Читать книгу A Strong Hand to Hold - Anne Bennett - Страница 13

‘What else can you do, cutie dear?’ Grandma O’Leary said to Jenny the following day. ‘The child hasn’t a one belonging to her. What are you to do, but offer her a place to lay her head?’

‘That’s right, Jenny. You can’t let her go into a home, not when you have the room,’ Peggy put in.

The approval of her gran and Peggy washed over Jenny, healing her spirit that was bruised from the blistering argument she’d had that very morning when she’d reopened the topic with her mother and grandmother.

‘I’d have the wee thing here myself,’ Maureen went on, ‘if it wasn’t for my Gerry and this one here, tying the knot next spring. The small room will be empty, but I’ve a feeling it won’t be long before that’s in use as a nursery.’

‘Gran,’ Jenny said, as Peggy blushed.

Maureen gave a gentle push to her future daughter-in-law. ‘You have to get used to things like that, my darling. You can’t be blushing every time I open my mouth.’

‘She’s awful, Gran is,’ Jenny said to Peggy. ‘And she’ll never change.’ In a way, she was a little jealous of Peggy and the closeness between her and her gran, but she told herself she was being stupid.

She smiled across at Peggy as she spoke. The other girl was still recovering from the raid on the BSA. Gerry had been all for an early marriage, but both Peggy and Gran had been against it.

‘Mad galoots to want to marry in the middle of the winter,’ Maureen had said.

‘Anyway,’ Peggy added, ‘I’m not hobbling down the aisle with my ribs bound up and my hair in a state. Besides, Mammy and Daddy want a bit of a splash, wartime or not. I’m the first to be married in our family and Mammy says we’ll do it in style. If we’re too hasty, she says people will think there’s a reason for it.’

So that had been that. Gerry had been overruled and the wedding was fixed for the very end of March 1941. According to Jenny’s gran, he’d been amazed at the fuss a wedding entailed. ‘What did you think, lad?’ she cried. ‘Did you think Peggy should put on a costume and yourself a suit, and the two of you could pop along to the priest, without a body belonging to you being there, as if you were going to the pictures?’

‘No, of course not,’ Gerry lied. ‘But does she really need a fancy dress and bridesmaids? Don’t you think it’s a bit unpatriotic?’

‘No, I don’t,’ his mother had snapped. ‘In this mad world, where the innocent are dying daily, what is unpatriotic about wanting to give the girl a good send-off on her wedding day? Would it help the country any if it was hidden away as if it were something to be ashamed of?’

Gerry had no answer for his mother, but really it didn’t matter. Unpatriotic or not, Peggy was having a wedding dress she could be proud of, and at least three bridesmaids.

‘Have you decided on who you’re going to have?’ Jenny asked Peggy. She knew two were Peggy’s sisters and presumed another would be a cousin, or friend of the family.

‘You,’ Peggy said to Jenny with a brilliant smile. ‘Will you do it?’

‘I’d be honoured to,’ Jenny said, touched that Peggy should even consider her. ‘What about fittings and measurements and things?’

‘Leave it a wee while,’ Peggy said. ‘There’s no rush.’

‘No, except I’ve got time on my hands now. The hospital doctor said I wasn’t to think of going back to work yet. It’s mad, I feel great and I’ll end up murdering my mother and grandmother if I’m home much longer with them.’

‘Look on the bright side cutie,’ Maureen said. ‘At least it gives you time to visit the wee girl in hospital.’

Jenny sighed and said, ‘I suppose it does. I’m on my way there now. She doesn’t get many visitors, you know – it’s too far for her friends to go. Her teacher has been up once, and Beattie pops in, but that’s it really.’

‘I’ll take a wee dander up to the hospital myself,’ Maureen said. ‘The days must hang heavy on her.’

‘I’ll go along with you,’ Peggy said.

‘You’ll not,’ Maureen said. ‘What will his lordship say if I let you go gallivanting?’

Peggy laughed. ‘Visiting a sick child is hardly gallivanting,’ she said.

Jenny left them arguing amicably over it and made for the tram.

Linda was feeling very low when she saw Jenny enter the room, but she tried to smile, because she was grateful to the older girl for making the effort to visit her. Jenny came almost every day. Linda hadn’t really believed she would, but she hadn’t let her down, even though it was a trek to Steel House Lane from Pype Hayes.

‘Hi. How are you today?’ Jenny asked.

Linda shrugged. ‘All right.’

‘I got you some comics,’ Jenny said.

‘Thanks,’ Linda said flatly.

Jenny took Linda’s hand. ‘I suppose you get bored?’ she said sympathetically.

