As Time Goes By

by Annie Groves

  ‘Mind you, if I was you I’d not have bin so keen to move in there, not after what I’ve heard the doctor had to say about your kiddies. Had it from one of the nurses, I did, wot knows my cousin Ruby. According to her he was that worried about you going out the way you was and leaving them for others to mind for you that he thought they should be teken into care for their own good. Said it was no wonder they’d ended up in hospital, so I heard.’

  ‘Well, you heard wrong,’ Sally told her sharply, her good intentions overturned by her fury. ‘The only reason they had to go into hospital was on account of the food poisoning they got from one of your sandwiches. Yes, and he wanted me to tell him where it had come from, an’ all, but I didn’t, having a bit more loyalty to others than some I could name.

  ‘Wot the doctor said was that he thought that maybe I should have let them be evacuated, that was all, but then he could have said that to plenty of other mothers here as well, as I’m sure we all know.’ There, that should put Daisy in her place, Sally decided angrily.

  ‘I’m surprised you need to queue up to buy anything, Daisy, wot with your hubby being so good at finding them damaged tins. Mind you, I suppose you might as well use all them extra points you get for having him at home and not in uniform,’ she added for good measure.

  She might seem calm outwardly but her heart was hammering away as though she had run a mile. She wasn’t going to let Daisy have everything her own way, not for one minute. That nurse had had no right to go saying anything about what the doctor had said to her about Tommy and Harry, and he had had no right to say that she wasn’t looking after them properly. What did he or Daisy know about the worries she had to bear?

  As Sally turned to leave, Daisy caught hold of her sleeve and hissed angrily to her, ‘You want to keep an eye on that doctor, you do,’ cos what I reckon is that with him losing his own kiddies he’s got it in his mind to take yours from you and adopt them. It was in the paper only the other week about someone doing that. Turned the poor mother’s brain, it did, when the judge said that they was better off with someone else. If you want my opinion that’s why he’s given you that job. The next thing you know he’ll be saying that you aren’t a fit mother and he’ll be keeping them two little lads.’

  ‘Don’t talk so daft,’ Sally told her scornfully, turning her back on her and walking away.

  ‘My, but you gave that Daisy Cartwright something to think about. That’s the first time I’ve ever seen her lost for words.’

  Sally tried to smile at the woman who had come up to her as she left the shop, but in reality now that she had calmed down she felt slightly sick and a bit ashamed of the way she had ripped up at Daisy.

  ‘I perhaps said a bit more than I should.’

  ‘No more than she deserved. It won’t do her any harm. Was that right what she was saying about you working for the new doctor?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes, it is.’

  ‘Thought I saw someone moving in the other week. Got two little kiddies, haven’t you?’

  ‘Yes, my sons.’

  ‘Only I live opposite from the doctor and a few doors down. Not that our side of the street is anything like as smart as where you are. A lovely house, that one of the doctor’s is. Your husband away fighting, is he?’

  ‘He was,’ Sally told her. ‘Only he got made a prisoner of war by the Japs and now he’s dead. I only heard a little while back.’

  Immediately her companion’s expression changed, her curiosity giving way to sympathy. ‘Oh, love, I’m ever so sorry.’

  ‘It’s all right. You weren’t to know and, besides, I’m not on me own. Sometimes I think there’s more lost someone to this war than there are haven’t.’

  ‘Well, that’s true enough. I’ve got two lads both in the navy and a daughter married into the Senior Service as well, and there’s never a day when I don’t wake up worrying about them. I’m Mrs Jessop, by the way.’

  ‘Sally. Sally Walker.’

  ‘Doctor not got a wife of his own then?’

  ‘He’s a widower,’ Sally felt bound to tell her.

  ‘Yes, I’d heard summat of the sort. House got bombed and killed her and their kiddies, so I’d heard.’

  ‘I’d rather not discuss it, if you don’t mind,’ Sally told her politely. ‘Not with me working for the doctor, you understand.’

