Читать книгу Follow Your Dream - Patricia Burns - Страница 6

LATE one January night in the bitterly cold winter of 1947, Lillian’s Aunty Eileen made a break for freedom.

Lillian woke up when Eileen crept out of the bed they were sharing. One side of her felt suddenly cold from the space her aunty had left, while the other was still warm where her older sister Wendy was curled up with her back against her. Moonlight was shining into the attic room through the crack between the threadbare curtains. It outlined her aunty as she pulled on two layers of clothes and carefully lowered the old suitcase from on top of the wardrobe.

‘What are you doing?’ Lillian whispered.

Eileen started. She caught her lip between her teeth as she stared at the little girl. Then she tiptoed over to the bed, bent and kissed Lillian on her chilly cheek.

‘I’m escaping, sweetie-pie,’ she breathed. ‘I’m going to follow my dream. I’m going to be happy! Don’t tell anyone, all right? Not a word. It’s our secret, just you and me.’

‘Can I come?’ Lillian asked.

Beside her, Wendy stirred. Eileen put a finger to her lips. They both held their breaths, willing Wendy to stay asleep. They both let out a sigh of relief when she turned and settled. Eileen smoothed back a lock of hair from Lillian’s forehead and kissed her again.

‘Bye-bye, my darling little Lindy-Lou. Not a word, remember! And listen, you make sure you follow your dream too, when the time comes. Don’t let them stop you.’

‘I won’t,’ Lillian breathed, though she hardly knew what she was promising.

Eileen propped a note up on the washstand and tied a scarf over her hair. Then, with her shoes tucked under her arm and the suitcase in her hand, she carefully turned the doorknob and slid out onto the landing. The door closed behind her with a creak from the carefully released handle, and she was gone.

Lillian lay for a long time, wondering what it was all about. Where had her aunty gone? How could you follow a dream? Dreams disappeared as soon as you woke up. Even she knew that, and she was only six-and-three-quarters. It didn’t make sense. Of one thing she was sure—there was going to be big trouble in the morning. Worrying about what Mum and Dad and, most of all, what Gran would say when they found out kept her awake for what seemed like half the night.

Yet at some time in the early hours she must have fallen asleep, for the next thing she knew was Wendy sitting up beside her and shaking her shoulder.

‘Where’s Aunty Eileen?’

Lillian looked at the space beside her in the lumpy double bed. Where was Aunty Eileen? Strange memories stirred. Aunty Eileen in her outdoor clothes. Aunty Eileen kissing her. But it was a dream. There was something about a dream.

‘Dunno,’ she said.

‘Oh, you! You never know anything. I s’pose she’s got up early. Go and get my undies.’

Lillian growled and pulled the blankets tight round her. She was lovely and warm in bed, and in the room it was freezing.

‘You get ’em.’

Wendy reached under the sheets and pinched her hard on the bottom. Lillian squealed and kicked backwards with her hard little heels, catching her sister on the shins.

‘Ow! Kick donkey! Go and get my undies, go on! And my shirt. Or I’ll tell Gran you kicked me.’

‘I’ll tell her you pinched me,’ Lillian countered.

But she knew it was useless. Wendy was three years older than her, three years bigger and stronger and far more than three years more ruthless. She always won the arguments in the end. Lillian slipped out of bed, scampered across the room to the chest of drawers, pulled two sets of vests, knickers and liberty bodices out of the left-hand top drawer and two blue cotton school shirts out of a lower one. Just as she was about to run back and shove the clothing under the sheets to warm up, another memory surfaced, of Aunty Eileen carrying a suitcase. She pulled open the right-hand top drawer, the one that belonged to her aunt. It was empty.

She caught her breath. At that moment, Wendy piped up, ‘What’s that on the washstand? Is it a letter?’

Lillian stared at the envelope. So it wasn’t a dream. Aunty Eileen had gone out in the middle of the night. She had kissed her and said goodbye. Fear, grief and a sense of betrayal began to churn inside her. Slowly, as if it might bite her, she reached out and picked it up, dropping the school shirts as she did so.

‘Give it here,’ Wendy demanded.

‘It ain’t for you,’ Lillian told her.

Oblivious now of the cold air that was bringing her arms and legs out in goosebumps, she stood gazing at the writing. It was Aunty Eileen’s all right. Just one word, in pencil, in her unmistakable sprawling hand. Mum.

‘Give it,’ Wendy repeated.

‘No.’

Lillian clutched it to her chest. This was her link with Aunty Eileen. Wendy was not going to have it. Her sister bounced out of bed and tried to snatch it from her. Lillian squealed and held on tighter. Wendy twisted at one corner. There was a rip and the cheap paper gave way. Both girls stood still, aghast.

