by Pam Weaver
‘Right on, Bren.’ She could hear the smile in his voice. ‘Out.’
The plane taxied towards them and came to a stop. They all waited for a few minutes before the door opened and Doc Landers, wearing his now familiar brown Tyrolean hat, given to him by a grateful patient, climbed onto the steps.
Brenda had put a white sheet over the table on the veranda and it was here that the doctor set up his makeshift surgery. As usual Brenda’s diagnoses were correct and it didn’t take him long to dish out the medicine and insert a few stitches into the cut. As soon as he’d finished he sank back into a chair and Brenda put the kettle on.
The homestead in the Australian outback was a far cry from her nursing job in England where she had risen to the position of sister at the Royal Victoria Hospital in Boscombe. Never one to rest on her laurels, Brenda had joined the army and travelled to the Far East. When war broke out, she was in Singapore and the trouble in Europe seemed a million miles away. She had been lucky enough to fall in love with Burt Nichols in ’41, a year before the Japanese overran the colony and she was safely in his hometown of Murnpeowie celebrating her marriage when the advancing forces trapped the rest of her friends and colleagues. Because they’d both come through the war unscathed, Brenda was a great believer in luck.
She thought her luck had run out when Burt got ill so soon after their return, but then she found the homestead, where they now eked out a living. Brenda put the teapot down in front of him. ‘How’s your mum, Doc?’
‘Going for more tests.’
‘Sounds ominous?’ She pushed a cup of tea in front of him.
‘Nobody’s saying much but it sounds to me like she won’t be able to take care of herself for much longer.’
‘Oh, I’m real sorry about that, Doc. Does this mean you’ll be leaving?’
‘I’ll hang around a while longer and see what the results are first.’
Brenda handed him a big piece of her legendary Victoria sponge cake. ‘Did you bring any post for me, Doc?’
‘A few bits and pieces,’ he smiled. ‘Bills mostly.’
Brenda pursed her lips. ‘Nothing from England?’
The doctor shook his head. ‘Definitely nothing from there.’ He leaned forwards and patted her arm. ‘Save yourself the trouble of worrying, Brenda. You’ll never hear from that bloke again.’
‘I can’t let it go, Doc,’ said Brenda. ‘I promised the kid’s mother.’
‘What are we talking about?’ asked Alf the pilot as he pushed his plate forward for a piece of Brenda’s cake. ‘Or is it private?’
‘Brenda’s looking after a little kid. She belonged to a friend of hers who died. She’s trying to trace the kid’s father.’
Alf pulled a face. ‘Local, is he?’
‘A British Tommy,’ said Brenda. ‘Got her in the family way in ’42. I’ve got the name and address of a pub where they used to meet.’
‘Blimey,’ said Alf. ‘What makes you think he’d even want the kid after all this time?’
‘I dunno,’ said Brenda. ‘Maybe he won’t. I don’t think he’s ever seen her but I just wanted to do what’s right by her, that’s all.’
‘How long since you wrote?’ asked Alf, sticking his mug out for some more tea.
‘Five weeks.’ She looked at the Doctor. ‘That’s time enough for a reply isn’t it, Doc?’
‘I should think so. He obviously doesn’t want to know. Forget it, Bren. You’ve done your best.’
Brenda went to the window where she could see the children swarming around the plane. ‘I can’t, Doc. I promised.’
‘Why don’t you and Burt keep her? You both love kids.’
‘I’d let her stay here, Doc, you know that, but what sort of a chance will she have around here? And besides, I have to think of my own. You told me yourself my Burt is only going to get worse. When he’s gone, I’ll have four to look after on my own. I can’t take care of Sandy’s girl, no matter how much I want to.’
‘You can always put her in a home,’ Alf said.
‘I don’t want to do that if I can help it,’ Brenda sighed. ‘The kid should be with her own. If I can’t do anything else for Sandy, I can at least try to get her kid back with her father.’
‘You’ve got a big heart, Bren,’ said Alf admiringly.
