As Time Goes By (25 page)

‘Johnny didn’t even recognise her name when I mentioned her to him, for all that she’s been running after him and telling everyone that they’re an item.’

‘Oh, Sam,’ Hazel repeated helplessly, ‘do be careful, please. This sergeant of yours is a handsome chap. Don’t let him sweet-talk you into doing something you might regret because he’s telling you there’s a war on.’

‘I know what you’re saying, and Johnny’s behaving like a perfect gentleman,’ Sam defended him.

‘Mm, whilst kissing you breathless and making you wish that he wasn’t quite so gentlemanly, I’ll
be bound,’ Hazel guessed shrewdly. ‘Don’t go rushing into something you might regret, Sam.’

Sam couldn’t help but feel a bit put out and hurt. ‘I thought you’d understand. After all, you and Russell have only just met.’

‘Russell isn’t Sergeant Everton.’

‘You’re beginning to sound as though you’re trying to say that you don’t believe that Johnny could love me. I know that I’m not as pretty or curvy as Lynsey …’

Hazel looked horrified. ‘Sam, no … I never meant to imply that you aren’t every bit as lovable as Lynsey – of course you are. In fact you are a far nicer person than she is. It’s just that men like him … well, I just don’t want to see you get hurt, that’s all. I’m sure he genuinely is attracted to you but men like him are very good at getting girls to fall in love with them. It’s part of what they do best. Just … just don’t …’ Hazel shook her head. ‘What am I saying? I can see that you’re head over heels about him, and I’m sure he’s everything I know you’re burning to tell me that he is, but I still can’t help worrying about you and feeling that you’re going to end up being hurt.’

‘Well, you needn’t worry because I know I won’t be hurt,’ Sam told her lightly, not wanting Hazel to see how much her well-meant words had upset her, and how close she felt to tears. Hazel’s comments had punctured the bright shiny bubble of joy in which she had been living since she and Johnny had declared their love for one another. Now she wished that she had kept her news to
herself. She felt as though that she had been backed into a corner from which she had had to defend not only their love but Johnny himself as well.

First Johnny and now Hazel. Why couldn’t they both see that she was perfectly capable of knowing her own mind and her own heart, even if what she was living through now was all new for her?

Her experience of men and falling in love, as both Johnny and Hazel had hinted, was less than that of other girls her age. But now that she knew he felt the same way about her, her whole world had become sky blue with golden sunshine.

Of course there would have been other girls; she was not so silly as to think any different. Johnny was well into his twenties and, as Hazel herself had already said, a very handsome and sexually attractive man.

A handsome and sexually attractive man who had once thought he loved someone else, she reminded herself. But that had been
then
, and it had been over and done with before he had met
her
, and anyway he would never have told her about it if she, whoever she was, had been really important to him, Sam reassured herself. Johnny was hers now.

Tiredly Sally sat back on her knees and surveyed the freshly scrubbed kitchen floor of what had become their new home.

She certainly had nothing to complain about in the spacious rooms on the third floor of the house, one for each of the boys, although she had kept
them sharing a room as company for one another and because it was what they were used to, and a bedroom for her, their own bathroom and even a sitting room, although the doctor has insisted that they were to think of the kitchen and the morning room next to it, both with access to the large enclosed back garden, as theirs as well.

His surgery occupied one large bay-windowed room on either side of the front door on the ground floor of the large and elegant doubled-fronted house. As his receptionist and housekeeper Sally was to answer the door and the telephone for his patients, and to maintain a diary of their visits and appointments. Doris seemed to think she should feel overjoyed, but then of course Doris did not know the true situation.

But Sally realised that virtually everyone who knew her would share Doris’s view, and consider her to be very fortunate indeed. She even had her own furniture in the top-floor rooms now, Doris having chivvied Frank and a couple of his friends to ‘borrow’ an army lorry and move it for her.

‘But, Doris, the doctor might change his mind, and not want to keep me on,’ she had protested, thinking that she would be looking for an excuse to leave just as soon as she could, and that leaving would be that much harder if she had her furniture to shift.

