by Penny Jordan
Only one of the young apprentices was making any attempt to work, and Joel frowned as he heard Jim Gibbons, one of the older men, telling him to stop.
‘What’s the point?’ he challenged Joel when Joel went over to tell him to leave the lad alone. ‘None of us will be in work by the end of the week—not the way things are looking.’
‘We don’t know that,’ Joel told him.
‘Oh, come off it. Why the hell else did Ryecart top himself if it wasn’t because he was going bust? This place is finished and we’ll be lucky if we come out of it with our last week’s wages, never mind our redundancy money. It’s always the same: the bank will get some fancy firm of accountants in to make sure they get their pound of flesh, but when it comes to us getting what’s rightfully ours… who the hell gives a toss about us? Course, it’s all right for you. You’ve got your missus in work. A nurse, isn’t she, down at the hospital? Smart pieces, those nurses, and not behind the door in bed either, if you know what I mean, or so they say… Does she keep her uniform on in bed for you, Joel?’
Joel forced himself to ignore the others’ laughter. It was just their way of letting off steam, of coping with their fear; there was nothing personal or malicious in it.
‘I hate it when Mum isn’t here in the morning,’ Cathy had grumbled earlier as she’d played with her cereal, and Joel had immediately felt both guilty and irritated as he heard the resentment in her voice; guilty because of his inability as a husband, a father and a provider to earn enough to support them all and irritated because of the way his children distanced themselves from him. It was Sally they wanted, not him, Sally they always turned to, her more than him.
Right from being a toddler of no more than two, his son had fiercely rejected any attempt Joel made to touch or hold him.
‘He’s a real mummy’s boy,’ Sally had said then, laughing softly as she’d taken over and held him. And, watching the way his son had clung to her, it hadn’t just been the pain of rejection Joel had felt, but an actual physical jealousy as well.
Sally claimed that he was far harder on Paul than he was on Cathy.
‘He’s a boy,’ he had told her in mitigation of his own behaviour.
Sally had just shaken her head, pursing her mouth in that way she had of showing her disapproval of what he said and did.
Sometimes these days it was hard to remember that that same mouth had once curved with joy and love for him… had softened into helpless passion beneath his, had widened in shared laughter with his.
Yes, things had changed. She hadn’t even cared enough to wake him this morning before she’d left to wish him luck, to tell him that she understood how he felt; to tell him that, in work or out of it, he was still the man she loved; it made no difference to her.
He put down the mug of coffee the apprentice had brought him, its contents untasted.
The boy was only sixteen, red-haired and pale-skinned, tall and gangly with a prominent Adam’s apple and a voice which had still not broken properly.
He had attached himself to Joel, following him about everywhere, reminding Joel of the crossbred whippet pups his father had bred and sold. This boy had the same ungainliness and clumsiness. His parents were divorced, his father remarried with a second family, and Joel was aware of a responsiveness to the boy’s unexpressed need within himself that he had never been able to express with Paul.
Duncan needed his approval, shyly semi-hero-worshipping him in a way that Paul had never done.
‘I put sugar in it,’ Duncan told him now, watching him put down his untouched coffee.
‘Yeah, it’s fine,’ Joel assured him as he looked at his watch. Ten to one.
‘Joel, what’s going to happen… to us… ?’ Duncan blurted out, his pale skin flushing as not just Joel but several of the other men turned to look at him.
Before Joel could say anything, the door opened and the works manager walked in. He had aged years in the last few weeks, and no wonder, Joel reflected. He was in his fifties with one son at university and a daughter injured at birth who needed constant care.
‘The council offered them a place for her at a special home,’ Sally had told him. ‘But Peggy Hatcher wouldn’t hear of it.’
Joel watched as Keith Hatcher held open the door for the rest of the management team and the woman left to walk in.
She was a girl really still, not a woman, Joel reflected as Keith introduced her, her skin glowiqg with health and youth and good food. She looked glossy and polished as shiny and bright as a newly minted coin, so plainly untouched by any of the disillusion and pain that life could hold that Joel felt a surge of anger against her.
What did she know of the lives of people like him… their problems, their hopes?
She had started to speak, her voice clear and firm. She was talking about the large amount of money Andrew had borrowed from the bank, explaining that it was because of his inability to repay this debt that the bank were now forced to put the company into liquidation in order to sell off its assets in an attempt to recoup what they could of their money.
The bank regretted the necessity of having to do this but they must understand that they really had no alternative; the company had been operating at a loss for some considerable time. They would all be issued with formal redundancy notices, she told them, making it sound as though in doing so the bank was doing them some sort of favour, Joel reflected mirthlessly as he watched her eyelids flutter betrayingly while she made this last statement.
So she wasn’t totally unaware of what she was doing, then. He saw the way she suddenly found it impossible to look directly at them, dipping her head instead.
‘What about our redundancy payments, and our pensions?’ Joel asked her as she finished speaking, raising his voice so that she couldn’t avoid hearing him.
‘Ay… what about them?’ someone else echoed, others taking up the cry, while she shuffled her papers and tried to look calm.
