We had to stand for a few minutes in a queue for a taxi. Then one drew up. The driver turned his head towards us and the constriction in my throat, at the sight of him, caused me to grip Sandy so close that he yelped. And in the same instant, Nardy, who had bent down towards the driver, clutched my arm, pulled me back onto the pavement, and almost dragged me along to where the next cab was approaching. He himself was gasping as he gave this driver our address. Then when we were seated, he gripped my hand, saying, ‘It’s all right. It’s all right. Stop shivering; nothing can happen. He wouldn’t dare attempt anything. There’s nothing he can do. And we’ll get back home as soon as possible. Now stop it, stop shivering.’
But I couldn’t stop shivering. And for the first time in weeks I saw Hamilton. He was crouched on the opposite seat, and seemingly filled with the same fear that was coursing through me. When Nardy said, ‘We will go back tonight, we’ll get the midnight train,’ Hamilton immediately made a great obeisance with his head. And when I could force myself to speak, I said, ‘We must wait and see how she is.’
When we reached the house the children swarmed over us, and Mary greeted us warmly. George wasn’t in. She said he was along with his mother. And yes, Gran was pretty low. What was the matter? Wasn’t I well?
The children were scattered back to the kitchen with Sandy while we went into the old sitting room where Mary had tea ready, and I said simply, ‘We…we came face to face with Stickle. We almost got into his cab.’
‘Oh my! Oh, my goodness! No wonder you’re looking white. Still, I’m sure he knows you’re on to him. He wouldn’t dare start anything.’
‘He’d better not,’ Nardy said grimly. Then he asked, ‘Do you hear anything of him?’
‘Yes, now and again. His lad seems determined to pal up with our Gordon.’
‘Does the boy mention his father?’
‘No, never, Gordon says; but there’re signs that the man has been at him now and again, for Gordon once said Neil had a split lip; and another time he said he couldn’t hold his pen. Anyway, don’t you worry, nothing’s going to happen. He wouldn’t dare.’
‘That man would dare anything, Mary. Oh, the look on his face when he recognised me. For a split second there was that oily smile of the yes, sir, yes, madam, look, the tailor’s shop smile. And then that awful look of hate enveloped it.’
As I warmed myself at the fire I thought about hate. It was a dreadful thing, hate. Look how it had changed Tommy. Thinking back, I realised that all my life I had been in touch with hate. I recalled the trunk in the attic upstairs in this very house, and it was still there, and my mother’s wedding gown was still in it, meticulously slashed to a hundred and one pieces. I remembered the night I first saw it and glimpsed a little the rage that must have consumed her to make her cut that gown into ribbons and then lay it out piece by piece to fit its original shape before doubling it in half and putting it in the trunk.
Once hate becomes alive it is difficult to kill. I had tried with regard to Stickle, but there it was, churning in me now, yet almost obliterated by my fear.
Nardy pulled at my arm and brought me out of my reverie, saying, ‘Come on, let’s get along to Gran’s while there’s still some light.’
There was more bustle. I went into the kitchen where the children were going mad with Sandy and, picking him up, I said, ‘I’m putting him in our bedroom. Now, please, don’t let him out no matter how much noise he makes. Play with him up there, but you won’t, will you, let him out?’
Mary, coming behind me, said, ‘I’ll see to that now. Don’t worry. Do you want me to call a taxi?’
‘No, we’ll walk.’ I looked at Nardy, and repeated, ‘We’ll walk, yes?’ He nodded, and a few minutes later we set out.
Our entry into Gran’s street didn’t go unnoticed, and people called to me, saying, ‘Why, hello there, Maisie. How are you? By! You’re lookin’ bonny.’
It was the usual greeting when people meant to be kind.
George opened the door to us, and I was once more lost in his bear-hugging embrace. But there was no great laughter issuing from his lips today and after he had shaken hands firmly with Nardy I said to him, ‘How is she?’ And he pursed his wide lips and wrinkled his nose before saying, ‘She hasn’t been too good, Maisie, not too good. But she’s turned the corner now. It’s funny to see her lying there without a bellow in her. Just thought lately, if anything were to happen to her, life would lose its spring, at least for me, because I haven’t been meself since she took to that bed.’