  To her relief Mrs Jessop gave her an approving smile. ‘Quite right and proper. I shouldn’t pay any mind to what Daisy Cartwright has to say, if I were you. Anyone can see how well looked after them little lads of yours are. I knew the minute I set eyes on them that they had a good mother. Never did have an ounce of sense in her head, Daisy didn’t. If she had she’d have never married that lump of a husband of hers. She was at school with my daughter, and she was allus causing a fuss about summat and nothing then. Tell you what, if you feel like you want a bit of company of an evening, feel free to come and give me a knock.’

  ‘It’s very kind of you,’ Sally thanked her, ‘but with the doctor having evening surgery some nights, and then the boys, I can’t really go out in the evening. Maybe you could come to me? I’d have to ask the doctor first, though, if it’s all right.’

  She didn’t really want to encourage a woman whom she suspected was probably only cultivating an acquaintanceship with her so that she could have a good gossip, but neither did Sally want to offend a new neighbour.

  ‘Here’s your wages for this week, Sally …’

  ‘Thank you, Doctor.’

  ‘Everything’s all right, is it? You’re happy with the arrangements we’ve made?’

  ‘Yes, thank you, Doctor.’ What else could she say? People would think she’d lost her wits if she complained about having a job they’d give their eyeteeth for. But it was thanks to the doctor that Daisy had been able to have a go at her this morning about Tommy and Harry. He’d had no right saying to her what he had at the hospital.

  ‘Doctor! I hear that word so often I’m beginning to forget that I have a name. Doctor … even Tommy calls me “his doctor”. I don’t suppose I could persuade you to call me Alex occasionally, could I?’

  Sally couldn’t conceal her shock. ‘I couldn’t do that.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘It wouldn’t be right, not with me working for you.’

  Her heart was thumping all over the place and she could hardly breathe. What a thing to say to her – her calling him ‘Alex’, just like they were close. A funny little pain speared into her heart.

  ‘So you could do it if you weren’t working for me then?’

  ‘No! No … you’re a doctor, and I’m … it wouldn’t be proper.’ She felt angry now as well as in a panic, afraid somehow, although she couldn’t explain to herself exactly what she was afraid of, only that it had something to do with the doctor and the way he made her feel.

  She heard him give a small sigh. ‘Very well, Mrs Walker and Doctor we shall have to continue to be. However, I hope you won’t be too offended if I forget myself sometimes and call you Sally.’

  Like he had done this morning, Sally wondered, remembering how he had called down the stairs to her, ‘Sally, I can’t find my collars and I’m due at the hospital in half an hour for a meeting.’

  ‘They’re in the tallboy, second drawer down,’ she had called back, half irritably, for all the world as though he had been Ronnie. ‘I put them there myself yesterday.’ She’d had one foot on the bottom stair ready to go up and get the collar for him like any harassed wife, thinking it would be easier to get it herself rather than risk having her husband make a mess of her neat tidy drawers, before she had remembered what her position in the household really was.

  She hadn’t had time to question her reaction then, but later on it had made her feel really angry and uncomfortable with herself, just like she was now, to realise how easily she had slipped into a reaction that belonged to the intimacy of marriage and not the more formal behaviour expected between an employer and an employee. She’d told herself that she’d make
sure she watched herself in future to see that it didn’t happen again.

  ‘It isn’t for me to be offended, Doctor. Not with you paying me wages.’

  ‘The fact that you work for me does not give me the right to abuse my position, nor would I want it to. However, I can’t help wishing …’ He stopped and looked out of the window. He looked tired, his shoulders slightly bowed.

  Something she didn’t want to admit she was feeling stirred in Sally’s heart.

  Still looking out of the window, he told her brusquely, ‘I noticed that you gave me an egg for breakfast again this morning. That’s the fourth this week, well over my ration.’

  ‘I get extra on my ration because of the boys, but Harry won’t always eat his so I thought you might as well have it.’