‘Your normal statutory rights will naturally be honoured,’ she informed them. ‘You will be put on a list of preferred creditors and paid out once the liquidation is complete.’
When? Joel reflected bitterly. Their normal statutory rights fell a long way short of what they might have expected to receive had those of them with long service records been made redundant in the normal way of things.
‘When does this redundancy take effect?’ Joel asked her.
‘Immediately,’ she told him steadily.
‘Immediately.’ Joel stared at her. He had expected her to say that it would be a few weeks… a month or so. He knew his shock must be registered on his face, just as it was on the faces of the men around him; he knew it because he could see the pity in the woman’s eyes as she dipped her head again and looked away from him.
Some of the men were turning to the union rep., demanding that he do something, but the man was just as helpless as they were themselves.
‘The factory will be closed as from tonight,’ the woman was saying in that cool, elegant, distant voice which belonged more surely to some posh dinner party than here on the factory floor. ‘The accountants’ office will remain open as there will be certain formalities to be completed.’
The company accountant didn’t look too pleased at that prospect, Joel noticed. Personally he wouldn’t have put it past Ryecart to have been up to all sorts of financial tricks.
No doubt he had feathered his nest warmly and safely enough. His wife wouldn’t need to go out to work full-time to pay the mortgage and put food on the table, he reflected savagely.
‘What will we do now, Joel?’ Duncan asked him timidly an hour later.
‘Do? Why, we get ourselves down to the social services and get ourselves on the dole just like the three million or so other poor sods who can’t find themselves a job,’ Joel told him savagely.
The dole… the scrap heap more like, because that was what it amounted to and that was all they were to the likes of Ryecart and his kind… so much human scrap… and not worth a si
ngle damn.
He could feel the anger and despair pounding through him like an inferno, a volcano of panic and fear which he couldn’t allow to spill over and betray him.
He had known that this was likely to happen and he had thought he had prepared himself for it, but now that it had happened it was like being caught up in one of the frightening nightmares of his childhood when he was suddenly left alone and afraid in an alien landscape with no one to turn to.
He had prided himself always on being in control, on managing his life so that he never fell into the same trap as his father, so that he never had to live from day to day, dependent on the whim of others; but now all that was gone and along with his anger he felt a choking, killing sense of fear and aloneness.
All he wanted was to go home to Sally, to hold her and be held by her, to take comfort in her body and the security of her love, to know that she still saw him as a man… still valued him and his maleness and did not, as he did, feel that it was diminished by what had happened.
But these were feelings that he sensed rather than understood and analysed, knowing more that he needed the comfort of her body and warmth, her reassurance and her love than understanding why he needed them.
‘I don’t know how Mum’s going to manage now. She relies on me and my wages,’ Duncan was saying miserably.
‘You’ll soon get another job, son,’ Joel told him automatically, reaching out to reassure him even though he knew his reassurance was as worthless as the promises that Ryecart had made them about the success of the company and the security of their jobs.
* * *
‘Have you thought any more about what I said about working full-time?’
Sally paused, shifting her weight from one foot to the other.
‘I’m sorry, Sister, but I haven’t had the time to talk it over properly with Joel yet.’
‘Well, don’t leave it too long; there are quite a few others here who would jump at the chance of the extra money. You’re a good nurse, Sally, and it’s a pity you never went on to specialise further. Still, it’s not too late.’
Sally stared at her. Sister O’Reilly was one of the old-fashioned sort, in her fifties, single and possessed of a lofty disdain for all members of the male sex above the age of twelve, excepting the Pope but including every male member of the medical profession.
‘She ought to have been a nun,’ one of the younger nurses had commented crossly when Sister had ticked her off for flirting with one of the interns on the ward, but Sally, who had shared night duty with her and knew a little more about her background than most, had told the girl not to be dismissive.
‘She’s forgotten more about nursing than you’ll ever learn; and she started learning by nursing her mother and taking charge of her family when she was ten years old.’
That family were all scattered over the world now, some married with their own children, others in the church, and it had been Sister O’Reilly who had taken unpaid leave from her job to go home and nurse the father she had never loved—who could love a man who gave a woman a child every year, even though he could see it was slowly killing her?—through his last illness.
She was one of the old-school nurses and any kind of praise or sign of approval from her was so rare that Sally could only stare at her.
Her, take specialised training, even expect to become a Sister? Just wait until she told Joel that. Joel… today was the day he would learn what was happening at the factory.
She knew that he was expecting the worst, but at least they wouldn’t be as badly off as some others. Why couldn’t Joel see that and be glad about it instead of… ?
When they had first been married he had wanted to help her with the chores, sliding his arms round her waist while they were washing up, kissing the side of her throat, insisting when she was pregnant with Cathy on carrying the vacuum upstairs for her, refusing to let her do any heavy lifting or moving.
And then, when she had first brought Paul home from the hospital and discovered how difficult it was to cope with an energetic toddler and a new baby, he had taken charge of not just the washing-up and the vacuuming but the washing and ironing as well.