‘That’s natural.’ I patted his arm. ‘Anyway, here, take my coat, and’—I stabbed my finger at him—‘don’t leave it lying on the couch for the cat to curl up on.’ I was aiming to be cheerful because I could see that there was a great change in him. And yes, I thought, the spring would go out of all our lives if anything happened to Gran, Gran whom I had loved first because she, like her son, was common, and through her I had imagined that everything nice in this world must be common.
We went upstairs and I opened the bedroom door and I saw her expression change. But, oh dear me, how she had altered. She did look ill, really ill.
When I bent over and kissed her she lifted one weak hand and patted my cheek. I had to keep the tears from my voice as I said, ‘I can’t leave you for a minute, can I? Why can’t you look after yourself? I’m tired of trailing after you.’ It was the same way in which she would have greeted me had our positions been reversed. And she smiled, a pale, wan smile; then her mouth dropped in at the corner and her voice came as a croak when she said, ‘It’s because you went away.’
‘Well, here I am back, and I want you out of that bed.’
‘I’ll be all right…The bucket.’
I looked round the room for the bucket, and she lifted her hand wearily again and smiled as she said, ‘The bucket was hanging—’ she drew in a deep breath, then went on, ‘on the knob of the bed…the bucket, but I wouldn’t kick it.’
‘Oh. Oh, Gran.’ It was too much. The tears spilled over from my eyes, and I turned away and Nardy took my place and I heard her say, ‘Ah, lad, lad.’ Then, after a moment when I turned to the bed again, she looked at me and said, ‘Sandy?’
‘He’s back in the house. They’re all looking after him.’
‘That fella?’ She was again aiming to smile.
I glanced at Nardy, then looked at her again and said, ‘Which fellow, dear?’
She closed her eyes and showed a slight return of her impatience before she brought out, ‘Ham…il…ton.’
‘Oh, him. Oh, he’s here all right.’ I looked towards the bottom of the bed. ‘He’s standing there with his girlfriend Begonia.’
Her smile widened and she made a sound like, ‘Aha.’
‘He’s going to make an honest woman of her, they’re going to be married.’
I put my hand out and squeezed Nardy’s as I saw the bedclothes shake. She was laughing inside. And when Nardy, bending towards her, said, ‘Tommy’s riding down on her,’ she made a croaking sound. Then as suddenly, her expression changed, and, turning away from the bed, I said quickly, ‘We’re tiring her.’ It was partly an excuse for myself to get out of the room for I felt that I would howl audibly.
A minute later, down in the passage, George was opening the door to the doctor, and once again I was enveloped in a bear hug, and it could have been a bear because his face was more hairy than ever. Yet, I noticed when he held me at arm’s length that it was mostly grey now. He, too, seemed to have changed so very much in a year. Yet, his voice was as I remembered it, and his compliments were as caustic as ever. ‘You haven’t altered much,’ he said. ‘I thought they went in for high living up in London; you’re getting scraggier.’
‘I’m in the fashion,’ I replied.
Taking off his hat and coat now, he said, ‘You’ve seen her?’
‘Yes.’
‘She’s had a rough passage.’
‘Is she all right now? I mean, is she over it?’
‘I should think so. Sh
e’ll have to go steady…How long are you staying?’
‘Well’—I hesitated, then looked at Nardy—‘only for a couple of days.’
‘Not for the holidays?’
‘Not…not this time.’
He didn’t ask the reason why but just nodded his head; then going towards the stairs, he said, ‘I’ll be seeing you; I’ll call in at the house after surgery.’
In the kitchen I said to George, ‘Can I help you?’ and he replied, ‘Aye, yes. Get yourself back to the house and have something to eat. Once the meal’s over, Mary’ll come and relieve me. Go on, now.’
I wanted to protest, but Nardy put in, ‘Do as George says.’ So we went back to the house and had a meal. Then, just as she was about to leave for Gran’s, Mary said, ‘What with one thing and another I haven’t been able to do much turning around regarding beds. But John is sleeping up in the attic because Betty wanted a room to herself. You know what they’re like. But there’s another single up there. Do you think Tommy would mind…?’
