A Distant Dream

by Pamela Evans

  May, Betty and George all had their eighteenth birthdays within two weeks of each other in the summer, so they decided to celebrate together. George arranged for his mother and sister to look after Joe on the nearest Saturday night and the three of them headed into the West End, which was thronged with people as usual at a weekend, everyone seeming undeterred by the threat of war evident in notices on buildings and trees all over London, appealing for volunteers to train as air-raid wardens.

  The trio strolled through Leicester Square and Piccadilly, where they could hardly move for the crowds.

  ‘Are we going to the pictures?’ asked May.

  ‘Nah, we can do that in Ealing,’ said Betty.

  ‘What about trying for a show, then?’ suggested May. ‘You can sometimes get tickets at the theatre on the night. Me and My Girl is still on, or there’s The Dancing Years.’

  ‘Why don’t we go into a pub while we decide,’ suggested Betty. ‘Just for the hell of being old enough to get served.’

  The others thought that might be fun, so they trooped into a pub in Leicester Square which was thick with cigarette smoke, packed to the doors and deafeningly noisy with the sound of talking and laughing. George ordered a half of bitter and the girls, wanting to be daring, had gin and orange.

  ‘This is the life,’ approved Betty, gulping hers.

  ‘I think you’re meant to drink it slowly,’ suggested George. He lifted his glass. ‘But cheers, you two. Happy birthday to us all.’

  May chinked her glass and took a sip of the bitter liquid while Betty emptied her glass and asked for another.

  ‘It’s strong stuff,’ warned George. ‘I don’t want to have to carry you home.’

  ‘Don’t be such an old misery,’ she came back at him. ‘This is supposed to be a celebration.’

  ‘Oh all right then, just one more before we move on and try to get into a show or the pictures,’ he agreed. ‘May, how about you? Would you like another?’

  ‘Not for me, thanks,’ she said. ‘It will take me ages to finish this, it’s so bitter.’

  While George ordered another for Betty, May had to admit to enjoying the warm feeling the drink gave her. It didn’t taste nearly so sharp when you got used to it either. In fact she rather liked it. It certainly had a cheering effect.

  ‘You really should try to have more confidence in yourself, Mum,’ said Sheila in a tone of mild admonition. ‘You’ve brought up two kids of your own, so why are you so worried about looking after Joe for a few hours?’

  ‘I’m not the same woman as I was when you and George were little,’ explained Dot. ‘Anyway, I’m out of practice with children of that age. You can’t reason with them.’

  ‘Surely you’ve looked after Joe before.’

  ‘Only for the odd short period during the day,’ she said. ‘I’m not so scared if Betty isn’t out for long.’

  ‘But Joe lives here, so he’s used to you.’

  ‘He isn’t used to being on his own with me,’ she said. ‘He’ll run rings around me.’

  ‘He’s your grandson, for heaven’s sake; surely looking after him comes natural.’

  ‘It probably does to other grannies, but things aren’t as cut and dried as you might think.’

  ‘Sorry, Mum, but I can’t be expected to stay in with you,’ Sheila declared.

  ‘You said you would when George asked us to look after Joe tonight,’ Dot reminded her.

  ‘Mm, maybe I did, but I want to go out now,’ Sheila explained. ‘I won’t be long. I just want to go round to my friend’s house. She’s going to lend me some Filmgoer magazines. She collects them and she’s got a pile I can borrow.’

  ‘Can’t you do it tomorrow?’

  ‘I could do but I want to look at them tonight,’ Sheila said. ‘You’re lucky I’m not out dancing like I sometimes am on a Saturday night. I would be gone for a long time then.’

  ‘You agreed to stay in to help me look after Joe, so you should stand by that,’ Dot said again.

  ‘He’s sound asleep in his cot upstairs,’ Sheila pointed out. ‘It doesn’t need two of us to sit here. Put the wireless on, that’ll keep you company. I won’t be more than an hour or so.’

  ‘An hour, just to collect some magazines?’ queried her mother worriedly.

  ‘Well I expect we’ll have a bit of a natter as well,’ Sheila said airily. ‘I’m sixteen, Mum. I don’t want to be stuck indoors every night. It’s only natural I want to go out.’

