‘They’re two years older; it makes a lot of difference. They both go to Sunday school, don’t they? And to a playgroup. They’ll be starting school soon. Children seem to start long before they’re five.’
‘Goodness! How time flies. It doesn’t seem long since Paul and Rosemary were born. Heaven help the teachers when Russell starts school if he doesn’t calm down!’
‘Don’t be silly, love. It’s ages off yet. But maybe … do you think he could go to a playgroup soon? Perhaps early next year? They take them at about two-and-a-half, don’t they?’
‘They like them to be toilet trained,’ said Val. ‘And thank goodness he’s doing very well in that respect. He seems to know what’s expected of him. That’s one blessing, I suppose. Lucy gets through a mountain of nappies. I must say that Bendix washer is a godsend.’
‘And you’re happier now she’s having a bottle, aren’t you?’ said Sam.
‘Yes, I have to confess I am. I know some women love breastfeeding – Cissie did – but I found it rather messy; I never felt clean. Anyway, I had no choice when my milk dried up.’
‘And now I can help with feeding times,’ said Sam with a chuckle.
‘I’m very pleased that you’re willing to do that. I really mean it, Sam. A lot of men think it’s nothing to do with them, that it’s the woman’s job. But times seem to be changing, gradually.’
‘Yes, I don’t think my father helped very much with us,’ said Sam.
‘No, nor did mine,’ agreed Val, ‘and my mum went out to work – only part-time, mind – when we were all at school. She never expected my dad to do anything in the house.’
Both Val’s parents had been employed at Walker’s mill. Bert still worked there in the packing department, although Sally Horrocks had finished long ago. Beatrice Walker, of course, had never gone out to work since she married the boss, and she had a woman to help with the running of the house as well.
‘Anyway, it’s my job to wash up now,’ said Val, starting to clear the table. ‘You go and read the paper and I’ll soon get rid of this lot.’
Val was thoughtful as she squeezed the washing-up liquid into the bowl and started to tackle the plates.
What a typically married couple we’ve become, she thought. Their recent conversation had been all about the children – mainly Russell’s bad behaviour – nappies and washing machines, playgroups and children starting school … What a difference a couple of years had made.
They had been married for three years now – almost three and a half, to be exact. The first year had been a carefree and blissful time as they’d learnt more about each other. A time for entertaining friends and family members in their new home, making improvements to the house and garden, enjoying holidays together and, especially for Val, her first trip abroad, to Paris.
It was during their second year of marriage that Val – more particularly so than Sam – had started to feel that it would be lovely to have a child to make their married happiness complete. For a while, it had seemed that this was not to be. Disappointments month after month, and then a miscarriage at six months had made her feel depressed and inadequate. Returning to her job in the mill office, however, had done her a world of good. She had been feeling quite contented with her lot and resigned to letting things take their natural course.
And then everything had changed dramatically. It had seemed so right, an answer to their hopes and prayers, to adopt the baby who had been so tragically orphaned. And now, a little more than a year later, they had not one but two children. A boy and a girl, which many couples would regard as the ideal family.
But it had all happened so quickly that sometimes Val could hardly believe what had taken place. It had all started off so well with Russell. She had felt so proud pushing the pram around the neighborhood – an elegant Silver Cross pram, a gift from Sam’s parents – and stopping to chat to passers-by who admired the bonny baby boy, seven months old at the time of his adoption. He had settled down so well with the two of them and he had already had a routine of feeding and sleeping.
Val had missed the early months, of course – a time when the child is so dependent on his mother for everything and when mother and baby form a bond, although it was said that this did not always happen. Val did feel, though, that she had formed a kinship with little Russell. His eyes would light up with recognition when he saw her, and it was the same with Sam as well. He smiled and gurgled, cut his baby teeth with the minimum of trouble and caused them very few sleepless nights.
Then there was the shock, albeit a pleasant one, of finding she was pregnant again. She had been worried at first that she might lose the baby, but all had gone well, despite her having to cope with an active little boy who was starting to walk at just over a year, and to talk as well, or at least attempt to do so.
He could certainly make himself understood now. One of the first words he had learnt to say was ‘no!’, but she gathered from talking to other mothers that this was not unusual. There came a time when a child changed from being dependent and obedient to wilful and difficult, realizing that he – or she – was a person in his or her own right, with ideas of his or her own which did not always agree with those of Mummy and Daddy.
Then baby Lucy had arrived, three months before Russell’s second birthday. Val had been forewarned about the possible resentment and jealousy of an older child, and she had done her best to make sure that Russell was given as much love and attention as the new arrival. Unavoidably, though, much of her time was spent caring for the baby: breastfeeding at first, comforting her when she cried and making sure that she was always warm, dry and comfortable.
Val had formed a bond with the baby girl at once. It had seemed like a miracle that she and Sam had produced their own child. She was an adorable little girl with dark hair – quite a lot of it – like her mother’s, and even at a few weeks’ old she had a definite resemblance to both of them.
