As Time Goes By (11 page)

Physically Bertha Harris’s eldest son was very different from the other two present, being tall and thin, with his mother’s hard eyes.

To Sally’s surprise, both the piano and the pianist proved to be good, and as she launched into the opening words of ‘Danny Boy’ the whole room went quiet.

Don’t think about this place or these people, she urged herself. Just think of the song and the words. Even here in this dreadful place the magic still worked and she could feel herself being lifted by the music, escaping to lose herself in it …

She was trembling slightly when she had
finished, oblivious to her audience, and its reaction to her singing, her own emotions reflecting those of the song.

‘I’ve heard it sung better, but I suppose it will have to do.’

The grudging words brought Sally back to reality. ‘I’m not a trained singer,’ she felt bound to say.

‘I’m not a trained businesswoman, but that doesn’t stop me being the best there is – better than any man, an’ all. Too soft by half, most of them are. Show ’em a pretty face and they lose all sense of what’s right. Sing it again. Let’s see if you can do it better this time.’

Mouse was crying. Sam could hear her as she lay wide awake in the darkness, her own eyes grittily dry. She couldn’t bear it, she really couldn’t. Something about the smothered muffled sound of Mouse’s distress tore at her heartstrings. She pushed back the bedclothes. The linoleum felt cold beneath her bare feet, the draught coming in under the ill-fitting door sending chilly little eddies of air up her pyjama legs.

‘Mouse,’ she whispered, crouching down beside her bed. ‘You must try to stop crying.’

‘I am trying, Sam, but I can’t. I’m so afraid.’

‘There’s no need for you to be,’ Sam tried to reassure her, but Mouse shuddered, shaking her head.

‘It’s all right for you, you don’t understand … you don’t know …’

She was making things worse, not better, Sam cursed herself.

‘I miss my mother so much. She used to tell me that when she was a little girl, her stepsister, my aunt, used to lock her under the stairs and then pretend she didn’t know she was there. Can you imagine that, Sam? Being left all alone in the dark. I can. I think about it a lot. I hate the dark. That’s why my mother gave me Bear. I want him back so much. I hate being here, and if I was brave like you I’d run away, only I’m not brave enough and I know now that my aunt would find me and make me come back.’

She talked more like a child than an adult, Sam reflected, a child who was more afraid of her aunt than aware that ‘running away’, as she called it, was a serious military crime.

‘I expect I’ll feel like running away myself on that parade ground tomorrow morning, especially since I’ve got a full week of jankers to look forward to, but I can’t say as I’d fancy being reported as absent without leave, and then tracked down by the Military Police and hauled back to face the music.’ Sam tried to inject a light note into her voice whilst at the same time tactfully making sure that Mouse was aware of the consequences she would be facing if she did try to ‘run away’.

But the other girl seemed to be oblivious to what she was trying to tell her, insisting emotionally, ‘I want Bear back, Sam. I can’t get off to sleep without him, and when I do I keep on dreaming about him and how upset my mother would be if she knew that I’d lost him.’

Sam couldn’t imagine how Mouse would cope if
she knew what had happened to her bear. It would be far better for her if she stopped thinking about it and accepted that she must learn to live without it, without having to know the truth. The destruction of the bear had been such a cruel and unnecessary thing to do, those viciously slashed and ripped pieces of fur surely indicating that the warrant officer actually enjoyed hurting others. Some people should not be in uniform, Hazel had told Sam, and in their different ways both the warrant officer and Mouse were two such examples, albeit at opposite ends of the scale. It was a malicious stroke of fate that they had been brought together.

‘I know I’d feel better if he were here with me,’ Mouse whispered weepily.

‘Well, that’s not going to happen, is it?’

