Secrets to Keep (43 page)

Ruth rose to her feet. ‘There is some soup downstairs waiting for you. Bertha made it herself, but I promise you all the ingredients came from the greengrocer’s apart from the bone for the stock. It’s very nourishing and should help to start building your strength up. Do you feel you could manage a little? The sooner you start eating, the quicker you’ll be back on your feet.’

He snapped at her, ‘I am well aware of that, Miss Whelham. I
am
a doctor.’

Ty was feeling wretched. This time, though, it
wasn’t through illness. The ex-nun, in her quiet, calm way, had made him feel totally ashamed of himself. She was right. an intelligent man, he should not have based his opinion of remedy makers on only one fraudster. And he should have allowed Aidy to explain her reasons for why she had acted as she did before he sacked her out of hand. But he had, and now he was the worse for it. She had proved him wrong from the onset, turning out to be an excellent receptionist, and filling her place wasn’t going to be easy.

And now he’d listened to Ruth enthusing over the home-made remedies he had proclaimed worthless in the past, he really would have liked the opportunity to have learned more about them. But how could he expect that family to show any forbearance towards him after the shoddy way he had treated them? What was concerning him most, though, was that he suspected from what Ruth had told him that very shortly Aidy herself would be making an appearance to take over his care. Now his eyes had been opened as they had, he couldn’t bear the embarrassment of coming face to face with her and having to admit his mistakes. He suddenly realised that he was actually frightened of doing so in case he started to see her again the way he had on Christmas Day …

He said to Ruth stiltedly, ‘Please tell Mrs Nelson I can manage for myself. I won’t need her or you to
call on me again. And I shan’t be needing the soup so please take it away with you. I am perfectly capable of making food for myself that will build up my strength. Would you pull the door to behind you as you leave, Miss Whelham?’

But as she saw herself out, Ruth was not seeing the rude and arrogant man most people remembered after an encounter with Ty. She was instead seeing someone who was afraid to let people get close to him. That could only mean that he had been so terribly hurt in the past, he couldn’t bear to be hurt again. And the only way to avoid being hurt was never to allow yourself to become emotionally attached to other human beings. She suspected that he had based his behaviour on one devastating incident that had cut him deep.

Aidy was very vocal when Ruth told her that the doctor had said in no uncertain terms they were no longer required.

‘Bloody ungrateful sod!’ she snapped. ‘We should have left him at the bottom of those stairs, where we found him. Better still, should never have taken the trouble to go and check if he was all right in the first place. I promised myself after the last time he humiliated me I would never put myself in that position again, and I damned well have!’

They were alone in the kitchen at the time. Ruth placed her hand on Aidy’s arm and said very quietly
to her, ‘Are you angry with the doctor for humiliating you again or angry with yourself, Aidy?’

She looked taken aback. ‘Angry with myself? Why would I be angry with myself?’

‘For falling in love with a man who is clearly frightened of letting anyone get close to him.’

‘What! Oh, don’t be ridiculous. I can’t stand that …’ Aidy stopped mid-sentence. She had been about to deny flatly that she could ever fall for a man like the doctor, when she realised it was true, she had.

As she had sat by his bed in the small hours of the night, watching him closely for any signs that his fever was climbing again, or as she was sponging him to get his fever down when it had shot up, she had found herself forgetting the man she knew him to be while at work, and seeing him instead as the man she had met on Christmas Day when he first opened the door to her. The man who had temporarily forgotten to show the austere side of himself he usually displayed to the world. Just a glimpse she had had of that other man, but she had liked what she saw.

She sighed heavily and said, ‘Yes, I have fallen for him, Ruth. Not the man he pretends he is to the world, but the man I know he is behind that cold, indifferent mask. It’s ironic, really. I fell in love with Arch when he pretended to be one thing, and fell out of love with him when I found out the side of himself he was hiding from me. Something terrible
must have happened to Doc to make him like he is. I wonder what it was that was so bad?

