That Liverpool Girl (15 page)

He sat on the bed that would be Eileen and Mel’s. She would sleep here, breathe here, dream here. Would she dream about Tom with the homely wife, the qualifications, the good job? Was she about to offer herself to a married man? If Keith could feel a pang of jealousy at the thought that these windows might have the privilege of misting over with the exhalations from a mouth he needed to kiss, hating Tom Bingley was going to be a very easy task. He was being silly, and he knew it. Eileen Watson was a virtual stranger, yet he was allowing himself to become tangled up in thoughts of her that would probably take him nowhere.

Jean Dyson arrived. She stood in the doorway, hands on hips, mouth set in a grim line. ‘What happened?’ she demanded. ‘And why was my Neil left out of it? He sat in that pub waiting for someone to tell him what the hell was going on, but he never found out, did he?’

Keith rose to his feet. ‘It was Jay’s show, not mine. I wasn’t doing the choreography. Collie Crawford and Elsie Openshaw confirmed that Gill is pregnant, then Elsie decided that Jay has diabetes. So they’re all at the infirmary, dog included, which leaves just you and me to get this place ready. And now you know as much as I do.’

It was Jean’s turn to sit down, though she used the dressing table stool. ‘Bloody hell. No aeroplanes for him, then.’

‘No.’

‘Can he work?’

‘Probably. Whatever happens, I think Miss Pickavance will look after him. She’s not the type to penalize somebody for getting ill. She’s too decent for that.’

‘I hope so. For long enough, it’s been me and Neil at Home Farm, Jay and Gill at the gatehouse, you down on the Edge. Gill’s supposed to be housekeeper when the house is up and running, but can she do it with a passenger? She wasn’t supposed to be able to have kids.’

Keith shrugged. With Jean and Neil, with Gill and Jay, there was no holding back, none of the social awkwardness that often existed between the sexes. Pregnancy and other delicate matters didn’t belong in the public domain but, between friends, all was fair. ‘She could carry well, Jean. Conception was the problem, but she might not have a bad time while she carries. There’s no way of knowing, is there?’

Jean studied her companion for a few moments. ‘I’m amazed you never got wed. You’ve a lovely nature, Keith Greenhalgh, and I reckon some poor girl’s missed out on a happy life.’

‘Set in my ways. A bit of a bore most of the time. I have my breakfast, work, get a snack, do my crossword, work, light a fire, have my tea and read the rest of the paper. Floors get swept twice a week, and I flick a duster round on Sundays, wash the kitchen floor, get—’

‘Give over. You left one thing out.’

‘What?’

She smiled. ‘You read your letters from that young woman me and Neil never saw, the one who came with Miss Pickavance.’

Keith laughed. ‘Just a friend who likes writing. I enjoy writing letters, too.’ He swallowed. ‘In fact, I think she might have met someone in Liverpool, so you can cross that name off the non-existent list.’

‘Aw. I am sorry, lad.’

He was sorry, too, but he mustn’t let it show. He had to check on the kitchen, the woodshed, the coal. There were brass and silver to be polished, crockery to be rinsed of dust, furniture to be rescued from the imprisonment of protective coverings. Normally, he would be working in a supervisory capacity only, but with Jay and Gill at the hospital, he and the home farmer’s wife had been forced to step into their roles. They made up all the beds, and Keith laid a fire in each room. ‘Right,’ he told his companion. ‘And that, as they say, is that. Time for a break, love.’

When they sat down in the kitchen for a well-deserved cup of tea, Jean asked Keith whether he would be taking an evacuee. ‘I might,’ he said. ‘If there’s one on his own. But the three lads up here are going to need a firm hand from what I’ve heard. If any of them starts bother, I’ll move him in with me. Are you getting one?’

‘A girl,’ she said. ‘With already having the two girls, we’re more used to females.’ She stood up. ‘Right, I’ve a meal to do. Will you be eating with us tonight? You’ll be very welcome.’

He shook his head. ‘Thanks, but no. I’ve a few things to do.’

