It was so easy to be myself with him; there were no secrets of the heart that I would hide from him. We sat in the pub and talked of this and that, but it was enough for me that we were simply there, together, as if that was how we always had been and always would be.
When I was with him, it felt as if everything was falling perfectly into place. I already knew that soon, there would never be a morning when I didn’t wake up, or a night when I did not fall asleep beside Daniel, and that that was how my life had always been meant to be. He was my way forward. He was my future. With him, there would be no uncertainty; with him I would be secure and happy. I did not doubt him, not for one second.
We had a lovely, peaceful evening and afterwards we spent a while together in the car steaming up the windows, and only after that did Daniel drop me off at the end of the lane. I kissed him goodbye and walked alone towards Reservoir Cottage. As I drew closer, I could see the lights were still on, even though it was gone midnight. I began to run back towards the house, praying that nothing bad had happened.
Viviane was waiting for me in the hallway in her nightdress and slippers. She threw her arms around me and pressed her head against my shoulder.
‘What is it?’ I asked. ‘Darling, what’s wrong?’
Julia wandered out from the back room, leaning on her stick, a glass in her free hand, looking terribly tired. Vivi looked up towards her mother.
‘Amy, dear, while you were out there was a telephone call,’ Julia said. ‘It was a neighbour of your father’s – a Mrs Botham.’
‘Is it my father? What’s happened to him?’
‘Now don’t panic, he’s all right but he’s in hospital. You need to go back to Sheffield. That’s it, sit down. Let Vivi hold your hand, take the glass. Now listen, sweetheart, it might not be as serious as it sounds but the doctors think it’s his heart and they’re taking every precaution. Drink the gin, it’ll do you good. Vivi has been round to Mrs Croucher’s to borrow a copy of the train timetable. You can go back to Yorkshire in the morning. We’ve booked a taxi to pick you up at seven. All the arrangements have been made. You don’t need to worry about anything.’
But I can’t leave you, I thought. How can I leave you both alone?
I dropped my head into my hands. There was barely enough food in the cupboards to last the week and although I had money now, I knew Julia wouldn’t go to the shop to spend it. There were God knows what horrors hidden behind the wallpaper in the empty bedroom and, if I went away, I would miss my appointment with Dr Croucher – which would delay the redecoration of the room. How could I possibly leave Julia and Viviane? How could I?
‘I can’t go,’ I said.
‘But you must, dear.’
‘There’s no benefit in me going,’ I said. ‘It will make no difference to Dad if I’m there or if I’m not and you need me here.’
I looked at Julia, held her eyes. I had once told her that my father cared more for his pigeons than for me and she had laughed, but not unkindly. ‘Birds are not complicated,’ she had said, ‘but daughters are. Perhaps he doesn’t know how to love you.’
‘You must go,’ Julia said, more firmly. ‘If, heaven forbid, your father takes a turn for the worse, and you aren’t there for him, you will never forgive yourself. And I will never forgive myself either.’
‘But how will you manage?’
‘We’ll be all right,’ Julia said. ‘God willing you’ll only be gone a few days and we can cope for that time. Mrs Croucher is next door if we need anything, and we have the telephone.’
I turned to Viviane. ‘And you’ll be up in time to catch the bus to school each morning?’
‘Yes, of course.’
‘And you’ll remember your choir practices? Because it’s not long until the concert now.’
‘Yes! It’s not like Mr Leeson would let me forget.’
‘Go upstairs and pack yourself a little bag, Amy dear,’ Julia said gently, ‘then you must try and get some sleep.’
I did as she said. By that time, the others had gone to bed and the house was quiet. The door to the empty bedroom was closed and locked, as it had been when I went out, but I had a compulsion to look inside. I turned the key, pushed the door open, switched on the light and went in. The room seemed to contract away from me, like a sea-creature closing itself back inside its shell. I had a sense of its withdrawing and I reached out to steady myself against the doorframe in case the floor beneath my feet disappeared. Strips of half-peeled wallpaper hung around the chimney breast, like lacerated skin. The patch of wall that we had scrubbed, where the drawing had been, was dark and bad-tempered, a filthy plaster slapped over a wound.
