I doubted in my mind that I would ever manage to travel as far as North Wales, but the idea gave me much pleasure, and I said with genuine enthusiasm, "I would love that."
He looked at me very soberly for a moment. "Would you?" When I nodded, he grinned at me. "Then we'll arrange it."
On the last day of the holiday, we all went to see Cartmel Priory, and were ambling around the old church, behind our guide, when Emrys stopped suddenly and began to gasp for breath. He clutched his chest and turned and stumbled into a pew to sit down. The rest of the party had moved on ahead a little.
I leaned over the side of the pew and put my arm around his
shoulder. "What is it, Emrys?" But I knew what it was. I had seen it happen to Father when he was a young man. "I'll get Gwyn. Just keep sitting."
I ran over to Gwyn, and whispered to him. He spun around, at the same time taking a small bottle out of his jacket pocket. He fumbled in his top pocket as he ran back and produced a worn, tin spoon.
He pushed into the pew, and asked me to support Emrys' head, while he poured out a colorless liquid and forced it into the gasping man's mouth. Some dribbled down Emrys' chin, but most went in. Then, after he had put the cork back into the bottle, he stuck it down on a pew shelf, while he rolled up his raincoat and made a pillow.
We laid Emrys along the pew seat, while the other guests, suddenly aware that something was wrong, came thronging anxiously over to us.
Slowly, Emrys' face lost some of its agony, the breathing became more normal. I crouched in the narrow space beside him and chafed his hands anxiously. Someone lent a coat to put over him. The verger was asked to telephone the guest house and arrange for a doctor to be called.
Emrys' eyes had been tight closed, but as he relaxed he opened them and looked at me. "Helen."
As soon as he felt he could bear to be moved, two men in the party made a seat with crossed hands and carried him into the bus and laid him down on the back seat. Gwyn cradled his head, and I knelt by him and held him, so that he did not fall off. He lay quietly.
The bus driver maneuvered the bus very carefully over the narrow lanes, and as soon as we reached the guest house, two of the staff came running out with a wooden chair with arms. Emrys was lifted from the bus into the chair, despite mild protests that he thought he could walk. He was not a heavy man, and the two young men made short work of carrying him up the stairs and into his room. He was closely followed by a doctor carrying a black bag and by his anxious brother. I stood forlornly at the bottom of the stairs, and then reluctantly went to my room to wash before dinner.
Everybody in the dining room seemed to be talking about the
fatal heart attacks they had witnessed, and I was very cast down, though Margaret did her best to cheer me up.
Gwyn did not come down to the meal, so when we had finished, Margaret and I went into the hall and, after a moment's uncertainty on Margaret's part, went to the office to inquire if they had news.
We were told that, while we were at dinner, an ambulance had come, and Mr. Hughes and his brother had gone to a hospital in a nearby town. Margaret and I looked at each other, and then in silent consent went to the prayer meeting.
I did not sleep much. I was filled with a strange emotion such as I had not experienced before, a fear of the loss of a loved one.
The next morning, before breakfast, I plucked up enough courage to go myself to the office to inquire if they had news of Emrys. They had not, but the manager allowed me to use the telephone to inquire fi-om the hospital how he was.
Mr. Hughes was resting comfortably, I was told primly. He was not yet allowed visitors.
At breakfast I passed this information to Margaret. Despite my depression, I ate a huge breakfast and while still at table, said good-bye to Margaret, because she had to leave immediately in order to catch her train home. I went up to the bedroom and silently put my few belongings back into their paper bag, while the turmoil of the packing being done by the five mill girls went on around me. There was a strong smell of dirty washing and violet perfume, and I was glad to escape.
I said good-bye to the staff^and to several other guests, and caught the train back to Liverpool and to reality.
TWENTY-ONE
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The family were quite pleased to see me back and asked many questions, which I answered frankly. I told Mother about the Hughes brothers, and she made a little grimace with her mouth, and asked, "They didn't touch you, did they?"
"Emrys held my hand," I said.
She laughed in a deprecating way, and I was unaccountably incensed.
"They were very good to me," I said defensively, and retreated to wash the dishes before I was provoked into saying more.
Such an excellent holiday gave me a lot more strength, and I formed the ambition of learning to type. The evening schools did not give courses in typing; my shorthand speed was rapidly increasing, but without a concomitant skill in typing, it was not much use to me.
I went to see Miriam in the attic. She very willingly allowed me to use her typewriter in the lunch hours and showed me how to manipulate the machine. She saved wastepaper so that I could use the back of it for practicing. The three typists crammed into the little room took turns in instructing me how to set out letters, agendas, and minutes. The head typist also showed me how to use the big duplicating machine with its huge tubes of very black, very sticky ink.
Emrys was constantly in my mind, and I daily hoped for a letter to say he was well again. But there was none. I was such a small, unimportant person, I told myself, that perhaps I had been only someone to amuse him while he recuperated from his earlier heart attack. But I would see him again in my mind's eye, teasing, talking, laughing with me, and thus reassure myself that we had been really good companions, and a true friendship had been formed.
