by Nancy Revell
‘Thank you. Much appreciated.’ Denise’s heart sank. She knew what she was doing was wrong, that it would have repercussions and that the consequences of her meddling would not be good – not for Dr Parker or Miss Crawford, anyway. Still, it would put her in Dr Eris’s debt – she would owe Denise a favour. Another introduction to an eligible bachelor from the Ryhope. An introduction that she was determined would lead to a ring on her finger, a walk down the aisle and a bun in the oven. She didn’t particularly care if it was in that order. But it had to happen soon, before she was well and truly stuck on the shelf, dried up and destined to a lonely life of spinsterhood.
Chapter Forty-Three
Bobby had seen Toby turn up and had watched as he and the rest of the women welders had trooped off to the canteen. Toby’s arrival in his officer’s uniform had caught everyone’s eye and when Bobby had seen him, he’d felt his heart lurch. Had he come to propose to Dorothy? The relief he’d felt when he saw Toby going straight over to Rosie had made him feel like sitting down, his energy suddenly drained. He really did have it bad.
He’d watched Dorothy and Toby exchange looks, but it was clear that Toby’s visit to the yard was to see Rosie. Instinct told him it wasn’t bad news. Toby had looked too chirpy. Besides, it wasn’t as though Peter could die twice. Rosie had received the worst news imaginable – anything that Toby had come to tell her would pale into insignificance.
Bobby had worked on, keeping half an eye on the canteen. When he saw Rosie emerge and head over to the admin buildings, she’d looked in a daze, albeit a happy one. He hadn’t seen her smile once since she’d been made a widow. Had the War Office got it wrong and was Peter alive? It wouldn’t be the first time a woman had thought her husband was dead only for him to turn up on her doorstep.
Bobby continued to watch the canteen and had seen Toby leave on his own, which had raised his spirits. He hadn’t left with Dorothy. Rosie had reappeared from admin and hurried out of the main gates. He’d then seen a snatch of Toby’s black Austin 8 drive up the embankment.
A few minutes later he’d seen Polly, Hannah and Martha leave, followed by Dorothy and Angie. His mam must have stayed behind. He’d wanted to go after Dorothy but stopped himself. There was something he had to do first.
Tapping Jimmy on the shoulder, he shouted in his ear, asking permission to take a break. Jimmy nodded. Bobby had more than earned it. On top of which, the success of D-Day was making even the hardest of taskmasters soften. Jimmy grabbed Bobby by the arm and shouted into his good ear that he could take the rest of the afternoon off if he wanted to. Bobby mouthed, ‘Thanks.’
Hurrying over to the canteen, he suddenly realised he couldn’t get there quickly enough. He’d been a fool to leave it this long. Peter’s death had been playing heavily on his mind, not because it was Peter who had been killed, but because it was a harsh reminder that life really was short. It was too precious to waste on resentments.
Opening the door, he looked around. There was just a smattering of workers dotted about. He could hear the clatter of dishes coming from the kitchen and was glad there was no one at the counter. He didn’t want to have to deal with any small talk or quizzing from Muriel. Striding over to Gloria, who was sitting at the table on her own, sipping a cup of tea, he couldn’t help noticing that she seemed lost in her own world. As boys, he and Gordon used to come back home and find their mam looking just as she did now – drinking tea, oblivious to everything around her, immersed in her own thoughts.
Gloria didn’t realise Bobby was there until he pulled out the chair next to her and sat down.
‘Bobby!’ she said, surprised, snapping herself back into the present. ‘Is everything all right?’ She suddenly felt panicked. Bobby never came to see her at work. Never came to see her at all unless it was on a Friday evening, and that was only to see Hope – and Dorothy.
‘Is Gordon all right?’ Suddenly, Gloria felt terrified that something had happened to her other son. Peter’s coming back from the dead might somehow be at the expense of someone else’s happiness. She knew it was insane to think that, but still she couldn’t help it.
‘No, Gordon’s fine,’ Bobby said.
‘Thank God.’ Gloria breathed a sigh of relief.
‘You never have to worry about Gordon, Mam,’ he reassured. ‘He’s a born survivor.’
