Homecoming (44 page)

‘Thank you for everything,' Martin said gratefully. They both turned as the matron approached, walking alongside Lily who was being wheeled in a chair by one of the staff.

‘You look miles better, darling.' Martin smiled in relief.

‘I feel miles better.' Lily grasped his hand. ‘Better enough to walk to the car.'

‘Oh no, you don't, young lady,' the doctor directed forcefully. ‘I haven't kept you on a week's bed rest for you to go gallivanting now. You will take it easy, if not for your own sake, then for the sake of that baby you're carrying.'

‘I promise.' Lily looked up at him. ‘Thank you for everything you've done for me and the baby.'

‘Just look after him until he can be safely delivered.'

‘I will.'

‘Now, we have to carry this chair out of the house and down the steps,' the matron interposed, steering the conversation back to the practical. ‘I'll call another member of staff to help.'

‘I've parked the car as close to the front door as I could get it.' Martin couldn't stop smiling at Lily. ‘I could lift Lily out of the chair and carry her down the steps, there are only a couple of them.'

‘As long as you don't drop her, young man,' the doctor warned gruffly.

‘I'll tell my brother to open the car door.' Martin went to the front door and shouted to Jack.

Lily offered the matron her hand. ‘Thank you.'

‘Take care of yourself and your baby and let us know when he or she is born.'

‘I will.'

The doctor stood beside the matron in the porch, as Jack drove Martin's car out of the courtyard and down the road.

‘You think there are going to be serious complications, don't you?' The matron accompanied him to his car.

‘If I'm right and the placenta is below the baby, yes. She'll be extremely lucky to hold on to it until it is viable.'

‘She'll need a Caesarean.'

‘Without a doubt, but I've seen worse cases end happily. Let's hope hers does.'

‘If it does, it will be because you broke all the rules and kept her in here for a week.'

‘Sometimes I wonder who the doctor is in this place, you or me. Keep a close eye on Mrs Jones,' he warned as he climbed into the driver's seat. ‘If her blood pressure rises again, call me, or if I'm not around, telephone for an ambulance.'

‘I don't need you to tell me how to do my job.'

‘I know. See you in the morning.'

Matron watched the doctor drive away before turning back to the house. It was a cold, clear spring evening. She would have liked to walk around to the garden to admire the camellias that had just come into full pink flower. They looked splendid from her office window. And it was the time of year when she liked to examine the embryonic hostas and perennials pushing their way up through the brittle, dried remains of last year's debris. Buds were about to burst into life on the shrubs – but she had a hostel to run, girls and babies to look after.

Marilyn hadn't stopped crying since her baby had been delivered that morning and she dare not risk giving her any more sedation lest it contaminate her milk. A careful eye had to be kept on Maggie Jones. Pregnancies could so often be difficult in women of her age.

As she climbed the steps she reflected that duty was time-consuming but she couldn't understand just why it seemed so much harder to shoulder her responsibilities after seeing Lily off. Perhaps it was the way that her husband had looked at her when he'd arrived. Tall, dark, with brown eyes, Martin Clay didn't bear any resemblance to her late husband that she could recall, but there had been a look in his eye that had seemed familiar. A look that quite unexpectedly tugged at emotions she'd assumed she no longer possessed.

Chapter Twenty-three

‘Are you really all right?' Martin turned around in the front passenger seat and rearranged the rug he'd covered Lily with when he had set her down in the back of the car.

‘I'm fine, Marty. Please stop worrying about me.' She clasped her hands around her knees and lay back on the cushions he had thoughtfully brought from home. ‘After a week of being cooped up in one room, the world seems huge and full of colour. I can't wait to hear all the news. What has everyone been doing?'

‘Slow down, Jack,' Martin shouted, as his brother negotiated a humpbacked bridge.

‘Any slower and the hedgehogs will be overtaking us.'

Despite the quip, Jack glanced anxiously at Lily in the mirror. ‘That didn't jar you, did it?'

‘No, you are driving beautifully,' she reassured. ‘Now relax, the pair of you, or you'll both be nervous wrecks before we reach Swansea.'

‘I'll relax,' Martin promised, ‘but not until we get you home and you are safe and sound in bed.'

‘Where do you want it?' Brian asked Judy, carrying Lily and Martin's television set into their bedroom.

‘I'm not sure.' Judy looked at Helen and Katie. ‘Where do you think it should go?'

‘If you don't decide in the next two minutes, my arms will drop off,' Brian warned.

‘Set it on the windowsill for the moment,' Helen advised. ‘We'll need a table for it anyway.'

‘Are you sure the aerial will stretch up here?' Judy pulled the sheet off the bed and straightened the underblanket.

‘John and Roy are seeing to it now.' Brian looked around the room. ‘I thought you girls were supposed to be helping. The house was tidier before you started.'

‘For your information, we're changing the bed,' Helen retorted cuttingly.

‘Make yourself useful, darling, and see if you can find a table for the television.' Judy tied the bedclothes they'd taken off the bed into a neat bundle and set it outside the door.

‘I'll see what I can do.'

Katie looked at her watch as she shook the bolster into a case. ‘They should be here in half an hour. Do you think we will have finished by then?'

