Counting Chimneys: A novel of love, heartbreak and romance in 1960s Brighton (Brighton Girls Trilogy Book 2)

by Sandy Taylor

  ‘Look, why don’t I meet you off the train and we’ll go to the pub and have a good old chat. Save up all the funny stories for me then, okay?’

  ‘Okay,’ I said. The prospect of Polly and me sitting in the pub, her with tears of laughter streaming down her face as I regaled her with the awfulness of my family, cheered me up considerably. She loved hearing about my dad and Rita, and now I had a whole new batch of material to entertain her with. I would have killed anyone else who made fun of my family, but it wasn’t really wrong of me to do it with Polly, because she knew how much I loved them deep down.

  ‘That’s a date then,’ said Polly. ‘I’ve got to go, I’ve got henna on my hair, and it stinks and clumps of it are falling off all over Mrs P’s carpet. See you tomorrow!’

  I walked the long way home, round the block, past the house where Mary used to live with her parents and her six brothers. The house was in just as bad a state as ever. There was a car in the front garden held up by four stacks of bricks where the wheels used to be, and I could see the skinny legs of one of Mary’s brothers sticking out from beneath it. A stack of tyres was heaped by the front door, along with several bags of cement and a scruffy old concrete mixer. I remembered, vaguely, Mum telling me that Mary’s parents were planning to make a patio in their back garden. Mum had said patios were the epitome of poshness these days but that it took Mary’s dad so long to get round to doing anything practical that they’d have gone out of fashion before the first slab was laid. I couldn’t much see the point of patios myself, and neither could Mum, but I had a feeling Rita would be interested.

  I smiled as I walked past Mary’s house, remembering the fun we used to have when we were children. The estate hadn’t felt small and claustrophobic then – it had been our whole world and had seemed full of excitement and opportunity. I remembered how Mary and I used to while away our weekends spying on her heart-throb, Elton Briggs. I was so lost in my thoughts that I didn’t notice the man walking towards me until we almost bumped into one another.

  I stepped to one side. He went the same way. We both stepped the other way. We both grinned.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said, stepping off the kerb into the road to allow me to pass. For the first time we looked at each other’s face, and I recognised him. It was one of Mary’s brothers.

  He said: ‘Dottie? Is that you?’

  ‘Wayne? Oh gosh, I was just thinking about you and your family! How are you? How are your mum and dad?’

  ‘They’re fine. Only…’ He reached out and took my elbow, gently turning me around and steering me back towards the alleyway that connected various roads on the estate. ‘You need to get home quickly, Dottie,’ he said. ‘There’s an ambulance outside your house.’

  7

  I ran all the way back down the twitten, round the corner and along the street. I could see two men lifting Mum into the back of the ambulance on a stretcher. I was terrified. This was my mum. What was wrong with her? She was pale as a ghost and had an oxygen mask over her face, and Dad was walking beside her in his socks, holding her hand and telling the ambulance men to be careful and stop bumping the stretcher. At exactly the same moment as I arrived on the scene, Clark and Emma arrived from the opposite direction, Emma sitting on the back of Clark’s Lambretta. She was clutching a box full of fish and chips. Clark jumped off the bike and rushed over.

  ‘What's happened Dottie?’

  ‘I’ve just got here. I don’t know anything yet.’

  We both ran over to our parents. ‘Mum, what’s the matter?’ I asked. ‘What did you do?’

  Mum mumbled something from behind the oxygen mask.

  ‘Silly woman went and had one of her funny turns at the top of the stairs,’ said Dad. ‘I told her, if she’s going to have funny turns to have them somewhere flat, but does she listen to me? No.’

  ‘What funny turns?’ I asked. ‘How long has this been going on?’

  ‘I kept telling her to go and see the doctor before something like this happened but she would insist that she was fine and dandy and…’

  ‘Excuse me, Mr Perks, but we need to get your wife to the hospital,’ said one of the ambulance men. ‘Would you like to ride with us?’

  Dad was not one for hospitals. I could see the colour drain from his face, but Mum looked at him rather desperately over the top of the mask. He tugged at his collar and said: ‘Yes please.’

