by Annie Murray
‘What you need,’ Ann said, ‘is a good walk round the shops.’
Katie groaned. ‘What, with a handful of coupons? And that’s if there was anything decent to buy. I’m saving my coupons for a proper pair of shoes. I keep getting to work with my feet all wet!’
‘I know,’ Ann said gloomily, her hands curled round her cup of coffee to warm them. ‘Still, at least you can make things for yourself. You always look nice, no matter what, Katie.’
‘Thanks,’ Katie said. She did take pride in her appearance and there was nothing she liked more than a new outfit, given the chance. ‘But I’ve had most of these clothes for years. It’s not as if we’ve got any spare curtains to cut up!’
‘This flaming war’s sucked the fun out of everything,’ Ann said gloomily. Then her eyes began to twinkle. ‘Well – maybe not everything.’
‘Go on.’ Katie grinned. ‘Tell me.’ Hearing about Ann’s evenings of fun with Gordon was about the nearest she was going to get to a social life for the moment. She sat back and listened to Ann chatting about dancing and going to the pictures. But she found her mind wandering.
It was true that things were difficult at the works. Mr Graham’s grudging working relationship with Simon Collinge, and Lena Crosby’s obvious resentment of her, had made the week difficult. On the first dinner break Katie had wondered whether she and Lena would eat together and maybe get to know each other. It would have been nice to share chats and jokes about work with someone in their office. It wasn’t looking very promising, but Katie lived in hope. Lena Crosby got straight up from her desk and walked out, without even acknowledging Katie’s presence. She left a strong smell of stale cigarettes behind her. Only the men were allowed to smoke in the office. She was clearly desperate for a puff.
‘Huh, be like that then,’ Katie muttered under her breath.
She went down to the canteen and ate with the other women she already knew.
‘Where’s that new one who’s working with you?’ Maureen asked.
‘I don’t know – she must’ve gone out,’ Katie said.
Maureen grimaced. ‘Ooh – like that, is it?’
‘Well, she’s not very friendly so far,’ Katie said, shrugging.
‘And what’s he like?’ Maureen was full of curiosity.
‘Seems nice enough. I don’t really know.’
‘Goodness . . .’ Maureen eyed Katie’s already empty plate. ‘You must’ve needed that.’
‘I’ve got to nip out,’ Katie said. ‘If I hurry, I can just make it to the Bull Ring – get a bit of fruit for my mom. She’s going down with a nasty cold.’
‘Aren’t you a good girl!’ Maureen’s words followed her as she dashed out.
As the week went by, Lena Crosby did not get any less chilly and disappeared each dinnertime. When they were all eating one day, someone said, ‘I heard she’s got a husband who’s a prisoner-of-war in Germany.’
Everyone looked a bit more sympathetic after that.
One afternoon, when they were all working away in the office, Katie was typing a great sheaf of correspondence that Mr Graham had dictated to her earlier, and he was busy at his desk. Simon Collinge was standing close to Mrs Crosby, giving her dictation in a low voice so as not to disturb the others. Miss Crosby sat very correctly at her desk, her feet neatly together, rapidly taking shorthand. Katie looked up, fingers pausing on the keys of the Remington, hardly realizing she had stopped work. She looked at Mr Collinge’s tall figure, one long arm bent to rest a hand on his hip in his relaxed-looking manner, his expression one of intelligent concentration. A physical sensation went through her at the sight of him. It was the shape of him, the way he stood. And he looked so intelligent. Gosh, he’s really nice, she thought. She didn’t realize she was staring.
After a moment he must have felt her looking at him and turned. Their eyes met for a couple of seconds and she could see he was curious, meeting her gaze. She looked down, blushing in confusion. He’d caught her staring at him! But she kept thinking about it afterwards. Hadn’t she, in that very brief look, seen the beginnings of a smile in his eyes?
Most of the time they had little reason to talk. She was not his typist, after all. But the next afternoon, when Mrs Crosby was sitting in her usual frigid silence and Mr Graham was at his desk muttering grumpily to himself about something, it was her turn to glance up and see Mr Collinge looking at her. To her extreme annoyance she blushed, thickly, and was about to turn away when he gave a mischievous glance round the office as if to communicate something to her, as if to say: What a shower!
