Miss Purdy's Class

by Annie Murray

  Ariadne was a devoted, if rather agitated nurse. All Gwen could feel towards her was gratitude. Her life became centred round nursing Joey Phillips back to health. As she said, what else could they have done with the poor little mite? After all the lengths he had gone to to escape the orphanage, they could hardly just pack him back there now.

  For the first few days, Joey lay fading in and out of consciousness. They managed to get him to drink a little: water with glucose powder, some diluted milk. He could manage to drink better soon, and open his eyes, and as soon as he had swallowed a few mouthfuls he would slip back into his long sleep again. Despite the doctor’s advice just to keep him safe and warm, Gwen was worried, wondering if he should be in hospital, but to her surprise Ariadne took it all calmly.

  ‘Do him good,’ she said, tucking the blankets round him. ‘Sleep is a great healer. And the doctor said we’re doing all that can be done.’

  ‘He reminds me of something in hibernation,’ Gwen said. ‘Like a hedgehog.’

  As the days passed he became able to take more: milk with an egg whisked into it, and some thin soup. He was obviously going to get better. But although he was awake quite a lot, lying looking round the bright pink painted room, he barely ever said a word.

  ‘D’you know,’ Ariadne told Gwen, ‘when you come into the room, his eyes never leave you, not for a moment.’

  Joey was almost all their conversation now. Ariadne had taken to wearing flatter shoes so she could hurry up and downstairs easily, and her porridge making had come on no end. She often sat beside Joey, reading him stray snippets out of the daily papers.

  By the end of the second week, Gwen told Ron he could come and visit after school and asked him to tell his mother where they were going.

  ‘Just for a few minutes,’ she said. ‘He’s ever so weak still, you see. He’s not saying much. But I’m sure he’d be pleased to see you.’

  She thought about asking Lucy if she’d like to come as well. Lucy had had another fit in class earlier in the week and Gwen thought it might be nice for her to feel chosen for something special. She felt awkward about it, though, not sure if Lucy knew of the rift between herself and Daniel, but the child showed no sign of it. The march was over – Gwen had read in the papers about the gathering in Hyde Park, the speeches. Aneurin Bevan had visited the marchers when they were sleeping in Reading cattle market and addressed them there. No one was sure if it was going to make any difference to anything. She didn’t know where Daniel was, and was on pins in case he suddenly appeared to meet Lucy. She had said to him that she didn’t want to see him, but she could hardly prevent him from living in the same neighbourhood as the school, could she? But the thought of seeing him again was very painful.

  ‘Is Daniel home now?’ she asked Lucy casually as they sat on the tram.

  Lucy shook her head. She had a white Alice band holding back her long hair.

  ‘He went back with the other marchers. I think he’s coming soon.’

  Ariadne had bought iced buns and lemonade for Ron and Lucy and laid the table with a lacy cloth. Gwen could see both the children looking round, overwhelmed by the big, cluttered house and Ariadne’s fussing attention.

  ‘I’ll take them up to Joey before they have anything to eat, shall I?’ Gwen said.

  They followed her up, Lucy laboriously hauling her calipered leg up each step, and went into Joey’s room. He was awake, and stared at them all as they came in. Gwen thought she saw a flicker of something in his eyes, but otherwise he remained expressionless.

  Of course, the children found it difficult to know what to say.

  Lucy said quietly, ‘Hello, Joey. You all right?’

  Ron was tugging at something in his pocket. He produced a squashed little brown paper bag.

  ‘Here y’are, pal. Brought yer some rocks.’

  He sounded so gruff and grandfatherly as he spoke that Gwen found herself smiling. Ron laid the bag of sweets on Joey’s bed. There was a silence.

  ‘I’m Ron,’ Ron said. ‘From school. D’you remember us?’

  Gwen watched Joey’s face. He said nothing, but his expression was not blank. She could tell there were thoughts going on.

  ‘Well,’ Ron said. ‘Sorry you’re bad. I hope you’re coming back to school soon. Weren’t the same after you went.’

