A Family Affair Page 34

  ‘What is it?’ Carrie called. ‘If it’s those carol singers again, tell them I haven’t got any more change.’

  ‘No, it’s the post. For me.’

  ‘The post? This time of the afternoon?’ Carrie came into the living room wiping her hands on her apron. ‘What is it?’

  ‘It’s for me,’ Jenny repeated.

  She tugged at the sticky tape with eager fingers and opened the box.

  Inside was the most beautiful card she had ever seen – rabbits and robins and a huge padded red satin heart in the middle of which sat a brooch made of imitation pearls and bits of diamanté. To The One I Love was the inscription.

  ‘Oh!’ Jenny said.

  ‘Well!’ Carrie said, looking over her shoulder. ‘Well!’

  She sounded a bit cross, Jenny thought, but she didn’t care. She took the brooch off the card and pinned it to her jumper. It looked a bit odd, sitting there on the dark grey wool, but she didn’t care about that either.

  Like the cup, she knew this was something she would treasure all her life.

  ‘Well, I don’t know, this is a treat and no mistake!’ Charlotte said.

  She was installed in the fireside corner of the living room of her old home, and Helen, gratified, thought she had seldom seen her looking happier.

  The furniture was different, of course – her own had been sold with the house and Helen had put in a modern cottage suite. But she had managed to find a wing chair in a second-hand shop that was very like the one that had been Charlotte’s favourite, and it was in that she now sat, beaming at the family who had congregated to spend Christmas Day in their old family home.

  Jack and Stella had come up from Minehead and were staying in Helen’s room whilst she had moved temporarily into the small spare room, sleeping on the camp bed that was the only piece of furniture it could yet boast. Charlotte was in the second bedroom and the others had all arrived during the afternoon – Amy and Ralph, who had driven over to collect Dolly en route, Barbara and Huw and their children Hope and Neil, Maureen and a young man she had met at college and brought home for Christmas. There would be another wedding in the family before long if she wasn’t very much mistake, Helen thought, and permitted herself a wry smile. Most of her cousins were younger than she was and they were all beating her to the altar!

  I must seem like a confirmed spinster to them! Helen thought.

  ‘You’re not having any of your own friends here on Christmas Day, then,’ her mother had said, and Helen had known what lay behind the apparently casual remark.

  ‘I know what you’re getting at, Mum,’ she had said. ‘You’re asking me if you can buy yourself a new hat – and the answer is no. I’m afraid you’ll have to wait a bit longer.’

  ‘I’m not asking anything of the sort!’ Stella had said hastily but the flush of colour in her cheeks gave the lie to the denial.

  Perhaps, Helen thought, it was just as well Guy had opted out. She had invited him, feeling duty-bound to do so since if he had left Marian he would be likely to be spending Christmas alone, though even as she issued the invitation she had been concerned she might be giving him – and her family – the wrong idea. Though she had been seeing him fairly regularly she was still sticking by what she had told him – that she didn’t want to rush into anything and find herself back in the same position as before. But it wasn’t easy; already she had felt herself being drawn in, the web that was spun as much from her own emotions as anything Guy did or said ensnaring her insidiously but relentlessly.

  And in fact, though she had had her reservations about inviting him, she had actually been a little hurt when he had refused.

  ‘You’ll have a houseful with all your family there,’ he had said. ‘Don’t worry about me.’

  Perversely her first reaction had been: He doesn’t want them to get the idea we’re a couple either.

  ‘You can’t spent Christmas on your own,’ she had said.

  ‘I don’t suppose I’ll be on my own,’ he had replied. ‘Anyway, by the time I’ve gone in to the hospital, dressed up as Father Christmas and distributed a few presents, the day will be gone.’

  She’d laughed, shaking her head. Guy dressed up as Father Christmas, touring the wards, was so out of character as to be almost unimaginable. But it was a tradition; she should be used to it by now.

  ‘We’ll have our own Christmas when they’re all gone home again,’ he said. ‘I’ll arrange to take a few days off and …’

  ‘We won’t actually be able to be on our own here, Guy.’

