by Pamela Evans
‘Oh, Marie . . . I just don’t know what to say.’ Jane looked from one to the other. ‘But thank you so very much.’
‘We were planning to do it while you were in hospital having the baby,’ she explained. ‘So we had to change our plans a bit lively.’
Jane grinned at her.
‘So that’s why you were so interested in what colour scheme I fancied?’
Marie grinned.
‘The kids will show you what they chose for their bedroom,’ she said. ‘I had to take a chance on yours. I was afraid you’d suspect something if I asked any more questions.’
‘You’ve done upstairs too?’ Jane cried in astonishment.
‘That’s right.’
‘And the kitchen,’ put in Davey. ‘It’s yellow like you wanted.’
‘The curtains aren’t a very good fit,’ said Marie, glancing towards the shiny clean windows where a pair of Rita’s old curtains were drawn back. ‘But they’ll do for the moment to keep you private when you’ve got the lights on.’
‘It’s all absolutely perfect,’ said Jane, recognising some bits and pieces of furniture dotted about. Her father’s put-u-up and his kitchen table, three odd chairs from different sources among the family. Incongruous, but adding a cosy touch by the fire, was a red and white striped deck chair she’d seen in Marie’s garden in the summer.
‘It’s all a bit basic but I think the place is just about habitable.’
‘Oh, thank you all so much! I’m so lucky to have such lovely people around me,’ said Jane, hugging them all in turn.
‘Isn’t it great here, Mum?’ said Davey.
‘Yeah,’ said Pip.
‘It’s wonderful,’ she said. ‘I’m so very glad to be home.’
And this place really did feel like home. Never mind the bare floorboards and lack of creature comforts; number one Vine Cottages was more of a home than the house in Maple Avenue ever had been.
The full flow of her emotions would be suppressed no longer and Jane sobbed with joy and love and gratitude for the kindness of these dear people.
‘Hey, come on, that’s enough o’ that,’ reproached Marie, her own eyes also shining with tears. ‘You’re getting me at it now.’
But she was smiling. Every minute of the hard work had been worthwhile just to see the look of pleasure on Jane’s face. Marie hoped this was the beginning of better times for her. If anyone deserved a break, it was Jane.
Chapter Eight
‘My throat hurts, Mummy,’ wailed Pip. ‘And I think I’m going to be sick.’
‘There, there, darling,’ soothed Jane, a bowl poised ready before her ailing daughter. ‘Mummy’s here . . .’
‘My head aches,’ moaned Davey, his cheeks un-healthily suffused. ‘And I want to be sick, too.’
‘It’ll be your high temperature making you feel sick,’ muttered Jane almost to herself as she kneeled between the two camp beds which she’d moved downstairs by the fire when the children fell ill a few days ago. The doctor had been and informed her that they had the latest ’flu virus, and she was to treat them with junior Disprin and plenty of fluids.
At this moment, however, simultaneous vomiting was keeping her busy.
‘You should feel a bit better now, for a while at least,’ she said when they had finished and she was settling them back against their pillows, both looking very washed out.
When she had comforted them, supplied them with a drink, cleared up with disinfectant, fed the cat and let him out, she took a Beecham’s Powder to relieve her own raging ’flu symptoms which had begun to trouble her that morning and grown steadily worse throughout the day. Having both children poorly at the same time was difficult enough, without feeling like death herself.
It was late-afternoon on this cold February day and the light was already fading. Going back into the living room from the kitchen, she stirred some life into the fire with the poker, put the light on and read the children a story, hoping to lull them off to sleep. They’d been too ill to do much of that this last few days.
‘I want to go to Granddad’s or Aunt Marie’s to watch the telly,’ wailed Pip.
‘We can’t go today, love,’ said Jane patiently.
‘Why not?’ she asked, pouting.
‘Because you and Davey aren’t well enough to go out,’ she explained gently. ‘Anyway, Melanie and Roy aren’t well either so Aunt Marie doesn’t want visitors.’