‘Now you done it,’ Wendy said.

‘It wasn’t me, it was you! You shouldn’t of grabbed it.’

‘You should of let me have it.’

‘It’s for Gran,’ Lillian told her.

They both went silent, thinking of their grandmother’s wrath.

‘You better give it her, then,’ Wendy said.

‘No. You wanted it. You tore it. You give it to her.’

‘Finders keepers,’ Wendy said, taking her underclothes from Lillian and jumping back into bed with them. From the warmth of her cosy nest she added, ‘You better take that to Gran straight away. She’ll be cross if you don’t.’

The thought of facing Gran first thing in the morning with bad news, and bad news in a torn letter at that, made Lillian feel quite sick. Shaking now with nerves and cold, she opened the door of the dark oak wardrobe. All Aunty Eileen’s clothes were gone. All that was left was a faint smell of the scent she used.

Wendy started nagging at her again. Lillian pulled on her baggy navy knickers, tore off her nightie and pulled on her woollen vest as fast as possible, then struggled with the fiddly rubber buttons of her liberty bodice. Next came her school shirt, her gym slip, her cardigan and the knee length grey socks with elastic garters to stop them from falling down. Every single item had once been Wendy’s. Some of them had been Eileen’s before. She couldn’t remember ever having had a new piece of clothing.

‘Hair,’ Wendy said.

It would never do to appear before Gran with untidy hair. Lillian looked on the washstand. The hairbrush that she and Wendy shared with Aunty Eileen was gone. She picked up the comb, dragged it through her straight hair and shoved a couple of hairgrips in to hold back the side-parted curtain. Lillian had similar colouring to most of the family, who had hair ranging from fair to mousy and eyes of greyish blue. Wendy was the lucky exception. She had inherited her mother’s wavy blonde hair and clear blue eyes. Wendy was pretty and she knew it. She was her daddy’s darling. Lillian was just Lillian, the smallest and the skinniest.

At last there was nothing more she could do to delay the moment.

‘Go on,’ Wendy ordered.

Lillian stepped out onto the cramped landing. All the family except Gran slept on the attic floor, the girls in one room, the two boys in another and Mum and Dad in the third. She went down the steep narrow stairs to the second floor landing. This was reserved for the PGs—the paying guests. At this time of year there were no PGs at all, nor likely to be any, since nobody came to Southend in the winter except a few commercial travellers, but still Gran insisted that the family stayed in their cramped quarters.

‘You never know when someone might knock at the door. We don’t want to have to turn money away just because we haven’t got a room ready,’ she stated.

And because the house belonged to her, they all had to agree, even Lillian’s dad. The PGs’ bathroom, however, was not out of bounds. Lillian dodged in, used the toilet and gave her hands and face what her mother called a lick and a promise. It was far too cold to wash properly, but she didn’t dare appear before Gran without washing at all. That done, she went down the main staircase with its gloomy brown paint and narrow runner of threadbare carpet held in place by brass rods. They were stairs that Lillian knew intimately from having to clean them every day with a dustpan and stiff brush. Down she went again to the ground floor, where she hesitated in the hall. At the end of the long corridor with the step halfway along it was the kitchen. Her mum would be in there, stirring the porridge, cutting the bread, boiling the kettle for tea. But first she had to face Gran.

Biting her lip, Lillian knocked on the door of the front room, the room that was the best parlour in most houses, used only for funerals and Sunday visitors.

‘Come in,’ came a gruff voice from inside the room.

Lillian took a deep breath and opened the heavy brown-painted door. It was gloomy inside the room, even though the rust-coloured curtains had been drawn back. Heavy furniture, a black marble-effect fireplace, green and brown leaf-patterned wallpaper and a brown patterned carpet square with a fawn lino surround made it look wintry on the brightest of summer days. Now, on a grey January morning, it was downright depressing. Lillian saw little of the detail. What took all her attention was the woman sitting up in the iron-framed single bed by the wall opposite the bay window.

Whenever the teacher read fairy tales to Lillian’s class, the princess in the story always had Wendy’s face in Lillian’s imagination, while the wicked witch or the evil stepmother always looked just like her gran. The same tight steel-grey curls held in place, as Gran’s were now, with a hairnet, the same hard hands, the same piercing grey eyes and grim mouth.

At least Gran had been given her early morning cup of tea, Lillian noted with relief. And she had had her first cigarette of the day. There was a smell of fresh smoke in the room and a mangled fag end in the ashtray by her bed. All this was good. It meant that Gran would be more approachable. But still Lillian’s stomach churned with fear.

