Secrets to Keep (35 page)

Bertha started to giggle, a gleeful chuckle that filled the kitchen and set Aidy laughing too. Grabbing hold of each other, they waltzed around, both whooping with delight. It was lack of breath that finally got Bertha to stop their dance of triumph.

Having caught her own breath, Aidy told her, ‘I’m off upstairs to pack his stuff.’

‘I’ll come and help yer, love. Be the most pleasurable job I’ve ever had to do.’

An hour later Arnold gave a loud belch as he arrived at the back gate and lifted the latch. He wasn’t drunk. At fourpence a pint, he’d only had enough to buy three with the shilling he’d found on the arm of the chair. He still couldn’t work out where the two sixpences had come from. He had realised after many fruitless searches that not even a farthing was ever left lying around the house for him to find. He knew his pockets had been empty which
was why he’d been fuming about the kids returning empty handed from their errand.

And that was something else he couldn’t quite work out. Who was lying to him? The bloke he’d sent the kids to do the job for or his own children? One of them was. When Arnold had sought the bloke out tonight to confront him about welching on their deal, it seemed that the bloke had been looking for
him
, to confront him over being let down. The bloke swore blind he’d been in at the appointed time. The kids swore blind he wasn’t. Well, there’d be no mistake tomorrow. Arnold had badgered the bloke until he’d relented and promised to give him another chance to prove his worth. Another pick up and delivery had been arranged, same time, same place, but this time Arnold would be following the kids from a safe distance and watching their every move, to make sure they pulled it off. Then he’d make it a regular event. It would mean he’d have a supply of money coming in, not a fortune but enough to keep him in booze and fags and treat himself to a couple of changes of clothes.

Looking as shabby as he was, he wasn’t attracting quite the sort of women he liked. Not the head-turners he used to attract before time started telling on him, but not so dusty either. He had his eye on the barmaid of the Stag and Pheasant. She was no spring chicken but still had plenty of life in her. There
was an empty space beside him in his bed which Maisie Turnbull and her big breasts would fill nicely … until something better came along, that was. Arnold didn’t care what the rest of the household felt about him moving in a woman. It was
his
house and they’d have to lump it.

Kicking the back gate shut behind him, he sauntered his way over to the back door. A flickering light from the gas mantle in the kitchen was casting an eerie light through the window out into the yard. Halfway down it he stopped short, surprised to see a bulky bag by the back door. Then he recognised it as his holdall. It looked like it was filled with something. Anger rose up in him. Who’d been in his bedroom and taken his bag to use without his permission? Well, wouldn’t they learn not to take what wasn’t theirs in the future! He was curious to know what the bag was being used for, though. Reaching it, he bent down and opened the buckle securing the strap. Seemed to be clothes inside … his clothes! And his razor and shaving brush and his few other personal possessions. What the hell was going on? Jumping up, he grabbed the knob of the back door and turned it. It would not budge. It was locked. He stood back from the door and bellowed, ‘Oi! Open this fucking door!’

Two faces appeared at the kitchen window.

Glaring at them, Arnold shouted, ‘What the hell’s
going on? Why is the door locked? And why is my bag out here with all my stuff in it?’

Aidy shouted through the window, ‘We thought you might need your belongings.’

Bewildered, he bellowed, ‘Why?’

‘Because you don’t live here any more.’

‘You stupid cow! I’m the tenant. It’s me who says who lives in this house and who doesn’t. If you and that old bag …’ he shot a murderous glare at Bertha’s amused face, peering at him through the window ‘… and those blasted kids want to keep living here, then open the door and let me in. I’ll kick it in, and you lot out.’

Aidy couldn’t remember when she’d had so much fun. ‘Do that and I’ll have the police on you. You aren’t the tenant any longer … I am. It’s me who says who lives here and who doesn’t from now on. And you don’t any longer ’cos we don’t want you.’ She placed the opened rent book flat against the window so he could clearly see that his name was no longer down as the tenant but his daughter’s instead. ‘Maybe if you’d paid some rent over to the rent man in person since you’ve been back, he wouldn’t have believed me when I told him you hadn’t lived here for years and were dead for all we knew. After that he happily handed the tenancy over to me. Now pick up your stuff and clear off!’

