A Distant Dream

by Pamela Evans

  ‘And does he make a living at it?’

  ‘It varies apparently, but he does all right.’

  ‘It varies: well that isn’t very promising, is it?’ said Dick. ‘That won’t put food on the table.’

  ‘For goodness’ sake, Dad,’ she began in a strong tone of admonition. ‘I’m meeting him for a chat. Not to marry him.’

  ‘Meeting him?’ he queried, sounding outraged. ‘Why isn’t he coming to call for you like any decent man would?’

  ‘Because I don’t want him to be cross-questioned by you,’ she explained. ‘I’m a big girl now. Quite old enough to go out without being collected.’

  ‘When I was courting your mother I always used to go and call for her,’ he insisted. ‘It’s only good manners.’

  ‘But he isn’t courting me,’ May pointed out.

  ‘Sounds to me as though he’d like to be.’

  ‘I hardly know the man,’ she said.

  ‘He’s a lot older than her too,’ her mother piped up.

  ‘Seven years, that’s all,’ May informed them.

  ‘This is getting worse by the minute,’ exclaimed Dick. ‘Why on earth can’t you go out with a boy of your own age?’

  Because the only one of those I want to be with is taken, she thought, but said, ‘I probably will at some point, but on Sunday I’m meeting up with Doug.’

  ‘You are a young girl who has been very ill,’ her father lectured. ‘I don’t want you traipsing about on your own.’

  ‘Doug has been very ill too,’ she said.

  ‘All the more reason to steer clear,’ he retorted.

  That remark infuriated May. ‘That’s a terrible thing to say and just the sort of attitude people like Doug and me are fighting against,’ she said sharply.

  ‘Look, I’m your father,’ began Dick in a reasoning manner. ‘It’s only natural I want you to have someone who can look after you. This man is ill so obviously can’t do the job properly.’

  ‘Was ill, Dad,’ she emphasised. ‘In the past tense, like me. He’s fine now.’

  ‘If you say so.’ He didn’t seem convinced.

  ‘Look, I appreciate your concern, but I want to go on Sunday and I won’t come to any harm,’ his daughter assured him. ‘If I go out with him again after that, I’ll make sure he comes to call for me so that you can give him the once-over. But this first time I’d rather meet him in London.’

  ‘Where does he live?’

  ‘Richmond.’

  ‘Ooh, posh,’ said Dick.

  ‘On the river in a houseboat,’ she added.

  ‘Cor blimey,’ her father blurted out. ‘What sort of a way is that to live?’

  ‘I think a boat is quite respectable, dear,’ put in her mother mildly. ‘It isn’t as if it’s a caravan.’

  ‘As near as,’ he grunted.

  ‘I’ve always thought houseboats were supposed to be quite posh,’ May mentioned.

  ‘They are when they are moored at the end of the garden of a big house to go off on at weekends, not when you are living on one all the time,’ her father said.

  ‘Well I still think it’s exciting,’ said May. ‘I’d love to see it.’

  ‘Don’t you dare,’ he ordered, holding his head in despair. ‘Who knows what might happen if he takes you there?’

  ‘Don’t you trust me, Dad?’

  ‘Of course I do. It’s him that’s the problem. I know what young fellas are like.’

  ‘Give him a chance, dear,’ suggested Flo somewhat forcibly. ‘He seemed a nice enough chap to me. Very well spoken and polite anyway.’

  ‘You said he was dressed like a theatrical, Flo,’ he reminded her.

  ‘Well he was, sort of, but I don’t think that really matters, does it?’

  ‘I don’t want my daughter going out with an actor type,’ said Dick.

  ‘He’s an artist, Dad.’

  ‘Artist, actor, they’re all the same to me,’ he retorted. ‘An immoral lot from what I’ve heard.’

  ‘Oh really,’ exploded May, irritated now by her father’s overprotectiveness. ‘What does it matter what he does for a living as long as he’s a decent man?’

  ‘You be careful on Sunday and I want you home by nine o’clock,’ he said.

  ‘Come off it, Dick, that’s a bit much,’ Flo objected. ‘She is eighteen, you know.’

