No reprimand was forthcoming from his grandmother, and I, like her now, suddenly sat down on a chair, and our heads were almost touching across the table as we groaned with our laughter.
Sixteen
On August Saturday, George and Gran paid us a flying visit. They came down on day return tickets. It was good to see them, but guilt struck me when I knew they weren’t aiming to stay the weekend.
They said Kitty was getting along splendidly, but they didn’t seem to have the same opinion of Nardy. They made great play of his being able to walk, but when Gran got me alone, she said, ‘What’s wrong with him? He looks peaked.’
‘He’s confined to the house too much,’ I said.
One thing I found odd: they didn’t laugh about Nardy’s pupil. Of course, they had when I had first described how he interspersed his speech with swear words—this they could recognise and so understand—but when I told them Nardy spoke French to him for an hour every morning and that it was amazing how the child had taken to it, they both stared at me, then looked at each other. And Gran said a strange thing: ‘You adopting him?’ she asked.
‘Adopting Harold?’ I laughed out loud. ‘Of course not! He’s got a family, seven uncles and aunts, a mother and a stepmother, sort of, and his own father. Adopt him? No, of course not!’
‘Doesn’t he go to school?’ Gran asked.
‘He starts next month.’
‘What about the French then?’ said George.
‘Oh, Nardy is going to take him at the weekends and whenever he can come around at night.’
‘My, my!’ Gran shook her head. ‘Some people are lucky.’
Yes, I had to admit I was glad when they left; only to be awake far into the night trying to work out the change in pattern of the emotions that life cut out for you and apparently without your consent. And Gran had been right, Nardy did look peaked.
And it wasn’t for the want of fresh air. Nardy was changing. In some subtle way he was changing right before my eyes. He was more quiet. I would find him sitting staring at me, and if I asked, ‘What is it, dear?’ he’d come out with some little compliment, such as, ‘I love you.’
One day he said that he wished he didn’t.
‘What is it, dear?’ I had said, and he had taken my face between his hands and replied, ‘Sometimes I feel sick at heart because I love you and I wish I didn’t.’
Then there was Tommy. As promised he had sent us cards from various places across Canada. And when on one of them was written, ‘Still looking,’ Nardy had said, ‘What does he mean, still looking?’ And I said, ‘I think he’s looking for himself,’ to which Nardy had replied, ‘Well, there’s one thing I know for sure, he won’t find it out there.’
So life went on. We had visitors. The Freemans called regularly. They were always very nice to me, but I never seemed to get close to Alice. Although she accepted me, kissed me warmly, I felt that, like all Nardy’s friends, she, at bottom, couldn’t understand what it was about me that had attracted their charming friend to this small plain girl…or woman.
Bernard Houseman and his wife came. Now, I knew where I stood with Mrs Sarah Houseman, for her manner towards me had always indicated that I was of an inferior class.
But one weekend we had a visitor who did warm my heart. Mike came and he brought with him all the warmth, understanding, and kindness that I needed. Until we had a quiet talk I hadn’t realised the effort it was taking for me to keep up the easy-going normal attitude that indicated everything in the garden was lovely. I said to him, ‘Tell me, is he in a really bad way?’
He had answered, ‘I haven’t examined him myself, but I can only go on what two highly experienced men have said. His heart’s in a poor condition. And apparently it wasn’t caused by the fire, only exacerbated by it. What has come to light is that his father died from a heart attack when he was fifty-two and an uncle in the same way. So Nardy’s condition could be partly congenital, which obviously wouldn’t have mattered so much if it hadn’t been for the fire and the physical strain the burns have put on his system. But,’ he had ended cheerfully, ‘there’s no need for you to despair, nor to worry yourself more skinny than you are. Given a quiet life, a bit of exercise, no undue worries, and he could be attending your funeral in your eighties.’
I think the highlight of Mike’s visit was his introduction to Harold.
‘So this is our little linguistic genius,’ he had said, bending over the minute but wide-eyed figure.
When Harold made no reply, Mike went on, ‘I hear you can speak three languages: English, French, and your own.’
Still no reply.
