Faded Dreams (31 page)

   All his life Joe Pomfret had been a “Peter Pan”, a boy who refused to grow up, and yet in truth, he was far removed from the storybook character. Although his uncontrollable tantrums and unpredictable melancholy had brought untold misery to his family, time and time again his intrinsic good nature and sense of fun had changed that misery back to laughter, that loathing back to love.

   He had played the role of the dying man so many times, well-acted scenes that were mere rehearsals for this, his Grande Finale. The parlour would be his theatre, the single bed his stage, the family his audience. Courage was a quality not normally associated with Joe, but now his wife and children would witness a new side to him. With fortitude and his indomitable humour he looked death squarely in the face and sent it on its way as if it was no concern of his.

   His life was hanging by a thread and yet he kept up the pretence that all was well, joking and laughing through the pain, hoping for that miracle that Florrie had promised him. But before long he had to face reality.

   One day when Florrie was out shopping he dragged himself upstairs to where his case-notes and other paraphernalia lay in the district nurse’s box. He perched on the double bed he’d shared with Florrie for nigh on thirty-five years and tried to make sense of the medical terms and doctor’s instructions. No doubt about it…it was as plain as a pikestaff… he was on his way out. Bumping gingerly downstairs on his backside he was back in bed by the time she got home, but unable to hide his anxiety.

   ‘Look at me, Florrie, I’m all skin and bone. I don’t seem to be getting any better. I'll not see 60, that's for sure.’   

   ‘It’s because it’s Winter, Joe.’ she reassured him. ‘Better days are round the corner and when Spring comes we’ll all feel a lot better, you’ll see.  You’ll be able to get out and about and get some sunshine and fresh air, it’s what we’re all short of, and I bet your appetite will pick up too. Our Ellie and Billy will come home for your 60
th
  and we'll have a special 'do'. You've always liked a good party.'

   ‘Aye, well I hope you’re right, love. But the way that I feel
now
, I can’t see me mending up with just a bit of sunshine and fresh air,' he made a brave attempt at a smile, 'bloody undertaker’s already hanging round the front door with his tape-measure waiting to come in and measure me up for a wood box.’ 

      He looked at the worried face of a wife in her fifties and saw only the fresh sweet face of a sixteen-year-old Woolworth’s lass with emerald-green eyes.

   ‘Never mind cock, when I’m dead and gone you’re still bonny enough to have all the fellas after ya. I’m a lucky sod,  having a wife like you to look after me… but if the worst comes to the worst you can always get another Joe.’  

   ‘I want no more Joes after you, you daft bugger, one’s enough for anybody,’ she forced a laugh, took his face between her hands and gently kissed his forehead. ‘Right then, now let’s have no more talk of giving up. Nurse Ryan will be here in a minute to give you a bed-bath.’

   He went along with her optimism if only to stop both of them from falling apart but as he had so often bragged, “
you can’t fool a fella that’s fooled thousands.”
And this time there was definitely no fooling Joe. 

   But if there was one thing that could brighten his day it was the sight of that bonny young Irish nurse with her black curly hair and eyes as blue as he’d ever seen. Every time he saw her he wished he were a bit younger as well as a bit fitter. He’d been a ‘ladies man’ all his life and he saw no reason to change that now.

   ‘Be sharp and give me a quick shave Florrie and fetch me hairbrush… I look a right bloody tuttle.’

   Long gone were his dark, glossy, gypsy-curls, in their place were dull wispy straws. He made an effort to brush them off his clammy forehead and felt it was energy well spent. Within minutes Nurse Ryan was clutching her stomach across her starched white apron and laughing fit to burst at his stream of comical tales. 

   'She’s a little smasher when she laughs, isn’t she Florrie? It does wonders for me just looking at that bonny  face and listening to that Irish brogue
.
’

                      Florrie brought a bowl of warm water and clean flannel and he was gently washed and dried, starting with his face and upper body then moving down across his swollen belly to his skinny thighs.

