‘Course you are!’ He took out a packet of cigarettes. Finding it empty he tossed it down on the table. ‘Got any money?’
‘No, sorry –’
‘No secret stash? You sure?’
‘Where would I get money from?’
‘You could try opening your legs for it.’
‘Danny, don’t talk like that.’
‘Don’t lie to me, then.’
‘I’m not lying. Honestly.’
‘Should I go and have a look around?’ He smiled at her. ‘Now, where – if I were you – would I hide a bit of cash?’
‘Nowhere.’
He snorted. ‘All right. I can’t be bothered with you now. Where’s Ben? Where’s my lad?’
‘He’s getting ready for school.’
‘What about that little bastard of yours? Where’s he hiding?’
‘Danny, please, please leave him alone. I don’t know why you have to be so hard on him…’
‘Oh – are you all worried about him now? All – Oh please don’t hurt him, Danny! He’s only little, Danny! Look at your face – fucking petrified. My mother used to hold us down when my father gave us a hiding, she didn’t whinge and moan on like you! In fact – yes, that’s what you’ll do – next time he needs disciplining you can hold on to him and keep him still!’
‘No, I won’t. You won’t hurt him, I won’t let you.’
He laughed. ‘Oh, go on. Let me. You always have up to now.’
She felt her face flush with shame and anger. Danny reached up and touched her cheek with one finger. He made a hissing sound like spit on a hot iron.
‘Annette. Some bloody mother you are, aren’t you? I wonder what Ben thinks of you – should we ask him? I bet he thinks you’re worse than fucking useless.’
She closed her eyes and tears spilled down her cheeks. Danny wiped them away with his thumb. ‘Do you want to ask me where I’ve been all night?’
It felt like a trick question. Too scared to say the wrong thing she said nothing and he squeezed her hand hard.
‘You can ask. I won’t bite your head off.’
‘Where –’ She cleared her throat to try to rid her voice of tears. ‘Where have you been?’
‘With another woman. She’s pregnant with my kid. Her name’s Anne-Marie. Anne-Marie and Annette.’ He grinned. ‘I quite like the sound of your two names together.’ He stood up suddenly. For once he ignored the way she flinched away from him and he smiled at her. ‘It’s all right – I’m not going to leave you and Ben. I thought she could move in here.’
Her legs felt weak and she leaned against the table. ‘Danny, don’t say things like that.’
‘No. Action not words, eh?’ He laughed. ‘Honestly, you should see yourself. You believe every word I say, don’t you? Quite gratifying if it wasn’t so fucking infuriating. I’m going to work. We’ll discuss Mark when I get back. Don’t think I’ve forgotten about him.’
She sank down on a chair. Upstairs Ben and Mark were getting dressed for school but she was shaking too much to go and see to them. After a while Ben came down. He sat beside her, her dogged little ally. She made herself smile at him. ‘All ready for school?’
He nodded. After a moment, reluctantly, he said, ‘I’m hungry.’
‘I know. But you can have your milk at school – that’ll be nice, won’t it?’ She got up, wiping her eyes quickly although he always knew when she’d been crying. Brightly she said, ‘Is Mark ready?’
‘I hate Mark.’
‘No you don’t!’
Unnoticed by either of them Mark had come downstairs. He gazed at them both from the doorway. After a moment Ben got down from his chair and went to him. He took Mark’s hand. ‘Come on,’ he said, ‘we have to go to school now.’ Glancing at her he said, ‘You can stay here, if you like, we can go on our own.’
Chapter 13
Simon said, ‘I’ve taken on a girl – to clean the house ready for when you come home.’
Joy nodded. She was sitting up in bed, a blue bed-jacket draped around her shoulders, the pearly buttons of her white nightdress fastened to her throat. A nurse had washed her hair and it fell softly around her shoulders, less severe than when Joy was in sole control of its styling. He smiled at her. ‘I like your hair like that.’
Two pink spots appeared on her cheeks, the first colour she’d had since her miscarriage. Taking her hand, he squeezed it gently. ‘You’re making good progress – Iain’s really pleased with you.’
She drew her hand away from his. ‘He’s a nice man.’
