Читать книгу Heartache for the Shop Girls - Joanna Toye - Страница 8

Wasn’t that just like life, thought Lily, as she stood and watched Jim fling a few things into a bag. At the start of the afternoon they’d been worrying about Les, and when she’d heard the word ‘telegram’, she’d automatically assumed it must be about Reg. Even then, when Jim had said it was for him … of his parents, the one you’d expect to get bad news about was his father, gassed in the Great War and left semi-invalided with a bad chest. Yes, just like life, to creep up and sandbag you from behind when you were looking in the other direction!

Jim zipped up his holdall and turned to face her.

‘I’m sorry about the cinema.’

‘Don’t be silly. I’m sorry for you. And your mum. Will you go straight to the hospital?’

Jim’s family home was in Worcestershire, in a small village, Bidbury. The telegram had said his mother was in the Cottage Hospital at Pershore.

Jim spread his hands.

‘I don’t know what I’ll do. I’ve got to get there first.’

You couldn’t count on the trains, when or if they’d run, and there was no direct train. Jim would have to go from Hinton to Birmingham, change there for Worcester, then for the branch line, a slow, jolting journey in a blacked-out carriage with long waits in between.

Lily put her hand on his arm.

‘They wouldn’t let you see her in the middle of the night anyway. Perhaps you’d be better going home to see to your dad. He can’t manage on his own, can he?’

Jim pushed his hands through his hair, making it stick up in the way that flipped Lily’s heart.

‘Can you tell them at work? I haven’t got time to write a letter.’

‘Of course. Don’t worry about that. Come here.’

She stepped forward and wrapped her arms around him. He rested his chin on top of her head and sighed. They both knew what this latest development meant.

The situation with Jim’s parents had been complicated enough already. He was an only child, and was only here in Hinton because his mother, Alice, had traded on a never-before-exploited family connection to write to the store’s owner, Cedric Marlow. She’d hoped that he’d help Jim through Agricultural College, but she hadn’t dared to ask outright and instead Cedric Marlow had offered a Jim a position at the store. With neither of them feeling that he could turn it down, Jim had moved away to the town, and Marlow’s – and Lily. His mother, frustrated at losing him, had spent the entire time since hoping that he’d return. In fact, she’d done more than hope – she’d as good as schemed to get him back.

Just a few weeks earlier, seeing that looking after his dad, the house and the garden was getting too much for her, Jim had started going back to Bidbury every other weekend, leaving after work on Saturdays and taking Mondays off unpaid to make the lengthy journey worthwhile.

The new regime had coincided with Lily and Jim confessing what they felt for each other, and if it was a brake on their relationship, at least it was better than the screeching full stop that Lily had feared. She’d had moments when she’d genuinely thought Jim was going to leave Hinton for good, and the fact that he was still there at all felt like deliverance.

But now this.

Jim pulled away and looked sadly down at her.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said again. ‘We’ll make things work, Lily, I promise.’

Lily stood on tiptoe and kissed him.

‘I know.’

Jim held her tight and kissed her back. ‘I’d better go.’

‘You had.’

Lily saw him to the front door. He kissed her again, for longer this time.

‘I don’t know when I’ll be back.’

‘I’ll see you when I see you,’ she said, as brightly as she could. ‘Give your mother my best, won’t you?’

Jim smiled thinly. He knew that Lily’s good wishes were the last thing that his mother would want and in her heart of hearts, Lily knew it too. The two of them were gambling for Jim’s affections, and, though a stroke was hardly something you could fake, or plan, and she felt wicked for thinking it, it still seemed to Lily as though Alice had played an ace.

‘Poor Jim!’ Gladys, the next day, was sorry to hear the news. ‘His poor mum, of course. And poor you, Lily!’

Lily shrugged the sympathy away.

‘Don’t feel sorry for me. I’m not the one in hospital.’

‘And the telegram didn’t say how bad it is?’