  ‘Look,’ May cut in. ‘I’m meeting him in the afternoon so we’ll probably have had enough of each other by about four o’clock and I’ll be back early anyway.’

  ‘Nine o’clock, madam,’ he insisted.

  ‘She used to get home later than that when she was younger and went out of an evening with Betty,’ Flo reminded him.

  ‘She wasn’t going out with some boat person who is years too old for her then, was she?’

  May knew that many fathers were strict with their daughters about this sort of thing, and accepted that her dad wanted the best for her, but she guessed that her parents were exceptionally protective because of the loss of their son and her own subsequent illness. They were terrified something bad would happen to her. But whilst she understood the reason, she couldn’t allow them to cast a shadow over her adult life by restricting her to this extent.

  ‘I must be allowed some freedom, Dad,’ she pointed out firmly. ‘I’m not a child any more, or an invalid.’

  The silence echoed around them and the tension in the atmosphere pulled tight. ‘Well that’s a fine way to speak to your parents, I must say,’ her father complained eventually.

  ‘Sorry, Dad, but I have to be allowed to live as a grown-up.’ She looked from one to the other. ‘But as it’s the first time I’ve been out with Doug, I’ll get back early to put your minds at rest.’

  ‘That sounds fair enough to me, Dick,’ said her mother. ‘Can we leave it at that and wish her well?’

  ‘Mm, I suppose so,’ grunted Dick with reluctance.

  May and Doug were sitting by the Serpentine eating ice cream cones they had bought from a street seller on their way into Hyde Park. Their first topic of conversation had been their mutual interest, Ashburn and their illness, but they soon moved on to exchanging personal details. She hadn’t been sure if it was a meeting of friends or a date, but as soon as she’d seen him waiting for her outside the station and they’d smiled at each other she knew it was a date. She liked the idea. It was new, exciting and fun.

  ‘So how come you live on a boat?’ she enquired in a friendly manner. ‘I presume you didn’t grow up on one.’

  ‘Oh no,’ he confirmed. ‘I grew up in an ordinary house in Twickenham with Mum and Dad, an only child. My father is a solicitor and the boat belonged to my parents. They used it for family holidays and weekends away, Sunday afternoon trips along the Thames, that sort of thing. It was great fun. I loved it, the three of us together when I was a kid. Much later, when they moved out of London to Sussex because of Dad’s job, I didn’t want to go with them, so they gave me the boat as a twenty-first-birthday present. They had more or less lost interest in boating by that time anyway.’

  ‘Quite a gift,’ she commented lightly. ‘Most people get a wristwatch.’

  ‘Dad has quite a well-paid job but he isn’t filthy rich or anything,’ Doug explained. ‘I did all sorts of jobs to pay my way while I was at art school.’

  ‘Art school?’ she gasped.

  ‘Don’t sound so shocked,’ he said.

  ‘I’m not,’ she told him. ‘It’s such a different world to the one I’m used to, that’s all.’

  ‘Anyway, I got the boat put on to a permanent mooring in Richmond with water and electricity laid on and made it my home.’

  ‘Sounds lovely,’ she said.

  ‘It has its drawbacks; it is a little confined, but it has many advantages too, like seeing the water in all its different moods and colours and feeling so close to nature; and nowhere is cosier with the stove on in cold weather. One thing I appreciate a lot since my illness is the fresh air. I spend a lot of time on the deck and have
all my meals outside in good weather.’

  ‘All that fresh air sounds wonderful.’

  ‘You must come and see it sometime,’ he suggested in a friendly manner.

  She laughed heartily. ‘I think my father would probably have a nervous breakdown if he thought I was going to do that,’ she explained.

  He grinned. ‘Fathers and daughters, eh?’ he remarked. ‘And you are still quite young. It isn’t really done for a girl like you to be alone with a man, not inside somewhere anyway. I’d be worried about that sort of thing if you were my daughter.’

  ‘Maybe all men are like that over their daughters. But I think the illness has made both Mum and Dad overly cautious.’ She went on to tell him about her brother’s death and how that had affected her relationship with her parents. ‘I was in a sheltered environment for so long at Ashburn and I haven’t long been going out and about again on my own. So I suppose it’s only natural.’