  He frowned. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I’m having Grandma with me whilst my aunt Dolly has a hysterectomy. I’m hoping she’ll go on living with me afterwards.’

  His frown deepened. ‘To live with you?’

  ‘Yes. This used to be her house. I told you. I know she’d like nothing better than to see her days out here. And Aunt Dolly will be in no fit state to look after her for some time.’

  ‘Surely though …’ There must be someone else who could look after her, he had been going to say, and she knew it.

  ‘I want her here, Guy.’

  ‘Oh well … if you want her …’

  She didn’t like his tone; couldn’t help comparing his attitude to Paul’s. And she could read him like a book; having a grandmother living with her would put paid to any ideas he might have had about moving in with her himself for the odd night. Grandmothers were likely to have old-fashioned ideas about extra-marital cohabitation.

  Today, however, Helen was not going to let such petty annoyances as Guy’s selfishness spoil things for her. It was Christmas, the family were all together in Greenslade Terrace. And Helen was determined that she and they were going to enjoy every moment of it.

  Billy Edgell had not had a good Christmas. In fact, he thought, it had been his worst ever.

  Christmas to Billy usually meant getting roaring drunk – one year he had fallen down in the middle of the road on his way home from the pub and had to be taken home in a passing police car. He was never sure whether it had been the spirit of goodwill to all men which had entered the policeman and made him decide on this course of action rather than taking him to the police station and locking him up in a cell for the night or whether his primary motive had been avoiding all the ensuing paperwork so as to get off duty in time to see his children open their Christmas stockings. Whichever, Billy had spent the night in his own home – albeit on the front-room floor because his legs refused to carry him up the stairs, and his hangover had lifted enough the next day for him to be able to enjoy his mother’s Christmas dinner.

  This year he had not been so lucky. This year he had spent the night in a cell, locked in at lights out by a warder with a big jangling bunch of keys and with no opportunity whatsoever to partake of the Christmas spirit.

  Billy had been found guilty two months earlier of being involved in a warehouse robbery. A large quantity of stolen cigarettes and bottles of whisky had been found stashed away in his mother’s outhouse and Billy had been sentenced to a spell in prison.

  It wasn’t the first time he’d been inside. He’d served a couple of spells in youth custody, first at an approved school and later in Borstal, which hadn’t been much fun either. He didn’t mind the long runs across muddy fields in the rain, but he did object strongly to having his hair, of which he was very proud, cropped short to his neck, and he loathed the discipline. But at least he’d never had to spend a Christmas there and now he was kicking himself, not for breaking into the warehouse, but for being stupid enough to get caught – again. It wasn’t as if he’d been attempting the Great Train Robbery, for God’s sake, just a poxy warehouse. And he couldn’t even get away with that.

  They knew him, the police, that was the trouble. As soon as there was any job done locally they were there on his back. He’d never be able to get away with a bit of honest thieving as long as he lived in Hillsbridge. He’d have to branch out into the world outside, somewhere he wasn’t known. Trouble
was, his mother made it too comfortable for him at home. Food on the table, his underwear washed – when he remembered to change it – and no questions asked.

  Billy shifted on his bunk, tossed aside the girlie magazine he had been ogling, and reached for the supply of chewing gum he kept there, hidden away from the thieving hands of other inmates.

  ‘What a way to spend Christmas!’

  ‘Could be worse,’ came the voice from the bunk below.

  ‘Oh yeah? How?’

  ‘You could be on the streets. At least you get a Christmas dinner in here.’

  ‘You been on the streets?’ Billy asked.

  ‘Was last year.’

  ‘Why was that?’

  ‘My old lady’s new boyfriend and me didn’t get on. This has to beat a shop doorway in Broadmead.’

  ‘S’pose so,’ Billy acknowledged grudgingly. ‘You come from Bristol, then?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘I come from Hillsbridge.’

  ‘That’s over Bath way, isn’t it?’

  ‘Well – sort of.’