‘Nonsense, of course he won’t change his mind,’ Doris had told her. ‘In fact, the more I think about it, the more I reckon it’s going to suit you both down to the ground. You’ll have a steady job and
be at home with your kiddies, and the doctor will have someone he can rely on to make sure he’s properly looked after. A man needs that, especially a doctor.’

‘Mrs Walker, I wonder if you could come into my office for a moment. I want to have a word with you … oh!’

The doctor might look disconcerted to find her on her knees scrubbing the floor but that was nothing to how she felt at having him stand there in his immaculate clothes looking down on her, her hair tired up in a turban and her face shiny with perspiration.

‘I’ll just go and get myself cleaned up first, if you don’t mind, Dr Ross,’ Sally answered.

‘It wasn’t my intention that you should scrub floors. I employ a daily to come in and do the rough work.’

Sally could hear the distaste in his voice. Did he think that having his housekeeper and receptionist do something as menial as scrubbing floors somehow belittled him, she thought angrily If so, she didn’t share his views, not one little bit. She would be thoroughly ashamed of herself if the day ever came when she was too proud to scrub floors. Not that that was likely.

‘Maybe you do,’ she told him forthrightly, ‘but whoever she is she doesn’t do a very thorough job. There’s no way I’d want me or my kiddies eating in a kitchen with a floor as filthy as this one was.’

It pleased her to see him looking taken aback.

‘I see. I’m afraid I hadn’t realised.’

‘Well, there’s no reason why you should, is there? That’s my job, to notice things like that. Perhaps you’d like me to bring a tray of tea through for you when I’m cleaned up?’

‘That’s an excellent idea – make sure you put an extra cup on it for yourself, please.’

Didn’t he understand that she didn’t want him treating her nicely, Sally fumed as she stood in the cold bathroom to have a strip wash. It put her at a disadvantage and made her feel even more angrily resentful than she already was. She didn’t want to have to feel grateful to him and to have to listen to everyone else telling her how lucky she was, and she most certainly didn’t want those dangerous feelings that kept sneaking up on her and catching her off guard, like they had done this morning when she had thought how much better he looked now that he was getting some decent home cooking.

Washed and dressed in a clean blouse and skirt, she brushed her hair, tugging the brush through her soft brunette curls, before checking on the boys who were playing happily in their new surroundings, warmed by the good fire the doctor had insisted they were to have.

Ten minutes later she balanced the tea tray she was carrying carefully before knocking on the door to the doctor’s office.

Instead of calling out to her to go in as she had expected, the doctor came and opened the door for her himself.

Startled by the unexpectedness of his action Sally looked up at him. He was looking straight back at her. Her heart started to beat far faster than she wanted. She could hear the china rattling slightly on the tray because her hands were trembling. She wanted desperately to look away from him, but somehow she couldn’t. What was happening to her? This wasn’t right. It wasn’t right at all.

‘Let me take that tray for you.’

Let him take the tray? How could she do that? He was her employer and yet here he was treating her as though they were equals. Sally shook her head.

‘It’s all right. I can manage.’

It was too late, though. He was already reaching for the tray. Their hands met, his covering hers, almost as though he were holding them.

Sally felt her heart jump. The only hands she held these days were those of her two sons. It was a long time since she had thought of the touch of another hand against her own as something that could make her heart beat faster and fill her with an awareness of a man’s strength and tenderness.

It was a long time too since a man’s hands had covered her own in this kind of simple domestic unintended intimacy. The kind of intimacy that might be shared between husband and wife.

A yearning she didn’t want to feel ached through her. For
Ronnie
, and everything she had lost, she
reassured herself. Not for anything else, or anyone else. But still she couldn’t move.

A piece of coal hissed in the grate. The doctor released her and went over to the fire, freeing Sally to carry the tray to his desk, whilst he used the tongs to restore the lump of coal to the fire.

‘I thought we’d be more comfortable having our tea here in front of the fire, Sally,’ he said.

Sally stiffened before she picked up the tray and carried it over to the tea table close to the fire. He was treating her almost as his equal, which she was not, and she could only assume that it must stem from some peculiar Scottish practice. Certainly no one in Liverpool would behave like that to someone they were employing in their home. If he wasn’t careful he could have her thinking all sorts of daft stuff, and that wouldn’t do anyone any good, would it?

