Annie's Promise (15 page)

Staff Williams blushed and Annie smiled.

‘I think perhaps I can manage, I do hope you like the sweater she’s knitting you.’

Dr Smythe laughed. ‘The patients seem to like the click of the needles, that’s all.’

Oh no it isn’t, my fine lad, Annie thought, feeling old as she watched them brush hands on their way to the door. But yes, I expect the patients do like the timeless sound of knitting needles, I always did.

She looked at the chart now, straightened Georgie’s sheets, checked the corners. Oh yes, very good, Staff Nurse, she thought, then sat again watching him, glad too be alone with him at last, glad to be able to lean over and kiss his eyes, his lips, his fingers one by one. The smell of his skin was
coming back, the shock was almost gone and soon the pain would begin.

‘I must get back to work, Annie,’ he murmured and she bent over him, holding his face lightly in hers, brushing his lips with her kisses, feeling the response in his.

‘No, there’s no need.’

‘There’s no money, Annie. We’ve debts.’

‘I said there was no need. I shall nurse, my love.’

He jerked his head. His fingers gripped hers, saliva ran from his mouth – she released his hand, wiped his lips with gauze. ‘I shall nurse as I’m doing now – see, there’s nothing wrong with me.’

His eyes were flickering, his mouth working. ‘You mustn’t, you mustn’t.’ His voice was rising, his breathing erratic, his head was turning from side to side. ‘Get me up out of here. Get me back to work.’

The nurse came in, saw, called the doctor, asked Annie to leave. She sat on the bench, looking out across the city, out at the lightness of the sky above the sea and didn’t think, didn’t feel, just clenched her hands until they came and said he was asleep again, though he had been very disturbed and that was dangerous now. Very dangerous.

She cursed herself, knowing that she had nearly killed him.

The next morning he told her again that he must return to work and this time she said there was no need to rush, now that they had the mail order up and running. They had used Manners’ pants – there was nothing to worry about, nothing, and his face cleared, his fingers touched hers and Staff Nurse smiled at her before she went off duty.

That evening Sarah sat with Georgie while Annie bought Tom tea in the canteen and told him about the lie she had told Georgie.

‘But it needn’t be a lie,’ she continued. ‘I’m going to put up the house as security, get a loan, set up a mail shot – it’s all I can do.’

Her spoon was stirring, clinking, why did she do that when she was tense? Why did anyone do anything? Tom was
holding his cup between two hands, bending his head to it – he always did that when he was thinking.

‘We should have done that in the first place, we should have listened to you, bonny lass.’

‘No, you can’t say that. Manners’ order might have worked.’

‘Then why didn’t it, Annie? What went wrong?’ Tom slurped his tea, his shoulders hunched.

‘I don’t know. It could have been that the outlets weren’t as willing to take them as Manners thought or maybe he was over-extended, just couldn’t pay us, or he found someone cheaper. We’ll never know, but it’s happened before and it’ll happen again. Come on, let’s go for a walk, I could do with some air.’

Tom grinned at her, putting his cup in the saucer, pushing back his chair. ‘You could do with a fag, you mean.’

‘How well you know me.’

The evening air was cool, the days were so long. Was it really still only the first week of June? It seemed as though it should be December. Annie smelt the roses, touched them. ‘Has anyone watered my lavender?

‘Bet’s been in each day, don’t worry.’

‘So, what d’you feel about the mail shot, shall we go for it?’ Annie asked, drawing deeply on her cigarette, blowing the smoke high into the air, looking back at the hospital. Which was his room?

Tom was breathing in her smoke. ‘I’d kill for one of those.’

She shook her head. ‘Shall we go for it?’

‘It’s all we can do, especially as we have Manners’ sets.’

Annie stopped, dropped her cigarette on to the ground, stood on it, picked it up, tossed it into the waste bin. ‘That’s the problem, Tom, we can’t use those.’ She put her hand up as he turned to her. ‘We can’t. If Manners saw the advertisement he might just cause trouble, write in explaining that they had been rejected once. We can’t risk it for the first one. We’ve got to make our name and we’ll run those out for the next shot, just change the trim.’

Tom nodded. ‘Yes, I can see your point.’

