Tuppence To Spend (16 page)

‘Alec!
Alec
! Why didn’t you let me know?’

He withdrew his head and a moment later burst into the kitchen and swung her into his arms. ‘Couldn’t. We only docked a couple of hours ago – if I’d stopped to send you a telegram I’d have missed the bus, and even then I’d probably have got here before it arrived. Oh, Lizzie, Lizzie, I just couldn’t wait to see you. I’ve missed you so much!’

‘I’ve missed you too,’ she declared breathlessly as he kissed her again and again. ‘It’s seemed like years … How are you, Alec? Are you all right? Shall I put the kettle on? Did you have any breakfast? There are some new-laid eggs … Oh, it’s so
lovely
to see you!’

They stared at one another, each taking in all the details of the other’s appearance. He was thinner, Lizzie thought, and he’d grown a moustache. And he looked tired. But he was still her Alec, and her heart turned over as she looked into his intense dark eyes and saw the passion in them.

‘Gosh, you look better than ever!’ he exclaimed. ‘You’ve got a suntan too. I expect you’re helping out on the farm – well, it’s better than having to be a Land Girl, I suppose!’ He laughed, and then the intense expression returned as he smoothed her hair back from her forehead. ‘Oh, Lizzie, if you knew how I’ve dreamed of being back here with you – able to touch you and kiss you and smell your lovely hair – d’you know, it doesn’t just look like chestnuts, it
smells
like them! All sweet and brown and woody.’

‘That’s because I’ve only just finished cleaning out the range,’ she told him. ‘And who said you could grow a moustache? I don’t remember you mentioning it in any of your letters. I suppose you think it makes you look like Ronald Colman, specially with your hair slicked back like that.’

He grinned and glanced in the mirror at his smooth black hair. ‘Well, I thought you might like a film star for a husband. Don’t you like it? They say kissing a man without a moustache is like eating an egg without salt, don’t they?’

‘Do they?’ Lizzie retorted and grinned. ‘Well, maybe I should try it out again …’ They gave the moustache a thorough testing and then she drew back once more and pretended to consider. ‘Mmm – well, it tickles a bit, but I suppose it’s quite nice, really …’

‘Perhaps it needs a bit more attention,’ he murmured wickedly, one eye on the staircase door. ‘Is anyone likely to come in?’

‘Yes – Mum. She’s only gone down the garden to pick some beans.’ Lizzie rubbed the moustache with one fingertip. ‘It’ll have to wait till later. Oh – how long have you got? You’re not going back straight away, are you?’

He shook his head. ‘Four or five days. I’ll have to go back on board tomorrow to see to a few things, but then it’s over to the maintenance boys and the stevedores. We can have a bit of a honeymoon. D’you think you can get a few days off from the shop?’ He winked. ‘Say it’s for passionate leave!’

Lizzie laughed. ‘I’ll have to go in on Monday morning,’ she said. ‘But I’ll ask. They might give me a day or two.’ She gazed at him and thought of her Aunt Ruth, saying how being married to a sailor was a series of honeymoons. And how if she wanted a family, she shouldn’t leave it too late.

We’ve got a chance now, she thought. We could start our family now, if we were lucky. But is that what I really want
to do? Is it really right to bring a baby into the world, the way things are now?

‘I’ll put the kettle on,’ she said, withdrawing herself from his arms. ‘And I’ll fry you a couple of fresh eggs and a bit of bacon. And when we’ve had dinner we’ll go for a walk. The countryside’s looking lovely now.’

Alec flung himself into Jane’s old rocking chair and stretched out his legs. ‘That’ll be smashing. I tell you what, Liz, I don’t really mind what we do. It’s just so good to be home again. It’s so good to be with you.’

The time passed all too quickly. There were old friends to see, old haunts to rediscover. Alec had been away for almost a year, far longer than anyone had expected. Everyone wanted to see him and hear his stories, but Lizzie didn’t want to share him with anyone else. She wanted to hold him close and keep him all to herself.

‘Four or five days!’ she said bitterly. ‘After you’ve been gone all that time. It’s not fair.’

‘There’s a war on,’ he reminded her, but she sniffed and tossed her head.

‘So there might be, but
you’re
not fighting it! You’re supposed to be unarmed – neutral.’

‘The country’s depending on us to bring in food and supplies. We’re fighting it as much as anyone in the Armed Services. Same as you are, on the land, and all those people growing beans and taters in their gardens. We’re all in it together, Liz.’ He drew her close. ‘I feel just the same. I want to stop here with you for ever. But I can’t leave the Merchant Navy now – and if I did, I’d just get slung into the other lot! At least I’m not in armed combat.’

