by Annie Murray
‘Let’s go and see if we can win ourselves a coconut, eh? I love coconut.’
The light was beginning to fade now and the fairground lights glowed in the dusk. They were walking through the smells of hot oil, the sickly whiff of candyfloss, the sea of laughing, shouting bodies nudging at them, the slap of the belts turning the rides. In the crowd, Melly caught sight of a familiar face. She had to look twice, turning to make sure.
‘Reggie – that was Lil, wasn’t it? Lil Gittins?’
By the time Reggie turned, the woman had stopped at a stall nearby where you could win a goldfish. They could see her face in profile in the light from the stall. Her pale hair was piled on her head.
‘Is it?’ he said doubtfully.
‘It is her, surely?’ Melly said, tugging on his arm. ‘Oh, let’s go and say hello. She looks better, if it’s her.’
The closer they drew to the woman the more sure Melly was that it was Lil, looking, in an aged, shadowy way, a little bit more like the Lil of the past. Melly tapped her gently on the arm.
‘Oh, Mrs Gittins, it is you,’ Melly said. ‘It’s nice to see you!’
‘Oh!’ Lil beamed at her, delighted, showing a row of bright new dentures. ‘Little Melly – and Reggie as well. Fancy – ooh, I haven’t seen you in ages. How are you?’
‘We’re all right,’ Melly said. ‘We’re . . .’ She looked at Reggie.
‘Getting married, us two are,’ he said, full of pride.
‘Oh!’ Lil put her hands to her cheeks. ‘I hadn’t heard. Oh, how lovely, bab – I’m ever so pleased for you.’
Melly saw that Lil’s hair was bleached blonde and she was well made up. Nothing could take away the lines that years of worry and strain had written on her face, but she had gained some weight and lost the scrawny look she had worn for so many years after the war. It looked as if life was treating her better.
‘How’s Stanley?’ Melly asked, feeling she must, even though she dreaded the answer.
‘Oh, well,’ Lil said, with the practised evenness of someone who has come through hell and become accustomed to it. ‘He’s going along, you know, in there. I still feel – well, I always will until my dying day – that I should’ve kept him at home. But I just couldn’t handle him any more. He . . .’ She looked down, then up at them again. ‘I s’pose you heard. He went for me – more than once. The last time, he put me in hospital.’
‘Oh, Lil,’ Melly said. ‘I’m ever so sorry. But it was all such a strain on you – he’s in the best place.’
‘I don’t know about that,’ Lil said with a wan expression. ‘But I do know I couldn’t go on. And now – I’m here with a gentleman friend.’ She looked back through the crowd. ‘My Jimmy. He’s gone to fetch us some potatoes.’ She smiled at Melly and Reggie. ‘We’ll never marry, of course, but . . .’ She shrugged. ‘Life’s been good to me, lately.’
‘I’m glad for you, Mrs Gittins,’ Melly said.
‘And you – you were always a good girl,’ Lil said fondly. ‘Our little nurse we used to call you. Didn’t you go to be a nurse?’
‘I did,’ Melly said. ‘For a while.’
‘Ah, here he is!’ Lil said. ‘This is Jimmy.’
A man with a thin, kindly face appeared, holding two hot potatoes. They were introduced, but soon made their goodbyes.
‘You two will be very happy, I’m sure,’ Lil said, as they parted. She touched Melly’s arm. ‘Bless you, love.’
Melly linked arms with Reggie.
‘Course we will,’ he said. ‘Won’t we?’
She smiled up at him. Reggie was always so optimistic.
‘Fancy a spud?’ he said. ‘I caught the smell of them. My mouth’s watering.’
They made their way back towards the barrow selling hot potatoes. They had to pass the big wheel again and the ride had just stopped to let everyone off, seat by seat, the bloke unlocking the bar across the front.
A man was getting down from the ride with a young girl beside him. Father and daughter, I suppose, Melly thought. Nice that, him taking her on the ride. They slipped to the ground and started to walk away. But within a few paces, something was wrong. The man stopped abruptly a few yards in front of them. There was a moment when he was leaning back, clutching at himself.
The girl started shouting, ‘Dad – Dad! What’s up with you?’
