Goodbye to Dreams

by Grace Thompson

  ‘Except complain about your lot!’ Ada added, her face red with anger. She warned her sister to stop then. She was right, and needed telling, but she didn’t want Dorothy to walk out and be unable to return. Proud and prickly, a difficult combination, that was Dorothy, but she was family. ‘Come on, Dorothy, you know how much we think of Willie. Let’s leave it now and have a cup of tea, shall we?’ Ada guided her out of the room. ‘Watch the shop, will you, Cecily?’

  When Dorothy tried to discuss Willie again, hoping to regain Ada as an ally, Ada stopped her and eventually she calmed down. But not before one more criticism. ‘You think more of Willie than my Owen.’

  Ada was tempted to agree but held her tongue for the sake of peace.

  The white-painted cottage was busy during the first weeks of Willie and Annette’s marriage. First the family filtered through the little house and took tea in the neat living room where Annette cooked a variety of cakes to satisfy the demand. Their friends began to call and were made welcome, although Willie spent as much time as he could in the shed behind the house, working on the tables and occasional furniture he and Danny designed and made.

  Annette and her mother had greeted each other affectionately and with guilt on both sides. Annette, seeing the effect of the weeks of worry on her mother’s face, regretted the anxiety she had caused. Dorothy wished she had accepted the love of her daughter for Willie before sending her so far away.

  Knitting went on at a remarkable rate as Annette was taught by Gladys Davies to make the small garments needed for the baby. Rhonwen and Marged called regularly and always brought the tapestry bags containing wool and needles, with which they were patiently making a shawl and a pram cover, proudly showing their progress at each visit.

  In another cottage only a few minutes away, Ada’s marriage was a happy one, but in many ways not a fulfilled one. She continued to work at the shop from eight every morning, when Phil would deliver her in the car, until half past six in the evening when Phil would collect her to take her home where Mrs Spencer would have a meal ready for them. Ada never had the opportunity to cook for her husband or to feel married, in the sense of caring for him.

  She was very happy with Phil and the standard of living at the spotlessly clean cottage was very high. Phil was an attentive husband and she would watch him occasionally and notice that his limp was barely showing. She was flattered at the effort he made to please her, although she pleaded with him not to suffer pain because of it. The limp was so much a part of him she had no desire for him to lose it, especially when she saw the lines of discomfort on his thin face.

  The shop was building up to its busiest time and as Ada entered each morning, she felt she had two hats. One worn at the busy shop with a thousand things to remember, the other that of pampered and adored wife.

  ‘Thank goodness I have the meats for the shop to cook each Tuesday and Saturday,’ she said to Cecily one morning. ‘I’d forget how to cook altogether if it wasn’t for that.’

  Living away from the shop had meant few changes but Ada knew the responsibilities were slipping away from her. Decisions, like being extra fussy about selling only the freshest and best vegetables and fruit to compare favourably with Jack Simmons’ cheap shop on the corner, were made without her being asked for an opinion. It rankled more than a little that her disagreement, when Cecily mentioned it, did not change a thing.

  Not being there in the evenings meant that all the books were attended to by Cecily, with Waldo and Melanie coming in regularly to check that all was well. Bertie and Beryl called often too but she was excluded from their chatter and became less au fait with how the shop was run. She belonged nowhere and was important neither at the shop nor at home with Phil and his mother.

  One evening each week she and Phil stayed for a meal and on these evenings, little shop business was discussed. They would generally stay after they had eaten, to play cards or listen to the wireless, sometimes staying with Van while Cecily went out. Neither sister mentioned him but Ada guessed Cecily was seeing Danny again. Early in July, Cecily asked if they could come again on the following Saturday. Ada looked at Phil for agreement then nodded.

  ‘Going somewhere special?’ Ada asked, thinking how strange it was not to know the moment Cecily knew of anything exciting happening in her life. The marriage had changed their relationship considerably and yet in ways so subtle she had hardly been aware of them. She waited, guessing Cecily’s reply would be vague.

  ‘Pictures.’

