The Most Precious Thing

by Bradshaw, Rita

  Matthew waited for more, but Alec did not go on. He took a handkerchief out of his pocket and rubbed at his face, then stuffed it back in his pocket before finishing the whisky in one gulp. ‘I think I need another one.’ It was wry.

  Matthew rose and refilled the glass without comment, and it was only when Alec had drank half of it that he lay back in the armchair with a sigh, his eyes still fixed on Matthew. ‘I didn’t expect any sort of welcome, apart from maybe Mrs Browell, that is.’

  ‘She’s out shopping with Gran.’

  Alec did not comment on this. ‘Out there in the hall, you said . . .’ He pulled in air through his nose. ‘You called me da.’

  ‘Well, you are, aren’t you?’

  ‘She told you?’

  ‘Yes. No.’ Matthew shook his head, running his fingers through his hair from his brow to the back of his neck. ‘It’s a long story.’

  ‘I’ve nothing but time and I want to hear it.’ Alec reached out and grasped one of Matthew’s hands. ‘She never admitted to me you were mine but I always knew it. What made her tell you?’

  ‘Gran, I suppose.’

  ‘Gran? You mean my mam?’

  Matthew nodded. ‘It happened like this . . .’

  Alec had finished the whisky by the time the story was told. He sat forward in his seat when Matthew said, ‘And I ran out of the hospital and went home and cleared out my things. I slept on a pal’s bedroom floor for a couple of weeks and then Mrs Browell said I could come here till you got home. He came round to see me when I moved here.’

  ‘He?’

  ‘David.’

  The name was said with such bitterness that Alec stiffened.

  ‘He said it happened on the night of Aunt Renee’s wedding, that you and Mam were drunk and that you . . . you took advantage of her. Did you?’

  Alec’s face was grim and his voice low when he said, ‘I’m not proud of that night, Matt, but it was a wedding and the drink was flowing. I came home and your mam and Aunt Lillian were acting the cuddy. Lillian went to bed and . . .’ He shrugged. ‘One thing led to another.’

  ‘But you didn’t know afterwards. That she was expecting.’

  Alec stared into the young face. It was true he hadn’t realised Carrie was pregnant with his child until after she had married David, but once he had cottoned on, it had suited him to keep quiet. And he had made sure in the days and weeks that followed that she understood he wanted nothing more to do with her. Those were the facts. Should he admit to them? He might lose Matthew if he did and he knew now he couldn’t bear that.

  And then Matthew made up his mind for him. ‘I hate them,’ he said, ‘the pair of them. Him pretending to be my da and her knowing all along it was you and trying to keep me from you. I’ll never forgive them, never.’

  ‘Whoa, lad, whoa.’ A voice in his head was saying, look at how he’s taken it, he’s one hundred per cent for you, don’t do anything to spoil it, but it was overshadowed by another which argued, you’ve told yourself that if one thing and one thing alone has come out of the madness and depravity of the last years, it’s that you know yourself at last. He had started to grow up the day he had shot his first German, a young, fair-haired boy who hadn’t looked old enough to shave, and the process had been completed the night he had crawled out to Lieutenant Strong. ‘It wasn’t like that, see this clearly.’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘You are not.’ Matthew was staring unblinking at him and it took all his courage to say, ‘It wasn’t six of one and half a dozen of the other that night, Matt. Your mother was verging on sixteen and had never been out with a lad. I was a man of twenty and had already sampled a few women. David is right, I did take advantage of her and I didn’t stop when she wanted me to. It was the drink, and I’ve never behaved like that before or since, but that doesn’t excuse what I did. Afterwards I was more concerned with my own plans for the future than her. David married her and he is the one who has brought you up.’

  As Matthew went to speak, Alec raised his hand, saying, ‘Let me finish. I can’t pretend I’m happy Carrie didn’t want me around but I can damn well understand it, and you’re old enough to understand it too.’

  ‘He knew he wasn’t my da, he told me so.’

  ‘And you give him no credit for accepting you as a son?’

  ‘No. He did it because he wanted her, and she kept me from you out of spite. Dress it up how you like but that’s the truth. And now they’ve got their own bairns they wouldn’t want me around anyway.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘They’ve got twins, a boy and a girl. They were born just before Christmas. I thought you knew, that someone would have told you.’

  Alec didn’t say, how could anyone have told me when I haven’t been in contact with any of you? It had been his decision not to write or telephone before he came home, just as he had decided to keep his whereabouts undisclosed once he was back on home shores. What he did say was, ‘Is there anything else that’s happened I ought to know about?’

  ‘You know about Aunt Margaret and Mr Reed?’

  ‘Yes.’ A solicitor’s letter had informed him he was a rich man.

  ‘Isaac was killed when he was fire-watching. He saved two children; it was in the Echo. And Aunt Renee, she died in a fire in her house, and Uncle Walter in an accident down the pit the same day.’

  ‘Walter?’ He couldn’t imagine his brother had gone. Not solid, dependable Walter.

