Christmas Wishes (11 page)

Gillian began to expostulate, thinking her grandmother’s feelings must be lacerated by such a response, but Grandma got to her feet more swiftly than Gillian would have believed possible and picked up the rejected slice. ‘I’ll take it home for me supper,’ she announced. Then she gave Joy’s hand a quick little pat. ‘I’ll find you some fruit cake next time I go shoppin’,’ she promised. ‘If I tell ’em in the baker’s it’s for a poor little blind girl …’

Gillian was watching her sister’s face and saw the pain, but also the fury, and felt she could scarcely blame her twin when Joy began to tell her grandmother, shrilly, that if she did any such thing she, Joy, would go down to the baker’s …

Gillian took a deep breath, wondering how to stem her sister’s words, which were becoming increasingly aggressive, but her father got in first. ‘That’s enough, Joy,’ he said firmly. ‘Grandma spoke without thinking; she didn’t mean to insult you.’ He turned to his mother. ‘We’ve all had a long and tiring day; it’s time I fetched that taxi. You and I must have a serious talk on the way home.’ He looked from his mother to Gillian, then put a gentle hand on Joy’s shoulder. ‘If I leave the three of you here, will I come back to find that a battle has been fought in my nice clean kitchen, or will you call a truce for ten minutes or so?’

Gillian gave a reluctant chuckle. ‘Of course we will, Daddy,’ she said and pinched her sister’s hand as it lay on the table. ‘We’ll both remember that Grandma doesn’t mean half she says, and anyway I’m sure you won’t be long.’

Alex nodded. ‘I’ll be as quick as I can,’ he promised. ‘Mother, if I give you a pan of potatoes to peel, do you think you could do that for me whilst I’m gone? And there’s a letter from Ireland for the twins from their other grandmother. It only arrived this morning, so it might be nice if Gillian read it to Joy. And no squabbling; is that agreed?’

Gillian murmured that of course they would do as their father wished, but Joy simply tightened her lips and said nothing. Grandma, on the other hand, creaked across to the sink and peered at the colander full of potatoes awaiting attention. ‘Me char peels spuds for me,’ she announced. ‘Me hands is too rheumaticky to handle a knife.’

‘Use the potato peeler,’ her son said, struggling into his overcoat and opening the back door, which promptly let in a draught of air that made Grandma give a protesting squawk.

‘Shut the perishin’ door, boy,’ she demanded. ‘Do you want us all to die of pewmonia?’

Gillian chuckled and squeezed Joy’s hand once more, reflecting that if Grandma had managed to prevail upon her son to let her stay with them, hand-pinching would have become a second language. Then she went over to the sink and took the potato peeler from her grandmother’s shaky old hand, knuckles swollen with rheumatism and veins standing out like knotted ropes. ‘Why don’t
you
read the letter from Granny O’Keefe, Grandma?’ she asked gently. ‘I’ll peel the spuds – it won’t take two minutes. Or tell you what, why don’t you pour us all another cup of tea? By the time you’ve done that, I’ll have finished the spuds and can get going on the letter, because Granny O’Keefe’s writing is terrible difficult if you aren’t used to it.’

Grandma sniffed but surrendered the potato peeler with alacrity and trundled back to the table. She picked up the teapot, groaning at the weight of it, and poured three cups. ‘No point in pourin’ one for the boy,’ she announced. She looked anxiously at Joy, then turned to Gillian. ‘Can she hold the cup if I put it into her hands?’ she enquired. Of course it was the wrong thing to say.

Joy jumped to her feet, knocking her chair over and making a wild, sweeping gesture which, had her grandmother already placed the tea before her, would have sent it flying to the four winds. ‘I’m going up to my room!’ she shrieked. ‘Does the silly old fool think I’m deaf as well as blind? I’ll tell her where she can put that cup of tea …’

‘That’s enough!’ Gillian ordered. ‘Just you stand still, Joy Lawrence; you’ve knocked your chair over and you haven’t had a chance to get to know where the table and chairs and things are yet, let alone how many stairs lead to our room. Look, I’m standing your chair up; will you please sit down on it and stop making an exhibition of yourself.’ She waited until her sister, sobbing dryly beneath her breath, had sat down again, then turned to their grandmother. ‘Grandma, I want you to promise me that you won’t open your mouth again until Daddy gets back. I know you don’t mean to upset Joy, but I’m afraid you keep doing so.’ She looked around her wildly, then seized a newspaper from where it lay on the dresser and thrust it into her grandmother’s hands. ‘It’s today’s
Echo
; have a read of it whilst I deal with the spuds.’

