Bia's War (14 page)

“‘Mrs Drinkwater.’ He said,
lifting his cap as he stopped in front of me. He seemed to be sober
and was speaking civilly, so I took my cue from that and answered
in the same fashion.”

“‘Good afternoon, Mr Dennison.’
I answered politely. “Have you taken the empty warehouse,
then?”

“He stepped towards me to
continue the conversation and I had an overwhelming desire to back
away from him, but the pride which had made me face him down in my
backyard now kept me standing my ground.”

“‘I’m expanding my business, Mrs
Drinkwater. I’ve been quite successful since I stopped drinking and
I’ve bought out Mr Sanderson’s interest in the grain store. Food is
at a premium in these bad times.’”

“I couldn’t agree more.” I
replied. “That has been my stock phrase since I started my
business, people will always need to eat, no matter what is
happening in the world. I’m glad you are having a successful time,
Mr Dennison.” I inclined my head at him and then turned to go, but
his next words brought me up short.”

“‘I’ve got you to thank for it,
Mrs Drinkwater. You gave me more than a soaking that day in your
backyard. You made me take a long, hard look at myself and I didn’t
like what I saw. I have been working extremely hard to redeem
myself ever since.’”

“I didn’t trust him.” Nana
continued, with a grimace on her face as though she had sucked a
lemon by mistake. “The words slipped too glibly off his tongue for
them to ring true and, let’s face it, a leopard never changes its
spots, however much it tries to hide in the undergrowth. A lifelong
drunken bully doesn’t become a pillar of society overnight. But the
proof of his redemption would be how he coped the next time life
took a swing at him, not an occasion I intended to hang around to
find out. At that moment, Peter arrived at my shoulder to tell me
that the stock was now all in the warehouse and we could go home. I
thanked him and turned back to the pig butcher.”

“‘I hope you continue to be
successful, Mr Dennison.” I said, but the butcher wasn’t
listening.”

“‘I see you’ve still got that
young bull hanging around, then,’ he commented.”

“I heartily disliked his tone as
he nodded at Peter and I sprang to his defence immediately.”

“‘Peter is a very good worker,
Mr Dennison.’ I said. ‘And he’s good protection for me in this part
of town. He always comes with me when I come here and he wouldn’t
let anything happen to me.’”

“I didn’t think it was a bad
idea to let the pig butcher know that I wasn’t ever alone when I
came down to the docks, because all my nerve-endings were screaming
at me that Dennison was trouble with a capital ‘T’. As we walked
away from him, I distinctly heard him mutter under his breath that
he wasn’t the only one who needed to change, that I could learn a
lesson on that subject as well. I chose to pretend that I hadn’t
heard him, although my heart was fluttering uneasily at his
comment. My uneasy feelings at his proximity to my warehouse were
strengthened as we walked out of the dock gates a few moments
later, when the gatekeeper asked if I’d seen my new neighbour.”

“‘All sweetness and light, isn’t
he?’ he said, when I answered in the affirmative. ‘I wouldn’t trust
yon bugger with the church bells, I wouldn’t. I don’t care how many
people he tells that he’s off the drink, that doesn’t mean it’ll
last. One of Satan’s angels, that one, you mind my words. There’ll
be more trouble from him before long, or my name isn’t Tom
Taylor.’”

“I muttered a quiet agreement,
hoping against hope that I wouldn’t have to see too much of
Dennison, but Peter’s next words frightened me the most.”

“‘Why did that man sit in our
bath, Mrs D? All those people laughed at him and he was very cross.
He said you had a lesson to learn, I heard him, when you started to
walk away from him. What did he mean? Are you going to go to
school, then?’”

“I forced myself to laugh and
assured him that I wasn’t going anywhere, but the cold fingers of
fear touched my spine and wouldn’t let go, not even when I was
sitting in our famous bath that night, up to my neck in hot
water.”