At the end of the month, I plucked up courage, took a piece of
copy paper from Miriam's store, and one lunch hour wrote to the I address he had given me, to inquire how he was.
Again, I began to watch for a letter, but still there was
- nothing. My newfound strength began to fade under the constant
f pressure at home, work at the office, work at night school, and the
everlasting hunger. I fell into a quiet depression and found it hard
to concentrate on my studies.
One hot sultry August day, when I arrived home to find the I family, as usual, just finishing their evening meal, I was greeted by Mother with the information that my friend had died. She said it not unkindly, as she tossed an open letter across the table.
I slowly turned back into the hall and hung up my hat and coat. I did not want to touch the letter; I did not want to have the shocking news confirmed. I stood panting in the hall trying not to crv. People did not die; they got better from heart attacks, didn't they?
Mother was saying, "Have a look at your letter."
Reluctantly I picked it up. First I looked at the signature: "Gwyn Hughes. "
It began, "Dear little Helen" and for a second I was tripping along beside a rushing river, and Emrys was saying, "Be carefial, little Helen. Don't fall in."
Gwyn apologized for not writing to me earlier, but he had had so much to do that it was only now that he was able to attend to his personal correspondence.
Emrys had recovered sufficiently from his heart attack for the hospital doctor to say that he could make the journey back to Wales in a private car, if they broke the journey fi*equently enough for him to rest. But at the moment of leaving the hospital, he had been stricken by another massive attack, which had taken his life. His body had been taken home and had been buried beside those of his wife and his son, who had died when he was twelve.
Gwyn was sorry to have to send me such bad news. My companionship had been a great pleasure to both of them, and Emrys had been determined not to let the friendship lapse.
With quiv
ering hands, I put the letter back in the envelope. I was too shaken to complain about the letter's being opened. All I wanted to do was to go to bed and rest, shut myself out of life for a while.
Brian and Tony, those great companions, were staring at me uneasily. Probably death frightened them, too.
I smiled wryly at them. "He was quite old," I reassured them. "It was natural."
"I'm sorry," said Father. "They sound like very nice people. Very kind."
I put the letter in my handbag. "I will write to thank him," I said.
"You should," said Mother. "Come and have your tea, dear."
Fiona silently gave up her chair for me, and Alan passed over the bread and margarine. Mother brought me a small plate of lettuce and cold meat. For the first time that I could remember, I was aware of an aura of kindly sympathy throughout the family. Very slowly, in a dazed way, I began to eat.
I knew Emrys Hughes for only two weeks, but he left me a legacy which changed my whole life. He taught me that I was worthy of love and respect. He revealed to me that, given normal circumstances, I could be a cheerfril, merry companion. He gave me self-respect, a belief in myself. This change in attitude did not reveal itself immediately because I was locked into circumstances beyond my control. But it was there, tucked away in the back of my mind to give me strength of purpose when the time came.
The raunchy cotton-mill girls had also done something for me. I had not at first understood their conversation, because I did not know the words they used, but constant repetition soon made their meanings clear. They talked of nothing but sex, and their lurid discussions soon knitted together for me much that I knew subconsciously before. Then the reading of a great number of files and observation of the prostitutes in the streets greatly added to my understanding. One is supposed to be shaken by such revelations, but it all seemed quite normal to me, and I accepted it without being disturbed. Perhaps because I was so starved, I had almost no feelings myself. My days were choked with work that had to be done, giving little time for contemplation of anything other than the next essay to be written, the next cup of tea to be provided.
I did not think of sex in connection with Emrys Hughes. He was a dear person, very carefial of me, and I gave him the same
kind of affection that I gave my grandmother, uninhibited and unthinking. Only years later, in the ripeness of womanhood, I realized that he might well have fallen for an innocent slip of a girl. He would not have been the first man to love someone thirty years younger than himself. But that last fortnight of his life was not wasted. It enriched mine immeasurably.
One of the more understanding ladies dressed in green wraparounds was a psychologist, a Mrs. Croft, and, unlike the others, she would sometimes talk to me when I took her in a cup of tea at a time when she had no client with her. She knew that I attended night school and was learning shorthand. She asked me if I could teach another girl this subject.
The girl lived too far from the city to attend evening school. She could, however, take a lesson immediately upon finishing work and before going home. I could use Mrs. Crofi:'s husband's office as a place to give the lesson, and could charge about one shilling and sixpence each time.
So once a week, on an evening when there was no night school, I went to Mr. Croft's office for an hour and gave a lesson to a languid, uninterested girl a little older than myself, while the cleaning staff mopped and dusted around us.
The girl quickly lost interest, but I earned enough money to enable me to put an advertisement in the Liverpool Echo, and acquire another pupil. A boy of about sixteen, suffering from epilepsy, asked to be taught at home. He was a very different kind of person, eager and enthusiastic. He practiced assiduously, and by the time his parents moved with him to a milder climate, he was writing steadily at forty words per minute.