‘Well?’ Gran said. ‘What is it? What are you bothering me with at this hour of the morning?’

Lillian came into the room and shut the door behind her as she had been taught. There was a dark red chenille curtain hanging behind it to keep out the draughts. She stepped forward and stood by Gran’s bed, the letter clutched to her chest. Reluctantly, she held it out.

‘It’s for you. I’m sorry it’s torn. It was Wendy, she tried to take it from me, but I said no, it was for you, not for her.’

‘Don’t blame others for your crimes,’ Gran told her, taking it. She stared at it. ‘There’s no stamp, no address. Where d’you get this? Give me my glasses, girl.’

Lillian did as she was told. Gran settled the steel-framed spectacles on her nose and peered again at the pencilled writing.

‘“Mum”,’ she read out loud. ‘Who’s this from?’

‘Aunty Eileen,’ Lillian mumbled, looking down at her feet.

‘Eileen? What’s Eileen doing writing me letters? What’s all this about?’

Lillian didn’t dare suggest that she open it and find out. Instead, she just muttered, ‘Dunno,’ and kept her eyes downcast. Through her lashes, she saw Gran rip the envelope and take out a single sheet of cheap lined paper. The only sound was Gran’s laboured breathing as she took in contents. Then came the eruption.

‘What? Gone? How dare she—? What do you know about this? Where’s she gone? What did she tell you?’

Lillian shrank back. ‘N-nuffing,’ she stuttered. ‘I don’t know nuffing. Honest.’

Gran glared at her. ‘You must know something. You and her are thick as thieves. What did she say? When did she go?’

‘Last night. But she didn’t say nuffing to me,’ Lillian lied desperately.

‘You saw her go?’

‘No!’

‘Then how do you know she went last night?’

‘She—she—she wasn’t here this morning. Just that letter. She left that letter.’

‘Didn’t you hear anything? You must have. You share a bed.’

Lillian shook her head emphatically. It seemed less bad than actually telling a lie.

‘What about Wendy?’

‘She didn’t neither.’ That at least was the truth.

Still Gran’s eyes bored into Lillian’s. She could feel herself going red.

‘You know what happens to liars, don’t you?’

Lillian nodded. Liars’ tongues shrivelled up and dropped out. But she had promised Aunty Eileen not to tell.

Gran made a disbelieving sound in her throat. ‘There’s something you’re not telling me. Go and get your dad.’

Relieved to be let off the hook, if only for the moment, Lillian turned and trotted out of the room. Her father rarely had a kind word to say to her, but he wasn’t as frightening as her grandmother. She carefully closed the door behind her and went down the chilly passageway to the kitchen. There she found her mother at the sink and her father sitting at the table with a bowl of porridge in front of him, reading the Mirror.

‘Gran says you’re to come,’ she told him.

Her father sighed and turned slowly to look at her. ‘What?’ he said, as he always did, to gain time.

Lillian repeated her message. Her mother started drying her hands on her floral apron.

‘Oh, dear, what’s the matter? What does she want?’ she asked, nervous as a bird.

‘She wants you,’ Lillian told her father. She didn’t want to be accused of repeating the message incorrectly. She was in enough trouble already, covering for Aunty Eileen.

Doug Parker sighed again and stood up. He was a tall man, but already he had an apologetic stoop which made him look older than his years. His once handsome face was marred by lines of discontent and his right arm hung awkwardly, the result of a fight with his brother long ago in the butcher’s shop the family had once owned.

‘S’pose I better go,’ he said, as if he had some choice in the matter. They all knew he was just deceiving himself. In this household, when Gran said jump, you asked how high.

Lillian and her mum waited as he went down the passageway and into the front room. Neither of them suggested that Lillian might start eating her breakfast. They needed to know whether Gran would want them next. From the front room came Dad’s voice, raised in anger and dismay as he heard what his little sister had done.

‘Gone? Gone where?’

Nettie Parker flinched. ‘What is it?’ she whispered to Lillian. ‘What’s going on?’

‘Aunty Eileen’s gone,’ Lillian told her.

‘Oh, my Gawd!’

Nettie put her two hands to her thin cheeks. ‘Now we’re for it,’ she predicted. ‘Eileen! The silly girl. How could she do this to us?’ She pulled out a chair with a shaking hand and sat down. ‘What are we going to do?’ she asked. ‘Your gran’ll go mad. It’s terrible, terrible.’

