The Thursday Friend

by Catherine Cookson

  It was as Hannah went to close the magazine that Maggie’s attention dropped to it, and on seeing this Hannah lifted the page, saying, ‘It’s a bridesmaid’s dress; isn’t it pretty?’ and she turned the magazine towards Maggie. ‘It says,’ she went on, ‘that it has a high, ruched bodice and a long skirt dropping to silver slippers; it’s crowned with a tiara of flowers matching the pale blue and rose of the gown. It’s pretty, isn’t it?’

  Hannah’s words brought Maggie’s eyes from the paper up to her, and she was sure she could detect a different expression in them, and at this an idea came into her mind. Maggie had always been interested in dress, albeit more outlandish clothes than were suitable for her age, so she repeated, ‘It’s pretty, isn’t it? It’s a girl’s bridesmaid’s outfit, and, you know, I’ve been looking for something similar – although not with such a long skirt because—’ She brought her upper body forward, for she could not bend her head, and cupping Maggie’s face in her hands, she said, ‘I was looking for something in that line because, you see, as soon as David can walk – even if he can’t, he can always sit in a chair – we’re going to be married, and I want a bridesmaid. Just one girl. And d’you know who that girl is?’

  The rolling pin had slid to the bedcover, and now Maggie’s mouth was open, but still no sound came from it, and Hannah said, ‘Give a guess. Well, who would I want for a bridesmaid but you? I know you don’t like long skirts, but it could be altered.’

  ‘Aunt . . . Hannah, b–b–bridesmaid?’

  ‘Yes, just you. Now mind, we can’t let you have a bum-freezer, not quite. This one would suit you beautifully, and it can be cut shorter.’

  ‘Oh, Auntie Hannah.’ The lids were blinking and the tears were running fast down Maggie’s face, and she cried, ‘She cut your hair off! And poor Mr Peter. Poor Mr Peter.’ The child’s head was swinging from side to side. ‘I hit her with the rolling pin.’ She picked up the rolling pin and hugged it to her again. ‘And she died and I tied her up.’

  ‘No, no; she didn’t die, Maggie. She’s in a hospital. She’s a bad woman, but she didn’t die. But you were very clever at tying her up. If you hadn’t, I understand she would have killed Mr Peter; but you saved him.’

  Her head bobbing, Maggie said, ‘I opened the front door, but it was so cold, very cold.’

  Hannah’s arm went around the child and pulled her head on to her breast, saying, ‘You’ll never be cold again, Maggie, never. It’s all over. Everybody’s all right, and all because you saved them, you and your rolling pin.’

  ‘I wouldn’t get on the stretcher until they gave it to me. I remember that.’

  ‘Yes, I know, they told me . . . ’

  At this, Maggie’s crying mounted, and the door was suddenly opened, and in came Sister and a nurse, who were warned immediately by a signal from Hannah: ‘It’s all right,’ she said, ‘it’s all right. We were just discussing a bridesmaid’s outfit.’ She nodded knowingly towards the magazine on the bed. ‘You see, Maggie is going to be my bridesmaid.’

  ‘Is that so?’ The sister took it up now. ‘Well, well! And I’d like to know if I’m invited to the wedding.’

  ‘Well, we’ll get out a list later on, Sister, and see.’

  ‘And what about me?’ asked the nurse, bending down to Maggie. ‘I’ve been looking after your auntie all this time; I should get a look-in, don’t you think?’

  For the first time a suspicion of a smile spread across the child’s face, and more than a suspicion of the old Maggie appeared as she said, ‘Me Mam.’

  ‘Oh!’ said the nurse now, looking at the sister. ‘She’s got to ask her mother who’s going to be invited. Did you hear that?’

  The sister had picked up the magazine and was looking at the page as she said, ‘Miracles happen in the strangest ways in this hospital.’

  Peter had been twice to the operating theatre. He was found to have a seeping vein at the bottom of the brain. But why, two days later, should he be taken down to the theatre again? Pete wanted to know. Of course, his enquiry of the sister about his uncle’s condition had been couched more politely than that: and he was told the surgeon was reviewing what he had previously done.

