As Time Goes By (35 page)

‘I’ve missed you too,’ Sam told him.

‘It isn’t true that I still love Molly,’ he said gruffly. ‘There’s only one girl I love, only one girl for me, and that’s you, Sam. And that’s the honest truth.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me about her? Why didn’t you want me to meet your sister?’

She felt his chest lift as he breathed in and then exhaled on a deep sigh.

‘It wasn’t because I still love her. I don’t. She’s a nice girl and a good wife and a mother, but she’s not my girl.’ His hand tightened on Sam’s. ‘Yes, me and Molly were engaged, and I thought … but it was nothing more than a lad’s calf love. The thing is, well, I’ve changed a lot from the lad I was then. I was a bit wild, a bit full of meself, and that. The army knocked that out of me and brought me to me senses. That, and this war. Me sisters, though, especially our Jennifer –’ he paused again – ‘they’re good-hearted enough but they aren’t your sort, Sam, and the truth is …’ He swallowed. ‘I’m ashamed of meself for saying this, but the truth is that I was worried that it would put you off me if you were to meet our Jennifer. She’s married now but time was when she was off with a different lad ever week and our mam was at her wits’ end with her.’

‘You were ashamed of her?’

‘Not so much of her, but of what I thought she might start telling you about me when we were kids, and that you’d not want me any more.’

‘Oh, Johnny, how could you think that?’

‘I could think it easily, Sam. When Molly turned me down it left me feeling that I wasn’t good enough. Hurt me pride more than me heart, and that’s the truth. But, well, a man’s pride is important to him, Sam, and I swore then that I’d never set meself up to be brought down like that again. That’s why I tried to put you off, saying that you was too young and that. I’d told meself that falling in love was for fools and that
it wasn’t going to happen to me a second time.’

Sam made a small sound of mingled pity and pain, and Johnny gave her arm a small gentle squeeze.

‘I should have known better, but when you’ve grown up like I did, without a dad, looked down on by the neighbours, allus feeling that you wasn’t quite good enough and having to put on a bit of a show about not caring what anyone thought, well, then there’s allus a bit of that kid somewhere inside you, waiting for someone to give him a kick and tell him to take himself off.
That’s
why I didn’t tell you about me and Molly. I’m not saying that I didn’t fancy meself in love with her,’ cos I’d be lying, but it wasn’t anything like the way I feel about you. The truth is that I didn’t want you knowing that she hadn’t wanted me in case it set you off feeling the same.’

‘Oh, Johnny,’ Sam wept, ‘I love you so much.’

‘I know you do.’ His voice wasn’t as strong as it had been and Sam had to lean closer to him to catch what he was saying. ‘You came down here, didn’t you, and I know how hard that must have been for you.’

Sam gulped and then sniffed. ‘I couldn’t not do, once I knew you were here.’

‘Don’t you ever forget what I’ve just told you.’ Johnny’s voice was fading. ‘I love you, Sam, and I allus will. Never think any different.’

‘Johnny.
Johnny!
’ Sam begged him frantically as she felt him slump against her. But it was no use, he had slipped back into unconsciousness.

Whilst they had been talking the water level had risen and now she tried to lift Johnny’s head a bit higher. Why didn’t someone come?

With Johnny unconscious she felt so alone and so afraid. Her kneeling position had made her legs go numb and now her eyelids felt so heavy.

What if help didn’t come?

Maybe the best thing she could do for both of them was to let Johnny go into the water and then lie down beside him herself.

Johnny stirred in her arms, muttering something, and then said her name quite clearly and with such emotion, before losing consciousness again, that she wanted to weep.

Sam had no idea how long she had been down here in this icy tomb, her own senses slipping away from her as she kept being tempted into a dream state of warmth and safety.

‘Next Christmas you and I will be taking the boys to see Father Christmas together, and when this war’s over I’m going to buy Tommy the best train set I can find. Mm, this soup’s good, Sally. Oh, no,’ Alex groaned, putting down his spoon as they heard someone banging urgently on the front door.