Before Lillian could work out whether she was supposed to answer this, her father put his head round the front room door and yelled for her to come back in. Reluctantly, Lillian obeyed. As she walked back towards Gran’s room, she saw Wendy sitting on the stairs grinning at her through the rails. She put her tongue out at Lillian as she passed. Lillian did the same back. At that moment her two big brothers, Bob and Frank, came clattering down the stairs.

‘What’s up?’ Frank hissed. ‘What’s going on?’

Aunty Eileen’s done a bunk,’ Wendy said, her blue eyes as big as saucers with the excitement of it all.

Frank whistled and sat down beside her. ‘She ain’t? What, done a midnight flit?’

Wendy nodded. ‘She’s taken everything, even the hairbrush. She just left a letter for Gran.’

‘Wow!’ Frank was fond of American expressions. ‘She’s got a nerve, ain’t she? You got to hand it to her.’

‘She’s a very silly young woman, if you ask me,’ Bob said from his lordly position of oldest son and the accepted clever one of the family.

‘Nobody did ask you,’ Frank told him.

Their father’s head appeared round the door again. ‘Lilli—! Oh, there you are. Come in here when you’re told, girl.’ He caught sight of Wendy and his voice softened. ‘And you better come as well. She can’t of gone without either of you hearing nothing.’

This time it was Wendy’s turn to look alarmed and Lillian’s to make a face before both of them lined up by Gran’s bed. It was easier with Wendy there, as she vehemently denied knowing anything and Lillian just stood beside her, agreeing with everything she said. But Gran still had her suspicions.

‘You and her, you was like blooming Siamese twins,’ she said to Lillian. ‘I can’t believe she’d go and not say nothing to you, whatever she might do to the rest of us, the ungrateful little madam. Walking out in the middle of the night like that! I never knew the like—’

Gran went off on a long tirade. The two girls stood silent, knowing better than to make any comment. Their father nodded and agreed with everything. But eventually Gran came back to her original point.

‘So come on, what did she tell you?’

Lillian shook her head. Despite her concern not to give anything away, the full impact of what had happened was finally getting through to her. Aunty Eileen had been more like a mother to her than her real mum, who was worn down with housework and miscarriages and trying to please everyone. Aunty Eileen had always stuck up for her and put her first. Out of nowhere, tears welled up and spilled over.

‘I don’t want her to go!’ she wailed. ‘I want her to come back!’

Try as they might, her father and grandmother could get nothing more out of her. A sharp smack round the ear from her father only made her cry harder.

‘Get her out. I can’t hear myself think with all this racket going on,’ Gran ordered. ‘You get off to work early, Douglas, and on your way ask at Madame Pauline’s if they know anything. She must of told them; she can’t just walk out of a decent job. And, if they don’t, there’s only one thing for it—we’ll have to go to the police.’

Lillian found herself pushed out into the hallway again, where Frank and Bob grabbed her and demanded to know what was going on.

‘The police!’ Bob said. ‘Gran’s never going to ask them to come here, is she? She’d never do that. It’d give the neighbours a field day.’

‘You’re such an old woman,’ Frank scoffed. ‘But come on, Lill, spill it. Where has Eileen gone?’

He loomed over her, his pale face gleaming with the excitement of it all. Nothing as dramatic as this had happened in their family in their lifetimes.

Lillian stamped her foot with frustration. ‘I don’t know! I don’t know! She’s just gone. She went in the middle of the night—’

She was saved by her father putting his head round the door.

‘Clear off into the kitchen, you lot. Your gran don’t want all this row outside her door. Go on, get!’

It was the beginning of a difficult time. The police were sympathetic but, with nothing to work on, they were unable to do more than suggest that the family get in touch with the Salvation Army. Gran continued to rant and rave about the situation, but all her bad temper couldn’t bring back the daughter who had escaped her heavy rule. Gradually, they all came to realise that Eileen really had gone for good.

Her absence was felt by all the family, though to different degrees. One fewer wage coming in made a difference to all of them, so did one fewer ration book. Mum missed a strong pair of hands to help with the many chores involved in running a guest house. Wendy missed having her blonde curls tamed into cute ringlets. They all missed Eileen’s cheerfulness. Her stories of difficult customers at the hairdresser’s where she worked had livened up the tea table no end.

But Lillian felt it most of all. She had lost her friend, her ally, her source of love and security. There was nobody now to give her a big hug and ask how her day at school had been, nobody to take her on their knee and tell her how sweet she was, nobody to stop the others from treating her as a general dogsbody. Lonely and miserable, Lillian would creep inside the wardrobe and breathe deeply through her nose, taking comfort from the lingering remnants of Evening In Paris. But there came a day when even that had gone, and Aunty Eileen with her ready laugh and her unquestioning love seemed to have disappeared from her life for ever.