The man pitched sideways and fell unconscious to the ground. Everyone around screamed, leaping back so that there was a ring around him.
‘Oh, my God,’ Reggie said. ‘He must be having a heart attack.’
Melly froze. Her mind was racing. Mr Alexander. What did the nurse do? You were supposed to do mouth-to-mouth or something – she had never been taught to do it but she had seen it done – maybe she should at least go and try . . .
But amid the shouts and consternation people were running, people in uniform rushing to kneel over the man and work on him. Melly let out a breath of relief. Of course, the St John’s Ambulance Brigade. She and Reggie stood in the crowd, everyone watching, willing the man to come to consciousness as his daughter knelt wailing and crying beside him.
Melly watched them as they worked, knowing what to do, competent, calm: there to help people. In that moment certainty reawoke in her. Her pulse raced. That was her, there, helping. That was what she should be doing! Over this dream of a summer, she had tried to forget that this was what she was made for.
The man was carried away on a stretcher and they watched until he was out of sight. All the time, Melly’s heart was hammering, her blood pulsing hard.
‘Come on,’ Reggie said. ‘We can’t do anything. Let’s get that spud.’
‘Reggie.’ She seized his arm. Now. She had to say it now, this minute. ‘Wait. I need to talk to you. Come over here.’
She led him to a quieter spot at the edge, where the fairground machines gave out to the darkness and a light mist was rising to mix with the fumes.
‘What’s got into you?’ Reggie complained, limping along with her. ‘I thought you was hungry?’
‘Reggie.’ She faced him and put her arms around him. ‘I love you, but – no, don’t say anything. Just listen. I can’t marry you – not quite yet. I want to marry you and be your wife – I do. But all my life I’ve wanted to be a nurse and if I get married now, they won’t let me finish my training. I want to finish it, Reggie, my love. I love you with all my heart, but that’s what I’ve got to do.’
VIII
1962
Sixty-Five
March 1962
Melly stood in the road outside St Paul’s church and kept looking along the Moseley Road. Her mother came to join her, smart in a soft brown coat and hat, her hair pinned up in a stylish pleat.
‘Any sign of him yet?’ They both peered in the direction of town, eyes narrowed in the chill wind. ‘The bride’ll be here before him if he’s not quick.’
The rest of the congregation, who had been standing in shivering, smoking, chatting clusters outside, pressed their cigarettes out and made their way into the church.
‘He knows how to get here, doesn’t he?’ Rachel said.
‘Course he does,’ Melly said.
‘Who’d have thought, eh?’ Rachel said, her eyes still on the road.
‘What?’
‘This – all of it. And Tommy . . .’
Melly could hear the pride in her mother’s voice and was about to answer when she caught sight of an unmistakeable shape along the road.
‘Here he comes!’ She was on tiptoe. ‘Look!’
Amid the other cars and vans they saw the little blue three-wheeler move bravely closer and turn into St Paul’s Road. Tommy saw them waving and soon he was parked by the kerb.
‘You made it!’ Melly slid the door open for him, noticing immediately how cheerful he looked.
‘You all right, love?’ Rachel said. She was still not used to Tommy living away from home. It had only been three weeks so far. ‘You look thin,’ she said, eyeing him as he climbed out, brushi
ng down his black suit. ‘You are eating, aren’t you?’
‘Yes, Mom.’ He laughed her off. ‘Mrs – Lane’s – trying – to – fatten me – up.’
‘I’m glad to hear it. You look nice, love,’ she added, sounding almost tearful. ‘Come on – we’d best go in. Look – Dolly’s waiting for us with the rest of ’em.’
Dolly, lavishly dressed in a bright royal blue suit and hat, was standing with Kev, looking self-conscious in a suit, and Sandra, Ricky and Alan. Her own boys were there too, including Reggie. Reggie reached for Melly’s hand.
‘Right,’ Rachel lectured her own children. ‘Behave yourselves. Ooh – look at Dudley. He’s really done himself up! Doesn’t he look smart?’
They greeted Dudley, shaking his enormous hand. He was tall and imposing in his top hat and tails; a fine figure of a man and, they had learned, a competent and kindly one as well. He had been a widower for five years and now had a light of new happiness in his eyes.
