Читать книгу There’s Always Tomorrow - Pam Weaver - Страница 15

‘You’re very quiet today, Dottie.’

Janet Cooper, Dottie’s Monday and Tuesday employer, gave her a concerned look as she filled the kettle for their afternoon break.

Dottie had been miles away. She couldn’t get the events of the previous weekend out of her mind. Worried about little Gary and upset by Reg’s revelations and rantings, she had gone about her work as quickly and as quietly as she could. She hadn’t stopped for her mid-morning break, neither had she stopped to eat the sandwich Janet had prepared for her as she closed the shop for the lunch hour. Dottie didn’t want to be drawn into a conversation in case she said something she might later regret. She was glad today was Monday and not Tuesday. Dottie helped in the shop on Tuesdays and it was easy to be drawn into long conversations between customers. Janet loved a little gossip. Starved of excitement in her own life, she thrived on the misfortunes of others and had a clever way of weeding juicy bits of gossip out of someone, no matter how reluctant the person might be to part with them. Had it been Tuesday, Dottie would have told her about their day in Littlehampton and little Gary’s illness and, before the day was over, it would have been all over the village. Fine if Peaches told friends and neighbours, but Dottie didn’t want people to hear it from her lips first.

Janet cut across her thoughts again. ‘I see Ellen Riley’s daughter is on the bottle again.’

Dottie gave her a quizzical look.

‘There was a definite bulge in her coat pocket when she came into the shop this morning,’ said Janet, clearly enjoying her tasty morsel of gossip. ‘Want a biscuit with your tea?’

Dottie shook her head and wished Janet a million miles away.

‘It’s the kids I feel sorry for,’ Janet went on. ‘If you can’t be a responsible parent, you shouldn’t have children, that’s what I say.’

Dottie switched off. Monday was the day she cleaned the Cooper house from top to bottom. Upstairs, she changed the beds, hoovered the rooms and dusted. Then she’d come down and spend the rest of the morning putting the dirty sheets in the washing machine. You had to stand over it when everything went through the wringer, but it was a great help and if the weather was kind she would end the day by ironing the same sheets she had changed in the morning.

With the washing on the line, the afternoon was spent cleaning and dusting downstairs. It was one of her heaviest days and yet with the weight of everything on her mind, she hardly noticed the time passing.

She’d been up early that morning. Reg was still in bed when she’d left for the Coopers. After another outburst about not seeing Gary the night before, she had poured him his usual cup of tea in the morning, but instead of making sure he was awake, she’d crept upstairs, being careful not to disturb him. She’d left the tea on the bedside table. He’d groaned and rolled over when she put the cup down and she’d panicked, but she stood very still and almost immediately he’d begun to snore again. Dottie hurried downstairs and out of the house. She didn’t want … couldn’t face talking to him again. Why did she always take him a cup of tea anyway? It had started when he first came home. He was ill then. He was fine now. Well, he could get his own tea from now on, she told herself defiantly.

All day long she’d gone over and over the things he’d said and she was surprised to realise that, for the first time in her whole life, she resented the idea of looking after someone else’s child. If Patsy was already eight, there was no way she could pretend the child was hers. What was she going to say to the people in the village? She hated the thought of everybody talking behind her back.

‘Of course, you know that poor Dot Cox can’t have any children.’

Dottie bristled at the thought of being an object of pity.

‘Can’t blame a man for wanting his own child, can you?’ they’d say.

And what about the child? When she had been conceived, she and Reg were already married. Everyone would know he’d been with another woman. War or no war, what sort of a man goes with another woman within a year of his marriage? What did that say about her? And what about the child herself? Poor little thing. She didn’t ask to be born, did she?

‘Dottie …’ Janet said.

Dottie frowned. She refused to feel sorry for the child. Why should she? But while she was ironing, she found herself wondering what she looked like. Reg had black hair but only out of a bottle to hide the grey. The woman in the picture was fair. She imagined Patsy all peaches and cream, a little Shirley Temple with pretty blonde curls, who smelled of talcum powder and Gibbs toothpaste. Dottie folded and shook a sheet viciously and banged the iron down on it. She had to stop doing this. She didn’t want her. She didn’t want Reg’s kid. She wanted her own child. And another thing, why should he rant and rave on like that, expecting her to like the idea? She’d be nothing more than an unpaid servant. She was his wife, for goodness’ sake. Why should she open her home to his … his bastard!

‘Dottie!’ Janet Cooper’s voice brought her abruptly back to the present. ‘You’ve ironed that sheet to death. Sugar in your tea?’