  ‘In that case you’ll have to bring them with you if you want to see the boat.’

  ‘Or I could take the view that what the eye doesn’t see . . .’ she said lightly.

  ‘May Stubbs,’ he said, pretending to be shocked. ‘I’m surprised at you.’

  ‘I don’t think you are,’ she said, flirting with him and enjoying it immensely.

  ‘Don’t worry, you’ll be quite safe with me,’ he said.

  ‘Really?’ she responded playfully. She was finding this whole process of getting to know someone new different and very exciting.

  ‘Yes, really,’ he chuckled. ‘So behave yourself.’

  They talked and flirted the afternoon away, and when they walked towards Hyde Park Corner for tea they were holding hands. Their attention was distracted by some noisy activity around Speakers’ Corner, where several anti-war protesters were holding forth.

  He took her for tea at the Corner House, and almost inevitably, given the abundance of sandbags and the subject of the speakers, the conversation turned to current events.

  ‘Have you got your gas mask yet?’ May asked lightly.

  ‘I have, as a matter of fact,’ he replied. ‘I got fixed up during the week when they started distributing them in our area.’

  ‘We went to the church hall the other night to get ours fitted,’ she told him. ‘It turned out to be quite a lark as it happened, because we all looked so weird in them. One poor woman there nearly had hysterics, though, because she felt as though she couldn’t breathe. She rushed outside screaming blue murder and saying she’d rather take her chances than wear one of those things.’ She sipped her tea and spread butter on a scone. ‘Anyway, let’s not talk about gas masks and the blackout and all the rest of the paraphernalia that’s crept into daily conversation lately. We’ve come out to enjoy ourselves.’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  She smiled at him and he almost melted. ‘I’m having such a lovely time, Doug,’ she said.

  ‘Me too.’ He took a mouthful of tea. ‘Do you feel that you lost some of your youth because of the illness?’ he asked.

  ‘I’m far too busy being grateful to be alive to spend time with regret,’ she said. ‘But I would like to have some fun now that I’m on top form again. Nothing very daring; just to go to dances sometimes, the sort of things that young people usually enjoy. I suppose I want to make up for lost time.’

  ‘We’ll have to see what we can do then, won’t we?’ he said, smiling at her.

  Everything was utterly perfect, and then he spoiled it by saying, ‘When it’s time for us to go, I’ll take you home then get the bus back to Richmond.’

  ‘There’s no need,’ she said, anticipating the embarrassing third degree her father would put him through. ‘I’ll be fine on my own, honestly.’

  ‘So . . . you didn’t want me to call for you,’ he said in a more serious manner. ‘If you don’t let me see you home to put your parents’ minds at rest, I shall think you are ashamed of me.’

  ‘That’s the last thing . . .’

  ‘Why then?’

  ‘It’s just that my dad . . .’

  ‘Will want to check me out,’ he finished for her.

  ‘Something like that, yeah.’

  ‘I would expect him to, and it won’t worry me, not in the least,’ he assured her.

  ‘Is that because you’re used to it?’ she asked lightly. ‘You’ve been out with lots of girls, I expect.’

  ‘A few,’ he told her. ‘I have turned twenty-five, so it’d be a bit odd if I hadn’t, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘Indeed.’

  ‘What about you?’

  ‘I’ve never had a proper boyfriend,’ she confessed. ‘The boy I’ve always been sweet on married my best friend while I was away at Ashburn.’

  ‘That must have been a blow,’ he said.

  ‘It certainly didn’t do much for my self-esteem,’ she said. ‘But at least it made me realise that I have to look forward and not keep harking back to childhood.’

  ‘Sensible girl.’

  They finished their tea in a leisurely manner, then headed to the station to get the train to Ealing Broadway.

  Despite all May’s efforts to persuade Doug just to see her to the gate and then leave, he insisted on going with her to the door, which meant that her mother invited him in for a cup of tea.

  ‘We’ve had tea, thanks,’ said May quickly. ‘And Doug is in a hurry to get home.’

  ‘No I’m not,’ he corrected annoyingly. ‘I’ve got time to come in for a few minutes, and I can always manage a cuppa.’