‘I hope that husband of yours is on his way,’ he said to Rachel with joking anxiety. ‘Taking care of my girl.’
Rachel laughed. ‘They’ll be here on the dot, Dudley, don’t you fret. In fact, you’d best get yourself down to the front – look, the vicar’s after you.’
A robed figure stood beckoning anxiously at the church door.
They shuffled into pews near the front of the church which, despite the candles, seemed dark on this spring day. Dudley lived in Balsall Heath and Gladys was to join him: this would be her new parish. Dolly and Rachel got into one pew with Mo and all the younger children. Melly and Reggie moved into the next one, to sit behind Dolly and Rachel. Jonny and Freddie came to join them and Tommy squeezed in at the end, by the side aisle.
‘Oh, he’s a nice man,’ she heard Dolly say. ‘I couldn’t be happier for her.’
‘He is.’ Melly could hear her mother’s whispers. ‘And no fool.’ Dudley had been a sales manager for a firm selling weighing machinery after leaving the guards. ‘He’ll be good for her – look after her.’
‘She could do with a bit of that after all this time, bless her,’ Dolly said.
They both kept turning as the organ played softly, to see if Gladys was arriving and to give little waves to people coming in.
‘Ooh – there’s Lil,’ Melly said, tapping her mother’s shoulder. They all waved and smiled.
‘Old Ma Jackman,’ Dolly said with a slight grimace. More waving. ‘Nice to see the rest of the old end here.’
The neighbours took seats a bit further back.
‘Here’s Cissy!’ Rachel said. She raised her arm, mouthing, Come here, Ciss! ‘No husband with her, I see,’ she added to Dolly. ‘She’s brought the little lad, though. Oh, look at him, bless his heart.’
Andrew, Cissy’s son, now a plump and endearing toddler of eighteen months, was all togged up in a smart sailor suit. He stared round him with wide blue eyes.
‘Looks to be another on the way too,’ Dolly observed.
Melly sat up straighter to look as she waved at Cissy. Cissy, dressed to kill in pale yellow frills and a buttercup-coloured hat, was well out at the front. Melly, giving Cissy a broad smile, found herself wondering exactly whose child it was.
‘I can’t fit in there with all of you,’ Cissy hissed to Melly, looking at the crowded pew. ‘We’ll go behind. Come on, Andrew, take Mommy’s hand.’
Melly would have liked to talk to Tommy but he was on the far end of her pew. That would have to wait. With them both being away from home now, she had hardly seem him since Christmas.
A few weeks ago, Mr Halstead had written to ask Tommy whether he would be prepared to come and train as the bookkeeper for his business. Mrs Andrews, who had been there for years, wanted to retire and, having seen something of Tommy and got to know him, he thought he would be well capable of it. Tommy was now living with a landlady, Mrs Lane, in Wolverhampton and working at Halstead’s. Melly looked along at him; he met her eye and they exchanged smiles.
Melly felt a tap on the shoulder and then Cissy’s breath in her ear. ‘You all right, Melly?’
‘Fine,’ Melly whispered. ‘I’ll catch up with you after. I see you’re keeping well.’ She eyed Cissy’s swollen belly.
‘Oh, yes – Teddy’s so pleased!’ Cissy beamed at her and gave a sizeable wink.
‘The bride!’
A hiss went through the church. The sound of the organ changed and the wedding march boomed out. Melly saw Dudley standing at the front. They all turned, agog to see Gladys walking, on Danny’s arm, up the aisle.
She was wearing a straight navy dress and matching navy jacket over the top, navy shoes with a strap and a little circular dark blue hat just resting on the top of her coiled, pinned, snowy hair which stood out strikingly against her dark clothes. Her face was solemn. She seemed tremulous, shy of all the attention. But, Melly thought, she had never seen Gladys look more smart and handsome or more happy. Beside her, their father walked tall and proud in his suit, to support the woman to whom he owed so very much in his life.
They stood up to sing the first hymn and Melly found tears on her cheeks. She wiped her face and glanced up at Reggie. She knew he was still sore about her postponing the wedding for another two whole years. And there were the other things they would have to get used to. As well as not being able to see each other as often as they would like . . . ‘I’m not going to have a baby along the way,’ she had told him. ‘So none of that – not unless you do something very clever about it!’