‘You could still get torpedoed, or bombed,’ she said gloomily. ‘Oh, I know, Alec, we don’t have any choice, none of us. It’s just so
unfair
. One man in Germany decides he wants to rule the world, and the rest of us have to turn to and give up our own lives to stop him. Why? How was
he ever allowed to
get
to that position? Couldn’t anyone have stopped him?’

Alec shrugged. ‘No good asking me that, Liz. In any case, it’s too late now. And that’s what we’re doing, isn’t it – stopping him. At least we’re having a go now.’

‘If we haven’t left it too late,’ she muttered. ‘He could be invading at this very minute. Sending ships full of soldiers to the beaches. Planes full of bombs. Oh, Alec, Alec –’ She turned in his arms and gripped his shoulders. ‘Alec, I’m scared. I’m frightened of what might happen to you – what might happen to us, here at home. And it’s not just me – everyone’s frightened. Even if they don’t say so, you can see it in their faces. It’s why we’re all so snappy. We hardly know where to put ourselves sometimes, we’re all so scared!’

Alec held her closely. ‘I know.’ He had seen it for himself – the fear in people’s faces, tightening the skin around their eyes, drawing deep grooves between their brows. He had seen the shadows under their eyes that told of sleepless nights, heard the tautness in their voices. And he understood it, for he too had felt the fear during the long months at sea in the convoys, trying to dodge the German vessels that hunted them like whales, hearing the gunfire as their naval escorts fought them off, seeing the smoke and flame of the explosions as ships from both sides went down …

‘I know,’ he said. ‘I know.’

Gordon’s appearance in court and his being sent away to an approved school seemed to have been the last straw for poor Nora Hodges.

Frank Budd had told Tommy how he’d found Dan Hodges almost frantic, with his wife collapsed on the pavement as if she were dead and how, although Dan swore they could manage, Frank had sent his wife Jess, who had come back from the evacuation to be with him, to offer a hand.

By the time she had arrived Dan was in no state to refuse help and he hadn’t lifted a finger to stop Jess as she bustled about, sending Sammy out for the doctor and making a pot of tea, clearing the scullery and living room as she did so. It would take more than an hour’s cleaning to get that place up to scratch, she’d told Freda later, but at least by the time the doctor had arrived the place didn’t look as if the rubbish men had just made a delivery.

The doctor had looked grim as he examined Nora’s thin body. He looked at the yellowish tinge of her skin, at the bruises that kept appearing so inexplicably and at her puffy ankles, and told Dan that he ought to have been called sooner. Mrs Hodges was very sick indeed. ‘I’m not sure there’s even any point in sending her to hospital,’ he concluded, putting away his stethoscope.

Dan and Jess stared at him.

‘What d’you mean? What’re you saying?’

‘I’m saying your wife is very ill indeed,’ the doctor said, speaking slowly as if to make his meaning clearer. ‘She’s got
a serious illness. And she’s had it for some considerable time, by the look of her.’

‘What sort of illness? What are you talking about? I
did
call the doctor – the other one came, the old one with white hair. He said it was anaemia, he gave her iron tablets and said she ought to have liver. Alf Hines, up the shop, he put some by for her every week. And you mean to say it’s not done no good? All them pills and that blooming liver we all had to eat, it’s not done no good at all?’ He stared at his wife. ‘D’you mean my Nora – my Nora’s going to d—?’

‘Ssh!’ Jess cried. She pulled Dan out of the room and they stood at the top of the stairs. ‘You mustn’t say that, not where she can hear you.’ The doctor had followed them out and they filed down the narrow stairs into the scullery. ‘That’s not what you mean, is it, Doctor?’ she appealed to him. ‘She’s not really that bad?’

‘I’m afraid she is. It’s rather more than anaemia. Not possible to say for certain without tests, of course, but it looks to me like leukaemia.’

They stared at him. ‘Leukaemia?’ Dan repeated at last. ‘And what the bleeding hell’s that when it’s at home?’

The doctor glanced at him with distaste. ‘Your words are all too appropriate. It’s a serious blood disorder. A kind of cancer, in fact.’

‘
Cancer
?’ Jess gasped. She had barely ever spoken the word, or even heard it spoken aloud before. It was a word you whispered behind your hand or mouthed silently. More often, you’d say it was a ‘growth’. Yet how could you get a growth in your blood?