  ‘Lovely,’ said Flo, and ushered him into the living room, where Dick was sitting in an armchair looking at the newspaper.

  Her father wasted no time and didn’t bother with subtlety. Out came all the questions about Doug’s circumstances; everything from his age and his work to his living accommodation. By the time Doug finally made a move, May had abandoned all hope of ever seeing him again. But much to her surprise, he did suggest another meeting the following Saturday evening.

  ‘I could cycle over,’ he suggested. ‘It’ll be better than relying on the bus service. We could go dancing if you like. It will be a chance for you to catch up on all that fun you feel you’ve missed.’

  ‘That would be lovely.’

  ‘See you Saturday then,’ he said, and swung off down the street without so much as a handshake, which was no wonder as he probably thought her father would have his beady eyes on his every move from behind the net curtains.

  ‘I’ve never been so embarrassed in my life,’ May raged when she stormed back inside and confronted her father. ‘It’s a wonder you didn’t ask him what he has for breakfast every morning and what time he goes to bed at night.’

  ‘Your dad is only looking out for you, love,’ said her mother, hoping to appease her. ‘It’s only natural.’

  ‘That sort of interrogation isn’t necessary, surely,’ May came back at her. ‘It’s enough to put any man off.’

  ‘A decent man wouldn’t be put off,’ said her father. ‘He isn’t our sort, May.’

  ‘Just because he happens to be a bit more refined . . .’

  ‘You should stick to your own kind,’ he said.

  ‘Like George, you mean? We never had any sort of interrogation if I was going to be with George, did we?’ she reminded him. ‘Well in case you haven’t noticed, George is married to someone else and I’m trying to get on with my life, and that means spreading my wings and getting to know new people.’

  ‘We’re bound to be a bit wary for you after you’ve been so ill,’ said her mother, still trying to smooth things over.

  ‘Am I never to be able to forget that I’ve been ill?’ said May, her voice rising emotionally. ‘You can’t wrap me in cotton wool for the rest of my life.’

  ‘I don’t like your tone and I think you’d better apologise to your mother for that remark since all she does is care and worry about you,’ said her father sternly.

  May looked from one to the other. She knew that she meant the world to the
m both, and vice versa. But they were suffocating her and she couldn’t bear it. She had to be firm if she was to have any degree of independence.

  ‘I am sorry for being rude to you both,’ she said in a conciliatory manner. ‘I know how much you suffered when we lost Geoffrey and again when I was ill and you were so afraid that you were going to lose me too. But I got better and I need to experience the world outside of this house and the Pavilion. And that includes men you might not think are right for me. I have to make my own mistakes and not be protected from every single thing beyond these four walls.’

  She saw her remark hit home and felt terrible.

  ‘Look,’ she began, hoping to make them understand and not be hurt by the stand she felt compelled to take, ‘no one could have more caring parents than I have and I’m very grateful to you for everything you’ve done for me, but I want to live my life a little now. Doug is taking me out dancing on Saturday night and I don’t want him to have to suffer in-depth questioning when he comes to call for me. If it happens again I shall meet him somewhere else in the future.’

  ‘Are you telling us what to do?’ demanded her father, not best pleased.

  ‘Not really, but I do want to make my position clear.’

  ‘Why not invite him to tea on Sunday?’ suggested Flo out of the blue.

  ‘And have him subjected to another cross-examination, no fear,’ said May.

  ‘There will be nothing like that,’ said Flo, flashing a warning look at her husband. ‘You have my word.’

  ‘Oh,’ May responded, surprised at her mother’s definite tone but more confident because of it. ‘Well, if it goes well on Saturday night, I’ll consider asking him.’

  ‘It might help to clear the air,’ said Flo.

  Dick looked at one then the other but he didn’t say another word.

  Saturday night at the Hammersmith Palais was absolute magic to May; the coloured lights, the music and the general air of excitement and glamour. Everyone had made an effort with their appearance, the women in dresses or smart blouses and skirts, the men mostly in suits. Until she’d been ill, May hadn’t been particularly keen to try anything like this, even though Betty had craved it; now she was glad to be here and was having the time of her life. Maybe because of her new lease of life since her recovery, or perhaps because of the increasing threat of war, she had a hunger for fun.