I became suddenly tearful. I left the room, locked the door, took the key and put it in my coat pocket. Then I finished packing – only a few things, I didn’t intend to be away for long. At the last moment, when I was almost done, I pulled Caroline’s satchel out from under the bed, unfastened the buckles, opened it up and took out the gold necklace that had once belonged to Daniel’s grandmother. I dangled the chain over my fingers, watched the pendant swinging, the way the ruby caught the light; it was exquisite.
It belonged to the Aldridges. It was part of Daniel’s inheritance, and more than that, part of his family history. Already it was a secret, a barrier between the two of us. I had not directly lied about it, but not telling was a kind of dishonesty; it tainted our relationship.
I wished I’d never set eyes on the thing.
CHAPTER FORTY
AT BRISTOL’S TEMPLE Meads station the next morning, I called Daniel from a telephone box to let him know what was happening, assured him that I would be fine and that I would miss him. He said he wanted to come with me; I told him that was absolutely not necessary. I promised to call again that evening. Then I treated myself to a cup of tea and a slice of buttered toast. I sat in the café at a table between shafts of sunlight falling through the high glass roof and shared my breakfast with Bess, who I had brought with me at the last moment, at Julia’s insistence. She was worried about keeping the dog at Reservoir Cottage when I was not there to look after her. How would she be exercised, Julia had asked, while I was away? Where would she sleep? I looked down at Bess, who sat beside my knee, looking up at me. I smoothed her ear, soft as silk.
‘I’m glad you’re here,’ I told her.
Bess thumped her tail. I offered her the last of the toast and she took it very gently from my fingers. It felt as if the dog and I were isolated in our own little bubble of aloneness. All around, people in coats and scarves and hats were going about their ordinary daily business. They were reading newspapers, talking to one another, blowing on their fingers, holding tightly to their briefcases, looking down the tracks to see if trains were coming, checking their watches. For weeks my world had been confined to the lake, the hills, to the village of Blackwater. I no longer felt that I belonged in this big, hectic outside world. I had become disconnected.
The train was busy, but the guard helped me find a seat by the window where Bess could sleep between my feet. As the train rolled north, I rested my chin on my hand and stared out of the window, watching my reflection superimposed over the bleak, wintry countryside. I let myself drift into an almost-sleep in which my father’s pinched face moved through my mind and disappeared as quickly and smoothly as the winter countryside. I let myself dream, for a while, about Daniel.
My father’s next-door neighbour, Eileen Botham, was waiting on the platform at Sheffield, bleached hair set in a severe permanent wave protected by a headscarf decorated with black and white Scottie dogs tied beneath her chin. She waved when she spotted me and headed across the platform. I was enclosed in a bony hug, a cloud of Max Factor.
‘Hello, my pet, how are you?’ Mrs Botham asked.
‘I’m fine,’ I said.
Mrs Botham patted Bess’s head. ‘It’s nice to see your Granny’s doggie again,’ she said.
I didn’t bother to reply.
I had prepared myself for being alon
e in Sheffield. I hadn’t counted on the company of Mrs Botham, a widow who, as my grandmother never tired of pointing out, was no better than she should be. She had a reputation, according to Granny, for being a gossip and a busybody. It was probably true, but I had been reluctantly grateful to Mrs Botham when she volunteered to make the sandwiches for the wake after my grandmother’s funeral and then handed them round. She’d helped me tidy up afterwards too. She was nice enough but she was just a bit much.
It suddenly occurred to me that perhaps Mrs Botham and my father were more than neighbours to one another. I glanced at the woman sideways.
No, surely not. She could hardly be less like my mother if she tried.
‘It was good of you to let me know about my father, Mrs Botham,’ I said.
‘There’s no need to stand on ceremony. You’re to call me Eileen. After all, I’ve known you since you were knee-high. You used to play in my yard. Do you remember?’