  ‘Who with?’ Ada coaxed.

  ‘Oh, a couple of friends from the dance. They came into the shop and invited me.’

  ‘What friends? Come on, I’d know them too if they’re from the dance crowd.’

  Cecily looked pained as she tried to think of a reply to satisfy her sister and yet avoid the truth. Phil saved her.

  ‘Leave the girl alone, woman,’ he said with a laugh. ‘Damn me, you don’t live in each other’s pocket any more. She can go out without an inquisition.’ He leaned closer to Cecily and in a loud whisper asked, ‘If it’s something exciting, I’ll go out for a while. Tell her before we go, for heaven’s sake. Never sleep, she won’t, not knowing the ins and outs.’

  ‘Right, then,’ Cecily said, joining in the teasing. ‘Make you both wait before telling you, that’s what I’ll do.’

  Ada looked serious. She has no intention of telling me, she thought sadly. Danny Preston’s married and if they’re meeting in secret, then it’s obvious why she won’t tell me. She knows I’d do my damnedest to stop her.

  Danny and Jessie lived – between quarrels and frequent separations – in two small rooms not far from the Pleasure Beach. Jessie had a meal ready to serve and she glanced at the clock and sighed. It was almost time for Danny to come home. He usually finished the post around this time. Not that she would see much of him. He’d go straight down the garden to the shed as soon as he had eaten. She would hear the tools and that was as much of her husband’s company as she could expect.

  Saws buzzing and chisels chipping away in a rhythm of almost metronome regularity. Then the sound of the lathe as he shaped the legs for the piece currently in the making. The softer scratching and smoothing then as he rubbed patiently and without pause in the rhythm, with emery cloth and sandpaper.

  Jessie never went out there to watch him any more but knew from the various sounds to reach her what he was doing. Their lavatory was adjoining the shed and even when she went there she didn’t disturb him. There was no point. He would hardly look up and rarely spoke to her. Only in bed would he sometimes acknowledge her presence and even those times had all but faded away. She heard the front door opening and took his meal off the saucepan of hot water, wiped the bottom of the plate and placed it on the table.

  ‘Thanks, Jessie, that looks good,’ he said as he did every day. She looked at him preparing to eat, washing his hands at the sink and staring down the garden as he dried them. He’s already thinking of the work waiting for him down there, she thought as he pulled out a chair and sat down. I’m not important for longer than it takes him to eat my food. On an impulse, she plucked the hot plate from the table in front of him and threw it on the floor. Her voice was calm as she said, ‘I’m leaving you, Danny, and this time you won’t talk me into coming back.’ It was a sentence she had rehearsed for days.

  ‘Don’t be a fool.’ Anger glittered in his dark eyes as he surveyed the mess on the floor. ‘You’re too comfortable to leave me. I don’t keep you short of anything, do I?’ He hardly looked at her, still staring at the mess on the floor. ‘You should see some of the places I deliver to, then you’d realize how lucky you are, woman. Living on fresh air, some families around Felwell Street and Grange Court. And there are a lot of people like Horse and his missus sleeping in nothing more than an old stable. So just get me some food and I’ll be off down the shed and out from under your feet.’

  Still speaking calmly she said, ‘I’m going back to live with Mam. My job at the factory is still open f
or me and I’d rather work in the noise and smell for ten hours a day than sit here talking to the walls.’

  ‘Visit your mother if you want, but get my food first.’

  ‘You aren’t listening. I’m going and I’m not coming back.’ Her usually pale face with its setting of rich red hair was flushed with the frustration of not being about to get her words through to him. Neither of them had even raised their voice.

  She left the kitchen-cum-living room, which was packed with furniture and a collection of cupboards where she had tried to make a home, and went into the tiny bedroom. Danny didn’t follow her; he stood looking around him. One cupboard held a supply of dried food, a loaf and a few tins. He selected a tin of corned beef, which he opened and tipped out onto a plate.