Arnold was left staring at her agog. He hadn’t a
leg to stand on, and he knew it. His period of sponging off his family was over. He furiously snatched up his bag, which he slung over his shoulder, and stormed off down the yard disappearing through the gate to the accompaniment of loud laughter from inside the house behind him.

A
idy was humming happily to herself as she entered the last patient’s name into her ledger one morning. Four weeks had passed since Arnold had been driven from their lives, and from the moment the back gate had slammed shut behind him, the atmosphere in the house had returned to the happy one it had been before he’d made his unwelcome return. There was still the underlying sadness of their loss of Jessie and the breakup of Aidy’s marriage, but time was helping both wounds heal.

They were all excited about Christmas and each in their own way trying their best to have a present to give every family member on Christmas morning. Aidy was certain that the children had put together their farthings and ha’pennies earned from running errands for neighbours, topped up by the odd ha’penny she or Bertha had been able to scrape together on a Saturday for them, and had bought her a box of her favourite liquorice allsorts. She knew
this because Marion was terrible at keeping secrets and had dropped so many hints to Aidy that it would have been difficult for her not to guess what her siblings had done for her, although she would never spoil their surprise by letting on.

Aidy wanted to buy her family the world, but the few coppers in her purse dictated she should lower her sights. Up to now she had managed to purchase Marion a cut-out doll book; for George a second-hand Meccano set minus a couple of pieces, which was how she was able to afford it; and had fashioned a new dress for Betty from one of her mother’s old frocks, hand sewing it in the evening after the children had gone to bed. And for all the family to play with, a pack of Snap cards. For Bertha she had yet to think of something as she hadn’t any spare money. Should she not be able to, she knew her gran would be more than understanding, just content they were all well and happy, dry and warm under the same roof together, and more especially no longer suffering the tyranny of her detested son-in-law.

Having put the reception ledger to one side until it was needed again for evening surgery, Aidy was filling in time by sharpening pencils until she had seen the last patient out. Just then an anguished cry coming from behind the closed door of the surgery reached her ears. The cry was one of several that had been issued by the last patient she had sent through.

Aidy knew Beattie Rogers, was on chatting terms with her should they meet up in the street. She lived in the next road and the youngest of her four children was in the same class at school as Marion. She was a salt-of-the-earth sort, solid and reliable. Her husband worked for a local factory as a storeman. Like most people in these parts they hadn’t much, but Beattie kept the mildew and bugs down in her home as best she could, was a good mother to her children, a good wife to her reliable husband, and a helpful neighbour. She hadn’t needed to tell Aidy why she was paying a visit to the doctor as it was very apparent she’d done something to her arm. It was tightly bound by a piece of bloodied towelling and her face revealed the pain she was in.

Moments after Aidy heard Beattie’s last cry, she heard the surgery door open, footsteps came across the corridor, and Ty appeared. He looked frustrated.

Seeing Aidy was alone, he said, ‘Oh, Sister has already left on her visits then? I was hoping she hadn’t. You’ll have to do. Come through to the surgery.’

She arrived in the surgery to find Beattie Rogers seated at one side of the examination couch, her injured arm now unwrapped from the bloodied towel and laid across it. The gash on her arm was at least six inches long and half an inch deep. Ty had wrapped a rubber tourniquet tightly around her arm above
her elbow, to stem the flow of blood. He was standing poised on the other side of the table, holding a suture needle threaded with thick cat gut.

He ordered Aidy, ‘Restrain Mrs Rogers to stop her pulling back her arm every time I try to start stitching.’ Then, to Beattie: ‘Would you please stop screaming every time I make an attempt?’

She was most apologetic. ‘I’m sorry, Doctor, really I am. I hate needles, you see. They terrify the life out of me. Every time I see it coming towards me, it sets me off. I know it’s going to hurt when you stick it into me … and me arm already hurts like the devil as it is.’