Alone once more, he allowed a long, sad sigh to surface. Thoughts of Eileen had been keeping him going. He couldn’t return to Cora Appleyard for sustenance or relief, because he was fixated. Again. And there was no one with whom he might share his thoughts and fears, since most would see his weakness rather than the strength of his feelings. Should he stop writing to her? Was a clean break less painful than an extended goodbye? And anyway, this foolishness could be part of an overactive imagination. Eileen and Tom might be no more than friends . . .

He went out to talk to the horses. His favourites, the large cart-pullers, were out in the field acting daft. A carthorse at play was a magnificent sight, owning the same silliness as an untrained polo pony but carrying about his person the weight of a small steam engine. The sight of four feathered feet waving in the air while an equine giant rolled in the grass was one to be treasured.

Keith whistled, and they stopped their foolishness to follow him into the yard. Behind them trotted a little palomino. Keith had plans for Pedro. The youngest of Eileen’s boys liked horses, and he would be taught to ride. There was still a chance. If he could tame her sons, he might just get her to look at him again. And life at Willows needed to be as easy as possible for Miss Pickavance, so the management of those children was of prime importance.

He settled the horses and returned to the house, surprised when he found Gill sorting out cupboards and crockery. ‘How did it go?’ he asked. ‘Has Collie gone home?’ He had not expected to see her, but she told him that the ward sister had ordered her home, as Jay needed to settle. ‘I have to take pyjamas and stuff tomorrow, because he’ll need them.’

‘And Collie brought you back?’

‘Yes, he’s gone. He’s a couple of cows need attention over at Pear Tree. And I’m pregnant, and Jay’s having blood tests, but they’re ninety per cent sure it’s diabetes. So that’s his dream of being a pilot finished. He can fly a kite, but that’s about it.’

‘And you’re upset, but you’re hiding it.’

She nodded and carried on wiping saucers. ‘I’m not upset about having a baby, because it’s what I’ve always wanted. It’s Jay. They gave me a booklet, and on one page it warns about heart attacks and blindness while further on it tells a diabetic to carry on as normal. So it’s not just Stephenson that’s mad; it looks like the whole medical profession could do with a fortnight in Blackpool for rest and recuperation.’

‘They’ll be keeping Jay in for a while, then?’

‘Yes. They have to get his food points to balance with his insulin, then try to calculate how much work he does in a day, multiply the points, adjust the insulin accordingly, then go back to the number they first thought of. It’s like some warped game. They’ve no idea what they’re doing, and I’ll have to pick up the pieces when their guesswork goes wrong. I’ll be following him around all day.’

‘I’ll help. You know I’ll do anything I can, Gill. So will Neil and Jean. Do you want to sleep at Home Farm tonight? I’m sure they wouldn’t mind.’

‘No, no. I’m all right.’ She wasn’t. She didn’t want to sleep at Jean’s house, but she wasn’t all right. There was the worry about Jay, for a start. Bolton Royal Infirmary seemed not to know whether to starve him or feed him, and she was afraid in case the little one in her belly might never see its dad. But there was a bigger anxiety, and he was standing very near to her. Gill had no idea how or when it had happened, but she seemed to have grown rather too fond of the land agent. She hadn’t fallen in love, because that was a sudden thing; she had slid into it smoothly and easily. Trying to climb out was no use; it was like struggling in quicksand, as she seemed to sink further whenever she attempted to free herself.

‘What is it, Gill?’

‘Tiredness,’ she answered.

‘Then go home and rest. I can finish off here.’

She walked towards the door, stopped and turned. ‘Why did you never marry, Keith?’

He raised his shoulders. Everyone kept asking him the same question. ‘No one would have me? Oh, I love too well, Gill. There was a girl, and she died. Her ghost stayed with me for a very long time, and I’m no spring chicken now. But there’s a lot to be said for living alone. I please myself and only myself. I can get away without shaving at weekends, and no one nags me.’

‘Do I nag Jay?’

‘Yes, of course you do. And Jean nags Neil, because that’s the way it works. Women nag, and men ignore them.’

She loved Jay. She did, she
did.
This Keith Greenhalgh business was a flash in the pan, no more than that. It was a bit like when she was at school, and Jimmy Schofield held her hand during long multiplication. At the age of twelve, she’d had her wedding planned; she and Jimmy would marry, get a farm and have four children. It was all connected to hormones, and her hormones belonged to the man she’d married. She had to make herself fall in love with Jay all over again.