‘No.’

Gladys pushed a bit of potato round her plate, trying to robe it in the thin gravy. The friends had managed to get off to dinner together, and the clatter of the Staff Canteen was all around them. The meat dish of the day was roast heart, which Lily couldn’t fancy – a bit too much like her own. She was doing her best with a lump of grey fish in a heavy sea of white sauce.

‘Who sent it anyway?’ Gladys managed to transfer the dripping chunk of potato to her mouth. ‘His dad never leaves the house, does he?’

Lily paused, knife and fork arched.

‘I never thought. I never asked. A neighbour, perhaps?’

Gladys nodded. She was such a sweet soul; she was really feeling for Jim, Lily could see.

‘I suppose so. Oh dear. And we’d had such a lovely afternoon.’

It was early afternoon by the time Jim got to the hospital. He hadn’t got back to Bidbury till dawn, trains cancelled or diverted, stuck in a siding in Birmingham to let troop trains pass, then the sirens going, hearing planes overhead, straining to hear if they were German Dorniers, then realising they were Lancasters, probably on their way back to base from a raid of their own.

Exhausted, he’d had to walk the last few miles, letting himself into the darkened cottage to find his father asleep in the chair with the dog loyally at his feet. Jim had a couple of hours’ sleep, washed and shaved his father and himself, and at nine had walked back into the village to get some food in. From the shop-cum-post office he’d telephoned the hospital to hear that his mother’s condition was unchanged, and that visiting was from two o’clock till four.

Now he was standing nonplussed in the ward with its shiny lino and tidy beds, trying to see which pale figure, pinioned by the bedclothes, was his mother. A nurse came by with a cloth-covered tray, so he asked.

‘Far bed on the left,’ she said, swishing off on rubber heels to the sluice room.

Head down, uncomfortable and feeling out of place, Jim made his way past the other patients, who, apart from one jolly woman surrounded by a tribe of relatives, seemed to be largely elderly and unloved, or at least unvisited. But as he neared the end bed, he realised that wasn’t the case with his mother – there was someone there already. A young woman was sitting at the bedside with her back to him.

‘Margaret?’

The girl spun round and stood up rapidly, rattling the chair back. She looked almost as out of place as Jim in her cord breeches and shirt, with tanned arms and her brown hair cropped close into her neck.

‘Jim! You made it!’

Jim caught the chair as it rocked.

‘Yes, finally. How is she?’

He could see straight away there was no point in addressing the question to his mother. She was asleep, or seemed to be, her face white and her lips a thin mauve line.

Margaret motioned him to one side. She kept her voice low.

‘The doctor was leaving as I got here. They’ve given her something to calm her down – she was getting what he called “agitated”. She hasn’t said much, so they can’t really tell about that, but it’s taken her movement, Jim, down her right side.’

‘Oh, God.’

On the long journey Jim had speculated about how the stroke might have affected her. A mother, especially his mother, who could get about but not communicate was as bad as one who was physically impeded but still had the power of speech. Now it seemed his mother might have lost both. He reached for the only possible straw.

‘People do get better, though, from a stroke? With exercises …?’

Margaret lifted her shoulders minutely.

‘It’s too early to say. But the doctor did say the stroke was a relatively mild one.’

‘That’s something.’

It still left him with a heck of a problem, he knew.

‘Look, Margaret,’ he offered. ‘I’ll sit with her now. I can stay till she wakes up. It’s good of you to have come. And thank you so much for sending the telegram.’ His father, who seemed bemused by the whole thing, had told him that much. ‘I’ll give you the money.’

‘Don’t be silly. That’s all right.’

‘How did you … how did you even know it had happened?’

‘Oh,’ said Margaret. ‘But I was there. I was with her.’

His mother showed no sign of stirring, so they went outside to talk. There was a small garden with a sundial and some benches where recuperating patients and their visitors could sit. Jim was too tense to sit down, so they walked round and round the narrow crazy-paved paths.

