Chrissie's Children (24 page)

At the hospital they took the boy away and a nurse cleaned and dressed Matt’s hand. As he was about to leave the swing doors of the casualty ward flapped open as a man in a suit and tie
threw them wide and strode in. Matt stepped aside to let him pass. Matt saw the suit was well cut and from a good tailor – he had learnt that much from his father. The newcomer walked with
his back very straight, the self-confident stride of a man who has got on in the world, used to responsibility and organising. He glanced around, immediately singled out the sister in charge and
headed for her. He asked, politely though brusque, ‘I hear you’ve got Jimmy Younger in here?’

Matt pushed at the still-flapping doors and passed through into the corridor outside. He was about to turn right towards the exit when he glanced to his left and hesitated. Was it? he wondered.
The face was familiar, but the uniform and the girl inside it . . . He said tentatively, ‘Hello.’

Helen Diaz, in crisp blue dress, starched white apron and cap, stopped in her hurried walk and stared at him. ‘Matt! What are you doing here?’

He couldn’t take his eyes off her. ‘Oh, getting this dressed.’ He held up his hand in its new white bandage, but still looked at Helen. He realised he was not really surprised
by the uniform. She looked the part, fitted in there, and gave off an impression of confidence and efficiency.

Helen said, ‘Good God! What have you done?’

He shrugged, dismissing the hand. ‘It’s just skinned. The nurse in there said I can take this lot off the day after tomorrow and it should be just about better.’ He thought
that it was not the uniform, but Helen herself. She looked older, and it was going on for a year since he had seen her. She was no longer the skinny, pallid schoolgirl. This was an assured young
woman.

Helen thought that Matt had changed, but searched for the reason. It was not just that he had grown taller still and now topped six feet, and was broader and heavier. Then it came to her that
the change was in the way he looked at her and for a moment she glanced away. When her gaze returned to him she found his eyes waiting to meet hers, and they both laughed shyly.

They talked for a minute or two and she told him how her father and brother had left and so she had become a nurse. She did not tell him how she used her sister’s birth certificate to gain
entry. As they chatted she cautiously kept watch on the corridor, because as a student nurse she was a dogsbody and very much on probation. She had been sent on an errand, so she said, I’ve
got to get on.’

She moved to pass him but Matt caught her arm. ‘Just a sec. What about coming out with me?’

‘What?’ Helen was not ready for that much change in him. She drew back in surprise, but not far because he held her.

Matt said, ‘I’ll meet you outside here. When?’

‘You will
not
! They don’t like men hanging around outside waiting for nurses.’ She did not want her colleagues watching her from the windows.

He pressed, ‘Where, then?’

‘Excuse me, but are you the chap who brought in the boy just now, the one that was in the lorry that crashed?’

Matt turned his head to see the man who had burst into the casualty ward. ‘I brought him in, yes,’ and turning back to Helen: ‘Where?’

‘Where?’ she repeated, head whirling now, trying to think. Then a rendezvous familiar in the town popped into her mind: ‘Mackie’s clock.’

‘Am I interrupting?’ The man looked from one to the other.

Helen said quickly, ‘Oh, no.’

He smiled. ‘Thank you.’ Then to Matt, ‘I’m George Younger, the boy’s father.’

Matt turned again and saw Younger holding out his hand. Matt took it in his bandaged paw but still held on to Helen with the other hand. He winced as the man squeezed. ‘Matt
Ballantyne.’ Then to Helen, ‘When?’

‘Sorry!’ Younger released Matt’s hand. ‘That must be painful.’ Then he added, ‘I’m very grateful.’

‘That’s all right. I’m glad I could help.’ Matt wished he would go away, and demanded of Helen again, ‘When? Tonight? About six?’

‘No! Tomorrow night.’ The postponement was for no reason but to give her time. She saw another figure at the end of the corridor. Was it Sister? ‘Six o’clock,
then.’ She finally pulled free and hastened off down the corridor away from the approaching figure.

Matt watched her go, with regret but elation. Then he found he was still half-turned to Younger and apparently listening courteously to the man’s speech of gratitude, though Matt realised
with guilt that he did not remember a word. Younger was saying, ‘. . . so if ever I can do anything for you, son, just say the word.’ He paused then, waiting.