‘Would you like me to pour for you, Doctor?’ she asked him with extra formality, just to show him that whilst he may not know how to behave as an employer, she knew what her own role was. She could feel him looking at her but she refused to look back, determinedly focusing on pouring his tea, whilst equally determinedly not pouring a cup for herself.

She thought she heard him sigh faintly but he made no comment, saying only, ‘We haven’t talked yet about wages. That is my omission and one for which I apologise. I had thought that five guineas per week …’

Five guineas a week! That was a fortune. More
than she would have earned getting danger money working on munitions. It would mean, though, that living here in this house ‘all found’, so she wouldn’t have to spend anything on food, rent or services, would allow her to save virtually all her earnings to pay off the outstanding debt on the money Ronnie had borrowed. Since, thanks to Doris making it impossible for her to refuse to take the job in the first place, and her own conscience, she couldn’t run away from her debt, she could have been tempted to thank the doctor and take the money. But there was that ‘conscience’ and so instead she shook her head firmly, and told him, ‘That’s far too much. They’d be struggling to earn that much at the munitions factory, doing work that’s dangerous.’

‘You haven’t met my patients yet,’ he answered, so straight-faced that it took Sally several seconds to realise that he had made a joke.

‘I think that five guineas is a very fair amount,’ Dr Ross continued. ‘After all, you are combining two roles, that of housekeeper and receptionist, and you will in effect have to act as my lieutenant, as it were, when I am away from my surgery at the hospital. I shall be relying on you to make a note for me of which patients I may need to see urgently.’

Sally gave a small gasp of protest. ‘I don’t know anything about people being sick.’

‘Not in technical terms but you are an intelligent woman and a mother, and I am sure you have a very good instinct for what is genuine and what is not.’

Sally didn’t know what to say. No one had ever told her before that she was intelligent.

Five guineas a week! With that amount of money coming in and no rent to pay she’d be able to save up enough to pay off her debt, provided the Boss didn’t keep on increasing the interest. Perhaps as ‘an intelligent woman’ she ought to be firm and tell the Boss that the original debt was all she was getting!

‘There is one thing that I must stress to you, though, and that is under no circumstances are either you or the boys to use the first-floor bathroom, which is set aside for the use of my patients, and which must be kept clean, and indeed should be cleaned after its use by a patient.’

Had she really thought he was treating her as an equal? Well, more fool her. He obviously thought that whilst she was good enough to get down on her hands and knees and scrub the bathroom upstairs, she was not good enough to use it.

‘You needn’t worry about that, Doctor,’ Sally responded through gritted teeth. ‘I shall make sure that we know our place.’

‘I think you’ve misunderstood me. It isn’t a matter of anyone knowing their place. I simply don’t want you or your sons exposed to any kind of infection or disease my patients might bring in. That is why I insist on them having a separate bathroom and why I should like you to make sure that you keep separate cleaning things for it. Good hygiene is a very important tool in a doctor’s armoury. I learned that very quickly in Glasgow’s slums.’

Sally wasn’t sure she liked the feeling that being wrong-footed by him gave her.

‘Will you be wanting me to wear a uniform?’ she asked.

‘No,’ he told her curtly, adding, ‘You seem to think that your role here is to be one of subservience and servitude, whereas what I want is for us to work together as equals in a team.’

Sally couldn’t believe her ears. Did he really think she was going to believe that? ‘Equals!’ she repeated scornfully, too infuriated to think about being careful. ‘That’s rich! You’re a doctor, you live in a big posh house – how can you talk about someone like me being your equal?’

‘You’re right. The boy I was when I was growing up would be someone you would have looked down on with contempt. I can see from your expression that you don’t believe me, but it’s true. I grew up in a tenement block in one of Glasgow’s slums. My father, a schoolteacher, died just before I was born, and my mother remarried. I didn’t get on with my stepfather and I was always in trouble. I got more beatings that I got hot dinners. If it hadn’t been for the kindness and generosity of our local vicar I’d still be living in that slum. He and his wife took me in; they fed my mind as well as my body. When they were moved to another parish they asked my mother if they could take me with them. She had other children by then with her new husband, and to tell the truth I think she was glad to see me go.’