‘Gill?’

‘It’s all right, Keith. I just got a bit fed up with Jay the super-pilot. Not easy living with someone who doesn’t know whether he’s coming, going, or falling on the floor like a sack of logs. I love him, I’m sure, but it’s been hard wondering which one of him would be coming home.’ She paused. ‘The being in love doesn’t last, does it?’

‘I don’t know. I expect it lasted for me because I turned her into an angel. The dead are always perfect, but we aren’t. You’ve a lot to face up to. There’s a baby coming, and your man’s ill. Don’t stop loving him because he’s less than perfect. Now’s the time for a deep friendship to be formed. When you locked him out that night and he came to me, he was a sick man. We didn’t know that. We thought he was a natural clown who couldn’t hold his drink. He’s your husband, Gill. In sickness and in health, remember?’

She smiled. There were many kinds of love. Red hot desire usually burned itself out, and unless replaced by something more substantial it disappeared like steam pouring upwards into the atmosphere. Romantic love that depended on poetry and posturing was not to be trusted, either. Love needed to come from the mind as well as from the soul. Real love was loyalty, laughter, and conversations in which minds met even though they didn’t necessarily agree.

Gill wasn’t sure what she felt for Keith Greenhalgh, so she decided that it was some kind of combination of all three. She wanted to touch and be touched, might have enjoyed a bit of Wordsworth, and the man was an intelligent communicator when he chose to talk. He was a passing fancy, or so she hoped. She said goodbye and left.

Keith continued to deal with crockery and pans. Something about Gill had moved him. She wasn’t pretty, wasn’t ugly, was a good woman. She had mid-brown hair and blue irises, and the skin beneath her eyes was currently stained like bruising on a peach. Other than that, her complexion was good, her figure pleasing . . . He cleared his throat. She had been talking to him, and beyond the words sat something he neither wanted nor needed.

Kitchen knives and meat cleaver went into a top drawer. Was a meat cleaver suitable company for Philip, Robin and Albert? They had to learn what not to touch, how to behave properly, or their mother would never again give Keith the time of day. ‘God help me,’ he whispered. He couldn’t bear the memory of the expression he’d seen in Gill’s eyes. Nor did he wish to contemplate a life without a chance to be with Eileen.

Should he talk to Gill? What might he tell her? She’d made no declaration, and what was he going to say about a look on her face? Nothing. Gill would need to frame the words, and she wouldn’t, as she was a decent human being with a family to care for. Perhaps if Jay got balanced and a bit more sensible, she would learn to value him again, because he was a good lad underneath the daftness.

Life was hard. Keith locked up Willows and went home for something to eat. Later on, he might go to the pub for a couple of pints. Sometimes, a man needed his comforts.

There was something terribly wrong. Whatever it was crackled in the air like undischarged lightning, and Mel wished with all her heart that it would show itself in a blaze of temper before going away and leaving in its wake a clearer atmosphere. This was a local war; the real one waited while Hitler entrenched himself in France. Only then would he be capable of bombing the north of England; he could get to London from Germany, but not much further. Yet it would come; oh yes, it would come. This quiet period was not to be trusted, and people should not become complacent, because the planes might already be lined up on the French coast. Meanwhile, the Battle of Rachel Street had begun.

The three lads, whose recent brush with the law was being taken extremely seriously, were sleeping in Miss Pickavance’s house. They were unusually quiet, untypically clean, and they wore a corporate expression that might have sat well on the face of a hunted animal being chased towards unfamiliar territory. But that was not the problem. The awful truth was that Mam was not speaking to Gran, and Gran’s features were set in grim lines that spoke volumes on the subject of disharmony.

They never quarrelled. Occasionally, there would be a small disagreement about the lads and their mischief, about when the family would go to the public bath house, about ordinary, everyday things that niggled and caused small amounts of tension in many households. This was different. This was enormously different. It was enough that her country was waiting with bated breath for the inevitable onslaught by a foreign power; that her mother and grandmother should be daggers drawn was ghastly. Ghastly was the favourite word at school these days; war, uniform and the creatures at the boys’ school were all too, too ghastly, and the vowel had to be a long, tall ‘ah’ rather than a flat Lancashire production.