‘There's only the television to sort out and the bed to be made,' Judy said briskly. ‘My mother has the meal in hand and everything else in the house is spotless.'

‘Judy, there's a mountain of furniture in here,' Brian shouted from the box room. ‘I'm not sure which table will go best in Lily's bedroom.'

‘Don't take too long deciding.' Helen gave Judy a sly grin. ‘Or we'll never have it set up before Lily gets here.'

‘Alone at last.' Brian shut the door of the box room as Judy joined him.

‘We have work to do.' She pushed him away but not before she kissed him. ‘Now where are these tables …' She laughed as he picked her up and swung her off her feet. ‘Let me go, you brute.'

‘If I thought you meant it, I might,' he murmured, kissing her again.

‘Judy was never like that with Sam,' Katie commented, as the sound of Brian and Judy's smothered laughter echoed from the box room.

‘She seems to be happier than she has been for a while,' Helen agreed, shaking the eiderdown on top of the bedspread.

‘To be honest, I was a bit worried about her and Sam. They always seemed to be arguing about something or other, but I hope they managed to break it off amicably. They're both such nice people, I'd hate for them to fall out.'

‘Katie, Katie, Katie.' Helen shook her head. ‘You're the sweetest person I know, but it's simply not possible for the entire world to live happily ever after.'

‘It's just that I'm so lucky and happy with John and Glyn …'

‘You want everyone else to be,' Helen suggested.

‘Is that so bad of me?'

‘No, it's wonderful of you, but what you have to realise is that you're an angel and the rest of us – well, let's say we're somewhat less than angelic and as such we don't deserve your happiness.'

‘That's nonsense.'

‘You know what they say. People get the lives they deserve.'

‘Not always.' Katie hesitated nervously. ‘I haven't liked to ask before, but you're here and Jack will be here soon, so is there any chance that you'll be able to forgive him?' she finished bravely.

‘Could you forgive John if he had an affair with another woman?'

‘If he asked me to, yes.'

‘See what I mean about being an angel?' Helen picked up the polish and duster she'd used to clean the dressing table. ‘But you don't have to be afraid that I'll thump Jack as soon as I see him. I met him earlier today and we managed to talk to one another in a civilised manner, which is why I'm here now.'

‘Then there is hope?' Katie's thin face broke into a radiant smile.

‘I wouldn't go that far. I'll just take these downstairs.' Helen picked up the bundle of bedclothes and made her way down to the kitchen. The hall clock chimed the half hour. Jack would soon be in the house. She shivered at the thought. She had managed to meet and talk with him in the park but then they hadn't an audience of their closest friends to cope with. And tonight – would it really be possible for both of them to live under the same roof and discuss building any kind of a future together?

She found herself wishing a year of her life away, because no matter what choices she made in the next few days or weeks, a year from now, for better or worse, she would have made them. It remained to be seen whether she would find herself in a situation she could live with.

Martin sat sideways in the passenger seat of his car, regaling Lily with the story of Judy breaking her engagement to Sam and arranging a marriage to Brian, but even as she made anxious enquiries about Brian's fight with Sam, she grew visibly paler.

‘Don't tell me you're all right.' Martin's voice was rough with concern. ‘You're as white as a sheet. If you're in pain …'

‘I just feel a little cold and faint,' Lily whispered. ‘But it's nothing, darling. Just the movement of the car and the smell of petrol.'

‘I can't smell petrol, can you, Jack?'

‘It's just having a baby.' Lily tried to smile, but her mouth seemed numb, her face muscles oddly stiff. ‘All your senses are heightened; every time the staff opened my window in the hostel I could smell wild garlic and they said it was fields away …' Her voice faded as she lay back on the seat and closed her eyes.

‘Do you want us to stop the car?' Martin reached out and took her hand into his. It was ice cold. ‘Lily!' When she didn't respond, he gripped Jack's arm. ‘Stop!'

As Jack checked the rear-view mirror before screeching to a halt, Martin leaped out and opened the back door. When he gathered Lily into his arms and moved the rug covering her legs he saw that her skirt was soaked with blood.

Jack fought a rising tide of panic as he looked from Lily to Martin. Desperately trying to keep a grip on his emotions, he studied their surroundings. The street was familiar; terrace houses stretched in unbroken lines either side of them … ‘Get into the car, Marty, we can be in Swansea Hospital in ten minutes.'

‘They should have been here half an hour ago. I hope everything is all right.' Katie walked from the living room where Judy, Roy, Brian and Helen were sitting with the two children, into the kitchen where Joy was transferring the vegetables and joint of beef she had cooked into Pyrex dishes that could be reheated in the oven.

‘Perhaps the doctor wanted to check Lily over one last time,' Joy suggested, in an attempt to hide her own concern.

Katie checked the clock. It was twenty-five minutes to nine, exactly five minutes since she had last looked at the time. Brian had told them that Jack and Martin had left the garage at five. It was about an hour's drive to the hostel and an hour back, so even allowing for the vagaries of traffic and time for Lily to pack, which she was sure Lily would have done before Martin arrived, they were long overdue. ‘Do you think we should telephone the hostel?'