It was inevitable that Val’s family members said, ‘She is just like you, Val’, whereas Sam’s family, especially his mother, proclaimed that she was ‘a real Walker’.
Val loved her more than she had imagined she could love anyone; a different sort of love, though, from the love she felt for her husband or her parents. She loved Russell, too, of course she did. She wondered now, though, if those first few months made a vital difference. Was it possible to love an adopted child as much as a child who was one’s own flesh and blood? It was a question she asked only of herself and not without a feeling of guilt. Until the arrival of Lucy, she would have said that she loved Russell just as much as she would her own child. But, now, she was not sure …
She became exasperated and worried when he defied her, quite blatantly sometimes, with a calculating look on his little face, as if daring her to chastise him. She felt at times that she almost disliked him, as well as feeling that she had no idea how to cope with him. She would never smack him; she knew that was not the answer, but cross words or even kind words seemed to make no difference.
She remembered how Sam’s mother had objected to the adoption, pointing out that the child’s background was far from desirable. The father had been estranged from his own parents and had married the mother only a few months before the child was born. A wild, irresponsible young fellow, according to some who knew him, although the child did seem to have been well-cared-for during his first few months of life.
Val and Sam had argued that that this would make no difference, that their nurture of the child would counteract that of nature and any undesirable traits that he might inherit. But Val, to her consternation, was now wondering if there might be some truth in what Beatrice had said. Was Russell already showing signs of the wildness and wilfulness that had been evident in his natural father? Or was he just a mischievous, determined little two-year-old like many his age?
Val sighed as she dried the pots and put them away. Time would tell, and in the meantime she must do her utmost to love and care for him as much as she cared for Lucy.
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TWO
In the living room above the cafe premises, Phil and Janice Grundy were talking about the christening of Lucy Elizabeth Walker which they had attended the previous day. It had come as a pleasant surprise when Val and Sam had asked them both to be godparents to their baby girl.
Val and her friend, Cissie, had been godmothers to Janice and Phil’s little girl, Sarah Lilian, so it had not been too much of a surprise for Janice to be asked, but it was nice that Phil, also, had been invited to be her godfather.
‘I was quite taken aback to be asked, but delighted, of course,’ he remarked. ‘It’s great how our friendship with Val and Sam has continued. It was certainly an eventful meeting, that night in the Winter Gardens …’
It was in the August of 1955 when they had all met in the ballroom of the Winter Gardens in Blackpool. Val and Cissie had been staying at the Florabunda Hotel at the northern end of the town, and they had invited Janice, who, as the landlady’s daughter was helping out as a waitress, to go dancing with them. Val and Sam had become acquainted for the first time that night, although she had known him already as the boss’s son. Phil and Janice, also, had met when he’d asked her to dance with him.
Phil had been in the RAF at the time, nearing the end of his National Service, stationed at Weeton Camp, a few miles from Blackpool. If not exactly love at first sight, there had been an immediate attraction between the two of them. Their friendship had developed gradually into the certainty that they wanted to be together for always, and they had married in the spring of 1958.
‘And now here we are,’ Phil went on, ‘old married couples with families. Cissie and Walter as well; we mustn’t forget them. Just imagine that! Who’d have thought it?’
Cissie, to her annoyance, had not met ‘anyone special’ that evening and had returned home to Halifax to marry her boyfriend, Walter Clarkson, with whom she had been having an on-off friendship for a few years.
‘Val has certainly got her hands full with those two,’ said Janice. ‘The last time we saw little Russell he seemed to be quite well behaved. I do hope he’ll settle down again. She looked so embarrassed when he wouldn’t keep quiet, then Sam managed to restrain him by holding him firmly; he was wriggling like an eel, though. And the other children were so good; Cissie and Walter’s two, and Rosemary and our little Sarah.’
‘Don’t speak too soon!’ said Phil with a chuckle. ‘You never know what’s ahead. A few months makes a big difference, and the last time we saw Russell it was before the baby was born. A touch of jealousy, I suppose, especially as there’s less than two years between them.’
‘Yes, Val had given up hope of them having their own child. They hadn’t been married all that long but she’d been disappointed so many times. It happened so soon, though, just as they were getting used to having Russell … I certainly wouldn’t want another baby, not just yet.’
‘Message received and understood,’ said Phil with a grin. ‘You’re doing really well, though, love; looking after Sarah and running the cafe as well.’
‘Not without help. Marjorie’s a real treasure; I couldn’t manage without her, and we’ve been very lucky with the waitresses. And Toby’s an excellent chef, isn’t he?’
Phil agreed that they had been very fortunate with their staff. They had all worked together as a team and Grundy’s had become a popular venue for local people and visitors to the town of Harrogate since the opening two years previously.
When they had met in the summer of 1955, Janice and Phil had discovered that they had similar backgrounds and this, as much as anything, had helped to cement their growing friendship.
Janice had been working as a waitress in the hotel run by her mother, Lilian Butler, marking time until starting her university course in September. Phil, about to complete his National Service, was to return to Ilkley to help his father run the Coach and Horses, a country pub and restaurant, once a coaching inn. His two years in the RAF had interrupted his training as a chef, learnt partly from his father and partly from night-school classes.
