As Time Goes By (24 page)

‘What has happened?’ Sam whispered.

‘What has happened is that you’ve made me break my own rules and go crazy for the kind of girl who doesn’t have the first idea of what she’s doing to
me. The kind of girl that a chap doesn’t play around with. A wedding vows and for ever kind of girl. Because that’s what you are, isn’t it, Sam?’

‘Yes,’ she admitted.

‘So there it is,’ he told her lightly. ‘You and me.’

His words brought Sam back to reality with a sharp jolt, guilt flooding her as she remembered what she ought to have been thinking about all along.

‘But what about Lynsey?’

‘Lynsey?’

‘Yes. You’ve been seeing her, after all, and she thinks that you and she …’ She could feel herself floundering.

‘Seeing her? I haven’t been seeing anyone,’ Johnny denied.

‘Lynsey’s told everyone that you and she are an item.’

‘Well, she’s lying because we aren’t.’

Sam looked up into his eyes and knew that no matter what Lynsey had said, Johnny was telling her the truth.

‘The thing is, Sam, you’ve got a lot of growing up to do before you catch up with me, and I don’t rightly know if it’s fair to you for me to want you to do that growing up exclusively with me, or if it’s fair to meself to take the risk that you won’t take off and want to do it with someone else.’

‘I’d never do that,’ Sam protested.

‘You can say that now but things change, people change.’

‘I won’t.’

‘You shouldn’t say that, Sam.’

‘Why not, when it’s the truth?’ she demanded.

‘Because like I said, a person can change. Any person.’ He gave a small shrug.

The way he was talking was beginning to make her feel anxious and uncertain, plummeting her down into despair where only minutes ago he had taken her up to the heights of dizzy excitement and joy.

‘I knew the moment I met you that you were trouble, the kind of girl a man could never relax around because he’d be forever wondering just what the hell kind of trouble she was going to get herself into next,’ he was telling her. ‘The kind of girl who a man needs to keep a constant watch out for in case she hurts herself. If you want the truth, when I saw the way you were going all big-eyed over Frank I was pleased, or at least I would have been if it hadn’t been that I know he’s married to Molly. You see, the way I looked at it, you wanting him should have made it easy for me to not want you myself.’ He shook his head. ‘You aren’t my type.’

Sam tried hard not to let him see how much those last few words hurt her. ‘So what is your type?’ she asked him as brightly as she could.

‘Quiet, gentle girls who don’t keep a man awake at night.’

‘I keep you awake then, do I?’

The look he gave her made her feel as though a jolt of electricity had struck right through her body.

‘That’s what I mean about you still having a lot to learn, Sam. If you had learned you wouldn’t need to ask me that question; you’d know that I can’t sleep at night for thinking of you and wanting you.’

She closed her eyes, excitement and joy sizzling through her.

Sally saw him whilst she was queuing up inside the butcher’s. She was just looking through the window to check that Tommy was standing where she had left him with Harry in the pushchair, lined up between two large prams, when she saw him coming down the street.

It didn’t matter she told herself, not even if he saw them. Why should it? He had told her himself that the Boss had said she would give her a bit more time – and charge a lot more interest. If she kept her back turned to the window then Sid the debt collector probably wouldn’t even see her, but the problem was that she couldn’t do that. Not with Tommy and Harry outside. Tommy was a good boy and she had told him to stay with Harry and the pushchair, but he was only three and easily distracted, and three-year-olds could wander off and get themselves into all sorts of danger and mischief.

Sid had drawn level with the shop now. Quickly Sally looked the other way but not quickly enough, and her heart sank when she realised that he had seen her. He was standing outside now and …

Sally’s heart jerked on its maternal strings as
she saw him say something to Tommy, putting one hand on the pushchair handle as he did so.

‘Excuse me …’

‘’Ere, wot’s going on? There’s a queue here, you know.’

‘Hang on a minute, love, it’s your turn next …’

‘I’m sorry,’ Sally apologised, ignoring the objections of the woman behind her in the queue packed into the narrow shop, as she caught her with her basket in her desperation to get to her sons.

‘Watch what you’re doing,’ she complained, but Sally didn’t have time to apologise or explain.

‘Thought these must be your two,’ the debt collector said to her. ‘They’ve got a look of you.’

‘Come on, Tommy,’ Sally urged her son as she took hold of the pushchair, trying desperately to sidestep Sid.

‘What’s your rush?’ He was standing in front of her now, blocking her exit, coming towards her so that she was forced to back away from him and into the shadows. ‘I’ve bin thinking. Can’t be easy for you with your hubby gone. I’ll bet you’re lonely too wi’out a man. Why don’t I call round after I’ve finished me round on Friday and you and me could have a bit of a chat?’

The leer on his face told Sally everything she needed to know about his intentions. Her stomach curdled with loathing and disgust.