‘I’ll go,’ he told Sally, but she stood up, telling him, ‘I’ll do it. You finish your soup.’

She hardly dare look at Alex in case he guessed that something had happened and demanded to know what it was. She still had no idea what on earth she was going to do. She couldn’t tell him.
She knew how he would react and how he would want to protect her. But he couldn’t; not from someone like the Boss. Someone who didn’t live by the rules.

Alex was such a decent upright man that he just wouldn’t understand how easily the Boss could damage his reputation. Once rumour got its claws into a person it never let them go. It dragged them down and destroyed them. She couldn’t let that happen to him because he loved her.

So what
could
she do?

There was only one answer, she knew that, but she could hardly bear to think of it, never mind act upon it. It ached through her like the slow painful spill of blood from a death blow. She could not, would not, allow Alex to be touched by this horror, or to be dragged down with her. There was no escape for her, she knew that; no law that could protect
her
from the kind of reprisals the Boss and her sort used to terrorise and control their victims.

No, this time she really did not have any choice than to take the boys and leave, to disappear. No choice at all. For Alex’s dear sake she must do what she knew was the last thing she wanted to do.

She crossed the hall and opened the door to find Daisy Cartwright standing outside. She was in a pitiful state of despair, and had obviously been crying.

‘We need the doctor,’ she gasped. ‘It’s our Luke, teken real bad, he’s bin …’ She was shaking and shivering, her face the colour of old yellowing putty,
and despite the way she had behaved towards her, and her own problems, Sally couldn’t help but feel sorry for her.

‘Wait here. I’ll go and tell him.’

‘Who is it?’ Alex asked her when she went back into the kitchen.

‘It’s Daisy Cartwright. She’s in a really bad way. It’s her Luke. She says he’s been taken bad.’

Alex was already standing up and wiping his mouth with his serviette, before pulling on his jacket.

As he opened the kitchen door to go into the hallway, Sally could hear Daisy telling him between sobs, ‘Bin sick all day, he has, and the other as well, you know what I mean, that bad that I could have done wi’ some nappies, and there’s blood coming now, an’ all.’

‘All right, Mrs Cartwright. Let’s go and have a look at him.’

‘I don’t know what time I’ll be back,’ Alex told Sally, putting his head round the door. ‘If he’s as bad as Mrs Cartwright says then it maybe that her son will need to go into hospital.’

Sally nodded, starting to turn away, and then unable to stop herself, she pulled him back into the kitchen, and kissed him fiercely on the mouth.

‘You are the best thing that’s ever happened to me and my kiddies,’ she told him huskily.

‘And you’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me.’

‘No, I’m not …’

‘Doctor … Doctor, are you there …?’ They
could hear Daisy calling anxiously from the hall.

He kissed her again, swiftly, before going back out into the hall. As soon as the door had closed behind him Sally sat down on a chair, put her head in her hands and began to weep.

The water was over her knees now. Sam knew that she needed to get Johnny sitting up, but she was afraid of trying to lift him in case he was too heavy for her and he slipped away from her and under the water. But if she didn’t move him then he might drown anyway before help came.

Why didn’t help come? Why?

She must get Johnny’s torso upright, she had to. As she struggled to gently lift his unresponsive frame she could hear mud sliding from the sides of the tunnel and landing on the shelf above them. Her hands were so cold she could barely feel them any more, as she used her body as a prop to try to lever Johnny into a more upright position. But it was useless, she couldn’t budge him, and the more she struggled the more she herself was getting sucked down into the mud. Her torch battery had run down what seemed like ages ago.

‘Johnny, please wake. You’ve got to wake up … please,’ she begged him, but he didn’t answer her.

Wrapping her arms round him, she bent her head over his and let the tears come. She was so cold and so tired, too cold and tired even to be afraid any more, and certainly too cold and tired to hope.

