As Time Goes By

by Annie Groves

  ‘But, Doris, the doctor might change his mind, and not want to keep me on,’ she had protested, thinking that she would be looking for an excuse to leave just as soon as she could, and that leaving would be that much harder if she had her furniture to shift.

  ‘Nonsense, of course he won’t change his mind,’ Doris had told her. ‘In fact, the more I think about it, the more I reckon it’s going to suit you both down to the ground. You’ll have a steady job and be at home with your kiddies, and the doctor will have someone he can rely on to make sure he’s properly looked after. A man needs that, especially a doctor.’

  ‘Mrs Walker, I wonder if you could come into my office for a moment. I want to have a word with you … oh!’

  The doctor might look disconcerted to find her on her knees scrubbing the floor but that was nothing to how she felt at having him stand there in his immaculate clothes looking down on her, her hair tired up in a turban and her face shiny with perspiration.

  ‘I’ll just go and get myself cleaned up first, if you don’t mind, Dr Ross,’ Sally answered.

  ‘It wasn’t my intention that you should scrub floors. I employ a daily to come in and do the rough work.’

  Sally could hear the distaste in his voice. Did he think that having his housekeeper and receptionist do something as menial as scrubbing floors somehow belittled him, she thought angrily If so, she didn’t share his views, not one little bit. She would be thoroughly ashamed of herself if the day ever came when she was too proud to scrub floors. Not that that was likely.

  ‘Maybe you do,’ she told him forthrightly, ‘but whoever she is she doesn’t do a very thorough job. There’s no way I’d want me or my kiddies eating in a kitchen with a floor as filthy as this one was.’

  It pleased her to see him looking taken aback.

  ‘I see. I’m afraid I hadn’t realised.’

  ‘Well, there’s no reason why you should, is there? That’s my job, to notice things like that. Perhaps you’d like me to bring a tray of tea through for you when I’m cleaned up?’

  ‘That’s an excellent idea – make sure you put an extra cup on it for yourself, please.’

  Didn’t he understand that she didn’t want him treating her nicely, Sally fumed as she stood in the cold bathroom to have a strip wash. It put her at a disadvantage and made her feel even more angrily resentful than she already was. She didn’t want to have to feel grateful to him and to have to listen to everyone else telling her how lucky she was, and she most certainly didn’t want those dangerous feelings that kept sneaking up on her and catching her off guard, like they had done this morning when she had thought how much better he looked now that he was getting some decent home cooking.

  Washed and dressed in a clean blouse and skirt, she brushed her hair, tugging the brush through her soft brunette curls, before checking on the boys who were playing happily in their new surroundings, warmed by the good fire the doctor had insisted they were to have.

  Ten minutes later she balanced the tea tray she was carrying carefully before knocking on the door to the doctor’s office.

  Instead of calling out to her to go in as she had expected, the doctor came and opened the door for her himself.

  Startled by the unexpectedness of his action Sally looked up at him. He was looking straight back at her. Her heart started to beat far faster than she wanted. She could hear the china rattling slightly on the tray because her hands were trembling. She wanted desperately to look away from him, but somehow she couldn’t. What was happening to her? This wasn’t right. It wasn’t right at all.

  ‘Let me take that tray for you.’

  Let him take the tray? How could she do that? He was her employer and yet here he was treating her as though they were equals. Sally shook her head.

  ‘It’s all right. I can manage.’

  It was too late, though. He was already reaching for the tray. Their hands met, his covering hers, almost as though he were holding them.

  Sally felt her heart jump. The only hands she held these days were those of her two sons. It was a long time since she had thought of the touch of another hand against her own as something that could make her heart beat faster and fill her with an awareness of a man’s strength and tenderness.

  It was a long time too since a man’s hands had covered her own in this kind of simple domestic unintended intimacy. The kind of intimacy that might be shared between husband and wife.

