‘What is she doing in here?’ she asked after a while and again the couple glanced at each other.
‘Well, the thing is, she’s sleeping through the night now, so we thought it was time to give you a proper rest.’ It was all Fliss could think of to say.
‘Actually, I like having her in my room,’ Adina said acidly. ‘And I don’t think she is old enough to be sleeping on her own yet. I wouldn’t hear her from my bedroom if she cried.’
‘Oh, that’s not a problem,’ Fliss said a little too quickly. ‘Theo and I have moved into the next room, so we could always come and fetch you if she needed you.’
‘Wouldn’t it have made more sense for me to move up here?’ Adina said, ominously quietly.
‘Not really. You need your rest and to tell you the truth, Mother was keeping us awake with her snoring, so we were actually quite happy to change rooms. I . . . I’m so sorry if we have upset you. That was never our intention.’
Fliss looked so close to tears that suddenly Adina’s anger fled and she felt desperately guilty. These people had stood by her in her darkest hour and here she was being horrible to them – and all because she was feeling jealous.
‘It’s all right,’ she sighed. ‘I’m sure you meant well, but I really would like to keep her in my room with me for a while longer, if you don’t mind.’
‘Of course we don’t mind.’ Fliss took Theo’s hand and led him from the room, leaving Adina feeling completely confused. Had she overreacted? She supposed she probably had, but she would worry about that later. For now she just wanted to cuddle her baby and catch up on all the time she had missed with her.
At dinner that evening Mrs Montgomery glared at her before saying, ‘I hear you didn’t like the idea of the baby being in the nursery then?’
Adina flushed but was determined to stand her ground. ‘I appreciate the reasons why Theo and Fliss thought it might be a good idea,’ she said, just as coolly. ‘But I don’t feel Dorothy is ready to be left on her own just yet.’
‘Hmph! Well, she’ll have to be on her own soon when you go back to work, won’t she? When were you thinking of going back, by the way? And have you arranged for someone to look after her?’
‘I’ve had some thoughts on that,’ Fliss butted in. ‘I was thinking that I could perhaps look after her for you. I’m not really needed at the school any more and at least you would know she was being well cared for.’
‘There’s no need for you to do that,’ she assured her. ‘I’m sure I can find someone reliable to look after her during working hours.’
‘Oh, so you’d drag the poor little mite out in all weathers and leave her with a stranger, would you, rather than let her be here with someone she knows?’ Mrs Montgomery growled.
‘I . . . I didn’t mean it to sound like that,’ Adina defended herself. ‘I just think it would be a shame for Fliss to have to give her job up. I know she enjoys working with the children and I’d hate her to lose a wage because of me.’
‘My daughter-in-law has never needed to work,’ Mrs Montgomery informed her pompously. ‘Theo doesn’t need to work either, if it comes to that. His father left them enough money to last two lifetimes.’
Not sure how she should answer, Adina fell silent. She did have to admit to herself that the idea made sense. Unlike them, she did need to work – and fairly soon, too. The money she had saved before the baby was born was dwindling alarmingly quickly, and she didn’t want to become a burden to them. Each week she gave them a few pounds towards her keep, although Fliss always protested and told her that it really wasn’t necessary. But it was necessary to Adina. She did have her pride.
Adina felt as if she had been backed into a corner and had no idea at all how she was going to get out of it.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Adina returned to work when Dorothy was two months old. She hated leaving her but knew that there was no alternative if she was going to provide for them. After a lot of soul-searching she had reluctantly agreed to Fliss’s offer; it did make sense, after all, and so now each morning Fliss waved her off with the baby snuggled contentedly in her arms. Adina was ashamed at the surge of jealousy she felt as she watched them each day but was helpless to do anything about it. She knew deep down that it was better for the baby to stay in her home environment with someone familiar who loved her, but she thought that Fliss was becoming too attached to Dorothy. In fact, sometimes she felt that Fliss was treating the baby as if she was her own.