She closed her eyes.

It was the beam of bright torches that woke her, and at first, confused by their brilliance, Sam wondered light-headedly if perhaps after all she was already dead and they were the lights of heavenly angels.

The voices that called down to her were anything but heavenly, though, in their rough anxiety, yelling her name along with Johnny’s.

Collecting her bemused wits, she managed to call back, ‘Yes, we’re here!’

The torches went out and for a second she panicked, thinking that she hadn’t been heard and that their rescuers were going to go away, not realising they were here.

‘Please, please, don’t go!’ she cried out. ‘Please …’

‘It’s all right, lass …’ Corporal Willett’s voice was warm and familiar, and much closer than she expected. ‘We’ll have the pair of you out in a couple of ticks. What happened? Fell in, did you, and Johnny had to rescue you?’

‘Certainly not.’ The accusation was enough to rally her to vocal indignation.

‘So what happened then?’

She guessed that the corporal wanted to keep her talking and alert for her own benefit, so despite
her exhaustion she forced herself to answer him as lucidly as she could.

‘I saw that the lorry was here and so I came to have a look, and then I saw that the corrugated iron had been removed and the bricks stacked up, so then … so then I came to have a proper look and I realised that Johnny was down here. So I came down, and then … then when I saw that he was unconscious and in the water, with it rising, I thought I’d better stay with him. I knew someone would come looking for us.’

‘Unconscious, is he?’

‘Yes. He is now,’ Sam answered then gave a gasp as she heard a thud on the platform above her.

‘Let’s take a look-see then.’

Sam thought she had never known anything more welcoming than the warm touch of the corporal’s hand as he leaned over the shelf and grasped her shoulder.

‘Johnny’s here,’ she told him. ‘I tried to sit him up but I couldn’t so I thought if I could sit behind him I could at least lift his head. He told me that his leg is trapped.’ Her voice shook with all that she feared and dared not say.

‘Aye, it looks like some of the shoring’s gone and collapsed,’ the corporal said, adding, ‘Let’s have a butcher’s at him, then.’

Sam winced in the bright glare of the torch he switched on. Its beam was much stronger than that of her own torch and in it she could see the way the side of the tunnel next to them was bowing in,
pressing against the shoring with the weight of earth behind it, and then down into the water, where Sam could see now that the pump had somehow become wedged between two pieces of wood, trapping the lower half of Johnny’s leg beneath them.

‘Mm. Got himself in a real pickle, hasn’t he? Looks like he must have slipped and knocked himself out. He was bloody lucky you found him. Right, let’s get you out of here.’

‘You’ll have to get Johnny out first,’ Sam told him.

‘That’s all right, lass, I’ll take your place so as you can get out.’

‘No! I’m afraid that if I move he’ll slip into the water, you see. There isn’t much room.’

‘The thing is, Sam, because the pump hasn’t been working some of the shoring’s started to slip a bit.’

He was, Sam could tell, picking his words with care like a man with bare feet walking on glass, and she suspected she knew why.

‘You’re trying to tell me that the shaft might cave in, aren’t you?’

‘It’s a possibility,’ Corporal Willett agreed, ‘so let’s get you out first, shall we?’

‘No … no, Johnny goes first … I mean it,’ she stressed ‘I’m not going anywhere until I know that Johnny’s safe.’

For a moment she thought he was going to argue with her and then he gave a small grunt and called back up to the waiting men at the top of the shaft, ‘We’re going to need a sling to get Johnny
up, lads. He’s out for the count, and his leg’s trapped. Should be able to get him free fairly easily, though, by the looks of it.’

‘Hang on, there’s a sling in the lorry,’ someone shouted back.

‘By heaven, if I had a daughter it would make me ruddy proud to have one like you,’ the corporal praised Sam whilst they waited. ‘Mind you, I’d probably feel like taking me belt to her for being so bloody stupid,’ he added forthrightly.