‘No it ruddy well isn’t, not unless she goes and asks Toadie to give it back to her, and we all know she’s too scared of her to do that,’ Lynsey snapped, obviously on her way back to bed from the bathroom. ‘And I’ll tell you what else isn’t going to happen either unless the pair of you shut up,’ she added, ‘and that is the rest of us aren’t going to get any sleep. It’s thanks to you that we’ve all had our off-duty time stopped, remember. We was fine until you two got landed on us; caused us nothing but trouble, you have, wot with one of you trying to pinch another girl’s chap and the other going on about a ruddy kiddie’s toy all the time.’

Sally exhaled in a silent sigh of relief as she watched the Boss take her leave of everyone, her sons at
her side and her daughters-in-law very much in the background as they trailed behind her.

It was gone midnight. Sally’s throat ached from the combined effects of anxiety and cigarette smoke. She had hated everything about the evening, but most especially the woman in whose honour it had been organised. There was no denying the fierce maternal love Bertha Harris felt for her sons, and their children, but their wives might just as well not have existed, and Sally had heard enough during the evening about her cold-blooded treatment of those who crossed her to understand why those wives were so cowed and obedient. Her sons were loud-mouthed bullies, who liked throwing their weight around, the strong-arm men she used to make sure that no one by whom she was owed money ever made the mistake of thinking they could get away with not paying her back. Sally had become more fearful with everything she had learned.

And as if that wasn’t enough she was also worrying herself sick about her son. She couldn’t get out of her mind the memory of how he had clung to her, crying, begging her to stay. She hated herself for having had to leave him but how could she have done anything else?

The Boss and her family had gone. Sally looked around for the debt collector and was relieved when she couldn’t see him, even though it meant she would have to make her own way home.

She was halfway down the narrow steps when one of the Boss’s sons – Pete, the one the Boss had
warned her to keep away from and who Sally vaguely recalled seeing at the Grafton – came back into the pub and saw her.

‘Not thinking of leaving us, were you?’ he demanded, giving her a drunken leer. ‘Fun’s only just about to start.’

He started up the stairs, so Sally had to turn back. There wasn’t room for both of them and besides, she had no wish to provoke him. She had overheard how he reacted to someone’s comment about his wife’s black eye, replying grimly, ‘Aye, and she’ll get another one if she doesn’t watch out. Miserable good-for-nothing. Don’t know why I married her.’

When she regained the top of the stairs, Sally turned to let him go past her but instead he reached out and grabbed hold of her arm, pushing his face so close to hers that she could smell his stale beer breath.

‘How about giving us a kiss?’ he demanded.

‘I’m a married woman,’ Sally told him firmly, just as she had told his mother earlier. ‘My husband’s in the army.’

‘I’m a married man and my wife should be in the army,’ he retaliated, roaring with laughter at his own joke, as he wrapped one arm around her, then pinched her cheek painfully hard with his free hand. ‘Come on then and sing summat for us.’

‘I really have to go,’ Sally protested. ‘My little boy isn’t very well …’

‘Aw, shame …’

He had dropped his free hand to her waist and
she could feel its heat as he moved it upwards towards her breast.

Sally could hardly believe this was happening. Her throat tightened and locked with fear and revulsion when he pushed her back against the wall and tried to kiss her, whilst a couple of the other male guests watched, laughing and cheering him on.

Sally didn’t know what would have happened if one of them hadn’t suddenly called out warningly, ‘Watch out, Pete. Your Kieron’s on his way back up.’

Kieron, Sally remembered from the pianist, was the eldest of Bertha Harris’s sons, tall and thin where the other four were squat and broad, sober apparently where they were drinkers, and as Sally had discovered earlier in the evening, disconcertingly given to reading out aloud passages from the Bible he carried with him. He was also unmarried, and Sally had been told by his doting mother that he should have been a priest. It was Kieron, Sally had learned, who was his mother’s first lieutenant and who put into action those orders she gave for beatings and worse to be handed out to those she felt deserved them. If it had not been for the weight of her maternal guilt and anxiety about Tommy, Sally knew that she would have spent the evening feeling even more appalled and scared than she had. For a mother, though, when her child was ill, that anxiety came before anything else.