  The reviewing had taken place three days earlier, the day after Pete had come back from York. He had been offered a permanent position at the psychiatric hospital, but on hearing of his uncle’s condition had decided to return to London until Peter was better. Now he was sitting by his uncle’s bedside. Peter had been talking for some time, and was now saying, ‘Look at it this way: even if mad Carrie hadn’t got up to her antics, it would have made no difference to me in the long run, now would it? And as I’ve said, they’ve got a lot of friends now, both of them, but they’re friends who have jobs and businesses and families of their own. They’ll rally round them, but that isn’t enough. They’ll want someone they know to be there all the time. In the past, with David, it’s been me. Although I’ve always called him Mr David, to him I was never just a servant, he never thought of me in that way. Now everything on my horizon is quite clear and defined because I know when the time comes you’ll take over and my spirit will stay with you.’

  Pete said nothing. His head was drooped deep on his chest, his hands gripped tightly between his thighs, and for a moment there was silence in the little ward. It was as if it and the occupants had been transported far away, although the atmosphere was not one of sadness but rather of resignation.

  Peter dispersed the feeling by asking, ‘Have you seen Miss Hannah yet?’

  ‘Yes,’ Pete muttered, ‘and she’s very excited; she’s going to see Mr David this afternoon, and so I thought it better not to show her the cutting I took from the paper this morning. It reports that last evening a car dumped a man on the pavement outside the Wishbeck Police Station. He had been badly beaten about the face and body and was also without his trousers. At first he refused to give his name and address, but he later gave his name as Humphrey Drayton and his address as 72 Beaufort Road. He insisted that he had not recognised any of his assailants, who seemed to be three in number; nor could he give any reason why he should have been attacked.’

  Pete paused, then said, ‘Now what d’you make of that, Uncle?’

  ‘Oh, I can solve that puzzle for you straight away. It’s either down to madam’s brother-in-law or Micky McClean. You know I’m not for violence of any kind, yet I have to say that it was deserved, well deserved. Of course, he’ll never be able to prove anything, but he’ll always suspect that his brother-in-law must have had a hand in this. Life is strange, isn’t it, Pete?’

  ‘Yes, Uncle, very strange. But now, if I’m to carry out your orders back at the house, I have a lot to do. I must get on with the books. Mr Gillyman told me what I must do with them, and I’m enjoying it.’ He stood up, leant forward and kissed Peter on the brow before saying, ‘Goodbye, Uncle.’

  ‘Goodbye, Pete; and the gods go with you.’

  David held Hannah as tightly as he could, with her lying in an awkward position half across the bed; and neither of them spoke for some time. Then when she murmured, ‘Oh, David; David, my love . . . David,’ he did not answer but buried his head in her shoulder for a moment before releasing her and allowing his head to drop back on to the pillow. Then she, straightening from her painful position, hitched herself further on to the bed and, taking hold of his hands, she brought them to her breast, saying, ‘You’re alive; we’re alive.’

  The seconds ticked away as their gaze held; and then he said, ‘You’re alive, darling; I feel only partly so, as yet.’

  ‘Now, now!’

  He drew one of his hands away from hers and pressed it across her lips, saying, ‘I’ve done a lot of quiet thinking during the last few days – at least, since the panic settled – and I’ve got to talk to you about it. You see, in a way, I’m the source of all this trouble. I know now I should have fought y
ears ago for a divorce, not just a separation, because then the boys could have had more control over her antics. They both said so the other day.’ He nodded at her now, saying, ‘They came in to see me, and Tony cried. He cried like a child; it was dreadful. But later, when I thought about it, I don’t know whether he was crying for me or for her being locked away with the others. Max didn’t cry; he blamed himself for being duped into leaving her for a time with the aunt. Anyway, it was odd. But that visit brought me out of the panic. You see, when I first came to and thought I was going to be paralysed for life I did some shouting, until Welshy took me in hand. She’s the night nurse and a tough lady. She told me to shut up or she’d push me into the main ward and show me others who really had something to shout about. Before they stuck a needle into me she told me I was lucky. But, Hannah, I didn’t feel lucky, because I couldn’t move my limbs. But I have a little movement in my leg now, because the swelling is going down, and I know I’m lucky; at least on that side. They tell me the bullet just missed my spine and, with the nerves going awry for a time, there was a big swelling there. As it goes down I’ll become more and more mobile. But it’s this left hip that promises to be the stumbling block; the bone has been shattered, and it might be months before I can put my foot on the ground. And so I must talk to you, and about our lives ahead.’

