Faded Dreams (30 page)

   Ellen wondered if her mum would change now that things were different at home, or would she go on aggravating her dad till it finished in a massive row, followed by sweet talk and kisses a few days later. Well at least there might be less friction with two of them, her and Betty, out of the house.

    And what about her dad? Yes, she would miss
him
more than she missed any of the others; the way he made her laugh till her cheeks ached,  his vitality that filled every corner of the house.

   Of course he’d always had his dark side when they’d all felt they were being tossed in a cement mixer for days on end. But from an early age she had recognised his inner turmoil and childlike vulnerability and had been his staunch  ally, “siding” with him against the rest.

   Whenever he was ill, real or imagined, she’d been the one who’d worried that he would die, but what would happen now if he was genuinely ill while she was 6000 miles away? She shed what few tears she had left and settled down to sleep.

*

   The man towering above the crowd and holding a board labelled “Ellen Pomfret” was good-looking enough but not as handsome as her dad. Staggering towards him, under the weight of her suitcases, she identified herself and was immediately surrounded by his four excited children and their mother.

   ‘Welcome to California, Ellen. Welcome to our family,’ the woman smiled as her husband loaded Ellen’s luggage into a trolley. ‘You must be exhausted after the long trip, but we’ll be home in an hour.’

   Ellen climbed into the back of the biggest car she had ever seen. As they left the city to join the broad freeways she forced herself to stay awake, spellbound by road-signs of places she’d only heard of in films...Santa Monica, Pasadena, Long Beach, San Diego, and most exciting of all… Hollywood.

   Just wait till she wrote and told Betty about this. They hadn’t fulfilled their childish dreams of becoming Hollywood film-stars but this was the next best thing. Give or take a couple of hundred miles or so she would be living with this family of strangers right on Hollywood’s doorstep. This was her new life, she would be re-named Nanny Malk, after her new family…and she would have to try not to worry so much about her dad.

A year or so later with Ellen now settled in her new life at the other end of the world there was no point in telling her about her father’s next brush with death.  After surgery to remove a lump in his testicle Florrie took him to Blackpool to recuperate.

   He knew of an antique shop close to the Promenade where he hoped an old copper kettle of his might raise a bob or two. It was a bit worse for wear but he polished it till he could see his face in it. 

   Arriving at the boarding house the first thing he looked for was the chamber pot - the surgical juggling of his balls having left him with an urgent need to relieve himself during the night.

   ‘Well I’ll be buggered Florrie,’ he was on his hands and knees peering under the bed. ‘What d’ya think? There’s no jerry… how am I gonna manage all night without one?’

    He couldn’t possibly ruin his perceived debonair persona with the rather glamorous landlady by asking to provide one, but he was nothing if not resourceful. The following morning he emptied his antique copper kettle into the tiny sink at the end of the bed and watched his pee disappear down the plughole.

   ‘I might of known this old kettle would come in ‘andy,’ he chuckled.

   At the end of the week he rinsed the kettle as best as he could and squirted a few drops of Florrie’s “Evening In Paris” inside to mask the smell of ammonia.

   The antique dealer, a flamboyant individual in purple trousers, velvet jacket and paisley cravat, examined it inside and out and offered £15. Joe pursed his lips and drew in a deep breath of disbelief.

   ‘Oh I daren’t let it go for less than twenty quid. I’m selling it for a pal of mine, he’s a well-known antique dealer in Manchester. He’ll play
herry
if I don’t get a good price for it, it belonged to The Duke Of Devonshire once upon a time, you know.'

   After a pause to give the dealer time to think, he went on, 'Anyway, never mind, I have a couple of other dealers to go to in Blackpool,
they’ll
know a bargain when they see one.’ 

   He picked up the kettle as if that was his final word and then held it to his nose before passing it back across the counter. ‘You’ve probably noticed it smells a bit funny but
that’s
because of its age.’

   The dealer sniffed loudly into the kettle, ‘Ah yes, I’ve often had items with exactly that same odour,’ he said loftily. ‘But of course
that’s
nothing new to those of us in the trade.’ He thought for a minute. ‘Very well, I’ll take it off your hands for £20.’

   The triumphant pair walked along The Promenade with Joe spitting on his thumb to count out the four fivers.

   ‘You’re a daft bugger Joe Pomfret,’ Florrie shook her head, ‘ I don’t know how you have the cheek!’

   He pocketed the notes and threw his arm around her waist, tickling her till she shrieked.

   ‘Aye, Florrie, he’s got a bargain… two for the price of one, kettle and piss-pot combined. When he brews himself a pot of tea tonight he’ll get a bit of extra flavour with it, snobby old sod.’

   A week in Blackpool wasn’t enough to revitalise him completely and he continued to make a meal out of his hospital experience whenever he had an audience of more than one.

                       ‘That surgeon must have been a bloody juggler or a conjurer… I went in hospital with three balls an’ I came out with one…don’t ask me how.  Reckoned he’d never seen the likes of it in all medical history. And now, one of me balls is in a jam-jar on ‘is desk so that the professors can come and have a look at it an’ learn all about it.’

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

   When poor health forced Joe to retire in his early fifties he was not unduly worried, unlike Florrie, who was at her wit's end. Billy was practically a young fella and growing out of his school uniform fast and  was costing her a small fortune to “keep up with The Jones’s” at his Grammar School.

   Joe took on the cleaning and cooking, and spent his spare time making toys or buying animals for Janet just as he had done for his own children.

   Home-made rabbit hutches and pigeon lofts cluttered the backyard; a canary and a small monkey lived in a corner of the kitchen...not in the same cage, of course. And then there were the three cats and Rusty, his faithful dog.

