by Anne Bennett
‘As a friend only,’ Steve said, drawing her away from the crowds surging into the cinema. Then he lifted his finger and gave it a lick. ‘See this wet, see this dry,’ he said with a smile, ‘cut my throat if I tell a lie.’
Lizzie gave him a push. ‘Fool!’
Steve laughed and grasped Lizzie around the waist and felt his heart thudding against his chest.
Steve behaved like a perfect gentleman that night, and the night he took her to the pictures and she saw Cavalcade in the end, and the time he took her to see the hilarious but saucy Max Wall at the Hippodrome. One night they spent a quiet evening at the pub, and though Lizzie allowed herself two port and lemons before switching to orange juice, Steve didn’t complain or urge her to drink something more exciting.
Gradually, she began to relax in his company and remember the good times of their earlier courtship. It was a novel experience for Steve to try and please a lady knowing there would be nothing in it for him, and Lizzie didn’t know what it cost him to keep his hands by his sides when he longed to encircle her and to kiss those lovely lips he watched yearningly.
Without his street women, he couldn’t have managed, though now he’d begun to feel guilty about going from Lizzie straight to the bed of another. He didn’t tell Stuart this, though, for he was aware that Stuart already thought him clean barmy. ‘Variety, man,’ he said, when they were both making their way home after such a night. ‘Spice of life. Nothing quite like it.’
Tressa’s son was born on Wednesday, 7th December, and Steve came that evening to tell Lizzie the news after it had been phoned through to The Bell public house and the landlady had come up with the message. ‘We could go up of the weekend,’ he said.
Lizzie hesitated. She wouldn’t like Tressa and Mike to get any ideas about her and Steve, and yet she was off-duty all day Saturday until seven o’clock, and she had to go and see Tressa sometime and ooh and ah over the child. It would be silly for her to go on her own, and so she nodded. ‘All right.’
In the end, she was more affected by the child, Phillip, than she ever thought she would be, and she didn’t have to pretend to be awed by the diminutive but perfect little person Tressa gave her to hold, with his tiny fingers and even smaller toes. His skin was flawless, his lashes making perfect crescents on the top of his cheeks as he slept, and Lizzie smelt that very special baby smell. Suddenly she was filled with a deep longing for a child of her own, a feeling that took her totally by surprise.
‘Are you and Steve…you know?’ Tressa asked when the men had gone off to wet the baby’s head.
‘No, but we are friends,’ Lizzie said. ‘Mind how I told you we had a talk about everything at your wedding?’
‘Aye, I remember all right,’ Tressa said. ‘And I hope you know what you’re doing. Steve doesn’t seem to be looking at you with the eyes of a friend, if you know what I mean?’
Lizzie told herself Tressa must be mistaken. Steve never touched her besides holding her shoulders gently and giving her a kiss on the cheek. Surely if he thought of her any other way he’d have tried something else. She hoped he never went down that road, for then she’d have to put a stop to it straight away, and she had to admit that going out with him was far better than sitting alone in the bedroom of the hotel.
Lizzie barely saw Steve once the Christmas festivities got underway, and she was surprised to receive a package on Christmas Eve. She took it to her room and opened it out. There was a velvet box inside, and in it, resting on a nest of navy silk, was a beautifully fine gold bracelet. When she lifted it out there were gasps from Betty and Pat and Marjorie, who now occupied Tressa’s bed.
‘Will you look at that?’ Pat breathed.
‘Who’s it from?’ Marjorie asked.
Pat and Betty exchanged knowing glances. Lizzie had explained away the birthday roses, and apparently to her satisfaction, but this was something else entirely. Lizzie was naturally reticent and too worried about being teased to tell Pat or Betty about her meeting with Steve in November, and the fact she had been seeing him since. It wasn’t hard, for their times off rarely coincided and they were too preoccupied with their own love lives to worry overmuch about Lizzie’s, and Marjorie had no idea of any of it. So, as far as Pat and Betty were aware, this bracelet had arrived out of the blue.
It was like a statement, Betty thought; like saying, To hell with being friends. I want something more. And so she said to Marjorie, ‘It’s from Lizzie’s feller.’