‘I want to live at Granddad’s,’ said Pip, her condition making her irritable. ‘’Cause there isn’t a telly in this house and we can’t see Batman.’
Jane’s eyes smarted with tears and she was forced to question her judgement in bringing her children here to live. After that wonderful homecoming from hospital six weeks ago, when she’d been so full of optimism, life had been difficult in the extreme. The weather had been bitter, the children had picked up one bug after another, which had made them rundown and tetchy, the pipes kept freezing up and the property had been colder and damper than she could possibly have imagined before moving in.
Having secured a few hours’ cleaning in the mornings for a professional woman who lived in a big house on the riverside, was out at business all day and didn’t mind Jane taking the children along with her, she seemed to be continually letting her employer down because the children were sick. She was afraid the woman would lose patience and give her notice.
‘How about another story or a game of I-spy?’ she suggested, bone weary for she’d been up with the children this last two nights, her whole body aching as the virus took hold.
‘I-spy,’ said Pip.
‘A story,’ said Davey.
‘We’ll have a game of I-spy first, then I’ll read you a story.’
‘I want to see Shadow,’ wailed Pip, who wasn’t normally this petulant.
‘He’s gone off somewhere, darling,’ said Jane, staying patient because of her daughter’s condition but close to breaking point from her demands. ‘He’ll be back when he’s ready.’
‘Can he sleep on my bed tonight?’ asked the little girl.
‘I want him to sleep on mine,’ said Davey.
‘He sleeps in the kitchen, you both know that,’ said Jane, moving on quickly. ‘Now . . . I spy with my little eye, something beginning with . . .’
Within a few minutes, both children had fallen asleep. She went out into the kitchen and let the cat in because he was wailing demandingly on the window sill, no longer the meagre moggy they’d taken in out of pity but a healthy cat they all adored with a fine glossy coat and bright eyes. Jane was planning to have a cat-flap fitted into the kitchen door as soon as she could afford it, so that he could come and go as he pleased.
Hot and shivering at the same time, she tidied the kitchen, which seemed to be in a permanent state of chaos with illness in the house, lit the paraffin heater to boost the heat from the coal fire and went out to the garden to fill the coal scuttle from the ramshackle coal shed before the temperature dropped with the onset of evening. Then she made up the fire, changed the water in the children’s hot water bottles and started on the backlog of ironing. She wasn’t planning on going back to work at the factory until the children were better because she didn’t think it would be fair to them or her father.
With all the chores done, she made herself a mug of Oxo and sat in the deck chair by the fire next to her two sleeping children, the effects of the medication beginning to ease her aches and pains. The cat settled down in his usual position at her feet by the fire and purred loudly. Sipping her hot Oxo, she experienced a moment of utter joy and tranquillity as the cosiness washed over her.
She knew in that moment that she had not made an error of judgement in coming to the cottage. How could that be so when the place had such a sense of welcome about it? For all its disadvantages, Jane didn’t want to live anywhere else. And neither would her children by the time she had finished.
The winter seemed endless. Jane didn’t know which was worse, the bitter frosts of February or the hig
h winds of March which rattled the doors and windows, sent whistling draughts right through the house, and drove the rain against the window with such force it seemed as though the glass would break.
Winter hardships strengthened her, though, and her morale was high once they’d all recovered from ’flu. She began to feel as though she was actually living her life without Mick, instead of just existing from day to day. No longer having her father under the same roof, she was forced to stand on her own two feet and was bringing her children up in her own way and making a life for them. As lonely and difficult as it was at times, it was a life.
The lack of money made homemaking something of a challenge. But much to her surprise, Jane enjoyed it more than ever before. Cooking became a new experience and she found fulfilment in concocting nourishing meals on a shoe-string, searching for the cheapest cuts of meat and making them go further by using plenty of vegetables. No longer able to buy cakes, she enjoyed making her own. In fact, baking cakes and pastries in the cottage kitchen became one of her greatest pleasures. She was very creative, adapting basic recipes to make them more interesting. The children loved baking days and would squabble over who would lick the spoon and bowl when she’d finished.