‘Er, no. I’m sorry,’ Dottie said. ‘I was miles away.’

‘So I see,’ smiled Janet. ‘Nothing serious, I hope?’

‘I was wondering …’ Dottie began hesitantly, ‘would it be possible for me to go early today?’

Janet Cooper looked at the clock. Normally her cleaner left at four. It was now ten to three. She frowned. Dottie didn’t usually ask favours but she’d have to be careful. Give these people an inch … the last thing she wanted was Dottie taking liberties.

‘I came in at eight instead of nine,’ Dottie pointed out, ‘and I haven’t taken any breaks.’

Janet hesitated. ‘Is it Reg?’ she asked.

Dottie chewed her bottom lip. She didn’t like telling lies but she could see by her face that Janet Cooper needed a good reason to let her go. ‘Yes.’

‘Oh my dear, why didn’t you say so? Of course you must go. We can’t do too much for those of our brave boys who came back. Yes, put the rest of that ironing away and off you go.’

Fifteen minutes later, Dottie, feeling somewhat ashamed and guilty, was hurrying to the next village. Durrington was easily a mile and a half away and she decided not to catch the bus that stopped outside the shops. She didn’t want anyone from the village telling Reg they’d seen her catching the bus. It was a bit of a rush, but she was fit and knew she could do it.

‘How was the trip to Littlehampton, Reg?’

Marney handed him a chipped enamel mug of tea. Reg was acting as ticket collector today, although there were few passengers on a weekday afternoon. He put the steaming mug to his lips and slurped in a mouthful of tea. ‘Not bad.’

‘Kids enjoy themselves?’

‘Reckon so.’

‘The wife wanted me to take her over for the torchlight procession and the fireworks,’ Marney went on, ‘but our Jean and her hubby came by. We all got chatting and then it was too late. Was it good?’

‘We were back before 8.30,’ said Reg. ‘Mary’s boy wasn’t looking too clever, so Peaches and Jack took him to the doc’s.’

‘Shame,’ said Marney. ‘All right now, is he?’

‘Suppose so,’ Reg shrugged.

‘A bit of a fuss about nothing, I expect,’ Marney observed. ‘It usually is where kids are concerned.’

Reg grunted.

‘Still,’ Marney ploughed on, ‘I expect Dottie enjoyed herself.’ Reg gave him a puzzled look. ‘Well, the girls like a bit of a get-together, don’t they? Have a bit of a chat and a laugh. It does them good.’

They could hear the 3.32 in the distance and Marney turned to go. The door of the ticket office clicked shut behind him, leaving Reg alone on the platform. He frowned. Another day out? Oh, no. Of one thing he was perfectly sure, he wasn’t going to be putting up with another day like that in a hurry. He only agreed to it to butter Dottie up. Well, enough was enough. From now on, Dottie would have to understand that her place was in the home, not gadding about with the likes of Peaches and that fat cow Mary.

As the 3.32 was pulling onto the platform of West Worthing station, Dottie was heading into the Isolation Hospital.

‘Visiting hours are 2 to 2.30,’ said the sister haughtily as Dottie arrived. The clock hanging on the wall behind her said a damning 3.25.

Her heart sank. ‘But I couldn’t possibly come then,’ she said. ‘Please let me see him. Just for a moment.’

‘I’m sorry, but it’s against the rules,’ said the sister. She began to walk away.

‘Sister, his mother isn’t able to come because she’s expecting,’ Dottie called after her. ‘She’s relying on me to help her out. I’ve been at work all day and I’ve had no meal breaks whatsoever in order to make sure I could get here to see Gary. Please. I can’t let his mother down.’

The sister pursed her lips and gave Dottie an irritated frown. ‘This is most irregular,’ she sighed. ‘The child has only just stopped crying. I’m not sure that a visit will be in his best interest.’

‘I would hate him to think we’ve abandoned him.’

The sister gave Dottie a long hard stare. ‘Very well.’

Dottie smiled with relief. ‘Thank you, Sister.’

‘But only five minutes and it mustn’t happen again.’

‘Of course. I understand,’ said Dottie. ‘How is he?’

‘He’s making progress,’ said the nurse. ‘Hopefully we can start his rehabilitation with the other children by the end of the week.’ She pointed down the ward. ‘He’s down there, next to the girl in the iron lung.’

