Goodbye to Dreams

by Grace Thompson

  ‘I don’t think so.’ She smiled as she spoke, leaning towards him slightly to avoid having to speak loudly. It was a friendly, automatic smile as she would use to customers in the shop but one to which Danny, returning from the bar, took offence.

  Before she could say anything, the innocent man was hauled to his feet, his startled face turning red above the white scarf.

  ‘Come on, Danny! We’re leaving!’ She stood up, abandoning their untouched drinks and walked out into the darkness. To her relief, Danny followed, leaving the man shaken and angry. She walked swiftly in the direction of the bus stop.

  ‘Where are you going?’ Danny called, running after her, pulling her back.

  ‘Home! I can’t stand any more of this. A word to someone, a polite word, and that look is back on your face. I can’t stand it any longer.’

  ‘But why? I didn’t say anything! I just helped him back to his own seat. I ignored it. Although I could see how you were egging him on. I was going to suggest we finished our drinks and leave.’

  ‘You think I was leading him on?’ She stopped and glared at him.

  ‘Of course you were. Just like you always do. You don’t know when you’re doing it.’

  Through the darkness she saw the lights of a bus approaching and she was glad. The longer this went on the worse she would feel.

  ‘Don’t get on the bus,’ he pleaded. ‘I’m sorry you’re upset but after all it is your fault. Blame me if you must, but it isn’t me who starts it. Did you see me flirting with the woman behind the bar? Did you? She was worth a wink if anyone was.’

  Cecily couldn’t trust herself to speak. It had always been like this. As soon as she began to relax and believe that things would change, out would come stupid accusations like this. She was a fool to be standing here listening to it. After all the years she’d known Danny she had to be crazy to be still taking this abuse. Because, she told herself, abuse was what it was, even though said in such reasonable tones.

  ‘We’ve been getting on so well, Cecily. If only you’d stop leading men on. I really thought you were trying to change. I love you. Isn’t my love enough? See how much happier we’ve been since you gave up dancing. That proves the fault for our quarrelling is with you, doesn’t it?’

  He tried to hold her as the bus slowed and stopped for her but she shook him off angrily and stepped on. She saw him standing there, watching the bus fade from his sight.

  ‘I hope I never see him again,’ she muttered.

  The man sitting next to her smiled politely and asked her to speak up.

  ‘I hate him!’ she said vehemently, and the man looked startled and turned his head. He didn’t glance her way again and when a seat became vacant further down the aisle he scuttled thankfully into it.

  Chapter Fourteen

  WILLIE WAS EXCITED as he parked the shop van at the lower end of town and went to the expensive china shop. The windows were full of tea and dinner services as well as ornaments in fine china and glass. He merely glanced at the tempting array. He knew what he wanted. He had been saving for this special gift since before he and Annette had married. Her dream, and his task to bring it to fruition.

  The young lady assistant came up to him and asked how she might help and he handed her the piece of paper that had been in his pocket for more than a week.

  ‘It’s the china I ordered for my wife,’ he said. ‘Green, best china with lots of gold on the rims and handles.’

  She brought out a sample. ‘Here we are. Ainsley and very expensive, sir. It’s so beautiful, your wife will be delighted. A surprise gift, is it?’

  He nodded. ‘She worked in service for a while and always talked about this china. So as soon as I’d saved enough I ordered it for her. I’ll be in later to order more. I’m going to keep adding to it, see, so she has plenty no matter how many friends come calling.’

  The assistant gazed longingly after the tall, handsome man as he left, clutching the long-awaited china. If only, she dreamed, if only I could meet someone as gorgeous and generous. She heard the intake of breath behind her that she knew would be followed by the reminder that she was there to work and not daydream. She picked up her duster to make sure not a speck of dust would blemish the treasures the shop contained.

  Willie drove slowly, his cargo so special he felt like shouting complaints to all the drivers who overtook him and to the woman who stepped out uncaring into the road and made him stand on the brakes. He had seen every item of the tea set wrapped and packed and he knew that if there was a crack or a chip, he would be to blame. It had to be perfect, like Annette.

