A Distant Dream (6 page)

Betty was down but definitely not defeated as she walked home. George Bailey had become a challenge and she wasn’t going to give up at the first hurdle. After all, there was nothing definite between him and May, so it wasn’t as if she was being disloyal to May or anything. It was lonely not having a best friend, and a boyfriend would solve all her problems. Her chance would come, and when it did she was going to grab it with both hands.

‘At least we get good food here,’ May remarked to Connie one day in May when their beds had been wheeled out on to the porch as usual.

‘That’s part of the cure; lots of nourishing grub,’ said Connie. ‘The rice pudding is much creamier than what we have at home.’

‘Home,’ May sighed. ‘I’d love to be back there.’

‘I shouldn’t wish too hard for that,’ said Connie. ‘They sometimes send people home from here to die.’

‘Oh Connie,’ she said with a wry grin. ‘Cheer me up, why don’t you?’

The other girl laughed. ‘Only teasing,’ she said. ‘I have heard people say that but it might just be a rumour. Don’t worry, it won’t happen to you.’

‘I flippin’ well hope not.’

‘Nothing we can do about it anyway, kid, is there?’

‘There certainly isn’t.’

‘Let’s talk about what we would like to do when we get out of here,’ suggested Connie. ‘First thing for me is to find a boyfriend, and while I’m looking for someone I’m going to go to Lyons Corner House for afternoon tea.’

‘I’ll join you,’ enthused May. ‘If we can find a job to pay for it, that is.’

‘They say it’s hard when you come out of here,’ Connie mentioned, looking serious. ‘Employers don’t want to take you on when you’ve had TB in case you get ill again and don’t turn up for work or infect someone. That’s why a lot of the patients stay on here to work as groundsmen or nurses.’

‘Let’s go back to our daydream about what we would like to do after Ashburn,’ suggested May. ‘Real life is a bit depressing.’

The two girls had become good friends over the past few months; there was nothing so binding as a shared illness. The ward in general was friendly. All the women here were young.

‘What do you want to do when you go home?’ asked Connie.

‘Nothing special, just ordinary things . . . Maybe go out dancing if I’m not too old by the time I get out of here.’

‘Give over, May.’

‘Well I was fifteen when I came in here. I’m sixteen already and could be here for years yet,’ she said.

‘You poor old thing,’ said a matronly nurse sweeping on to the scene. ‘Well, time is moving on and so are you. The doctor wants you shifted to another ward.’

‘Does that mean I’m getting better?’ she asked.

‘I have no idea,’ replied the nurse. It was more than her job was worth to give a patient any sort of hope; such were the complications of the disease, it could easily turn out to be false. ‘But you will have a little more mobility. You will still be in bed for most of the time but you will be able to go to the canteen for meals and other communal areas.’

‘Oh whoopee,’ said May, then she looked at her friend and added, ‘Is Connie coming?’

‘I have only been told to move you,’ said the nurse. ‘You’ll have to do without your pal for the moment.’

‘I’ll be coming along soon, don’t worry,’ said Connie, but May found herself to be a bit tearful as the nurse wheeled her out of the ward.

The day of the coronation of King George VI was a public holiday, so George and Henry and some other mates went to the West End to join the crowds and get into the spirit, no one in the least deterred by the cool, cloudy weather. The lads managed to catch a glimpse of the royals on the balcony at Buckingham Palace and joined in the cheering and singing. After a day in this celebratory mood, Henry wanted to finish off with a party of their own.

‘We need girls, music and booze,’ he declared.

‘And how are we going to get any of those things?’ asked George. ‘Let alone a place to have a party.’

‘Let’s head home and have a look at the local street parties. There might be some spare girls at one of them,’ said Henry. ‘I reckon I look old enough to get served in the bottle and jug if we go somewhere they don’t know me, and we can make do with the music in the street even if it is only someone on the piano.’

‘Let’s give it a try,’ said one of the group.

‘Yeah, all right,’ agreed George, and full of youthful exuberance, they headed through the crowds to the tube station en route for home ground.