  ‘I don’t want you and the boys going without on my account. Children need their protein, that’s why the Government gives them the extra egg allowance. If Harry won’t eat his eggs as they are then we’ll have to come up with some other way of getting them into him. Protein is important for growing boys.’

  There was no reason for her to feel offended and that funny feeling inside her chest certainly didn’t mean she was hurt because he was criticising her and rejecting her kindness in giving him the spare and precious egg, of course it wasn’t.

  ‘Yes, Doctor. Will that be all?’

  ‘Yes, yes … You can go, thank you … Mrs Walker.’

  ‘What’s up? You look like you’ve lost ten bob and found a sixpence,’ Johnny joked, as he joined Sam for a cup of tea in the Naafi.

  Her heart lurched into her ribs. Her eyes still felt sore from all the tears she had cried last night and her head was aching. Johnny reached across the table to take hold of her hand. Immediately she tensed back from him so that he couldn’t.

  ‘Sam, what is it?’ he demanded, his smile giving way to a small frown. ‘What’s wrong? And don’t tell me “nothing” because I can see that there is.’

  He was too quick for her, Sam acknowledged. She had planned to wait until they were alone before she talked to him about what Lynsey had said to her.

  ‘There is … but well, I’d prefer to wait until we’re on our own. It isn’t something I really want to talk about here.’

  ‘It sounds serious.’

  ‘Yes.’ Sam’s voice was muffled as she bent her head to avoid having to look at him. ‘It is.’ If she’d known that loving him was going to hurt so much would she have been able to stop herself from falling for him? Sam wished desperately that her answer to that could be a firm ‘yes’. She wanted to be brave and strong, but it wasn’t easy. Not when more than anything else she wanted to be held tight in Johnny’s arms and to stay there, knowing that she was loved.

  ‘Serious, is it? Not changed your mind about loving me, have you?’ he was asking her whimsically.

  His words pierced her heart. How could he be like this with her if it was true that he loved someone else?

  ‘No, I haven’t changed my mind about that,’ she told him, ‘only …’

  ‘Only what? Come on, Sam, out with it. I’m not getting up from this table until you tell me what’s going on.’

  Sam could feel herself starting to tremble. She would have to tell him now. She took a deep breath and then fixed her gaze on Johnny’s as though it was her only lifeline to safety out of the darkness of some unimaginably frightening place.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me that you were engaged to Molly Brookes before she married Frank?’

  ‘Who told you about that?’

  One look at his face told her that her lifeline had just been cut, plunging her into despair and misery. She could see his expression changing, the warmth leaving his eyes as though a shutter had come down between them.

  ‘That’s why you didn’t want me to meet your sister, isn’t it?’ she plunged on doggedly. ‘Because you knew she’d say something about Molly and how much you … about how you feel about her?’

  Johnny looked at her in silence. His face had lost its colour, and his jaw was clenched. Because he was angry, or because he was shocked? Whatever he felt should not concern her now. It was Molly Brookes to whom he had given the keys to his heart and the right to care about what he felt, not her.

  Sam pushed her chair back and got up, turning on her heel, almost running towards the door, half blinded by her own tears. She couldn’t bear any more of this and she certainly couldn’t bear to stay here and listen to Johnny telling her that he still loved Molly.

  She could hear the sound of his boots on the concrete floor as Johnny came after her. He caught up with her just as she reached the door, leaning on it so that she couldn’t open it and escape.

  ‘All right, so I was engaged to Molly, but I don’t see how that affects us.’

  ‘How can you say that?’ gasped Sam. ‘Of course it affects us. You should have told me, and if you really loved me like you said you did then you would have told me. You’d have wanted to tell me because you’d have wanted to make sure that I heard it from you. You’d have wanted to protect me from being hurt by hearing it from someone else. But you don’t care about me being hurt, because you don’t love me. You still love her, Molly Brookes.’

  This wasn’t how she had meant to do this. She had planned to be calm and dignified, not betraying with every word how much she loved him and how badly he had hurt her.

