Since He Went Away

by Marie Joseph

  Now Dora, shouting as though she was speaking from Outer Mongolia, was telling her that Edgar was at Amy’s house, feeling proper poorly, not fit to drive himself home. She was ringing, she said, from a house lower down the street.

  ‘Hold the line!’ she suddenly yelled, then after a moment or two came back at full blast. ‘It’s all right, Mrs Battersby. Mr Dale is going to bring Mr Battersby back. He can drive a car. Don’t worry,’ she added, before slamming down the receiver.

  ‘You can get used to speaking on the telephone, can’t you?’ she told Bernard as they walked down the street together. ‘Mrs Battersby isn’t keen on me talking on hers, though God knows why. She’d been at the sherry again. I could nearly smell it through the telephone.’

  She was very put out when she realized that her part in the drama was over and that Amy was going off with Mr Battersby in the car, sitting with him in the back seat, leaving Dora – as per usual – to see to things. But wasn’t that the story of her life? Stopping behind seeing to things, while others went off and enjoyed the excitement. Years and bloomin’ years of tending other folk’s fires for them to sit round, preparing meals for others to eat, mopping floors for other feet to walk on and make mucky again.

  Chunnering to herself, she placed Amy’s fireguard in position, carried the basin containing what was left of the marrow-bone jelly through into the kitchen and decided to have a bit of a scout round.

  The oven shelves could do with a good rub-up with panshine, and who would have thought Amy had nothing in her meat-safe but three eggs in a brown dish? Her cake tin was nicely filled, however. Dora counted eight rock buns, decided seven would have to do Amy and took one to have after the slice of corned beef she’d pinched from old Ma Battersby.

  On her way out through the living room the wonderful Wesley seemed to be leering at her from the large chromium-plated frame on the piano. Fancying himself as John Boles in The Desert Song. Dora had a good mind to spit at him. She held the frame at the right distance but controlled herself. The wonderful Wesley wasn’t worth wasting good spit on.

  It could easily have been a case of rape that time when he made a pass at her. For a moment Dora could feel his hands on her, his mouth wet and searching, his tongue probing. All at a time when Greg was hardly cold in his grave and when Amy was within earshot on the other side of their dividing wall, getting over her fourth – or was it her fifth? – miscarriage. Dora put the photograph face down and walked out of the house.

  Suppose she told Amy? Somebody needed to pull the wool from her eyes. But since the Red Shadow had galloped off into the night, she and Amy had got to know and understand each other a lot better. In fact, they’d become really good friends now that Amy had stopped quoting Wesley every other sentence.

  Dora tended the fire before taking off her coat. Since the embarrassing episode when she’d kneed Wesley where it hurt most to stop him slavering over her, she had avoided being in the same room with him if possible. He might look like Robert Taylor, but looks weren’t everything. Anyway, he wasn’t her type. She liked men a bit more cuddly, shorter, clean-shaven, who liked a bit of a laugh.

  Chunnering to herself again, she brought the margarine through to the fire to warm, tilting the saucer towards the flames to speed things up.

  Greg had been just like that before he went to France all those years ago. When he put his little short arms around her and squeezed the breath from her body, it was like being hugged by a plush teddy bear. Greg had never said smarmy things to her, or sang at her. Their lovemaking had been a joyous thing, with laughter a part of it, especially when it didn’t come up to their expectations. A German bullet fired from a sniper’s gun in no-man’s-land had put paid to all that. For the left-over life Greg was forced to live there was precious little laughter and no lovemaking at all. Had she done the right thing in letting him go into hospital? Into an institution? Why not call a spade a spade and not a bloody shovel? Could she have managed if she’d tried harder, hadn’t been so tired?

  As tears blurred her eyes, Dora shook her head to blink them away. She saw the slab of yellow margarine slide from the saucer to be swallowed and hissed to a bubbling nothing by the flames.

  It wasn’t a nice word she uttered but it did her a power of good.

  Phyllis took to Bernard straight away. He was so polite, so nicely spoken. She was sure he must be a friend of Wesley’s. Soothed and comforted by his white shirt, discreet tie and his London accent, she listened gratefully when he told her that in his opinion her husband should see a doctor without delay.