  ‘But Joe might wake up,’ said Dot.

  ‘Well then you’ll have to get him back to sleep again, won’t you?’ She gave her mother an affectionate hug. ‘You’ll be fine. You must start to have more faith in yourself.’

  Although Sheila was sometimes hard on her mother, she was actually very fond of her. She felt bad about leaving her tonight, but the reality was that Mum would never get her confidence back if she and George pandered to her all the time, and George was far too soft with her in Sheila’s opinion. Before Dad died she was a perky and competent woman and there was no reason why she couldn’t be again with a gentle shove in the right direction.

  ‘If you’re determined to go, don’t be long,’ said Dot miserably.

  ‘An hour at the most,’ Sheila assured her, and headed for the door. Turning, she added, ‘If he does happen to wake up, just give him a cuddle and put him back down.’

  ‘I know what to do,’ said Dot. ‘It’s making it work that’s the problem.’

  When the door closed behind Sheila, Dot sat stiffly on the edge of an armchair, then got up and went over to the wireless set and turned it on. When the sound came through, she twisted the knob to adjust the volume so that she could barely hear it, in case Joe cried and she didn’t hear him. Every nerve in her body was raw.

  May wasn’t sure when the evening began to go downhill, but she thought it was probably sometime after Betty’s fourth or fifth drink. She’d insisted on having one after another while George and May still hadn’t finished their first.

  ‘I don’t often get a night out,’ she told them. ‘I want to make the most of it.’

  ‘We all want to enjoy ourselves,’ said May. ‘Let’s decide what we are going to do, or we’ll end up wandering about all evening or just doing a pub crawl.’

  ‘We don’t wanna do anything ordinary like going to the pictures,’ Betty said in a slow, slurred tone. ‘We can do that any time. This is supposed to be a special occasion. Us three are all grown up.’ She burst out laughing. ‘Whoopee.’

  ‘We are not staying here in this pub all night,’ said George firmly.

  ‘Why not, Georgie boy?’ Betty said, giggling. ‘I like it here.’

  ‘But you’re not the only one involved in this celebration, are you?’ he reminded her. ‘May and I have had a birthday as well, and we don’t want to sit in a pub all night. There’ll be time enough for that when we’re old.’

  ‘What do you wanna do, then?’ asked Betty.

  ‘I think we’ll be too late for a show now,’ suggested May. ‘Probably the pictures too. Maybe we could go for something to eat. A special meal would be nice. We could go to the Corner House.’

  ‘Good idea,’ agreed George.

  ‘Later on,’ drawled Betty loudly. ‘It’s good ’ere. It’ll be even better when I’ve had another drink.’

  ‘You are not having another,’ George stated categorically.

  ‘Who says?’

  ‘I do, and as I’m paying that rather settles it, I reckon,’ he told her.

  ‘Why, you bloody skinflint,’ she shouted.

  ‘Keep your voice down,’ he said, glancing around. ‘You’re making a fool of yourself.’

  ‘I never get a night out, and the first time I do you try and spoil it for me.’

  ‘It isn’t spoilt,’ said May persuasively. ‘It will be fun to have a meal together, the three of us.’

  ‘Except that it isn’t the three of us, is it?’ said Betty in a belligerent manner. ‘It’s you two and me. That’s how it�
�s always been and how it still is, even though I’m married to George. I’m always the outsider, the odd one out.’

  May and George looked at each other.

  ‘That just isn’t true,’ said May.

  ‘Of course it isn’t,’ added George firmly. ‘The sooner you sober up the better. Drink apparently doesn’t suit you, so you’d best leave it alone in future.’

  ‘If anyone is the odd one out tonight it’s me,’ stated May.

  ‘That’s how it ought to be, but it never is,’ said Betty drunkenly. ‘I don’t get a look-in with him when you’re around.’

  ‘What do I do that brings you to that conclusion?’ asked May. She realised that her friend was under the influence, but she’d heard that people spoke the truth when they were drunk.

  ‘You don’t have to actually do anything,’ said Betty. ‘You just have to be there to cast a shadow over me.’

  May was very hurt. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘If that’s the case then I should stay away from you both.’