  Hannah held up a hand to him now, saying, ‘I know what you’re going to say; well, let me have my say first. I’m engaged to be married to you, and don’t forget that what’s inside me belongs to you too. So yes, we’ve got to do something about it, and soon, but not in the way you mean, waiting until you can walk, but as soon as the divorces are through. I want to be married and have a name for our child. You don’t have to walk to the altar: you can go in a wheelchair.

  ‘Now’ – she touched his cheek – ‘there’s no way you can live in the flat again, and so other arrangements are being made.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Well, now, at the moment I can’t give you an answer because I don’t know myself; I only know that a group of our friends have got their heads together: Gilly and Natasha; Mrs Drayton; and Eddie and Micky. Oh, yes, Eddie and Micky, they seem to be very busy. Janie comes in somewhere; I can’t guess at her role – whenever I ask she tells me to mind my own business, and yours, and not to ask questions out of place.’

  ‘Do they realise that for a long time yet I shall have to attend hospital for therapy?’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  There was silence now as they gazed at one another. Then, as if his mind had switched away from all she had said and implied, he asked quietly, ‘Have you been to see Peter?’

  She nodded. ‘Yes’; and he put in sharply, ‘Well, how is he?’

  ‘Oh, since his second operation he seems better than he was.’ She did not go on to say what was really on her mind, that he seemed slightly odd, as though he were resigned to something; that he kept talking about Pete and what a good fellow he was. ‘When he talks it’s about you and how Pete will look after us both until he himself is back on his feet.’

  She brought his hands up to her breast again, saying, ‘We have a lot of good friends, darling. We’re very lucky.’

  He gave a short laugh now as he said, ‘You sound like Welshy. Oh, and how’s Maggie?’

  ‘Almost herself; not quite; but I think she’s beginning to enjoy her role as the saviour with the rolling pin. She’s never away from Peter for long, you know. There’s no doubt about it, she did save his life.’

  But as she uttered these words a startling thought struck her, for it said, At least for a time.

  She stayed with David for another fifteen minutes, during which he held her close and kissed her again and again, but said very little.

  When she left him, she was assailed by another odd thought: he had never mentioned her bandaged neck, although his fingers had lain gently on it; nor had he touched on the matter of her hair, which had been tidied up into a tomboyish bob. What, to her, was more serious, he had not mentioned the baby, even though she had referred to it; and she came to the conclusion that he was suffering from shock, or perhaps guilt that he had been to blame for it all.

  Chapter Eighteen

  It was nine weeks later when Hannah and David saw their new home for the first time.

  David’s flat was now managed by Pete, who cooked, cleaned and looked after his uncle, home from the hospital. Hannah too spent a lot of her free time with Peter, for she wasn’t happy about him. Although he now rarely had what appeared to be fainting fits, he was far from the old Peter she remembered. He still insisted on getting dressed every day and making her tea, if she was in; at other times he brought her a hot drink; these attentions, she knew, were made with effort, but nevertheless they gave him the opportunity to sit with her for a time and talk.

  Their conversation would generally start with David’s present condition: his back being much better but his hip still causing concern. It would then drift to Maggie and her insistence on spending the weekends with them, and invariably would end with the house and trying to guess where it might be and what it would look like.

  Hannah felt that Peter knew more than he would acknowledge, even though she knew he could not have seen the property.

  During the past few days things had been different and the excitement all round was at its height, especially with David and Hannah, for they were to see their new home on this particular Saturday morning.

