by Rosie Harris
She was also aware that the ‘attacks’, as she and Benny called them, were becoming ever more frequent and that they were lasting longer.
Benny was changing, too, Vera noticed. The worry and responsibility were gradually getting through to him. He was losing weight and growing more serious. These days, she thought sadly, she rarely heard him whistle or try to make her laugh with any of his light-hearted jests.
She knew he was working desperately hard at school and she sometimes wondered whether this desire to achieve academic supremacy was a sign of ambition or necessity.
She hadn’t forgotten what Benny had told her about his early days at the grammar school, when he had been the butt of the other boys’ jibes because Di Deverill was living with them. Had they somehow found out about his father’s derangement? If they had, then were they teasing him about it? Was he again trying to prove himself by beating them all in class, she wondered.
Sometimes at night, when she lay listening in the darkness for the slightest sound from her father’s room in case it might be the start of another attack, she wondered if things would have been better for all of them if Di Deverill was still living with them.
She was sure her father needed professional advice, but she wasn’t sure how to go about getting it since he refused to go and see a doctor.
‘I’m not ill, you stupid bitch,’ he had said angrily, the last time she’d suggested it. ‘I suffer from night-mares, that’s all. It’s probably the grub you dish up that is to blame,’ he had told her sourly. ‘They’ll go away in time.’
Vera didn’t think that they would and she wondered if one of the organisations like the British Legion, who claimed to help ex-soldiers, could offer her any advice.
The trouble was, they would want to see him and talk to him, but she wasn’t sure if he would cooperate.
She’d tried to keep her concern from Benny, but it was impossible to do that. Benny was as worried as she was about their dad’s condition and their own future.
‘I don’t want to leave school until I’ve sat for my School Certificate,’ he confided in Vera. ‘It would be such a waste of all the work I’ve been doing. The moment the exams are over then I’ll look for a job.’
‘Shouldn’t you wait until the results are out so that you have something to show a prospective employer?’
‘Probably, but I can always tell them what subjects I have taken and the sort of marks I expect to get.’
‘You can’t be sure of the results …’
‘You mean you think I might fail,’ he interrupted. ‘Thanks for the vote of confidence!’
‘I didn’t mean it like that!’
‘Well, that’s certainly what it sounded like,’ he scowled.
‘Please, Benny,’ Vera squeezed his hand. ‘Don’t let’s quarrel. The only way we’ll get through this is by sticking together and helping each other. It’s not going to be easy.’
‘I know. I’m sorry, Vee. I didn’t mean to snap. You know what they say,’ he grinned, ‘once you reach rock bottom, things can only get better.’
His words cheered her. After a fairly peaceful weekend she went into work on the Monday feeling happier than she’d done for ages. But her confidence was soon sapped.
‘Mr Brown wants a word with you in his office at ten o’clock,’ Miss Linacre told her stiffly.
Feeling very apprehensive, Vera went to his office. The moment she went in she sensed from his attitude that something was wrong.
‘Miss Quinn, it is not easy for me to say this,’ he told her awkwardly, ‘but I am afraid I am going to have to replace you.’
For a moment Vera was struck dumb. Then, her colour rising, she demanded, ‘Why is that, Mr Brown? What have I done wrong?’
Leonard Brown cleared his throat uneasily. Ever since Thelma Linacre had complained about Vera’s timekeeping he’d wondered if they weren’t being a little bit harsh in dismissing her. He’d heard rumours that her father was ill and surmised that the root cause of the trouble was that she was having a rather difficult time at home.
‘We’re only a small company and everyone has to pull their weight,’ he explained awkwardly, wishing he could soften the blow.
‘I know that! My work is always up to par and I … I don’t make many mistakes,’ she said defensively.
‘You do take rather a lot of time off … especially at lunch times, I understand.’
She bit her lower lip and looked away. ‘I … I have things to do then, family things.’
‘Like shopping?’
She stiffened. ‘Occasionally. Usually I do things to help my dad.’
She knew he was waiting for a fuller explanation than that, but she couldn’t think of anything other than the truth. Suddenly the story of her father’s ‘attacks’ came rushing out.
Leonard Brown listened in silence, his admiration for Vera increasing with every word he heard. He had liked her, with her bright smile and vivid blue eyes, from the moment she had applied for the job three years ago. She’d been a good worker and he’d been secretly amused at the way she had stood up to Thelma Linacre.
He would be happy enough to turn a blind eye to her poor timekeeping, but he knew if he did that then there were other members of staff who would take advantage of such leniency. He’d always been a stickler on these matters so he could hardly relax the rules now.
‘I can see you have a considerable burden on your shoulders, Miss Quinn, I only wish there was some way in which I could help you.’
‘Could I work part time?’ she asked timorously.
He pondered the matter for a few minutes then shook his head. ‘I’m afraid that wouldn’t be very convenient for us. You know how the office is run, and you know we need someone here all the time to attend to the switchboard.’
‘What about if I did some of the invoice typing at home?’ she persisted.
Again Leonard Brown shook his head. ‘I don’t think Miss Linacre would agree to such an arrangement,’ he said firmly.
‘I understand.’