The nursing school had suggested she rejoin her training in February and repeat the second year. She had already done her weeks in the training school and was now overjoyed to be back on the wards. She had been nervous at first, fearful of a repetition of her problems when she left. But there had been no trouble and her worries soon disappeared. Even with the tiredness and hard work and sore feet, she felt useful and truly herself. She was loving it even more than before. She saw Reggie as and when they could manage it. But he was still in Worcester and once he had got over his disappointment, he had become used to it and could see the sense in them both finishing their training before they settled down.
‘I know where you are,’ he said. ‘And –’ it had taken him some time to admit this – ‘I know you’ll be good at it, nursing.’ He had had to adapt, gradually, to the fact that she had something else in her life as well as him – and he could see that his girl was even more glowingly happy.
But as they watched Gladys and Dudley make their solemn vows to each other, they did look at each other, each knowing that if things had been different, they would soon have been making their vows as well. As Gladys spoke her final ‘I do’, Melly laid her hand on Reggie’s thigh for a second. I do, her hand said. I’m here, and I love you.
They all showered Gladys and Dudley with rice and confetti outside, amid cheering and whistles and laughter.
The photographer got them all lined up. Melly found herself next to Tommy.
‘You all right?’ she asked as they shuffled into place on the church steps.
‘Yeah,’ he said. She could see he looked happy. ‘It’s nice.’
‘Jo-Ann all right?’
‘Yeah. She’s – all – right.’ He reached out with his good arm and touched her hand for a second. ‘Ta, sis.’
The photographs which they saw later had caught Tommy’s face in a lopsided smile of utter joy.
The next morning, Melly was back at Selly Oak hospital: an early shift on a women’s medical ward. Getting up that morning did not feel any hardship. Despite all the excitement of the celebrations yesterday, the drinks and sandwiches in the pub afterwards, she did not feel tired.
As she dressed in her uniform – the stockings, dress, apron with its crossed straps, her cap – she was conscious of every piece of it, loved every piece of it, aware that this meant she could be a nurse. She was sad that her other trainee friends had gone on without her, but she was back now and the new group were all nice enough.
When she sa
id goodbye to Reggie the day before, after the wedding, they had held each other close. She looked up at him, with solemn intent.
‘You know I love you, don’t you?’
‘Oh – and I love you an’ all.’ And he followed it with something he had never said before. ‘I love you – and I’m proud of you, wench.’
Walking into the long corridor of the hospital, Melly thought of this and held it close to her, feeling in it all the warmth of his love. And then she walked into the ward to begin her work.
Acknowledgements
Thanks for particular help with the research for this story are due to: Adam Siviter, David Barnsley and Anthony Lunney of Cerebral Palsy Midlands for their generosity in giving time, information and insights; once again, Iris and Gordon Parker for their hospitality and for talking to me about life on the Rag Market – it was such a pleasure meeting you both; Anne Howell-Jones and Professor Paula McGee for information about nursing in the early 1960s; and Jim Rawlins of Disabled Motoring UK who was invaluable in answering questions, as was Stuart Cyphus of the Invalid Carriage Register. Others who helped were Debbie Carter and Maureen and Fred Hyde.
The Birmingham History Forum is always a valuable resource. I used a wide variety of books, but of particular help this time were: Mary Joyce Baxter’s The Past Recaptured; Judith Smart’s I’ll Never Walk Alone; Out of Sight by Steve Humphries and Pamela Gordon; A Fifties Childhood by Paul Feeney; and, as ever, the collected works of Professor Carl Chinn.
A very big thank-you also to the staff at Pan Macmillan, especially Natasha Harding and Kate Bullows, and all the others working hard in the background in so many ways. Also to my agent Darley Anderson and all the staff at the agency. I couldn’t ask for a better team.
Q & A Annie Murray
How does it feel to be publishing your twentieth novel?
It feels rather astonishing. Writing a novel is like being in a dream state which you can re-enter if you read the books again (which in the main I don’t – I’d rather be reading someone else’s!). So it’s strange to look back at all those books, all those dreams, and think, did I actually write those? And where did all that time go?