‘I’m afraid so. Has your wife been very tired, Mr Hodges? Fainted at all? Complained of aches and pains? Blurred vision? Excessive bleeding if she cuts herself?’ He gave Dan a sharp look. ‘She’s showing signs of bruising, but—’

‘We don’t know where those bruises come from!’ Dan broke in. ‘They keep on coming. Nora swears she don’t
remember hitting herself on anything, but you needn’t think I been knocking her about. I’ve never laid a finger on her, not that way.’

The doctor looked as if he doubted that, but he said, ‘Well, that’s another sign. Bleeding, bruising – it’s the blood, you see, breaking out of the circulation system. And the swollen ankles – that’s fluid.’

‘My granny had that,’ Jess said. ‘Dropsy. Her whole legs came up like balloons—’ She glanced at Dan and broke off, biting her lip.

‘Just so,’ the doctor said. ‘It’s because the heart is beginning to fail and fluid’s building up. Now, what I’d like to do is take your wife into hospital for a few tests, so that we can be sure – but I have to tell you that if it
is
leukaemia the outlook is very poor. There’s nothing we can do for it.’

‘Nothing?’ Jess whispered. ‘Nothing at all?’

Dan stared at him. His face was white under his dark stubble. ‘But I just thought it was the way she was naturally. I mean, she’s never been properly strong, and she’s had a few miscarriages. And she always reckoned it must be her age or the worry over the war or – or our older boy. He’s been in a spot of bother with the police, see. Fact, we just come from the court now, he’s bin – well, he’s bin sent away. Approved school.’

‘I see. Well, you may have to ask permission to have him home again. Just for a few days. Not immediately – but in a few weeks, I think. And meanwhile—’

‘Hold on a minute,’ Dan broke in. ‘What d’you mean, have him home? They won’t let us do that – not unless it’s an emergency.’ He caught the doctor’s eye and his shoulders sagged. ‘All right, Doc, I get your drift. You don’t have to say no more.’ He turned away for a moment and leant over the sink, his hands gripping the white rim. Jess gazed at him, pity welling up in her breast. She had never known him well, it was Frank who’d known him in the last war, but she’d tried to make friends with Nora and
felt sorry for her. But now her heart went out to the big man, looking so lost and bewildered. He really does love her, she thought. For all his bad temper, for all his bluster and shouting that Tommy Vickers says he and Freda can hear through the wall, he really does love her. And she remembered what Frank had told her, about Dan being shell-shocked.

‘There isn’t nothing at all?’ he said at last in a husky voice. ‘You can’t do nothing to help her?’

The doctor shook his head. He seemed a little more sympathetic now, as if his original assessment of Dan had changed when he saw the man’s obviously genuine distress. ‘I’m sorry. As I say, we can take her into hospital and carry out some tests, but I don’t really think there’s much doubt.’ He paused, then went on. ‘I can’t really tell you how long it will be. It could be just a few weeks – it may be a few months. If it does prove to be leukaemia, she might as well return home. I’ll come and see her regularly, of course, but there’s really very little I’ll be able to do besides give you a prescription for some tablets to help the pain. I’ll get the district nurse to call in every day to do whatever’s necessary. Other than that …’ He sighed, then glanced at his watch. ‘I’m sorry, I’ll have to go, I have a surgery … I’ll send an ambulance to take her into hospital. Do you pay any insurance? To a Friendly Society or anything?’

‘Yeah.’ Dan straightened his shoulders and turned back to them. ‘Yeah, we pays a penny a week, Sammy takes it to the old woman round Carlisle Crescent. I s’pose it’ll pay …’ He wiped the back of his hand across his face and eyes. ‘Thanks for coming. We’ll manage. We always do, one way or another.’

The doctor hesitated, glanced at them both, then nodded and walked quickly through the living room and along the passage to the front door. Jess looked uncertainly at Dan and moved to put a hand on his arm.

‘I’m ever so sorry,’ she said. ‘I really am. You – you
know we’ll do whatever we can, don’t you? Me and Frank – and Ted and Annie, and Tommy Vickers and Freda next door. We’ll all do whatever we can. You’ve only got to say the word.’

Dan looked down at her. She thought briefly that he must have been a good-looking man when he was young, before hard work and worry and drink had taken their toll. Before the so-called Great War. Frank always did say he used to be different, that he’d never been the same again after he’d been in the trenches. And he was a good-looking man still, when you looked behind the tiredness, the anxiety, the grief. Tall, dark, well set-up – you couldn’t ever destroy those sort of looks.