Nellie’s eyes filled with tears and she hurried away.
The Christmas visit was a great success. Nellie had furnished the roomy third bedroom with a double bed and a walnut bedroom suite for Bob and David and on Christmas morning Nellie and Tom went in to see David opening his Christmas stocking. They were all caught up in the child’s delight.
David was excited about everything – the contents of his stocking, the small tricycle his father gave him, the Christmas tree decorated by Tom and the Christmas dinner when his father carved the goose cooked by Nellie. He seemed to have become quickly attached to Nellie and Tom and sat as close as possible to Tom.
Bob was interested in the layout of the cafe, and while Tom played with David, Nellie and Bob caught up with all that had happened in the lost years. Bob said that his employers had been very good to him, allowing him to transfer to the Yorkshire branch when he needed to take Meg back there for the air.
‘The trouble is they need me in Liverpool and there’s not much work for me in Yorkshire. I can see they think I should move back and there’s nothing to stop me, only I can’t get a chance to look for somewhere to live,’ he said. ‘At least where I am I’m getting David looked after.’
‘But what about when Meg comes home? Won’t she need the air?’ Nellie asked.
‘It didn’t do her no good before,’ Bob said bitterly. ‘Anyhow, she’ll be cured when she comes home.’
An idea was born in Nellie’s mind but she said nothing then.
Bob and David returned to Sudely and the following Sunday Nellie and Tom travelled there again. Tom stayed with David while Nellie accompanied Bob to visit Meg.
She was shocked to see how thin and frail Meg looked although she seemed in good spirits. She and Nellie hugged each other, both near to tears, then Meg stood back and looked at Nellie.
‘I don’t think you’ve changed, Nell,’ she said. ‘Bob thought you had.’
‘Not in her looks, like,’ Bob protested. ‘Just sort of – more grown up, sort of.’
‘Harder, he means,’ Nellie said but she smiled as she spoke.
‘I’ll have a walk round,’ Bob said, ‘leave you two to talk.’
He went out and Meg said quietly, ‘He’s made up to see you again, Nell, and so am I. We have worried about you, y’know, although we never done nothing about it.’
‘You had too much else on your plate,’ Nellie said. ‘I suppose it was the same with me.’ She sighed. ‘The years just go past.’
‘Bob says Tommy’s grown a lovely lad and a good son. Do you ever hear anything of Sam?’
For a moment Nellie was shaken by Meg’s directness then she said quietly, ‘I’ve heard that he sailed to America and backed off there. He was a sick man when he come home that time, Meg. You know he was sick on that trip to the Ivory Coast and they put him off at some hospital? I don’t know what they done to him but he wasn’t himself when he got home.’
‘We don’t know what happens in them foreign places,’ Meg said. ‘They might have given him stuff they get from them foreign plants or anything.’
‘They done something,’ Nellie said sadly. ‘He wasn’t the Sam I knew when he come home.’
‘Never mind, you’ve got a good son,’ Meg comforted her.
Nellie smiled again. ‘I wouldn’t change a hair on his head,’ she said.
Bob came back and Nellie said, ‘Now while you’re both here, what do you think of this idea? What about Bob getting his Liverpool job back and him and David staying with us while he looks round for a house? Me and Jean and Winnie could keep an eye on him during the day or he could go to Jean’s sister who looks after Jean’s boys. They’re very happy with her. She’s only young but real motherly.’ She stood up. ‘I’ll go and have a walk round now and leave you to talk about it. I won’t be offended if you say no.’
She went out and about ten minutes later Bob came looking for her. He put his arms round her and hugged her.
‘We think it’s a wonderful idea, our kid,’ he said. ‘If you’re sure?’
‘I wouldn’t have said it if I wasn’t,’ Nellie said.
Meg was as enthusiastic as Bob and as grateful to Nellie.
‘It’s been fretting me to think of David with that half-baked Hetty while Bob’s at work,’ she said. ‘I want him to grow up like Tom so he might learn by his example.’