  There were no words, but Gwen saw something she had not seen before. There was a slight twitching round Joey’s lips and, for the first time, a light in his eyes.

  ‘Says here the king’s been in Wales,’ Ariadne said over tea one night. As usual she had a newspaper open on the table. King Edward had visited South Wales after the Hunger March.

  ‘“Something must be done,” he said,’ Ariadne read. ‘D’you know, it says here that three-quarters of the people in Merthyr Tydfil are on poor relief!’

  ‘Yes,’ Gwen said. ‘Things are in a bad way there.’

  Ariadne considered her across the table and said tragically, ‘The least thing makes you think of him, doesn’t it?’

  Gwen kept her eyes on her plate of macaroni cheese. They had cooked it together. ‘Yes.’ It was no good pretending otherwise. She was so hurt that she wanted all thoughts of Daniel just to fade from her mind. Instead, he kept coming back to her. Ariadne was right. Any thought she had of Lucy or Billy made her think of him. And she couldn’t forget, longed for things to be otherwise, for her to be able to trust him. But she couldn’t and that was the truth of it. And yet she couldn’t get past him either, couldn’t get over him and feel better.

  She swallowed down the lump in her throat. ‘I’ve just got to stop thinking of him, that’s all.’

  It was getting close to the end of November. The weather was damp and unpleasant, but in spite of that Joey was getting better every day. He was still weak, but he was gaining weight, and once on a good diet, proved extremely resilient. He was soon able to get up and start moving about.

  One Saturday afternoon Gwen sat with him up in his room, teaching him to play snakes and ladders. He was very withdrawn and she could still hardly get him to say anything at all. Trying to keep his attention focused on anything was difficult too.

  ‘There –’ Gwen pointed at the board – ‘you’ve landed on a ladder. You can move right up there, look.’

  Joey peered at it and solemnly moved his counter up the ladder, pressing his finger hard onto it.

  ‘Joey?’

  He looked up at her but wouldn’t quite meet her eye.

  ‘Can you remember your school? The class – Ron and Lucy and the others?’

  Joey nodded.

  ‘Would you like to go back to school one day?’

  There was a faint shake of his head.

  ‘No? Well, maybe not yet. You do know you can stay here for as long as you like? Ariadne’s very kind and she likes having you here. And so do I.’

  She heard a knocking on the front door, and, after a short delay, Ariadne talking to someone.

  ‘It’ll be all right, Joey. You don’t need to run away again.’

  ‘I’m never going to the orphanage!’

  The words seemed to explode out of him. He was suddenly seething with emotion, eyes narrowed in an animal way, so that for a moment she found him almost frightening.

  ‘The orphanage? No, of course we won’t put you in an orphanage! Oh, Joey – that’s why you ran away in the first place, wasn’t it?’

  ‘The man was coming. They took Lena and Kenny and Poll, but they weren’t having me!’

  To Gwen’s irritation she heard Ariadne’s tread on the stairs. She was just beginning to get something out of Joey and now they were going to be interrupted.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ she told him.

  ‘Gwen!’ Ariadne hissed, poking her head round the door. ‘It’s Daniel – your Daniel. Downstairs!’

  Gwen shot to her feet, in a complete panic.

  ‘Tell him to go. I won’t see him – I can’t!’

  ‘I can’t just tell him to leave, dear. Do calm down! He wan
ts to see Joey – he did rescue him after all.’

  ‘Well, let me get into my room. I can’t see him . . . Don’t let him up here yet.’

  She fled along to the front of the house and shut herself in her room, leaning back against the door. Through the blood pounding in her ears, she heard Ariadne calling from the landing, ‘You can come up now, Daniel,’ and his feet climbing the stairs. She stood with her arms folded, crushed against her, heart pounding, her breathing shallow. The longing to see him was so overpowering that it was all she could do to stop herself tearing the door open. Yet this collided head on with her dread of him, of the strength of her feelings, which gave him such power over her, a power which he had betrayed and could betray again and again. She closed her eyes, trying to make herself breathe properly, straining her ears to hear what was going on. She caught the deep timbre of his voice coming from Joey’s room. He was speaking gently, reassuringly. Pain washed through her. How extraordinary it was that those two had been brought together, both so far from home – that it had been Daniel, of all people, who had found Joey. She still did not know the exact circumstances and she wanted to ask. Not long ago all this would have felt so right, as if it was meant – like her soft spot for Lucy, her rapport with Billy. As if all these things had brought her to Daniel, tied her so closely to him, given her that feeling she had of coming home every time she was with him, as if it had all been set in the stars. And now everything was wrong. There was no trust. It was broken.