  He ate while Jessie came from the bedroom with a cane suitcase, the leather straps stretched to their fullest extent to accommodate the dresses and underwear it held. Her voice was breathlessly quiet as she said a prim ‘Goodbye’. She would have been surprised if she had seen the smile on Danny’s face as her footsteps echoed down the street.

  He ate a few slices of the meat with some bread, then, putting the remainder in the gauze-covered meat safe to protect it from flies, he went to see Willie. He found him searching through the drawers of the sideboard he had recently made.

  ‘Lost something, Willie?’ he asked, stepping into the living room.

  ‘Yes, a pocket watch I’ve had for years. Cecily and Ada gave it to me when the old man died. Funny, I’d have sworn I left it here.’

  ‘A burglary?’

  ‘He wouldn’t have taken just the watch, there are other things he’d find easy to sell. I can’t have lost it.’

  ‘I’ve lost something too,’ Danny said, his smile widening as he explained. ‘Jessie left me at last and gone back to her mother. She means it this time; taken all her clothes an’ all.’

  ‘You didn’t cut up rough, did you?’

  ‘No, man! I’ve never hit a woman yet and never will. No need. I just ignored her till she couldn’t stand it any longer. Threw my dinner on the floor, she did, mind. There’s a waste.’

  ‘What will you do now?’

  ‘Use some of the money I’ve been putting in the bank. It isn’t much but I’m going to take a chance and give up the post and start making furniture full-time. More satisfaction.’ He looked at his friend, younger in years but with a maturity that shamed him at times. ‘What about you? You ready to give up the shop and take a chance too?’

  Willie shook his head. ‘No, I can’t. Got a wife to support and a baby on the way. I’m not free to do that now.’

  ‘Fool you were to get married.’

  ‘No, I’m not the fool, you were, marrying Jessie when you loved someone else. That’s what I call being a fool.’

  ‘You’re right. And Annette is the one for you. But perhaps, now Jessie’s gone, things will start working out for me. But first,’ he said, ‘I’ll concentrate in expanding the business. Know of a barn we can rent, do you?’

  ‘Yes, I do. But keep your job a bit longer. Money’s scarce and jobs are harder to find. The two pounds eighteen shillings you earn is important. You’ll have to support Jessie and there are weeks when the money is slow to come in, and weeks while we’re working on a big project when there’s nothing to sell. Times are hard and not many are prepared to spend on quality and luxury items.’

  ‘All right, I’ll keep the job for a while longer. I want us to concentrate on the simple stuff for a while – good tables and practical things that working people need and can afford. With a decent lathe we could double our output in no time.’

  Not far from Willie’s house was a neglected brick and wood barn, once used as a hay store. It suited them for situation and size and they went at once to talk to the farmer who owned it. The farmer agreed to sell them the place and they walked back jubilant with the prospect of the surge in work they would achieve now they had proper premises.

  ‘Should have done this years ago,’ Danny said. Then he stopped and pulled Willie out of sight behind a thick hawthorn. ‘Look who’s coming.’

  It was Phil Spencer, and he was running. There was no hint of his familiar limp and he was startled when Willie and Danny suddenly stepped out in front of him.

  ‘Don’t tell Ada,’ Phil pleaded, his face falling with the urgency of his appeal, so he looked thinner and smaller than ever. ‘Surprise it is for her, see, me running straight. Takes it out of me, mind. Can’t do it for long.’

  Danny laughed. ‘Why bother? You’ve got your woman, haven’t you?’

  ‘Shamed I am, by the limp. I try to walk proper but it pulls on the wrong muscles, see, and it’s too much. I’ll have to go slow from here.’

  ‘Go on, then. Don’t let us stop you.’ Danny laughed again. ‘Unless you want a piggy back?’

  ‘That was unkind,’ Willie said as the small man, limping painfully, hobbled across the uneven grass.

  ‘Can’t stand the man, with his rat’s face and his whining voice.’ Danny kicked a tuft of grass and walked on. ‘And I don’t trust him either,’ he called back. Willie glared his disapproval at the broad back and followed.