‘So, I’ll have to get a loan against the house, get supplies in not just for the first mail shot but for more of Manners’ pants. We must get the same roll runs that we had for those while the suppliers still have them, put it ‘under the counter’ until we need it. But Georgie mustn’t know about the loan or the new designs. Can you get some drawn up?’

They were walking out of the gates now, their heels clicking on the pavement. Were Staff Nurse’s needles clicking in Georgie’s room? Annie looked at her watch. ‘I must get back, be within earshot, just in case.’

Tom linked his arm in hers, turning her, squeezing her. ‘What about his legs?’

‘I don’t know, all I know is that he’s alive and that’s the first problem over.’

They walked in silence up the drive, into the hospital. ‘We’ll share the loan,’ Tom said. ‘I’ll sort it out with the bank. I’ll bring in the designs, I’ll speak to Gracie and Brenda, get them alerted. You just relax, stay with him, get him better.’

‘We’ll need to set up the advertisement too, book the space, provide the copy and a sketch. Let’s make it twenty-eight-day delivery; that will give us three weeks to clear the cheque, package, and a week for delivery.’

Tom smiled, ‘Fine. Don’t worry.’

The next day she sat with Georgie as he drifted in and out of consciousness and each time his eyes opened he said, ‘Why are you here, why aren’t you working?’

‘Tom is doing it.’

‘He can’t be, he has work to do. I should be up. I shouldn’t be here.’

His breathing was irregular again, his pulse weaker, and the doctor said that she should go, if only for the morning because it was hindering his recovery.

When he came to again he said once more, ‘Why are you here, why aren’t you working?’ and she told him that she was waiting for Tom, that she would go home with him
this evening and return tomorrow in the afternoon and then Georgie rested, his breathing calmed, his pulse too.

Sarah wouldn’t speak to her in the car, she sat stiff and straight until Tom stopped at the verge and turned. ‘The doctors told your mam to come home, get the business going. They told her to do that because your da is worrying, it’s making him worse. Now stop being such a claggy little beggar and smile – look, you’ve made the sun go down.’ He pointed to the darkness ahead and around them and Sarah glared, then smiled, then laughed. ‘It’s gone down because it’s ten at night, Uncle Tom, and if that’s what the doctors said then that’s all right.’

Annie and Tom raised their eyebrows at her.

‘So all I have to do to get you to tidy your room next time is to give Dr Smythe a call, is it?’ Annie asked, and laughed when Sarah sighed, and said, ‘Bet and Aunt Gracie haven’t made me do anything while you’ve been away.’

‘Tough, I’m home now, so it’ll be the hardship of Armstrong life again my girl, I just don’t know how you’ll survive.’

They rang the hospital when Tom dropped them off and all was well, then Annie cooked Sarah’s favourite macaroni cheese, and they sat together for half an hour, just talking, thinking, stoking the fire. ‘He’ll be home soon will he, Mum?’

‘Very soon I hope, but he needs another operation, just to check his legs.’

That night Annie sat up in bed drawing up plans for the mail shot, confirming twenty-eight-day delivery, deciding on just three sizes and a choice of two colours.

In the morning she rang the wholesalers, reserving more of the Manners cloth, white and cream cotton for the first mail shot. She spoke to the bank manager and they arranged that Tom would liaise for them both, then she drove back to the hospital for the afternoon, holding Georgie’s hand and telling him of the advertisement Tom was drawing up. She
pushed down the thought that it could all go wrong. It mustn’t, it wouldn’t.

She stayed at the hospital all night, driving back early the next day, calling in on Brenda and Meg, putting them on stand-by. She gave up her stall in Wassingham Market but arranged to supply the new trader. She ran up samples of Tom’s designs. Yes, they were good, the trim was broderie anglaise, quite expensive but would look good on the advertisement. Could they get free publicity, a feature? She would write to the newspaper in which they set the advert. Tom had decided on
The Mail
.

She drove back to the hospital, taking Bet with her and now there were two pairs of needles clicking and Georgie smiled then and laughed and the doctor had a glint in his eye and the Staff Nurse a ring on her finger. Annie wished them well when the doctor called her out of the room, telling her that they were operating on Georgie the next day, they were concerned for his legs, especially the left.

She told Georgie quietly as Bet drank tea in the canteen with Sarah who had arrived with Tom and Gracie. He nodded, his eyes sunken now with pain, though he said nothing, and she wanted to hold him, take him far from here, but all he said was, ‘But the business is all right? The mail shot is going through?’