Without thinking, before she could stop herself, Katie pulled her cross-eyed face that she and Em used to make at school when they wanted to be cheeky about the teacher. She saw Simon Collinge look bemused, before a grin broke over his face and he turned away so that Mr Graham didn’t see. Katie was mortified. What on earth did she go and do that for? But at least he had looked amused – she hoped to goodness he’d carry on seeing it that way.
That evening as she hurried home she kept thinking about it, about the way he had looked at her, worrying about how badly she had put her foot in it. She had plenty of other things to be thinking about, like seeing to the tea because her mother’s cold was obviously turning into something worse and she was becoming more and more feverish, and about stoking the fire and washing up. But it was his face that kept coming back to her. That wide smile. She couldn’t seem to stop thinking about it.
Eleven
Vera O’Neill’s cold turned into a nasty bout of the flu. She took to bed in her little room with the pale-blue walls and white window frames, the pretty flowered coverlet flung to the bottom of the bed when she was too hot to bear it, then pulled up again as she grew cold and shivery. Katie, attending to her every need, lit a fire in the grate and made drinks and refilled the hot-water bottle from time to time. There was a wicker chair by the bed with a cushion made of floral material that matched the coverlet, and Katie sat with her mother and kept her company.
‘It’s a good job it’s the weekend,’ she said. ‘Otherwise I’d be worried about leaving you to go to work.’
Vera smiled glassily and said in a rasping, martyred voice, ‘I expect I’d have managed. But I’m glad you’re here. Could I have another sip of water, dear?’
Katie reached over for the glass of water on the bedside table and helped her mother take a mouthful. She saw the muscles in Vera’s neck strain as she lifted her head, and the crinkly look of the skin of her neck and chest, which made her see once again that her mother had aged. Lying there, she looked vulnerable. It was a rare thing for Vera to be ill as she was usually a very healthy woman, but Katie realized she also seemed to be enjoying it, lying back and being looked after, almost like a child.
Vera slept fitfully on and off. Katie sat reading Dombey and Son. As the day passed into evening, she turned the lamp on so that she could see her book. The room was cold, so she rebuilt the fire, but Vera grew more and more feverish, tossing and turning, delirious. Katie thought she should not leave her for too long. Should she call a doctor? she wondered. But she didn’t like the idea of walking the dark streets and calling on Dr Radnor, who was a rather sour man.
She cut herself some bread and cheese and ate it sitting upstairs on the little Turkey rug by the fire. The room was softly lit and the only sounds were the coals hissing and Vera’s restless murmurs from the bed. It all felt rather stifling and, to escape, Katie lapsed into a dream: in the flames she kept seeing Simon Collinge as she’d seen him that first day, so different from the bantering lads downstairs, long-limbed, energetic, leaning over the work table, then turning with that energy of his, his handsome smile, which turned into the impish grin he had given her when she pulled that face. She found herself smiling back as if he was actually in front of her, then she caught herself. How stupid she was being! There was she, a little typist, and he not only the boss’s son, but someone who’d been to the university, somewhere she couldn’t even imagine! She really was going
to have to pull herself together and stop mooning about like this.
A gasp came from the bed behind her. Vera was thrashing her head from side to side.
‘Is that him . . . ?’ she said in a slurred voice. ‘Spots, Spots, come here!’ A moment later, more loudly, she cried, ‘Daddy! Is that you, Daddy?’
Katie got up and went over, alarmed. She sat down and reluctantly took her mother’s hand. This felt awkward. Being in any way close to Vera was not comfortable. But soon Vera had gone back to sleep.
Vera’s throat was on fire. One minute she was sweating, the next shivering with aching cold. The glands in her neck throbbed, and if she opened her eyes the walls seemed to bulge in and out, so she mostly kept them closed, except when she was looking for Mummy. She seemed to have been gone for a long time. Where was she? And why was Spots barking, on and on, next door?