Some days she would come home to find Dorothy dressed in yet another expensive outfit. that Fliss had bought for her, and her heart would sink. Adina wondered where she managed to find them, as clothing was still difficult to come by, but when she protested, Fliss would simply wave away her concerns.
‘Oh, it wasn’t that much,’ she would say airily. ‘Theo has contacts, so Dottie will never want for anything, and the colour really suits her, don’t you think?’
Adina would nod glumly and sigh. Theo’s contacts were no doubt something to do with the black market. It seemed that there were no shortages of anything for people who had money. Fliss treated the baby as if she was a little doll, and the worst part about it was that the baby seemed to enjoy all her attention. However, Adina had stood firm on one point and the baby was still sleeping in her room, which she supposed was something.
Spring was bearing down on them and at the weekends Adina would put the baby in her pram and take her for nice long walks, just the two of them. These were the times that she loved the best and she savoured every minute of every weekend. She would lift Dottie from her pram in Regent’s Park, and after getting settled on a bench would point out the daffodils that were peeping through the earth and the fresh green buds on the trees as the child crowed with delight.
More than ever now she longed for a home of her own, but the possibility of that looked remote in the near future unless Karl returned to whisk them away. She would whisper in the baby’s ear and tell her all about her daddy. ‘One day he will come for us,’ she would say. ‘And then we’ll all live together in a lovely house with a big garden where you can play to your heart’s content. It will have a great big apple tree in it and Daddy will fit you a swing up.’
Dottie would stare at her as if she understood every word that her mother was saying, and Adina’s heart would well up with love as she looked at the child, who meant the whole world to her. She still thought of Karl every single day and wondered what he would think of his beautiful daughter, but sometimes now, doubts would creep in. Why had he not come back for her as he had promised he would? Why had he not even written? The only possibility as far as she could see was that something must have happened to him, or perhaps he had married his fiancée, but as that possibility was far too painful to even contemplate, she went on forcing herself to believe that he would come . . . eventually.
It was one day in April that Theo came back from a shopping trip with a wide smile on his face, brandishing a bunch of bananas. ‘Look what I found in Covent Garden!’ he announced, as if he had discovered the Crown Jewels. ‘Bananas! I haven’t seen one since before the war. Things must be looking up.’
‘They must,’ his wife agreed. ‘And it said in the newspaper today that the government are going to introduce free school meals for the children that need them and free bottles of milk.’
‘About time too,’ old Mrs Montgomery huffed. ‘Some of the poor little mites that you see turning out for school haven’t even got decent shoes on their feet. Not like that lucky little devil there.’ She waved her walking stick in Dottie’s direction and Adina felt colour flood into her cheeks. She had had a really bad day at school with Rebekah, the little Jewish girl whose parents had perished during the war. Sadly, the family who had cared for her during the war had decided that they could not take on the longterm responsibility of her, and the child was struggling to settle into the orphanage that she had been sent to.
‘I have to sleep in a big room with seven other girls,’ she had sobbed t
o Adina in stilted English. ‘And they make fun of me because of the way I speak.’ Adina had cuddled her and assured her that things would get better, but her heart was breaking for the child. And now here was Mrs Montgomery pointing out in a not too subtle way how lucky Adina was that they were all looking out for her and her daughter, which sadly she could not dispute. But she still could not see a way out of the pos it ion she found herself in. She had opened a savings account at the post office and after paying her board each week she saved every penny she could. But the flats in London were so expensive, as well as few and far between, and she knew that it would be ages before she could rent a place of her own, because then she would not only have to pay the rent but she would have to pay someone to look after Dottie too.
Seeing that the old woman’s words had struck home, Fliss smiled at her kindly. ‘Mother didn’t mean that the way it sounded,’ she reassured her as she cast a withering glance in her mother-in-law’s direction. ‘We all love having you and Dottie here, so don’t give it another thought.’