‘Do yer want a cuppa?’ Gloria asked.
Bobby shook his head. ‘No, Mam, I just want to talk to you.’
Gloria caught Muriel’s eye. She shook her head to show that they didn’t want anything.
Bobby leant forward with his hands clasped on the table.
‘I’m sorry I’ve been this way, Mam. You know – distant …’ His voice trailed off.
Gloria nodded but didn’t say anything. She knew words didn’t come easily to Bobby.
‘I couldn’t help it. I tried to talk myself round … tried to force myself to be nice to you, to be loving and kind and all the things Dorothy has repeatedly told me I need to be.’ He laughed. ‘I have even tried just to please her.’ Dorothy’s serious face sprang to mind. ‘But I just wasn’t able to. I’m sorry, Mam.’
Gloria shook her head and put her hand on his arm to show he didn’t have to be sorry, but she remained quiet.
‘I was shocked when I came back and found out that you’d not only left Dad but you’d divorced him too – never mind set up home with some other bloke and had a daughter together who you hadn’t bothered to tell me and Gordon about.’
Gloria opened her mouth to defend herself but stopped. She needed to let her son speak.
‘I wasn’t angry, like Dorothy thinks I was, because you were a divorcee, living in sin and with a baby out of wedlock.’ Bobby looked into his mother’s sad brown eyes. ‘But I think you’ve known that deep down. I don’t care about things like that.’
Gloria nodded. Both her boys had never judged others, or been prejudiced in any way. It was something she’d always been so proud of.
‘But when I saw you with Jack and Hope, I felt angry towards you,’ Bobby said. ‘And I feel a bit ashamed to admit why it was I was so angry …’
‘You felt resentment,’ Gloria said finally. She had known it all along, but there was nothing she could do. She couldn’t change the past, no matter how much she wanted to.
‘Yes.’ Bobby was surprised at her insight. ‘I feel embarrassed saying this as a grown man, but I was angry with you because Gordon and I begged you to leave Dad so many times, and you promised so many times that you would leave him and you never did.’
Bobby rubbed his hand across the top of his head. ‘He used you as his punchbag, Mam – verbally and physically.’ He was going to add and sexually as well, but he didn’t. It would not be proper, although he was under no illusion that his father had used his mother for his own gratification whenever the mood had taken him.
‘And then we go off to sea and you meet someone else and not only leave Dad, but you divorce him to boot. Why couldn’t you have done that when Gordon and I were at home – when we were young?’ Bobby took a deep breath. ‘I can still see it all now, as clear as day – still feel the tension in that house. The fear, the nights me and Gordon lay awake, dreading him coming back from the pub, dreading him kicking off because his supper hadn’t been kept hot, or it had dried out, or, God forbid, hadn’t been made.’ Bobby shook his head as the memories flooded back.
Gloria leant forward, wanting to take her son’s clenched hand, but held back.
‘I stayed because he promised he would change.’ Gloria’s voice was a monotone; her words were not a defence, merely a statement of facts.
‘But he never did,’ Bobby said.
‘I just kept hoping – pathetic, I know,’ Gloria said. ‘He kept saying he wanted to change, but I know now that he didn’t – not really.’
‘He only said it so that you wouldn’t leave,’ Bobby said. He had understood that as a child, so why hadn’t his mother?
‘It’s only now,’ she said, her
voice more animated, ‘it’s taken me this long to realise how stupid I was back then.’ She sighed, again wishing she could change the past. Not for her own sake, but for the sake of her boys. ‘How stupid was I to keep believing him.’ She exhaled. ‘I’m so sorry I put you and Gordon through all of that.’ Gloria looked at her son and felt the most terrible guilt. Guilt she had kept buried deep inside herself for years. But her son’s words had cut deep. Tears started to fill her eyes. Her whole life had been blighted by her one decision to marry Vinnie. She hated him, but she hated herself more because she had stayed with him.
Bobby looked at his mam and saw how the light in her being was dimming at the remembrance of that time.