A little push from Nardy’s hand brought Harold’s face towards him, and when Nardy said, ‘Well, what have you to say to the doctor?’
Harold waited some further seconds before he replied, ‘He’s hairy…like Flannagan’s dog. It’s got long hair.’ And he made a dramatic gesture with his hand from his small shoulder down his body and outwards to describe the length of the hair on Flannagan’s dog.
Nardy and I both cried together, ‘Harold!’ And Harold looked at Mike who had straightened up, turned about and was walking towards the window. An elbow was sticking out, indicating that he had his hand across the lower part of his face, and his shoulders were slightly hunched.
‘Now you see what you’ve done,’ Nardy’s voice was stern. ‘You’ve upset the doctor.’
‘Haven’t.’
‘Oh, yes you have.’
‘No, I haven’t; he’s too big.’
Nardy’s puzzled glance was on me. There were times when he couldn’t follow his pupil’s thinking; but it was plain to me that anybody as big as Mike could not possibly be upset by anyone as small as himself. Get angry with him, swear at him, box his ears, kick his backside, as his uncles did, but not get upset by him.
This line of thought brought Hamilton on the scene. It seemed that it was he who swung Mike round to face his opponent again and then walked by his side until Mike was once more towering over Childe Harold.
‘So, I’m like Flannagan’s dog, am I? What kind of a dog is it?’
Harold appeared slightly puzzled for a moment, then answered, ‘He’s a dog.’
‘You said that, but what type? Is he like Sandy there, a poodle? or a …?’
‘No, silly, he’s not like Sandy, he’s a scruffy bug…he’s a scruffy dog.’
‘Oh, my goodness.’ I hung my head.
‘So, I’m like a long-haired scruffy dog, am I?’
‘Well—’ Harold looked from Nardy to me and, noting that we weren’t pleased with him and the latent diplomat coming to the fore, he now said, ‘Bumps is all right. He once caught some burglars at night. They was takin’ the wheels off me Uncle Rod’s banger. ‘Twas outside the front door.’
Nardy, Mike, and I kept our faces straight but our eyelids were blinking rapidly. ‘So they call the dog, Bumps,’ Mike said. ‘Why give it a name like that?’
‘Eh?’
‘I said, why do they call Flannagan’s dog, Bumps?’
Harold thought, then said, ‘’Cos of Bumps-A-Daisy.’ And without further prompting he went on to explain: ‘’Cos he’s big, I s’pose, an’ gets in the way of Mrs Flannagan’s feet, and she says she’ll make a mat of him after she’s cut him up, and so the lads bump him out of her way.’
I could imagine how the lads bumped the poor dog out of the way, likely with their feet. Anyway, that session ended with Mike lifting Harold high in the air and shaking him while Harold laughed a high glee-filled laugh.
And I held the picture in my mind for a long time afterwards.
Seventeen
I remember the day when I first registered the fact that Nardy was fading away before my eyes. Harold was in the picture that day too.
It was a Saturday morning in November. Harold had been at school since September, so he came only on a Saturday morning for his ‘is he on’ lesson, as he called it. But during the half-term holiday he came every morning with Janet.
<
br /> It was amazing how the child had progressed with this new language, while still dropping his aitches in the English one and occasionally falling back on his flowery one.
Nardy had not dressed this morning, but remained in his dressing gown, which was unusual because he was meticulous about his attire. So much so, that I laughingly put it to him one day: ‘You feel undressed, don’t you, when you are not wearing a collar and tie?’ And good-humouredly he had come back at me with, ‘Yes; especially at night in bed.’ But this morning he said, ‘I feel a bit lazy today, dear; I hope our young genius doesn’t object to my dressing gown.’
‘Our young genius wouldn’t object to your being stark naked as long as he was with you,’ I assured him, to which he answered, ‘Tut-tut!’
After depositing her grandson, Janet usually did some odd shopping for me while I went to my study and left the tutor and his pupil together. But I’d been in the room only about twenty minutes when the door opened and in rushed Harold, gabbling, ‘Mr Nardy, ’e’s got a pain. ‘E’s ‘oldin’…’
I didn’t hear the rest of what he had to say for I had scrambled out of the room and into the dining room where the lessons usually took place, and there was Nardy, bent over the table, one arm tight around his chest.
