Tuppence To Spend (13 page)

When Jack had died a few years ago, of malaria, Jane had wondered if her sister would be upset to hear his voice repeated in the parrot’s croaking tones, but Ruth had continued to find it a comfort. It wasn’t any different from someone having a recording of their husband’s voice, she said, except that Silver was alive and well, and looked like keeping her company for a good many years yet.

‘Parrots can live till they’re a hundred years old. He’ll see me out, the old rascal.’

‘I wish I had something like Silver to keep me company
while Alec’s away,’ Lizzie said. ‘So that I could go on hearing his voice, like you can hear Uncle Jack’s. I’m sure it’d help.’

‘What you want is a baby, not a parrot,’ Ruth told her. ‘And when your man comes home you ought to do something about it. Don’t leave it too long, like Jack and me.’

Lizzie looked at her. ‘I know. I keep thinking about it. But – it seems such an awful world to bring a baby into. Suppose we get invaded. You hear such terrible things about the Germans. I couldn’t bear to see my baby hurt, or killed. Dotty Dewar told me the other day that they
eat
babies. It doesn’t bear thinking about.’

‘And I don’t suppose it’s true either,’ Ruth said. ‘I wouldn’t believe anything Dotty Dewar told me. I know we don’t have any time for Hitler and the Nazis, but most of the Germans are ordinary Christian people, same as us. I don’t believe they’d do anything like that.’

‘Yes, but it’s the Nazis who are in charge now, isn’t it, and look what they’ve been doing to the Jews. Making them live behind brick walls and wear yellow stars on their sleeves, and taking all their money away and everything. They’ve been treating them like animals.’

‘Well, there’s lots of people don’t like the Jews,’ Ruth said. ‘Mind, I’ve nothing against them myself, but I know there are plenty who think they ought to go back to their own place. That’s the trouble, you see, they’ve spread all over the world and they seem to make money wherever they go. It’s bound to cause trouble.’

Lizzie stared at her. ‘But that’s just jealousy! If everyone worked as hard as Jews do, they could all make the same money. And they can’t go back to their own place – they haven’t got one.’

‘Well, I don’t know,’ Ruth said. ‘I don’t know what the rights or wrongs of it are.
Why
haven’t they got their own country? I’ve never understood it all. All I know is
wherever there’s Jews there’s trouble, and it can’t always be everyone else’s fault.’

They seemed to have strayed a long way from parrots and babies, and Lizzie decided it was better to leave it there. She went out into the tiny hallway and wrapped her long scarf round her neck, pulled on her hat and shrugged into her coat. She gave her aunt a kiss on the cheek.

‘Don’t you get cold, now,’ Ruth said. ‘We don’t want you going down with your chest.’

‘I’m warm as toast. And these mittens you knitted me are lovely and cosy.’ Lizzie held her hands up like woolly red paws. ‘I’ve got my old gloves on underneath them too. Now, are you sure you’re going to be all right, Auntie? You could always come and stop with us for a few days, you know, Mum told you that. You could have Ben’s bed, he could sleep downstairs on the settee – he wouldn’t mind.’

‘Thanks, but I’d rather be here with my own things. And I’ve got plenty of clearing out to do – that back bedroom’s cluttered up almost to the ceiling with all Dad’s old junk. I used to tell him he must have been a magpie once, but he always reckoned it would come in useful some day. Well, so it might, but it’ll be someone else getting the use of it, because I’m clearing out the lot. There’s stuff in there going back years.’

‘Well, you don’t need to do it all on your own,’ Lizzie told her. ‘I’ll come and give you a hand. Now don’t you stand on the doorstep letting in all the cold.’ She gave her aunt another kiss. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow and I dare say Mum’ll come along too. Night-night.’

She slipped out into the darkness and was lost instantly in a whirl of snowflakes. Ruth watched for a few seconds, then closed the door quickly. It was impossible to believe that there might be a German plane above them now, looking for a light to show it where to bomb, but the blackout was law and you had to keep to it. She went back
into the living room and made up the fire again, then stood for a moment or two, irresolute.

‘I think I’ll bring that blessed bird back in here now after all,’ she said to herself. ‘It does seem ever so quiet, now that everyone’s gone.’

She went out into the kitchen and fetched the perch with Silver clinging to it, then went back for the big domed cage. She set both down in their accustomed places and she and the bird looked at each other.

‘Well, that’s it, then,’ she said with a sigh. ‘Just you and me again. Back to the way it’s always been.’