  ‘We'll meet you at the hospital,’ said Clark.

  This was too much for Mum. She pulled off the mask and raised her head a little. ‘You young ones eat your chips first. I’m not having good food go to waste.’

  ‘We could take the chips with us!’ Dad suggested.

  ‘No food in the ambulance. Now please, Mr Perks…’

  ‘I’m coming with you,’ I said firmly. I climbed up into the back of the ambulance and sat down. Dad followed. Mum was tugging at the mask again to argue. I took hold of her hand in a way that I hoped would let her know I wasn’t going to be bossed about.

  ‘We can warm the chips up later,’ I told her.

  It was the first time in my life that I’d felt responsible for my mum. I was completely out of my depth. I didn’t know what I would do if anything happened to her.

  The ambulance raced through the streets. Mum lay on the bed, her hands worrying at the striped blanket. Dad didn’t take his eyes off her. He looked pale and scared. I reached across and held his hand.

  At the hospital there was nothing we could do but wait. Mum was sent off for ‘tests’ but we didn’t know what they were testing for, and we didn’t know who we ought to ask, so we just sat in a poky little room trying to think of things to say to one another.

  Dad smoked one cigarette after another until the waiting room was so full of smoke that my eyes were stinging, and it was hard to see across the room, but there weren’t any windows we could open, so we had to put up with it. Emma was very sweet. She kept asking me questions about London in her quiet little voice. She and Clark had spent a day there a few weeks back and they’d gone shopping in Carnaby Street and gone to a free gig in the park. Emma twirled a piece of her long hair around her delicate little finger.

  ‘It was groovy,’ she sighed.

  Emma was a lovely girl, but I was finding it hard to have a conversation with her when all I could think about was my mum.

  ‘We’ve rung Rita,’ said Emma. ‘She’s coming straight here.’

  I’d forgotten about Rita, and that made me feel bad. ‘Thanks Emma,’ I said.

  Clark kept interrogating Dad about what was wrong with Mum.

  ‘I don’t know, son,’ Dad said. ‘She’s just been coming over a bit unnecessary lately, every now and then.’

  ‘And you didn’t think to make her see a doctor.’

  ‘Oh you know what your mother’s like, stubborn as a mule.’

  I didn’t blame Dad. I knew that he’d have been worried, but Mum would have insisted she was all right. She hated going to the doctor or the dentist or anything like that, because she always thought she was wasting their time when they had better things to be getting on with. I don’t think I’d ever heard her complain about her own health. She used to moan about my dad a lot, but that was more of a hobby than because she was actually unhappy.

  I chewed at my cuticle. I had a particular horror of the hospital, because it was where Mary had died four years ago. Just being back there, smelling the same hospital smells, brought so many sad memories flooding back to me.

  The second last time I saw Ralph had been there, at the hospital.

  The last time had been at Mary’s funeral.

  I felt a hand on my shoulder. It was Emma.

  ‘Shall we go and see if we can get a pot of tea anywhere?’ she asked me.

  I nodded gratefully and stood up when the door opened and a nurse came in.

  ‘How is she?’ Dad asked.

  The nurse squinted and wafted her hand in front of her face to clear a gap in the smoke.

  ‘She’s fine. She’s
having a bit of a wobble with her blood pressure, so we need to keep an eye on her to be sure of what’s going on, but apart from that she’s all right. Would you like to go and see her? Just two of you at a time I’m afraid – hospital rules.’

  Dad and I followed the nurse down the corridor to the women’s ward, leaving Clark and Emma in the waiting room.

  Mum was lying in bed, partially propped up by pillows. She was still a little pale but insisted she was perfectly all right and that it was ridiculous that she wasn’t allowed to go home when there was nothing wrong with her. She gave Dad a right telling off over the fact that he was still in his socks and asked us to be sure to bring her handbag with us in the morning so she could put on some lipstick.

  I pulled a chair up to the bed and leaned across to hold her hand. It seemed so small in mine. ‘I wish you had let me know you were ill, Mum,’ I said.

  ‘I didn’t want you worrying about that up in London, and anyway it’s nothing, just one of my turns.’