  A few weeks later, Danny and Willie had repaired the barn, installed a large lathe and painted a sign advertising their business as Makers of Fine Furniture. Danny left Foxhole Street, telling Jessie via her mother that she could stay there if she wished and he would pay the rent. Willie’s quiet criticism had made him feel guilty enough to make the gesture. He had been wrong to marry her while loving Cecily. He found himself a room with meals and laundry included in a house near Gladys Davies, who had looked after Willie so well.

  Chapter Thirteen

  SINCE ADA’S MARRIAGE, the sisters had agreed that, with Willie’s help, they would each have an afternoon off every week. Ada imagined she would find plenty to do in her new home, sewing, cleaning and cooking. Cecily looked forward to getting out on her own and enjoying a few hours of complete freedom. Neither achieved what they hoped.

  Ada was living ‘through and through’ in her mother-in-law’s house, not having rooms of her own but sharing as one of the family. Only the bedroom was hers and Phil’s and even that was cleaned and cared for by Mrs Spencer and was not the private place she had presumed it would be. Mrs Spencer would walk in while they were in there, talking non-stop, or asking for a piece to be read to her from the newspaper before she went visiting, so she could continue with the illusion she could read.

  The house was run efficiently. Mrs Spencer was always up early and most of the dusting and polishing and even the scrubbing of the back kitchen floor was done long before Ada and Phil rose, to eat the breakfast waiting for them. It was like living in a hotel, with even the simple tasks of clearing the table or washing the dishes denied her.

  They would eat their food and before they had finished the second cup of tea they both indulged in, the rest of the dishes would be washed and back on their correct shelves. When they left for the shop, Mrs Spencer would be sitting near the immaculately clean fireplace, sewing or knitting, the house as neat as it could be.

  The one thing her mother-in-law wouldn’t allow was for Ada to carry water up to her bedroom so she could wash in private. She didn’t actually complain, but would always bring the offending bowl down the moment Ada had finished, tutting in mild disapproval. Even when Ada took it up as she went to bed, Mrs Spencer would come into the bedroom and take it back down. Ada thought longingly of the bathroom she had enjoyed in the rooms behind the shop. Eventually she accepted the rule and washed in the back kitchen.

  So Ada’s half day was spent sitting with her mother-in-law discussing the local gossip, of which the lady was an expert. She rarely saw Phil on these afternoons. He spent them travelling around the town collecting his debts. Gradually she began to forget her hours off and stayed on at the shop. She used Willie as an excuse.

  ‘Go on, Willie, you have a few hours off, there’s nothing important for me at home and I know you can use th
e time.’

  After a few weeks it was usual for Cecily to take a half day but for Ada to work the full week. She was pleased to be working the extra hours; it brought her close to the amount of time Cecily worked and made her feel less of an assistant to her sister’s role of manager.

  Cecily didn’t ask her sister why, but guessed the reason from the few remarks Ada made about the efficiency of her mother-in-law and the joy the woman found in spoiling her son’s wife. Cecily knew how much Ada had been looking forward to showing her own skills in looking after a home and husband, and the dismay was written on her face when she said how wonderful it was to be so cared for. It was a symptom of the growing gap between them that neither could fully discuss their thoughts.

  Cecily used her half day to meet Danny. Ada said nothing about this for several weeks but finally warned, ‘People love to talk and several of our customers have seen you and Danny Preston meeting outside the town. D’you want to end up in court? Imagine the delight Dorothy would have telling Jessie she has grounds for divorce.’

  On her next half day, Cecily didn’t meet Danny as arranged but went instead over to Peter Marshall’s garage. Wind was gusting, threatening to steal her hat, and the day was gloomy. She filled the car with petrol, then began talking about her dilemma. It was he who started the conversation with a gentle, ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘Danny!’ she said succinctly.

  ‘You’re meeting him and he’s a married man.’ There was the slightest hint of censure in his voice.

  ‘After Ada’s wedding he stayed and for a while we met almost daily. He’d come after Van was asleep. Then I told him goodbye, urged him to try and repair his marriage. We didn’t meet for several weeks and I believed he and Jessie were back together and all was well.’