‘Go on with you,’ Sam laughed. ‘You’re much too big a softie to do anything of the sort.’

Somehow it was easier than she had expected to keep up their shared banter and not to think about the warning he had given her, nor to hear the sound of the mud slithering down onto the platform above them, as the corporal worked quickly and competently.

‘Keep a tight hold on him, lass,’ he told Sam, as he started to remove the broken spars of wood.

Sam trembled, her stomach churning for him when Johnny cried out in pain, without opening his eyes, as the wood was removed from his legs.

‘Just as well he’s out for the count,’ the corporal told her grimly as he put the broken spars in the sling, to be hauled up to the surface, and then started to remove the now submerged pump. ‘Broken his leg, I reckon, from the angle of it,’ he grunted, as he lifted the pump away.

‘Shouldn’t his leg be splinted before you move him?’ Sam asked anxiously.

‘Ideally, yes,’ he agreed, ‘but we ain’t got ideal
conditions down there. He ain’t bleeding, and that’s a mercy and no mistake, so the best thing we can do is get him up to the surface, I reckon.’

All the men were trained in first aid, so Sam didn’t argue.

As he had been doing intermittently throughout the time she had been in the tunnel shaft with him, Johnny moaned and muttered unintelligibly as though he was returning to consciousness, before going silent again.

It seemed to Sam that it took for ever before the corporal was satisfied that Johnny had been secured safely in the sling and he was finally being slowly lifted up out of their prison, the corporal following him to make sure that his inert body did not bang into the sides of the tunnel, pausing briefly as they reached the upper level of the platform, from which the men above had removed some planks to make the shaft wide enough for the sling and what it held to get through.

Now, as they rose slowly above it, their progress blotting out the reassuring brilliance of the torches being shone down by the men waiting above ground, Sam was once again trapped in darkness.

Then to her relief she could see a torch beam and a cheerful voice called down to her, ‘On our way now, Sam.’

Shakily she exhaled her pent-up breath and then froze as there was a gathering sound of mud and debris trickling and then rushing towards her through the gap in the platform through which
they had hauled Johnny to safety, in a roar of life-extinguishing darkness.

It had happened; just what she had always feared since that first time. She was trapped down here; buried alive. Panic clawed at her thoughts in much the same way that she wanted to claw her way upwards, but she forced herself to stay calm. The men up there above her knew she was there, and they knew far better than she how best to get to her. All she had to do was keep calm and wait …

But what if they couldn’t reach her? What if the weight of the earth that that fallen on top of what was left of the platform forced it down on top of her? What if …? She could taste mud mixed in with her fear; she could feel death hovering at her shoulder, waiting.

She thought of Mouse, and her parents. She thought too of Hazel and Russell, soon to be reunited and happy, but most of all, as the seconds and the minutes of her entombment crawled by, she thought of Johnny.

Sally tensed as she heard a car pulling up outside. Unable to settle after Alex had left, still filled with the shock and despair of the debt collector’s visit and threats, as well as worrying about poor little Luke, she had started dusting the already dust-free furniture and then, when that was done, pacing up and down the kitchen, trying to work out how on earth she was going to find the strength to leave Alex, whilst knowing that for his sake she must.

‘Alex!’ She ran to open the door. ‘How’s Luke?’ she asked.

‘It’s bad,’ he told her grimly. ‘I’ve had him admitted to Mill Road. The hospital didn’t want to take him at first, but I managed to persuade them to find a bed for him.’

Because they thought so highly of him. Because he was a doctor, because he was a man who others admired and respected because of his decency and his devotion to his patients. But public opinion could be fickle. Gossip was easy to spread and could soon destroy even the best reputation.

Sally’s thoughts ripped at her heart like so many knives. It was so unfair. If she left she would be depriving her sons of the best stepfather they could have, a man they already loved and trusted, and she would be depriving Alex of them, never mind her own feelings. But what else could she do?

