‘Open it my dears, and try to forgive me,’ she said. Roland ran his fingers under the flap and onto the white counterpane fell their letters, more than twenty of them. They stared at each other, then at Julia.
‘Sorry my dears,’ was all she said.
‘You did write!’ Patricia whispered.
‘You did reply!’ he smiled in return.
‘I thought…’
‘It doesn’t matter what you thought. I think we have some talking to do, don’t you?’ He looked down at the pale-faced woman on the bed.
‘Yes, but not here and not now.’ She bent and kissed Julia’s cheek, and Roland did the same.
‘You’re not angry?’ Julia asked. ‘I deserve your anger.’
‘Just sleep and get well, please, grandmother,’ Patricia whispered.
They walked out of the hospital promising to return the following day and Roland said, ‘Does this mean you have changed your mind, about marrying me?’
Patricia thought of what he had been saying about his life in London. She had to let him down, lightly, give him a chance to escape and allow them to still be friends.
‘Things change all the time,’ she said. ‘You have a life in London now, it sounds so exciting. You can’t be the same person you were months ago.’ She offered him the envelope containing their letters. ‘I’ll take mine back and you can have yours. It’s best, isn’t it?’
Was that a statement or a question, he wondered, but a glance at her serious expression seemed to confirm the former.
Back in the room above Julia’s ice cream parlour Patricia felt exhausted. Sadly, she pushed the letters she had written to Roland into a drawer. Then she bathed and fell into bed.
* * *
Nelda was upset about Julia, but dismayed too as she realised she couldn’t expect any help from Patricia for a while. She had been searching for a vacancy every day since she left school before Caroline was born, hoping to return to teaching. She toyed with the idea of opening a nursery school of her own but that took more money than she and Leonard could find.
‘What about the flower shop?’ Leonard had suggested. He understood that for Nelda work outside the home was important, although he didn’t want her to be anything more than wife and mother.
Nelda thought about it, and decided that it would be impossible to work for someone like Sally Drew, after being a person of some importance in the village.
As time passed, Caroline entranced her mother. She was enchantingly beautiful. Blue-eyed like the rest of Leonard’s children and placid, so Nelda had few really fraught moments. During the days of Julia’s illness, she began to realise that she didn’t really want to give her up for someone else to enjoy. The idea of settling at home for the first few years of Caroline’s babyhood began to take hold. Leonard smiled, said casually that it was all right by him, and crossing his fingers, sent up a prayer.
* * *
Roland went to see Marion the next morning to reassure himself she was unharmed. Then he walked to the garage Jacky owned and insisted on having a talk. Jacky put down the spanner with which he had been tightening wheel nuts on a Jowett, and led Roland into a part of the building he used as an office.
‘If you’ve come to convince me I should look after Marion, accept my responsibilities, you’re wasting your time,’ he said and, as Roland scowled, he added, ‘I’ve already decided that for myself.’ He busied himself making tea on the parafin stove in a corner and went on, ‘Scared I was. Frightened of having to go to court and admit to fathering Marion’s child.’
‘What changed your mind?’
‘When I realised that Marion would have to go through it all as well.’
‘I’m glad. Does Marion know yet?’
‘I’m just waiting for the owner to collect that B.S.A. bike in the corner, then I’m off to find her.’
‘She’ll probably be with Patricia, but if you don’t have time to go there, she’ll be at the hospital tonight visiting Julia.’
‘It’s just a pity that it’s happening now,’ Jacky said, handing Roland a letter. ‘Read this.’
The letter stated that the owners of the wasteland opposite his garage intended to open a smart new garage. They offered to buy him out.
‘Accept!’ Roland said. ‘Start again somewhere else.’
‘D’you know, I don’t think I will start another garage. I feel like trying something completely new. I know this sounds barmy but I have enjoyed helping at ‘Julia’s Ices’. How’s that for a change of direction, eh?’
Roland looked very thoughtful as he walked away.
A week later, Julia was much improved and when Patricia went to see her, leaving Marion and Jacky, assisted by Mr Forest, in charge of the parlour, she saw to her delight that Nelda, Elizabeth and Will were there. Julia’s bed was still near the door, where the nurses usually placed those who needed the most attention and care. Waiting until there was room to go in, she couldn’t help overhearing their conversation.
‘I’ve given up looking for a new post,’ Nelda said. ‘I’m staying home to look after Leonard and the children. It isn’t easy being a second wife,’ she went on. ‘I’ve had to compete with the shadow of Donna Maria, your daughter. I couldn’t be a more capable mother and housewife than she’d been, so I tried to be more interesting instead. The new baby changed all that. I can’t bear to be apart from her. You wouldn’t understand that, but it’s how I feel.’