The old woman tutted and swept past them on her way to the dining room as Adina made to take Dottie from Fliss who was holding her. She was intending to put her down for a nap whilst they all had dinner, but as she reached her arms out, Dottie cuddled into Fliss and started to cry. Adina felt as if someone had stabbed a knife into her heart but she merely lifted the child firmly and took the stairs two at a time.
Once the baby was settled in her cot, Adina sat down to have a think. Already Dottie had a strong bond with Fliss, but Adina had no idea what to do about it. Of course she was pleased that she could leave the baby in safe hands each day, but surely it should be her and not Fliss to whom the child held out her arms? Hot tears trickled down her cheeks as she watched Dottie sleeping peacefully, and she knew in that moment that somehow she would have to find them a place of their own to live in at the earliest opportunity.
In June that year, Adina received a letter from Ariel that she found quite worrying. In it, Ariel wrote that their father had taken to opening the shop for just four days a week. Alarm bells instantly rang in Adina’s head. Her father had always been a very hard worker; even more so since he had been on his own. And yet in the letter she had received from her father just the week before, he had assured her that he was fine and had not mentioned the shop at all. Ariel went on to say that on one of her short visits he had agreed to go and see a doctor and she promised to keep her sister informed.
Adina briefly considered paying another visit to Nuneaton, but then decided against it. If she went it would have to be at the weekend, and that was the only opportunity she had to spend time with Dottie – unless Fliss whisked her off somewhere, that was – and that was becoming more and more of a regular thing. Dottie was now five months old and could have charmed the birds off the trees. She was a sweet-natured child and everyone who met her, instantly fell in love with her. Her blonde hair had grown and now framed her chubby cheeks with soft baby curls, and her eyes were as blue as the skies. Sometimes when Adina looked at her she found it hard to believe that anything so utterly perfect could have come out of her body. No, she thought now, I’ll wait until I hear from Ariel again, and if Papa is no better then, I’ll go and see him. It’s far too soon to leave Dottie again.
Over the next two weeks, Fliss and Theo took Adina and Dottie out every weekend to show Adina the sights of London that she had not seen so far. In truth, Adina would have preferred to spend her time at home with the baby but she didn’t like to hurt their feelings as they were obviously trying their hardest to make her feel a part of the family. The weather was stiflingly hot by then and Fliss had bought a pretty white Broderie Anglaise sunshade for Dottie’s pram so that she wouldn’t get burned. She had also bought her a much smaller pushchair that they could more easily lift on and off public transport when they embarked on their sightseeing tours. It was invariably she who ended up pushing it within minutes of them all leaving the house, but knowing how much the woman loved Dottie, Adina tried not to mind.
It was around about then that they also had a telephone installed. Mrs Montgomery hated it. ‘Damn newfangled contraptions,’ she would moan each time it rang. ‘Don’t know why we need a phone anyway!’
Adina couldn’t have disagreed with her more, because now she was able to speak to Ariel on a regular basis. Her sister would ring as regularly as clockwork each Tuesday evening at seven o’clock, and somehow their chats made Adina feel less isolated from her remaining family.
On this particular Tuesday, Adina was pacing the hall as she waited for Ariel to ring when Fliss approached her.
‘Here, let me take her off you,’ she offered, and when Adina didn’t immediately hand her over, she went on: ‘She is due for a bottle any time now – and how are you going to explain a crying baby to your sister if she starts while you’re on the phone?’
Seeing the sense in what she said, Adina quickly placed the baby in Fliss’s arms just as the phone rang. Adina snatched it up but the smile on her face died away as Ariel gabbled, ‘Adina, Papa is poorly. Really poorly, I think. He hasn’t opened the shop for five days and Mrs Haynes says he hasn’t even got dressed. She’s seen the doctor go in to him a couple of times but when she asked him what was wrong, he refused to tell her. Brian has offered to keep the shop open for him today and Papa didn’t refuse, which only goes to show how ill he must be feeling.’