‘Not a bit of it,’ Nardy put in now, ‘he’ll be in his element. He’ll think he’s camping out with the boys.’
‘Oh, there’s only John sleeps there; I don’t let Gordon go up, because there would be skull and hair flyin’. Those two…funny, but they’re at each other’s throats most of the time, yet, let anyone else go for either of them and there they are like close buddies.’
Just as she finished speaking there came the sound of screeching brakes outside the front door, and Nardy said, ‘He’s arrived.’
We opened the door and there, grabbing up parcels from the boot, was Tommy. As I stood with the others waiting for him to bounce up the steps I thought, Of all that could happen in a year! For Tommy, of all others, seemed to have changed out of all recognition.
As soon as he entered the house the children’s squeals and high laughter filled the place and his greeting to Nardy, Mary and me was lost under it.
Some short time later I opened the sitting room door and there was Tommy sitting on the hearthrug, Sandy lying across his knees, and John, Kitty and Gordon squatting near him; only Betty was standing. But they all turned as Nardy and I entered the room, and Tommy, rising to his feet and for the first time, mentioned Gran, saying, ‘How did you find her?’ He seemed to have forgotten that Gran was our main reason for being here.
‘Pretty bad, but doctor says she’s turned the corner,’ I said.
‘Good, good.’ He nodded. Then, looking at Nardy and his expression changing, he almost cried, ‘Five hours, twenty-three minutes, with only one stop! How about that, laddie?’
‘You’re a maniac.’
‘I never went over sixty…Well, just now and then to pass something. You could have saved your railway fare.’
‘I’ve got a whole neck, that’s something to be thankful for.’
Tommy, now casting his eyes over the children and nodding towards Nardy, said, ‘He’s old, crotchety.’
‘So am I. Come on you lot!’ It was George coming into the room. ‘Scram!’
‘Aw, Dad, you’re back.’ It was a chorus from the three younger ones, and he replied, ‘Never mind, Aw Dad, you’re back. I’ll give you two seconds to get off your hunkers before I skelp your lugs for you.’
Rising to her feet, Kitty looked at John and Gordon, and, the three of them nodding together, said, ‘Promises, promises.’
With raised hand, George advanced on them crying, ‘I’ll carry out me promises on your bare backsides if you don’t get.’ And laughing, they ran from the room.
In this moment I felt happy for George: here he was with his four adopted children and loving them as he had once loved me when I was small; and I could sense that his affection was returned fourfold.
After George had marshalled them out of the room and we were left alone with Tommy, we both looked at him as he sat on the couch, his long legs sprawled out. And when he didn’t speak, I said, ‘Tired?’
‘No, not really.’ He looked, first to the right and then to the left. ‘Somehow it’s all changed,’ he said; ‘I suppose it’s because Gran isn’t here.’
I didn’t answer, for a moment thinking that he was right. But then, Gran didn’t live here. Yet she had been here when he last visited. However, I realised he was right, for, to me, even were Gran here, the house wasn’t the same, which was natural for it was occupied by a family now, and their different way of life had changed the atmosphere.
Nardy was saying to Tommy, ‘When are you starting on your run around the world?’ And Tommy answered, ‘Oh, sometime in March.’ Then he looked at me and said, ‘Can you imagine longing for something all your life, then when you get it you don’t want it.’
‘Not really,’ I said as I thought, I’ve wanted to be loved all my life, and now I’m being loved I want to go on being loved. I have never wanted it to lessen, this feeling that has existed between Nardy and me, because I know he has been and is happy. That I had the power to make him happy always appears to me a miracle and not a small one.
Tommy was still looking at me as he said, ‘I don’t want to go on the damn tour. I realise now that I would much rather take her ladyship’—this was the name he had given to his car—‘and run around the country, and perhaps take her over to France.’
‘Oh, you’ll enjoy it once you get going. And what an experience to do a world tour. I wouldn’t mind it myself, would you, Nardy?’
Nardy shrugged his shoulders and pursed his lips before answering, ‘I hate flying and I cannot see myself being months on a boat. Rough weather and I don’t agree, do we?’ And he smiled at me as he recalled our cruise together before we were married.