Dottie hurried down the ward. In daylight, the ward seemed even gloomier than she’d remembered from the Saturday before. The dark green and cream paintwork was pretty cheerless and some of the tiles on the walls were cracked and chipped. But at least somebody had made an effort: although the curtains at the windows were dark blue and faded at the edges, the curtains on the screens that went around the beds had bright nursery rhyme pictures on them.

There seemed to be few toys. Of the children who were sitting up in bed, some were reading comics and others simply stared at her as she walked down the ward. One little girl standing at the end of her cot held her arms out as Dottie walked past.

Gary was as white as a ghost but he seemed more peaceful than before. He saw her coming and whimpered, ‘I want my mummy.’

His plaintive cry tore at Dottie’s heart. She touched his forehead and brushed back his damp hair. ‘I know, sweetheart, I know. Mummy can’t come today, so she sent me instead.’

Gary’s chin quivered.

Dottie reached into her bag and drew out two small bears wrapped in dark blue tissue paper. She had bought them the previous year when the whole country had been captivated by the story of Ivy and Brumas and early that morning she’d sneaked them out of their hiding place.

In 1949, Ivy, a polar bear at the London zoo, had surprised everyone by giving birth to a son, Brumas. The following Christmas, just about every child in the land had an Ivy and Brumas bear in their stocking. Dottie had bought a pair, and after wrapping them in tissue paper she had put them in Aunt Bessie’s wardrobe alongside Aunt Bessie’s cowboy hats and boots, and all the other things she couldn’t bear to throw away.

Dottie had always imagined that one day she would put the bears in the cot of her own baby but after what Reg said last Saturday, that day seemed too far away to matter. She realised that if Reg knew about them, he would make her give them to his child and she wasn’t prepared to do that. No, she’d sooner give them to someone more deserving and in the present circumstances, who could be more needy than Gary?

He watched her unwrap the bears. ‘Where’s my mummy?’ he whimpered again and a tear rolled down his cheek.

‘Mummy can’t come today,’ said Dottie gently as she put both bears on the bed. ‘But Mummy told me she misses you very much.’ She was willing her voice not to break. ‘So I’ll tell you what I’ll do.’ She fondled Gary’s hair again. ‘I’m going to give Brumas to you to cuddle and I’m going to put Ivy down here at the end of the bed.’

As Gary tried in vain to move his head in the direction of the bear, the full extent of his paralysis became a chilling reality. Dottie bit back her own tears.

‘Ivy loves Brumas very much,’ she went on, ‘just like your mummy loves you. She’ll be watching Brumas all the time, see?’

She placed the larger bear in his direct line of vision.

‘You look after Brumas and all the time you see Ivy watching him, you’ll know your mummy is thinking about you too.’

She lifted his limp arm and placed Brumas next to his body.

‘Is Ivy watching him?’

‘Yes,’ Gary whimpered.

‘See?’ said Dottie. ‘Ivy is watching Brumas so your mummy must be thinking about you.’

Gary looked up and gave her a weak smile.

‘Sister says it’s time to go,’ said a young nurse, coming up to them. ‘We have got to get all these children ready for bed.’

It was a ridiculous statement, but Dottie knew what she meant. She leaned forward to kiss Gary goodbye but the nurse held her shoulder. ‘No. Not too close.’

Dottie kissed her own fingers and touched Gary’s forehead. ‘I’ll come back as soon as I can, darling.’ The lump forming in her throat felt like it would choke her. She had to keep strong. She mustn’t let Gary see her cry. ‘Mummy will come along another day.’

She left him watching Ivy. ‘Thank you, Nurse,’ she said as they reached the door.

‘No,’ said the nurse, taking a furtive glance over her shoulder, ‘thank you. I’m sure he’ll be much happier now. That was a nice thing you did.’ And with a rustle of her starched apron, she was gone.

Dottie made her way outside, her whole body racked with sobs. As she stood in the bus shelter, she wiped her eyes and blew her nose. Poor little lamb. Just three years old and not allowed to see his mummy. It wasn’t fair. What was going to happen to him?

‘Dear Lord,’ she prayed through her tears, ‘don’t let him be paralysed all his life.’

The bus came and she got on. Thankfully she couldn’t see anyone she knew. As she looked out of the window, she allowed herself a small smile as she recalled Brumas under the sheet and Ivy watching him. She’d go round and tell Peaches all about it later this evening when Reg had gone to the pub. It wasn’t much but it would certainly put her friend’s mind at rest. Careful that she mustn’t do anything to let Reg know where she’d been, Dottie got off two stops before she needed and walked the rest of the way home. The fresh air gave her a chance to clear her head and to compose herself.