased to help, and Millie thought how much more cheerful he had become since war ended. He had been cock-a-hoop about the Labour landslide in the summer election and he appeared to be working on a reconciliation with Ava. Many of her dancing partners had now left the town, returning to civilian life, and she allowed her husband to accompany her instead.
Then, just before Christmas, Gordon Armstrong appeared out of the blue, demobbed from the navy. He came armed with presents of cigarettes, a bottle of whisky, tinned fruit, and dolls for the girls.
‘We don’t play with dolls any more,’ Charity told him frankly.
‘Don’t be so ungrateful,’ Ava scolded, preening in the spotted silk scarf he had bought her.
Patience watched anxiously. ‘Are we coming home with you now?’
‘Course you are,’ he declared. ‘I’ve got a good job lined up at the yards and I’ve rented a place near Aunt Rachael’s house. She thought you’d be a help in her sweet shop.’
Patience looked horrified. ‘After school, you mean?’
Gordon laughed. ‘You won’t have to bother with boring school any longer; you’ll be out earning your keep, young lady.’
Millie, seeing that Patience was on the verge of tears, ushered the girls out of the hotel and told them to get some fresh air. She turned on Gordon. ‘That lass has a good brain and she wants to make something of herself. You should let her stay on at school. If you’re worried about the cost, she can stop here until she gets her certificate.’
Gordon blustered and protested, but to Millie’s surprise Ava backed up her offer. ‘Millie’s right, the girl’s always got her head in a book. Millie knows how to look after her.’
At Millie’s insistence Gordon stayed on for Christmas, and she did her best to put on a tasty spread for everyone and small treats for the children. On Boxing Day she found Ava packing in her bedroom.
THE TYNESIDE SAGAS: Box set of three dramatic and emotional stories: A Handful of Stars, Chasing the Dream and For Love & Glory Page 79