‘Steve’s not my feller,’ Lizzie protested.
‘Oh no,’ Pat said, with a hint of derision. ‘Let’s say I wish some non-feller of mine would send me something half so nice.’ And she pulled the card from the box ‘“All my love always, Steve”,’ she read out. ‘Like I said, some friend that Steve.’
The card unnerved Lizzie and she knew she should have a talk with Steve as soon as possible. She withdrew the bracelet and played it though her fingers. It was gorgeous and she knew it would have been expensive. ‘Maybe I shouldn’t accept it.’
‘Don’t be such a bloody fool,’ Pat admonished.
‘I need to talk to him about this,’ Lizzie said. ‘Set the record straight.’ But she knew that was a vain wish. The guests were arriving any time after four o’clock that afternoon, and from when they stepped into the hotel until they checked out on 1st January she knew she’d hardly stop running. The hours would be long, sleep a luxury she could only dream of, and time off virtually non-existent.
In a way she was glad of it. She was able to push the problem of what to do about the bracelet to the back of her mind.
On 3rd January Steve took her dancing at the Locarno. She spent some of the tips she’d earned over the festive season to buy a dress from C&A Modes. It was of rose velvet with a scooped neckline and fell to the floor, the bottom section gathered in little pleats. She had her hair piled on her head with combs the same colour as the dress, and peeping from beneath it were dainty high-heeled shoes. On one of her slender wrists was Steve’s bracelet. He was so pleased. He hadn’t been sure she would accept it, especially after what he’d written on the card.
Everything pleased him that night. Lizzie thanked him warmly for the bracelet and said truthfully it was the prettiest thing she’d ever owned, but she chided him for spending so much on it. ‘And who else would I spend it on?’ he asked. ‘Now, Lizzie, my money is my own and I must choose how to spend it.’
Lizzie kissed him gently on the lips in gratitude and friendship and he felt his body grow hot with desire, but he told himself to go easy. Lizzie had noticed nothing untoward and she removed her jacket and said, ‘Do you like the dress? I treated myself.’
‘It’s beautiful,’ he said, surveying it. He was bowled over by the strength of his feelings coursing through him and excited by the prospect of being able to legitimately hold Lizzie in his arms as they danced. He put his arms gently around her and said, ‘And you’re beautiful, Lizzie.’
Lizzie, though embarrassed, was warmed by his genuine praise and realised she’d missed not seeing him over Christmas. Don’t depend on him, she’d warned herself, but the alternative if she didn’t go out with Steve was a dismal one.
She had a wonderful time, so wonderful that when Steve left her back at the hotel she kissed him again on the lips. ‘Thank you, Steve.’
‘You deserved a treat tonight,’ he told her. ‘You’ve been working like a Trojan at this place. You’re thinner than ever.’
‘Och, Steve, don’t worry, I’m as strong as an ox.’
‘Oxen don’t come in such pretty packages,’ Steve said. ‘Look after yourself.’
‘I will, don’t worry.’
CHAPTER SEVEN
The following morning Lizzie didn’t feel a bit like an ox. In fact, she woke feeling very strange indeed. She was dripping wet with sweat, her head was thumping and she felt as if she had a tight band around her chest. She was due to serve breakfasts with Marjorie and she struggled to get out of bed, though the room tilted in a most alarmin
g way.
She slumped back on the bed again, and Marjorie, coming back from the bathroom and beginning to dress, said, ‘God, are you all right? Your face is as red as a beetroot.’
Lizzie wasn’t surprised. She could feel the sweat standing out on her forehead, trickling down her back, and seeping between her breasts. She opened her mouth to say she felt a little strange, but she was taken unawares by a fit of coughing.
‘God, Lizzie, I don’t think you’d better go downstairs like that.’
‘No, I’m all right, I’m fine,’ Lizzie said in a husky voice.
‘Don’t be bloody stupid,’ Marjorie said, putting her feet into her shoes. ‘Stay here, I’ll have a word with someone.’
Lizzie tried to tell the doctor that the manager had summoned that she was all right too, between bouts of coughing and gasping for breath. The doctor was Scottish and one to stand no nonsense and he said, ‘Please let me be the judge of that, young lady. I wouldna dream of telling you how to serve breakfast now, would I? Open up the front of your nightie and let’s have a wee listen to that chest of yours.’