  She went to sit on the edge of the bed, and watched her hands trembling in her lap as if they belonged to someone else. She could think of nothing, nothing except that he was here, a few paces away from her, and that soon he would leave and the house would be empty of him. And how would it be, his not trying to see her? Seeing or not seeing him – which was the more painful?

  Then she heard footsteps and before she could even move the door opened. She jumped. Seeing him again was such a shock, at once so familiar and so strange.

  ‘Gwen – for God’s sake . . .’

  He sounded distraught, but somehow this enraged her instead of making her pity him.

  ‘What?’ She got up off the bed. ‘For God’s sake what? No – don’t come any closer!’

  Daniel turned and shut the door. ‘Why won’t you even speak to me?’

  ‘Because . . .’ She was having to hold on very tightly to her emotions. ‘Because I can’t stand it, that’s why.’

  ‘Please . . .’ He walked a couple of paces closer. ‘I know I’ve done something terrible, so wrong, leaving Megan like that – and the boy. I can’t even make amends for that because she won’t have me anywhere near . . .’

  ‘You’ve tried, then?’

  ‘I’ve been in the valleys. I went to Treherbert, but she wouldn’t even let me in the house. But the thing is, Gwen, I was younger then and on fire for what we were doing. I never really loved her – not the way I love you. I’ve told you. I don’t know what else to say . . .’

  ‘She seemed to think you did.’ Gwen felt suddenly overwhelmed with weariness. Here they were again, back in the same place, and it would always be like this. ‘Look, Daniel – please, just go. I can’t do this any more. I need to be by myself.’

  Again, he came closer. They were only a yard or so apart, and she had to fight the feeling, the tingling that came over her when he came near. She stepped backwards.

  ‘So are you saying you don’t love me? All those months, all those words didn’t mean anything. Was it just lies then, all you said, if it just disappears like this, like a puff of smoke?’

  ‘You know it wasn’t.’ She could feel tears coming and loss of control and she fought them hard. ‘I did love you – I do. I think I love you too much. What you do affects me so much. I can’t live like that, never knowing if I can trust you – with Esther, or with whoever turns up next, or knowing that you had a woman and child all this time and never told me, never seemed to think it mattered!’ She began to cry then. ‘How could you, Daniel? I poured myself out for you, month after month and you just hurt me so much . . .’ She put her hands over her face.

  ‘I know. Don’t you think I know? Look, I’m sorry . . .’ He came close and gently put his arms round her, and she did not resist. ‘But I want – I need – to tell you that it matters. That you mean more to me than any woman I’ve ever met before. I need to know whether you’ll give me a chance?’

  The feel, the smell of him, were so achingly familiar she longed just to surrender, to press him close to her, for everything to be back where it was and all right. But she was shaking her head. It was not all right. What they had had before had been ruptured.

  ‘I want to know if you’re with me.’ His voice was very solemn and he drew back and looked into her tearful eyes. ‘I’m going away.’

  ‘What?’ She stared at him. ‘Where to?’

  ‘There are volunteers going to Spain. Some have gone already – a few, here and there. The party is starting to get people signing up. They want to get something more organized going, when there are more volunteers.’

  ‘You’re going to go – to Spain?’ Suddenly she laughed, incredulous, pushing him away from her. ‘God, Daniel, you’re the end. You come back here, playing with my feelings all over again and then announce that you’re disappearing to heaven knows where!’