   When Florrie went down with pneumonia he brought Ellen’s single bed downstairs into the parlour and piled blankets on top of her. She blamed her illness on his menagerie; it must have been the fur and feathers and the smelly concoctions of animal-feed he always had simmering on the stove.

   ‘I can’t breathe in here,’ she groaned, through her raging fever, ‘keep that kitchen door shut… all them cat hairs and dog hairs are getting on my chest and making me wheeze.’

   The doctor visited and after a dose of M&B pills she fell, sweating and shivering, into a fitful sleep. The banging and crashing sounds of Joe staggering up the lobby awakened her. Nothing unusual in that, though. She turned her face towards the door and blinked to clear what was surely an hallucination.

   ‘What the bloody hell is
that
doing here?’ she spluttered.

   Joe stood next to the bed holding an old grey donkey on the end of a frayed and grimy rope. ‘It’s for our Janet, she’ll be right suited when she sees this, Florrie.’

   Words failed her but even if they
hadn’t
she was in no fit state to argue. She fell back on her pillow in despair. Joe was already making plans.

  ‘I’ve bought some hay and I’m gonna make a bit of a shelter at the bottom of the yard till I’ve time to get a cabin put up. Now then, d’ya think I’d better let our Janet pick a name for it?’

   ‘Just get it out of the house, you daft bugger… no wonder I’m ill… you and all your damned animals.’

   ‘Come on now girl, it’s all right, keep yourself calm…let’s get you quiet and nicely settled down.’ He was talking to the donkey.

   Whistling merrily he led the animal through the kitchen and down the yard. He had a lot of work to do before it went dark. As for Florrie, she’d be all right for a while now she’d got her M &Bs.

*

   His next bargains, not quite as exotic as Dolly the Donkey, were a pair of old-fashioned wind-up telephones with ear-phones like Bette Davis or Joan Crawford would have used in the 1940s films. Florrie didn’t bother asking him how he had come by them, the main thing seemed to be that all this buying and selling stopped him worrying about that pain in his stomach. And anyway, before long, the phones would go the same way as the rest of his junk, either in the cupboard under the stairs or in his garden shed.

    But this time Joe had other ideas. He burst into Betty’s kitchen carrying a brown paper parcel, excitement written all over his face.

   ‘Betty? How’d ya like a telephone under your stairs?’

   ‘A what? A telephone? Telephones aren’t for the likes of us, they’re for posh folk that can afford ‘em.’

   ‘Nay, there’s one here for you and Jeff if you want one.’ He pushed past her, disappeared in the cubby-hole under the stairs, banged about for a while and then reappeared.

   ‘Right, I’ve done it. Come in here and ring your mam up.’

   Betty picked up the ear-piece with one hand and turned the handle a few times with the other. ‘Mum?’ she murmured gingerly.

   ‘Hiya Betty, what do you want?’ Her mother’s abrupt voice came back loud and clear.

   Jeff was amazed at his father-in-law’s ingenuity. ‘How did you manage that, Joe?’

   Joe told them how he had  fixed a second telephone in the cubby-hole under his own stairs and then last night, under cover of darkness, he had clambered across seven roof-tops with a roll of wiring and ended up in their back-yard. Betty’s mouth dropped; was there no end to her father's antics?

   ‘What d’you think you’re playing at, you daft thing? Climbing up there when you’re not well, it’s a wonder you didn’t collapse.'

   'It'll come in handy if you need a doctor in an emergency, like when you start having some more grandchildren for me and your mam,' he laughed.

   'Don't start that again dad, I'll have a baby when I want one not when you want one.'

   Betty and Jeff exchanged glances. They dearly wanted a child but it just wasn't happening for them. Her dad never failed to hit a raw nerve whenever they set eyes on each other. Sometimes it seemed he was still trying to torment the little girl she once was.

   'Anyway dad,' she took a deep breath, 'you have no business going on other people’s roofs, you’ll get yourself locked up. And apart from
that
… I’m sure we’re supposed to
pay
if we want a phone in the house.’

   ‘Nay you’ll not have to pay for this one Betty… it’s on the house,’ he laughed, ‘or at least it’s on the house’s roof! But don’t go trying to ring our Ellie in America…I haven’t been able to get across there with some wiring…yet!’

   The illegal phone connection remained in good order for many years with no one any the wiser, though when Betty and Jeff finally had a son it was of no use for calling the doctor - it was only ever connected to her mother's house.

1964

   As Joe's bouts of illness became more severe he found it hard to summon up any real enthusiasm for his grandson, Little Joe, even though his love for Janet was obvious which was hurtful to their mother. 

   Throughout his life there had numerous hospital stays, x-rays and the like, but this time the news was grave; the cancer was incurable. The surgeon gave him six months to live, or that’s what he would have given him had Florrie allowed him to be told.

   It was better to keep Joe in the dark about anything that might send him into a rage or a month of sulking; and as for a death sentence, she knew full well he’d never be able to handle that.

   ‘I’ll nurse him just like he’s nursed all of us for all these years when we’ve been ill, it’s no more than he deserves, ‘she told Betty. ‘But we’ll not have to let on how ill he is, if he knows he’s dying it’ll kill him.’ The irony of her remark escaped her.

   ‘We’ll get through this together mum, just like we always have done, ' Betty's feelings were for her mother rather than for the suffering of her father, 'but what about getting our Ellie back from America? And we’d better let our Billy know how things are and then he can get back from university.’

   ‘No, let’s leave it a while…no point worrying them till we have to, and you never know…miracles can happen.’

   And for a time it seemed as if a miracle had happened. The six months dead-line, if that's the right phrase, came and went and it seemed Joe was defying all odds.

   Life went on just like before, except that he was a little quieter, a little thinner, and was easily tired. He was approaching his 60
th
birthday and more than a year went by before his illness suddenly caught up with him.

*