  A yearning she didn’t want to feel ached through her. For Ronnie, and everything she had lost, she reassured herself. Not for anything else, or anyone else. But still she couldn’t move.

  A piece of coal hissed in the grate. The doctor released her and went over to the fire, freeing Sally to carry the tray to his desk, whilst he used the tongs to restore the lump of coal to the fire.

  ‘I thought we’d be more comfortable having our tea here in front of the fire, Sally,’ he said.

  Sally stiffened before she picked up the tray and carried it over to the tea table close to the fire. He was treating her almost as his equal, which she was not, and she could only assume that it must stem from some peculiar Scottish practice. Certainly no one in Liverpool would behave like that to someone they were employing in their home. If he wasn’t careful he could have her thinking all sorts of daft stuff, and that wouldn’t do anyone any good, would it?

  ‘Would you like me to pour for you, Doctor?’ she asked him with extra formality, just to show him that whilst he may not know how to behave as an employer, she knew what her own role was. She could feel him looking at her but she refused to look back, determinedly focusing on pouring his tea, whilst equally determinedly not pouring a cup for herself.

  She thought she heard him sigh faintly but he made no comment, saying only, ‘We haven’t talked yet about wages. That is my omission and one for which I apologise. I had thought that five guineas per week …’

  Five guineas a week! That was a fortune. More than she would have earned getting danger money working on munitions. It would mean, though, that living here in this house ‘all found’, so she wouldn’t have to spend anything on food, rent or services, would allow her to save virtually all her earnings to pay off the outstanding debt on the money Ronnie had borrowed. Since, thanks to Doris making it impossible for her to refuse to take the job in the first place, and her own conscience, she couldn’t run away from her debt, she could have been tempted to thank the doctor and take the money. But there was that ‘conscience’ and so instead she shook her head firmly, and told him, ‘That’s far too much. They’d be struggling to earn that much at the munitions factory, doing work that’s dangerous.’

  ‘You haven’t met my patients yet,’ he answered, so straight-faced that it took Sally several seconds to realise that he had made a joke.

  ‘I think that five guineas is a very fair amount,’ Dr Ross continued. ‘After all, you are combining two roles, that of housekeeper and receptionist, and you will in effect have to act as my lieutenant, as it were, when I am away from my surgery at the hospital. I shall be relying on you to make a note for me of which patients I may need to see urgently.’

  Sally gave a small gasp of protest. ‘I don’t know anything about people being sick.’

  ‘Not in technical terms but you are an intelligent woman and a mother, and I am sure you have a very good instinct for what is genuine and what is not.’

  Sally didn’t know what to say. No one had ever told her before that she was intelligent.

  Five guineas a week! With that amount of money coming in and no rent to pay she’d be able to save up enough to pay off her debt, provided the Boss didn’t keep on increasing the interest. Perhaps as ‘an intelligent woman’ she ought to be firm and tell the Boss that the original debt was all she was getting!

  ‘There is one thing that I must stress to you, though, and that is under no circumstances are either you or the boys to use the first-floor bathroom, which is set aside for the use of my patients, and which must be kept clean, and indeed sho
uld be cleaned after its use by a patient.’

  Had she really thought he was treating her as an equal? Well, more fool her. He obviously thought that whilst she was good enough to get down on her hands and knees and scrub the bathroom upstairs, she was not good enough to use it.

  ‘You needn’t worry about that, Doctor,’ Sally responded through gritted teeth. ‘I shall make sure that we know our place.’

  ‘I think you’ve misunderstood me. It isn’t a matter of anyone knowing their place. I simply don’t want you or your sons exposed to any kind of infection or disease my patients might bring in. That is why I insist on them having a separate bathroom and why I should like you to make sure that you keep separate cleaning things for it. Good hygiene is a very important tool in a doctor’s armoury. I learned that very quickly in Glasgow’s slums.’

  Sally wasn’t sure she liked the feeling that being wrong-footed by him gave her.

  ‘Will you be wanting me to wear a uniform?’ she asked.