  It was because he was driving slowly that he noticed Jessie Preston. He slowed even more, wondering whether he should drive past or speak to her. But the decision was made for him as he saw her stop and knock at the door of number seven Slate Street, where his mother-in-law Dorothy lived. Gently he pressed the accelerator and glided past unnoticed. I wonder what Jessie wants with her, he mused idly. Then he concentrated on getting the china safely home and forgot all about her.

  Dorothy was bored. There was only Owen for company and when he wasn’t at Waldo Watkins’ store he had his face in a comic, only surfacing for food. So when she had an occasional day off, she spent it doing nothing more interesting than housework and cooking, at which she did not excel, or listening to the wireless.

  The knock, when it came just after two o’clock, had her jumping from her chair in excitement at the prospect of someone calling for a chat. She glanced quickly around the room to check for neatness, hid her knitting under a cushion and opened the door.

  ‘Mrs Owen? Remember me? I’m Jessie, Mrs Danny Preston. D’you think we might have a word?’

  Dorothy ushered the small red-haired woman into the living room, her mind whirling with curiosity, her tongue twisting with the effort to control the questions lining up to be asked. In a display of patience which surprised herself, she waited until they had tea and biscuits in front of them, the kettle singing with the prospect of a second cup, before tilting her head to one side in silent request for Jessie to explain the reason for her visit.

  ‘Danny and I are separated,’ Jessie began nervously. ‘I know it’s a cheek, me coming here to worry you, almost a stranger, for help, but—’

  ‘Nonsense. How can I help you, dear? You only have to ask.’ She smiled encouragingly. If this was anything to do with Cecily, she very much wanted to ‘help’! ‘Don’t worry about mentioning my sister-in-law,’ she said. ‘I do know about her – seeing – your husband.’ She whispered the final words behind a hand.

  ‘You do?’ Jessie visibly relaxed. ‘That’s a relief. I didn’t know where to start.’

  ‘Seen together often,’ Dorothy whispered even though the house was empty apart from themselves. ‘Terrible for you, and—’ The hand came up again. ‘And you pregnant, is it?’

  ‘You’re right. It’s a miracle though. Danny hardly bothered me in that way. He treated me more like a housekeeper than a wife.’

  ‘A housekeeper? You poor girl.’ Dorothy looked at Jessie with deep concern, as if that was the worst fate a woman could suffer.

  ‘Danny doesn’t know. He wouldn’t want me to have it. I was pregnant once before and he pleaded and even threatened to leave me if I didn’t go to someone and get rid of it as he put it. I didn’t, of course, but I lost it anyway a few weeks later. I haven’t told anyone about this and I don’t want anyone to know.’ She looked down at her lap where her thin hands held her empty cup. ‘There’s something else, you see.’

  Dorothy refilled their cups and looked at her visitor expectantly.

  Cecily fumed through the days that followed the latest row with Danny. Breaking the silence of weeks, she blurted it out to Ada, expecting nothing more than criticism, but needing to talk about it if only to clarify the situation in her own mind.

  ‘All he wants is to have me under lock and key so only he can see me. I’d be nothing more than a possession. Ada, I’ve been such a fool, I really hav
e. Loving him, letting life slip past, wasting all these precious years. I must be insane.’

  ‘The saddest thing is, you were saying this more than fifteen years ago. All this precious time you’ve wasted on Danny and all the time you knew it wouldn’t work.’

  ‘I believed that if his love grew so he really cared for me, for the person I am, it would come right. I’ve never met anyone else I could love as I loved Danny.’

  ‘What about Gareth?’

  ‘I loved him, in a way, but not with the passion Danny arouses in me.’

  ‘I thought I loved Gareth for a while. I really believed it was me he wanted to take out.’

  ‘You never said.’

  ‘There’s a lot I never said,’ Ada replied.

  ‘You’re happy now, though, with Phil?’

  ‘Oh, yes. He’s fun and so caring. D’you know he’s trying to reduce his limp to please me? He practises and thinks I don’t know. Remember how he walked down the aisle for me? His leg was agony for days. The other night,’ she went on, ‘I woke and found his side of the bed empty so I went down to see where he was and saw a light in his shed. He’s got electricity now. He doesn’t like me going down there, what with the inks and the machinery he’s afraid I’ll hurt myself. So I looked through the window and he was walking up and down, to and from the bench, walking as straight as you and me!’