To fill the gap left by television in the evenings after the children were in bed, Jane joined the library and discovered the joy of losing herself in a book. She enjoyed novels in particular and found herself becoming more informed about all sorts of things, her interests widening in the process. The transistor radio that had been a present from Mick, and was one of the few personal items she’d been allowed to keep, sat on the kitchen window sill, keeping her entertained and up to date with the latest news and views.
Some day she would get a television set and all the other home comforts her little family had been used to - when she had found a way of earning some decent money without disrupting her children’s lives. She still couldn’t bear the idea of farming them out while she went to work all day. Not while they needed her so much.
Having to think for herself, Jane found that her opinions were changing - or, more accurately, she was forming opinions of her own rather than sharing Mick’s. She was becoming more assertive than she used to be, too. You had to be when you didn’t have a man to lean on.
This was something that was happening almost subconsciously and Jane constantly surprised herself. Never more so than one Saturday evening in late-March when Wilf Parker called at the cottage with some fruit and vegetables for her, something he’d been doing regularly since she’d moved into the cottage, prompted, she guessed, by his wife.
‘Are you sure you won’t take any money for this stuff?’ she asked as he put a small wooden crate down on the kitchen table. He never allowed her to pay him anything. ‘I mean, you do have a living to earn. I’m sure you can’t afford to give your stock away.’
‘In the normal run, of course I can’t, but it’s different when it comes to you,’ he said, grinning broadly to show nicotine-stained teeth.
‘It’s very kind of you.’
‘Take it as my contribution to my grandchildren’s welfare.’
‘Thanks again.’
‘It’s the least I can do for you, since that no-good son o’ mine’s legged it to Gawd knows where.’
‘Would you like a cup of tea?’ asked Jane, stifling her irritation at his criticism of his son.
‘I’ll have a quick one if you’re making some, ta, love,’ said Wilf, removing his sheepskin coat and putting it over the chair.
Jane filled the kettle and put it on the gas stove to boil. He stood in the kitchen doorway watching her, wearing a light brown, heavy cotton coat-style overall with a multicoloured scarf knotted at his neck gypsy-style. He looked windblown, his cheeks pink and blotchy from being outside.
‘Have you just finished your round?’ asked Jane to make conversation.
‘Yeah.’
‘Working late then?’
‘Saturday is always a busy day and I’ve been chasing up some of my regulars who pay me at the end of the week.’ He glanced towards the stairs. ‘Are the nippers in bed?’
She nodded.
‘Peace, perfect peace, eh?’
‘Not half. Why don’t you go and sit down in the living room?’ she suggested courteously. ‘I’ll bring the tea in to you.’
‘Righto.’
When Jane took the tea in, he was sprawled out in the deck chair so she sat on one of the hard chairs.
‘It’s a novelty anyway,’ Wilf grinned, referring to the deck chair.
‘Yeah, it’s great. I can sit by the fire and imagine myself on a sunny beach somewhere.’
‘It’s about the nearest you’ll get to it, now Mick’s buggered off,’ said Wilf with glaring insensitivity.
‘Oh, you never know,’ she replied, determined not to be cast down by his complete disregard for her feelings which had offended her many times in the past, even though she had never said so or even admitted it to herself until now. ‘I might manage to take the kids on holiday one of these days.’
‘I don’t see how, love,’ he said, casting a critical eye around the room. ‘You’ve got your work cut out just keeping this place going.’
‘I don’t intend to use a deck chair in my living room for the rest of my life, you know,’ Jane told him firmly. ‘Once Davey and Pip are a bit older, I shall get a job.’
‘You shouldn’t have to, though, should you?’ he said. ‘That bigheaded son of mine should be here looking after you.’
This was greeted with stony silence.