‘The ambulance has just collected him,’ Alex was telling her. ‘I’m on my way there myself now but I thought I’d just call here to tell you what’s happening.’

‘And Luke? I know you said it was bad, but he will get better, won’t he?’ she asked him.

To her shock Alex didn’t reply straight away and then avoided looking at her. ‘It’s going to be touch and go.’

‘What … what do you mean?’ she asked him, but she already knew the answer from his bleak expression. ‘No,’ she protested, adding when he
didn’t respond. ‘What is it? What’s wrong with him?’

‘Same as Tommy had, but much worse. His mother won’t say what he’s been eating, but my guess is that that husband of hers has been giving her tins of condemned food again. I just hope to God that this is an isolated case. He would have had a better chance if she’d got medical help earlier.’

‘Oh, Alex. Why didn’t she? It’s not as though the Cartwrights are short of a bob or two.’

‘She said something about her husband not wanting her to. Poor woman, she was in too much of a state for me to press her too hard for an explanation. I’ve got to go. They won’t have any spare doctors down at the hospital to stay with him. The poor lad’s very weak. If we can get him stabilised over the next twenty-four hours he might have a chance.’ He rubbed his hand over his eyes. ‘If only they’d called me out at the first. Don’t wait up for me, Sally,’ he told her. ‘It’s going to be morning before I get back.’

When he hugged her, Sally hugged him back fiercely, determined not to let him see her tears or guess what she was going through.

Maybe this was a ‘sign’ for her, she decided after he had gone. Maybe fate was telling her that she should leave, by providing her with the perfect opportunity to do so.

Alex had told her himself that he wouldn’t be back until morning. All she had to do was go upstairs, pack their things, wake the boys and go.

No! No, she couldn’t bear the thought of it, never mind actually doing it. It was so unfair. They had been so happy.

She had no idea where she could go or what she would do. All she did know was that she had to go to protect Alex.

She felt sick and somehow as though neither her head nor her body were working properly. It was a bit like having a bad head cold, a muzzy, vague, shaky sort of feeling that made her feel wretchedly miserable and weak.

It was dark and cold, and the mud was all around her, pressing in on her, filling her mouth and her eyes and her nose so that she couldn’t see or breathe. It pressed down on her in a heavy crushing weight. Sam tried to cry out against it but it was too late, the darkness was invading her …

‘There, it’s all right, love, you’re safe and sound now. You was just having a nasty dream, that’s all.’

Sam forced open her eyes. They were sticky with something, and her chest hurt. A nurse was bending over her.

‘Where am I?’

‘Mill Road Hospital, love. Brought you in a couple of hours back, and a real state you was in, an’ all, covered from head to foot in mud, looked like you’d been dug up out of a potato patch and according to them what brought you in you might just as well have been. Dug you out of some tunnel that had collapsed, they did.’

Sam could feel her chest starting to grow tight whilst her heart pounded.

‘Johnny?’ she managed to ask. ‘My … is he …?’

‘Sister will have my hide if she comes in and finds you awake. You get back to sleep. Sister said to put you in a private room as a bit of a treat, seein’ as what you’ve bit through.’ The nurse started to move away.

‘No, please wait,’ Sam begged her. ‘I’ve got to know. Was there … did they … Johnny …?’

‘You’re asking me about that handsome chap with the broken leg and a bump the size of an egg on the back of his head?’

‘He’s all right?’

The nurse nodded.

Sam sank back against the hard mattress, weak tears of relief blurring her eyes.

‘Unconscious, he was, when they brought him in but seemingly he’s come round now and Dr Munroe says there’s nothing wrong with him that won’t heal, thanks to a certain someone not too far away from me,’ the nurse told Sam meaningfully. ‘Now, you’d better drink this medicine the doctor said you was to have. It will help you sleep. And no more nasty dreams this time.’