To her relief Pete was now releasing her but so roughly that she fell against the roughly plastered
wall, hurting her arm. She didn’t waste any time. As soon as Kieron was on the landing, she slipped away and hurried down the stairs.

It was nearly half-past twelve and it would take her a good half an hour to walk home. Her head was aching and her heart thumping.
Why
had this had to happen to her? Why couldn’t Ronnie have seen sense and kept his promise to her not to gamble or borrow any more money? It was all right for him; he’d had his fun and now she was left to pay for it. He’d reckoned to love her and their sons so much but he’d got a funny way of showing it, leaving her with a load of debt. It had been bad enough before, but now … And where was he anyway, going and getting himself made a prisoner of war of the Japs, and then not even bothering to write to her and let her know that he was safe? And he could have done. That was what the Red Cross was there for, wasn’t it, to see that captured soldiers wrote home to their families?

The misery and anxiety the evening had brought her was driving her thoughts. It was all very well Ronnie doing his bit for his country but what about her and the boys – who was going to watch out for them? Who was going to protect them? How was she supposed to cope with someone like the Boss all on her own? There was no one for her to turn to, no one to help her or care about her.

Tears of anger and self-pity burned her eyes and hastened her footsteps, until suddenly she came to
an abrupt halt, filled with guilt and shame. How could she be so unloving and selfish? It wasn’t Ronnie’s fault that he wasn’t here, or that he was a prisoner of war. Poor Ronnie. Sally looked up at the night sky. All she knew about Singapore was the fuss there had been in the paper when it had surrendered – not because of the men killed and taken prisoner, but because now Britain would not have access to those much-needed supplies that had come into the country via Singapore. But what did she care about supplies when what she needed was the strong supportive presence of her husband to confront the threat she was facing?

What was she going to do? What could she do? She felt so helpless, so vulnerable and so very much in the power of Bertha Harris and her sons.

Things had been bad enough when she had been paying off their debt to old Mr Wade, but now … Fresh tears filled Sally’s eyes. It’s no use you crying, she told herself, and let’s have none of that you don’t know how you’re going to manage. You’ll have to.

She had been walking so fast that she had to stop as she turned into Chestnut Close because of the stitch in her side. Perhaps she could ask around and see if any of the other dance bands wanted a singer. If she could get a solo spot then she’d be paid more and she might even end up singing on the wireless like Gracie Fields or Vera Lynn. The thought that she could come anywhere near rivalling the success of two of the country’s best-loved singers was enough to have her laughing.
There was no point in her feeling sorry for herself; she’d just have to pull herself together and get on with things as best she could.

No light showed through the blackout curtains as she turned the key in the lock of her front door, but Doris was obviously awake and waiting for her, Sally realised guiltily as the door was opened from the inside before she could turn the handle.

Only it wasn’t Doris standing there in her hallway, it was her son, Frank, his expression sombre.

‘Frank!’ Sally exclaimed. ‘What is it? What are you doing here? Where’s your mother? What—’

‘There’s bad news, Sally. Mam sent word, and me and Molly decided that it would be better if I waited here to tell you. I’m sorry, lass, but it’s little Tommy.’

‘Tommy? What do you mean? What’s happened?’ She looked frantically towards the stairs, but Frank shook his head.

‘He’s not here, Sally. He’s up at Mill Road Hospital – doctor’s orders.’

‘In hospital?’ Sally shook her head. ‘No, no, he can’t be. There was nothing wrong with him when I left, not really … just a bit of tummy ache, that was all. All kiddies get that.’ Her voice broke and she looked pleadingly at Frank. ‘Doris said it was nothing, just a bit too much excitement, that’s all.’

She could see that Frank was looking at her with a mixture of discomfort and sadness in his eyes but somehow she still couldn’t take in what he was saying.

‘Mam went to the hospital with him, and she took Harry along with her as well. Seemingly the doctor wanted … that is, he thought it best …’ Frank told her awkwardly. ‘Mam asked me to wait for you and tell you what’s happened.’