Tommy now straightened himself up abruptly on the couch and, bending forward, placed his elbows on his knees, and with his hands dangling between them he looked down at them as he said quietly, ‘I’ve had a kind of funny feeling on me of late that something was about to happen. It’s made me wonder about the damned tour. Keeps niggling at me. I’m not given to that kind of thinking. It worries me.’
Nardy rose hastily to his feet, saying, ‘Which all goes to prove, laddie, that you’re in need of a holiday. Now come on, let’s go along to Gran’s again.’
As we walked down the room, I thought it was strange that Tommy should be troubled by premonitions, for he wasn’t really the type. But then a little of his fear rubbed off on to me as my thoughts ran ahead. Enough! Enough! He can’t do anything. He wouldn’t dare.
Then as we entered the hall I saw Hamilton in the far distance. He looked solemn, sad, and his outline wasn’t clear. Begonia was with him, and I watched him turn her about while she still looked over her shoulder at me with those compassionate eyes of hers, and I thought, Gran is going to die.
Nine
The following day, I spent the morning and all afternoon with Gran, and she definitely seemed stronger. As George said, she had turned the corner at a gallop since I had come. At one stage in the afternoon when we had the room to ourselves, she held my hand and she said, ‘I’m goin’ to make it now, lass. I thought me number was up, and that’s why I trailed you all the way here. I’m sorry.’
‘Oh, stop your jabbering.’ I used her tone. ‘I’ve been wanting to come for months, but…but you know why I didn’t.’
‘Aye. Aye, lass.’ She moved her head slowly. ‘He’s still about.’ She drew in a long breath, then said, ‘I heard at the club that he’d been taken on full-time with Morgans Motors, the taxis, you know. But he’s not liked among the fellas, plays the big “I am” too much.’ Then after a moment, she said something that brought the fear of him galloping back. ‘It must rankle enough to drive him mad,’ she said, ‘to know how you’ve got on, being famous like and married to a gentleman, and your name in the papers through your books. It was in last week again, saying you had done another best-seller.’ Once more she gasped, then ended, ‘By, it must burn him up!’
My staying with Gran all day had afforded Mary a break, but Tommy had now brought her in the car. She was
to stay the night. Apparently he had had the children out nearly all afternoon and they’d had a rare time.
Before leaving, I told Gran I’d be round in the morning first thing and that the last thing I was going to do before we got the train was to slip in to see the doctor.
I made her laugh: ‘I’ve a good mind to go to the surgery and wait me turn,’ I said. ‘You can imagine what he’d say when I walked in, can’t you? And what’s more, I’d likely meet my old friend there, you know, the one who used to greet me with, “you here again? It’s your nerves.’’’ At this, she caught my hand and said, ‘You know something, lass? Love must agree with you, ’cos you could end up being quite canny-lookin’!’
‘Go on with you!’ I flapped my hand at her. ‘I thought all you’ve had was pneumonia, not softening of the brain.’
Nardy hadn’t come with Tommy. Being a good cook, he was seeing to the meal tonight. And so, for the first time I found myself alone in the car with Tommy, and he, with his hand on the starter turned to me and put my thoughts into words, saying, ‘You know, it’s the first time you’ve sat there.’
‘Don’t be silly,’ I said; ‘I’ve been in this scary thing a number of times.’
‘Not sitting there in the passenger seat.’ He started the car and almost in the one motion turned quickly out from the kerb, and I said, ‘Oh, Tommy, for goodness sake, drive carefully.’
‘You’re safe with me, madam.’
‘I don’t know so much.’
‘No?’ He glanced at me. I made no answer to this, but loudly I said, ‘Look, there are traffic lights ahead.’
His laughter filled the car and his only answer was, ‘Oh, Maisie.’
At one point I glanced at the window and then turned sharply to him as I said, ‘We’re going through the market place.’
‘Yes, I know.’
‘But why? This is the long way round.’
‘Oh, I didn’t know it was the longer way round. I just thought it was another route. The children showed me.’
Goodbye Hamilton Page 12