‘Anyway, I would be a fool to think a man of his standing would ever look in my direction. It’s a good job I’m no longer working for him. It would be awful seeing him day after day, knowing my feelings for him were completely wasted.’

‘I
t’s a job, Gran, and that’s what matters.’

‘Yes, love, it is, and not to be sneezed at. But the hospital laundry! You’re worth more that.’

‘Gran, the couple of ward orderly jobs had a queue of people going for them. Someone who’s been an orderly before will get set on over me. And I can’t hang around another week, waiting to hear if I’ve been successful or not, and then find out I haven’t and lose another week’s pay. If it hadn’t been for Ruth stumping up all her wage packet to help us last week, I dread to think …

‘Anyway, it doesn’t mean to say I can’t still be on the look out for something else while I’m working at the laundry, does it? I start tomorrow morning at seven. The pay is ten shillings a week less than what I was getting at the surgery, so things are going to be tighter than usual.’

Aidy was in fact very worried about their future finances. That ten shillings a week less was the
difference between having a pint of milk a day or eking it out over two days, making half a bag of coal last a week instead of three bags, turning the gas mantles down to their lowest and, after the kids went to bed, turning them off altogether and using only one candle. Meat in any guise would be a distant memory. Having to beg from the parish for clothes and shoes was a possibility.

Ruth had been sitting very quietly, listening to what was being said. She knew Aidy was worried about her cut in pay and how she was going to make what she did get go around, and Ruth’s own recent contribution wasn’t being taken into consideration since they thought that at any time she could announce she had found a place of her own and was moving out. Little did Aidy and Bertha know that Ruth herself felt so comfortable being a part of this family, she wasn’t even looking for a place, and until it was made clear to her that she had outstayed her welcome, she had no plans to. But she had had an idea for how the family’s income could be improved. It had come to her a few days ago and, after thinking about it to make sure it was workable, she was ready to impart it.

‘Could I just have a word before you go through to make a start on the dinner, Aidy dear? You see, I might have an idea for how you can improve your finances.’ That statement had Aidy sitting back down
again, and she and Bertha were both looking at Ruth enquiringly. ‘Of course, a shop would be ideal though that is out of the question at the moment for obvious reasons, but we could turn the front room into one … I really have no objection to sleeping on the flock in the recess in here for this to go ahead. I’ve noticed several people around here have turned their parlours into shops. There’s a lady in Denton Street who cuts hair in hers. A lady in the street behind sells sweets; another wools and haberdashery. All we would need is some shelves put up, and the dining table could be used as a sort of counter and for displaying the goods on as well.’ She eyed them both eagerly. ‘So what do you both think of the idea?’

‘Sounds a grand idea to me,’ Aidy said enthusiastically.

‘And me too,’ said Bertha.

‘Just one question, though,’ said Aidy.

‘The same one I’m going to ask, I expect,’ said Bertha.

‘Oh, and what’s that?’ asked Ruth.

‘What are you proposing we sell?’ Bertha queried.

Ruth smiled. ‘Oh, didn’t I make that clear? Your remedies, Bertha dear.’

They both stared at her agog.

‘Do I take it you think my idea a good one then?’ she asked them.

She did not get an answer. A loud and very urgent
hammering began on the back door and shouts of: ‘Aidy! Bertha! Come quick!’

Aidy reached the door first, and yanked it open to be greeted by a frenzied Ava Charman, mother of one of George’s friends, who lived in the street behind them.

Before Aidy, Bertha or Ruth could ask what the urgency was, Ava blurted, ‘It’s the old factory! Apparently a wall’s collapsed. One of the boys that was in there got out, and according to the lad, your George and my boy were amongst the kids still inside that ain’t come out. I’m on me way now but I didn’t know whether you’d heard …’

Aidy’s coat was already off the back of the door and she was pulling it on. Ruth had run off to get her nurse’s bag from her makeshift bedroom in the parlour.