‘No.’
‘Well, you did. You were a shy little thing but very polite.’ Mrs Botham took hold of my arm, and we walked towards the exit together.
‘How is my father?’
‘He’s being stoic. There’s not many as survives a heart attack, but he did. He’s on painkillers and he’ll be in hospital for a couple of days. After that, he’s to come home and rest. The doctors said we should treat it as a shot across the bows.’
We?
‘Where is he?’
‘He’s in the General and he’s in good hands. He’s been told he’s to stop smoking.’
‘Dad will never stop smoking.’
‘Oh, he will if I have anything to do with it!’
I glanced at Mrs Botham again. This time, the older woman noticed the look and she flushed. She cleared her throat. ‘I’ve been keeping an eye on him,’ she said. ‘Somebody has to.’
‘Yes,’ I agreed. ‘Absolutely.’
We had reached a small patch of grass outside the station. Bess sniffed it suspiciously and then, satisfied at last that it was safe, circled three times and squatted, holding her tail out straight behind her with a self-conscious expression on her face. Once done she looked at me expectantly and I told her she was a clever girl.
‘Can I see my father now?’ I asked Mrs Botham.
‘No, pet. They’re very strict with the visiting hours. And you must be tired. We’ll go home and get us something to eat and then we’ll be ready to see him in the morning.’
Back at the house that had once belonged to my grandmother I sat at the table squashed into one end of the kitchen and politely drank the tea and ate the pie and chips Mrs Botham had warmed for me while she took Bess outside and saw to the pigeons. The kitchen was tiny and old but it was warmer and more comfortable than I remembered. Mrs Botham had clearly been at work. Some home comforts had been introduced. After I’d eaten, I washed the dishes. The water was piping hot, delivered directly from a newly installed boiler, and the towel I used to dry my hands was soft and fluffy and smelled of flowers. Granny’s towels had been uniformly hard and stiff and smelled of old washing-up.
Before she left me that evening, Mrs Botham asked if there was anything else I wanted, hesitated as if unsure as to whether or not she should kiss me, saw the expression on my face, decided against the kiss, and bade me goodnight. I waited until I heard her footsteps going up her own stairs, through the wall that separated the two houses, and then I telephoned Reservoir Cottage. Julia answered at once. She said everything was fine. Mrs Croucher had brought round a lamb stew and a treacle tart for their supper, Vivi was doing her homework and – dropping her voice – there’d been no mention of you know who. We spoke for a few minutes, then Julia, anxious about running up my father’s telephone bill, urged me to end the call.
‘We’ll speak again tomorrow,’ she promised.
After that, I called Daniel. We talked about my father, my journey, Daniel’s day, and then I told him about Mrs Botham.
‘She’s taken over,’ I said. ‘She’s still living next door – well, at least while I’m here she is – but she’s as good as moved in. Her pinny is hung on the hook in the kitchen, there’s a bar of lavender soap in the privy, there’s even a pair of her slippers by the front door.’
‘At least they’re not under the bed.’
‘Oh don’t!’
Daniel laughed. ‘Isn’t it a good thing that she’s so involved?’
‘How is it good?’
‘Because you know somebody is looking after your father, that he’s not lonely, that he has somebody else in his life besides you, someone he can talk to.’
‘He’s not the kind of person who needs other people.’
‘Everybody needs other people,’ Daniel replied.
‘But not her.’
‘Wasn’t it Mrs Botham who called the ambulance when your father had the heart attack?’
‘Yes.’
‘And didn’t she go with him to the hospital?’
‘Yes.’
‘And did she wait with him while he was examined? Did she talk to the doctors? Did she find out what was going on?’
‘All right,’ I said. ‘I see your point.’
He was right. When the doctors said my father must stay in hospital for a few days, it was Mrs Botham who caught the bus home, packed up his pyjamas, his toothbrush and his cigarettes, and then caught another bus back to the hospital to deliver them to him. It was she who caught a third bus back to his house after that, who went to the trouble of finding the Reservoir Cottage telephone number and leaving a message for me. And she must have spoken to Julia a second time, some time during the day just passed, to find out which train she should meet at the station after she had prepared a meal for me and made up the bed.