‘The war’s been over for six years,’ said the doctor, standing up and picking up his bag. ‘How d’you know he wasn’t killed somewhere?’
‘Or that he’s married someone else,’ said Alf.
Brenda looked down at her feet. Those were both possibilities, she knew that, but something deep down inside her told her she still had to try.
They walked out to the landing strip together and the kids scattered like rabbits.
‘Which one is she?’
‘The little one with the ribbon in her hair,’ Brenda said.
‘Sweet kid,’ said Alf. ‘Thanks for the tea.’
‘If you do hear from her dad, be careful,’ Doc Landers cautioned. ‘She’s had a lot to contend with, what with her mother dying and all. Don’t raise her hopes too high.’
‘I won’t,’ said Brenda. ‘All the best, Doc. I hope your mum turns out to be all right.’
Doc Landers gave her a mock salute.
‘Best of luck,’ Alf called as he closed the plane door.
Grim-faced, Brenda nodded. She knew only too well that if she were going to find Patricia a home of her own, she was going to need all the luck in the world.
Twelve
Mrs Fitzgerald was out. She’d left a note on the kitchen table. Dottie, give the doctor his coffee after surgery. There’s some cold meat and salad in the fridge for his lunch. The downstairs windows need cleaning. M.F.
Dottie’s stomach went into an immediate knot. That meant that once surgery was over, she’d be alone in the house with Dr Fitzgerald. Apart from when he saw Gary the day he got sick, Dottie had avoided him. She couldn’t risk a recurrence of what had happened when he’d given her a lift back home the night of Josephine’s wedding. She had dreaded being on her own with him again, but now she had no choice.
As she went about her work, she was rehearsing over and over in her mind what she would say when she finally came face to face with him. Would he try it on again? No, he was drunk the night of the wedding. He probably regretted what he’d done. But then the thought of his podgy fingers groping around under her skirt and his whisky-saturated breath in her face came flooding back, making her feel sick.
The house was back to normal after the wedding. Keith was back in boarding school and all Miss Josephine’s things had been sent to her new house in Fittleworth. In fact, her old bedroom was being converted into another guest room. Mrs Fitzgerald had chosen pale yellow walls to contrast with the new fabric she had bought in London, a bold geometric design of white ‘hourglass’ shapes, shot through with black on a red background. It was bang up-to-date. Ever since the Festival of Britain, contemporary lines, bright colours and geometric designs had become all the rage.
She’d asked Dottie to make a bedspread, eiderdown, curtains with tiebacks and a blind for the window, all in the same material. To Dottie, the fabric was amazing and she couldn’t wait to begin work on it. She rubbed it between her fingers, loving just the feel of it. After so long using utility material or ‘making-do-and-mending’, it would be a real treat to cut into a fabric which had never been used for anything else before, a fabric at the height of fashion and at the forefront of modern design.
Thrilled to bits that Mariah was going to trust her with something so lovely, Dottie was determined to prove she could do a fantastic job. Mariah usually had her curtains and other furnishings done by Bentalls, so this was Dottie’s big chance. Mariah had discovered Dottie’s talents about six weeks ago when she’d popped round to the cottage to collect a couple of jars of jam she had been promised for her mother. Dottie invited her in, and Mariah had been amazed by the transformation in Aunt Bessie’s cottage.
‘Where did you buy these c
urtains?’ she’d exclaimed. ‘And that bolster cushion … and the fire-screen …?’
When Dottie confessed to making them, Mariah had found it hard to believe, but now she was confident enough in Dottie’s abilities to ask her to refurbish Miss Josephine’s old room. The only trouble was, she wanted it finished in time for her brother’s yearly visit at the end of September.
‘I’m afraid it will take a bit longer than that,’ Dottie told her firmly.
Mariah had threatened to go elsewhere, but Dottie was no fool. Sending away for the job would mean they would have to send someone around to measure up (these big firms never believed your own measurements), and relying on the post. All that would take twice as long and probably cost her three times as much. In the end, they’d agreed that the room would be finished by October 11th at the latest.
