Faded Dreams (27 page)

   Each day at 12.15 sharp she hurried to the nursery to breastfeed Janet before dashing back to work. The younger nurses were mostly kind, although Matron and Sister had their noses in the air with something that looked like disgust on their faces and spoke to her only when absolutely necessary. She began to feel estranged from her own baby, as if she had surrendered her to a group of competent women who always knew what was best for her.

   There would be a whispered warning the minute Janet finished feeding. ‘You’d better go now, Matron will go mad if she finds you’re still here.’

   Matron would appear as if out of thin air, tutting in her Scottish, checking the silver timepiece pinned to the bib of her uniform before folding stick-like arms determinedly across her scrawny chest.

   ‘What are
you
doing here? Come along now Mrs Pomfret, it’s time you put the child back in her cot and left her to cry. If you sit there spoiling her you will make a rod for your own back and then you’ll only have yourself to blame. Now off you go, back to work.’

    After a while the
Mrs
Pomfret felt so familiar that Betty wondered if she should buy a cheap wedding ring from Woolworth’s like some of the other unmarried mothers she’d met at the nursery gate. It would be one lie too many; her family, friends and neighbours knew there had been no wedding nor was there ever likely to be one. What sort of a lad would want to marry her and bring up another fella’s kid?

   There were times when, with muddled reasoning, she contemplated suicide in the belief that Janet and the rest of her family would be better off without her…Janet would be too young to remember her and the others would get over it and realise it was for
the
best. But just thinking about how to go about it exhausted her, and so she sank deeper and deeper into a dark pit of despondency.

   Betty's interactions with Matron were curtailed after she stopped breastfeeding, and her father began dropping Janet at nursery on his way to work. As he waited in the spotless hallway he basked in the admiring glances  from an assortment of young women, each balancing a squawking offspring on her hip. 

   One morning he found himself admiring the backside of a woman on her hands and knees strenuously scrubbing the stairs. Her brown lisle stockings trapped in elastic garters that threatened to cut off her circulation were rolled down to just above her knees. Her rounded buttocks swayed to and fro to the rhythm of the scrubbing brush…left, right, left, right, left... her pink fleshy thighs in full view where her tightly-stretched skirt had wrinkled and risen.

   She dried off the bottom step with her grubby cloth, climbed to her feet, smoothed her apron down and wriggled back inside her skirt. Then picking up her bucket and rubber kneeling-mat she stopped dead in her tracks. 

   ‘Joe… Joe Pomfret!’

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

   Joe watched her adjust her gaping blouse and felt himself go hot under the collar. ‘Well I’ll be damned… if it isn’t Lily Rawcliffe! What…what are
you
doing ‘ere?’ he spluttered.

   ‘I’ve been here 12 months, working afternoons till this week and then Matron changed me to mornings.’

   At the mention of her name Matron came bustling round the corner.

   ‘Lily, you haven’t time to stand there talking, get on with your work,’ she said sharply.

   After that, Lily made sure she was in the hallway scrubbing the bottom stair every morning ready for a few more whispered words when Joe turned up.

   ‘You know Joe, I used to hear the young nurses talking between themselves...Janet’s
Granddad
, have you seen him yet? He’s so handsome and he’s so young...and I never thought  for a minute they meant
you…
Joe Pomfret, of all people!’

   ‘Aye, they’re not the first that’s said I don’t look old enough to be a granddad. Mind
you
, I don’t feel old enough to be a granddad.’ He straightened his tie and nudged her. ‘I’m not so bad for 48 am I, Lily? I always were a bit of all right, weren’t I? He puffed out his chest and laughed, ‘There’ll never be another Joe, eh?’

   ‘You’re dead right, there won’t.’ She glanced over her shoulder, ‘It’s murder trying to talk in here with that nosey bugger hanging around. Let’s meet somewhere where we can have a bit of peace and quiet and talk about old times.’ She paused, trying to gauge his mood before risking it further.  ‘I’ll be up at the top of the park outside the big gate at 8 o’clock tonight...please yourself whether you come or not.’

   Lily was a little plumper than he remembered and he couldn’t work out where that black ‘beauty-spot’ that used to sit on her left cheek had gone, but there was still something fascinating about her and by the time he got home from work he knew he had to meet her. He spent longer than usual on his appearance, putting on a clean shirt and polishing his best shoes.

   ‘You’re making a lot of fuss over yourself, just for a pint and a game of darts,’ Florrie remarked.

   ‘Don’t be daft, I’ve only had a swill, that’s all… just like I generally do.’

   On the way to the park he was having second thoughts, even third thoughts. If Florrie went to the pub and found the lads playing darts without him he’d be in
real
trouble. “Please yourself,” Lily had said, so she wouldn’t be
that
bothered if he
didn’t
turn up. He’d happen be better off turning back
now
and going for that game of darts just like he’d told Florrie. Suddenly he was at the big gate at the top of the park.

   Lily had obviously had more than a swill, she was smartly dressed  in a maroon winter coat. A cheap diamanté brooch was pinned to the lapel and glinted in the moonlight, and she wore heels so high she was almost as tall as Joe. With only the briefest of greetings they turned into the park and walked down the dozen or so broad stone steps to a bench under a large oak tree.

   ‘Oo, it’s bitter cold tonight, isn’t it, Joe? My hands are freezing and my feet are dropping off.’ She snuggled closer and slid her hands inside his jacket. ‘I’m glad you’ve turned up Joe, all these years you’ve no idea how many times I’ve thought about you. I never thought I’d live to see the day when I’d be sitting here with you like this.’