‘Two for tea,’ the parrot said cheerfully. ‘You old blighter, you.’ He cocked his head to one side and winked his bright eye and then said, very softly and tenderly, ‘I love you, Ruthie.’

Lizzie trudged home through the snow, head down against the driving wind. Despite her assurances she could feel the wind slicing through her thick coat and she jammed her woolly hands deep into her pockets. Every now and then her foot skidded on the packed ice that lay beneath the snow and she slithered and almost fell. Once she skidded to lie in a heap on the snow, but it was so soft and deep that her fall was cushioned and she had to struggle to get back on to her feet.

‘My stars above, whatever’s happened to you?’ Jane exclaimed as her daughter came through the kitchen door at last. ‘You look like a snowman.’

‘I fell in a drift. You just can’t see where to put your feet.’ Lizzie pulled off her mittens, which were plastered with snow, and put them beside the range. She hung her coat on the back of the door and held out her hands to the glowing coals.

‘Your auntie all right, is she?’ Jane asked, leaning over to stir the large saucepan which was simmering on the top of
the range. ‘It’ll seem queer to her, now she’s on her own again.’

‘I think she’s all right. I said I’d go in tomorrow, help her clear out some of Grandad’s things.’

‘She doing that already? Seems a bit quick. Still, I suppose she might as well get on with it, no point putting off jobs like that. I’ll go down with you.’ Jane sighed. ‘I must say, it’s going to seem funny down there without Dad. I mean, I know it’s a few days now, but we’ve had the funeral to arrange and all that. It’s only now that it sort of comes home to you.’

‘I know.’ Lizzie thought of the little cottage without her grandfather in his armchair at the window, watching the world go by. ‘Still, it won’t exactly be quiet, not with Silver squawking his head off.’

Jane smiled. ‘He’s like a baby to our Ruth, that bird is. Shame she never had her own kiddies.’

‘She told me they’d left it too long,’ Lizzie said quietly. ‘Said me and Alec didn’t ought to do the same.’ Her mouth twisted a little. ‘Chance’d be a fine thing! And yet – well, I said to her, it don’t seem any sort of a world to bring a baby into. Not with this war going on, and nobody knowing what’s going to happen. I mean, suppose they do invade. You hear such awful things about what they’ve been doing in Poland. Even in their own country … I don’t think I want to have a baby, Mum, not till the world’s a bit more settled.’

Her mother moved the saucepan to the side of the Rayburn, where it could be left to simmer. George had been allowed to stay at home during the last war, working on the farm, and she hadn’t had to face the prospect of losing him. There hadn’t been the fear of invasion then either, so having a baby seemed the right and natural thing to do. But things were different now and she couldn’t blame Lizzie for feeling the way she did.

‘It’ll all come right in the end,’ she said, hoping her
words were true. ‘You and Alec will get your chance, Lizzie. This war hasn’t come to all that much so far, and maybe it never will. It might all be finished with this time next year, then we can all settle down to a proper normal life again.’

‘I hope so,’ Lizzie said. She had started to lay the table, spreading the cloth over it, but now she paused to stare at the pattern as if she’d never seen it before. ‘I really do hope so.’

Nora was not dead. But she was very ill and Dan had sent Gordon racing up the street to telephone for a doctor. He came an hour later to find Nora conscious again and in bed, with Dan beside her and the boys hovering anxiously at the foot of the stairs. Gordon let him in and he brushed past them without a word, not pleased to have been called out on such a cold, snowy evening to a house where there was obviously no money for paying doctors’ bills.

‘How long’s she been like this?’ he demanded abruptly, taking Nora’s pulse and pulling down her lower eyelid. He moved the sheet and opened her nightdress, laying his stethoscope on her chest. ‘Where did she get this bruise?’

‘I dunno,’ Dan said defensively. ‘She keeps on knocking herself on things. I don’t knock her about, if that’s what you’re thinking.’ He stared belligerently at the doctor. ‘Anyway, she bin tired, and not had much go about her, for quite a while, but I dunno as I’d have said she was actually ill. I mean, there’s bin nothing else to notice, apart from that, and some days she seems all right, able to get up the street, do a bit of shopping, wash the clothes, you know. I thought she was getting better.’

‘And how old is she?’ the doctor asked, as if Nora were unable to speak for herself.

Dan thought. ‘She’s a coupla years younger’n me, so that makes her thirty-five, coming up to thirty-six.’