‘Yes, he is. And he and his wife Sarah have invited us both over for dinner as soon as you’re well enough. Which will be soon. You’ll be fit as a flea in no time.’
‘A flea.’ She snorted dismissively. ‘A flea!’
She’d barely glanced at him since he’d arrived. The flowers and chocolates he’d bought her, the get-well cards from her friends in London, all were ignored beside her on the bed. Buying the chocolates, he’d realised he didn’t know which type she preferred and so he had bought
Quality Street, a mix, a compromise. Her nostrils had flared in contempt when she saw the box with its soldier and crinolined girl.
He cleared his throat. ‘Is there anything you need? Anything else I can get you from the shops, or from home?’
‘No. Thank you.’
He sighed, ‘Joy –’
‘What?’ She looked at him with such hatred he was shocked. He looked away but felt the weight of her gaze.
She said, ‘I had a letter from Doctor King. He said I could have my old job back any time. Any time at all.’
He frowned at her. ‘Why should he offer you your job back?’
‘Because yesterday morning I telephoned and asked him. He told me on the phone he’d be delighted to have me back. He very kindly wrote to me, too, reiterating the offer. A very nice letter which I received this morning. He was always very prompt.’
‘Is that what you want to do? Go back to London?’
‘It’s an option.’
Matching her matter-of-fact tone with a coldness he didn’t feel he said, ‘And what are the other options?’
‘One would be to go back to Stoke. My mother’s quite frail now. I could go home to Stoke and care for her. Perhaps get a part-time job – I still have some contacts there and friends who would help me.’ Her hands clenched and unclenched on the hospital counterpane. He reached out and covered them with his own. Again she drew away. ‘Please stop touching me, Simon.’
After a while she said, ‘Actually I’ve thought of emigrating. My sister lives in Toronto. She’s always been very keen for me to go out there, too.’
Anger rose inside him. Too loudly he said, ‘For goodness’ sake, Joy! What else? What else can you think of to say to hurt me?’
She looked at him astonished. ‘Me hurt you? Is that possible, do you think?’
‘Of course it is! You’re my wife! I don’t want you to leave me!’
‘Keep your voice down.’ She glanced along the ward as if checking to see if any of her fellow patients had reacted to his outburst. Turning to him again she said, ‘Simon, I over heard two nurses talking about you. They called you the dishy new doctor. Of course, they didn’t realise that I was the dishy new doctor’s wife. I’m sure they wouldn’t dream that someone like me was married to you.’
‘Why wouldn’t they? Who the hell am I? Dishy!’ He spat the word out in contempt. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘About how others see us – ill-matched. Unsuited. Ridiculous. I’m ridiculous.’
‘This is self-pity, Joy. It’s really too far beneath you.’
‘Nothing is too far beneath me now. You’ve reduced me to nothing. I am alone without a job or friends in a town I’d never heard of before I married you. I’ve lost everything. And that is not self-pity, that is fact. I have to face facts.’
‘You could face the fact that you’re married to me. For better or for worse. That’s what you promised me and th
at’s what I promised you!’
He couldn’t remember feeling so angry. It was such an unexpected emotion he got up, wanting to find some physical out let for this rage, making him forget about his leg so that he put too much weight on it too quickly. The pain was a sharp reminder, and he closed his eyes, clenching his jaw against it. He sat down again, feeling idiotic.
She said, ‘You’ve gone white.’
‘Of course I’ve gone bloody white!’ He opened his eyes to look at her. ‘I’ve never sworn in front of a woman before, Joy. So, are you satisfied?’
She turned away. ‘Just go, Simon. Please, just go.’
‘No. I’m not going. I won’t be treated as though none of this affects me! I had a life in London, too, Joy! A life I can’t go back to as easily as it seems you can go back to yours. And I’m miserable and sad. Believe it or not, I am.’
She remained silent, kept her head turned away so that she reminded him of a stubborn infant refusing the last of its dinner. Her lip trembled.
More quietly he said, ‘I want you to stay. I want us to mourn our baby together and I want us to help each other come to terms with what’s happened. Please don’t tear another big hole in my life, Joy. I don’t think I could bear it.’