‘What d’you think?’ Linda snapped, snatching her hand away. Almost immediately, she was ashamed of herself. It would serve her right, Linda thought, if Jenny didn’t come again. The thought of long days stuck in this place without the other girl’s visits to look forward to made her eyes fill with tears.

Jenny knew Linda was depressed; Matron had warned her about it. She decided to get straight to the point.

‘Linda,’ she said. ‘When you’re well enough to leave hospital, would you like to move into my house?’

Linda’s eyes opened very wide. ‘Your house!’ she repeated. ‘Live with you, you mean?’

‘That’s right,’ Jenny said.

The other girl’s eyes shone. ‘You mean it, really and truly?’

‘I do.’

‘That would be great.’

‘It won’t be for some time, you know,’ Jenny said.

‘I know, I don’t care. I was worrying about where I was going to live,’ Linda said. She studied Jenny for a minute or two and then said, ‘What about your mom?’

‘What about her?’

‘Won’t she mind me coming to live with you?’

‘No, of course not.’

Linda was lying back on the pillows watching Jenny, and she suddenly said, ‘She will though, won’t she? Your mom ain’t happy about it, I can tell.’

Jenny opened her mouth to voice another denial, when Linda suddenly said, ‘I know when you’re lying. Your eyes dart about all over the place.’

Jenny laughed and said, ‘All right then. My mother isn’t all that keen, to tell the truth. But she’ll come round.’

‘I don’t care if she doesn’t,’ Linda said. ‘If I had to choose anyone to live with, it would be you, and as long as you’re happy about it, that’s all I’m bothered about.’

And Jenny put her arms around Linda and gave her a hug. She knew all the rows with Norah were worth it, to give Linda something to smile about at last.

The news of where the orphaned Linda Lennox would live when she was finally released from hospital, soon filtered through the estate. Many thought that Norah O’Leary might be a stuck-up cow and her mother too, but their hearts were obviously in the right place to open up their home for a child. Jenny never told the true story, but let people believe the decision was one her mother had made.

To Dr Sanders, who knew the type of women Jenny’s mother and grandmother were, it seemed out of character for them to offer an orphan a home, especially a tough cookie like Linda Lennox. He was worried about the whole situation, and knowing they’d have no privacy in Jenny’s house to talk, he waited for her in the car park one evening as she left the hospital. He made the excuse he’d been visiting a patient and Jenny was certainly glad to see him. The winter’s day was raw and cold and inclined to be foggy. Her feet throbbed and she had no wish to stand at a freezing tram stop for hours on end.

She slipped gratefully into the car and with an impish grin said, ‘We’ll have to stop meeting like this.’

‘If you say so,’ Dr Sanders said in the same vein. ‘I could always let you out now, if you’re worried about your reputation.’

‘Don’t you dare,’ Jenny cried. ‘It’s lovely to be chauffeured home like this.’

‘Then sit back, enjoy it and shut up.’

‘Yes, sir!’

The doctor drove in silence down the darkened city streets for a moment or two. He’d noticed the exhausted pallor of Jenny’s skin as she sat beside him, and guessed it was the trek to the hospital wearing her out. But he knew Jenny well enough now to know it would do no good to mention it. Instead he said, ‘Are you looking forward to Linda coming to live with you?’

‘How do you know about it?’ Jenny asked. ‘I’ve never mentioned it and it’s only just been decided.’

‘Jenny, I work on the estate,’ he reminded her. ‘The story is on everyone’s lips.’

‘Well,’ said Jenny, recognizing the truth of his words, ‘the answer to your question is yes and no. Yes, I’m looking forward to having Linda’s future settled, and she’s happier than she’s been for a long time.’

‘But?’ prompted the doctor.

‘It’s my mother and grandmother,’ Jenny burst out. ‘They’re so against the child.’ She chewed her thumbnail anxiously and then went on, ‘Between them, they’ve given me hell for years. I’d hate them to do the same to Linda. I mean, I won’t always be there to protect her.’

‘Then, is it wise of you to offer her a home at all?’ Dr Sanders asked.

‘Maybe not. But what’s the alternative?’ Jenny asked. ‘A children’s home? Indifferent foster-parents? At least I do care for her and she cares for me. And she’ll have all the rest of the family.’

‘But your mother …?’

‘Mother and Grandmother refuse to discuss it,’ Jenny said.

‘What if they refuse to have her at all?’ Dr Sanders suggested gently.

‘Oh God. That would really break Linda’s heart,’ Jenny said, and added after a second or two, ‘but Mother won’t do that.’

‘How can you be so sure?’

‘Because if she did that, I’d leave home and she knows it.’

‘Where would you go?’

‘I’d join the WAAFs,’ Jenny shrugged. ‘I wanted to right at the start of the war, but all the family said it was my duty to stay and look after Mother. If she said Linda definitely couldn’t come, I’d be off.’