Chapter Seven

“The thought of the pig butcher
and his threats hung over me for more than a week. It didn’t matter
what I did during the day to take my mind off him, this lesson I
was going to learn was always at the forefront of my conscious
thought. I worked all day thinking about it and I couldn’t sleep at
night for the pictures which rose, unbidden, every time I closed my
eyes. I worked until every bone in my body ached for lack of sleep,
but as soon as I tried to sleep, his face rose up in front of my
mind.”

“Then, something else happened
which managed to push all thoughts of the pig butcher out of my
head. William came home. He came home minus an arm and with some
terrible wounds to his legs, but he was carrying a chip on his
shoulder that could have been crafted into a table, six chairs and
a Welsh dresser, with enough wood left over to complete a wardrobe
and dressing table.”

“Oh my goodness! How had he been
injured? And why was he carrying a chip on his shoulder? It wasn’t
your fault that he’d been wounded, was it?” Victoria was furious
for her grandmother, having to endure the tantrums of her husband
just because she was better able to cope with life than he was.

The bedroom burst open as
Victoria’s mother slammed into the room.

“Get off your backside, lady and
get down those stairs to help me do the tea. I’ve been shouting for
you for a good ten minutes and you just ignore me and carry on
doing what you want. It’s not Christmas yet, you know. There’s a
lot of hard work to be got through before I can have a nice rest
like you!”

Victoria didn’t argue; that
wasn’t something anyone did when her mother was in one of her moods
and it was obvious that she was in one of her moods. She said a
hurried goodbye to Nana Lymer and then went straight to the kitchen
and began peeling potatoes for tea.

“You are too hard on that girl,
Bia, you’ll lose her one of these days, you mark my words.” Nana
had often tried to make her daughter less aggressive towards her
only child, but it was a pointless exercise. She often didn’t say
anything because she had a shrewd idea that it could have the
opposite effect of what she intended and that Bia would be even
more harsh with Victoria. To divert her attention away from the
girl, she made an announcement she had been mulling over for the
last few days. “I’m going to get up tomorrow and have Christmas
dinner with the rest of the family at the table.”

Bia was immediately against
this. She had no wish for her mother to take up the reins of her
life once more and start interfering in the running of the shop. As
far as the general public were concerned, Bia and Jack owned and
ran the shop and if her mother began mixing with the customers
there was a good chance that she would remind everyone that, in
fact, she still owned the property. When her mother had taken to
her bed the previous year, after falling when she had been on one
of her midnight strolls around the town, Bia had thought that she
would never get up again and she had lost no time in letting the
neighbours know that she and her husband had bought the business
from her mother. If Nana Lymer decided she was well enough to come
downstairs, then Bia’s story could be scuppered.

“And what if you fall again,
trying to get down the stairs?” she quickly said. “If you break a
bone at your age, it could finish you off for good.”

“I’m prepared to take that risk
because I’m bored with living in this bedroom and only seeing you
and Victoria, even though I love chatting to her. I would like to
have some quality of life back, before I get too old to enjoy
it.”

“Do you think I’ve got any
‘quality of life’?” Bia shouted at her mother. “I spend all day
working my fingers to the bone in that shop, as well as running up
and down stairs to care for you and you want to get up to improve
your ‘quality of life’. What will happen if you fall again? I’ll
have even more work to do, that’s what will happen, but you don’t
care, do you?”

“Of course I care.” Nana knew
that she was losing the argument before it had really started. “I
think I would make less work for you if I could come downstairs and
help in the kitchen. I’m not an invalid, you know.”

“You might not be an invalid,
but you’re doing your best to make me into one.” Bia said. “If you
didn’t have me to look after you, then you’d have to go into a home
and you wouldn’t want that to happen, would you?”

“Ok, Bia. You win. I won’t come
downstairs tomorrow, but I’m not stopping in bed all day. I shall
get dressed and sit in my chair.”

“You do that.” Bia’s reply was
terse. “You do what you want, just don’t make any more work for me.
I’ll go and get your tea, and then you can rest. I want our
Victoria to help me prepare the vegetables for tomorrow, so she
won’t be visiting you any more today.”

