Unforgettable (6 page)

‘What the bloody hell does that mean? And
don't speak to your father in that way. Respect for your elders, my girl!'

She bit her tongue, aware that she was going to have to do it more often if they were all to stay sane.

‘What I mean is, Mum obviously needs decent food that she can eat, and regular visits from the doctor. It's all got to be paid for, and you shouldn't be boozing all your wages away.'

For a minute she thought he was going to hit her, and she flinched visibly at the sight of his clenched fists. She had never spoken to him in that way in her entire life before, but she was independent now. At least she had been in London, and although her life might have changed, the spirit was still there.

‘When I need a chit of a girl telling me what to do, I'll ask, and you'll be a long time waiting!' he shouted. ‘See to your mother and get on with your women's work and leave me to mine.'

He turned and slammed out of the door, leaving Gracie with her eyes stinging. Fighting with her dad was the last thing she intended. Of all times, they should be united when her mother was so ill, and galling though it was, Gracie knew she would have to wear kid gloves when he was around.

The thought was suddenly farcical. Kid
gloves, indeed! They were only words, but when would the likes of her ever be able to afford such luxuries, especially now …

‘Has he gone, Gracie?'

Her mother's voice made her jump. She wore her dressing-gown and slippers now, and she looked even smaller, her hands paper-white as she gripped the door handle. Coming downstairs again had evidently weakened her.

‘I thought you'd gone to bed, Mum. You need your rest …'

She waved her hand limply.

‘There'll be plenty of time for rest when I'm in my wooden box, and don't start grizzling about that, because we all know that's where I'm heading. I want to talk to you about something important, and I can't do it when he's about.'

Upset at this kind of talk, Gracie led her mother back to the parlour and sat her down in her armchair. Her eyes closed for a few moments while she got her breath back, and then she smiled more resolutely.

‘Don't look so sad, my love, we all have to die someday, and I'm quite prepared for it.'

‘Oh Mum—'

‘I usually come downstairs in the evening when he's gone out again. I like to feel my own walls around me for as long as possible,
and not just the bedroom walls either. It's lonely up there, and I like to hear the street noises.'

Gracie swallowed. They rarely used the second downstairs room, except for dusting and visitors. But there was never a more important time for it than now.

‘We could put a bed for you in the front room, Mum. You could rest there whenever you liked, and watch the neighbours go by. I'll suggest it to Dad when he comes home. He doesn't leave you alone like this every night, does he?'

‘He means no harm, Gracie. It's his way. But it would be nice to be downstairs in my own home as long as possible, and I don't need him snorting and wheezing beside me all night long.'

‘I'll see to it then,' Gracie said, furious at her father's insensitivity.

The racking coughing interrupted them again, and to Gracie's untrained eyes, the doctor's six-month prognosis seemed hopelessly optimistic.

‘That's not why I need to talk to you,' the sick woman said eventually. ‘I've made a will but he doesn't know about it. It's with the doctor, and he'll see to things when the time comes. It's just to be sure that you get my bits and pieces and do what you like with them.
It's not much, but it's for you and not him.'

She spoke slowly and haltingly, but Gracie could see that these were things that had to be said, and she didn't stop her. It occurred to her that her mother rarely referred to her husband by name, and she thought how sad it was that two people who had once loved one another should have grown so far apart.

‘I've been paying into a funeral club,' Queenie went on. ‘You'll see the little book underneath the rent book in my bedroom drawer. There'll be enough for all that's necessary, and if there's anything left over, you're to have it.'

‘All right. So can we stop talking about this now, Mum?' she had to say at last in a strained voice. ‘It's too much to take in all at once, and it's not doing you any good.'

‘It's all said now, love, so tell me about you. I know you'll be missing London and your friends. Have you got a young man yet?'

The change of conversation startled Gracie. She wouldn't say her mother looked more animated, but it seemed that getting all the funeral business off her chest had relaxed her for the moment.

And the spark in her eyes as she mentioned a young man reminded Gracie that she had once been a pretty woman.

But a young man! No, she didn't have a
young man. There was no one, only two young men she had danced with in what seemed like a lifetime ago. A bumbling, inarticulate coalman called Billy, and a dashing, handsome, black-haired saxophone player in a dance band …

‘There is, isn't there?' Queenie said, more alert. ‘Good. You'll go back to him afterwards, mind. You're not to stay here and stagnate. So tell me about him.'

She didn't want to. What was the point? She would never see him again. She could hardly remember him. He would certainly not remember her. There was a young woman who flirted with him with her eyes whenever she sang with the band. Someone far more glamorous than Gracie Brown could ever be …

‘He must be nice to put that look in your eyes, Gracie,' her mum was saying quietly now, and Gracie knew she had to pretend, if only to put a bit of sparkle back in her mother's life.

‘He's very nice. He plays the saxophone in a dance-band.'

‘Bless me!' Queenie said. ‘Is that a respectable job?'

Gracie laughed. ‘Of course it is. He wears smart clothes, a bow tie and all, just like a real toff.'

And what her dad called co-respondent's shoes
, she could have added, but didn't. There was nothing of the gigolo about Charlie Morrison. Not as far as she knew, anyway—and what she didn't know, she would just have to invent for her mother's sake.

‘Where did you meet him, Gracie? Was he in the band at the dance where there was that fire?'

There was obviously nothing wrong with her mother's memory, and Gracie remembered that her dad had seen her picture in the newspaper, and that her mum would have seen it too. But the unwitting lead had given her something to tell her now, without bending all the truth.

‘Yes, and he was one of the lucky ones who got out safely, just like Dolly and me,' she said, crossing her fingers and praying that it was true.

‘Didn't he mind you coming back to Southampton?' Queenie said, but Gracie recognized that her voice was becoming exhausted again.