It was quickly arranged. Nellie had been worried to find David so frail on her first visit but he seemed to improve every day, spending his days happily with Jean’s sister and settling in with Nellie and Tom and Bob as though he had always lived there.
The arrangement worked well from the start. Bob had moved back to the Liverpool works and after work he was always ready to lend a hand with the work of the cafe. For Nellie it was almost like being a family again, although the memory of Sam still filled her heart.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Nellie had said nothing of her circumstances, even to Jean, and it was generally assumed by her customers that she was a widow. Sometimes it seemed to Nellie that this might be the truth. Would Sam disappear so completely from her life if he was still alive? Surely he would want to see Tommy even if he no longer cared about her.
She remembered what had happened to her father and wondered if Sam had met a similar fate. Or if that mysterious illness, which had so changed his personality in her opinion, had also claimed his life. She knew that Tom still hoped for his father’s return so she said nothing to him which might destroy his hope.
During Tom’s last year at school he had entered two national competitions and had won prizes in both. One for an essay on animals organised by the RSPCA, where the prize was a lavishly illustrated book on dogs, and the other for the RNLI, where the prize was a certificate and a book on seafaring.
Miss Helsby had encouraged him to enter and she also encouraged him to keep a journal. He still wrote down phrases which interested him from the racy conversation he heard all around him, and again urged by Miss Helsby entered competitions in the children’s pages of magazines and newspapers, often successfully. For many of the stories he wrote he drew on the tales his father had told him of faraway places and people of other lands.
All this and some discreet help from Miss Helsby had secured Tom a job as office boy for the Courier newspaper. His duties were all the most menial, making tea, emptying wastepaper baskets, delivering parcels and letters to various places, even placing bets for one of the reporters with the bookie’s runner who operated in a nearby entry.
Nothing dimmed his enthusiasm and his notebook rapidly filled with new phrases. Nellie had watched proudly as he set off on his first morning wearing his first suit with long trousers and carrying a small case containing his lunch and a notebook and pencil.
She never tired of hearing his tales of what happened in the office and often wondered how she and Sam had produced such a clever son who looked such a gentleman. Miss Helsby had learned him manners and how to speak but that look was Tom’s own, she thought.
Buried under all her memories of Sam was the thought of her employer Joshua Leadbetter who had raped her and one wakeful night she found it impossible to thrust the memory away. He had belonged to a rich and well-bred family even though he had behaved so badly towards her and the thought that he might be Tom’s father troubled her.
The date of Tom’s birth made it unlikely but possible, yet all her instincts had always told her that he was Sam’s son.
She slept little but the next day Jean helped to allay her doubts.
‘Doesn’t Tom look smart in his new suit?’ Jean said. ‘He looks quite the gentleman.’
‘I don’t know where he gets it from or his cleverness,’ Nellie said incautiously.
‘What was his father like?’ asked Jean.
‘He was big, broad-shouldered, dark curly hair,’ Nellie said, not correcting Jean’s assumption that she was a widow.
‘So Tom takes after you altogether,’ Jean said. ‘He’s even got your refined air.’
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‘Me, refined?’ Nellie exclaimed. ‘There’s nothing refined about me, Jean. I wish there was.’
‘Of course there is,’ Jean insisted. ‘I thought that as soon as I saw you, that you looked ladylike. And you can’t say you haven’t got brains running this place.’
Nellie coloured with pleasure but more because of the suggestion that Tom had inherited her refinement than for the compliment to herself.
She was growing very fond of Jean, who in addition to being a good worker possessed a practical good sense which often helped Nellie.
Before the cafe reopened after the first Christmas Jean and Winnie, Nellie and Tom discussed what they had learned and made plans for the future. Tom thought his mother was doing too much and the others agreed.
Jean said she thought that they were being too ambitious in trying to supply anything that was asked for.
‘Bacon butties,’ Winnie said giggling.
‘That was a good idea but I don’t think we should try to serve them all day,’ Jean said seriously.