They had planned to meet again when Janice started her university course in Leeds, not far from Ilkley. Fate had stepped in, however, and their plans had changed. In early September, Lilian had been taken ill suddenly with a brain tumour. Janice had decided not to go away to college but to stay and run the hotel, to the best of her ability, with the help of the assistants who had worked with Lilian.
Phil, on hearing of their predicament, had come, with the total agreement of his father, to help at the Florabunda Hotel until the holiday season finished in October, when the illuminations came to an end.
Lilian had never fully recovered from her operation and died early the following year. Phil had still been helping there but he’d had his own work with his father to return to, and Janice had known that she could not run the hotel on her own. It had been quite a wrench for the Butler family when they’d sold the hotel and moved to a bungalow near to Stanley Park on the outskirts of town.
Janice had known by this time that her future lay in the catering business. She’d given up all thoughts of university and enrolled for a year’s course at a catering college in Blackpool, after which she’d worked for a while at a seafront hotel.
Her friendship with Phil had blossomed into love and they were married in 1958. Phil had had a stroke of good fortune. He had long wanted a place of his own, not wishing to work with his father for evermore. Then his elderly aunt, his mother’s much older sister, died and made him almost her sole beneficiary. Not a vast fortune but enough to buy a place that he and Janice could run together.
They had looked for premises close to Ilkley, although Phil had not wanted to set up in opposition to his father. Then, searching a little further afield, they had found just the place they wanted in Harrogate. A shop, with vacant possession, at the end of a terrace, it had once been a bakery. It was a half-mile or so from the town, facing the vast expanse of grassland known as the Stray.
It had needed a lot of renovating but they had opened eventually in the summer of 1958. They had decided on the name Grundy’s, their own surname – short and easy to remember. It was a cafe, or tearoom, rather than a restaurant. They served morning coffee – or tea – light lunches and afternoon teas. After a while they started to open in the evenings for private pre-booked parties: family celebrations or small gatherings of friends.
The downstairs dining room, which could seat up to eighteen – although this was rather a tight squeeze – overlooked the peaceful scene of the Stray. The upstairs family accommodation was adequate for the time being: a large living room, kitchen, bathroom and two bedrooms. Sarah, at the moment, was sleeping on a cot in their bedroom but they knew that arrangement could not carry on indefinitely. She would need her own room before long and a bed instead of a cot.
The spare bedroom was used for visitors, not that there were many who stayed overnight. The exception was Ian, Janice’s younger brother, who came to stay with them during his school holidays. Not just as a guest, however. He helped in the cafe, mainly as a waiter, but also worked in the kitchen doing odd jobs: washing up, preparing vegetables and being generally useful. Over the last year, during his visits at Christmas and the Easter holidays, he had shown more interest in the cooking and preparation of food. So much so that he had decided, as his sister had done, that his future lay in the catering business.
He had spent one year in sixth form at the grammar school in Blackpool, then, instead of going into the upper sixth, he had enrolled at the catering college in Blackpool where Janice had done most of her training.
‘Do you think Ian will come and work here, as usual, during the holidays?’ Phil asked now.
‘Possibly,’ replied Janice, ‘but you never know what possibilities might arise in Blackpool. There are so many hotels looking for staff and he’ll meet all sorts of different people. Who knows what opportunities might come his way.’
‘I was rather surprised he decided to stay in Blackpool to do his training,’
said Phil. ‘I would have thought, under the circumstances, he might have preferred to go away to a residential college.’
‘You heard what he said, though. Dad persuaded him it would be more sensible to stay at home; cheaper for one thing, and the Blackpool college has a good reputation.’
‘Even so, it might have done him good to get right away,’ said Phil.
Ian was Janice’s only brother, six years younger than herself. He had been twelve years old when his mother died and it had come as a dreadful shock to him, as it had to Janice and her father, Alec. Ian, though, had kept his feelings to himself, not speaking much about his sadness. He’d still felt secure in his home background and the love of his father and sister. Although there was quite an age difference, the two of them had been close, more so than many siblings.
Ian had been upset when Janice and Phil got engaged, even though he liked Phil and regarded him very much as an elder brother. He had reacted quite badly when he realized they would be living in Yorkshire after their marriage. He had seemed to imagine they would stay in Blackpool and the status quo would remain unchanged.
The final blow for Ian had been when, two years after his mother’s death, his father had remarried.
‘He’s in a much better frame of mind, though, now,’ Janice went on. ‘I noticed a great change in him this summer.’
Ian had spent the summer break working with them at Grundy’s before starting his college course.
Janice was aware of how much he had matured. Just turned seventeen, he was a good-looking lad, dark-haired like his father but much taller and slimmer, with grey eyes that were more often thoughtful than shining with humour. Janice and Phil had told him how pleased they were that he had finally decided on his future career.
‘I thought at one time you’d fancied being a car mechanic,’ Phil had reminded him just before he started his course.
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