Nana Lymer stayed where she was
after Bia had slammed out of the bedroom, wondering what she could
do to make life a little better for Victoria. She pondered for a
while and then came to a decision; although she wouldn’t be able to
put her plan into action without a little help from Victoria
herself and it would have to wait until after Christmas.

Victoria was also wondering what
she could do to alleviate the pressure she felt from her mother,
but she couldn’t see any way out of the situation until she was old
enough to leave home. She hoped she would be able to do that when
she went off to college to do the teacher-training she was
determined she was going to do after she had finished her A-levels.
But that was over two years away, because she would be taking her
O-levels the following June and then there would be two more years
of study before she could apply to train to be a teacher. Could she
spend the next two and a half years with her mother? The constant
sniping was reducing her confidence in herself and the older she
got, the more it intensified, making her less and less sure of
herself. If only her mother would stop pointing out her faults all
the time.

Her mother entered the kitchen
at this point and Victoria bent her head to her task of peeling
potatoes, waiting for the comment which would inform her that she
couldn’t even peel potatoes properly. She didn’t have long to
wait.

“Why do you have to leave such a
thick layer of potato still attached to the skin?” Her mother
complained. “If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a thousand times
that you are wasting good food! Do it properly!”

“Yes, mam. Sorry, mam.” Victoria
mumbled, putting her head down so that her mother wouldn’t see the
red suffusing her face, a redness that appeared when she was angry,
not ashamed. Her mother, however, didn’t miss the blush that had
coloured her daughter’s cheeks and it satisfied her that she had
the power to provoke that reaction in the girl, misreading the
blush for shame rather than anger.

Christmas Day was fairly
peaceful in the house, without the constant banging of the shop
door and the chatter of the customers. Victoria helped with the
breakfast, exclaimed her delight at every present and then helped
prepare the meal, hoping she could get through Christmas Day
without the carping criticism of her mother. It worked so well that
Bia allowed her to go and sit with her Nana after they had finished
the washing up and Victoria sped to her bedroom before her mother
could change her mind.

Nana was in her armchair,
wearing her dressing gown because she hadn’t managed to dress
herself without any help and Bia had made it very clear that she
wasn’t going to help her that morning.

“I didn’t think you would be
allowed to come and see me today, not after the paddy your mother
was having yesterday.” Nana said, beaming at Victoria as she placed
a cup of tea and two mince pies on her little table.

“No, I thought I wouldn’t be
able to come and sit with you for the rest of the holidays, but Mam
is in a better mood today. Dad says she gets very tired working in
the shop and that’s why she loses her temper so easily.”

“Your father is a saint.” Nana
replied. “But we can go on with my story, now you are here, but
only if you want me to, don’t let me force you if you would rather
be doing something else.”

“Nana, why do you think I’m
here? I can’t wait to find out what happened when William came
home.”

Victoria sat herself on a little
stool next to Nana’s chair.

“Right. William suddenly arrived
home without any warning and missing an arm. What happened
next?”

Nana stared off into space,
remembering how she had felt when William had opened the shop door
and stepped inside.

“The first we knew about
William’s return was when the cart from the railway station stopped
outside the shop one morning and Billy Pinkney jumped down from the
driving seat and trotted round to the back. He’d been doing the job
of station porter, driver and handyman since his older brother,
Peter whose job it had been, had gone off to war with the rest of
the patriotic crowd. He seemed to be struggling with something and
I was racking my brains, trying to remember if I had ordered a
bulky item which would have been sent by train, when I realised
that it was William that Billy was helping down from the back of
the cart.”

“I went cold to my bones when I
realised that William was back home. I could feel a cold drip like
an ice cube slithering down my backbone and I wanted to blot him
out of my sight. I was acutely conscious of the gaggle of women who
were all waiting to be served and I cringed at the thought of what
he would say when he came into the shop.”

“His left coat sleeve was
swinging empty as he landed on the pavement and he clutched Billy’s
arm as though he wasn’t capable of walking the few steps from the
cart to the shop. Billy was only a small lad and he struggled to
keep William on his feet until he got him to the shop door, but
William had no trouble flinging open the door and making a dramatic
entrance into the shop.”