Matt’s memory stirred as it had earlier, but this time it made the connection. George Younger? There was a chain of garages called Younger’s. He said hesitantly, ‘I need a job.
So if you were wanting anybody . . .’ He tailed off into embarrassed silence.

Younger thought, You and thousands more, lad. But he asked, ‘What are you doing now, signing on?’

‘I’m at the art college.’

Younger sighed within. ‘So you’ll be wanting a clerical job.’

‘No. More mechanical. I know a bit about cars, I’ve worked on them.’

‘Oh, aye?’ Younger had heard that one before, many a time, and it had turned out the fellers couldn’t change a wheel. As it happened, though, he needed another man to replace
an old employee who was just about to retire. ‘I can use an odd-job man to do a bit of sweeping up and cleaning, a few simple jobs on the cars, learn from the mechanics as you go along and
move up a bit. What do you think?’

Matt grabbed the offer. ‘I’ll take it.’

Younger said, ‘Start tomorrow at my garage on the Durham Road.’ He began to turn away but now a name jolted his memory in turn. He said, ‘Ballantyne? Any relation to the
shipbuilders?’

Matt admitted, ‘Jack Ballantyne is my father.’

That startled Younger, though he kept his face blank. He wondered, Why the hell does Jack Ballantyne’s son want to work as an odd-job man? But he shrugged mentally, deciding it was none of
his business. ‘I’ll see you in the morning.’

That evening Jack Ballantyne said, ‘This sounds to me as if you are still drifting. I think this is just a way of getting out of starting at the yard.’

Matt admitted that to himself. He had no intention of working in a garage for the rest of his life, but he said stubbornly, ‘I’ll be working.’

Chrissie pleaded for him, ‘At least he’ll be gaining experience of some sort and keeping himself while he makes up his mind.’ She still had faith that Matt would succeed
– somehow – though she was not able to produce any evidence to support that faith.

George Younger had called on Chrissie and Jack and told them how Matt had saved his son, so Jack set his doubts aside and grinned at his son with pride. ‘I wish you the best of luck with
it, then.’

Chrissie sighed with relief.

So did Matt, because he had been uncertain whether his father might somehow have stopped him from taking up the job.

He was jubilant when he met Helen the following evening. ‘I’ve got a job!’ he said, and went on to tell her about it.

‘I thought you were at art school.’

‘I was, but I just wasn’t good enough. Oh, I can draw a bit, and I like it, but spend my life at it?’ He shook his head. ‘I was just wasting other people’s time. I
didn’t want to go on doing that. Would you work at something you didn’t like?’

Helen had been listening, disapproving. ‘Lots of people have to.’

‘I know they do, but would
you
want to?’

Helen hesitated, then admitted, ‘No,’ because she was on the way to attaining her ambition, to become a nurse. That was not completely true, though: nursing was to some extent a
compromise, because she had really wanted to become a doctor. She knew that was a dream impossible of fulfilment for she had neither the brains nor the money to go to medical school, and its
impossibility meant she had told no one. However, she sympathised with Matt’s point of view now. She did not consider that she might be becoming biased.

Matt invited her to the cinema and she refused. They walked instead, out along the sea front.

Helen was not allowed to wear uniform outside the hospital. Her dress was an old one, but the tweed swagger coat with a pleated back that she wore over it was new and had cost her twenty-five
shillings, most of her savings. Matt did not notice it, but Helen, on the other hand, saw that he needed a haircut, his grey flannel trousers bore a smudge of engine oil and his sports coat –
borrowed illegally from Jack’s wardrobe – was loose on him. He was so tall and ungainly and she couldn’t help smiling at him. They talked a lot, and though neither could remember
much of it next day, they thought it a memorable evening all the same.

Matt said as they parted, ‘When will I see you again?’

Helen replied, ‘I’ll think about it and let you know,’ and he had to be content with that.

He put his head around the door of the sitting-room when he got home and his mother looked up from the book she was reading to greet him with a smile. ‘Hello, Matt. What have you been up
to?’

‘I went for a walk.’ Then he added casually, ‘I met Helen Diaz – Sophie’s friend, remember?’ He went on to tell her how Helen had been deserted by her father
and was now a student nurse living in the nurses’ home.