  ‘But that’s amazing, Ada.’

  ‘He often can’t sleep, you know. I think it’s the pain. He goes down there and works at improving his walk. Yes,’ she said, reverting to the question, ‘I’m very happy.’

  ‘I’m glad, Ada love. At least one of us has found the right one.’

  ‘There is one disappointment and it isn’t a great problem. I feel guilty telling you, but I don’t do anything to look after Phil, his mother does it all. She still runs the house and chooses the meals. I feel like a spare part. All our wedding gifts are wrapped up and packed in the attic. I don’t feel I’m properly married, more of a lodger in Mrs Spencer’s house. But, as for Phil and me, it couldn’t be better.’

  ‘How is Mrs Spencer with you? She isn’t resentful, is she?’

  ‘No, never. But Cecily, she’s so funny. She asks me to read bits out of the paper then goes across to chat to her friends about it as if she’s reading it herself. Even finding the place for them if they have the same newspaper. I’ve offered to teach her to read but she refuses. She’s a lovely lady and I think she enjoys the fun of it.

  ‘Yesterday she was telling Gladys Davies how shocked she was about the Prince of Wales and the American divorcee. “And her admiring Hitler too,” she was saying. It’s clever, the way she does it. And all these burglaries; remembering names, addresses and everything. Her memory is fantastic.’

  After the months during which they hardly revealed a single thought to each other, both sisters were happy to return to their former closeness. Cecily talked for a long time about her feelings for Danny and how ashamed she was that she had been prepared to marry Gareth without loving him in the same way.

  Ada made Cecily laugh at the antics of Phil and his mother whose capacity for fun seemed endless. Laughter released tension between them and refreshed them, and they were reminded of the misplaced close friendship they had almost lost.

  ‘Danny said he thought we’d got on better since I gave up dancing. That has made me determined to start again. I was a fool to give up, although it did seem strange, going without you.’

  ‘Tell you what, I’ll ask Phil if he would mind me going with you, just for the first few times. You’ll soon meet up with the usual crowd. Beryl and Bertie will have our Van, won’t they?’

  Phil raised no objection and the sisters agreed to go the following Saturday. Cecily treated herself to a permanent wave and bought a dress that swung from her hips in a shimmer of silver blue. The neckline was daringly low, revealing the rise of her breasts in a V of sequinned trim. She was excited as she and Ada set off, Willie having stayed late to take them in Cecily’s car.

  ‘Take it home with you, Willie,’ Cecily offered. ‘Take Annette somewhere nice tomorrow. Thanks for staying late.’

  ‘Sure you don’t want me to meet you?’ he offered but they promised to get a taxi.

  For the sisters, the evening was a mixed success. It was a happy time renewing old acquaintances but sad to realize how few there were. Most had married and given up the regular evenings out, staying at home to mind babies instead. Unemployment too had reduced numbers. The resulting poverty had brought at end to the carefree days of their youth.

  They had ordered a taxi for eleven o’clock and Cecily – and, she suspected, Ada as well – felt relief when they could leave, in a wave of promises to keep in touch. She knew the moment had gone and she couldn’t go back.

  ‘Perhaps we’ll start again when the babies are grown up and the work comes back to the town,’ Ada said, guessing her thoughts. ‘It’s no good trying to recreate something that’s gone, is it?’

  ‘Not even Gareth was there. Unless he saw me and remembered his mother’s warning that I am a dangerous woman!’ She laughed but there was little humour in it.

  ‘He doesn’t go very often, so I hear. His mother is his problem – what’s new! Every time he plans to go out she flops a fit and he has to fetch the doctor and stay with her until she recovers.’

  ‘Old witch!’

  When the taxi arrived Cecily was pleased to see it was their cousin, Johnny Fowler, driving. ‘Glad to see you’re working, Johnny,’ she said as he opened the door for them.