  ‘No,’ he told her curtly, adding, ‘You seem to think that your role here is to be one of subservience and servitude, whereas what I want is for us to work together as equals in a team.’

  Sally couldn’t believe her ears. Did he really think she was going to believe that? ‘Equals!’ she repeated scornfully, too infuriated to think about being careful. ‘That’s rich! You’re a doctor, you live in a big posh house – how can you talk about someone like me being your equal?’

  ‘You’re right. The boy I was when I was growing up would be someone you would have looked down on with contempt. I can see from your expression that you don’t believe me, but it’s true. I grew up in a tenement block in one of Glasgow’s slums. My father, a schoolteacher, died just before I was born, and my mother remarried. I didn’t get on with my stepfather and I was always in trouble. I got more beatings that I got hot dinners. If it hadn’t been for the kindness and generosity of our local vicar I’d still be living in that slum. He and his wife took me in; they fed my mind as well as my body. When they were moved to another parish they asked my mother if they could take me with them. She had other children by then with her new husband, and to tell the truth I think she was glad to see me go.’

  Sally couldn’t look at him. She didn’t want him to see the shocked pity in her eyes. ‘I expect she wanted to do what she thought was best for you,’ she told him quietly. ‘It must have hurt her to let you go.’

  ‘It’s a kind thought, but I doubt that she did. She’s dead now so I’ll never actually know. My adoptive parents became close friends with the doctor in the small town we’d moved to. He was kind to me and encouraged my interest in medicine. I’ve been very lucky to have people in my life who’ve helped me to achieve my dream of becoming a doctor and in turn helping others, but make no mistake, nothing can change the beginnings I came from, or the way one is judged because of them, even if I was once foolish enough to think otherwise. Now, you will need some housekeeping money. How much do you think you will require each month for food and other necessities?’

  Sally kept a close watch on what she spent and knew to the penny how much it cost to keep a roof over their heads and buy their food each week, but when she gave the doctor this sum he shook his head and told her, ‘That won’t be enough. I shall pay all the household bills, of course, but I don’t want you to short-change the boys out of some foolish notion that you have to stick to a budget that isn’t sufficient. No, I shall open accounts at any shops you wish to recommend and we will take things from there.’

  ‘You’re being very generous,’ Sally felt obliged to say. ‘Far too generous, in fact. It’s no wonder the girl you’ve got coming in to do some cleaning doesn’t do it properly. She’ll have recognised that she can take advantage of you. She’ll find that she’s going to have to pull her socks up a bit.’ There was a martial glint in Sally’s eyes.

  ‘Well, I’ve said my piece, so is there anything you want to ask me? Anything within the house you might want to see changed?’

  Sally hesitated and then said quietly, ‘Well, since you’ve asked, I’m a bit worried about the boys coming to live here, especially Tommy.’

  ‘How so? They’ll have more room and a bigger garden and—’

  ‘It’s nothing like that.’

  ‘What is it then?’

  She had known this wasn’t going to be easy, but it had to be said, for Tommy’s sake.

  ‘It’s the way Tommy is with you. He’s only three and he doesn’t understand things properly yet. He’s … well, you don’t need me to tell you that he’s taken to you, what with him always calling you “his doctor”, an’ all. The thing is that now that we’re living here I don’t want him getting the wrong idea or making a nuisance of himself, and you having to put him straight.’

  ‘What exactly are you trying to say?’

  ‘Tommy can’t remember his own dad. I don’t want him … well, with you having lost your little ’uns … well, I know it can’t be easy for you.’ This was so difficult for her and she was beginning to wish she hadn’t said anything but it was too late now. Her voice had become muffled because the truth was that she didn’t think she could have borne to see too healthy little boys running around alive and well, and having to share a house with them, if her own had been in their graves.

  ‘No,’ Dr Ross agreed tersely, ‘it isn’t. But I wouldn’t be much of a person if I blamed your boys for that, and besides, having you and them here can’t possibly be compared with my life with my wife.’