  She was sitting beside his wheelchair in the hospital day room, and she was listening to him as he sang the praises of Welshy. ‘She’s got something, has that nurse; it’s uncanny. She’s the one who stopped my nightmares. I think she let me talk it out. I told her all about you and how we met on that particular Thursday and how Thursday was the only evening in the week you could get out to meet me, and, too, that you had been born on a Thursday. And I remember her quietly saying, “Thursday’s child has far to go.”’

  He now leant forward and, cupping her face in his hands, he whispered, ‘Thursday’s child has far to go, but never go far from me, will you, darling? All my big talk inside my head – that I must let you live your own life and that I can’t allow you to play a nurse to me because it wouldn’t be fair – I know is mere empty twaddle, because, looking ahead, I’m terrified at the thought of life without you. Oh, Hannah.’

  Her arms were about him and her heart was wrenched with the thought that it wasn’t only his as yet useless leg that would need time for recuperation. His mind had been so shocked that he had lost a sense of his own value, part of which derived from her need of him.

  ‘David,’ she said; ‘don’t you know by now that I could never go on without you? I’ll soon have our child and we’re going to be married and whether you walk or not I want to be near you always. I want to defy fate and look down the years to where we will still be together and our children grown up. Don’t you understand, I love you for so many different things and I need them all to make my life whole? So,’ her eyes blinking rapidly and her lips trembling, she added, ‘come on, come on, no more doubts. They’re taking us to the house today. And they’re so excited about it.’

  The Land Rover glided gently to a stop. Gilly got out, then handed Hannah on to the pavement.

  Behind them the second car had pulled up; and the first to alight, and quickly, was Eddie, followed by Janie, Natasha and, more slowly, Mrs Drayton.

  Eddie was standing at the rear of the Land Rover, where Gilly had already opened the doors and let down a ramp. Together they then eased David’s wheelchair on to the road, to hear him exclaim loudly, ‘Where are we? What’s all this?’

  ‘Shut up,’ ordered Gilly; ‘You’ll know in a minute.’ Then he said to Eddie, ‘You see to that fellow, will you?’ and to the ladies, ‘We’re going in by the tradesman’s entrance. There’s a better view of everything from there.’

  He now took
Hannah’s arm and led her forward; and Eddie, pushing David’s wheelchair, followed, leaving the three other women to bring up the rear. David’s head was turning from side to side now. To his left was a vegetable garden, to his right a high hedge. Then he was wheeled into an open paved area.

  Hannah was now by his side, and they exclaimed simultaneously, ‘Oh, no! No!’ and Hannah added, ‘Surely this isn’t the house.’

  ‘No!’ Gilly growled; ‘this isn’t the house, it’s your house, and your home.’

  Hannah turned, appealing to Natasha, and she, smiling, said, ‘It’s our wedding present to you, my dear.’

  David said nothing: he was staring at what must be the back of a long, low, two-storey house, with two French windows leading on to a large lawn, and thence down to the river . . . the Thames.

  In a flash he recognised where they were: this was the house Gilly had bought, and to which he had hoped to retire.

  He looked from Gilly to Natasha, his head shaking. Then he said, ‘No; it’s too much; we couldn’t . . . ’

  He appealed to Hannah, and she said, ‘He’s right; we just can’t accept it.’

  ‘Well, where do you think you’re going to live?’ This raucous question came from Eddie. ‘Talk about lookin’ a gift horse in the mouth. Oh! come on. What d’you say, Mr Gillyman?’

  ‘I say you’re right, Eddie; let’s get them inside.’

  Inside, David started again: ‘I can’t,’ he said; ‘we can’t.’ He now looked round for Hannah, who was standing by Natasha’s side looking as bewildered as he was. ‘You feel the same, don’t you? We . . . we just can’t accept.’

  ‘For God’s sake, shut up, man!’ cried Gilly.

  ‘I won’t shut up.’ David’s voice was loud, too, almost a shout. ‘You bought this house for yourselves. All right. All right, Natasha doesn’t like the water, but, in the end, she would have been persuaded about it. Of course she would; of course she would.’