  It was the first conversation Billy had had with his new cell mate. His previous mucker had been released for Christmas and all he knew about the new arrival was that his name was Dallimore – Sean on his birth certificate, Ticker to his friends.

  ‘That’s where the coal mines are, right?’ Ticker said.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘There used to be coal mines round Bristol, too. Fishponds way, I think. Long time ago, though.’

  Billy didn’t bother to reply. To him, coal mines were a way of life and hardly worthy of comment. He picked up his magazine again, flipping a page and ogling the model pictured there.

  ‘I knew a girl went to live over your way,’ Ticker offered. ‘Went to school with her. Heather, her name was. Can’t remember her other name. Don’t s’pose you know her, anyway.’

  ‘Might do.’

  ‘She’d be older than you. She’s my age.’ He paused, thinking. ‘Simmons – that was it. Heather Simmons.’

  Billy looked up from his magazine.

  ‘Heather Simmons – I know her.’

  ‘Never.’

  ‘Yeah. Her parents used to live across the road from us. Still do. She got married. To a Pole.’

  ‘Well, bugger me! Small world, in’t it?’

  They both considered this.

  ‘She was a bit of all right,’ Ticker said after a moment or two. ‘Tits that came round the corner half an hour before she did and legs up to her armpits. She put it about a bit, though. They reckon she was knocked up when she left. That’s what her mates said, anyway. The story was her family had gone to get out of the way of the bombing, but her mates reckoned that was only the half of it.’

  ‘She was in the club, you mean?’ Billy asked.

  ‘That’s what was going round at the time. One or two of the boys in our class were sweating, I can tell you, but nothing ever came of it. Her mother wanted to keep it quiet, I s’pose. They were like that. Toffee-nosed. Fancied themselves.’

  ‘Well, I’ll be buggered!’ Billy said, a grin spreading from ear to ear. He had nothing against Heather – scarcely knew her really – but he’d never forgotten the way Jenny had given him the brush-off, and he’d always disliked Carrie. When he’d been younger she’d been forever shouting at him and he could still remember the night he’d peed over her garden wall in revenge and she’d looked out of the window and seen him doing it. He could remember the hiding he’d had off his mother too after Carrie had come over and knocked on the door to complain about it. Joyce had given her an earful, but after she’d gone he’d been for it!

  Carrie didn’t shout at him any more, but she wouldn’t acknowledge him either. If he passed by on the pavement she’d look straight through him and the expression on her face was as if she’d smelled a bad smell. Now it was gratifying to find out that for all her airs and graces she was no better than anybody else. Her daughter in the club when she was still at school! That was a good one!

  ‘Often wondered what became of her,’ Ticker said. ‘Heather, I mean. What she did about the nipper an’that. P’raps she got rid of it.’

  ‘Well, there was certainly no kid when she lived opposite us,’ Billy said. ‘Just her and her brother and sister. She’s got one now, I think, with her husband – the Pole. Though now you come to mention it …’ he paused, wrinkling up his puggy nose as he tried to remember something which had been of no interest at all to him at the time, ‘… there was some talk then that she had to get married.’

  ‘I wouldn’t be surprised,’ Ticker said. ‘If she was at it when she was fourteen or fifteen … Can I have a borrow of your magazine if you’ve finished with it?’

  ‘I haven’t,’ Billy said, but he handed it over anyway. Then he lay back on his bunk with his hands above his head, staring at the ceiling and thinking about what Ticker had said.

  ‘Are you all right, Jenny?’ Carrie asked. ‘You’re not eating your dinner.’

  ‘I am!’

  ‘Well, you don’t look as though you’re enjoying it. It’s a lovely bit of cockerel, too. You’d better make the most of it, we shan’t be having another one’til next year.’

  ‘She does look a bit peaky,’ Glad said.

  They were all sitting around the table in Glad’s home, tucking into their Christmas meal. All except David, who, meeting his mother’s concerns halfway, had booked himself into a bed and breakfast in the wilds of Dartmoor.