  ‘We can do some good over there—’ He was all fired up, she could hear. ‘Something direct. Not like here, fighting against this cowardly government and all the apathy on the left! In Spain they’re really making the revolution happen. They’re up against it, see? It’s so clear what’s going on when you’re fighting the fascist enemy face to face. I’ll be leaving within the next week or two, to go to Catalonia.’

  Gwen was lost for words.

  ‘That’s why I had to see you, my girl . . .’

  ‘I’m not your . . .’

  He laid his hand gently over her lips. ‘Don’t say that now. Think about it. Think of me when I’m fighting in Spain and see whether I matter to you. Because I know you’ll be the light I carry in my heart . . .’

  ‘Oh, Daniel, stop,’ she said miserably.

  ‘Will you write to me?’

  She hesitated, then nodded. ‘Are you really going so soon?’

  ‘Within days. You know me – never sit still if I can help it.’

  ‘It doesn’t mean . . . It doesn’t mean I’m just sitting here waiting for you to come back.’

  He looked silently down into her eyes and she fought desperately not to be moved by his expression. She reached up and stroked his cheek.

  ‘Give me a kiss for the leaving?’

  His face moved closer to hers and she closed her eyes and kissed him back.

  After he had gone she rested on the edge of the bed, lost in thought. Her emotions were completely different now from those of the previous weeks, and she realized to her surprise that she might reach a place of calm. The future held so many challenges. One day she would have to reckon with her family. There were the children in her charge, her life at the school. There was Joey to care for.

  And there was Daniel . . . She knew now some of the things she didn’t want – with him or with anyone. She didn’t want her mother’s dead respectability, nor did she want to be trapped like Millie, who’d rather run home to her mother than be with her husband. She didn’t intend to run slavishly after men like Ariadne had done either. She wanted to make a different way, deciding things for herself because she was learning from hard experience.

  Daniel was in her life, and whatever difficulty and pain that involved she did love him. She believed that he also loved her. But he was going away and there was no knowing what it would mean for him. The future, for now, was without him and all she could feel was a delicate balance of the certainty of love and a surrender to not knowing whether she would ever be with him.

  When she had sat for some time, a smile came to her lips and she reached across and picked up her picture of Amy Johnson. She looked into Amy’s s
trong face.

  ‘I’m learning to fly too,’ she said.

  Epilogue

  February 1937

  ‘It’s from Daniel, isn’t it?’ Ariadne was full of glee as she handed Gwen the envelope. ‘Boys, shoes off and sit by the fire. I don’t want your slushy water all over the house! And there are doughnuts in the kitchen.’

  Gwen had come home from school with Joey and Ron in tow. Outside, the place was bright with snow. She left the boys to Ariadne, who had been waiting to pounce on them and take charge.

  In her room she read the letter, hearing his voice:

  Albacete

  30.1.1937

  Dear Gwen,

  It was very nice to get your letter at last. I’m glad Joey is back at school and seeming more himself. I suppose his strange moods are not surprising, what with the time of it he’s had. I wonder if he has talked to you any more about what happened and how he came to be all the way down there. Say hello to him for me, won’t you? I’m glad Ariadne is ‘like a new person’ as you said. She must have been lonely and now you’ve given her a family, of sorts. Where would Joey be without her, eh?

  Things are quiet here today so far, so that’s why I’m taking the chance to write. Being here has given me so many thoughts, about the revolution and where we’re all going. I don’t possibly have time to write them all down. One thing that strikes me with great force is that when you hear about ‘war’ at home it sounds like something more organized and militarily set up than it ever is here. It really is neighbour against neighbour, men, women and even children. No one can escape and I’ve seen more inhuman treatment of man by man here already than I had ever imagined seeing in a lifetime. Even without extremes, there is so much misery, hunger, orphaned children etc. What we need desperately is more aid coming in to help the Spanish people. So, all of you – keep it coming to us. Your work is not for nothing! Even more than by the misery, I am affected by the courage, determination and self-sacrifice here in the face of Franco and his fascist thugs. The republicans are fighting for all the best things there are – freedom and justice and right. With all our efforts, these are the things we have to attain if barbarism is not to take over the world.