A Distant Dream

by Pamela Evans

  ‘Sands Nest?’ she said, astounded, when the bespectacled man sitting behind the leather-topped desk had finished telling her the reason why she had been summoned. ‘Are you saying that Doug has left me his boat?’

  ‘Yes, that’s right.’

  ‘But that was his most treasured possession, and his biggest asset,’ she said.

  ‘He must have held you in very high regard.’

  ‘I can’t believe it.’

  The man nodded but didn’t seem to want to engage in any further discussion. Instead he moved on briskly, explaining certain relevant legalities. ‘Here are all the necessary papers to prove your ownership, and the keys,’ he said eventually, pushing a large envelope across the desk along with a form. ‘If you could just sign as proof of receipt, please. Any queries, feel free to contact me. Otherwise I hope you enjoy your inheritance.’

  ‘Thank you,’ she said numbly, writing her signature. Then, clutching the envelope, she walked out of the office into the cold November day.

  ‘That will be worth a good few quid,’ announced her father over their evening meal . ‘A motor boat in good condition. Oh yes, that will fetch a pretty penny, though you’d do well to wait until after the war before you put it up for sale.’

  May looked at him in astonishment. ‘How can you even suggest that I sell it, Dad?’ she asked emotionally.

  ‘Well I didn’t think you’d want to live on it or take up boating,’ he said drily.

  ‘I don’t, but that isn’t the point,’ she told him. ‘It was Doug’s most prized possession and he chose to leave it to me.’

  ‘Which shows how much he thought of you,’ Dick said. ‘He was looking after you, making sure you had a few quid. If he’d died a day later you would have got everything else as well, as his wife.’

  ‘That’s a terrible thing to say, Dad.’ She was shocked at what seemed such a callous attitude. ‘As if I would look at it in material terms.’

  ‘It is a bit insensitive, Dick,’ chided Flo.

  ‘I’m sorry to have upset you, May.’ Her father wasn’t an unfeeling man, just a bit tactless. Having experienced poverty at first hand, he couldn’t help thinking in financial terms when potential presented itself. ‘Just forget that I said anything and enjoy your inheritance.’

  That didn’t go down well either. ‘Enjoy something that has come into my possession because the man I was about to marry has died?’ she said incredulously. ‘Of course I won’t enjoy it.’

  Flo tutted, shaking her head and glaring at her husband. ‘Dick, honestly, you can be so thoughtless at times. Can’t you see how upset she is?’

  ‘I’m upset too, we’re all upset,’ he objected. ‘All I said was enjoy your—’

  ‘Well keep your trap shut in future.’ Flo turned her attention to her daughter, who seemed about to rush from the room in floods of tears without finishing her portion of shepherd’s pie. ‘And don’t you even think about leaving one morsel of that meal, my girl. It’s got a large part of this week’s meat ration in it. It’s a sin to waste food in these hard times, as you well know.’

  ‘All right, Mum,’ said May, forcing herself to eat. She knew that her mother was right.

  May wasn’t quite sure why she was so uneasy about her inheritance, but she did know that she wasn’t going to sell the boat. The following Sunday afternoon she caught the bus to Richmond and went aboard and into the main cabin, which was achingly poignant without Doug. When she’d been here with him the stove had been glowing, the polished wood shining and the atmosphere warm and welcoming.

  Now it was cold and uninviting. The air was stale and there were dishes in the sink, which she washed with cold water after she had let in some fresh air. There were various other items lying around too: newspapers, books, a few items of outer clothing. Doug had left here that fateful night to meet her father for a few drinks, not knowing that he would never return.

  Leaving her this boat was the highest compliment anyone had ever paid her. Sands Nest had meant everything to Doug. Not in any material sense, but because it was full of memories of a time in his life when he’d been happy, and he had trusted her to be its guardian.

  She sat on the upholstered leather bench for a long time, lost in thought, remembering Doug here where he had seemed so comfortable and right. He would have hated living with Mum and Dad after they were married, as they had planned. But he would have done it for her. She had a mental image of his crooked smile and the worried look that he had worn too often.

  Realising that she was shivering with the cold, she closed up and left, now knowing exactly what she was going to do about the boat.