‘Bobby, I am so sorry. I could sit here and tell yer that I had no idea yer felt like that, but that would be a lie, because deep down I’ve always known. I should have simply packed our bags ’n left, but I didn’t. When yer both joined the navy, I felt such relief that yer had both done what I couldn’t do. Yer’d left ’n I admired yer both for it – and I still do.’
Bobby gave Gloria a sad smile. ‘It was the broken china that made my mind up.’
Gloria had to stop herself from bursting out crying. She’d never forget that day. Vinnie had come back home in a foul mood. He wasn’t even drunk, but he’d let rip and smashed up all the crockery.
‘The funny thing is,’ Bobby said, ‘I don’t think he actually hit you that time, but for some reason all this terrible anger just rose up in me. It scared me because I didn’t feel in control of it – all I could think of was going downstairs, opening the kitchen drawer, getting out the sharpest knife I could find and stabbing him to death.’ Darkness clouded Bobby’s expression. ‘And that’s when I knew I had to go – and if I was going, Gordon was coming with me.’
A lone tear had escaped and was trickling down Gloria’s cheek. ‘If I’m honest, I was scared,’ she said. ‘Scared of him. Scared of what would happen if I did leave. Ashamed because I didn’t have the strength to say no and leave him. I just went round and round in circles. For fifteen years. And believe me – ’ she looked at her son ‘ – there’s not a day goes by that I don’t regret that.’
Bobby looked at his mam. If he had any residue of anger or resentment, his mother’s words had dissolved it all. And for the first time in a long, long while he felt unburdened. Free of the hold of the past. Free of the anger and resentment that had always been there, but which had marched to the fore since his return and clung to him.
‘But I want yer to know one thing,’ Gloria said. ‘I didn’t leave Vinnie because of Jack.’ She paused. ‘I wanted to be with Jack, of course, but the actual moment I decided to finally get shot of Vinnie for good was when he punched me while I was pregnant with Hope.’
Gloria stopped for a moment and took a breath. It was a part of her history it pained her to recall.
‘Vinnie had no idea I was pregnant; it was just another punch to let off steam because he wasn’t getting his own way.’ She paused. ‘But when I got him out of the house and bolted the door, I was filled with the most terrible dread that he had killed the life growing inside of me – my baby … I had not protected you and Gordon from that man who was your father – I was not going to fail again. That was when I went to the solicitors, took all the money I had saved’ – Gloria had a flash of herself sitting in the musty-smelling office on John Street and opening up her bag in which she had stashed every penny she had – ‘and told the solicitor that I wanted that man out of my life and I had the money to pay for it.’
Bobby sat up. He hadn’t known anything about this. Dorothy’s lectures had missed this part out.
‘For a divorce?’ Bobby asked.
Gloria shook her head. ‘Not to start with. At first, the solicitor drafted out a letter that threatened Vinnie and said that if he laid another hand on me he would file charges against him on my behalf. And then he got started on the divorce.’
Bobby looked at his mam and understood. For whatever reason, Gloria hadn’t been able to leave their dad when they were young, but she’d done it for Hope. And for the first time he felt proud of his mam. Proud of her true grit and her determination.
‘Which is why you needn’t have worried about Jack being another Vinnie,’ Gloria said. It had broken her heart when she’d realised this was the reason Bobby was a regular visitor to the house, why he wanted to spend time with Hope – to make sure neither his mam nor his sister were being hurt in any way. She had wanted to tell him that there was no way she was going to make the same mistake twice.
‘You knew that was why I was coming round?’ Bobby asked.
Gloria nodded. ‘And why you got a job at Thompson’s – rather than at Bartram’s, where yer did your apprenticeship. Yer got to check on me here ’n on Jack working next door at Crown’s.’
They were quiet for a moment.
‘I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone say a bad word about Jack,’ Bobby admitted. ‘You look like you’ve got yourself a decent bloke there.’
‘I have,’ Gloria said.
Bobby half laughed. ‘There might have been another reason I got a job at Thompson’s.’
Gloria looked at Bobby and, seeing the look of love on his face, smiled.
‘Dorothy,’ she said simply.