The little bedroom in Sparkhill seemed to have become her childhood room in Hall Green, with the watercolour picture of Jesus calming the storm on the wall by the bed, so that that was what she saw each time she looked up: Jesus in a halo of light amid the towering waves and bucking ship. He would always be there to make things right, that was what Mummy said – Mummy with her childlike beliefs.
They were Congregationalists, deeply involved in the Church and Bible Study, saying prayers before every meal. Vera had no brothers and sisters, so she was thrown into the company of her parents and of adults in general. Her father, Harold Porter, was a big man, imposing, with strong-featured good looks and dark-brown curly hair. He was a travelling salesman, and good at it – his looks must have helped, his air of knowing something that other people would benefit by learning from him – so they had a car. He was away for a night or two quite often.
When Vera was eight, he disappeared for two years, almost to the day.
Vera’s mother, Jean Porter, a tiny, doll-like woman with curling auburn hair and porcelain skin, told no one that he had gone – not even herself.
‘I haven’t seen your Harold for a while,’ her friends might remark. Vera could remember them, in the parlour with the net curtains, drinking tea and eating dainty scones and cake.
‘Oh, I know,’ Jean would say in a vexed way. ‘It’s so naughty of him. He will take on these big jobs that keep him away from home. He was home earlier in the week, but you missed him, I’m afraid. He’s had to go away again on urgent business overseas.’
At this, her voice would sink to an awed whisper and the other women would look suitably impressed. If they ever asked exactly what he was doing overseas, Jean would laugh in her girlish way, fiddling with a curling strand of her hair and say, ‘Oh, you know – it’s all to do with buying and selling. I don’t interfere too much in his work, to tell you the truth. You know what the male of the species is like, don’t you? They don’t like to be interfered with!’
She would tell her friends that he was due home in a few days, and that then they would be away, taking a little holiday – perhaps by the seaside?
Vera, whose ninth birthday came and went without her seeing her father, did start to doubt things. When Mummy said to people that Daddy had been home for a few days last week, she started to think that yes, perhaps he had been? Hadn’t he come in and kissed her goodnight? And when Mummy said in the holidays once or twice that they were not going to go out of the house for a few days, because so far as everyone knew they had gone on a little holiday to the seaside, hadn’t she joined in when Mummy asked for this to be their game of pretend?
‘You can tell your friends about the cliffs, and the rock pools – you know, going out with your net on a lovely sunny morning, and catching crabs and sea anemones and tiny fish, with the sand between your toes and the sound of the waves in your ears . . .’ By the time she had spun her story, Vera almost felt as if she had been to the seaside. To confuse things further, on one of ‘Daddy’s’ holidays by the sea, they had taken a train all the way down to Bournemouth and spent a few days with Jean’s mother in a little boarding house looking over the sea. It was blissful for Vera, as her grandmother was a kindly woman, but there was still no sign of Daddy, even though Mummy told her to tell her friends that he had been there with them, but had now had to go on a long journey.
After a time this became close to normal, but now and again Vera would ask, ‘When is Daddy really coming back?’
Her mother looked at her stony-faced. ‘What do you mean, really coming back? You know perfectly well that your father is a very busy man, back and forth on business. He’s with us as often as he can be. Now don’t be demanding, Vera. We just have to accept that this is the way it is.’
‘I don’t believe you’ve got a dad,’ one of her friends at school started on her once.
‘What d’you mean – course I have!’ she retorted.
‘Where is he then? Is he a ghost or something?’
‘He’s just busy: he’s away on business,’ she said defiantly, making herself believe it as she said it.
‘Huh – my mom says he’s run off with a bit of stuff!’
Vera got caned that day, six raps on each hand, for slapping the other girl soundly round the face.
Just before her tenth birthday he did come back. She saw him first, one afternoon when she came home from school. Even though it was threatening rain, she had stopped two doors up to play with Spots, the Jack Russell, leaning over the neighbour’s fence, stroking him, and he kept jumping up to meet her hand and yapping with enthusiasm. Then she caught sight of someone just inside her own garden. There was a rose bush by the gate with pink blooms, straggly now and needing deadheading at the end of summer, and he was standing there next to it, just standing, as if in a dream.