  ‘Only just,’ he told her. ‘I only work at weekends. It isn’t much but with the occasional day in the week, Mam manages somehow. Several of my friends have moved to London looking for better prospects.’ He tucked a rug around their feet. ‘Terrible being poor. When you’re a child and there’s always food when you want it, you can’t imagine it ever being different. Not that we go short. Not like some. Mam’s a good manager.’

  Cecily decided she’d send a box of groceries each week to the Fowlers. His father had been on the sick for months and it must be a nightmare for his mother to feed them all. Ada gave him a generous tip, which he refused.

  ‘Come off it, Ada. I can’t take that from you.’

  ‘Sorry, Johnny, I wasn’t thinking.’

  They dropped Ada off first and as he helped Cecily out at the shop, he asked, ‘Be all right, will you? I mean, is there anyone waiting up for you?’

  ‘Not any more, Johnny, love. I’m on my own now.’

  ‘Shall I come in for a minute?’

  ‘No need, honestly. I’ll be all right. Lovely to see you. Give our love to your mam and dad.’ She waited until the sound of the engine had faded completely and there was no further excuse to delay. She didn’t want to go in. The dance had been more than a disappointment, it had made her face the realization that a stage of her life was over.

  The key in the lock sounded extra loud and as she closed the door the bell sent its echoes around the empty rooms; a lonely mocking ghost. The light in the living room was low but the curtains between the room and the shop were drawn and little light showed through. Shadows grew as she stood there, her eyes becoming accustomed to the gloom, separating positive and negative, the substantial from the phantom. Shapes sprawled and moved towards her and still she didn’t move.

  Here, in the dark shop, she could still pretend there was someone waiting for her, and here, there was only a glass door separating her from people in the street. Once through the dark shop and into the living room she would be engulfed by emptiness, only cold rooms on all sides.

  The living room was chilled and unwelcoming, the fire grey and lifeless. She coaxed it with some wood, took off her coat and sat waiting for the kettle to boil, feeling more dejected than at any time in her life. There was nowhere she belonged anymore, except here in the shop that had once been a joy and now was a prison. As she reached to lift the kettle, she saw years ahead of her, sitting here night after night alone and with no pro
spect of a change.

  In a few years Van would leave. And anyway, because of the situation, they had failed to build a good relationship. It’s all because of my obsession with Danny, she thought, pouring tea from a teapot ridiculously large for her solitary cup. If it hadn’t been for Danny, I’d have accepted many invitations over the years. If it hadn’t been for him, I wouldn’t have an illegitimate daughter and a reputation that scares people away.

  ‘Damn you, Danny Preston!’ She said the words aloud, her fists clenched, wanting to hit him, pummel him for ruining her life.

  She cursed Dorothy too, for the cancellation of her marriage to Gareth. It wouldn’t have been perfect, being Gareth’s wife, but once his mother had been sorted, a good life. And Danny’s fascination would have faded. As she sat there, staring into the fire, she finally faced the fact that she was the one who was truly to blame. Why couldn’t she be strong? But she could change, couldn’t she? Starting from today? Perhaps the dance was more than a disappointment; it was a catalyst for her facing her demons and driving them away.

  The teapot grew cold and she made fresh tea, brightened the fire, doing anything to avoid the moment when she’d have to undress in the cold lonely dark and try to sleep. She put down her cup and closed her eyes. She stayed there, her coat across her, until a cockerel crowed in a nearby yard, then changed out of the shimmering dress into a jumper and skirt, ready to begin another day.

  ‘Damn Danny, damn Danny Preston,’ was her morning chant as she set breakfast for herself. ‘Damn Danny and damn Dorothy with her evil mischief over such a small inheritance.’

  Dorothy said nothing to the sisters about Jessie Preston’s visit, but when she visited her daughter, she couldn’t resist talking around the edges of the new development.

  ‘There’s wicked of Cecily, going out with that Danny Preston, knowing he’s a married man.’

  ‘Best not to gossip over something we know nothing about.’ Willie spoke with such censure, protective as always of the sisters, that Dorothy felt unable to continue. She sat knitting, discussing clothes for the new arrival with Annette.