Once the master bedroom had been cleaned, Dottie left the linoleum along the landing. There seemed little point in polishing it. The decorators were coming in tomorrow to start on the yellow walls and they’d be tramping back and forth.
When she got back downstairs, Dottie glanced at the clock. 10.35. The morning surgery must be nearly over. She’d make a start on the windows downstairs and then she could keep an eye on the waiting room at the same time. The doctor would want his morning coffee before he went out on his rounds.
The waiting room for the surgery was on the side of the house, so there was no need for patients to come to the house itself. They could walk up the driveway and go straight into the waiting room. The doctor would call in the next patient as the previous patient went out. It was up to Dottie to guess when surgery was finished, but before she went in she would also have to take the added precaution of listening at the connecting door between the house and the surgery to make sure no one was still in there having a consultation.
She was outside washing the windows when she saw old Sam Taylor coming down the driveway. Dottie smiled at the aged road sweeper. Out in all weathers, old Sam was a regular visitor to the surgery, especially in the winter when his cough got bad.
‘Glad I seen you, m’dear,’ said Sam cheerily and Dottie came down the small stepladder. ‘Will you thank your Reg for me?’
Dottie was puzzled. ‘What for?’
‘For the tatters. He left a bag on my doorstep.’
Reg often did things for people. It was his one redeeming feature. ‘Yes, yes of course.’
The old man patted Dottie’s hand. ‘Good man, your Reg.’
‘Any more left in the surgery, Sam?’ she smiled.
‘Just Mrs Reid,’ said Sam touching the front of his cap politely. ‘She be the last.’
Dottie put down her cloth and walked indoors. She’d already poured some Camp Coffee into a cup and the milk was in the saucepan. Trying to ignore the growing tightness in her stomach, she watched it boil and then poured it onto the dark liquid, stirring vigorously. He had one sugar – she’d worked there long enough to know that – but she put the sugar bowl onto a small tray covered with a tray cloth rather than adding it herself.
As she waited outside the connecting door, she heard low voices before Mrs Reid said, ‘Thank you very much, Doctor.’
The surgery door closed and Dottie knocked softly.
‘Come in.’
Brisk and business-like, Dottie swept in with the tray.
‘Dottie!’ She was a little unsure of the tone of his voice but her throat tightened as he rose to his feet, pen in hand. Dottie laid the tray on the desk in front of him and stepped back smartly.
‘I think you should know, someone saw you trying to kiss me on the night of your daughter’s wedding,’ she said coldly.
She saw the colour drain from his face and he glanced anxiously at the waiting room door. He was obviously worried that Mrs Reid might overhear them but Dottie wasn’t too concerned. Mrs Reid was as deaf as a post. He looked back at her and seemed surprised by her boldness.
‘Dottie, I want to explain …’ he began, his voice soft and his eyes lowered.
‘Touch me again,’ she glared, ‘and me and my witness will be round to see PC Kipling.’
He stared like a startled rabbit caught in the glare of a car’s headlamps and swallowed hard.
She turned on her heel and, head held high, she swept back out of the room, and closed the door quietly. Once outside in the corridor, however, her knees began to shake and she was trembling all over. She waited a second or two until her rapid heartbeat calmed a little. A slow smile crept across her face and she closed her eyes with relief. There, that should do it. Crisis over. The dirty old basket valued his reputation in the village too much to try it on again.
‘Seventy pounds!’
Reg’s brow was furrowed yet again. Dottie sighed. Earlier, with Michael Gilbert’s wedding less than a week away, she’d asked him if Sylvie could come, but she’d obviously chosen the wrong moment. Just as she’d feared, he’d flatly refused.
They were out in the garden in the warm evening and Reg was gathering the last of the runner beans; he planned to leave the rest to mature into seeds for next year. He had just been saying that it had been a reasonable year for the garden, despite the weather, and Dottie chose this moment to say what else was on her mind.
‘That’s what I said, the fare to Australia is seventy pounds.’