  I looked across at Dad, who was holding Mum’s other hand. He looked almost grey with worry, and it suddenly occurred to me that for all their sniping and grumbling they would be lost without each other.

  I leaned over and kissed her cheek.

  ‘Now mind you go back to London tomorrow, Dottie. I’ll be right as rain.’

  I didn’t answer her.

  After a bit I went outside. Clark and Emma were leaning against a wall in the corridor.

  ‘How is she?’ Clark asked anxiously.

  ‘She seems okay, a bit pale, but we’ll have to wait for the results from the tests before we know what’s wrong. Go on in.’

  When I got back to the waiting room, Rita was there. She looked all puffy-eyed, as if she had been crying. I almost felt sorry for her till she opened her mouth.

  ‘Oh, Dottie,’ she said. ‘I got such a fright when Clark phoned. I’d just started the tea. I dropped everything and came straight here. I had to get the bloody bus and there was all sorts of riff-raff on it. I’m still shaking.’ Rita held her hand out in front of her as if to prove it.

  ‘Couldn’t Nigel drive you?’ I said, sitting down next to her.

  ‘Don’t be stupid. I have got a baby, you know. What was I supposed to do, leave her on her own?’

  ‘Sorry, I wasn’t thinking.’

  ‘You never do, that’s half your problem.’

  ‘Well it’s a relief to know it’s only half,’ I said. Even at a time like this, I couldn’t help winding Rita up.

  ‘Well don’t just sit there,’ said Rita. ‘Tell me what’s wrong with Mum.’

  I couldn’t help noticing that she’d dropped the ‘Mother’ bit. ‘I think she’s okay,’ I said. ‘At least the doctor doesn’t think it’s anything too serious.’

  ‘Well what happened? All Clark said was that she had a funny turn. He made it sound as if she was doing some sort of stand-up comedy routine.’

  ‘From what Dad says, she’s been having dizzy spells for a while now.’

  ‘Well why didn’t she tell me?’ said Rita, her eyes filling with tears. ‘I’m her daughter, I should have been told.’

  I didn’t like to remind her that I was also her daughter, and I hadn’t known either.

  ‘You can’t go back to London now, you know,’ she said, standing up as if to emphasise the importance of what she was saying.

  I looked up at her.

  ‘You can’t. And don’t look at me like that.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘You are so annoying, do you know that?’

  ‘Am I?’

  ‘You think just because I live around the corner that I should be the one to look after Dad. Well I can’t – I’ve got Miranda Louise to look after. I can’t be running round there every two minutes. You have to stay, Dottie, you just have to.’

  She had said all this without seeming to take a breath. She went over to a machine that dealt out water in polystyrene cups, filled one and gulped it down in one go. Her face was red and sweaty, and there was a look of panic in her eyes.

  ‘What about Clark?’ I said. ‘He’s still at home.’

  ‘Clark can’t look after himself let alone anyone else – and anyway he’s a boy.’

  ‘Haven’t you heard, Rita? We are living in an enlightened age. Sex doesn’t come into it.’

  ‘Who said anything about sex? If you ask me, Dottie, the sooner you leave London the better. You are getting a very smutty mouth on you.’

  ‘Oh good,’ I said. ‘Smut’s all the rage this year.’ Why did my sister always bring out the worst in me?

  ‘Well?’ she said.

  ‘Well what?’

  ‘Well are you going back to London or not?’

  ‘Of course I’m not.’

  The relief on Rita’s face was palpable. ‘Well you could have said.’

  ‘You didn’t give me much of a chance.’

  Rita then started pacing up and down the small room. ‘And I don’t know what Emma is doing in there, she’s not even family.’

  ‘I expect she wants to support Clark.’

  ‘Well it’s me that should be in there, not her.’

  Just at that precise moment, Emma came into the room. I hoped she hadn’t heard Rita.

  ‘Your mum’s been asking for you,’ she said to Rita in her gentle little voice.

  None of us wanted to leave Mum in the hospital, but she insisted, and the nurse said she needed to rest.

  Clark and Emma went home on Clark’s bike and Dad, Rita and I went back on the bus. I ran into the house to get Dad’s shoes so that he could take Rita home. Now I knew Mum was all right I was suddenly starving, and because Mum wasn’t there we ate our supper off our knees in the living room, in front of the telly.