‘I’ll tell you what, why don’t I walk back wi’ you now? Come on, son, you hold my hand.’

‘No!’ Sally almost shouted her fear-filled denial but it was too late, he was already reaching out
to take her son. Sally reacted with a strength and speed she hadn’t known she possessed.

‘Let go of him.’ She pulled Tommy away from Sid, holding the little boy tightly to her side and slightly behind her in an attempt to protect him. In retaliation the debt collector stepped forward and put his hand on her shoulder, standing so close to her that she could smell the sour odour of his breath.

‘I’m the one who gives the orders, not you, and don’t you go forgetting it.’ He squeezed her shoulder hard, making her flinch and cry out in pain.

Tommy’s face had started to crumple.

‘Leave us alone,’ Sally snapped.

‘Now that’s not a nice way to talk to someone who wants to be friendly, is it? In fact if I was you I’d think about being a bit more careful,’ cos a person might just take offence, and we don’t want that, do we?’ His hand had moved from her shoulder to her throat, and as he finished speaking his fingers tightened, almost choking her. How far he would have gone if two women who Sally knew by sight and who lived a couple of streets away from Chestnut Close hadn’t been coming towards them Sally didn’t know.

As it was she made good use of the opportunity they had unknowingly given her to escape. Taking advantage of the debt collector releasing her, she pushed the pram towards them, saying with the kind of forwardness she would never normally have exhibited, ‘You’ll be walking back
my way, I expect. I’ll walk along with you, if you don’t mind.’

She knew that Sid would not risk following her in broad daylight, but she also knew that the danger she was in now was far greater than it had been, and that the next time he came knocking on her door it would not just be money he would be expecting to collect from her.

There was only one thing she could do now, only one option left open to her.

The minute they were safely inside the house, Sally set to work. She had dragged a pair of heavy wooden step ladders in from the garden shed, locked both the back and front doors and then struggled to get the step ladders up the stairs so that she could drag down from the loft space the battered dust-covered suitcases that had lain there ever since her and Ronnie’s honeymoon. She wouldn’t be able to take anything she couldn’t carry, so she would just have to take what was essential. The rest of their things she would have to ask Doris to store for them until such time as it was safe for her to come back and get them. Not that she intended to tell her neighbour what she was planning to do until the very last minute.

As she feverishly opened drawers and removed their contents, her mind raced ahead of her shaking hands, her body stiffening as she heard someone knocking on the front door. Before she could stop him Tommy got up from the floor where he had been playing and raced into the front room,
pressing his face up against the window as he looked to see who it was.

‘It’s my doctor,’ he told Sally excitedly. ‘Mummy, let him in.’

‘No, Tommy …’ Sally began, but she knew that it was too late for her to pretend that they weren’t in. The doctor had already seen Tommy at the window and if she refused to answer the door no doubt he would decide that she must be neglecting her sons and he’d keep on knocking on until she let him in.

Wherever they ended up going – and she had no idea yet just where that was going to be, except that it would be a long way from Liverpool and in the country – she intended to make sure that it was somewhere where they didn’t have an nosy parker interfering doctor, who seemed to think that she wasn’t capable of looking after her own sons just because he had seen her singing on stage in a dance hall, she decided angrily as she unlocked and opened the front door.

‘I’ve been visiting a patient close by so I thought I’d call and see how—’

‘Call and check up on me to make sure that I’m not being a bad mother, don’t you mean?’ Sally finished acidly as he stepped into the hall. Before she closed the door she looked outside quickly, fearing that the debt collector might be hanging around, but to her relief there was no sign of him, not yet. But it wasn’t dark yet, and men like him preferred to slink out under the cover of darkness, using it to cloak what they were doing.

‘I thought I’d call and see how both you and the boys are,’ the doctor told her, ignoring her outburst.

‘I suppose you’d better come through then,’ Sally offered grudgingly. ‘Only I’m a bit busy. I’m having a bit of a clear-out,’ she added, acutely aware of the untidiness of the parlour with drawers and cupboards open, their contents spilling out. ‘I’d offer you a cup of tea but, as you can see, I’m in a bit of a mess.’

‘That’s all right.’ Ignoring her, Dr Ross crouched down so that he was on Tommy’s level, a dimple creasing his chin as he smiled warmly at her son. Sally couldn’t tear her gaze away from the picture the two of them made, their heads close together, Tommy leaning against the doctor, the doctor’s arm around his shoulder, both of them engrossed in some kind of male communication that totally excluded her. A sharp pang of loss and pain struck at her heart. This was how Ronnie should have been with his sons, but they would never share a father and son relationship with him now; her boys would never know what it was to have a father’s love, just as the doctor would never be able to see his own sons growing up. A man who had lost his children and two children who had lost their father – they were in a way united by those losses, her sons and the doctor.