‘I had Donna Maria when I was seventeen,’ Julia said softly. ‘I desperately wanted to be a doctor and nothing, not even a beautiful child, could have stopped me. We married, her father and I, and I gave Donna to my grandparents to look after. We were strangers, she and I, until she was old enough to cope with us being away from home so much. Strangers all our lives really. It wasn’t until she met Leonard that I really became involved and that was only to interfere, impose my will on her.’
‘You did what you thought best,’ Nelda said.
‘I should have supported her like my parents and grandparents supported me. Instead I tried to make her see how little her love affair meant. How unimportant it was compared with her becoming a doctor.’
‘Rest, you’ll be getting ill again and Patricia and the others would never forgive me.’
‘What’s so unforgivable, is that I tried to do the same thing with Patricia and Roland. I told lies you see, told each of them the other didn’t want to see them. They trusted me and I betrayed them.’
Elizabeth leaned over and kissed her grandmother, the first time she had done so. ‘If you look at the door, grandmother, I think you’ll see it isn’t too late to make amends.’
Patricia turned and saw to her surprise that her father was standing not far away. Stepping into the ward in defiance of the rules she joined Nelda and Elizabeth. Her father followed her.
‘Don’t think of what you’ve lost,’ Patricia said, ‘think of what you have now. Elizabeth and Will. Marion and her baby, me and…’ she looked questioningly at her father.
‘Me as well,’ Leonard said, putting an arm around Nelda’s shoulders and pulling her to lean against him.
‘Nelda and Dad and the children.’ Patricia touched Nelda affectionately, afraid she would feel out of things. ‘We’re all your family and once you’re well again, you’ll be in the centre of the family, where a grandmother really belongs.’
* * *
In spite of the glow she had felt in the hospital where the family had gathered around, Patricia was lonely.
Marion was in the flat above ‘Julia’s Ices’ when Patricia reached home and beside her, his arms around her, was Jacky.
‘Jacky. I didn’t expect to see you here.’
‘Is Mrs Llewellyn better?’ he asked. ‘Marion and I thought to go and see her tomorrow, tell her about us suing Matthew for divorce and getting wed. D’you think she’ll be pleased?’
‘I don’t know, but I am!’ Patricia looked at her sister, taking in the happy face and the glowing eyes and asked, ‘You are h
appy, Marion? It is what you really want?’
‘Sure is, sis.’
It was dark, but Patricia couldn’t stay in the flat. Leaving Marion and Jacky planning their future she went for a walk.
It was on the headland, lit only by thin light from the street lamps beside the closed cafés on the front, that Roland found her.
‘I thought I’d find you here. I’ve just left Julia.’
‘You haven’t come with bad news?’
‘She’s starting to order the staff about and tell the doctors what they should be doing,’ he laughed. ‘No, she is making a good recovery.’
‘Marion and Jacky are at the flat. They’ve come to an understanding and it seems she is going to be all right.’
‘You won’t have to look after her then?’
‘No, and Nelda seems happy to stay home and care for Richard and baby Caroline for a while at least.’
‘So you are free?’
‘Hardly. I still have a café to run and Marion will need my support while she goes through the difficulties of the divorce. That won’t be easy.’
‘Leave them to deal with their own troubles and come to London with me. Or, marry me and we’ll make our life here.’
Patricia’s heart began to race.
‘Above an ice cream parlour?’
‘Rose Cottage then? A cave on this headland? An old bus? Anywhere, as long as you stay with me.’
‘There’s the parlour. I promised Julia…’
‘I think we might ask Marion and Jacky about that.’
‘I’d be letting Julia down.’
‘You aren’t angry with her?’
‘No.’
‘Your father told me once that your mother was training to become a doctor but when she knew Elizabeth was on the way, she said she would never put anything before the child. Not like her mother had done. The mistake Julia made was in presuming she knew best, that her offspring would be exactly like her: ambitious and determined. Every child is wonderfully, miraculously, individual. And each one must decide alone what their priorities are. What are yours, Patricia?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Close your eyes,’ he commanded. ‘Now, let your thoughts soar, up and up into the night sky. Let them wander among the stars. Tell me, what would you really like to do with your life, honestly?’
‘Marry you and love you for the rest of my life,’ she breathed.
‘That’s strange,’ he whispered. ‘My thoughts were flying alongside yours.’
First published in the United Kingdom in 1995 by Severn House
This edition published in the United Kingdom in 2017 by
Canelo Digital Publishing Limited
57 Shepherds Lane
Beaconsfield, Bucks HP9 2DU
United Kingdom
Copyright © Grace Thompson, 1995
The moral right of Grace Thompson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 9781911420262
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
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Ice Cream in Winter Page 27