  Sally recoiled. Who’d said anything about wanting to be compared with his wife? Not her. All she’d tried to say was that she didn’t want Tommy making a nuisance of himself, even if what she’d meant was that she didn’t want the doctor upsetting her son by putting him in his place. There’d been no call for him to make that comment about his wife. There were some things that a person just didn’t say.

  ‘If that’s everything you wanted to say to me, Doctor, then I’d better go and get on,’ she told him, her pride smarting.

  She was just about to pick up the tray when she suddenly remembered something she had needed to ask him. ‘I was wondering what time you’d be wanting your tea. I was thinking maybe six o’clock or thereabouts.’

  ‘My late wife always used to insist we had dinner at eight thirty,’ he informed her.

  Sally’s face reddened with his stress on the word ‘dinner’. Posh folk had dinner, not tea – she ought to have remembered that instead of having had him tell her.

  ‘Then that’s when I’ll make sure your dinner is ready, sir,’ she told him smartly, picking up the tray and making for the door before he could continue the conversation.

  TWENTY-TWO

  ‘Happy?’

  The soft whisper caressed Sam’s ear, causing the now familiar flutters of longing and excitement to race through her body. In breathless exaltation she daringly snuggled closer to Johnny in the darkness of the back row seats of the cinema, as he caressed the curve of her throat.

  ‘Mm,’ she answered him blissfully.

  ‘Sure there’s nothing else you’d like?’

  He was teasing her, knowing how much she loved the intimacy of his touch, Sam knew, but there was something she would like very much indeed, so she took a deep breath and told him softly, ‘Actually, there is. I’d love to meet your family, Johnny. I know you’ve told me that you mother is living in Wales now, but I heard Sergeant Brookes saying something to you the other day about your sisters.’

  She wasn’t going to say anything to him about how she’d felt a little bit hurt that he hadn’t said so much as a word to her about his family, whilst asking her all sorts of questions about her own.

  She felt the change in him immediately. His body tensed against hers and then he moved slightly away from her, no longer holding her quite so close.

  ‘Well, you’re not going to get to,’ he told her so curtly that for a few seconds she was too shocked to speak.

  When she did manage to speak she only got
as far as protesting, ‘But, Johnny—’ before he interrupted her sharply.

  ‘No. And that’s an end to it. Apart from anything else, me sister Jennifer is the only family I’ve got living in Liverpool now, and her and me … well, she’s got her life and I’ve got mine.’

  ‘But she’s your sister.’ Sam was unable to take on board what he was saying. She and Russell might have quarrelled fiercely as children but there had always been a very strong bond between. All the more so now that they were grown up, in fact.

  ‘Stow it, will you, Sam?’ Johnny told her ‘Let’s watch the film.’

  He obviously didn’t want to talk about his sister, but why?

  ‘Perhaps we could go and see her?’ Sam suggested, unwilling to give up.

  ‘No!’

  His angry vehemence made Sam recoil, feeling confused and hurt. If her brother had been living close enough for them to visit him, she would have been both thrilled and proud to have had the opportunity to introduce Johnny to him.

  ‘Well, if you’d rather not,’ she told him valiantly, trying not to let him see how hurt she felt, ‘then of course we won’t.’

  ‘There’s no point.’ His voice was still curt.

  No point in her meeting his sister? Why not? The harshness in his voice suggested that his reasons were ones that caused him pain. Had there been a quarrel between them that they’d never made up – things like that did happen in families, she knew – or was it that they simply did not get on? Sam realised uncomfortably that she felt unable to ask him. Her closeness to her brother made her feel very sad for Johnny and for his sister.

  She was so lucky with her own family, she acknowledged. Impulsively she reached for Johnny’s hand and gave it a small loving squeeze. He was still sitting upright and slightly away from her, but she resolved not to allow herself to feel hurt.