‘Good God, man, only thirty-five years old and you think she’s
better
when she manages to do a bit of
shopping! You’ve been talking as though she’s a woman of seventy.’

‘Well, she’s never bin all that strong,’ Dan argued. ‘And she’s had a few miscarriages; they pulled her down. And then there was the brewery saying we couldn’t stop on at the pub after her dad snuffed it, and young Sammy’s whooping cough and our Gordon’s spot of bother … I just thought she was a bit run down, that’s all.’

‘Your wife’s more than run down,’ the doctor stated, putting away his stethoscope and folding Nora’s nightdress over again, with another sharp look at the bruise on her right breast. ‘She’s ill. I suspect she’s got anaemia – quite severe, possibly even pernicious, but we’d need to have her in hospital for some tests to know for sure. She needs iron and she needs good food to build her up. I dare say she’s not been eating much lately, has she?’

‘Ain’t bin much to eat,’ Dan said grumpily. ‘They said it’d be better when we got the rationing but I don’t see no improvement. And Nora knows I need meat to do me job. It’s me what brings the money home.’

‘So she’s been giving you the lion’s share.’ The doctor nodded, knowing this was no uncommon story. He looked down at Nora and spoke directly to her for the first time. ‘Well, you must make sure you get a better plateful in future. Get some liver, and eat it raw. As much as you can get hold of – a pound a day is what she really needs, but obviously there’s not much chance of that … Beef tea will help too. And get these iron tablets from the chemist.’ He handed Dan a prescription. ‘You know what anaemia is, I suppose?’

‘It’s to do with the blood. But I dunno what that other sort is – per—per—’

‘Pernicious,’ the doctor said. ‘It’s the most severe form. If your wife has that she’ll need more treatment than just iron pills. But we’ll try these first. If she doesn’t improve, I want her in hospital for tests.’

He turned to go, then glanced back over his shoulder. ‘Those boys downstairs. Why haven’t they been evacuated?’

‘The bigger one’s at work,’ Dan said defensively. ‘And young Sammy – well, his mother didn’t want him to go. Wanted to keep him with her. And a lot of nippers have come home now, what with there not being any bombing.’

‘Hm,’ the doctor said. ‘Well, he’d be better off out in the country. He looks peaky himself.’ He glanced disparagingly around the bare little bedroom with its iron bedstead, damp-stained wallpaper and threadbare curtains. ‘It’s a pity your wife can’t go too. She’d get good fresh food there.’

He departed, leaving Dan and Nora together. She looked up at him, her eyes huge in her white face, and he snorted and shook his head.

‘They live in a different world, doctors! How could we afford to send you out to the country? It’s bad enough having to fork out for iron tablets. I mean, if it was me, being a worker, he could put me on the panel and we’d get them for nothing, but there’s nothing like that for you or the kids … And saying you’ve got to have better food! Where’s it going to come from, eh? Tell me that.’ He dropped on to the bed beside her and took her thin hand. ‘Oh, I’m sorry, love, it ain’t your fault, I know that. I know you’re poorly and if it’s this per—per – anaemia thing, you got to have the right sort of medicine to put you right, and if you got to go to hospital for these tests we’ll manage it somehow. But holidays in the country and beef dinners – well!’

‘I know, Dan. Don’t you worry about it.’ Nora smiled at him. She was feeling better now she was in bed and the doctor had been. ‘And anaemia’s not all that serious. It just means run down, like you thought in the first place. Once I’ve had a few of these pills I’ll be right as rain, you see, though I’m not sure I fancy raw liver! And I couldn’t
eat a pound a day even if we could get it. I’ve just let things get on top of me, that’s what it is.’

‘Yes,’ Dan said, gazing at her and trying to see the bright-faced girl he had known in this thin and weary woman, old before her time. ‘Yes, that’s all it is.’

Downstairs, Sammy made an effort to tidy the room and clean up the kitchen. Gordon, who had scooped up the jewellery and goblet when the doctor was called, sidled up the stairs with his haversack. He gave Sammy a warning look.

‘Don’t you say nothing about this, see. They’ve forgot all about it. There ain’t no need for you to go putting it back in their heads.’

Sammy watched him and turned back to scrubbing the draining board. He didn’t for one minute believe that Gordon had been given the things as a reward for helping. And he remembered Christmas Day, when they’d met Micky Baxter in the street and Micky had boasted of giving his mother and gran gold necklaces.