  ‘Don’t you dare,’ said George. ‘She doesn’t know what she’s saying.’

  ‘I do, mate,’ said Betty blearily.

  ‘Well anyway, we don’t want to stay here all night,’ said May, feeling awkward. ‘Shall we be on our way?’

  ‘Yeah, I think they’ll be glad to see us go, the way you’ve been carrying on, Betty,’ said George. ‘Come on, girls, let’s get out of here.’

  Just as they were about to leave, Betty turned pale. ‘Ooh, I don’t feel well. I want to be sick.’

  May grabbed her arm and guided her forcefully towards the ladies’ room, managing to get her to the lavatory before she was violently sick.

  ‘Ooh,’ wailed Betty, sitting on the lid of the toilet. ‘I feel so ill. I wanna go to bed.’

  ‘We’ve a long way to go before you can do that,’ said May, wondering how they were going to get her home.

  ‘I want some water,’ Betty said.

  Having ascertained that she didn’t want to be sick again, May dragged her to her feet and helped her back into the bar.

  ‘God knows how we’re going to get her home,’ she said to George. ‘She can barely stand up, let alone walk to the station.’

  ‘We’ll have to get a taxi,’ he said.

  ‘Blimey, George, that will cost a fortune,’ May pointed out.

  ‘I’ll use the money I was going to spend on a meal,’ he said. ‘That’s the answer.’

  ‘I’ll pay my share,’ she offered.

  ‘No you won’t,’ he said. ‘It isn’t your fault we can’t go home on the train.’

  ‘Yours neither.’

  ‘My wife, my responsibility,’ he said. ‘Don’t even think of getting your purse out.’

  Between them they managed to get Betty out into the street so that they could flag down a taxi. What a horribly disappointing evening it had been, thought May, and she still couldn’t get used to the idea of George and Betty being a married couple.

  When George and Betty got home, having dropped May off on the way, they found Dot in tears and little Joe sitting on the floor grizzling and looking very sorry for himself.

  ‘Don’t you ever leave me on my own with that child again,’ Dot sobbed. ‘It’s been an absolute nightmare. I just couldn’t settle him. Sheila went out after promising to stay in and help me.’

  ‘Oh Mum,’ said George, dismayed. ‘Surely you can look after a one-year-old child. You’ve had two of your own.’

  ‘I can’t do it,’ she said. ‘He just doesn’t respond to me at all. If I pick him up, he screams.’

  ‘Babies sense fear, so they say, Mum,’ he said. ‘Maybe that has something to do with it.’

  George sat Betty in an armchair and she promptly went to sleep. He picked up his son, who immediately stopped crying. ‘Come on, little man,’ he said gently. ‘Let’s get you back into your cot and settled, then I’ll see about getting your mother to bed.’

  ‘And you’ll need to change his nappy,’ said his mother crossly. ‘He screamed blue murder when I tried to do it, so I just had to give up trying.’

  ‘Oh well, happy birthday, George,’ he said to himself as he carried his pungent son up the stairs. ‘So much for a birthday celebration.’

  The next morning May received a visit from an ashen-faced Betty, who was bug eyed and complaining of a shocking headache.

  ‘George said I have to come round to apologise for ruining our night out last night.’

  ‘It was a shame but it’s over and done with now.’

  ‘He also tells me that I said some mean things to you,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry about that too.’

  ‘Forget it,’ said May.

  ‘Blimey, I feel as though I’ve been hit by a bus,’ said Betty. ‘I don’t know what happened.’

  ‘You wouldn’t lay off the booze, that’s what happened,’ May reminded her.

  ‘I suppose so,’ she agreed. ‘It made me feel so nice at first I couldn’t get enough of it. I don’t feel at all nice now, though, so that’ll teach me.’

  ‘Mm.’

  ‘Anyway, the three of us will have to have a night out again some other time and I’ll promise not to experiment with the gin,’ suggested Betty.

  May muttered something vague. She knew in her heart that the three of them together didn’t work any more. She also believed that Betty had meant every word last night when she’d said that May overshadowed her with George. It was something that just seemed to happen unintentionally that neither May nor George could do anything about.