Her heart gave an enormous leap. It was him. It really was him!
‘Daddy!’ She started to run, as fast as she could. ‘Daddy, Daddy!’
He turned to look at her, bewildered, as if he couldn’t remember who she was. They stood each side of the gate for a moment. There was a strong breeze and it was just beginning to drizzle.
‘Vera,’ he said, gently, ‘little Vera. You’ve got so big.’
He came and opened the gate to let her in. He didn’t lift her up into his arms, but took her hand and led her to the front door. She wanted to cry, but didn’t let herself. She didn’t know whether to trust that he was here.
‘Are you coming home really?’ she asked.
He looked down at her, his eyes affectionate but sad. ‘Yes. I think so,’ he said.
Vera had cried, ‘Daddy, Daddy!’ out loud in anguish as Katie sat on the bed beside her.
‘Mom – Mother?’ Katie said, taking her hand. ‘What’s the matter? Are you all right?’
Her mother’s hand felt hot and dry. She gave a small moan and opened her eyes, and for a few moments it seemed as if she was looking at a complete stranger. In a cracked voice she said, ‘Is he still here?’
‘Who?’ Katie asked gently.
‘Daddy – I mean . . .’ She looked confused. ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ she said, seeming to come back to herself. She gave a little sobbing sigh. ‘They all go, all of them. They’re always taken from you.’ Her voice was desperately sad.
Katie felt for her. All she knew was that her grandparents didn’t want anything to do with them, that Vera’s husband had died so young. She had great sympathy for her mother. But it meant that she had never felt that she was enough, that there was anything adequate she could do to make up for all her mother’s grief and pain. All she could do now was pat her hand.
‘It’s all right, Mother. You’ll be better soon. Then things won’t look so bad. D’you want another sip of water?’
But Vera ignored the question, squeezing Katie’s hand with sudden ferocity. ‘You won’t go away and leave me, will you? Promise me?’
With a sinking heart, Katie looked back into her mother’s intense, feverish gaze. What was she asking? Katie felt trapped, stifled, but what else could she say?
‘I . . . No, of course I won’t, Mother—’
>
Vera’s head came off the pillow. ‘Promise me.’
‘I promise.’
Twelve
Vera seemed less feverish the next morning. Katie had left her with plenty to drink and the reassurance that Mrs Hargreaves from next door would look in on her this morning, and that Enid was due to come over in the afternoon. It was a lovely day, bright and crisp, and even right here in the middle of town, hemmed in by factories, it lifted the spirits. Katie was so glad to be out of the house and breathed in deep, her lips turning up in a smile at the sense of freedom and of being away from her mother.
Her smile met that of Simon Collinge. Until then she had assumed that he came into work with his father, but no, there he was getting out of what seemed to be his own shiny Austin 10 tourer! The sight of the car removed him into a life of wealth and privilege very far from her own, and immediately she felt embarrassed and foolish about daydreaming over its owner. What on earth did she think she was playing at! She lowered her gaze and was hurrying past, but he jumped energetically from the sporty little car to land in front of her, and perched his hat lightly on his head in time to tip it off again for her benefit, in a way that was gentlemanly and self-mocking at the same time.
‘Morning!’ he called cheerfully. ‘Lovely day.’
‘Yes,’ she agreed, her heart speeding like a motor that had been turned up. ‘Lovely car as well.’
He smiled. ‘Oh, she is, isn’t she? Goes like the clappers.’
Katie could feel the eyes of the stream of workers coming into the factory all watching this exchange and tried to walk on again. But Simon Collinge slammed shut the door of the car and fell into step beside her as they made their way into the works. You could hear the racket of the machines from behind the closed doors. He was carrying his coat over his arm and held his trilby resting on top of it. His hair had a slightly rumpled look, as if he had brushed it, but it wouldn’t lie flat. Katie had to restrain herself from reaching up and smoothing it down as if he was a child.