   ‘Hey Nurse, just be careful down there with me courting-tackle…you  never know when I might need it,’ he breathed deeply, ‘I’m not finished yet y’know… there’s life in the old dog yet. I’m still a bit of a rum lad…ask our Florrie here, she’ll tell ya.’

   The nurse was young enough to be his daughter and old enough to have heard it all before. She raised her eyes to the ceiling.

   ‘D’you hear him now Mrs Pomfret? All that blarney about his way with the girls? Just like all of the fellas, isn’t he now, forever bragging about what they
can
do, not bothering to tell us what they
can’t
do.’

   She dried her hands and drew a measure of morphine into the syringe. Joe was drowsy by the time she’d finished  sipping a freshly brewed cup of tea. He reached out to bid her goodbye but his hand fell limply back on to the quilt.

   ‘Nurse, I’ll never forget what you’ve done for me all these weeks. As soon as I get over this…and back on me feet…I’ll take you out and buy a …’ his voice had trailed off even before she left the room.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

   Ellen returned from The United States  to find her mother and sister in a world that had fallen apart and her beloved dad, that strong, handsome man who had waved her off at the airport only a few years earlier, on his deathbed. She followed her sister into the parlour.

    Now that Betty had children of her own she realised just how difficult it was for a parent to always say and do the right thing and she questioned, not for the first time, why she had had such a stormy relationship with her father. He had done his best for them and when all was said and done wasn’t she just like him, with her depressive moods and her quick temper?

   She knelt at his bedside and held his hand. This sad face before her bore no resemblance to

the wild-eyed cursing monster of her childhood and yet one image kept blurring into the other. She pitied him as she would pity a sick animal, yet she could not forgive him for the misery he had caused.

   'Hiya, dad. Look, our Ellie's back home,' she said.

   ‘Where’s our Janet?’ There was disappointment in his voice. Janet was still the apple of his eye. ‘Where’s me little sunshine?’

   If Betty had
her
way Janet would never see her granddad looking like this. But why hadn't he asked to see his namesake, Little Joe? For all he cared she might as well not have given her son her dad's name. She hated herself for judging him and feeling bitter at a time like this but he had only himself to blame.

   ‘Every time we bring her, you’re fast asleep,’ she lied.   

   ‘Fast asleep, am I? I’m sorry about that…tell her I’m sorry about that, Betty.’

   She looked away but not before he’d seen her eyes brimming over. She was weeping for the father he could have been... if only he'd tried a bit harder.

   He gripped her hand as hard as the strength left in him would allow. Betty had always been a lot like him…a fiery little bugger…touchy about everything…and Lord, could she sulk when she got her feelings hurt? Just like him.

   ‘Now give o’er crying Betty, for God’s sake or you’ll have your mam rushing in with three cups of tea and three Cephos Powders.’ Even today, the old family joke raised a smile.

   ‘Come on now, give o’er worrying ya daft little devil afore you set our Ellie off,' he paused for a few moments to catch his breath, 'I’m not ready to pop me clogs just yet…I might have lost a bit of weight lately but being thin’s nothing to worry about. Me old dad always said,
A Lean Dog For A Long Race,
and it’s true… I’ll not be leavin’ any of ya just yet.’

     ‘I’m sorry dad …but you know
me
… always getting myself worked-up, crying or going off the deep end about something or other.’

   ‘Aye, you’re just like you daft old dad, aren’t ya?'  His eyes pleaded for the forgiveness that wasn't there. 'We’ve always been alike, me and you, that’s why we’re always falling out...but it’s never stopped  us loving one another... ‘as it, cock?’

   ‘No, nothing
can do that.’ Betty answered curtly, forcing out the answer he was looking for, shocked at the hardness in her voice.

   But did he believe her? His eyes searched hers pitifully as she withdrew her hand from his and rose to her feet.