  ‘He’s been seeing a doctor regularly for quite some time, Mr Dale.’

  ‘I’m sure he’s had the best attention, Mrs Battersby, but at the moment he has a fever, and there’s a hardness underneath his right ribs that I don’t like.’

  They were talking together in the hall, leaving Amy to settle Edgar in his chair and help him off with his coat.

  ‘Are you a medical man?’

  Bernard shook his head. ‘Red Cross trained, and even that a long time ago, but I know enough to see when genuine medical advice is necessary.’

  ‘I’ve been trying to reach my son, but he’s not available.’ Phyllis fidgeted with her two-stranded pearl necklace. ‘He’ll be most upset when he hears.’

  ‘The doctor’s telephone number? I’ll speak to him if you wish.’

  Phyllis nodded. It was strange that Wesley had never mentioned this very personable friend of his. Perhaps he was something to do with the Light Operatic Society? Honorary Secretary or Musical Director? He had that authoritative look about him and in the tone of his voice. When he came off the phone and said the doctor was coming straight away, she wasn’t surprised.

  ‘It is so kind of you to help my daughter-in-law like this. You must know my charlady, Mrs Ellis, as she telephoned from your home?’

  ‘Dora and I are old friends,’ Bernard said, wondering why Amy shot him a startled look, then blushed bright red.

  He stared at Phyllis. Was this woman real? She had done no more than give her husband a cursory glance, leaving Amy to kneel by her father-in-law’s chair, holding his hand and whispering to him. It was obvious the woman was agitated, but where was her warmth, her distress? Her milk of human kindness?

  ‘I’ll just go upstairs on the extension and try to get Wesley again,’ she was saying. ‘He may be there now.’

  Amy patted Edgar’s hand. The pain was creeping back – she saw it in his eyes, felt it in the way his fingers dug into her wrist. He was frowning at his feet, biting his lips.

  ‘We’ll soon have you fixed up, sir. Hold on,’ Bernard whispered.

  Edgar felt he should have known this nice young chap, but for the life of him he couldn’t bring him to mind. Looked all right though. Officer material, he wouldn’t wonder. Oh, dear dear God, he wished he didn’t feel so damned awful. Wished he wasn’t such a trouble to everybody. Wished he was in his bed and fast asleep. He closed his eyes.

  Bernard exchanged a look with Amy.

  Upstairs Phyllis pressed the receiver against a pearl earring, hearing the ringing tone going on and on. At last she went back downstairs.

  ‘Wesley’s still out,’ she told them. ‘I’ll get some things together. If hospital is called for I’ll need to do that.’

  Her sharp nose was coated with white face powder, patted into the wrinkles beneath her eyes. Her mouth, with not enough lip to it, had raspberry lipstick running down into the vertical creases. Amy felt suddenly achingly sorry for her.

  ‘Can I come and help you?’ she asked, standing up. ‘I’d like to. Please.’

  ‘No need for that.’ Phyllis’s voice was as brisk as her step. ‘I can manage quite well, thank you.’

  Bernard’s eyes were telling Amy not to mind, so she smiled at him to show she didn’t.

  In the house next door to Amy’s Dora was making chips to have with Phyllis’s slice of corned beef. She still felt restless, uneasy in her mind, left out, slighted, badly done to. So she was
making chips. Other people might scrub floors, tidy drawers, whistle, wash curtains, go for a walk when they felt miserable and frustrated. Dora made chips.

  The important thing was to lift the wire basket clear of the bubbling fat when the chips were almost done, then plunge them back to make them crisp and brown. Dora shook them out on to a plate, feeling more cheerful already.

  But even perfectly cooked chips couldn’t take her mind off poor Mr Battersby. How did a lovely man like that have a son like the wonderful Wesley? Dora bet it was Wesley’s antics that had brought on his father’s illness. Mr Dale had once explained to her that the mind and worry could affect a person’s health. Dora speared a chip on her fork, dipped it into a mound of tomato sauce and chewed thoughtfully. Suppose Mr Battersby died? She put down her fork.