Chapter Five

When her father returned from taking his mother home, Gillian half expected him to give them both a telling-off, but Joy was so utterly weary that when he came over and lifted her off the kitchen chair to give her a cuddle, she simply buried her face in the breast of his jacket and wailed. ‘Oh, Daddy, Daddy, I’m so sorry,’ she cried between sobs. ‘But Grandma said all the things I’ve been afraid of hearing, all the things they never said in hospital, even if they thought them. Why, even the lady in the unit never called me the blind girl, not even when I was un-ungrateful, and t-told her what to d-do with her white stick.’

Alex chuckled and Joy heaved a deep sigh and curled her arms up round his neck. ‘You’re the best father in the whole world,’ she said contentedly. ‘I know what you said about making haste slowly is true …’

‘It wasn’t me who said that, it was Night Sister,’ Alex pointed out. ‘But she was right, of course. And now that there are just the three of us, we can begin to plan how we are going to live our lives. You do know, darling, that you will have to attend school. Oh, not immediately; the summer term doesn’t start for a couple of weeks, so you’ve all the Easter holidays to grow accustomed.’

Later, in their bedroom, Joy admitted to Gillian that she was dreading the return to school. ‘I wouldn’t say so in front of Daddy because he’s got enough worries without me adding to them, but even though the teachers will probably do their best I’m sure the other kids will find me a bleedin’ nuisance,’ she said despondently.

The girls were sitting on their beds, Joy undressing slowly and carefully, and before replying Gillian moved from the foot of her bed to its head since Joy had turned to face that direction. ‘Of course it will be strange at first, but everyone will want to help you and of course the teachers will be there to talk you through everything. You’ll be fine, honest to God you will.’

Joy patted her bed until she reached the pillow, then delved beneath it for her warm winceyette nightgown. She slid it over her head and stood up to shake it down to her ankles, giving a little satisfied nod as she found the three buttons at the neck and did them up. Then she turned slowly round, pulled back the covers and climbed carefully between the sheets. ‘I suppose it doesn’t much matter when I start school again,’ she said. ‘But I’ll dread it, whenever I start.’

Gillian, who had undressed with great rapidity and donned her own nightgown, climbed into bed too, then looked across at her twin, who was still sitting up. ‘Lie down, darling Joy,’ she said gently. ‘Remember, I offered to give up my scholarship, but you wouldn’t have it. If you want to change your mind …’

‘I don’t,’ Joy said quickly.

‘That’s all right then,’ Gillian said. ‘Is there anything you want, a drink of water beside your bed? If you need the jerry in the night you’d better wake me up.’

‘I don’t want anything,’ Joy said abruptly. She lay down and pulled the covers up. ‘As for using the jerry, I almost never do. Just because I’m blind it doesn’t mean I’ll start bedwetting, you know.’

‘Oh, don’t be so daft,’ Gillian said crossly. ‘If you’re going to snap and snarl at everyone who tries to help you, you’ll soon not have a friend in the world.’

‘Sorry, sorry,’ Joy mumbled. ‘You don’t know what it’s like, nobody does. I keep telling myself to be cheerful and look on the bright side, but when all you can see is black …’ Her voice wobbled into silence.

Gillian jumped out of bed and dropped on her knees beside her sister. She flung her arms round Joy’s neck and pressed her cheek against hers. She said nothing and presently felt Joy’s arms go round her, felt also a trickle of tears run from her sister’s sightless eyes and down her cheek. ‘I’m sorry too; sorrier than you’ll ever know,’ she muttered. ‘Will you think I’m copying Grandma if I say I wish I could take your place? I’m not even sure if it’s true; I just wish I could help you, take some of the burden.’

‘Well you can’t,’ Joy said gruffly. She gave a small – a very small – giggle. ‘Now if you were to say you wished we could have an eye each, just the one …’

Gillian giggled too, though there were tears in her eyes. ‘An eye in the middle of our foreheads, you mean? Like the feller in Greek mythology – Cyclops, he was called.’

‘I wouldn’t care where the eye was, so long as it worked,’ Joy said in a small voice, rubbing her wet cheek against her twin’s. She sighed. ‘Oh, I do love you, Gillian!’

Joy lay for some time in the darkness, which was deeper and more dreadful than any darkness she had ever known before. It had been bad in the hospital, but for some weird reason, which she could neither understand nor attempt to explain, she had believed in her secret heart that when she got home she would be able to see, if not everything, at least the difference between day and night. When Gillian left her side to return to her own bed, she knew a desolation so complete that she was unable to prevent a sob from rising to her throat. She did not let it escape, however. She had not cried once in the hospital, but it seemed that the moment she got home she became a whirlpool of emotions and a positive crybaby.