Acutely embarrassed, Lizzie undid the buttons at her neck and the doctor sounded her chest with the stethoscope. ‘Hm, hm,’ was all the comment he made, and then he straightened up and said, ‘Pull it right off.’
‘What?’
‘I need to listen to your back.’
‘I can’t.’
‘I’m a doctor, lassie,’ the man barked. ‘Here to see how ill you are, not to look at your body. Now pull off your nightie.’
Lizzie did as the doctor bid, glad they were alone, and the doctor listened and he also gave her back little taps. Eventually he said, ‘All right, put your nightie back on.’
‘What is it, Doctor?’
‘Bronchitis,’ the doctor replied, ‘and a bad dose I might add. Need to take care of it.’
To the manager he said more. ‘Have to see it doesn’t turn to pneumonia. Needs careful nursing, for that girl might have little resistance and she’s as thin as a rake.’
‘She’s never had a day off sick before.’
‘Well, she’ll have more than a day now.’
‘I have a hotel to run.’
‘I am aware of that.’
‘What I mean is, I can’t have her here,’ the manager said. ‘With one down anyway, I won’t have the staff to nurse her and I presume she won’t be able to stay in a dormitory with the others?’
‘It’s not something I would recommend.’
‘Well then…’
‘The only place for her, if you’re adamant, is the hospital.’
‘See to it, can you?’
The doctor, grim-faced, saw to it, and when he told Lizzie that she was to go to the General Hospital, she shed bitter tears. She’d never been in hospital in her life and didn’t want to go now. Surely to God she wasn’t that sick. People died in hospital.
Lizzie sent a note to Steve to tell him what had happened and he turned up at the hospital a couple of days later. Lizzie had deteriorated during that time and it tore at his heart to see her fighting for breath, the beads of glistening sweat on her forehead lending a sheen to her face, despite the ministrations of the nurses.
Knowing she had little breath to talk, he did the talking, and for hours. Much of what he said went over her head, but she liked the sound of his voice and it was nice to have someone near, holding her hand.
Betty and Pat came, and even Marjorie popped in one day. Tressa came too, but obviously without Phillip, so she couldn’t stay long, but Lizzie was pleased she had made the effort, for it was quite a trek.
Two days after Tressa’s visit, Lizzie was in the throes of delirium when Steve called at the hospital. ‘What is it?’ he cried, seeing the hospital staff scurrying about and Lizzie hardly aware of anything as she was being transferred to a separate single room.
‘Are you a relative?’ the doctor asked.
‘Sort of,’ Steve said. ‘All her people are in Ireland. I’m her boyfriend,’ and then, thinking it might have more clout, he added, ‘her fiancé really. I just haven’t got around to buying the ring yet.’
‘Well,’ the doctor said, ‘in view of that, and her family not being here, I’m sorry to have to tell you that Miss Clooney has developed pneumonia.’
Ah Jesus Christ, Steve’s mind screamed, thinking of that killer disease of his youth, and his mouth dropped open with shock. ‘Will she…Will she…?’
The doctor shrugged. ‘We’ll do what we can and it will depend on her resistance to fight. I’m sorry I can offer you no further hope.’
‘Shall I inform her people?’
‘It can do no harm,’ the doctor said, and those words more than any other conveyed to Steve the seriousness of Lizzie’s condition.
Lizzie felt as if she were surrounded by sticky treacle and across her chest was a hot, tight band, so that she found it hard to breathe. She was semi-aware sometimes of someone sitting by her side, holding her hand, talking to her, but it was as if she were outside of it. Strange images disturbed her dreams, mixed up with her home back in Ireland, the hotel, and, most of all, Steve.
He’d arrived every evening since he’d been told Lizzie had pneumonia. ‘We have got a visiting policy,’ the matron had said to the nurses, ‘but I haven’t the heart to turn him away. And after all, it’s a private room she has, so he’s disturbing no one else.’
‘He wouldn’t disturb anyone else anyroad,’ one of the nurses replied. ‘He just sits there. God, to have someone love you like that.’