  ‘And--’ Matthew stopped abruptly, his voice quieter when he continued, ‘And Granda. He came through the Blitz but the doodlebugs got him last year. Him and his friend and his friend’s wife, they all copped it.’

  His da. Now he would never have the chance to try and put things right. He closed his eyes and leaned back in the chair. He felt very tired suddenly, so tired it was an effort to breathe. He’d had this experience time and time again since he had first been lifted out of the hut by Allied soliders and carried to the makeshift medical centre. He knew they had thought he wasn’t going to make it because he’d heard them talking, but he had proved them wrong. At first it had been the promise he’d made to Strong to go and see his wife and boys that had kept him fighting, and then it had just seemed the right thing to do, in spite of the fact that there were days when his mind longed for the peace of oblivion. No memories, no pictures in his head of unmentionable atrocities, no screaming nightmares, just . . . nothing.

  But he had Matthew now. He opened his eyes as his whisky glass, half full again, was pushed into his hand.

  ‘Drink this, Da.’

  Da. He said it so naturally, as if he had been thinking it for a long, long time. He looked down at the whisky. There were some at the hospital who had their wives or pals bring in booze every day just to get through. Without it they couldn’t sleep or face the world. He handed the glass back to Matthew. ‘Thanks, but I’ve had enough. Is there anything to eat in the house?’

  ‘Eat? Oh aye, you know Mrs Browell. Gran hates it because she can do better pastry than her with the bitty wholemeal stuff we’re still getting.’

  ‘My mother is living here?’

  Matthew nodded.

  For a moment Alec felt like asking for the drink back. His mother here. Saints alive. Well, that was not going to continue. He could afford to make some sort of provision for her and he would do so, she was his mother after all, but as for her living under his roof, that was out of the question. He didn’t like the part she had played in all of this, even though the end result had been Carrie acknowledging Matthew was his.

  He smiled at his lad. ‘Well, son, shall we go and raid the larder?’

  And Matthew grinned back at him. His da was back, he could hardly believe it. He had waited so long for this day. And now there was no one to stop them spending time together. It would be the end of him having to go down the pit, he knew that. When he told his da how he felt, that’d be it. And whatever he said about them - he always referred to his mother and David as them in his mind - it wouldn’t make
any difference. He had been forced down that hellhole first and foremost because the man he’d been told was his da was a miner, and all the time his mam had known. She had known.

  The next morning Olive was sitting, straight-backed and thin-lipped, in the hall, her big cloth bag at her feet. Matthew was with her. Alec had just gone to run the car round to the front of the house. She fixed her grandson with gimlet eyes as she said bitterly, ‘It’s come to something when I’m carted off like a sack of taties.’

  Matthew moved his shoulders uncomfortably but said nothing. His father had spent some time talking to him about what he was going to do and why, and for the first time in his life he was seeing his grandmother without rose-coloured glasses.

  ‘There’s your da owning umpteen houses round about the town, from what I can make out, and he’s not even setting me up in one on me own. Oh no. I’m going to be a tenant like Joe Bloggs off the street and sharing with others. His own mother. Do you know what he said to me last night? Behave yourself.’ Her voice rose with outrage. ‘Me! Behave yourself, he said, or the other couple of tenants might make life difficult.’

  ‘You’ll be all right, Gran.’

  ‘Will I? Huh.’

  Olive would have said more but Alec opened the front door at that moment. He surveyed his mother for a moment before he said, ‘Pick up your grandmother’s bag, Matthew, and we’ll be off. Have you made your farewells to Freda, Mam?’

  Olive’s chin rose a notch. Made her farewells indeed! If he thought she was giving that woman a further chance to gloat, he was very much mistaken. She stood up and strode to the front door by way of answer, brushing past Alec without a word.

  She sat in the front seat of the car, her body rigid and her eyes staring straight ahead. She’d never thought she’d say it, but Alec was just like the rest of them, ungrateful to the core. But now she knew where she stood and one thing was certain: she wouldn’t care if she never clapped eyes on any of them again.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Carrie stood gazing at David who was fast asleep in his armchair. The two babies in his arms were also slumbering although every so often one or the other of them would make a little sucking motion with rosebud lips. They were such happy bairns, and bonny. Philip already had a crop of light brown curls, but poor little Melanie was still as bald as a coot. Not that she would have dared to put the ‘poor’ in front of Melanie’s name if she was talking to David, she reflected wryly. As far as he was concerned, his children were the bonniest, brightest and most perfect little angels who had ever been born. He had been a wonderful father to Matthew from the first, but whether it was because he was older, or this was the second time round, or simply that deep inside it was different because he knew the twins were flesh of his flesh, he had a confidence in handling the infants that he had never had with Matthew. Then again the circumstances were so different now.

  Carrie glanced round the kitchen, her face now sombre. If only she could have given Matthew a start like this. Matthew’s crib had been an old drawer, and although she had loved and appreciated Ada, that front room in the house at the Back of the Pit had been poky and dark and depressing. And there had been no question of having her firstborn in hospital like she’d done with the twins - the five guineas this had cost would have seemed like a fortune nineteen years ago.