‘Just for breakfast, you mean?’ Nellie said and Jean nodded.
‘And now we’re doing liver and onions, spare ribs and cabbage and anything else anyone wants, as well as all the different puddings. It’s too much for you, Nellie.’
After some discussion it was decided that they would serve bacon and sausage sandwiches and pea soup until ten o’clock then stop making sandwiches and serve pea soup, scouse and pie or pasty served with potatoes and vegetables and a rich gravy.
‘We could do one pudding each day,’ Jean suggested. ‘Apple pie or boiled fruit pudding with custard or jam roly-poly. One each day, not a choice of any of them.’
Nellie agreed. ‘I could do a couple of big rice puddings for them that wanted something cheap,’ she said. ‘That’d be no trouble.’
The customers readily accepted the more restricted menu. The cafe had become so popular that men were being turned away or waiting around outside until there was room.
Life became easier for Nellie with the smaller menu and with more help. Winnie’s sister had left school and came to help in the kitchen and when Bob came to live there he took over many jobs which Tom had done, like peeling potatoes for the following day.
Tom did the books after work but they all worked as a team, everyone willing to do whatever was necessary at the time.
Before Bob came Nellie told Jean that she was not a widow and was surprised to find that she already knew.
‘From something Tom said,’ Jean said calmly. ‘But it’s your business, Nell.’
Nellie told her what she had told Meg of Sam’s illness. She had told it to herself so often that she truly believed it and it made Sam’s desertion easier for her to accept.
‘In a way it’s worse than being a widow,’ Jean said. ‘If you’re widowed you know where you stand. You know that though you never really stop grieving it must get better with time. I suppose you worry about him too.’
‘I do,’ Nellie said. ‘I don’t think I’ll ever see him again and I think he might be dead, but—’
‘But there’s always a hope,’ Jean said sympathetically.
‘Yes. I know it’s daft but a fortune teller told me I would see him again and I think of that. I don’t really believe in them things but some of the things she said have come true.’
‘You’ll just have to live from day to day and see what happens,’ Jean said practically and Nellie agreed.
Bob and Nellie decided that he would look for a house when there was definite news of Meg’s discharge from hospital but the date was constantly put back.
Nellie and Bob visited her frequently, often taking David and sneaking him into the grounds where Meg could spend some time with him, although children’s visiting was discouraged.
‘You’d have been too terrified to do this at one time,’ Bob said to Nellie.
‘I’m frightened of nothing now,’ she said grimly.
‘I believe you,’ Bob said.
Many of the men Nellie dealt with either as customers or in business seemed to think that as a widow she was easy prey. With her slight frame, her big blue eyes and deceptively gentle voice Nellie seemed very vulnerable, but they soon found their mistake.
‘Some of them try it on,’ she told Bob. ‘They see a nice little business and think they’ll get their knees under the table but they don’t get very far with me. Still, I’m glad you’re living here, Bob. That should frighten them off.’
I think they need to be more frightened of you than me, Bob thought, but he said nothing. He could see that Nellie had changed but he knew it was only a façade. To David and Meg and himself she was still a loving elder sister.
Almost unnoticed the years slipped away, filled with hard work and growing success for the cafe. Soon after his arrival Bob had arranged for his firm, Meldrum’s, to knock through some sculleries and walk-in pantries to enlarge the cafe and the kitchen. Nellie had bought the house at a reasonable figure as a sitting tenant only a month earlier.
Before long the extra tables were filled every day and more food needed. Nellie had engaged two girls to wait on the tables and a woman to help with the cooking. Winnie and her sister were still unhappy at home and when they told Nellie that their stepfather tried to force his way into their bedroom she converted the attics into a flat for them.
When at long last Meg was discharged from hospital in 1936 she told Bob that she felt nervous about running a house so they stayed on with Nellie. David moved to share Tom’s bedroom and it seemed that the family simply expanded to take in Meg and went on as before very happily.