He snapped at her brusquely, ‘But not as much as it will should I have to amputate after septicaemia sets in – which it will if you don’t allow me to close the wound and disinfect it. I keep telling you to look the other way.’ He then snapped at Aidy, ‘Well, hold Mrs Rogers down then.’

She was weighing up the situation. If anyone was restraining her, she would automatically fight to free herself and had no doubt that was what Beattie would do, making it impossible for Ty to work away on her arm in any case. What Aidy felt she needed to do was to distract Beattie’s attention from what Ty was doing to her and on to something else. Hopefully, knowing the type of woman Beattie was, she knew just what would work. Engaging her in conversation! Rushing
over to the back of Ty’s desk, Aidy grabbed his chair and pulled it over to set it before Beattie Rogers, so that she had to turn her head away from the doctor to look at Aidy.

Taking Beattie’s free hand in hers and squeezing it hard to get her initial attention, which thankfully she did, Aidy asked, ‘Did your Avril catch the measles when we had that epidemic a few weeks ago, Mrs Rogers, or was she one of those that escaped? Marion, George and Betty all went down with it together. What a nightmare! It wasn’t so bad at first when they were all too ill to do anything more than sleep, but then they started to recover and the boredom set in. How do you keep three youngsters entertained in their bedroom for a fortnight? That was the problem.’

For a moment Ty was annoyed that his receptionist seemed to be blatantly ignoring his instructions. Then, being the intelligent man he was, he realised what Aidy was attempting. She seemed to be succeeding, so without further ado he set to, hoping she would keep the patient’s attention diverted long enough for him to finish his work.

Beattie was looking sympathetically at Aidy. ‘Oh, I know just what you went through, ducky. Three of mine caught chicken-pox all at the same time last year. It cost me a small fortune in carbolised oil from the chemist to stop them scratching, which didn’t do the job as well as the label on the bottle promised,
so I did what I should have done in the first place and got some lotion from your …’

Aidy nearly choked, knowing what Beattie was about to divulge innocently, and interrupted to stop her, ‘I’ve no doubt that worked. So just how did you keep your kids occupied, to stop them from driving you mental?’

‘I was lucky ’cos neighbours rallied around and borrowed me some books and jigsaws, but I have to say, it was the longest three weeks of my life. I was lucky with the recent measles outbreak. My lot escaped it.

‘Anyway, I haven’t had chance to tell you in person but it’s a grand job you’re doing. Me and Mrs Fisher were only talking about you the other day. All of us around here admire you. Not many young women of your age who had their own home and husband would give it all up to care for their orphaned sisters and brother like you are. And yer’ve yer gran living with you as well. I know Bertha will be pulling her weight to help as much as she can, but the burden still falls mostly on you ’cos she’s not as young as she used to be. Only so much she can do, and ’course a lot of her time will be taken up making her …’

Aidy frenziedly cut in, ‘Yes, well, I couldn’t manage without Gran, and the kids help out too with what they can do. I can’t say it’s easy, but we manage.’ Desperate to change the subject, she asked Beattie,
‘With all what’s happening just now, Mr Rogers is still in work, I hope?’

‘At the moment, thank God. Every night he comes home I have a dread on me he’s going to tell me he’s been laid off and be joining the groups of other desperate men gathering on street corners ’cos they’ve n’ote else to do. Some I’ve no doubt are plotting other ways to make themselves a bob or two, if yer understand me. With all the worries you must have in the circumstances, be thankful that’s one you ain’t got, lovey, what with you and your husband no longer being together.’

She pulled a rum face before continuing, ‘Shame on him is what I say. Up and leaving you to care for your family on yer own ’cos he didn’t want the responsibility. Throughout our lives, we all have to knuckle down and do things we don’t want to. And, after all, family is family. I hope he’s managing to live with himself, wherever it is he’s gone off to. Mind you, looking at who his parents are, ’specially his mother who’s all take and no give, is it surprising he did what he did, coming from her loins? Well, just thank God you had no kids of yer own, love, and he didn’t leave you to look after them as well as yer sisters, brother and grandmother. Still, I bet you’re glad you don’t have the likes of Pat Nelson as yer mother-in-law any longer.’