  A couple of weeks later, on a Wednesday afternoon, May walked into Lyons Corner House in the West End, looked around for a few moments, then went over to a table where a woman was waiting for her.

  ‘Hello, my dear,’ greeted Mrs Sands. ‘Thank you so much for coming.’

  ‘No trouble at all,’ May assured her, sitting down. ‘It doesn’t take long on the tube.’

  She looked around the crowded café, at the many people in uniform, the Nippy waitresses weaving in and out of the tables. As a conversation starter she said, ‘I see that the Corner Houses are managing to keep the service going despite food rationing, though there isn’t so much to choose from these days.’

  ‘The war is bound to have an effect.’

  ‘The Nippy waitresses have gone from all the tea shops, though,’ said May. ‘It’s self-service now. They couldn’t get enough staff with so many women doing men’s jobs, apparently. One of the women in our local tea shop was telling me about it.’

  ‘That’s a pity. It won’t be the same without them,’ said the older woman. ‘Still, change is inevitable in wartime, I suppose.’ She sighed, shrugging her shoulders. ‘I noticed that the John Lewis store near here has some bomb damage.’

  ‘Yes, it was bombed a couple of months ago,’ confirmed May. ‘The West End is looking quite battered.’

  A waitress came over and Mrs Sands ordered tea and buns for them both.

  ‘Is your husband not coming?’ enquired May.

  ‘No, I asked you to meet me because I wanted us to have a chat on our own,’ she explained. ‘He has come to London with me but I left him in the room at the hotel having a nap.’

  ‘Are you just here for tonight?’ asked May.

  Mrs Sands nodded. ‘I wanted to see you to thank you personally for your wonderful generosity in giving us the boat and it’s too far to come just for the day,’ she said. ‘It means so much to us to have Sands Nest back in the family again. I was very moved when we heard from the solicitor of your intentions. We are so grateful to you, my dear.’

  ‘Yes, I guessed you would be pleased,’ May told her. ‘Doug had such wonderful memories of his childhood there with you and Mr Sands.’ She paused, not sure if she should continue, but decided to take a chance. ‘I think his childhood was the last time Doug was truly happy.’

  The older woman looked desperately sad. ‘Yes, he was a very happy child; always laughing and full of fun. But when he reached adolescence he changed. He started to have dark moods and withdrew into himself. He shut himself away from his father and me mentally.’

  ‘All the time?’

  ‘No, there were times when he seemed like his old self, but the darkness would always come back,’ she explained. ‘We did think of getting medical advice but he was grown up by then and refused to see a doctor.’ Her eyes were full of tears. ‘I don’t think there’s anything they can do about that sort of thing anyway.’

  ‘So do you know what caused it?’

  ‘No, because he refused to talk about it,’ she said. ‘I don’t think he realised the extent to which it affected other people. His father had no patience with it at all.’

  ‘Was he a strict father?’

  ‘Very. He wanted Doug to go away to boarding school, but I refused to allow it.’

  ‘How did Mr Sands take that?’

  ‘We argued about it for mon
ths,’ she confided. ‘He thought if we’d sent Doug away to school he would have been tougher; had more confidence in himself.’

  ‘Does he think he wouldn’t have had the psychological problems?’ she asked.

  ‘He does sometimes try to pin the whole thing on me for not letting him be sent away, yes,’ she admitted. ‘And who knows, he could be right.’

  ‘It was in his make-up, I think. Part of his personality,’ said May. ‘He had been a lot better lately as it happens. Ironic really.’

  ‘Yes, it is,’ Mrs Sands agreed tearfully.

  ‘I don’t see anything of Doug in his father,’ May mentioned.

  ‘No, he was more like me in every way.’ Mrs Sands paused thoughtfully as though guessing May’s thoughts. ‘My husband is not a bad man, you know,’ she said as the waitress brought the tea. ‘He is just very set in his ideas and impatient with people who don’t think along the same lines. He used to get so angry with Doug over the moods. He thought he had no right to inflict them on other people and make them miserable.’