   ‘Er…um…how’ve ya been keeping then, Lily?’ Out of his depth Joe resorted to the kind of small talk that might have been more appropriate had he not been seeing this woman every morning for the past month. ‘Your looking
very well, I must say,  still as bonny as ever but what happened to that ‘beauty-spot’ you used to have?’

   ‘You daft bugger! Didn’t you know it were painted on?’ she laughed.

   Joe felt like a daft bugger for not knowing that. ‘Now then Lily,what’s been happening to you in all these years? What about your husband? Let’s see…Arthur, weren’t it?’ The words were tumbling out.

   ‘Lost at sea, poor Arthur was. I moved away from Blackburn for a few years after the war and I’ve been married again since then. He’s not a patch on Arthur…sits on his arse all day instead of getting a job, it’s time I chucked the dozy bugger out.’ She hurriedly brought him up-to-date  hoping to get on with something more interesting.

   ‘Yeah, I remember now, we heard Arthur had gone down with his ship, but me and Florrie weren’t sure if it were just a rumour. Christ, that must have been a bad job for you Lily… left on your own like that.’

   Lily had spent enough time talking about Arthur and certainly had no intention of talking about Florrie. Not now, not when she had Joe Pomfret to herself after all these years. Her arms were around his neck pulling him closer, her scarlet lips crushing his mouth.

   Joe, having been expecting a bit more conversation than this, was momentarily taken aback
.
His seduction technique had gone a bit rusty over the years but a lass like Lily was enough to make any bloke remember. After a furtive glance over his shoulder, he returned her kisses and caresses with equal passion,  courting couples strolling by  putting a stop to anything more.

   Once a week after that, they kissed and cuddled on the same park-bench. Lily made him feel young and virile again and wasn’t always nagging at him like Florrie. He’d just have to make sure she never found out. He had the occasional twinges of guilt but told himself he wasn’t doing any harm.  Dressed up like Eskimos in heavy coats and scarves, they couldn’t get up to much mischief even if they’d wanted to, and with Lily’s caresses hampered by her bulky fur mittens…well, it felt more like she was shoving two ferrets under his overcoat!

   As Winter gave way to Spring the lighter evenings made it impossible to meet in broad daylight, and another thing, one or two at the nursery had started kidding them about their friendship and supposing Betty got wind of what he was up to and told her mother?

   They sat on the bench for the last time with Lily sobbing loudly. She had known all along that her and Joe could never amount to anything. It was just the same now as all those years ago… he would always stay with Florrie even though
she
loved him more than Florrie ever could.

   She reached in her pocket and handed him a brand-new silver-plated cigarette case with “J” and “L” engraved on the back. He ran his fingers over the intertwined initials, just visible in the half-light.

   ‘Thanks Lily. I’ll think about you every time I use it.’

   It wasn’t long before Florrie came across the case and wanted to know where it had come from. Joe gave her the story he’d had already rehearsed in his head - he’d bought it from a fella in the pub and it was a pity it hadn’t got a “P” on instead of an “L” and then it would have stood for “Joe Pomfret”.

   She knew him well enough to know that something was going on but couldn’t put her finger on it. He had been acting funny lately, going out dressed up like a dog’s dinner pretending he was in the darts team when she knew for a fact he wasn’t, sitting for hours in silence except when he was grumbling about having to take little Janet to nursery.  Oh well, whatever it was, he’d just have to get over it, she had enough on her plate, worrying about Betty.

*

   In the year since she became a mother Betty hadn’t been the same girl. She would sit staring into space as if she had all the troubles of the world on her shoulders, turning her nose up at mealtimes or pushing food round her plate without even the energy to argue with her dad these days. Her 21
st
birthday had come and gone, marked only by a simple corned beef salad tea and one of her dad’s home-made birthday cakes. Remembering how depression had blighted her own life Florrie was prepared to move heaven and earth to help her.

   The first thing that needed sorting out was the baby who they wanted to chuck out of the nursery now that Betty couldn’t hold down a job, the reason being that “the nursery was there for the benefit of
working
mothers, not for
able-bodied young women like her who wanted to sit around at home all day doing nothing”.

   Down at The Health Office Florrie put her case to a senior official, a severe-faced middle-aged woman in a navy-blue two-piece suit, white shirt and strangely, a man’s tie. Her pleading paid off and it was agreed that for the time being Janet could keep her nursery place.

   Betty’s prescribed tranquillisers had no effect and she was admitted to the psychiatric ward at Queen's Park Hospital, a rambling collection of stone buildings standing high on a hill above the town. The  former Victorian workhouse was steeped  in the misery of destitute families and only increased her melancholy. On Visiting Day she clung to Ellen.

   ‘Don’t tell ‘em I’ve been crying Ellie,’ she begged, fighting back the tears, ‘or they’ll transfer me upstairs where everybody is doolally…I don’t want to finish up upstairs like them that’s gone mad… you don’t think I’ve gone mad, do you Ellie?’

   The following day Ellen found her sister
had “
finished up upstairs” just as she'd dreaded. The woman in the next chair was repeatedly taking off her clothes, others were weeping and wailing, shouting obscenities, or laughing unnaturally.

    ‘Ellie, tell me I’m not like them…tell me I’m not as bad as them…don’t leave me in here, please Ellie. Take me home.’  

   When Betty finally came home with no sign of improvement the next step was to be electro-convulsive-therapy or “shock treatment” as it was commonly known.  Each treatment-day the sight of the ambulance at the front door was enough to make her shake from head to foot, overwhelmed by a terrifying sense of foreboding.

   She had no clear recollection of the ritual that awaited her each time, the men in white coats who rendered her senseless and powerless while electrically manipulating her brain, unscrambling it then reassembling it into an even fuzzier ball of cotton wool. The only thing she
did
know was that whatever they did to her at the hospital left her with excruciating headaches for hours.