‘
Both
of them! Both of them are at the hospital?’ She started to shake with shock so violently that her teeth were clattering together.

‘You’d better sit down for a minute,’ Frank suggested tiredly.

‘No … no! I’ve got to go to the hospital. My boys … What’s happened, Frank, tell me?’ How could she sit down when her sons, her babies, were so sick that they had had to be taken to hospital? No one took their children there unless they were desperately ill.

‘Mam said that he took bad after you’d left, being sick and crying for you,’ Frank was saying. ‘In the end he was that bad that she decided to send for the doctor, that new one, you know, that’s taken over from Dr Jennings, especially with it being in the papers about them kiddies in Glasgow having smallpox back in June.’

Smallpox! Doris was a trained nurse; if she had felt it necessary to send for a doctor then that meant … Sally was still shivering, yet at the same time she felt as though she was burning up, being consumed by the fires of hell for going out and leaving her sick child.

‘Mam told Dr Ross that she reckoned it was that fish paste of Daisy’s, but she just wanted to be sure. The doctor took one look at Tommy and said that he was too poorly to stay at home and that he wanted him in the hospital, so Mam got them both wrapped up and then the doctor took the three of them down to Mill Road in his car there and then. Before she left Mam asked Mrs Brent next door to slip down to us and tell us what was happening, so I came straight up here and said I’d wait for you to get back.’

‘Did the doctor say anything else – about it being smallpox?’

‘I don’t know any more than what I’ve told you, Sally,’ Frank replied. ‘Try not to worry. Like as not it will be them sandwiches.’

‘But if it
was
just a bit of fish paste that was making him sick, then why has he had to go to hospital?’ Sally asked shakily, unable to take in what had happened and in too much of a shocked state to think straight.

‘I don’t know. That’s something you’ll have to ask the doctor.’ Was that disapproval she could hear in Frank’s voice? If so, it was nothing to the guilt she herself was feeling.

‘I should never have gone out and left him,’ she whispered, more to herself than to Frank. ‘I didn’t want to, I really didn’t, but I had no choice.’

‘Come on, don’t go getting yourself even more upset,’ Frank urged her gently.

‘I’m going to the hospital, Frank. I’ve got to see him – both of them.’

‘They won’t let you on the ward. Not until visiting hours.’

‘They’re my kiddies and no one is going to stop me being with them,’ Sally told him defiantly, already turning to leave.

‘Molly said as how you’d say that,’ Frank told her. ‘Hold up a minute, I’ll walk you there.’

Sally gratefully accepted his offer.

How lucky Molly was, having her husband on home duties, and how lucky she was too to have a good steady man like Frank. Frank would never gamble or borrow money; he just wasn’t the sort. Molly would never need to take on all
the work she could get to pay off his debts, nor would she have to endure what Sally had had to go through tonight. Why had the doctor taken Tommy
and
Harry to the hospital? A bit of sickness, that was all he’d had, but what if it wasn’t just a bit of sickness? What if was smallpox? Kiddies had died in Glasgow … Her thoughts were going round and round inside her head, whilst her heart thumped with frantic anxiety. She started to walk faster, until she was almost running, causing Frank to lengthen his stride to keep up with her, but Sally was oblivious. All she could think about was her precious sons and her fear. What had
they
ever done to deserve something like this?

They had almost reached the hospital when an ambulance raced past them in the darkness, its doors opening almost before it had stopped. Sally could hear the low tortured groans of the man being stretchered into the hospital.

‘Hello there, Frank,’ the driver called out.

‘What’s happened?’ Frank asked him

‘He’s one of them bomb disposal lot,’ the driver said, nodding in the direction of the disappearing stretcher. ‘Working on a bomb, they was, when it went off. He was lucky. He’s lost his legs, but the rest of them didn’t have a chance. Blown to bits, they was. That’s the second lot gone inside a month. Oh, begging your pardon, missus, didn’t see you there.’

Sally shook her head.