Dottie was picking the first blackberries from the wild branches which grew at the very end of the garden. The ground beyond the brambles was kept fallow because years of using the same few feet of land over and over again had made it unusable.
Reg stopped picking the beans and came from between the rows to stand in front of her. ‘Have you been talking about my business with someone?’ he challenged.
‘No …’ Dottie protested. He moved his head on one side and she knew he didn’t believe her. ‘Reg, I promise you I haven’t said anything,’ Dottie continued, ‘It’s just that in her letter Sylvie was talking about a friend of theirs who is going over to Australia on the ten-pound passage. She was saying what a brave thing it was and how it was a wonderful opportunity to go all that way for just ten pounds, so when I wrote back, I asked her how much the real fare was and she said seventy pounds.’
Reg looked at her, expressionless. He said nothing so Dottie ploughed on. She had to make him see how impossible his dream was going to be. ‘It’s going to cost us that much to get Patricia over here.’
‘Then we’ll save for it,’ he said.
‘And how long is that going to take us?’ she cried desperately.
‘It’ll take as long as it takes!’
As she watched him striding back up the garden with the beans in his arms, her heart sank. She didn’t know what to feel any more, she was so mixed up. She could see his frustration and there were times, like now, when she felt a twinge of sympathy for him, but nothing altered the fact that she didn’t want this child in her home. She sighed. She’d have to talk to him again … make him understand how she felt. It had taken a lot of courage to stand up to Dr Fitzgerald, but she’d done it. She smiled to herself as she recalled the look on his face. Well, if she could stand up to a man like him, she could stand up to Reg. He wouldn’t like it, and it wouldn’t be very easy, but she’d have to try. Full of determination, Dottie picked up her bowlful of blackberries and followed him back to the house.
Reg was a man of few words; he always had been. Sylvie always said he was ‘all buttoned up’ but up until now Dottie had accepted that talking about things wasn’t his way. At times he seemed to relish being awkward. She could put up with his moods – they didn’t happen too often – but it was harder to deal with the silences and the sulks.
As she reached the back door she could see him through the kitchen window, sitting at the kitchen table with his head in his hands. She paused and all at once it hit her. This was breaking his heart. He’d had so little in life before she met him. He’d been abandoned as a child, he’d told her. He’d never known a mother’s love. When Dottie had said she’d go out with him, he’d b
een the perfect gent. Even though Aunt Bessie never liked him, he always treated her right and he was keen to be part of the family. Look how excited he’d been on their wedding day, running around the whole house and telling her this was the first time he’d had his own home. As they lay in bed in that little guesthouse in Eastbourne, they’d talked about having children. She was being selfish, wasn’t she? Just because she couldn’t have children didn’t alter the fact that he had a child, a child without a mother on the other side of the world, and it was breaking his heart. How could she do this to him? Just because she couldn’t have what she wanted, should she deny her husband the one thing that would make him happy? All right, it upset her to think about Elizabeth Johns with Reg, but she could get over it and perhaps he was right. If Patsy came, they’d be a family at last.
Dottie smiled as a picture of Patsy formed in her mind. She’d be wearing a little gingham dress, blue and white with a pretty gathered skirt and white Peter Pan collar. She’d have white socks and a ribbon in her hair.
Reg glanced up and saw her smiling. ‘What are you staring at?’ he said acidly. ‘Having a good laugh at my expense, are you?’
She hurried inside. ‘No, Reg,’ she protested. ‘I was trying to imagine what Patsy looks like. Oh Reg, I’m sorry. I’ve been a selfish cow. We’ll save up for her. We’ll work all the hours God sends until we get the money.’
He rose to his feet, his whole face enveloped with a smile. ‘D’you really mean it, Dot?’
‘Yes, dear, of course I do.’
He took her into his arms and hugged her. Dottie snuggled into his wiry embrace. Why couldn’t it be like this more often? ‘But first we have to talk,’ she went on.
He pushed her away, roughly. ‘Oh, I might have guessed there’d be a catch.’
‘It’s not that,’ she said, ‘but we’ve got to make a good story for the people around here.’
