Love or Duty--A saga set in 1920s Liverpool (15 page)

Her mother's hands were lying on top of the bedspread and, as she gently picked one of them up and held it between her own, she noted how the blue veins stood out emphasizing her mother's frail condition.

‘Penny … Penny … where are you?'

The words were spoken so softly that for a moment Penny wondered if she was imagining her mother had said them because she still appeared to be sleeping. Then the sad little plea came again, almost as if the words came out automatically from between her lips as she breathed.

‘I'm here, Mother,' Penny murmured, gently squeezing the hand she was holding. ‘I've come home.'

Her mother's eyelids fluttered and with a tremendous effort she managed to open them and focus her gaze on Penny. She stared in a disbelieving way, uttering a little sigh of pleasure and then with a great effort she reached up to stroke her daughter's face.

Over the next few days Penny spent every moment she possibly could with her mother. When she was awake Penny helped to feed her or sat by her bedside, holding her hand and talking to her.

A nurse came in regularly to attend to Mrs Forshaw's personal needs. While her mother was being bathed and dressed in clean clothes ready for the day, Penny usually sought out her father's company or went down to the kitchen to chat to Mrs Davies and Mary.

They didn't attempt to celebrate Christmas. They did eat the turkey, which had already been ordered, and as Mrs Davies pointed out there was no point in wasting it since they had to eat something.

Penny found it strange to be back in her own home and her very own bedroom with all her favourite things around her. She was more than ever conscious of how cramped her living conditions had been during the past months while she had been living at Blenheim Road and sharing a room with Kelly. One of the things she had missed most of all was being able to take a bath and now she was able to do so whenever she felt like it.

Bryn came to visit her occasionally despite her father's comment that there was no need for him to do so. He never stayed very long but he brought her news from Ma Reilly.

Whenever she asked after Kelly he told her not to worry. ‘Kelly is doing fine; she's young and adaptable so she'll settle back in with her family in next to no time,' he assured her.

His answer failed to set her mind at rest. She promised herself that as soon as her mother was stronger and she felt she could leave her for a few hours then she would go across to Liverpool. She wanted to see for herself whether or not Kelly really had settled back at her home in Cannon Court and was happy there.

Her waking hours, however, were so taken up looking after her mother that Penny found she had no time for her own life.

Mary and Mrs Davies were very supportive but they had their own work to do in running the house and preparing meals. It was left to Penny to fetch and carry for Mrs Forshaw who was becoming more and more demanding as her strength returned.

The days became weeks and Penny was well aware that she had still done nothing about her proposed visit to Liverpool. When she mentioned her intention to her father he frowned and told her not to be too hasty.

‘You're place is here; your mother still needs you,' he pointed out. ‘It's done her so much good having you here looking after her, so it's your duty to put her first, Penny.'

It was almost mid-February before Leonora Forshaw was able to get dressed and come downstairs for a little while each day. She looked very pale and fragile and was still quite weak and rather unsteady on her feet.

She still made constant demands on Penny and expected her to be on hand to fetch and carry for her. She also insisted that Penny must always be at her side when she walked so that she could lean on her arm for support.

Gradually, however, her strength returned and by the beginning of March she was managing not only to stay up all day but to have dinner with her husband and Penny before retiring for the night.

Captain Forshaw was relieved by his wife's progress. Not only was his home life gradually returning to normal but he knew that as Penny was there to look after her he was able to go to work with a clear conscience concerning his wife's welfare in his absence.

A few days before Easter, without a word to either his wife or Penny, he invited Arnold Watson to dinner.

Leonora was delighted when Arnold arrived. He looked immaculate in a dark grey well-tailored suit, crisp white shirt and a discreetly patterned blue tie. He greeted her with a large bouquet of exotic flowers.

He also conveyed a message from his own parents to say how relieved they were that she was now almost fully restored to health. They hoped that she would be well enough to visit them very soon.

Arnold also brought a bottle of a special brandy liqueur for Penny's father, which pleased Captain Forshaw immensely.

Penny was taken aback to see him and immediately wondered if his visit had been engineered by her father in the hope of bringing about some sort of reconciliation between herself and Arnold.

If that was so then it had been a mistake, she thought. She recalled only too well the way Arnold had treated her throughout the previous summer and the abrupt way in which he had ended their engagement. She also remembered his total rejection of Kelly. Not only that but they had been apart now for so long that she was a different person and no longer had any feelings whatsoever for him.

She received him coolly and was aware that for a brief moment, when he handed her a box of expensive chocolates, Arnold seemed slightly embarrassed by their encounter.

As they gathered in the drawing room to have a glass of sherry before dinner was served she noticed that he avoided speaking directly to her whenever possible.

As they were about to move into the dining room they heard the doorbell ring. A few minutes later Mary came into the drawing room to say that there was a gentleman at the door asking for Miss Penny.

Much to Penny's astonishment she found that it was Bryn Cash.

‘We haven't spoken for such a long time that I thought I owed you a visit,' he greeted her. ‘I was hoping that I could take you out for a meal somewhere and we could catch up with all our news,' he added.

‘Oh dear, I'm afraid that's not going to be possible. We were about to start dinner and we have a guest.'

‘Oh, I am sorry. I should have telephoned to let you know I was coming,' Bryn admitted with a rueful smile. ‘So when will you be free?'

Before Penny could answer her father came out into the hall to find out why she was detained. He frowned heavily when he saw who their unexpected visitor was.

‘Bryn came to take me out,' Penny explained. ‘I was about to suggest that he should join us for dinner.'

There was a moment's hesitation before Captain Forshaw agreed. It was done in such a very grudging manner that Bryn quickly refused and said that he would contact Penny the following day.