  ‘They did take some tolerating, I must admit,’ said May. ‘I only knew your son for a short time, but I found that side of him quite upsetting. It’s a shame, because he was such a lovely man in other ways. I wish now I’d been more patient with him.’

  ‘You stayed with him, that’s the important thing,’ said the other woman, pouring the tea.

  ‘I suppose so, but I can see why some people may have been put off,’ she said. ‘He gave me the impression that he’d had girlfriends before who got fed up with it.’

  ‘Yes, he did have a few, but once he didn’t live with us any more I didn’t know what he was doing. We lost touch for a while.’

  ‘One good thing you did for him was to give him the boat,’ said May. ‘That was where he was happiest. He found some sort of peace there.’

  ‘Yes, I know,’ she said. ‘He loved it as a boy and that’s why I’m so pleased we can keep it in the family now that he’s gone.’

  May sipped her tea. ‘What will you do with her?’ she wondered. ‘I expect it will cost a bit to keep her moored where she is now if you’re never going to use her. Will you take her to a stretch of water near you?’

  ‘Oh no,’ Mrs Sands said at once. ‘She has to be on the Thames; that was the essence of the whole thing. We’ll have her stored in a boatyard somewhere until after the war, then we’ll put her back on the river and use her as accommodation when we come to London. We might even have boating holidays again one day.’

  ‘Yes, why not,’ said May.

  ‘It’s somewhere that I can revive some happy memories,’ she said. ‘We moved away from the family home because of my husband’s job, so all the memories are in the boat.’ She fixed May with her gaze. ‘Thank you so much, my dear.’

  ‘It’s a pleasure,’ said May, and she really meant it.

  It was such a weight off her mind having handed the boat back to its rightful owners that she was positively light hearted when she got home, where Betty and Joe were waiting for her.

  ‘I sometimes fear for your sanity, May Stubbs,’ said Betty when May had finished telling her and Flo about her business with Mrs Sands. ‘Fancy giving the boat away. Anyone would think you had money, the way you carry on.’

  ‘I didn’t give it away,’ she told her. ‘I returned it to its rightful owners.’

  ‘Rightful owners my Aunt Fanny,’ protested Betty. ‘That boat was yours. Doug wanted you to have it or he wouldn’t have left it to you. If you didn’t want to keep it you could have sold it and had a decent bit of dough in your purse.’

  ‘You are as bad as my father about this,’ protested May. ‘Why can’t the two of you understand that some things can’t be measured in financial terms?’

  ‘When you’re in the moneyed classes maybe that’s true, but when you’re in the lower ranks like us you have to grab anything that comes your way. Isn’t that right, Mrs Stubbs?’

  ‘Don’t drag me into it,’ protested Flo. ‘My daughter has a mind of her own and when she gets an idea into her head no one will alter it, not you, nor her father, and believe me he has tried. It was her inheritance so her decision.’

  ‘So let that be an end to it please,’ said May.

  There was an interruption from below. ‘Swings please, Auntie May,’ said Joe, staring up at her with his gorgeous pale brown eyes.

  ‘Yes, of course I’ll take you to the swings, darlin’,’ she said, picking him up and kissing him. ‘Come on, Betty, get your coat. And hurry up or the kids will be out of school and we won’t be able to get Joe on anything.’

  ‘It’s bloomin’ cold out there,’ Betty said. ‘I think I’ll wait for you here, if that’s all right, Mrs Stubbs.’

  Flo exchanged a glance with Betty, then said, ‘Course it is, love; you can talk to me while I get the meal ready for tonight.’

  For once in her life Betty wasn’t thinking of herself. She knew that Doug’s death had devastated May, even though she didn’t make a performance of it, and the only real comfort she seemed to get came from being with Joe. May’s love for him exuded from every pore and Betty thought she would let her have a little time on her own with him. Besides, it really was cold out and it would be nice and warm in the Stubbses’ kitchen.

  May and Joe had the small recreation ground to themselves on this grey November afternoon and May sat with her arm around him on the roundabout, feeling him close to her and cherishing the moment. Doug’s death had traumatised her, but because he had always been so much outside of her normal circle, it sometimes felt as though he had never been in her life at all now that he had gone. She had resumed her old routine as though she hadn’t left it.