  It had been wonderful to be free from the worries of rationing, laundry and housekeeping for a while, and with the twins turning out to be model babies who woke on the dot every four hours for their feeds and slept the rest of the time, she had come out of the hospital feeling rested and ready to tackle life again. And how she had needed that.

  Carrie left the kitchen and walked back to the front room where she resumed her seat at the sewing machine. She had gone to check whether David required help with the babies but she might have known he would be fine, she thought fondly.

  After the accident at the pit, David had needed several operations on his injured leg and had been in and out of hospital like a yoyo. For a time it had been touch and go whether amputation was the only answer, but the doctors had worked a minor miracle and the shattered bone and torn flesh had eventually healed enough to take his weight. But he had been told that the leg would always be stiff and unbending, which had effectively put an end to his life down the pit.

  During this time, Lillian had decided to share a house with a widowed friend of hers from the steelworks, who had children the same age as Luke and Katie. Lillian had insisted that with twins expected, life was going to be hectic enough without in-laws always around, besides which her going would give Carrie her workroom back which she was going to need now that no wage would be coming in from David for the foreseeable future.

  Carrie did not argue against Lillian’s decision too hard. Her friend was adjusting to Isaac’s loss at last, and since Lillian’s pal at the steelworks was in the same situation as Lillian was and all the bairns got on well, Carrie felt it was a good move.

  When Lillian moved out, Carrie set about establishing her workroom, letting folk know she was working from home. She and David had decided to deposit his compensation money from the pit straight into the bank to join the nest egg she had laboriously saved over long years; they would touch it only if absolutely necessary, something Carrie was determined would not happen.

  She soon found she had accepted more work than one person could realistically cope with, especially since the person in question had discovered the baby she was expecting was in fact two. When she asked Miriam, Billy’s wife, if she would like to work a few hours a week for her, Miriam had jumped at the chance. And no one was more surprised than Carrie when her mother offered her services.

  ‘I’ve been taking in washing and such for years, lass, to make ends meet, as you well know,’ Joan said when she called round to see her daughter the morning after Carrie had spoken to Miriam. ‘And I tell you, I’ve had me fill of steaming rooms and damp clothes everywhere. There’s enough of them anyway with your da and the lads. The thought of coming to work for you would be like a tonic - that’s if you want me, of course.’

  Carrie had wanted her and within days it was clear to the three women that this was an ideal set-up. Joan had a flair for the work, and although Miriam was merely adequate, she was eager to learn. And Carrie paid well.

  David’s final operation took place eight weeks before the twins were born, which meant he was out of hospital and as mobile as he was ever going to be when Carrie brought Philip and Melanie home. During the weeks leading up to the birth, they had discussed their future. Carrie had put forward a variation of her earlier proposition. How about, she asked David, if they followed through on her suggestion to buy shop premises with a flat above, but along with the workroom and salesroom they designated another part of the building for David’s use? He could buy, mend and sell secondhand sewing machines, irons, crimping machines, small hand mangles, goffering irons and other equipment.

  She had been both relieved and thrilled with his enthusiasm for the idea, and it had gone some way towards easing the ache in her heart that had been present since Matthew’s abrupt departure from the house. But in the dead of night, when David was asleep, she often cried scalding tears, lying awake for hours in spite of being exhausted. Three times she had called to see Matthew, swallowing her pride with some effort when it became clear Olive was gloating over the estrangement. The first time Matthew had spoken to her just long enough to tell her not to call again, and the next two times he had flatly refused to see her. She had written many letters but had heard nothing in return and had no way of knowing if he’d opened them. She feared he had ripped them up unread.

  She knew he felt she had grievously wronged him in concealing the fact that Alec was his father, and had compounded this crime by trying to prevent anything but the most minimal contact with his ‘uncle’, but she couldn’t truthfully say she wouldn’t do exactly the same if she had her time over again. And he did not seem prepared even to try to understand how difficult it had
all been for her. David told her over and over again that Matthew would come round in time, but as the weeks and then the months passed, she had become increasingly frightened. And then they had heard Alec was alive and coming home soon.

  Alone with her thoughts, Carrie found she couldn’t concentrate on the task in hand - Miriam and Joan had long since gone for the night. She rose and moved restlessly to the window to look out into the twilight. She had lost Matthew to Alec. She rubbed her hand over her aching eyes. Since Matthew had gone, she had begun to feel such hatred for Alec it scared her.

  When she looked up, her thoughts seemed to have imprinted themselves on the glass because Alec was staring back at her.

  She shut her eyes, then opened them very slowly, and when only her dim reflection looked back at her she put a hand to her racing heart. A moment later the doorbell rang.

  Carrie’s nails were digging into the palms of her hands as she left the front room and walked into the hall. Just before she opened the front door she lowered her head, saying to herself, you knew he would come to crow that it’s all worked out his way, but don’t let him see how much you’re hurt. Don’t give him that satisfaction. Be cool and remote.