  Chapter Six

  Because she was seeing him out of context, May didn’t instantly recognise the colourful character who swept into the Pavilion a few days later wearing a blazer with a bright blue bow tie and fashionable baggy trousers. His blond hair was worn slightly longer than most men of May’s acquaintance, and flopped on to his brow.

  ‘Doug from Ashburn,’ she said when recognition finally dawned. ‘How lovely to see you again. What brings you to this neck of the woods?’

  ‘I’m looking for you, as it happens,’ he replied casually. ‘And it wasn’t difficult to track you down, as you told me about your area and the Green Street Pavilion during the chat we had at that Christmas party at Ashburn.’

  ‘Ooh, that seems a long time ago. Fancy you remembering.’ She paused, looking at him. ‘Is there any particular reason why you want to see me?’ she enquired, hoping he wasn’t the bearer of bad news about his health.

  ‘No, not really. I was thinking about Ashburn and remembered that you didn’t live too far from me. I thought you would have left by now. It’s a bit cheeky of me to turn up out of the blue, but I thought you could soon send me packing if I was a nuisance, so I hopped on a bus and here I am,’ he explained. ‘I just wondered how you were getting on.’

  ‘I’m doing fine now,’ she told him, ‘but it hasn’t been all plain sailing.’

  Overhearing their conversation, Flo suggested that they continue their chat in the café and said she would bring some tea over. May introduced the two of them and led Doug out on to the veranda, where the geraniums were in full colour, a glorious mixture of red, orange and pink.

  As it was quite a while since May had last seen Doug, they had a lot of catching up to do. She told him about the success of her operation, and her job-hunting and the prejudice she’d encountered with the latter; he said he’d experienced similar discrimination when he tried to join the ARP.

  ‘So are you managing to sell enough paintings to earn a living these days?’ she enquired in a friendly manner.

  ‘Just about,’ he told her. ‘I have an occasional exhibition and get shopkeepers to have my paintings on display on a commission-only basis. Just when I think I’m about to be on my uppers, I sell enough work to keep me going for a while longer. It isn’t the most secure of professions but I don’t do too badly.’

  He asked her if she’d kept in touch with anyone else that he knew from Ashburn.

  ‘Yes, Connie and I write to each
other,’ she told him. ‘She’s also left Ashburn and we intend to get round to meeting up at some point, which will be nice. She’s managed to get a job in a sewing factory, apparently. She wormed her way in by not telling them about her medical history.’

  ‘I don’t blame her for keeping it dark, but she shouldn’t have to hide it.’

  ‘I quite agree.’

  They had been talking for a while and May noticed that her mother was very busy at the counter, so she felt obliged to go back to work.

  ‘Perhaps we could continue our chat another time as you can’t stop now,’ suggested Doug.

  ‘That’s a good idea,’ she agreed. ‘I’d like that.’

  ‘When would it be convenient for me to come back?’ he asked.

  ‘We could meet in central London to save you coming all the way over here,’ she suggested quickly. She wasn’t sure what he had in mind and wanted to avoid a whole lot of parental speculation at this stage.

  ‘Whichever is best for you. I don’t mind how we work it,’ he told her. ‘But I would like to see you again.’

  They made arrangements to meet at Marble Ach the following Sunday afternoon, then Doug bade Flo a polite farewell and sauntered off down the street, leaving May feeling rather excited. The age gap seemed to have disappeared now that she was grown up. She wasn’t sure if their meeting was a date as such, or just a friendly get-together of two fellow sufferers, but it should be fun whatever the purpose. She’d never had a proper boyfriend; maybe Doug would change that.

  Predictably there was an inquisition that evening over their meal.

  ‘So who is this bloke who came to see you, May?’ asked her father. ‘Your mother tells me he’s a bit flash.’

  ‘I know him from Ashburn,’ she replied. ‘And he isn’t flash, not really. He just looks a bit different to the men round here, that’s all, probably because he’s an artist.’

  ‘An artist. Oh my Gawd,’ exclaimed her father. ‘What does that mean exactly?’

  ‘He paints.’

  ‘Pictures?’

  ‘I suppose they are pictures but I’ve never seen any of his work,’ she said. ‘Some artists do abstract stuff, I think. I’ve no idea what he specialises in.’