She remembered how it had reduced her to silly emotional tears to see his big hands gently trying to smooth out Cathy’s little dresses and Paul’s tiny baby clothes as he’d struggled to iron them, the frustration and helplessness in his eyes as the fiddliness of the task had threatened to defeat him. But he hadn’t given up, and if his ironing had not been up to the standard of her own it had still moved her unbearably to witness his love and care for her and their children.
It had been after that that the first threads of tension had started to pull and then snarl up their relationship.
Paul had been a difficult baby, colicky and demanding, clinging to her and refusing to go to anyone else. He had even gone through a stage when he was two when he had actually screamed every time Joel went near him.
He had grown out of it, of course, but Joel had never been as relaxed or loving towards him as he was with Cathy, and that had hurt her.
Sometimes it was almost as though he actually resented Paul and his demands on her time and attention, seeming not to understand that Paul was a child and that there were times when his needs had to come first.
She knew Joel was worrying about his job and what was going to happen to them if he was made redundant, but why take it out on her and the kids? It wasn’t their fault.
At two o’clock, when her shift ended, her feet and back ached. The last thing she felt like doing was going home to tackle the housework and the ironing. No doubt Joel and the kids would have left the kitchen in its usual mess this morning. Wistfully she imagined how wonderful it would be to go home and find the kitchen spotless, not a dirty plate or cup in sight, the sink cleaned, the floor swept and washed, everywhere smelling fresh and looking polished.
Like her sister’s home? Only Daphne had a cleaner three mornings a week, a small, nervous woman whom Daphne bullied unmercifully and whom Sally privately felt sorry for.
‘I don’t know why I have her; she never does anything properly,’ Daphne had once complained within the woman’s hearing. ‘I’m constantly having to check up on her.’
Sally remembered that she had been as embarrassed for her sister and her lack of good manners and consideration as she had been for poor Mrs Irving, her cleaner.
Not that Daphne would have understood how she felt. It amazed Sally sometimes that her sister wanted to remain in such close contact with her; after all, they had little in common these days other than the fact that they were sisters, and Daphne made such a thing of their upmarket lifestyle and their posh friends that Sally was surprised that she didn’t drop her and Joel completely.
‘What, and lose out on having someone to show off to?’ had been Joel’s acid comment when she had remarked on this to him. ‘Don’t be daft. I’ll bet not many of her posh friends would let her get away with putting them down the way she does you.’
‘She doesn’t put me down,’ Sally had defended her sister. ‘And it’s only natural that she should be proud of their success and…’
‘And what?’ Joel had demanded bitterly. ‘Get a real kick out of rubbing your nose in it and making it plain that she doesn’t think you’ve got much to be proud of? Oh, I’ve seen the way you look round this place when you come home from there.’
‘Joel, it isn’t true. I love our home,’ Sally had protested, but it was true that sometimes she did feel slightly envious of Daphne. She only had to think of the benefits Daphne could give Edward that she and Joel could never give their two, especially not now.
Tiredly she pulled on her coat. Joel had bought it for her last winter, just before the company had cut all overtime. She had protested at the time that it was far too expensive, but she had loved it so much she hadn’t been able to resist it.
They had seen it in the window of a small exclusive shop in the city, marked down in price to make way for the early spring st
ock. It was a clear, soft red that suited Sally’s dark colouring, three-quarter-length, in a style that would never be outdated.
She didn’t normally wear it for work, but she had forgotten to collect her mac from the cleaners, and because it had been a cold morning she had decided to wear it.
Her six-year-old basic-model car had gone in for a service and it was cold standing at the bus stop so early in the morning.
She was on her way out through Casualty when someone called her name. She stopped automatically, her face breaking into a smile as she saw Kenneth Drummond coming towards her on his crutches.
‘Kenneth… Mr Drummond,’ she corrected herself. ‘What are you doing here? I thought Wednesday was your day for seeing Mr Scott.’
‘It was, but there was some emergency and so they asked me to attend Mr Meadows’ clinic this week instead, lucky for me. Oh, and by the way,’ he added as he smiled down at her, ‘you got it right the first time.’
When Sally looked puzzled, he said softly, ‘Kenneth, not Mr Drummond.’
Oh, heavens, she wasn’t really going to start blushing, was she? Sally wondered shakily. She hadn’t missed, either, the significance of that deliberate ‘lucky for me’, nor the way he had looked at her when he’d asked her to call him Kenneth.
She had always liked him, of course, laughing with him and teasing him, listening to him and talking to him, but somehow it was different now that he was no longer one of her patients and instead of her looking down at him he was the one now looking down at her. He was a big man, nearly as tall as Joel but not quite as broad across the chest. As he touched her arm lightly she noticed that his hand felt smooth, not like Joel’s, whose skin was rough.
‘Are you just off?’ he asked her now.
Sally nodded. ‘Yes,’ she agreed ruefully. ‘I’m on my way home to the housework and the ironing.’
‘I was just going to have a spot of lunch; I had hoped I might be able to persuade you to join me. I still haven’t totally got full control of these things,’ he told her wryly, gesturing towards his crutches.