‘It might be an idea,' Joy concurred, stowing the last of the casserole dishes into the oven. ‘On the other hand, if they had been delayed in the hostel, you'd think they would have telephoned.'

‘I bet that's them now,' Katie said in relief as the telephone rang. Roy picked up the receiver and she stood watching, waiting expectantly in the doorway, but when he looked up and she saw the expression in his eyes, she froze.

*……*……*

Jack left the telephone kiosk and stood in the corridor fighting nausea, as the potent mix of odours that he would forever associate with hospitals assailed his nostrils; antiseptic vied with disinfectant, boiled cabbage, urine and human sweat.

He'd left Martin in a small waiting room, set off the entrance to the gynaecological ward, a room so small he sensed it was used exclusively for the relatives of critically ill patients, and they'd had an enormous fight with an officious ward sister to be granted even that dubious privilege. She had informed them in no uncertain terms that husbands should wait at home and telephone their enquiries at two-hourly intervals. If it hadn't been for the intervention of a sympathetic doctor, he doubted that Martin would have been tolerated on the premises, let alone him.

He had promised Martin that he would return as soon as he had telephoned the house, but the thought of returning to sit next to his brother in that bleak, soulless, institution room, waiting for news that he suspected would be unbearable when it came, was more than he could endure. All his problems with Helen paled into insignificance when he compared them to what Martin was facing. The loss of his wife as well as his child.

How would Martin and all of them cope if the unthinkable happened? He suppressed the thought even as it formed. If he didn't think about it, nothing bad would happen. It couldn't. Not to Lily.

He continued to stand in the corridor, too numb to do anything other than absorb the sights and sounds around him. A nurse hurried down the corridor, her rubber-soled shoes squeaking against the linoleum. A subdued murmur of voices hummed from a sluice room on the ward ahead. A porter wheeled a trolley loaded with used cups past him. He stared at the radiator on the wall and mentally ticked off the thick metal bars. Lily would be all right. She wouldn't, would, wouldn't, would, wouldn't …

‘Are you lost?' a staff nurse enquired briskly.

‘No.' He resented her intrusion because she had stopped him on ‘wouldn't.' Didn't she realise how important it was that he be allowed peace and quiet to run to the end of the radiator?

‘Visitors aren't allowed to linger in the corridor, especially outside of official visiting hours,' she informed him sharply.

‘I was using the telephone.'

‘There is a public telephone outside the main gates.'

‘I'm with my brother. His wife is seriously ill.'

‘He should go home and telephone later.'

‘They said we could wait.'

‘What ward is she on?'

‘The gynaecological ward.'

‘I'm going that way. I'll walk with you.' The nurse escorted him as if she were transferring a prisoner.

Martin was still sitting in the same position. Slumped forward on a hard, upright, wooden chair, his head in his hands, as inert as a waxwork figure.

Jack sat alongside him. There was no point in asking Martin if he had heard any news of Lily. It was patently obvious that he hadn't.

‘Come on, love.' John lifted Glyn from Katie's lap and leaned him against his shoulder. ‘There's nothing we can do here. We'll go home and put the baby to bed.'

‘I can't leave,' she protested, ‘not until we hear how Lily is.'

‘The minute we hear anything, I'll come round and tell you,' Brian promised, eyeing Roy who was pacing restlessly between the living room and the hall.

‘I want to be here,' Katie insisted obstinately. ‘If Martin or Jack come back, they'll need me.'

‘From what Jack told Roy, there might not be any news for hours,' Brian reminded. ‘You could be here all night.'

‘I don't care.' Katie glared at Brian and he realised that she was in no state to listen to reason.

‘I checked on Billy a few minutes ago, he's sleeping fast in the spare room,' Judy informed Joy when her mother returned from the kitchen where she'd been transferring the food no one wanted to eat from the stove to the fridge.

‘Thank you.' Joy took Roy's arm. ‘Come and sit down, Roy.'

‘The phone …'

‘Is not going to ring any sooner for you pacing around it.'

Roy allowed her to lead him to the sofa but, as he sank trembling and wild-eyed beside Judy, it was obvious he was in shock.

Unable to sit still a moment longer, Helen rose to her feet. ‘Would anyone like a cup of tea?'

‘That's a good idea,' Joy agreed, recognising Helen's need to do something useful. ‘Judy, why don't you give her a hand?' As they left the room, she turned to Katie. ‘John's right, Katie, you should put Glyn to bed.'

‘Please,' Katie begged, ‘let me stay, if only for a little while longer. Just until Jack telephones again.'

‘In that case, I'll go next door and get a clean nappy, Glyn's pyjamas and the pram. He can sleep in the hall.' John went to the door.

‘Give Glyn to me.' Brian held out his arms. ‘There's no point in taking him outside until you have to.'

‘I'll see if I can do anything in the kitchen.' Katie left the room.

‘Katie is very close to her brothers,' Joy murmured.

‘I discovered that before I married her.' John looked at Roy, and Joy knew they were both thinking the same thing. It wasn't only Martin who was going to be devastated if anything happened to Lily. She might only be Roy's foster daughter, but Joy knew her husband was as devoted to Lily as he was to his son.