‘If you've come all this way then of course you must stay and have dinner with us,' Penny insisted. Linking her arm through his she propelled him towards the dining room.

As she introduced Arnold and Bryn to each other Penny saw a look of irritation on Arnold's face. Remembering her father's reluctance to ask Bryn to stay to dinner, she was even more convinced that her father had inveigled Arnold's visit to try and get them back together again.

Arnold regaled them over dinner with details of the play staged by the Amateur Dramatic Society in which he had performed the lead role and how brilliant the girl who had played opposite him had been. He then went on to tell them about the many other social activities that he had indulged in since he had last seen them.

Penny was well aware that he was doing this on purpose to make her realize how much she had missed out on over the past few months.

Throughout the meal she found herself comparing Arnold with Bryn Cash. They were about the same age and both men were tall and good-looking but in many different ways.

Arnold had a long face with chiselled lips beneath his trim moustache. He had an elegant appearance and a somewhat supercilious manner that could be irritating.

Bryn was more sturdily built with wide shoulders, square features and a firm jaw and he was far more reserved and pragmatic.

Their backgrounds were equally different, she reflected. Arnold's father was a prosperous shipping magnate and Arnold had enjoyed a very privileged and cosseted background. He'd been sent to private schools from a very young age and always made aware that he was a very special person. As an only child his mother had doted on him and he'd been thoroughly spoilt. From his very earliest days he'd been given everything he asked for and indulged in every way.

The moment Arnold left the expensive private college he'd been sent to he was appointed to a position in his father's company; one that gave him both power and authority. He was also given a company car and a generous business allowance as well as his salary.

Bryn came from a farming family in North Wales and had known a hard realistic childhood. They had lived in a stone farmhouse south of Beddgelert at the foot of the majestic Snowdon mountain range. His father had bred sheep which had roamed the nearby mountainside.

Bryn had three brothers. They were all older than him and from the time he was eight years old he had been expected to do his share of chores on the farm. This had included tending the sheep and helping to herd them down from the mountainside every year at the start of winter.

Bryn had grown up self-resilient and sturdy. He was not afraid of hard work but unlike his brothers he wanted something more from life than merely being a sheep farmer. When he was given the opportunity of going to university and then later on of studying to be a doctor he had accepted the challenge with alacrity.

Nevertheless he was extremely proud of his Welsh background and he was steeped in local folklore about Mount Snowdon and the numerous legends of King Arthur and Merlin that were associated with the area.

He had related many of these legends to Kelly and her favourite had been how the village he came from had earned its name. She never seemed to tire of hearing him tell it to her time and time again.

According to legend Prince Llewelyn ap Iorwerth decided to go on a hunting trip and left his infant son in the charge of his faithful dog Gelert. When the Prince was greeted by Gelert on his return, he noticed that the dog's muzzle was soaked in blood, and his son was nowhere to be seen.

Outraged that the dog he had loved and trusted had betrayed him Llewelyn attacked the dog, and it fell to the ground gravely injured. However, within minutes the prince heard a cry and stumbled through nearby bushes to find his son, safe in his cradle. Beside the cradle lay the body of a giant wolf covered with wounds, the result of a fight to the death it had fought with the hound Gelert.

‘So why did they call the village Beddgelert and not just Gelert?' Kelly asked each time he told her the story.

‘The word “bedd” means grave and it is where the dog's body was buried,' Bryn would remind her patiently.

Patience was one of his strengths, Penny reflected. She had witnessed it not only with the way he treated Kelly but also with the way he spoke to patients whenever she had attended his clinic at the hospital.

He had told her that one day he hoped he would be able to afford to buy into a family practice or even have a practice of his own. Until then he was quite prepared to work in a hospital.

He'd aimed for one in a large working-class area because he felt that afforded him a greater degree of experience than a smaller hospital would have done. He also felt that living as well as working in the same area gave him a deeper insight into understanding the specialized needs of local people.

Arnold on the other hand, was so self-opinionated that he never considered other people's viewpoint to be of any value. Whenever someone tried to tell him anything he would listen impatiently and then dismiss what they said as being of no interest.

She wondered what Arnold was like at work and whether his colleagues found him overbearing. Since he was the boss's son they probably kept their opinions to themselves. Most of them would fall in with his wishes and try to please him no matter what he asked them to do.

Remembering his comment about thinking of it as delegating responsibility when she had jokingly complained that her mother seemed to be intent on making all their wedding arrangements she suspected that delegating was what he did most of the time.

He was far too impatient to deal with trivial matters so he probably left all those to his secretary who, or so he said, was extremely efficient and couldn't do enough for him.

During dinner as she compared Arnold's inconsequential chatter about his own personal activities to Bryn's calm, direct, straightforward answers when he was asked a question, she realized how shallow Arnold was.

The thought of being married to him was now quite repugnant and far from feeling hurt or sad because he had broken off their engagement she was aware of an overwhelming sense of relief.

It was almost as if she was now freed from an invisible yet overpowering threat that had hung over her like a grey cloud. Now she was completely free and could do whatever she wanted to do. Once again she was heart-whole and had the opportunity to make a new life for herself.

This time, she promised herself, she would make quite sure that she made the right choice and not let herself be talked into any arrangement that didn't suit her.

As she looked up and saw Bryn looking at her across the dining table she felt the colour staining her cheeks. She wondered if he had sensed what she'd been thinking.

Once again she found herself comparing him with Arnold. He was so much more concerned with other people and their problems than he was with himself. His work was far from easy yet she had never heard him grumble or ever heard him say that he had delegated responsibility.