Fairly or not, she blamed this on her grandmother. She had so looked forward to leaving the hospital and getting home, back to the dear, familiar house to which she and Gillian were only just becoming accustomed again. Arriving to find Grandma in possession had been a shock, and then the old woman had said unforgivable things …

Hastily, Joy burrowed down the bed. Don’t think of Grandma, or of being blind, or anything else nasty, she commanded herself. Think of nice things, like Daddy taking us round the fire station tomorrow to reintroduce me to his crew, and all the school pals who weren’t able to visit me in hospital coming round to say hello. But it was no use; the tears continued to flow. I’ll be brave once I get used to things, Joy told herself in her cage of hateful blackness. Tomorrow I’ll be nice to everyone and – and make the best …

She felt the sob begin to fight its way up her throat once more and buried her head in the pillow. Please God, let Gillian be asleep so she can’t hear that I’m crying, she prayed. Please God, make me brave, like Daddy was when Mummy was killed. Please God, let me learn to cope with the dreadful dark!

After her first couple of days trying to learn the route she would take to school when the summer term started and Gillian took up her scholarship, Joy admitted to her twin that she did not think she would ever be able to go to and from Bold Street alone. Whilst they were walking she clutched Gillian’s arm as a man who is drowning seizes a life belt and Gillian, the impatient, never uttered a word of complaint, though she did tell Joy, laughingly, that her arms would soon be black and blue from shoulder to wrist. ‘We should try to go a few paces along the pavement with me walking alongside you but not touching,’ Gillian suggested, but Joy only managed half a dozen stumbling steps before clutching Gillian’s arm again and announcing that she felt giddy.

Gillian, sighing, told her father that they would simply have to have some help. ‘Joy is getting more dependent with every day that passes, instead of less. She dreads the thought of going to a special school, but I’m beginning to think it might have to come to that.’ Her father, however, was reluctant to take such a drastic step after such a short time.

But then they had a piece of luck. One of the elderly firemen, who had been beginning to find the work more than he could manage, had given in his notice and taken a job at a large commercial bakery. The young man who had been appointed in his place, Jerome Braddock, happened to mention that he had a brother who had attended the London school for blind children as a child of eight, and was now working part time whilst attending the St Saviour’s school in Liverpool, which was where those without their full sight were taught a trade of some description so that they could learn to be self-supporting.

Alex promptly buttonholed his new crew member, who listened with real interest when Alex told him about Joy and said that if it would help, he would send his brother round to No. 77 to meet Alex’s daughter. The young man was a few years older than the twins, but like Joy he had been blinded in an accident, and lacking a twin to guide him he had gone to the London school for help and training.

After speaking to Jerome, Alex discussed the situation with Gillian, and they decided that they were not helping Joy by letting her rely on her twin so completely. ‘Perhaps this young feller will persuade her to stop using you as a prop, which can only be an improvement on the way things are at present,’ Alex said. ‘I hate to see my dear little girl afraid of moving without holding either your hand or mine.’

He realised, however, that it would take both tact and persuasion to get Joy to meet the young man, and employed both, finally being forced to give her an ultimatum. ‘Either you meet this young fellow tomorrow or I take you down to London for an interview at the special school there,’ he said, though it wrung his heart to see the fear on his daughter’s small face.

‘All right, I’ll meet him if you insist, but why should you think he knows better than I do what’s best?’ Joy asked. ‘Oh, Daddy, if you’re bringing him here so that he can persuade me to go to that special school,
please
don’t try to make me. If you do, I’ll run away, honest to God I will.’

Alex laughed. ‘Some chance you’d have of running away when you won’t even let go of Gillian’s arm to see how you get on without her,’ he said. ‘Now, your visitor’s name is Colin Braddock and he’s sixteen or seventeen years old; not a boy really, but a young man. I’ve never met him myself but his brother, Jerome, is a grand bloke, lively and hard-working; if Colin’s anything like him, you’ll get along, so let me have no more argument. I shall be on Watch, but Mrs Clarke has baked scones and ginger snaps and Gillian will make the tea, so all you will have to do is chat to Colin and listen to what he tells you about both the special school and St Saviour’s, though of course you’re too young to attend the latter yet. I know you won’t be rude’ – Alex crossed his fingers behind his back – ‘but try to show him you mean to follow his advice, even if it goes against the grain.’