‘The band has lots of engagements all over the place,' she replied. ‘It's what they do, Mum, and he's always busy, so I didn't ever expect to see him very often.'

‘But he'll write to you, I daresay.'

‘I' daresay, Gracie said, overcome with sudden misery.

Her mother was so quiet then that Gracie thought she had fallen asleep, and she crept back to the scullery to finish the washing-up in the congealing water. And then she heard the weak voice again.

‘If he's as nice as you say, hold on to him, Gracie. A trustworthy man is hard to find.'

Gracie's eyes welled up with tears again and she dashed them away angrily. A fat lot of use she was going to be to anybody if she fell apart from the first day. And inventing a pack of lies about Charlie hadn't been her intention at all. Saying he was her young man … inventing his life for him—and for her … hearing his music in her dreams, that rich, mellow sound of his saxophone … dancing in his arms in her head, to the music, the music …

‘Gracie, I'm tired. I think I can sleep now.'

She jerked around as her mother's voice came from the scullery door again, and she wiped her hands on a cloth quickly, before helping her up the stairs and into bed. At this rate the washing-up would never be done, but she didn't care. There were times when other things were more important.

But later, on her own in the small parlour, with only the muted sound of the wireless for
company in the background, she closed her own eyes, and thought what a difference a day could make.

This time yesterday she was still in London, still fancy-free, as they called it. Now she had duties that no daughter wanted to perform, even if they were duties that she did with unstinting love. But now she had time to think about Charlie. Unknowingly, her mother had brought him back into her consciousness again. Perhaps he had never really been away, but he had been as unlikely a dream as meeting one of the glamorous stars in her movie magazines. It all seemed so shallow now, compared with the enormity of what the family was facing.

But if filling her mother's days with a few stories about Gracie's dashing young man called Charlie was going to bring her pleasure, who was to say it was wrong? To Queenie, a saxophone player in a dance-band was just as unattainable as any movie star. And he
was
such a beautiful young man …

Before she knew it, Gracie was letting her thoughts drift towards the imaginary background she was creating for her mother's benefit. Naturally, she had been properly introduced to Charlie, who came from a respectable family and had encouraged their son to follow his musical talents. His dream
was to write songs and have them turned into sheet music for people to buy. One day they might even be performed on gramophone records, and he would be rich and famous. And Gracie would be right there alongside him.

The front door banged, and her father came stomping indoors, his head and clothes wet from a sudden rainstorm, his clothes unpleasant with the smell of damp wool. Uneasily, she saw that he looked none too pleased with himself. He'd wanted her to come home—had practically ordered her home—but they had never got along, and nothing seemed likely to change that now.

‘Now then, girl, make us some cocoa and then you and me are going to have a little talk.'

Her heart sank. She'd had enough little talks for one day, and any more soul-searching on her mother's account was more than she could bear.

And although it was probably very wrong of her, she wanted to go to bed with thoughts of Charlie still vivid in her mind, and not the smell of her father's beery breath in her nostrils.

‘Can't it wait until tomorrow, Dad? You're in no fit state for talking—'

‘Are you saying I'm drunk?' he snapped.

‘Well, aren't you? Look at you, hardly able to stand upright!' Gracie snapped back, unable to hide her disgust as he leaned against the table for support.

‘Since when did a daughter speak to her father in such a way?'

‘When he gave her cause, that's when.'

She stared at him fearlessly. Her months away in London let her see more clearly what a bully he was, if not physically, then always verbally. Always belittling everything she did, and sneering at her gentle mother. And the only way to deal with bullies was to face up to them, not flinch away from them.

‘You've changed, my girl,' her father finally growled, slumping down in his chair. ‘I'm not sure I like what I see, but providing you do right by your mother, we'll agree to keep our distance as much as possible.'

‘That's fine by me,' Gracie said, her head held high. ‘Now I'll go and make you a strong cup of cocoa, and there's something I want to talk to you about too.'

Take the initiative
, she told herself.
Don't let him browbeat you. And get his agreement to her mother sleeping by herself in the downstairs front room, so she would get some much-needed peace and quiet in her last days
.

‘Now then, Dad,' she said a little later,
dumping the two mugs of cocoa on the table in the parlour, and prepared to tackle him all night if need be.

And then she saw that he was fast asleep, snores roaring out of his slackly open mouth. She tiptoed out of the room, went upstairs and found a spare blanket and covered him lightly. Better that he should spend the night in a chair than wake the whole household.

* * *

Gracie knew she now had to get used to a new routine. The first few days were awkward. They all had to get to know one another again and, apart from doing the daily chores to relieve her mother as much as possible, at the first chance she went to see the family doctor.

He looked at her sympathetically. She was a lovely young girl, and as unlike her brute of a father as it was possible to be. But as he shuffled the papers on his desk, he knew she had a difficult time ahead of her.

‘So what exactly do you want to know, Gracie?'

She spread her hands, and swallowed the lump in her throat. He had been the family's doctor ever since she was born, and she was attuned to his mood, and she could see that
he didn't want to tell her the worst.

‘What you can't tell me, I suppose, Doctor Wilson. That this was all a mistake, and that my mother isn't going to die.'

The breath caught in her throat, just saying the words.

‘You know I can't tell you that, don't you, my dear? There's no mistake, and your mother has come to terms with it, and so must you. It's the only way to make it easier for her. She won't want to see gloomy faces for the last months of her life.'

‘How many?' Gracie said, so abruptly that he looked startled for a moment. ‘Dad said six months, but I've seen the way she looks, and it's not going to be that long, is it?'

‘I could lie to you, Gracie—'

‘Please don't. Please credit me with being able to deal with the truth.'

‘Then three months at most, maybe less. Her heart is weak as well, you see, and either condition could be the one to kill her. I'm sorry.'