  She would be very sorry if he died. Mr Battersby had always been kind to her. Dora ate another chip. Somehow she had always thought how lonely he was, in spite of his businesses and his meetings in town. They had no fun, Mr and Mrs Battersby. Dora had never heard them laugh together, never seen the old man give his wife a playful slap on her bottom. But then, old Ma Battersby had no bottom to speak of, had she?

  Suppose he did die? Dora pushed her plate away, her appetite quite gone. She would be sorry of course, and she’d miss him. But since Greg’s death there was this thick lump where her heart should be, so that she could sympathize but not anguish. The hurt had been so bad that she knew that never again could she ache so much, cry so much. Not for anything or anybody.

  Did that make her into some kind of monster?

  Up at the infirmary they sat in a long corridor on chairs lined up against the wall. Nurses passed and re-passed, their crêpe-soled shoes making little sucking sounds on the polished floor.

  Phyllis said that if only they’d had more time her husband could have been got into the Masonic Hospital, or at least into somewhere more in keeping. She explained to anyone who would listen that her son would be there if he’d any idea his father was so ill.

  Then she fell silent, drooping her head down as if she might drop off to sleep.

  ‘Mrs Battersby?’ The doctor was very young, with horn-rimmed glasses slipping down an inadequate nose. ‘You can see your husband for a couple of minutes now. He’s very drowsy, but he’ll know you’re there.’ He hesitated. ‘It’s a straightforward gall bladder problem, and normally we would operate as soon as possible.’ He looked at Bernard. ‘You’re the patient’s son?’

  Phyllis bridled, sat up straight, looked on the young doctor with a kind of pity. ‘My son is out of town. Unavoidably detained.’ She looked stricken and her face was tense with anxiety. ‘He would be here if he had any idea . . .’ She turned to Amy, actually pleading. ‘He would be here, wouldn’t he?’

  ‘Like a shot,’ said Amy, squeezing her hand. ‘Wild horses wouldn’t keep him away if he knew.’

  ‘If you’d like to come with me . . .’ The young doctor spoke to Phyllis but smiled at Amy.

  ‘Daughter-in-law,’ Amy said, feeling she needed explaining, turning to Bernard as soon as they were out of sight. ‘Why can’t they operate as soon as possible?’

  Bernard had planned a quiet evening, reading and listening to the wireless – La Traviata in its entirety. When Dora had called to use the telephone he was just about to cook his supper, which Amy Battersby would undoubtedly call his tea. He was willing to help out, of course, who wouldn’t be? But he was being involved against his wishes; he wanted no part of all this. For two pins he’d make his excuses and leave.

  Then he turned to the girl by his side, met her eyes and was at once so inexplicably moved, so filled with a total unexpected compassion that he had to look away.

  ‘I’m sorry, Mr Dale,’ she was saying in her soft voice. ‘I shouldn’t ask you questions like that.’ She paused, as if making up her mind about something. ‘It’s not right you being here. That’s twice today you’ve been put in an impossible position.’ She sounded cross. ‘I bet you haven’t had your tea!’

  ‘You’re quite right, I haven’t.’ He glanced down the long corridor to where a stout nurse with large splayed-out feet was presiding over a bedtime drinks trolley. ‘Stay right there, Amy.’

  She blinked as he used her christian name for the first time. He was a bit of a dark horse all right, secretive almost, wrapped up in himself, but not in a conceited way. Serious, thoughtful, yet with an in-built twinkle in his eyes. She knew nothing about him really, yet he knew almost everything there was to know about her. Amy stared bleakly at the opposite wall, dark green at the bottom and a bilious yellow at the top.

  He had read Wesley’s farewell letter. She had forced him to read it against his wishes, just as he had been forced to come here tonight. Amy studied his back as he stood talking to the nurse at the end of the corridor. There was an incipient bald patch at the back of his head though his hair was thick and a pleasing shade of brown. Wesley would have gone mad if his glossy black hair had begun to thin – not that it stood much chance with its weekly bay rum massage and the daily application of a tiny bead of Brylcreme. Amy sighed deeply, causing a passing probationer nurse to look at her with concern.