Betty was sitting on the front wall outside her house, bored stiff and miserable after an afternoon of entertainment aimed at the under tens: races, games and other tedious activities. What was the use of a day off work and a national celebration if you had no one to share it with? This gathering was made up of kids and old codgers; apart from the little ones, there wasn’t a soul under about thirty-five. Anyone of her age had gone to the celebrations in the West End or at least somewhere more exciting than a London back street full of children and an old man on a piano playing ‘Nellie Dean’; and now to make things even worse, it was starting to rain.

It was at times like this that she missed May more than ever. If she hadn’t been carted off to the wilderness the two of them could have gone to a dance to find some boys and excitement. There were lots of special coronation dances on tonight. This street party was the last word in dullness. Some of the small children were getting tired and fretful. Why couldn’t their mothers take the little brats indoors to bed, for goodness’ sake, instead of inflicting their wretched whining on everyone else?

Finding new friends after you’d left school wasn’t easy because there weren’t many meeting places, unless you liked churchy types. There were a few girls of her age working at the department store, but she didn’t seem to have anything in common with them; there wasn’t anyone she wanted to spend time with as she had with May. She and May had been friends for so long she’d never bothered with anyone else. She’d relied on her for company and now there was no one. Why did May have to get ill and leave her all alone? she thought, full of self-pity. It really wasn’t fair. Even her plan to go after George Bailey hadn’t materialised because she hadn’t been able to summon up the courage to go round to his house a second time and she hadn’t seen him around anywhere.

‘Betty,’ called her mother. ‘Come and make yourself useful instead of sitting there with a long face. We need some help washing the dishes, and there are sandwiches to be made for people to have with their drinks.’

She sighed irritably. ‘All right, Mum. Just coming,’ she said, getting up and heading indoors.

George and his pals were decidedly merry as they walked the streets of Ealing, having managed to obtain several bottles of cider from the bottle and jug in a pub in Ealing Broadway where the person serving had turned a blind eye to their youth in the interests of the pub’s turnover.

There were several parties in progress in the area, though some seemed to be in the final stages. They had to steer clear of their own particular streets because of family disapproval of their underage drinking, so that narrowed it down, but they found one gathering with a man playing the piano and decided it was worth staying for a while.

‘Do you know any modern songs, mate?’ asked Henry.

‘You tell me how it goes and I’ll play it.’

The boys sang ‘Is It True What They Say About Dixie?’ and the pianist played it and the whole street came to life; people singing along and dancing.

It occurred to George vaguely that this was Betty’s street, but she wasn’t around so he guessed she was out having fun somewhere else. She didn’t know what she was missing; this was a really good shindig. One of the best they’d been to tonight. ‘Red sails in the sunset . . .’ he sang at the top of his voice after another healthy swig from a cider bottle. For the first time since May had gone away, life seemed like fun and he was having a good time.

Betty was delighted when she went back outside with a plate of sandwiches to see that the party had livened up. Something was apparently happening further down the street beyond the trestle tables; she could see a crowd in the lamplight and hear people singing. She put the sandwiches on the table and hurried towards the action.

‘George,’ she said, hardly able to believe her luck. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘Joining in the party and having a good time,’ he replied, smiling broadly at her through an alcoholic haze.

‘So I can see.’

‘We’ve been all around the town and your street has the best party of the lot.’

‘What do you expect when I live here?’ she said, catching his mood and becoming flirtatious.

‘Thassa point,’ he drawled drunkenly.

‘Glad you realise it,’ she joshed, considering herself to be very witty indeed.

‘Come on then, come and have a dance,’ he invited. ‘Let’s have some fun.’

Without a moment’s hesitation she went into his arms and held on to him tight.

‘But to get you in the party mood,’ he said, leading her to a low garden wall behind which the boys had hidden the cider, ‘have a swig of this.’

Betty needed no second bidding. She was hungry for excitement, and suddenly here it was right on her doorstep.

They did energetic versions of the conga, the hokey-cokey and ‘Knees Up Mother Brown’. Everybody was in the mood and ready to do it all over again.

