Faded Dreams (15 page)

   Tears flooded her emerald eyes, giving them back the sparkle missing for so long. Relieved to see some sign of emotion after all these months, he crushed her to his chest and this time she didn’t draw back.

   ‘You daft bugger, what made you do a daft thing like that?’ he said gently. ‘Your shouldn’t take any notice of what I say when I’m upset…you know I don’t mean it. Now don’t go telling anybody else what you’ve just done or they’ll think you’ve gone doolally.’ He tapped his forehead with a forefinger to make his point.

   ‘Better go to the doctor’s in the morning and show him your arm. Tell him it were an accident or he’ll have your in the lunatic asylum sooner than you can spit.’

   He wiped her tears with the grimy rag from his pocket. ‘I’m sorry for shouting at ya cock, and telling you to piss off… I don’t ever want you to piss off sweetheart… I love you too much for that.’

   Dr Ross dressed the scald and noted the black circles under Florrie’s eyes, and the uncontrollable trembling of her thin body. He scribbled hurriedly on her medical record card and raised his head.

   ‘It isn’t just your arm that concerns me, Mrs Pomfret. You appear to be on the verge of a nervous breakdown,’ his tone was firm, but gentle. ‘You are not the first young woman to be troubled with your nerves in times like this. Women all over the world are worried about their families and the war but look how fortunate
you
are compared to some of them.’

   He rose to his feet, approaching her from behind the heavy mahogany desk. ‘Women in London have lost homes and families in The Blitz, but you have Mr Pomfret by your side, and three healthy children and a roof over your heads.’

   He opened his surgery door. ‘Now go home and count your blessings and pull yourself together for your own sake. You just have to try and be strong like the rest of us. Nobody else can help you do that, you must do it for yourself.’

   Walking home she tried to remember his advice, some of which only reinforced her sense of a world without hope. He was right,  people
were
worse off than her, people
were
suffering and dying. What a bloody world.

    She tried to take in the scene that awaited her. Joe had collected his wages, given the pub a miss and come straight home. The parlour was heavy with the smell of Mansion Furniture Polish and it struck her as odd that a fire should be roaring away in the parlour grate on an ordinary Saturday afternoon. The flagged kitchen floor had been mopped, the dishes washed and the table set with an assortment of plates and cutlery. A lamb stew bubbled away on the stove.

   ‘Me and our Betty’s done all your jobs Mum ‘cause you’ve got a sore arm and ‘cause it’s your birthday,’ Ellen said cheerfully.‘And Dad’s made the tea.’

   ‘Happy Birthday! Wait till you see your birthday present Mum, it’s a surprise,’ Betty said. ‘Me and our Ellie have made you some bananas.’

   Florrie was even more confused. Bananas? Birthday? Christ, that meant she must be 33… no wait a minute… 34…35… oh what did it matter anyway?

   Billy had never known bananas. His sisters hardly remembered them, though  for a while their image was kept alive by a large metal ‘Fyffe’s’ advertisement fastened to the outside wall of the greengrocer’s on Alexandra Road. The sign became rusty as the war rumbled on, and eventually the bright-yellow bunch of eight-feet-long ‘bananas’ turned brown and rotten. And after that the girls didn’t remember
real
bananas at all.

   So it took all their imagination to conjure up the perfect birthday present for their mother. Powdered milk was mixed with water, yellow food colouring, and banana essence to produce something that looked vaguely like marzipan. This was moulded into two banana-shaped lumps and proudly arranged on the only unchipped plate in the house.

   With half a bottle of flavouring in the ‘bananas’ their mother almost choked on their bitterness but in appreciation of their efforts she ate every scrap. 

   ‘Thanks, they were lovely,’ she said softly, then turning to her husband, ‘Thanks Joe.’

*

   Mabel's angina meant she was not well enough to live alone and without a moment’s hesitation Joe offered her his parlour as a bed-sitting room. Florrie questioned if it was asking too much to expect the two of them to live under the same roof; there had been nothing but hatred between them since they first clapped eyes on each other and her mother was not yet sixty which meant they could be taking her on for another ten or twenty years.

   Joe's  mind was made up, Mabel needed looking after and that was that. Sometimes his compassion outweighed his common sense but you couldn’t deny he had a big heart. 

   He set about making the parlour into her own private room by building a partition stretching from the front door to the middle door, well aware that if Mr Spicer, the landlord, found out what he was doing he’d chuck them all out for knocking the place to bits.  He only came to Blackburn every blue moon so Mr Haworth who ran the hardware shop next door collected the rent. Joe didn’t want Old Haworth, or “Owd Haworth” as he was commonly known, coming round investigating the banging and clattering so he did the work after the shop was locked up for the weekend.

    Six weeks after her husband took possession of his grave Mabel took possession of the Pomfrets’ parlour and systematically began to take possession of their lives. Joe had made every effort to make her room cosy yet she complained that there wasn’t room to swing a cat round - what with his piano stuck at the end of her single bed - and no room for any of her own furniture, apart from her heavy carved dresser and her rocking chair. And as if that wasn’t enough, she grumbled about the cold and the damp and demanded most of their coal rations for her parlour fire.