  ‘I’m fine,’ Jenny said, but truth to tell she wasn’t. She didn’t feel very well, though she couldn’t exactly put her finger on what was wrong. There was a strange hollow niggle in the pit of her stomach and she felt vaguely … not nauseous, exactly, that was too strong a word for it … well, just odd in a way she couldn’t remember feeling odd before.

  ‘She’s in love,’ Steve said, teasing her from across the table. ‘That’s what it is.’

  Carrie snorted, Jenny blushed and Heather smiled at her conspiratorially.

  ‘You don’t want to be thinking about that sort of thing yet!’ Glad said. ‘Not at your age!’

  ‘I’m sixteen, Gran.’

  ‘Sixteen!’ Glad shook her head. ‘I wish I was sixteen again!’

  ‘Sweet sixteen and never been kissed!’ Steve said, still teasing.

  Jenny’s blush deepened.

  ‘Leave her alone, Steve,’ Heather warned. ‘You’re embarrassing her. No wonder she’s not enjoying her dinner, with you sitting there making fun.’

  ‘She doesn’t mind, do you, Jenny? What’s mistletoe for, I’d like to know?’

  ‘Don’t take any notice of him, m’dear,’ Joe said, shaking yet another spoonful of salt over his meal. ‘You eat up and enjoy your dinner. Brussels and potatoes out of my own garden … what could be better?’

  Having Bryn here, Jenny thought. But she said nothing. And however much she tried, the meal wouldn’t go down the way it should.

  Chapter Seventeen

  As always, after the bright oases of Christmas and New Year were over, it seemed that winter would last for ever. According to the calendar, the days should be gradually lengthening; instead they seemed shorter, for sometimes the light was no better than dusk from daybreak to nightfall. Drizzle and sleet fell from a leaden sky, the wind howled in the trees and the headgear of the pits, and the fields and hedges were barren and brown. Last year’s dead leaves lay in sodden drifts in corners and alleys and the smoke from the chimneys hung in a hazy cloud over the ranks of houses on the hillsides.

  At the surgery the queues grew ever-longer as rheumatics and persistent chest infections joined the ranks of colds and influenza. Helen, rushed off her feet, had little time to worry about her strained relations with Paul, and less to spend with Guy. He was also busy as the hospital was full to overflowing and for that, at least, she was grateful. It gave her the breathing space she needed to try to sort out her feelings, though by the time she fell into bed at night she was usually too exhausted to think of an
ything but falling asleep and hoping that she would not be woken by the telephone for an urgent night visit.

  During those dark and miserable weeks the telephone interrupting her sleep was an all too frequent occurrence. Sometimes she became aware of it as part of a dream, sometimes she reached to switch off her alarm before realising it was not the clock at all but the telephone, sometimes she even came to wondering where she was, so exhausted and disorientated was she.

  Perhaps it was just as well that Charlotte had not as yet moved in, she thought, shivering uncontrollably as she struggled into her clothes. Dolly’s hysterectomy had been postponed due to pressure on hospital beds and she had insisted Charlotte should stay with her until she went into hospital. Helen had felt frustrated by the delay – who knew whether Charlotte would be one of those to succumb to the unrelenting winter weather? – but in the bitter small hours she was forced to concede that at least with Dolly her grandmother was getting an undisturbed night’s sleep. And quite honestly she herself was better off without the added pressure of having to look after her.

  One morning in early February Helen was still wading through a procession of patients who had been well enough to come to the surgery when the telephone on her desk rang. She reached for it, slightly surprised. Because of the pressure of work, Dorothea Hillman was fielding all calls; she never put one through when the doctor was with a patient unless it was something that could not wait.

  Dorothea herself was on the other end of the line.

  ‘I’m very sorry to interrupt you, Doctor, but I’ve just had a call from Charlie Gregory, the Co-op baker’s roundsman. He’s just called on Ida Lockyear and found her collapsed.’

  Helen experienced a twist of foreboding.

  ‘Has he called the ambulance?’

  ‘I don’t think so. He was ringing from the cottage next door and called us first. I’ve said I’ll get the ambulance, but from what he says I think it may be too late for that. I thought you should know, Doctor.’