‘You wouldn’t know who they were, them as
was killed, would you?’ Frank asked the driver, in concern.

Despite her anxiety to get to her sons Sally could well understand why Frank was asking. The moment the driver had mentioned the bomb disposal men she had thought of Johnny.

‘Sorry, mate, no.’

‘Look, Frank, there’s no need for you to come any further with me,’ Sally told him quickly.

‘If you’re sure …’

She could see that he was torn between wanting to stay with her and wanting to find out more about the bomb blast so she gave him a small push and told him firmly, ‘I’m sure.’

The entrance to the hospital was busy with nurses coming on and going off duty, and it took Sally several precious minutes to find out where her children were.

‘He’s Dr Ross’s patient, you say?’ the sister on duty asked her, pursing her lips.

‘Yes. That’s right. All my little lad had wrong with him was a bit of tummy ache. I’m sure there wasn’t any need for Dr Ross to go bringing him in here.’

‘That’s for the doctor to say, and doctors don’t go admitting patients unless they think there’s a need. He’ll be up on the children’s ward, but since it’s not visiting time until …’

Sally wasn’t listening to her. The nurse’s words were beating a slow terrifying tattoo into her head like the dark measured beat of a funeral march.

Until this war had brought them its injured
soldiers and bombed civilians, the only time people like her had gone into hospital had been to give birth or to die, and sometimes, in the case of a woman, both at the same time, and just the fact that he was in a hospital made Sally feel as though the hand of death had already touched her vulnerable little boy. Inside her head there were so many treasured pictures of him: the day she had given birth to him, earlier than she had expected, her birth pangs mingling with the shrill wail of the air-raid siren, whilst Doris and a scared-looking Molly had helped her upstairs to Frank Brookes’s old bedroom. How fearful and resentful of the new life causing her so much pain she had been then, and how little she had known about the true nature of the pain a child could cause its mother. She would go through those birth pains again a hundred, no, a thousand, times over now if in return she could know that her son was safe and well.

After hurrying along what felt like miles of disinfectant-smelling corridors, she saw the doors to the ward up ahead. Almost running the last few yards, Sally pushed them open. The smell of disinfectant was even more overpowering inside the dimly lit ward with its rows of beds. A nurse, with an angry frown and a thin pinched mouth, came hurrying towards her.

‘What are you doing?’ she demanded. ‘You can’t come in here. It isn’t allowed.’

‘I want to see my little boy. He’s been brought in this evening by Dr Ross.’

If anything, the nurse was now looking even more sour and critical.

‘You’ll have to come back during visiting hours.’

‘I want to see him now.’

‘That’s not possible. It’s against the rules.’

A second nurse appeared out of the gloom, demanding in a cold voice, ‘What’s going on here, Nurse?’

‘I’m sorry, Sister, it’s the mother of that little ’un we’ve got in the side ward, the one Dr Ross brought in. She wants to see ’im but I’ve told her she’ll have to come back at visiting time.’

‘Yes, that’s right,’ the sister confirmed, but Sally wasn’t listening, pushing past them both in her desperation. The sister caught hold of her arm, already bruised from the rough handling she had received earlier, but somehow Sally managed to break free.

‘Nurse, go and call for a porter to remove this woman immediately.’

‘I want to see my sons, and I’m not leaving until I have seen them. They’re my children …’

‘Nurse, the patient in …’ a new voice joined the conversation, and it was one that Sally would have recognised anywhere, thanks to that Scottish accent! Still trying to free herself from the sister’s painful grip she insisted, ‘I want to see my sons,’ at the same time as the sister was complaining, ‘I’m sorry, Dr Ross, but she just burst in here without a by-your-leave and now she’s refusing to go.’

‘Where are my boys? What have you done with
them?’ Sally was trying to remain steadfast and determined but fear was weakening her, making her voice tremble along with her body, and taking her to the edge of hysteria.