           Her failing health forced her to leave the gas mask factory and take a lighter job at the British Restaurant on Mayson Street where cheap and nourishing meals were served to the public. She brought home the leftovers, that were often little more than the scrapings from pans or dishes, packed into clean screw-topped two-pound jam jars. Florrie welcomed anything now that more foods, like dried fruit, rice and cereals were going on coupons.

   It was impossible for Mabel to change her ways and Florrie had no option but to accept her constant criticism and humiliation. But Joe was a different kettle of fish, he wouldn’t be ordered around by any woman least of all his mother-in-law and during the inevitable arguments he accused Florrie of siding with her.

   Mabel threatened to take her hook and go off somewhere where she would be made welcome, she knew
they’d 
never wanted her or cared about her and she should never should have broken her home up in the first place.

  
On one occasion an enraged Joe helped pack her bags, bundled her out of the front door, and sent her on her way. An hour later when she came home in an ambulance after collapsing in the market place he was left with no choice but to have her back.

   Their bickering grew more vicious and bitter until Florrie was afraid to leave them together in the house. Things came to a head one Saturday afternoon when a boozed-up Joe found  Mabel alone. Trying to conceal his drunkenness and keep his temper in check just like he kept promising Florrie he would, he went quietly about his business.

   ‘Where’s Florrie and the kids?’

   ‘What do
you
care where they are? You care bugger-all for nobody but yourself.’ She carried on without taking a breath, ‘boozing, that’s all you’re fit for, I’m surprised you bother coming home at all. If you’d sling your hook our Florrie’d be a lot better off
.
Just look at you… you drunken bugger… you’re a bloody disgrace.’

   She pursued him round the kitchen hurling more abuse till Joe had had enough. He grabbed her by the shoulders and shoved his face in hers.

   ‘Oh for Christ’s sake Ma, shut your gob, you’re like a bloody gramophone record that’s got its needle stuck.’

   She recoiled from the stale beer on his hot breath. ‘Don’t think you can walk all over
me
like you walk all over our Florrie…
she’s
too bloody soft. I never should have broke my own home up to come and live here, I’ve not been wanted here from the start… I can tell you’ve rued the day you took me in by the way you treat me like a lump of shit on the bottom of your shoe.'

   ‘You ungrateful bugger what more d’ya want?’ He shook her so violently her head lolled back and forth. ‘You’ve got your own room, I wait on ya hand and foot and what do
you
do for us lot? Nothing… apart from pinching all our coal and sticking your nose in where it’s not wanted. Now piss off in yonder and don’t show your face out here again till teatime.’

   She clutched at her chest as if a ton-weight were crushing it and collapsed onto the couch, her face contorted in pain.

   ‘Joe… help me… help me…’ she whimpered. She knew full well he was nothing more than a bloody loony but she had nobody else to turn to.

   He turned his back on her, whistling at the top of his voice, pretending he hadn’t heard.

   She tried again. ‘Fetch me pills right away… for Christ’s sake…me brandy, it’s in me handbag…be quick... me smelling-bottle…’

   ‘Fetch your own pills, you hard-faced bitch.’ He threw on his jacket and combed his hair. ‘I’ve finished with you, I’ll do bugger-all for you in future... and I’ll tell ya summat else,’ he towered over her and wagged his finger in her face, ‘if you were on fire… I wouldn’t
piss
on ya.’

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

   Slamming the door behind him Joe turned towards the pub. He downed a pint of Thwaites in one swallow and followed it swiftly by two more pints.

   Silly old bugger, he’d show her who was boss in his house. Any more messing about from her and he’d throw her straight through the front door, and
this
time she wouldn’t get back in. Florrie would have heard her mam’s side of it, so there’d be another big shouting-match to look forward to when he got home  and then they'd be on 'silent meals' for a week or two.

   The sight of the ambulance speeding away from his door was enough to sober him up; something must have happened to Florrie or the kids. He broke out into a run.  Ellen was on the doorstep with Billy clinging to her hand.

   ‘We think Granny Sefton’s had a heart attack, mum’s gone to hospital with her. She says we’ve all to wait here till she gets back.’

   Never in a million years did Joe think that he would ever be praying for his mother-in-law’s survival and yet that’s exactly what he was doing when Florrie walked in. Her red-rimmed eyes told him there’d been no one up there listening to him.

  The parlour was heavy with the overpowering smell of extravagant wreaths of chrysanthemums. Mabel lay in an elaborate cream gown inside the satin-lined box like a  an
old
doll, with one hand resting on top of the other. Joe shuffled in to pay his respects to a mother-in-law no longer red with rage at the sight of him but alabaster-pale, her mouth shut, her clattering mobile teeth having danced their last waltz. He swallowed what felt like a golf ball and made no attempt to stem the tears dripping steadily on to her marble fingers.