Bobby nodded, a lopsided, almost sheepish expression on his face. He guessed she’d known how he felt from the off.
‘Well, now we’ve put the world to rights,’ Gloria said, ‘will you please go and put that poor girl out of her misery and tell her yer’ve done as she’s been mithering on at yer to do since yer first tipped up here, and have forgiven yer auld ma.’
Gloria could feel the tears starting and forced them back. She leant forward and put her arms around her son – her broad, handsome, stubborn, brave boy – and hugged him hard.
‘Tell her we’re gonna be happy families now, or as happy as real families in the real world get, outside of the ones they like to have acted out in all them films she’s so keen on dragging us to see.’
Bobby bear-hugged his mam back.
‘We just need to get our Gordon home now,’ Gloria said, her voice muffled against her son’s dirty overalls. ‘Then we really will be a proper family.’
‘We will, Mam,’ Bobby said, letting go. ‘We’ll get him back.’
Gloria swallowed her tears. She could let them all out once he was gone.
‘Go on, get yerself off.’
‘I love you, Mam. And Gordon does too.’
‘Oh, Bobby, I love you too. And Gordon and Hope. I love you all so, so very much.’
She watched as Bobby pushed his chair back, grabbed his haversack and strode out of the canteen. She had a feeling her son might well be telling Dorothy more than that he had done her bidding and made up with his mam.
Gloria smiled through her tears, which she could now let free.
God help the lad.
Chapter Forty-Four
As Toby pulled up at the end of Brookside Gardens, he jumped out to open the passenger door, but was beaten to it by Rosie, who was climbing out and grabbing her work haversack.
‘I must apologise once again for initially giving you false information about Peter’s demise,’ Toby said, taking off his cap and putting it under his arm.
‘Toby, I’m just so glad it was this way round and I didn’t think Peter was alive only to be told a mistake had been made and he was dead.’
Toby smiled.
‘So, you’re all sorted,’ he said. ‘You’ve got your ticket?’ They had stopped off at the train station to convert the travel warrant into an actual ticket. Toby didn’t want any hiccups. He’d been able to check that the train to London was running on time and there weren’t any delays. He had also upgraded Rosie’s ticket to first class, which he had managed to do after telling the ticket inspector that Rosie was meeting a war hero, and slipping him a ten-bob note.
‘Yes,’ Rosie said, pulling out the ticket from her top pocket and waving it. Her face was flus
hed with excitement. ‘I just need to spruce myself up a little …’ She laughed, looking down at her dirty overalls.
‘I don’t think Peter will mind what you wear,’ Toby chuckled. He stepped forward and took Rosie’s hands and squeezed them. ‘I’m so happy for you – for you both.’
Rosie suddenly became sombre.
‘I know it might sound like I’m being overanxious – neurotic even,’ Rosie said, ‘but Peter’s safe now, isn’t he? He’s not in any danger?’
‘None at all, my dear,’ Toby said with confidence.
‘I think … well … I was just thinking about his flight over – it’ll be all right, won’t it?’
‘Don’t worry. He’ll be fine. The aircraft he’s on has been across the Channel and back more times than I’ve had hot dinners – it’s safe as houses.’
Rosie breathed a sigh of relief. She had been wanting to ask Toby this since they’d got her train ticket and he’d told her that Peter’s plane would probably be landing at around the time her train reached York, giving him enough time to meet briefly with his superiors and get a lift to King’s Cross.
‘Are you off to see Dorothy now?’ Rosie asked as Toby turned to get back in his car.
Her question was met by a wide smile.
‘Most definitely, although I have a few errands to run first.’
Rosie narrowed her eyes. She wondered if Toby’s ‘errands’ involved nipping to one of the jewellers in town. Toby had casually asked Rosie which shop she would patronise if she wanted to treat herself to ‘a nice necklace, or the like’.
‘Good luck!’ she said, smiling.
Chapter Forty-Five
As Helen drove along the coastal road to Ryhope, she kept thinking of the many times she and John had spent together since they had become friends. She was now convinced that John did love her – had always loved her. That her feelings for him would have been reciprocated.