I sighed, leaned my head against the wall and closed my eyes.
‘I wish you were here with me, Daniel. You make me a better person.’
‘There is not a single thing wrong with you as you are,’ he said.
When I went to bed, I found Mrs Botham had put a hot water bottle between the sheets. There was a note on the bedside table.
Sleep well, pet. Anything you need, just knock on the wall. Yours, Eileen.
I fell asleep counting the cigarette cards in their frames that were hung on the bedroom walls, Loretta Young smiling down at me with her knowing, ageless smile.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
WHEN I WOKE the next morning it was already light. The bedroom door was open and Bess was gone. I put on my father’s dressing gown and went downstairs. The dog was in the kitchen lapping scrambled eggs from a bowl on the floor. She wagged her tail between her legs when I came into the room but did not stop eating.
Mrs Botham looked up from the stove; her eyes were anxious.
‘I hope you don’t mind me giving the doggie her breakfast.’
‘Of course not. It’s very good of you.’
‘Sit yourself down, Amy, the kettle’s on.’
Now Daniel had made me look at things from a different point of view, I realized it was very relaxing to be told what to do. It was nice that somebody else was up first to light the fire and heat the water; it made a pleasant change for somebody else to be in charge.
Mrs Botham put a plate of egg on toast on the table in front of me. ‘I’m ever so glad you came,’ she said. ‘Your father said he wasn’t sure you’d come but I knew you would. He misses you terribly, you know.’
‘He has a funny way of showing it.’
‘It’s not your father’s way to say how he’s feeling out loud,’ Mrs Botham said. ‘It doesn’t mean that he’s not feeling anything.’
‘He talks to the pigeons.’
‘And you know why that is. It’s because he knows they’re not going to run away and leave him. They always come back. There’s a reason why they’re called homing pigeons, you know. There’s a reason why he’s so fond of them.’
In due course, we caught the bus back into town, queued up at the hospital entrance with the other visitors, and then
trooped into the men’s ward. My father had the bed closest to the door. He was sleeping when we arrived. He lay on his back with his mouth open, his head making a dent in the centre of the pillow and his hands crossed tidily on top of the overblanket. I stood helplessly beside him, trying to reconcile how he was now with how he always had been before.
‘You mustn’t worry, Amy,’ Mrs Botham said. ‘He’s going to be fine.’
She moved the ashtray on the table at the side of the bed to make room for the cake tin she’d brought. Then she took off her gloves, perched on the side of the bed and patted Dad’s hand.
‘Don,’ she whispered. ‘Don, wake up, you’ve got a visitor.’
My father’s eyes flickered open, he gave a little panicked snort, remembered where he was and said, ‘Oh,’ in a disappointed tone of voice, as if he had hoped to find himself back at home. Then his eyes fell on me. He blinked, and reached out for his spectacles. Mrs Botham passed them to him, and he put them on. He hitched himself up the pillows, squinting into the light.
‘Birdie?’ he asked quietly. ‘Is that you?’
‘Yep,’ I said.
‘You came home?’
‘Just like a pigeon.’
Mrs Botham went off to find a doctor. It was kind of her to give us some time alone together. Mostly we were quiet. There didn’t seem to be the need for either of us to say anything and for the first time in my life I realized this was not a bad thing. When the bell rang to signify the end of visiting hours, I stood reluctantly and kissed my father’s cheek.
‘I’ll be back tomorrow,’ I said.
‘There’s no need.’
‘I’ll be back anyway.’
The afternoon was bitterly cold, wind washing the rain off the moors, sending it sideways into the streets, down the rooftops, over the areas of the city, devastated by the war, that were being cleared to build new roads and flats, great swathes of rubble heaped behind hoardings. Mrs Botham and I sat side by side on the bus, sharing a bag of Mintoes as the windows steamed over.
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