Adina was reeling from shock. She couldn’t imagine her father letting anyone outside the family behind his shop counter, let alone Ariel’s husband.
‘Do you want me to come home?’ she asked.
‘No – not at the moment. We’ll keep a close eye on him and Brian is going in to open the shop up again tomorrow for him. But I promise to ring you if he gets any worse.’
They spent the next few moments chatting of other things then Adina placed the phone down with a heavy heart. Job or not, she would have gone like a shot knowing that her father was so unwell, but how could she go without Dottie? If he was really ill, her turning up out of the blue with an illegitimate granddaughter that he didn’t know existed might make him even worse. And if she went home without Dottie, it might end up being for an indefinite period, and she couldn’t bear to leave the baby for too long. It was a terrible decision to have to make, and she wrestled with her conscience for two whole days until Ariel rang again.
‘I think you should come,’ she said shortly.
Adina’s heart sank. ‘Why, what’s happened?’
She heard Ariel stifle a sob at the other end of the phone and knew that she was going to hear bad news.
‘Brian had been running the shop for Papa for the last couple of days,’ she told her. ‘And so I went round to do some cleaning for him. He told me nothing needed doing as usual, but this time I wouldn’t take no for an answer. While I was there the doctor came so I went out into the yard to hang the washing out and give them some privacy, but I could still hear what was being said . . .’
‘And?’ Adina prompted her.
‘Papa has a serious heart condition,’ her sister informed her solemnly. ‘The doctor would like him to go into hospital but you know how stubborn Papa can be. Adina . . . I’m frightened.’
‘I shall be there as soon as I can tomorrow,’ Adina told her without hesitation. She knew that she really had no choice now, but it seemed so unfair that her father should have developed a similar condition to their mother so soon after her passing.
Fliss was wonderful about it when Adina explained the predicament she was in.
‘Of course you must go first thing in the morning,’ she told her. ‘And stay as long as you need to. You know Dottie will be perfectly all right here with me.’
Adina nodded glumly. She knew that only too well. In fact, Dottie sometimes seemed to prefer Fliss to her now.
‘I shall go and fetch a suitcase for you right away,’ Fliss rushed on. ‘And I’ll get Theo to ring and check the time of the first train to Nuneaton in the morning. He can take you to
the station in the car.’
The new car that Theo had recently purchased was still a novelty. He had bought a rather grand Daimler and never tired of driving it. Adina imagined that it must have cost a small fortune, but then if the Montgomerys chose to waste their money on whims she supposed it was nothing to do with her.
She packed her case with enough clothes to last for a week, hoping that she would not need to be gone for longer than that, then she took Dottie to her room, determined to spend the last few hours quietly with her. Theo was taking Fliss to see a show in the West End, so for once she intended to make the most of having her baby all to herself. She stroked her hair and sang lullabies to her and wondered how she would manage to get through the next few days without her until finally the little girl fell asleep in her arms. And then as Adina stared down at her she fingered the band of steel on her finger and thought of Dottie’s father and her heart ached afresh.
The next morning she was up bright and early, but she couldn’t manage to eat any of the lovely breakfast that Beattie had prepared for her.
‘I ain’t happy about you goin’ off with nuffink in your stomach,’ the kindly woman scolded. ‘You just be sure an’ get yourself a sandwich or somethin’ on the train, do you hear me?’
Adina nodded, knowing that she wouldn’t be able to eat a thing until she had seen her father, and then Theo led her outside to the car after a tearful goodbye to Dottie.
In no time at all she was on the train where she stared impatiently out of the carriage window as it chugged towards Nuneaton. Once it pulled into the station, Adina dragged her case off the platform and set off at a trot for Edmund Street, although the suitcase seemed to get heavier with every step she took. By the time the shop came into sight she felt as if her arm was being pulled out of its socket but still she hurried on, concerned to see that the shop was shut. She was sure that Ariel had said Brian had been running it, but perhaps he had taken a lunch-break.
A Band of Steel Page 30