Chrissie was not deceived by that casual pose, and she remembered the girl very well.

A day or two later Chrissie called in at the hospital and sought out Helen to tell her, ‘Think of our home as yours. Come and stay whenever you like. We’d love to see you.’ She
left before Helen burst into tears – and drove home wondering what her own daughter, Sophie, was doing.

November 1937

Now they were into another winter. The clouds hung heavy and dark above Newcastle and although it was close to noon there were lights burning in many of the houses. Sophie
trudged miserably, head down into the rain, carrying a heavy shopping basket. It drove almost horizontally along the street, borne on the wind coming off the Tyne and smelling of smoke and the sea.
The umbrella she held before her face kept off some of the rain but blew inside out every few seconds. When she shoved open the front door and stumbled into the passage she was dripping as if she
had crawled out of the river itself, her blonde hair hanging darkened and damp against her neck. She swore under her breath and shook the worst of the rain off the umbrella, holding it outside the
door. Then she closed both umbrella and door, wiped her feet and walked along the passage. As she mounted the stairs she was conscious of the moist eyes of the fat landlady watching her from the
door of her kitchen at the back of the house. Sophie mouthed silently, ‘Nosey old witch.’

Once inside the sitting-room she put the shopping basket on the table, hung up her coat on a nail in the back of the door and stood before the small fire drying the hem of her dress. But not for
long. Hunger sent her to take a loaf of bread from the basket and cut it into slices. Then she toasted it on a fork before the glowing coals. The food in the basket would be the first she had eaten
that day.

The door of the bedroom next door opened and Martha Tate stepped out on to the landing, blinked around then wandered into the sitting-room to stand over Sophie. She clutched a garish, imitation
silk robe about her. ‘Hello, pet. Making a bit o’ breakfast?’

Sophie replied shortly, ‘Lunch.’ She had missed breakfast because there had been no food in the house when she woke. That was a regular occurrence.

‘I’ll have a cup o’ tea and a slice with you.’ Martha sank into an armchair and slid off her slippers, stretched her toes out to the coals and yawned. ‘Then I think
I’ll go back to bed for another hour or two.’

She had been in bed when Sophie returned at midnight. Sophie had a job singing with a band now and last night’s dance across the Tyne in Gateshead had not finished till close on eleven,
just in time for the patrons to catch the last buses and trams. She had stolen up the stairs carrying her shoes because their landlady complained about any noise at night. The door of the bedroom
had been closed but Sophie had heard the mutter of voices, one of them hoarse and male. She had heard him leave as she lay on her own bed on the couch in the sitting-room. That, too, was a regular
occurrence.

‘You have this one.’ Sophie unpacked the carrier bag to get at the butter, spread it on the slice of toast and gave it to Martha on a plate. Then she made a pot of tea.

‘I’ll go out and get some grub later on,’ Martha promised and crunched toast. ‘I’ve got some money next door.’ Sophie knew where it came from – and
guessed where it would go. She glanced at the table in one corner and saw the bottles standing on it were all empty.

Martha drank tea thirstily, licked her lips, then her eyes slid round to the corner table and she saw the empty bottles. ‘Well, I think I’ll get dressed and go out now.’ She
rose to her feet, clutching the robe with one hand and pushing at her tangled hair with the other. Sophie wondered what the men would think if they could see her now, her lined face bare of
make-up. On the stage she looked half her age, but that was in truth – what? Chrissie knew her own mother, Martha’s daughter, was forty-three. So Martha was . . .

Martha asked, ‘How’s your job with Bobby going?’

‘Fine,’ Sophie lied.

Martha leered, ‘You be careful. Some o’ these fellers . . . ’ She winked a bloodshot eye. ‘If he puts his hand on your leg, you tell him where he gets off.’

‘I will.’

That night he did – and she did, then smacked his face into the bargain. ‘You’re sacked!’ he shouted at her, holding a hand to his jaw.

She snapped back at him, ‘I’m resigning!’ and walked out of the dressing-room. Then she wondered, What now? She had given up the job at Woolworth’s when she went to sing
with the Bobby Delville band. She had saved only a pound or two because Martha frequently borrowed money and only infrequently paid it back. Sophie knew she had to get another job because her
grandmother could not – would not – support her, and that would not be easy.