‘It’s no wonder she feels out of touch,’ Nellie said to Tom. ‘All those years shut away.’
Tom laughed. ‘You’re a fine one to talk,’ he teased her. ‘All that’s been going on in this city and the world and you’ve never paid any attention. The Tunnel opening the year before last, the celebrations for George V and Queen Mary’s Jubilee last year and now King George dying last month and a new king and you never even noticed, did you?’
‘Why should I?’ Nellie said. ‘It’s got nothing to do with me. This is what I’m interested in, my cafe and my family.’
‘Mam, you’re incorrigible,’ Tom said laughing. ‘You should go to the pictures sometimes with Jean. See the Pathé Gazette and a film.’ He leaned over her chair and whispered, ‘And leave Meg and Bob on their own.’
Nellie only pushed him away, laughing, but later she thought over what he had said and suggested a trip to a cinema to Jean. It was the beginning of a regular outing and Nellie began to be more aware of what was happening outside her own little world.
Tom was now sixteen and when a reporter left to join the International Brigade, he was offered the job of junior reporter but he declined it.
He told his mother that although he wanted to write it was not as a reporter.
‘It’s not for me, Mum,’ he said. ‘Interviewing people after a tragedy when they want to be left alone, or trailing round garden fêtes and presentations. I’ve applied for a job in a shipping office. I think I’ve a good chance.’
‘But what will Miss Helsby say?’ Nellie said dismayed.
‘I’ve told her and she approves,’ Tom said. ‘She said she taught me Spanish because she thought it would help me to get a job with a line trading to South America, only she thought the newspaper office might appeal to me more.’
‘He knows his own mind, doesn’t he?’ Meg said.
Nellie sighed. ‘He had to grow up too fast, Meg,’ she said. ‘The way I was.’
‘It hasn’t done him any harm,’ Meg said staunchly. ‘If our David turns out like him I won’t grumble. He’s got a good chance with Tom learning him all the time.’
Nellie only smiled but she thought to herself that David was not the only one learning from Tom. She listened to him correcting David’s speech as Miss Helsby had corrected his and realised the faults in her own speech. Without saying anything to anybody she tried to correct them. It
was easier for her because Jean spoke well so the improvement in her own speech was less noticeable.
Tom secured the job and was happy in the shipping office, finding romance in the documentation he did for ships sailing to various parts of the world. He also hoped that in this milieu he might hear something of his father but he was disappointed.
He was still writing short stories and sending them to the many magazines which printed such pieces and he was often successful. Nellie almost burst with pride when the stories were published and copies of the magazines were passed from hand to hand in the cafe.
As always on such occasions she thought of Sam and how proud he would have been. She went in to serve in the cafe from time to time to see that her customers enjoyed the food and were well served and one cold morning when trade slackened she went in.
Tables occupied the space where the tea urn and counter had been and there were three tea urns in the extended kitchen. A man sat near the door, a tall man who must once have been as well built as Sam. Now his shabby clothes hung loosely on his emaciated frame and his skin seemed stretched over the bones of his gaunt face. Most of the customers ordered pie and potatoes and vegetables, followed by the pudding of the day, but Nellie also did a cheap meal of scouse or pea soup and bread and rice pudding for twopence and this was what the man had ordered.
Was this what Sam was like now? Nellie wondered as she looked at him. She had never forgotten Tom’s words about the Depression in America following the Wall Street Crash.
She filled the bowl of scouse as full as possible and cut large hunks of bread to go with it and then gave him a massive helping of rice pudding. Tea was not included but she said to the woman in the kitchen, ‘Fill a lot of mugs with tea.’
The woman looked surprised but no one argued with Nellie and she rapidly filled the pint mugs. Nellie went back to the cafe.
‘Mugs of tea on the house,’ she said. ‘A new woman’s made a mistake.’
‘Keep her on, missus,’ one man said jovially. ‘Buckshee tea tastes twice as good.’
A Wise Child Page 41