My parents approved of this tutoring, though Mother grumbled because I would not be available to help until late in the evening. I said that I proposed to keep the one shilling and sixpence a week that I was earning, toward buying lunches and some clothes.
At first, Mother frequently borrowed what I made, by riffling through my handbag and taking the money out. She never considered it necessary to pay it back. Finally, I made a stout little cotton bag to hold the precious pennies, and hung it around my neck by a piece of string. Once a week, I went to Woolworth's
Ciifeteria at lunchtime and bought a threepenny bowl of excellent soup and a roll. It was a treat to look forward to.
Long before then, the shoes I had worn on holiday got to a point where there was so little sole left that I could not keep the pieces of cardboard from falling out. The best Mother could do for me was to give me her summer sandals, which still had a little wear in them.
I woke up one morning to a black city suddenly made into a wonderland by an early fall of snow. I spent my last penny on a tram to work, but still my feet were sopping wet and freezing before I arrived at the office.
I sat down in the office kitchen, took off the sandals and wiped them with the floor cloth. Then I rubbed the stockinged toes.
The letters for hand delivery that morning were fortunately all for nearby offices, and I was just about to set out with them when the cashier sent for me.
This forbidding lady always frightened me, and she was not in the best of moods. She had a letter to be delivered to the dental hospital about a mile and a quarter away. It was still snowing, so I asked if I might take the tram.
"No," she snapped. "We haven't any money to waste on tram fares."
By the time the local letters had been delivered, the snow was nearly up to my ankles, and I was in real pain. Before setting out for the long trudge up the hill to the dental hospital, I sat down on an office stairway, took off the sandals and knocked the snow out of them, then brushed off the ice clinging to the stockings. I was weeping, and I wondered if I took the letter back to the office and refused to deliver it, I would be dismissed.
I decided that I would probably lose the job, and I dreaded this more than anything else. So up the hill I went through almost deserted streets, delivered the letter and came down again at a stumbling run, crying all the way with pain in my feet. I envied Alan the new pair of shoes that had recently been bought for him. But he also got his feet wet that day.
Back at the office, I stripped off shoes and stockings, filled a sink with water and, teetering on one toe, plunged each foot in turn into the hot water. Then I tried to drv' them on the roller towel, an impossible feat. So I left a trail of water leading to the kitchen while I went to dry them on the floor cloth.
As I put on the wet stockings again, I began to laugh shakily at the idea of the Presence surprising me with one foot caught in a roller towel. She was kind enough that, had she known about it, she would probably have been very upset at my being sent so far in such bad weather.
I was still shivering as I ran to make the tea and then fled up and down the eternal stone steps to deliver it, but probably the exercise helped to restore the circulation. I was left with only a very bad cold.
That lunch time, Miriam offered to lend me a portable typewriter for a week, so that I could practice at home. She was a member of the Communist Party and did all she could to attract other members. Another of the stenographers was an equally ardent Roman Catholic and also keen on making converts. So between the two of them, I received a lot of attention. Life was such a struggle for me, however, that I had neither time nor strength to consider their arguments and remained totally uncommitted.
The loan of the typewriter was most kindly meant, and I wanted to hug Miriam in gratitude. She brought it to the office the next day, and I took it home, with some scrap paper, and put it in the empty front room. The children all wanted to try it, but I told them it had to be taken special care of because it was on loan. I joyfully practiced far into the night, much to the irritation of Father, who could not sleep because of the steady tapping. I was myself always short of sleep, because I did my homework in the early mornings before the
family got up, or late at night after they had gone to bed, provided that there was a penny to put in the gas meter to obtain light, or a stump of candle.
When I had finished my long practice, I returned the typewriter to the safety of the front room, put a penny from my handbag into the gas meter ready for the morning and crept up to bed. I was filled with hope that a good typing speed would help me to get a better job.
The following evening I had to go to night school, so I was too busy to practice on the typewriter. On the third evening, I hurried through my work and then ran into the empty front room to fetch the machine.
There was no typewriter.
Perplexed, I looked in a built-in cupboard by the fireplace, but it held only the gas meter.
Mystified, I went into the back room, where Mother was sitting by the fire reading the newspaper. Edward and Avril were playing on the floor squabbling over a few cigarette cards they had found.
"Mummy, did you move the typewriter from the front room?"
Mother looked up with studied casualness, and I knew instinctively that something was wrong. "Yes, I did," she siiid carefully.
"Well, where did you put it?" I asked impatiently. "I want to practice."
"It's not here." Her cultivated voice was without expression.
The fearful apprehension in which I spent most of my life suddenly reached swamping proportions. "Mother! What have you done with it? You haven't sold it, have you?"
"No. " She was looking at me with a kind of lazy indifference. I felt as if she had me impaled on a pin and that in the back of her mind she was enjoying the situation.
"Mother, " I whispered. "What have you done with it? Are you teasing me—^joking?"
"I never joke, " said Mother, and I realized that that was true.
She got up from her chair with a slow gracefiil movement, walked past me and into the hall. Through the open door, I watched her put on her hat and then her coat.
Minerva's Stepchild Page 26