Lizzie’s mother, who’d come over to see her daughter, while desperately worried about her was also impressed by Steve’s diligence. When she was informed he was Lizzie’s fiancé, she believed it, though thought it odd. Lizzie had not asked their permission and she said as much to Steve.
Steve had no wish to alienate Catherine and yet was unable to tell her the truth in case he might not be allowed to see Lizzie any more, but he was anxious to assure her their relationship was above board. ‘Neither of us had the time to ask your approval,’ he told Catherine. ‘We were just toying with the idea of becoming engaged, with your blessing of course, when Lizzie became ill.’
Catherine accepted Steve’s version of events and the hospital gave a very good account of Steve Gillespie; and while his cronies at The Bell and the women of the street could have painted a different picture, even they would have had to admit that since this business had started he’d been a changed man.
Catherine was staying at Longbridge with Arthur and Doreen, whom she’d met and got on well with at Tressa’s wedding. It was a long haul every day into the city centre, and while she stayed with Lizzie most of the day she tended to leave the evenings free for Steve, which suited him fine.
He hadn’t told Flo where he went every evening after a swift wash and a bite to eat, but the news filtered through to her at last. Flo wanted to tell her son to waste no time on the girl, that it would be better if she died altogether, but the sorrow on his face checked her and, uncharacteristically, she made no comment.
‘The crisis will be reached in the early hours,’ the doctor told him when Lizzie had been in hospital a fortnight. ‘Sometime between two and four.’
Catherine had been informed too, and that night they sat either side of the bed, holding Lizzie’s hands, watching her struggling to breathe, the sweat pouring from her. Steve was bone-weary for he’d sat there many days now, but he felt that if he took his eyes off Lizzie for one moment she would die.
It was the early hours when Catherine got to her feet. ‘God, I’m stiff,’ she said, ‘and I need some air. I feel as if I’m suffocating in here.’
Steve had barely noticed, but when she said, ‘Would you mind if I pop out for a few minutes?’ he nodded. He’d be glad for a few minutes alone with Lizzie to speak of what was in his heart.
He began as soon as the door had closed behind Catherine. ‘Come on, Lizzie. You must fight this, for God knows I can’t live without you. You kno
w that. I love you. Jesus, I’ve always loved you. I’d lay down my life for you, Lizzie, please…’ On and on he went, in the same vein.
Lizzie felt as if a furnace blazed within her and her eyes burned too, and she was so tired she had the feeling she could just float away, but always that voice would drag her back. She liked the sound of it. It soothed her, though the words were indistinguishable, and she liked the feel of a large hand encircling her own. Maybe, if she could raise her other arm from the bed, she could tell whoever it was she could hear them and that she liked what they were doing.
But her arm felt like lead. She couldn’t lift it. She tried again and again and eventually, slowly, her fingers moved. Steve wasn’t aware of the slight movement straight away, but when her arm lifted oh so slightly, he jumped from the bed as if he’d been shot and was out of the room in seconds, yelling for a nurse.
He stood at the threshold of the room, unable to see her for the doctor and two nurses grouped about the bed as Catherine returned to the ward. She hurried when she saw Steve standing outside the room, but before she was able to frame a question the young doctor came out of the room towards them, and he was smiling. ‘The fever has passed,’ he said. ‘The crisis is over and she is sleeping normally. I won’t tell you how worried I was. She will be weak for some time, but she will live.’
‘Oh thank God! Thank God!’ Catherine said fervently.
Steve thanked the Almighty too, but in his head. He couldn’t speak for the torrent of tears pouring from him. Catherine put her arms around him and they cried together and took comfort from one another.
It seemed to Lizzie that nearly every time she opened her eyes, Steve was by her side, his large muscular hands holding hers, especially after her mother had returned home. Her mother and the nursing staff had often referred to Steve as her fiancé and she’d not corrected them and wasn’t sure why she hadn’t. Maybe, like Steve, she’d thought he wouldn’t be able to visit so often, and she’d not have liked that. In fact, he had become very important to her and she longed to see his large frame almost filling the doorway each evening and his heavy strides across the floor to sit by Lizzie’s bed, when he would take her small hand in his and talk to her.