When Tom took the others home, Georgie told her to go too. ‘You must have work to do, or it’ll not go well, you know.’

She drove home with Sarah and there was no stiffness between them now, there was just fear at the thought of tomorrow. They ate without appetite sitting either side of the range, their plates on their laps, and Bet stayed with them, taking Annie’s plate from her as the phone rang and she ran to pick up the receiver. Was it the hospital?

No, it was a market trader from South Warnsted, one of those who had dropped her. ‘We heard about your man at a meeting last night,’ he said. ‘Deliver what you can, we’ll take the lot.’

Five more rang that night and two in the morning. She told Georgie as she sat with him and his smile brightened eyes that were clouded with pain and a face deeply lined.

He was wheeled to the theatre at two and Tom brought Sarah as Annie had asked. Together they sat in the corridor for the two hours it took, waiting for Mr Adcock to come out and tell them that he was fine, he had come through, his right leg and been tidied up nicely though his left was still giving cause for concern.

The Staff Nurse took Sarah for a cup of tea and Mr Adcock told Annie that he might have saved the left leg, he wouldn’t know for a while and she nodded because what else could she do.

Tom held her though, when Adcock had gone, gripping her tightly, not speaking. How could he speak without his voice breaking because Annie was so tired, so thin, so brave, and so was Georgie and none of this was fair.

That night Georgie was in post-operative shock but rallied in the morning, then sank, then rallied, and sank again. His cheeks were hollow, his eyes too and Annie signed the forms that Tom brought in from the bank, reading them line by line because there were to be no mistakes this time. Georgie would need a firm to run. Yes he would, he bloody well would she said inside her head, pushing aside the look of him, pushing aside the smell of him, the weakness of his pulse, the quietness of his breathing. She wouldn’t let him die.

She took Sarah in to see him when she arrived, telling her it was much worse than it looked, much much worse. He stabilised in the afternoon and the pain tore at him, and his eyes sank deeper into their sockets until they gave him pain killers and he drifted again.

Annie used Staff Nurse’s phone to ring Brenda and Meg, setting them on to work on the traders’ stock, telling them to give the completes to Tom and he would bring them in for checking. She couldn’t get home tonight.

‘How is he?’ Brenda asked.

‘Holding his own.’ And he was, just.

She sent Sarah to bed in the hospital room at eight p.m. and checked through the stock. All but ten were perfect. Meg’s smelt of smoke again and she told Tom to hang them on her airer overnight. Brenda could re-do the rejects. Could Gracie deliver to the traders tomorrow?

Tom nodded, showing her the figures for the week. Thanks to the traders there would be enough to pay the household bills. He also brought her a letter for Georgie from Don, asking when he could come and visit.

‘Not yet,’ Annie said, looking towards Georgie’s room. ‘Best not yet.’

The next day Adcock told her that the antibiotics had lost the battle, the leg was gangrenous and must be removed if he was to be saved, and Annie nodded. Somehow she had always known it, and her heart broke for Georgie and for Sarah when she told her because the child looked old and crushed and in pain – just as she felt.

In the theatre Adcock worked fast, severing the left leg well above the knee, sewing the flap of skin over the bone but Georgie was weakening, his pulse was becoming faint. He tidied, finished. ‘The heart’s stopped,’ the anaesthetist called.

There was a stillness, a silence, then Adcock jabbed with a needle, took Georgie’s wrist, and felt nothing. He waited and then there was a thread, a flutter. ‘He’s there.’

Adcock finished, and George was wheeled to intensive care.

Adcock spoke to Annie. ‘He’s in shock again but he should recover, he’s very strong, though there’s always a risk, my dear.’

Annie nodded. She knew that, oh yes, she knew that. She and Sarah waited. It seemed to be all that they’d ever done.

Georgie woke fourteen hours later and Staff Nurse was there, but no knitting – how strange – then the darkness came.

He woke again to streaming sunlight, to searing pain, to parched thirst, to a nurse who was holding his wrist.

‘Please, it hurts.’

‘It’ll ease,’ she soothed, wetting his lips which were cracked and dry.

It didn’t ease, even when Annie came it didn’t ease and he couldn’t bear the touch of anyone’s hand, even hers. He couldn’t bear the pain.