‘But can’t you see we’re not right for each other?’
‘Aren’t we? Perhaps we are…’ He shook his head as if he could clear his muddled thoughts. ‘Perhaps in time…’
She cut in, her voice shrill with misery. ‘In time? In time what? Will we look at each other and see what a waste of our lives our marriage has been? Is that what time holds for us?’
‘Oh, this is nonsense! I can’t see the future, Joy!’
‘I can – it seems so obvious: the two of us stuck in a loveless, childless marriage! What is there that might hold us together? Nothing! There’s nothing to build on…’
She began to cry and he watched her helplessly. Desperate to say something that might comfort her he said, ‘Joy, we have each other.’
‘I’m not the woman you want to be married to! You want someone young and pretty like that little nurse you can’t help but look at!’
‘That’s not true!’
She glared at him. Taking a handkerchief from her sleeve she wiped her eyes impatiently and blew her nose. A little more composed she said, ‘I have been a fool. This is a foolish mess I have to clear up, that’s all there is to it.’
‘You’re writing me off as a foolish mess? Our marriage a foolish mess? Well I don’t think it is!’ He felt even angrier and knew it was because she suspected him of being the kind of silly, insubstantial man he knew himself to be. Wanting only to prove her wrong he said heatedly, ‘You mean more to me than you think – ever since our first evening together you’ve been in my thoughts – I don’t think anyone has ever preoccupied me so much.’
She avoided his gaze but he saw something in her expression change, a kind of doubt in her convictions he seized on. He took her hand and held it tightly. ‘Joy, do you really think I would have asked you to marry me if I didn’t feel something for you?’
Without looking at him she said, ‘Something, though. Not love.’
He sighed. Facing defeat he said, ‘If I’m honest I don’t think I’ve ever loved anyone.’
‘Except Grace.’
He had told her about Grace during their first date. He had talked about her briefly, lightly, as though she was a part of his past as incidental as the first hospital he’d worked in. He hadn’t told Joy how much he still thought about Grace, or that his dreams were still full of her so that when he woke he felt newly bereaved. Perhaps all of that had shown in his face, perhaps she’d heard it in the softening of his voice. Even now he felt something inside him contract at the thought of his loss. He hung his ahead, ashamed to meet his new wife’s eye.
After a while Joy said, ‘It’s all right that you loved her, you shouldn’t deny it.’
He kept his gaze on the hospital’s tiled floor. He said, ‘We were so young, the war put its mark on everything –’
‘But you loved her.’ Quickly she said, ‘I loved a man during the war. I wasn’t as innocent as you think.’
‘I never thought you were…’
‘Yes. You did. I know what you thought, Simon, what everyone thought. Well maybe everyone was right – I should have stayed unmarried, a spinster, an old maid, keeping my sad little secret, pining for a dead man.’ She plucked at the counterpane, folding a fan of creases in the cloth. He noticed how thin her wedding ring was and felt shocked by the meanness of it. He remembered how hastily it had been bought and was overcome by a new sense of shame.
Covering her fidgeting hand with his own he said, ‘I only ever thought how lovely you were…’
She laughed harshly and drew her hand out from under his.
There was an uneasy silence between them. Around other beds visitors spoke in low, hospital voices. Outside in the corridor a trolley rattled past and a man laughed and Simon glanced toward the ward’s swing doors as though laughter was the most astonishing noise in the world. He turned back to Joy and found her watching him. He smiled crookedly. ‘I suppose he must have told you how lovely you are?’
Holding his gaze challengingly she asked, ‘Who?’
‘The man you loved during the war.’
She looked down at the fan of creases she’d made and smoothed them out. ‘I can’t remember.’
‘Was he in the army? Air force?’
‘Army. He was a Captain.’ After a while she said, ‘His name was Peter and the Japanese murdered him’
Simon remembered the newsreels he’d seen of the liberation of the Japanese camps, the skin-and-bone men in ragged loincloths who staggered towards the camera; they barely looked human, still less like British soldiers. He remembered thinking how foreign they seemed, as though no English man could ever be reduced to such a pitiable state. He thought of this Peter, his wife’s one time lover; no doubt he had been kind, ordinary, like any one of the officers he himself had served with. He thought of how much this man must have suffered, and he thought of all the pain and suffering there had been in the world and was yet to come and knew that for the first time in his life such thoughts could unhinge him.