  But everything was different for her now emotionally. She had been part of a couple; now she was on her own again and had to adjust to the loneliness of it. As the damp, smoky scent of incipient evening rose around her, she was transported back to earlier times spent under the lamp-post on the corner of the street when the air had smelled just like this; the three of them, her, Betty and George. An ache of longing rose inside her for simpler times when life had been safe and carefree.

  ‘May loves young Joe, doesn’t she?’ said Flo as she rolled out pastry on the kitchen table with Betty sitting opposite.

  ‘Yeah, she’s a brilliant godmother, as George and I knew she would be when we chose her.’

  ‘Have you heard from George lately?’ Flo enquired.

  ‘I get a letter every now and again,’ she said.

  ‘Where is he now?’

  ‘His letters are censored so I’m not sure, but it’s somewhere warm.’

  ‘We could do with a bit of that round here,’ said Flo lightly, putting cooked meat and gravy into a pie dish and covering it with pastry.

  ‘Not half.’ Betty had switched back to her normal self-seeking ways as an idea to brighten up her life came into her mind. ‘I was thinking, Mrs Stubbs, as May seems to draw such comfort from being with Joe, might it be a good idea for her to have him here one evening and let him stay over for the night?’

  Flo narrowed her eyes. ‘You want to go out, do you?’ she said.

  ‘I wouldn’t mind a night out at the flicks, but that isn’t why I’m suggesting it,’ Betty fibbed. ‘I thought it might do May good; give her something else to think about other than her bereavement and do me a favour at the same time. I never get to go out of an evening. My mother-in-law won’t look after Joe for me because she can’t cope with him on her own.’

  ‘I suppose if the raids ease up it might be an idea,’ said Flo. ‘Anything that cheers May up is all right by me.’

  ‘People do go out despite the raids now that we are all used to them,’ said Betty.

  ‘And look what happened to poor Doug,’ Flo reminded her.

  ‘Mm, there is that,’ she said. ‘But some people say if a bomb is meant to get you it will wherever you are.’

  ‘That’s rubbish,’ declared Flo. ‘If it were true you might as well not have air-raid shel
ters and we’d all carry on as though bombs aren’t dropping out of the sky.’

  ‘Of course nobody means we should take it to that extreme,’ said Betty.

  ‘I should hope not.’

  ‘But they have longer programmes and entertainment at some of the cinemas if there’s a raid on, so I’ve heard,’ said Betty. ‘The organist comes up and they have a sing-song after the big film. It helps to take people’s minds off the bombs.’

  ‘That’s just asking for trouble,’ said Flo. ‘They wouldn’t stand a chance if a bomb hit the cinema.’

  ‘I suppose they hope it won’t,’ said Betty, disappointed to find opposition to what had originally been an altruistic gesture. ‘Anyway, it was only an idea. May can have Joe for a night and I’ll stay in if it will make everyone happy. I was only trying to help.’

  Flo had known Betty all her life and she knew that May was the giver in that friendship. Betty always wanted what was best for Betty, but Flo was quite fond of her just the same. Probably because she was so transparent she could be comical at times.

  ‘You need to speak to May about it,’ she suggested. ‘It’s nothing to do with me.’

  ‘Right you are,’ agreed Betty.

  The idea of having her godson for a whole night really appealed to May and she was confident that he would be happy to stay with her because she had built an excellent rapport with him.

  ‘You go off to the pictures and Joe and I will have a nice time together,’ she said later when she and Betty were on their own with Joe in the living room. ‘Let’s do it when we get a couple of quiet nights.’

  ‘Your mum seems to think that I am only offering for my own ends,’ said Betty.

  ‘Knowing you, you probably are,’ said May without animosity. ‘But that’s fine with me; you never get to go to the flicks, so why not take the opportunity and please me as well.’

  ‘Why does everybody always suspect my motives?’ asked Betty, looking peeved.

  ‘Probably because we know you so well,’ replied May.

  ‘I really did have the idea for your sake,’ Betty insisted. ‘At first, anyway. It was only afterwards I thought I might as well make the most of it and go out.’