Aidy ordered Bertha, ‘Gran, you stay here. Marion is next door so she’s safe.’ Then, with fear in her eyes, she demanded, ‘Where did Betty go off to when she went out earlier, do you know?’

Face ashen, Bertha helplessly shrugged. ‘Sometimes she goes to a friend’s house. Sometimes she plays with other gels, skipping and hopscotch and whatnot, in the jetty. But sometimes … well, they all play together, girls and boys, so she could … Oh, Aidy, she could be with George, trapped inside the factory!’

Ruth, her coat on and carrying her bag, had
returned by now. Aidy grabbed her arm and pulled her outside to join Ava Charman. Without a word passed between them they ran off in the direction of the disused factory.

As they rounded a corner and the factory came into sight, they all stopped abruptly to stare at it in shock. The evening was a dark one, the only light coming from two flickering gas lamps to the front of the building and from a three-quarter moon in a cloudless sky. The rest of the dilapidated building was still standing but one of the gabled walls was gone, the bricks now lying in a huge mound on the ground and scattered round about. A section of the roof had come down too, taking part of the second floor with it.

Aidy gasped, horror-stricken. Her brother was possibly under that mound of bricks, her sister too. She just had to hope and pray, with every ounce of her being, that they had been playing on the other side of the factory when the collapse had happened.

She noticed no one was standing beside her and looked down to see that Ava had collapsed in shock in a dead faint. Ruth was kneeling over, administering first aid.

A lone policeman was standing guard in front of the building. Plenty of people seemed to be milling around, talking amongst themselves, but no one seemed to be doing anything by way of searching
for survivors. Aidy dashed up to a group of people, demanding, ‘Is anyone in the building yet, searching for the kids who might have been playing there when the wall went down? Has anyone fetched the doctor in case … in case?’ She could not bring herself to say in case he was needed to deal with the injured.

She was told, ‘Copper said he’d been instructed not to let anyone in the building until the others arrive and decide what’s to be done. They shouldn’t be long. I thought I saw the doctor arrive a few minutes ago but I can’t see him around now …

‘I was the one who first raised the alarm. I was just about to pass by the factory on me way home from work when, without warning, the far wall suddenly came down. Just like someone had stuck a stick of dynamite under it and blown it up. I ain’t never seen so much dust. Look at me, I’m covered in it. And then part of the roof and second floor came down almost straight after. Bloody place has been a death trap for years. It should have been bulldozed to the ground long ago. Anyway, it ain’t safe in there, that’s why no one’s gone inside yet until the police set up a search party. Someone else said there could possibly be some kids in there. Well, if they were still able they’d have come out by now, so if there are any in there, it don’t look good for ’em, does it?’

Aidy was barely listening. She couldn’t stand here, knowing her brother or sister or some other poor
children were trapped and frightened and needing help. She rushed back to Ruth, still trying to revive the unconscious Ava, and snatched up her nursing bag.

Ruth caught sight of this out of the corner of her eye and demanded, ‘What are you up to with my bag, Aidy?’

‘I might need it, Ruth. I can’t wait around for the Cavalry to arrive when my brother and sister could be in there needing help. I’m going inside to look for them.’

In the far-off distance the clamour of a police siren could be heard.

Ruth cried, ‘No, wait, Aidy! That’s the police on their …’

Her words fell on deaf ears. Aidy was already running off towards the ruined building, her mind racing as she weighed up the best way to get inside.

She mustn’t let the policeman on guard see her or he’d stop her. To make her way inside by clambering over the mound of bricks could prove counterproductive as they were loose and, should anyone be trapped under them, she could cause further hurt. The double door at the front was chained and padlocked shut, so that was out. The glass in the windows at the front was all broken and jagged. She’d cut herself to ribbons getting in that way … besides, she couldn’t do it without the policeman on guard
seeing her. Then she realised that the children had to have been able to get in somehow. Hopefully their access point was through a door or window in the gabled wall still standing and not the one that had collapsed.