Ignoring her, the doctor turned to the two nurses, telling them calmly, ‘Thank you, Sister. I’ll deal with this matter now, seeing as the boy is my patient. And thank you for finding him a bed.’

‘You’re welcome, Doctor. I wouldn’t have wanted to turn him away, not seeing as how poorly he is, and his mother not being there to look after him, poor little mite,’ the sister responded, giving Sally an acid look of contempt before nodding to her subordinate to return to her post.

The doctor waited until they were out of earshot before acknowledging that she had spoken, looking past her rather than at her as he said coldly, ‘Will you please stop making so much noise? There are children on this ward, who, unlike your sons, are not fortunate enough to have strong recuperative powers, and who, being extremely poorly indeed, need their sleep.’

In any other circumstances those cutting words would have filled Sally with guilt, shame and concern for the poor children and their mothers, but right now she couldn’t think or feel beyond the relief his words had brought her.

‘My boys are all right?’

A small inclination of his head was all the response Dr Ross gave her, as though he begrudged her the comfort of actual words. What kind of man was he? He seemed not to have any normal
human feelings at all, at least not that Sally understood. It was almost too much for her to take in: such intense fear, followed by an equally intense relief, and now anger surging through her so powerfully that she felt physically dizzy.

‘They haven’t got smallpox then?’

‘Smallpox? You mean you went out and left them thinking …? No, they haven’t got smallpox.’

The relief tipped her over the edge of self-control.

‘Well, if they’re all right, why won’t you let me see them?’ she challenged him furiously. ‘Why are they in here, and where’s Doris?’

‘If you mean Sister Brookes, I have sent her down to the nurses’ sitting room so that she can have a rest. She isn’t a young woman, and being left with the responsibility of a very sick child whilst his mother goes out enjoying herself—’

Sally recoiled as though she had been hit. ‘I had to go. Doris knows that. I had no choice … I was working. I have to work.’

‘Working? At a dance hall, the way you were the other night?’

The scorn in his voice made Sally’s face burn. ‘I have no choice,’ she repeated fiercely. ‘There’s a war on, you know!’

‘No choice other than to leave a sick child so that you could go out and sing? Somehow I don’t think that’s what the Government had in mind when they said that the country’s women had to enrol for war work. The age of your younger child means—’

‘I know how old my kiddies are, thank you very much, but what I don’t know is who gave you the right to go bringing them in here, especially seeing as you’re telling me now that there’s nothing wrong.’

‘What I said was that they were all right now. When Sister Brookes called me out to see your elder son, he was very poorly indeed, extremely poorly in fact,’ Dr Ross stressed, ‘and his condition made it imperative in my opinion that he be nursed under the care of a responsible person. Since it was obvious to me that his mother could not be relied on to be that person, I had no option other than to have him admitted here. As for your younger child …’ he paused, and now he was looking at her Sally caught her breath as she saw the condemnation in his gaze, ‘if you can’t look after your children yourself then why haven’t you taken advantage of the Government’s evacuation scheme and sent them into the country where they can be cared for properly and safely?’

‘My kiddies’ place is with me. I’m their mother.’ Like every other mother she knew, Sally dreaded the thought of being parted from her children.

‘I notice that your younger child has several bad bruises.’

‘Him and Tommy are always fighting.’ She wanted to see her boys, not listen to this man, whom she knew disliked her every bit as much as she did him, going on about a few bruises.

‘And I found that when touched he has a tendency to cry out in fear.’

Sally’s mouth compressed with growing irritation. ‘That’s because you’re a man. He isn’t used to men, on account of his dad being in the army, just like a lot of other kiddies’ dads.’

‘If that’s true then surely that’s all the more reason why you, his mother, should be with your children just as much as you possibly can.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘I should have thought my meaning was self-evident, Mrs Walker. This evening, despite the fact that you knew your elder son was feeling poorly, you went out to a dance hall—’

‘I was going there to work. I don’t have any choice, I need the money.’ Sally regretted her emotional admission the moment the words left her mouth but of course it was too late to recall them.