Looking at them, Sally suddenly felt excluded, and even jealous that Tommy should make it so obvious how much he liked the doctor, running to him instead of clinging to her.

‘I can see that both the boys are looking well and have some good healthy colour in their cheeks,’ Dr Ross told her as he stood up.

‘We’ve just come back from the shops,’ Sally told him shortly.

Tommy moved closer to the doctor and told him, ‘There was a nasty man at the shops. I didn’t like him.’

‘Tommy,’ Sally tried to stop him, but it was too late.

‘Didn’t you, old son?’ the doctor answered, ruffling Tommy’s hair.

‘No. He hurt my mummy and made her cry.’

How could something as simple as silence make her stomach churn as though she was about to be sick, Sally wondered as she struggled for something to say.

The doctor had moved closer to her son, and Tommy was leaning against him now, within the protection of his arm, both male gazes fixed on her but with very different expressions in them.

‘How did he do that then, Tommy?’ the doctor was asking him, bending to his level but without removing his gaze from Sally’s guilt-ridden face.

‘He did this to her,’ Tommy told him, demonstrating the debt collector’s grip of her throat with the small span of his own hand against the doctor’s throat.

Another silence. Sally swallowed uncomfortably.

‘Why don’t you go and play with Harry for a minute, Tommy, whilst I have a word with your mummy?’

‘No!’ Sally protested, but it was too late, Tommy was already going over to the playpen she had put Harry in whilst she started to sort through their things.

‘I’d better take a look at your neck. Come over here into the light.’

‘No … no … it was nothing. I’m fine. Tommy got it wrong. It was just a bit of fooling around …’

The long cool fingers touched her skin with clinical detachment, whilst the sick anxiety in the pit of her stomach doubled and then trebled.

‘A bit of love play from an overardent admirer, you mean?’

‘No!’ She jerked back from him, her eyes blazing with anger. ‘Nothing like that! I’ve only just lost my husband and that sort of thing is the last thought on my mind. I’ve got my boys to consider.’

‘So he attacked you then?’

‘No! That is …’

‘Well, he’s certainly left his mark on you. You’ve got a bruise coming up already.’

A key rattled in the back door, causing Sally to jump nervously but it was only Doris, beaming at them both as she let herself in.

‘I saw the doctor’s car outside on my way back from Molly and Frank’s so I thought I’d better call and see if everything is all right.’

‘Everything’s fine.’

‘Tommy has just been telling me that his mother was attacked in the street.’

‘What?’ Doris sat down heavily, looking
shocked. ‘After your purse, I expect. You’ll have to tell the police.’

‘Although Mrs Walker claims the man in question was merely being—’

‘He was just someone who used to hang around the singers at the Grafton. You always get them – men who can’t take a hint that you aren’t interested in them,’ Sally rushed in to stop him from saying any more. ‘He’d heard about Ronnie and …’ she gave a small shrug, ‘it was nothing really.’

‘It was enough to worry and upset Tommy,’ the doctor pointed out.

Doris shook her head. ‘Well, it’s typical of you not wanting to cause a fuss, Sally love, but you’ll have to watch out, you know. Sally, that sort don’t know how to take no for an answer. What you need is a chap around the place to send him about his business. I don’t like to think what could happen if he takes it into his head to come round here pestering you.’

‘He won’t, and even if he does …’ she took a deep breath. This wasn’t how she’d planned to break her news to Doris but now she felt she didn’t have any choice. ‘It won’t matter. I’ve made up me mind. We’re leaving here. I’m taking the boys away … to the country.’

Now Doris looked even more shocked, but it was Dr Ross who looked at her sharply and demanded coolly, ‘Are you sure that’s a good idea?’

‘You were the one as said the boys would be safer evacuated,’ she reminded him. ‘Now that my Ronnie’s gone, me and them may as well have a
fresh start. The country’s safer than living here.’

‘I can understand that you might feel vulnerable living here on your own, but have you thought this through properly? Have you got a job to go to, for instance, and somewhere to live?’

Sally knew that her expression was giving her away. ‘Jobs are easy to find now there’s a war on, and I reckon I’ll easily get a billet.’

‘
You
might, but I doubt you’d find anyone willing to take on a family. I’ve got a better idea. It just so happens that I’ve been looking for a live-in housekeeper to … to take charge of the house and act as my receptionist. You’d have your own rooms on the top floor of the house and there’s a fair-sized garden at the back for the boys to play in.’

‘
Me
, come and work for
you
?’

Sally shook her head in vehement denial, but before she could refuse him properly, Doris stepped in, insisting firmly, ‘Don’t be daft, Sally love. Dr Ross is right; you’d be much better going working for him than taking yourself off to the country, and if this man does come looking for you then the doctor will be able to tell him where to go. She’ll do it, Dr Ross, and a very good job she’ll do for you as well, even though I say it meself,’ Doris accepted, before Sally could stop her. ‘A good housewife, is Sally, and a good mother as well.’