Joy picked up the box of chocolates and turned it over and over, her eyes fixed on it. ‘I do like you, Simon. When I met you I thought that you were funny, perhaps too frivolous – but that was good, I knew there would be no hard feelings on either side when we’d both had what we wanted from each other. I knew I wouldn’t feel embarrassed when I passed you in the hospital corridor because it would have all been just fun to you. And I wanted some fun. I wanted to feel that my life hadn’t just been a weekend in 1940.’ She laid the Quality Street box down on her lap and her hands became still. At last she looked up at him. ‘Look where fun has got us, eh?’
‘I’d do anything to turn the clock back.’
‘To when? Before we went to bed together?’
‘No!’ He frowned at her. ‘To before we got on that train…if I could have saved our baby…’ Overcome by grief he covered his face with his hands. Unable to help himself he saw dead foetuses, all the would-be babies whose remains he had dealt with so clinically. Just like those babies, his would have been afforded no more respect than surgical waste.
Gently Joy said, ‘Are you crying, Simon?’
He wiped his eyes quickly. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t be.’
‘No – I should be strong for you…’
She held his hand as he cried. At last he drew his hand away and fumbled in his pocket for his handkerchief. He attempted to laugh, heard it as it was, a harsh, hollow noise. Wiping his eyes he said, ‘The other week I found myself looking in a toyshop window at a rocking horse. Almost bought the thing! But you know what was really foolish? I didn’t buy it because I thought it was tempting fate! As if we have any control over our destinies, as if we can make any difference to anything! You know – looking in that toyshop window was the
first time I’ve felt truly happy for years? And I didn’t even realise it!’ He met her gaze. ‘Joy, please don’t think of leaving me. You’re the only person since Grace that has made me believe my life is worth anything. I don’t want to return to being that idiotic man you met.’
For a while she said nothing, only held his hand, her eyes searching his. At last she said, ‘My heart’s broken, Simon. I don’t know what I can offer you…it’s so painful…I never guessed I could feel like this. I can’t imagine it getting any better.’
‘It will. In time, it will…’ He wiped the fresh tears from her eyes. ‘Joy…my poor girl…’
A nurse came, the pretty, blonde nurse who smiled at him so readily. She said, ‘Oh now Mrs Walker – not more water-works!’ She looked at him sympathetically. ‘She was being so brave this morning when I was doing her hair.’
Joy sat up straighter. ‘I’m fine, really.’ She busied herself opening the box of chocolates and thrust it out to the nurse, who smiled, taking her time in choosing. When she’d gone Joy said, ‘Why don’t you tell me about this girl you’ve taken on.’
He thought about Annette, her fragility, and wondered how he might describe her to Joy in a way that made any sense. Making himself smile, he said, ‘Her name is Annette, she’s quite a timid little thing really. But she works hard – she’s very diligent. I bought her a Hoover – bought us a Hoover. I don’t think Mum even had a duster in the house.’ After a moment he said, ‘The house needs you to knock it into shape, Joy. The garden, too. The garden is like something from a Grimm fairy tale – I half expect the trees to start talking.’
She laughed. ‘The daffodils you brought me were lovely. Are there flower beds?’
‘Probably, beneath the weeds.’
She unwrapped a toffee penny. ‘I’m looking forward to seeing it.’ She handed him the opened box. As he took it she said, ‘Annette – is she very young?’
‘Quite…’ Hastily he said, ‘Although she’s married, she has children.’
‘And yet she works?’
‘Yes, the little boys are at school.’ After a while he said, ‘I gave her some books – books I’d had as a child – to give to her children.’ It sounded like a confession and he took his time choosing a sweet, knowing that Joy was watching him, waiting for him to give more of himself away. At last he looked up. ‘I think they’re very poor. I felt rather sorry for them, for her and her boys.’
Say You Love Me Page 14