‘I’ve been dropping in when I could,’ Margaret explained. ‘I know you’ve been coming at weekends, Jim, but I think your mum was lonely. Your dad sits in the chair dozing most of the day. She asked me to call if I had time, so I did. I think she just wanted company.’

‘I see.’

That wasn’t all his mother had wanted and Jim knew it. Margaret was the daughter of a local farmer. Both her brothers had been killed in the war and, unbeknown to her, she was part of Alice’s scheme to get Jim back. If Alice could pair Jim off with Margaret, that was not one, not two, but three birds with one stone. Jim would be back home, with a wife on his arm and running the farm down the lane, country trumping town, her son secure and with a promising future.

Jim knew his mother felt she’d been dealt a rotten hand in life. Now it seemed to have turned into a winning one, because if she didn’t make a good recovery – and who knew? – he’d surely have no option but to come back to Bidbury for good.

While Jim had been thinking, they’d continued their aimless circuit of the garden, Margaret brushing her hand against the tall spines of lavender and releasing their scent. Jim’s mother had claimed that Margaret held a torch for him – always had – and there was no doubt she’d make a wonderful wife for a farmer. She was milking her father’s herd by herself these days, butter-making, delivering the churns, delivering and looking after the calves, too – and she had other talents. She’d wanted to go to Art School, but that had been scotched by the war and she’d taken on her new role uncomplainingly. Jim liked her very much, admired her, even, and felt sorry for what she’d had to give up. All in all, Margaret was a thoroughly nice girl and, if things had been different, they might even one day have made a match. But things were different. He had Lily now.

When Lily got back to her department after dinner, Miss Frobisher was waiting for her. Lily instinctively looked at the clock but Miss Frobisher held up a reassuring hand.

‘You’re not late, don’t worry!’

‘Good! Did you want me for something, Miss Frobisher?’

‘Yes, I do. Not now, but on Monday. I want you to come with me to Ward and Keppler.’

Lily’s mouth made a fair imitation of her dinnertime fish being landed.

Ward and Keppler were big manufacturers of children’s and babywear – their Robin Hood brand was top quality and they chose their outlets very carefully. The only shops in Hinton favoured with their goods were Marlow’s and their big rival, Burrell’s.

‘You may well look surprised,’ Lily’s boss went on. ‘I was due to go with Miss Naylor, but she has to be at home that day for the ruins recorder.’

Miss Naylor was the buyer on Schoolwear. Her house was in a terrace that had been part-destroyed when a bomb had dropped on Hinton the previous year. The council’s inspector had to make regular visits to make sure the houses still standing were safe to live in.

Poor Miss Naylor – but lucky Lily! Lucky Miss Frobisher too, though she’d never have let on. She and Miss Naylor were not the best of friends and Miss Frobisher had always felt her presence on the trip, on the basis of girls’ gym knickers and boys’ rugby socks, was superfluous.

‘The expenses had already been cleared and the tickets bought,’ Miss Frobisher went on, ‘so rather than waste one …’

Her eyebrows signalled it might be a good idea if Lily made some response, and she found her voice.

‘Miss Frobisher, that would be wonderful!’ she managed. ‘Thank you!’

‘It’s intended to be instructive,’ said Miss Frobisher firmly, in case Lily thought it was to be a jolly day out – which she hadn’t. ‘Selling’s only one aspect of running a department. This will show you where and how it all begins – the buying process.’

Lily knew she should be listening as Miss Frobisher explained how she’d cleared Lily’s absence with the first floor supervisor, Mr Simmonds, when they’d need to leave and when they’d get back, but her mind was running ahead.

‘One aspect of running a department?’ Of running a department? Lily knew she wanted to progress and she knew Miss Frobisher thought she had it in her … but buying? Was her boss really implying she could see Lily going that far at Marlow’s?

Things really did happen in August – and they weren’t all bad, either!