‘What is it, dear?’ Even as I said the words I was chiding myself for asking the road I knew.
He couldn’t answer for a moment; then he said, ‘A…a bit of a pain.’
‘Sit quiet. Don’t move.’ I rushed out of the room again and grabbed up the phone and dialled the doctor …
Doctor Bell lived a five minutes car ride from us. He arrived in less than ten minutes. Luckily he had just finished surgery.
He did not examine Nardy, but said brightly, ‘We’ll have to get you into hospital, laddie.’
Nardy, making a great effort to speak, said, ‘No…no hospital…bed.’
When the doctor began to speak again, saying, ‘Well now,’ Nardy slowly raised his hand from his chest and, looking up and after a pause, he managed to repeat, ‘Bed.’
‘Stay still for a moment then.’
As the doctor hurried out of the room I followed him, and in the hallway he said, ‘I’ve got something in the car that might help, but the place for him is hospital. He’s in a very bad way. You understand that, don’t you?’
‘Yes, yes, doctor, I understand that. And he knows he is, too, but he wants to stay at home.’
He made an impatient movement with his head, then hurried out. A few minutes later he was back and, after getting Nardy to swallow some pills, he gave him an injection, saying, ‘This’ll help.’
Between us, we got him into the bedroom and into bed, and all the while I’d been conscious of a spectator in the form of Harold.
Just as the doctor left Janet returned, and she became so distressed that I had to plead with her, saying, ‘Janet! Janet! I need help. Don’t, please, don’t give way like that.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, ma’am. I really am. I’ll be all right. But…but I’ve seen it comin’, the change in him. You see, he, I’ve got to say it, he’s been like me own because I’ve pushed him along since he was a bairn. I love him, I do, I do.’
‘I know you do. I know you do, Janet, but you’ve got to help me. He…he should be in hospital…’ I didn’t finish and voice my thoughts, but said, ‘Do you think you could spare me a few hours this afternoon if the family…?’
‘Blast the family. They can look after themselves, today and tomorrow and as long as I’m needed here. It’ll do them good.’
A sniff and a choking sound, coming from the side of us, caused us both to look at the boy. The tears were running down his face. Then, coming to me, he clutched my hand and said, ‘E’ll get better, Mr Nardy, won’t ’e?’
‘Yes, yes, of course he’ll get better.’ I put my hand on his hair. ‘Of course he will. Of course he will. Be a good boy now;’ then hurried out and into the bedroom.
Standing near the bed I looked down on my dear one. His face had taken on a blue tinge but his breathing was easy. He was asleep; the injection had done its work.
Sometime later Janet said, ‘I’ll take this one home’—she thumbed towards Harold—‘and tell my lot what they can get on with.’ And Harold said, ‘Don’t want to go, Gag.’
‘It doesn’t matter what you want, young man, it’s what you’re goin’ to get. Come on, get your coat on.’
‘But I want to stay, Gag. I want to stay with Mrs…‘
‘You heard me.’
‘Janet.’ She looked at me. ‘Let him stay.’
‘You’ve got enough on your plate without…‘
‘Please, Janet, let him stay.’
‘Well, if you say so, ma’am; but mind’—she had turned to her grandson again, her fingers wagging—‘you make a noise an’ open your mouth when you shouldn’t an’ I’ll put me foot in it when I come back, because I’ll know, I’ll know.’
The door had hardly closed on her when the child came to me and I almost wailed aloud my misery and foreboding when he held out his arms and I lifted him up and he cuddled my neck tightly while his face was pressed close to mine and he never uttered a word. It was then that my two friends appeared, one on each side of us: Hamilton’s whole demeanour was grave; Begonia’s eyes were large and soft and full of understanding, and it was she who said, It is strange—isn’t it? From where you derive comfort in times of need.
The doctor called every day for a week. Nardy took his pills three times a day. If he felt further pain he didn’t show it. He lay relaxed and quiet but ever ready to hold my hand when I neared the bed.