‘The bloody fool!’ Wilf went on angrily. ‘If he hadn’t tried to be Mister Big the whole time, he wouldn’t have got himself into bother he couldn’t cope with - and you wouldn’t have to live in a dump like this!’
‘You’re only living in a council flat yourself,’ Jane heard herself say, on the defensive. ‘It’s hardly a palace.’
Wilf’s bushy brows rose in surprise because it wasn’t like his daughter-in-law to be so disrespectful.
‘At least I’ve never pretended to be something I’m not,’ he said. ‘I’ve never got my wife and kids used to a lifestyle they can’t keep, then cleared off when the going gets tough.’
‘I like living here, actually,’ said Jane. ‘I like it a lot.’
‘You don’t like having bare boards, though, do you?’ he said. ‘And no comfortable chairs to sit on?’
‘Of course not, but the place is clean and as comfortable as I can make it for the time being.’
He gave her a sharp look.
‘There’s no need to defend yourself ’cause I’m not having a go at you, love,’ he said. ‘That’s the last thing I would ever do. I think you’re a ruddy marvel, the way you’ve coped, being left with two kids to bring up on your own and losing the baby on top of everythin’ else. No, it’s that son of mine I’m talking about . . . bloody waster! Always putting on a show and trying to be something he wasn’t.’
Jane couldn’t imagine ever being so much against her children, whatever they had done. Wasn’t it an inherent part of parenthood to defend the young, no matter what? Apparently not in Wilf’s case.
‘There’s nothing wrong with trying to better yourself,’ she said evenly.
‘But Mick hadn’t bettered himself, had he?’ Wilf pointed out, putting his tea on the floor and waving his arms emphatically. ‘The damned great house and fancy car didn’t even belong to him. Why the hell he couldn’t have settled for being ordinary like the rest of us, I do not know.’
‘Maybe if you’d given him some attention instead of hogging it all yourself, he wouldn’t have been so desperate to make something special of himself,’ Jane replied, shocked to be uttering the words but realising she had wanted to say something like this for a very long time.
‘I don’t know what you mean,’ he said, affronted. If there was one thing Wilf couldn’t bear, it was a forceful woman. This was a side of his daughter-in-law he hadn’t seen before.
‘Oh, come on,’ she said
reprovingly. ‘If Mick is nothing else, he is his father’s son. You both have the same need to be the centre of attention. It wouldn’t have hurt you to stand aside for him every so often.’
‘Are you suggesting it’s my fault he got into debt over his head and ran off?’
‘No, of course not,’ she said, amazed at her own confidence because she’d always been very much in awe of Mick’s father. ‘But I am saying that he spent his whole life, ever since I’ve known him anyway, trying to please and impress you. And you wouldn’t give him that satisfaction . . . your own son.’
‘That isn’t true!’
‘Oh, but I think it is,’ she said. ‘And having children of my own, it’s something I find very hard to understand. ’
‘And I find it hard to understand why I’m under attack when all I’ve done is bring you some fruit and veg?’
‘I’m very grateful to you for that and I’m not attacking you,’ Jane was quick to deny. ‘I’m just saying what I believe to be true. I’m not suggesting you deliberately set out to hurt Mick. But I do think a little encouragement now and again wouldn’t have gone amiss.’
‘Mick was born wanting to be a bigshot.’
‘Because he takes after you.’
Wilf’s mouth curled cynically.
‘Me want to be a bigshot? That’s a new one on me. I’ve never been the slightest bit ambitious. I’ve always been quite content with my greengrocery round and a little council place to live in.’
‘I meant socially,’ she said. ‘You like to be the big man at parties . . . in the pub. Mick didn’t have the personality to compete with that so he tried to go one better another way. He thought material success would bring him status and respect . . . and it did with everyone except you.’
Wilf lit a cigarette, looking aggrieved.
‘All this psychology rubbish is beyond me,’ he said, inhaling deeply. ‘So far as I’m concerned, Mick was a grown man when he ran out on you and I’m ashamed of him for it. The blame doesn’t lie at my door.’