‘Isn’t it possible for you to help your father in his business?’
‘Repairing boots and shoes? I don’t have the right skills. Anyway, the state things are in he won’t be doing that much longer because we won’t be able to afford the rent on the shop,’ she added bitterly.
‘Mmm!’ He looked thoughtful. ‘Have you ever thought about employing someone to do the repairs for you? If you did that,’ he hurried on, ‘then I’m sure if you took care of all the paper work and deliveries then you would be able to build up the business again.’
Vera smiled wanly. ‘It sounds like a sensible idea, except that I wouldn’t be able to afford to pay the sort of wages that a skilled repairer would expect. It would only be possible if we managed to get all our old customers back and trade was as brisk as it used to be.’
He nodded understandingly. ‘I happen to know of a boot repairer who’s recently retired. Now, he might be exactly the sort of person you are looking for. If business was slow at first then it would give him a chance to get back into the swing of things.’
‘It sounds like a good idea, but we’d still have to find his wages each week,’ Vera said doubtfully.
‘You’d only pay him for the work he did so if you priced things carefully you’d find you could afford to hire him and still make a living for yourselves,’ Leonard Brown pointed out.
Vera nodded thoughtfully as she mulled the idea over.
‘He has retired, so he might be prepared to work fairly cheaply,’ Leonard Brown reminded her. ‘Would you like me to ask him to come along and have a chat with you?’
Chapter Twenty-seven
Vera felt sure she was going to like Sam Dowty from the moment he walked into the shop. With his thatch of thick white hair, white whiskers, twinkling blue eyes and ready smile he reminded her of a jovial Father Christmas.
The morning he turned up her father was in bed recovering from one of his attacks. It had lasted for two days and it had been
one of the worst Vera had witnessed. She had been pondering all morning about what she ought to do for the best.
She knew there was no way she and Benny could repair the pile of boots and shoes they had taken in over the past few days and she was wondering if she should return them to their owners. Perhaps she also ought to put a notice on the shop door saying that they were unable to take in any more work for the present, she thought disconsolately.
When the bell jangled, and she saw the elderly man standing there, instinct told her that this was Sam Dowty, the retired shoe repairer that Mr Brown had told her about. She felt so relieved that she could have hugged him.
‘Mr Brown from Elbrown’s said something about you needing someone to give you a hand, missy,’ he greeted her. He nodded towards the mound of shoes waiting to be repaired. ‘It looks as though I haven’t arrived a moment too soon,’ he added, his eyes twinkling.
‘Does that mean you can commence work right away, Mr Dowty?’ Vera asked in disbelief.
‘As long as you don’t want to check out my references or any damn silly thing like that.’ He unrolled a bundle from under his arm and took out a long leather apron. ‘I came prepared,’ he told her with a chuckle.
‘I think that apron’s proof enough that you know what you’re about.’ Vera grinned.
‘Then I might as well get started. Now if you’d like to sort out the ones that are most urgent I’ll do those first.’ He looked round the shop. ‘Nice little set-up you’ve got here, all very ship-shape.’
He set to work so quickly, as if he knew where everything was and what had to be done, that it was almost as if he had worked there for years.
At first he said very little, humming tunelessly to himself as he worked. At mid-morning when Vera made them both a cup of tea he paused and sat back on the stool and looked at her questioningly.
‘So what has happened to the man who usually sits here at this bench?’ he asked gravely.
‘My dad? Well, he’s not been very well lately,’ she said ruefully.
He nodded understandingly. ‘I had heard something of the sort.’
He didn’t press the point, but waited expectantly as if he knew she was going to tell him more. Sam Dowty would have to know the whole story sometime, Vera reasoned, and this seemed to be as good a time as any to explain things to him.
In as few words as possible she told him about the attacks her dad was having. ‘I think you ought to be clear about the situation because he doesn’t know you are working here,’ she confessed. ‘I’m not at all sure how he will react when he finds out,’ she ended lamely.
‘Don’t you worry, my dear. Now that you have taken me into your confidence I know what to expect.’
‘I’m not sure that you do, Mr Dowty,’ Vera said almost apologetically. ‘You see, he can be very violent.’
Sam Dowty nodded benignly. ‘Oh, but I do, my dear! My son was the same. He died about a year ago. Shell shock. That’s what it is, you see. That’s what your dad’s suffering from, too, I’m afraid.’
Vera looked puzzled. ‘He’s been out of the army for years and years, though, and he’s only recently started having these attacks.’
‘That’s the way it is, luv. They push all the terrible sights they saw and all the horrible things they experienced to the back of their minds to try and forget about them. Then suddenly it all comes back to them. Has he had any sort of bad shock lately that could have triggered it?’
Vera nodded thoughtfully, hoping he wouldn’t ask her for details.
He looked at her shrewdly, then drained his cup and passed it back to her. ‘Better get on. We don’t want your dad coming in here and finding a pile of work waiting to be done. It would only worry him, now, wouldn’t it.’
It was late afternoon before Vera heard her father stirring. A wave of panic swept over her as he blundered down the stairs. She glanced at him anxiously, trying to gauge what sort of mood he was in. She was nervous about what his reaction would be when he saw a stranger working at his bench.