Janet had slept in one of the spare rooms for six nights, but I had insisted she went home on the Friday, because I am sure, in spite of her protestations, she had been worrying about how they were getting on at home. But when she arrived on the Saturday she wasn’t accompanied by Harold, and I felt a keen sense of disappointment. And so, apparently, did Nardy, for although there was no possibility of a lesson taking place, I felt he was disappointed at not seeing the boy. And he voiced this when I was sitting by the bedside and we were having a coffee: ‘Saturday mornings don’t seem the same without Childe Harold, do they?’ he said.
‘No.’ I smiled. ‘He always made us aware that it was Saturday morning, if nothing else.’
‘You like the boy, don’t you?’
‘Yes.’ My reply was quiet and I nodded at him, saying, ‘And you do too, don’t you?’
‘Oh, yes, yes, I like him. I’d like to think he’d be given a chance to be something later on. He’s got it up top, you know, that child. It’s amazing how he picks things up. He’s learnt more French in two months than I did in a year when I began. And his pronunciation is amazing, seeing that sometimes he’s as broad in all ways as a Billingsgate porter.’
I was sipping at my coffee when he said, quietly, ‘Would you like to adopt him?’
‘What?’
He chuckled now as he said, ‘That’s how you must have sounded in the surgery to Mike with your Wh-at! every Monday morning. You know, you do sound funny when you say it like that.’
‘I’m not the only one that sounds funny. You did say would I like to adopt him?’
‘Yes, that’s what I said.’
I was silent for a moment before I answered in the same way as I had done Gran, ‘And him with a father, a mother and a half, a grandmother, and, as far as I can count, seven uncles and aunts. And you saying, adopt him.’
‘Well,’ his voice was sober now, ‘as far as I can see it, dear, between his father and his mother and a half, and his seven uncles and aunts, his future is going to stand a very thin chance. He’ll end up either driving a lorry, or working in a warehouse, or some such. And he’ll become popular because of his quick mind, colourful vocabulary. And that will be about the limit of his career.’
‘But…but, my dear, they’d never agree to that.’
‘You don’t know what they would agree to until you put the question to t
hem.’
I remained quiet for a moment, and then I said, ‘I don’t think I could stand him running around this flat seven days a week; and he would upset you; it would be too much of a good thing.’
He put down his cup and his hand came out and sought mine. ‘My dear, let’s face facts. Now, now, don’t get agitated.’ He shook my hand. ‘There’s bound to come a time when he won’t irritate me, let’s put it like that.’
‘Nardy, Nardy, please, I won’t listen to you.’
‘All right, my dear, don’t listen to me, only think about it.’ His blue lips stretched into a broad smile as he ended, ‘Consult Hamilton. Yes, that’s what to do, consult Hamilton, and, of course, his good lady.’
‘Oh, Nardy.’ I pulled my hand away from his, picked up the coffee cups and put them on to the tray, shaking visibly as I did so while I said, ‘I don’t need to consult anyone. And, I am not going in for adoption. So get that out of your head, Mr Leviston.’ And on that I left the room, and I arrived in the kitchen at a run where, dropping the tray on to the table, I flopped into a chair and held my face in my hands. But I daren’t cry, because I knew that once I gave way to the despair that was in me there would be a deluge that I should be unable to control.
At about half past three the following day I heard the ring from the downstairs hall, and as I went to open the door I was thinking it could be Bernard Houseman and his wife or the Freemans, or someone else from the office. But to my utter amazement, there, stepping out of the lift was the tiny form of Harold.
‘What on earth!’ I looked beyond him, then asked, ‘Where is your …?’
‘I came meself.’ He had walked past me and, after closing the door quickly, I grabbed at his collar, swung him round and said, ‘You came on your own? It’s nearly dark. Do…do they know?’
‘No. They were asleep.’
Asleep. Of course, after a Sunday dinner and likely their usual swig of beer, the men, like those in the north, would be taking their Sunday afternoon nap. But surely not Janet.
Goodbye Hamilton Page 21