Sally still tried to protest, though, shaking her head again and saying, ‘No,’ but she knew she was wasting her breath. The doctor and Doris had
both made up their minds and Sally could see that they weren’t going to change them.

‘Right, now that’s decided,’ the doctor told her firmly. ‘If you want to pack what you and the boys will need for tonight, I’ll drive you home with me and then we can sort everything else out in the morning. I dare say Mrs Brookes won’t mind asking her son to keep an eye on the house for you until you’ve had time to speak to your landlord.’

Things were moving far too fast and in a direction Sally would never have chosen but at the same time she was forced to admit that living under the doctor’s roof would certainly protect her from Sid’s unwanted sexual attentions. He would never dare to try to force himself on her there in the way that he would have done if she had been an unprotected widow living on her own with two small children.

She would still have her debt to repay, though, she reminded herself tiredly. It seemed that fate wasn’t going to allow her to walk away from it in the way she had heard Peg describing, and deep down she knew it would be wrong for her to do so. Her stubborn pride wanted her to be able to repay the money and hold her head up high.

‘Sam, are you listening to me?’

Guiltily Sam tried to drag her thoughts away from the pleasure of thinking about Johnny to focus on what Hazel was saying to her.

‘You’ve been lost in such a daydream these last
few days that anyone would think you’d fallen in love,’ Hazel joked, her expression changing when Sam went bright red and ducked her head, admitting, ‘Well, they’d be right because I have.’

‘What? Who with? Sam, what’s going on? I don’t want to throw cold water on anything but, well, Russell has asked me to watch out for you, and I do know that you haven’t been seeing anyone.’

‘I have, it’s just that no one knew. Not even me. I’ve been seeing him nearly every day, but … well, not in the way that you mean. And he’s only just said now that he …’ Sam stopped and laughed self-consciously. ‘The thing is, Hazel, he didn’t want to fall for me and he’s a bit worried that he’s out of my league experiencewise. But that doesn’t matter to me … well,’ Sam’s colour deepened. ‘Personally I’d rather have a man who knows what’s what, especially with me not knowing much at all.’

‘Sam!’ Hazel sounded faintly scandalised.

‘It’s the truth, that is how I feel.’ Now Sam could see that Hazel was looking more concerned than convinced.

‘It sounds to me very much as though he’s giving you a bit of a line, Sam. My ex was pretty keen to let me know when we first met that he knew a thing or two he was more than willing to teach me. Men like that know how to turn a girl’s head and how to steal her heart. Take it from me.’

‘Johnny isn’t like that,’ Sam defended her newfound love indignantly.

Hazel shook her head. ‘Sam, I do understand
how you feel, and I know too that war changes things, because none of us knows quite what tomorrow will bring or even if we’ll have a tomorrow, but that doesn’t mean that a girl should necessarily trust every young man she meets. Even pretty decent sorts can be tempted if they think they can sweet-talk a girl into doing something she shouldn’t.’

Sam could understand that Hazel’s own experience would make her cautious, and even a bit cynical, but she was determined to make sure that Hazel understood just how special and wonderful Johnny was.

‘Johnny isn’t trying to sweet-talk me into anything,’ she assured her. ‘In fact, he told me that he didn’t want to fall for me and that he’d rather he hadn’t done.’

Hazel was looking even more concerned. ‘Oh, Sam, please do be careful,’ she urged her. ‘I’d hate to see you get hurt.’

‘I’m not going to be hurt,’ Sam insisted stoutly. ‘Johnny would never hurt me.’

Hazel gave a small sigh. ‘Why don’t you tell me a bit more about him?’

Sam could tell that Hazel was not going to be put off.

‘I wasn’t going to say anything yet,’ she answered her, ‘but I can see that I’m going to have to come clean. When Johnny was just Sergeant Everton, I never imagined that he and I—’

‘Sergeant
Everton?
’ Hazel was looking at her as though she couldn’t believe her own ears. ‘You
mean that good-looking bomb disposal chap that Lynsey’s crazy about?’

‘Yes,’ Sam admitted. ‘But it isn’t like you think, Hazel. I’m not stealing him from her. Johnny says there’s never been anything between them and that he isn’t interested in her,’ she insisted defensively.

He might have told
you
that,’ Hazel said doubtfully, ‘but it certainly isn’t what Lynsey thinks.’

‘It’s true,’ Sam insisted fiercely. ‘I know it is. He wouldn’t lie to me. He isn’t like that.’

‘Well, I can see how you feel about him, and of course you’re bound to want to believe him, but I can’t help wishing that you’d fallen in love with someone else. He’s obviously convinced you that there was nothing going on between him and Lynsey, and maybe there wasn’t, but Lynsey’s made it plain enough to all of us that she’s got her eye on him and she won’t take kindly to this.’