  I was washing up afterwards, stacking the sudsy crockery in the plastic tray at the side of the sink, when Dad came into the kitchen. He stood behind me and cleared his throat.

  ‘Dottie, love,’ he said. ‘I don’t like to ask but…’

  I turned and smiled at him over my shoulder. ‘It’s all right, Dad, I’d already decided to stay. I’ll stay until Mum feels better.’

  ‘Thanks, love. You’re a good girl.

  ‘Try not to worry too much.’

  ‘I’ll stop worrying when she’s back home.’

  I kissed his cheek. ‘Try and get some sleep, Dad.’

  ‘I’ll try. Put the lights out when you come up.’

  8

  I woke early the next morning. The sun was warm on my face as it filtered through the gap in the curtains and into the room. I could hear Dad moving about downstairs. I pushed back the covers and sat on the edge of the bed. I couldn’t believe how well I had slept and then felt guilty when I remembered that Mum was in the hospital.

  I stood up and looked out of the window. My bedroom was at the back of the house so I could look down on to the gardens on either side. An Indian family had moved in next door a couple of years ago, and there were two saris hanging on the line. The colours were so vibrant, reds and oranges and golds. They were flapping about like two exotic butterflies trying to make a bid for freedom. Mr and Mrs Baxter’s oversized knickers and long johns on the other side looked dull in comparison.

  I washed and dressed and went downstairs. There was no one about, but the back door was open. I put the kettle on and went outside. Dad was standing in the garden. There was a newspaper on the ground beside him, and he was cutting daffodils and laying them down on it.

  ‘Morning, Dad,’ I said.

  ‘Thought I’d bring these in for your mum,’ he said, turning round.

  ‘She’ll love them. Did you sleep all right?’

  ‘Not really,’ he said, laying another flower on the paper. ‘Do you know, Dottie, apart from the war, this is the first time since we got married that we’ve been apart?’

  ‘What about when us kids were born?’

  ‘She only had Rita in the hospital, and I slept in the waiting room. Wasn’t supposed to but I had been in the
army with the porter who was on duty, and he sort of turned a blind eye. You and Clark were born at home.’ He was staring down at the daffodils. I had never seen him look so lost and frightened.

  ‘You never know, they might let her out today.’

  ‘I only want her home if they think she’s okay to come home,’ he said, taking a hankie out of his pocket and dabbing at his forehead. It was already hot in the garden, even though it was early, and it held the promise of a beautiful day. I should have been looking forward to meeting up with Polly. We could have gone to the park and done some people watching, and later Joe and I could have gone to the little Italian café down at Camden Lock. London was so alive when the sun was shining, it was just about the best place to be, but there was no way I was leaving Brighton yet. My dad needed me and I needed to be close to Mum. I knew that she would worry less about Dad knowing that I was with him.

  Dad finished picking the daffodils and wrapped them in the newspaper. As he stood up, he rubbed the small of his back ‘No fun growing old, love,’ he said, smiling at me.

  ‘Wait while I get the violin tuned,’ I said, linking arms with him and leading us inside. I was trying to be light-hearted, but there was a twinge of fear in my stomach at the thought of my mum and dad getting old.

  My Aunty Brenda and Rita were visiting Mum this afternoon, and Dad and I were going up in the evening. I was on my way to Rita’s to take Miranda out for a walk. She was in her pram when I got there, and Rita had her kitted out as if she was going on an expedition to the North Pole.

  ‘Isn’t she a bit overdressed?’

  ‘No,’ said Rita. ‘She’s still not right, and I don’t want her catching a chill.’

  I looked into the pram. Miranda’s little face looked very pink. ‘She looks hot.’

  ‘What would you know?’ said Rita, getting all huffy.

  ‘It was just an observation. Excuse me for breathing.’

  ‘Now there’s a bag under the pram with a bottle in and some nappies. Make sure she’s changed regularly. I don’t want you leaving her in a wet nappy.’

  ‘I’ve looked after a baby before, you know,’ I said, remembering Peggy, who I’d taken care of when Mary was so ill.