  ‘Where the hell did you get hold of a crazy idea like that?’

  ‘It isn’t a crazy idea, it’s the truth. Everything you’ve said to me about loving me was a lie.’

  Someone was pushing on the door from the outside, wanting to get in. As Johnny stepped back from it Sam seized her chance and slipped through it ignoring his, ‘Sam wait …’ as she cravenly ran to take refuge in the one place where she knew he would not try to follow her – the ladies’ lavatory.

  Hazel was right to have warned her not to give her heart to Johnny, Sam could see that now. She had been such a fool. But she wasn’t going to be a fool any more. She was going to be strong and she was going to show everyone, including Johnny, that broken heart or not she was still going to do her bit for the country and the war effort.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  ‘Will you just look at that,’ Doris Brookes laughed, drawing Sally’s attention to the game of football going on in the garden between the doctor and Tommy. ‘The doctor’s a good man, and him and your Tommy get on together like a house on fire. Stands to reason when you think about it, what with him having lost his own kiddies and Tommy having lost his dad.’

  Doris swung round in surprise when Sally banged down the pan she had been scrubbing clean.

  ‘What’s that look for?’ Doris asked.

  ‘Me and the boys are only living here on account of me working for the doctor and I don’t want anyone getting any other ideas. I’ve already had Daisy Cartwright saying that she reckons that the doctor wants me under his eye because he doesn’t think I’m a fit mother.’

  ‘Give over, Sally. That’s nonsense and you know it,’ Doris told her bracingly.

  Sally’s hands shook slightly as she scrubbed even harder at the now clean pan. ‘There’s nothing more important to me than my two lads, Doris. I know I should have been there when Tommy took sick…’ Her voice broke and she stopped scrubbing at the pan. ‘I’ll never forgive meself for not being there that night, Doris. Never.’

  ‘Well, you should because it wouldn’t have made a bit of difference if you had been there, and anyone who tries to say any different will have me to answer to, so don’t you go getting yourself upset over Daisy’s spite. And spite is just what it is. Everyone know what a good mother you are.’

  Sally gave Doris a grateful look before determinedly changing the subject.

  ‘How’s Molly and the new baby?’

  ‘Oh, he’s coming on a treat, Sally. Ever such a good baby, he is,’ Doris told her, more than happy to talk about her new grandson. ‘Oh, and Molly said to tell you that she’s having a few in on Boxing Day and that you and th
e boys are welcome to come along. She knows you’ll be having your Christmas dinners here, of course, because you’ve got that goose ordered from her auntie at the farm.’

  ‘The doctor asked me if I wouldn’t mind working over Christmas, seeing as he’s on duty with that emergency team up at the hospital he’s joined up with as a volunteer. Seeing as it’s voluntary work he’s doing, I didn’t feel I could say no.’

  ‘He’ll pay you a bit extra for working over, I expect,’ Doris offered comfortably, ‘and with Tommy and Harry to bring up on your own you’ll need it.’

  ‘He did offer but I said no, he pays me enough as it is,’ Sally told her. ‘I’m not having anyone accusing me of taking advantage, especially when he’s doing volunteering.’

  ‘You’re a good lass, Sally, I’ve always said so, but don’t you go being so good that you lose out on summat that would bring you something good yourself,’ Doris warned her cryptically.

  ‘Hazel’s been looking for you, Sam,’ May called through the open sitting-room door. ‘She said it was important.’

  Sam nodded. She had thought she had already endured the worst day of her life with Mouse’s suicide, but she had been wrong. Driving the major out to the bomb site where Johnny was working, knowing that it was over between them, had torn at her heart with all the devastating agony of a shrapnel blast tearing into vulnerable flesh to leave wounds that would never heal. Only her pride and her training had kept her from breaking down.

  ‘Are you all right, Sam?’

  ‘Yes, I’m just a bit tired, that’s all,’ she fibbed, miserably aware that May was bound to know the real reason she looked and felt so low. ‘I’d better go and find Hazel.’