‘Shall we go for a walk, George?’ suggested Betty, eager to get him alone, away from his mates and – even more importantly – out of range of her mother’s vision. She was never going to get a better chance with George, and she was damned if she was going to let it pass her by.

‘What for?’ he asked blearily.

‘Just to cool down a bit,’ she told him, holding on to his hand and loving it.

‘All right,’ he agreed, feeling very inebriated. ‘Let’s take a bottle with us.’

They collected a bottle from behind the wall and left without anyone noticing. Betty slipped her arm around him.

‘Where are we going?’ he asked.

‘You’ll see.’

George wasn’t too drunk to realise what she had in mind but he wasn’t sufficiently in control to resist, especially as the booze was making him amorous. Out of the light in a dark alleyway, she stopped and put her arms around him.

‘I’ve wanted this for so long, George,’ she said, overwhelmed by the excitement of it all.

If he’d been sober, this was the last thing in the world he would want. Three sheets to the wind it didn’t seem like such a bad idea.

By the autumn of 1937 May was resigned to her uncertain circumstances, and with acceptance came a certain sense of peace. She’d been through periods of fury and self-pity about her illness, but now she endured her fate with as much patience as she could muster and tried to make the best of things at Ashburn. Because the medical profession were still searching for a reliable cure for tuberculosis, patients were closely monitored and their weight noted regularly, with even the slightest loss causing concern. But the wall of silence about an individual patient’s recovery remained.

So May lived from day to day immersed in the Ashburn community and looking forward to letters from home. Her parents and George were her main correspondents, with a very occasional note from Betty.

The regime here was strict, but it wasn’t all rules and severity. Occupational therapy was very much encouraged, and recovering patients with a particular skill were asked to pass it on to their fellow patients by means of classes. May learned to knit, and play simple tunes on the piano, and she became a whiz at dominoes and any number of card games. She developed a love of fresh air as it played such a large part in her life here. Now that she wasn’t on complete bed rest, she was allowed to stroll in the grounds so long as she didn’t overexert herself.

Because most of the patients were young, a great deal of flirting went on at mealtimes in the canteen where the sexes were mixed, even though men and women weren’t allowed to sit together. A certain amount of covert communication was possible in the queue for food, and there were all sorts of stories of couples who defied the strict segregation rule by getting through the undergrowth near the boundary fence and meeting up after dark.

There was a strong sense of togetherness here, and May was fond of the other women in the ward, among them Connie, who had been moved here soon after May herself.

When the management relaxed the segregation rules to allow a male patient, an artist, to give art classes in one of the communal areas in the women’s section, there was a great deal of laughter and speculation, and a lot of the women suddenly realised that they had artistic tendencies.

‘He’s a bit of all right, that Doug Sands,’ said one woman after they’d been given the news. ‘I’ve noticed him in the canteen and had my eye on him. A tall fella with blondish hair. A bit skinny, but he’ll do for me.’

‘You’ll have to be quick to beat me to him,’ joshed another.

‘Now now, ladies,’ intervened May lightly. ‘No falling out over a bloke.’

‘What about you, May, are you interested?’ asked someone.

‘He’s too old for me,’ said May, having seen the man in question at mealtimes. ‘So I’m not in the running. No fighting over him, you lot. He might even be spoken for.’

‘While he’s stuck in here for years? Don’t make me laugh,’ said the woman. The rate of broken romances due to this illness was high.

‘Some people don’t give up on us,’ stated May, thinking about George, even though he wasn’t actually her boyfriend.

‘Plenty do though, May,’ said Connie.

‘So everyone keeps telling me.’

‘It’s bound to happen when people are miles away from each other for years,’ said Connie.

‘Yeah, well don’t all of you go after the art teacher at the first class,’ May said jokingly. ‘You’ll frighten him half to death.’

‘Since when has a man been afraid of women?’ asked Connie lightly. ‘It’s the other way around.’

‘Since when have you been an authority?’ asked May.

‘All my life. My dad rules the roost in our house and Mum has to do as he says,’ she replied. ‘She’s scared stiff of him.’

‘Oh,’ said May, a little shocked. There was nothing like that in her family. ‘I suppose something like that would make you a bit biased.’