  As well as reading Wesley’s farewell letter, the man accepting two cups of tea from the stout nurse had seen Wesley’s wife in her nightie and also without her nightie. He had seen her tears that afternoon when she had walked into his office without an appointment, and now here he was again involved when she was sure that was the last thing he wanted to be.

  He was bowing slightly to the nurse, thanking her politely. In his own way, Amy supposed, Mr Dale was just as charming as Wesley, though she could recognize his technique as being totally different. Wesley would have flirted with the plain nurse, paid her outrageous compliments, lingered, conscious of the effect he was having on her, leaving her bemused, wondering whether she was coming or going.

  ‘All done with a smile,’ Bernard grinned, and passed Amy a thick white cup of reasonably hot tea.

  ‘I don’t suppose many women can resist your smile,’ Amy said quick as a lick, all mixed up in her troubled mind because he wasn’t Wesley when he should have been, and because she still couldn’t understand why Mr Battersby was too ill for his operation. ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to say that. I never seem to show myself up in a good light to you, do I? I always seem to be at my worst when you’re around.’

  ‘That’s true,’ Bernard said, his eyes twinkling at her. ‘If you suddenly jumped up and went screaming down the corridor I don’t suppose I’d turn a hair.’

  ‘Wesley’s mother’s coming back.’

  Amy stood up as Phyllis came towards them, an unreadable expression on her face. She held out a hand, but what Phyllis had to say she was obviously going to say to Bernard.

  It had been a most unusual day for the time of year and when Wesley and Clara came out of the pictures it was pleasant enough for them to walk along the promenade without danger of being blown out to sea. Clara tied a scarf over her hair and clung to Wesley’s arm.

  ‘I like Blackpool out of season,’ she said all at once.

  Still filled with the sound of Richard Tauber’s voice and the soaring music, Wesley was in one of his romantic moods. He stopped so that Clara had to stop too. ‘The sea is half asleep,’ he said. ‘Just listen to it, whispering against the sea wall.’ Reluctantly, urged on by Clara, he walked on.

  ‘Why don’t we stay the night?’ Clara asked.

  ‘What? You’re joking!’

  ‘No, I’m not.’ Clara whipped the scarf from her head and laughed out loud. ‘We can get up early in the morning and catch a train back in time to open up the shop.’ She waved an arm. ‘We can book a room with a window overlooking the sea. We can sleep with the curtains drawn back and lie and watch the moonlight shining on the sea.’ She flung her arms round his neck. ‘We can make love in a bed big enough to move around in instead of squashing together in that camp-bed over the shop.’ She moved herself against him. ‘Oh Wesley, why don’t we?
That awful little room is stifling me, with its gas fire going plop all the time, and cartons of cigars piled all over the place.’

  ‘You once said that room was your idea of heaven.’

  ‘And so it is.’ She kissed him in a teasing way, butterfly kisses, just missing his mouth.

  He felt his senses quicken. ‘Kiss me properly,’ he whispered, and when his mouth opened over her own she knew she had won. They would stay the night.

  Charlie Marsden couldn’t settle that night. He usually went down to the pub about half-past nine to have a couple of pints and meet Billy Warton, Tom Sowerbutts, Ernie Sutcliffe and Alf Hothersall. Usually he was the life and soul, thinking up harmless jokes about Irishmen or Jews or mean-minded Scots. But it hadn’t been the same since Wesley went away. Say what you liked but Wesley Battersby had brought a touch of class with him. Charlie would be the first to admit that as far as money was concerned he could buy and sell Wesley and still have a few quid left over, but Wesley had done the unforgiveable when he had run off with a mate’s wife. Spitting on his own doorstep, so to speak.

  After that first shock which had reduced him to tears of disbelief, he’d realized that it wasn’t so much Clara he was missing as her presence. He liked having a woman about the place, liked the smell of her scent in the bathroom, liked watching her dry her hair kneeling down on the rug by the fire, brushing it up from the nape of her neck.

  That night Lottie had washed her hair before going up to bed. She had knelt between his knees while he rubbed it dry with a towel, the moment so intimate, so cosy he had tried to have a proper fatherly talk with her.