‘Afternoon, guv. Feeling a bit better?’
Michael Quinn stared at Sam Dowty in a dazed way, then rubbed his hand over his unshaven chin and shook his head from side to side as if trying to clear his mind.
‘Who the hell are you? I don’t know you!’
‘Of course you do, guv. Sam Dowty. You asked me to come along and give you a hand.’
Vera held her breath, waiting for her father to explode. Instead, he ran his hand over his chin again and slowly nodded as if in agreement.
‘I’ll go and make you both a cup of tea,’ Vera said quickly.
As she waited for the kettle to boil Vera watched through a crack in the door to see what was going on. Sam Dowty went on with his work as if there was no one else there. Her father sat with his head in his hands, looking up from time to time to watch what the older man was doing.
When Vera took the tea through, Sam Dowty signalled for her to leave them alone. Back in the living room she could hear the rise and fall of their voices and to her surprise she heard her father going into detail about his attacks.
‘My son had the same problem,’ she heard Sam Dowty tell her father. ‘Some of the things he told me about the sights he’d seen would turn your guts. He wasn’t a bloke who was squeamish, either, but he couldn’t get them out of his mind. Haunted him they did. Made his life hell.’
Vera could hardly wait for Benny to come home so that she could tell him all about Sam Dowty and how well everything had gone.
‘To hear him and Dad talking things over and exchanging confidences, you’d think they’d been buddies for years,’ she enthused.
‘Does this mean I won’t have to do any more work in the shop?’ Benny asked as he lowered his heavy satchel with all his homework in it from his shoulder onto the floor.
‘No, you needn’t do anything at all to help,’ Vera told him happily.
‘What about all the deliveries?’
‘No, I’ll do those. Now that I’m not working at Elbrown’s I’ll have plenty of time during the day,’ she pointed out.
‘Couldn’t you get your job back at Elbrown’s now that this old chap is here to help Dad out? If the two of them are as friendly as you said then he probably wouldn’t mind keeping an eye on him.’
‘I don’t think that’s possible, even if I could get reinstated. Mr Dowty is quite old and it wouldn’t be fair to impose on him. I’m grateful enough that he’s agreed to put in a full day until the backlog of work is cleared. Mind, I doubt if he will be able to work at that pace all the time. Once we’ve got things running properly again I should think he will only be working part time.’
‘Yeah, well, that’s better than nothing, I suppose.’
‘It certainly is because it will give you time to study for your exams!’
‘True! And once I’ve passed them, and managed to find a job, perhaps we could sell up and you could find another position. If Dad didn’t need to work then …’
‘Hey! Steady on!’ Vera laughed. ‘You can’t plan that far ahead, who knows what is going to happen over the next few months.’
As it happened, Vera was right to be cautious. Although Sam Dowty and their father got on far better than she had ever dared to hope it wasn’t the answer to their problems by any means.
Their father’s attacks became more and more frequent and left him in such a dazed state that it became impossible for him to do any work at all.
Sam Dowty did his best, but his eyesight was not too good and with the approach of winter, and the need to use gas lighting most of the time to see what he was doing, the standard of his work began to suffer.
Vera was at her wits’ end. She liked Sam Dowty so much, and she was so grateful for the way he was helping them out, that she didn’t like to say anything about it to him.
The matter was brought to a head when an irate customer returned a pair of recently repaired boots. He started making a fuss at the top of his voice in front of Sam Dowty.
‘Look at the mess someone’s made of these,’ he shouted, waving the boots menacingly at Vera. ‘They were black, but they’ve been finished off with brown polish! What’s more, the polish has been splashed all over the upper of one of them. I can’t wear them in this condition so what are you going to do about it?’
Vera had no idea, but she tried to placate him. ‘If you leave them with me I’ll make sure it is put right,’ she promised.
‘Put right? They’re ruined! Any fool can see that,’ he ranted.
‘The young lady has already said we will rectify the matter,’ Sam Dowty intervened. He took the offending boots from the customer, examined them critically, then put them down on the counter.
‘You’d better, and make sure you do a good job. I don’t expect to be charged for it, either. Daylight robbery! You’ve ruined a good pair of boots …’
The rest of his sentence was lost as he slammed out of the shop.
Vera sighed as she picked up the boots from the counter. She could see that his complaint was fully justified. He wasn’t the only customer who had complained about the standard of their work recently and she wondered how many more there were going to be.
‘It was my fault,’ Sam Dowty said quietly. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll see what I can do to put matters right.’
‘It’s a mistake anyone could have made,’ Vera told him, squeezing his arm reassuringly.
He shook his head. ‘No, only a half-blind old fool like me could have messed things up so much. What you need is a younger man working here. There’s too much for an old codger like me to do and your father is no help at all these days, now is he.’
Vera knew he was right, but she still didn’t have an answer to the problem.
‘I could recommend a bright young chap if you would consider taking him on permanently.’ Sam Dowty told her. ‘Nice fellow, good workman. I can vouch for him.’
‘It’s certainly the sort of person we need, but I wouldn’t be able to afford to employ anyone else,’ she murmured regretfully.