   This was too much for Ellen to bear. The reconciliation between Betty and her father that she'd prayed for had come to nothing. How often she had wanted to bang their stubborn
heads
together, and never more-so than at this minute. She swallowed hard and, thankful for an excuse to leave the parlour, went to answer the knock on the front door.

   A pale middle-aged woman with painted-on eyebrows, who looked like she had seen better days, stood there visibly trembling.

   ‘Is Joe in? I heard he…he… wasn’t well. He’s an old friend of me and my husband. D’you think I could see him for a minute?’ 

   Something told Ellen that this woman must not get over the doorstep. She stared at her coldly, unable to rustle up any compassion for this stranger so obviously in distress.

   ‘He’s resting,’ she said, abruptly, ‘he’s not seeing anyone apart from family,’

   The woman shoved an envelope at her. ‘Will you give him this card then?’

   In the backyard and out of sight of her mother, Ellen opened the pale blue envelope. The “Get Well Soon” card had just one handwritten word in smudgy ink, “Lily”. Instinctively, she tore it in two and put it in the dustbin.

   ‘Ellie, where’ve ya been?’ her father beckoned her to the bed. ‘Come here, while I talk to you, love. Now then, you were always a clever ‘un so I want ya to promise me something.’

   ‘What’s that, dad?’

   ‘Y’always wanted to go and be a teacher… just like that Mary Kingsley did,’ it was barely a whisper. ‘Well you’re a damned sight cleverer than
she
ever were… I want you to get yourself to that college one day… make something of yourself and be a teacher… just for me, will ya promise me?’

   ‘I will, Dad…I promise.’ The promise was empty; her future was a fiancé waiting for her in California. And yet she felt no guilt, she would have promised him anything. He began to cry and Ellen, who had never cried in his presence since she arrived home, took his frail body in her arms and cried too.

   She had lost count of his bungled half-hearted efforts to leave this world but now the choice was out of his hands she had never felt such helplessness. That old childhood feeling of sinking into nothingness came over her but she quickly shook it off, the days when the involuntary closing down of her body would blot out anxiety were gone.

   ‘Come on Ellie… we’ll not change nothin’ by crying.’ Joe pulled himself together and changed the subject. ‘Now listen to me. Sell all them antiques in the shed and then your mam’ll have a bit of money after I’ve gone. An’ get shut of me car, it’s seen better days but it’s still worth a bob or two…unless our Billy can make use of it down there at that university. Oh, and Granddad Pomfret’s gold watch  an’ war medals…they’re all for our Billy as well…’

   ‘Don’t start
that
again, dad,’ Ellen interrupted, ‘you’ve been talking like this for years and had us all worried stiff. Remember all those times when you've made your last will
and testament? But you’ve always got better…you
know
you have.’

   ‘Not this time, cock… I’m buggered… I’ll be dead-an-gone a week from today, mark my words.’ A wry smile crossed his face. ‘Old Barlow’s walked past twice this morning with ‘is tape-measure measuring me up for a box. Anyway, don’t forget what I’ve told you, Ellie… our Billy’s to have me dada’s watch an’ medals…’

*

   The family needed  Billy now more than ever before. Whenever it was at sixes and sevens with one crisis or another, whenever Betty was shouting and bawling, whenever Ellen was fainting all over the place, he'd been  the one with  the maturity to think straight and calm everybody.

   University had been Bill’s aim for as long as could remember. He was lonely at first, his Northern accent and turn of phrase a much-imitated source of amusement but by the end of the first year he had a circle of loyal friends and had found his feet; girls in particular were drawn to the sensitive Lancashire lad who was so unlike the usual well-heeled, self-absorbed young medical students.

   He had returned to Blackburn  only a handful of times over the past  few years. Not that he didn’t look forward to seeing his mother, but what with his father sarcastically addressing him as ‘Professor’, scoffing at his wispy ginger beard and always glad to see the back of him, it was hardly worth the journey. This time it was different, he was on his way, clean-shaven , to see his father for the last time.