Mourning Doves (24 page)

As they progressed, Louise’s dislike of the young woman faded, to be replaced by some apprehension of the quandary in which she had suddenly placed herself. She knew nothing about the care or training of the blind or, even worse, the deaf and blind. She was about to offer help to a man who would surely be under doctors who, she
presumed, already knew what to do for him. Or did they? That was a question to be asked.

But it might have been my George or Tom in such a desperate situation, she told herself passionately. In need of all the help they could get. At least I might be able to offer some entertainment to alleviate his boredom. Richard Williamson must be nearly out of his mind with simple, excruciating boredom.

And just what do you think you can do for this man, a working-class man? she asked herself.

The answer was that she had not the faintest idea, but she would try. It would give her something challenging to do.

She forgot her horrid cottage and her irritating daughters, as her far from stupid mind ground rustily into gear after weeks of disuse, and she began to think constructively of means of communication, of how to give Sergeant Williamson something to do other than sit on a bench.

Swept forward on a tide of overwhelming compassion and not a little of her own need, Louise entered the hall of the nursing home. She heard, in the distance, the rumble of young male voices and the clatter of knives and forks. Thirty of them, the maid had told her. How cruel war was.

It was the idea of two of them being both deaf and blind, however, which drove her upstairs to see an irate matron.

Matron was fed up with volunteers and other do-gooders whose enthusiasm, now that the war was over, waned within weeks; with a government which was simply muddling through and wished heartily that wounded soldiers would go home and get on with their lives; with a nursing staff with a marked tendency to get married and depart.

At first, Louise had some difficulty in persuading the matron, a very experienced army nurse who had seen more medical horrors than she cared to remember, that something
more should be done for Sergeant Richard Williamson and his similarly afflicted comrade.

If Louise felt like doing something, she could be very stubborn. She was not stupid. She had some idea of planning and organisation. Her home and entertaining for her husband had both been well run. During the war, she had worked steadily for the Red Cross, and she understood the need to raise funds for charity.

But the dire need of an ordinary Lancashire man sitting on a seaside bench and an unknown number of others like him carried her far beyond the idea of charity. She sensed that it would take long-term dedication and, like the raising of Red Cross funds, endless patience. And, as she talked to the disillusioned matron, she realised that she herself would need to encourage others to help, just as she had when interesting herself in various charities.

A couple of hours later, when she finally left the nursing home, a bewildered matron, though very hungry for her forgotten lunch, had promised her cooperation in a scheme to find help for Sergeant Williamson and his fellow sufferer.

‘As far as I know, there’s nothing to help people like Richard, except I did hear that an American lady was once able to help a young deaf-blind girl,’ Matron said flatly. Her grim middle-aged face was heavy with melancholy. ‘The blind will be taught Braille, as soon as we’ve found teachers for them – the usual places are full, and the boys are having to wait. But I don’t see how they can teach anyone blind and deaf.’

For the moment, Louise could not see a way out of Sergeant Williamson’s dilemma either. She pushed the problem away for the moment, and inquired, ‘Will they get a pension?’

‘I suppose they will. There’s supposed to be a bill going before Parliament this year, which, if it passes, will make the government responsible for all legally blind people. But you know government – they’re as slow as snails.’

Louise nodded. ‘Is Braille difficult to learn?’ she asked. ‘If we could find a way to teach him, we could communicate with Sergeant Williamson.’

‘We could – Braille in itself is not that difficult – but the nurses and aides here are run off their feet. I don’t think there is one of them who has the tenacity to learn something which won’t be of much use when they return to general nursing. Braille would not be much needed by a civilian nurse.’

‘I have time – I’ve all the time in the world,’ replied Louise with a certain amount of bitterness in her voice. ‘I wonder if I could learn it.’

It did not occur to her that her daughters would be thankful if she would use some of her time to help them. They did not need to earn a living like men did.

The matron smiled. ‘You really want to help them, don’t you?’

‘I do,’ Louise responded, with the same commitment with which she had said the same words when she had married dear Timothy.

Let her try, decided the matron; something good may eventually come out of it. But she had not much hope. Once a war was over, governments were not very interested in soldiers.

Nevertheless, she shook Louise’s hand and assured her that she could visit at any time. ‘The blind boys would probably be grateful if you could read to them occasionally – something light that would amuse them.’

Louise picked up her handbag. She rose and thanked Matron for her time. ‘I’ll most certainly come to read to them,’ she promised. ‘Do you think they’d like
Three Men in a Boat
?’

‘I’m sure it would make them laugh – and that would be good for them,’ Matron said.

Louise trudged slowly up to the station. She had felt drained and tired when she sat down beside Sergeant Williamson.
Then she had been shocked out of her fatigue and her grief. Now she felt suddenly worn out, maddeningly frustrated because her tired mind simply would not work. Reading would help the blind boys, but it would not help Sergeant Williamson. And it was his predicament which touched her heart.

After three cups of tea, the conversation between Eddie, Edna and Celia languished, and he announced his departure because he had to cut his hedge.

Both ladies rose and ushered him out of the back door, with many thanks for the lettuce and spring onions. Just as he was about to vanish round the side of their house, however, Edna called him back to ask if he knew a young man who would clear their back garden and dig it over for them.

Eddie paused and scratched the back of his head. ‘Do you mind a lad who’s not all there?’ he asked tentatively, while Celia tugged at her sister’s sleeve and whispered that it would cost too much.

‘Shush, Celia, it won’t be that much.’ Then she replied to Eddie. ‘We don’t mind who does it, as long as it gets tidied up,’ she assured him.

‘Well, I’ll ask young Ethelred’s mam if he could do it. He’s a strong lad, though he’s lost a few marbles.’

‘That would be most kind of you.’ She pushed a quietly protesting Celia back into the kitchen.

‘We can’t afford these things, Edna,’ Celia argued. ‘I was going to do it bit by bit.’

‘Don’t be a duffer, Celia. It needs real muscle, and you are not going to undertake it. I can manage the few shillings it will cost.’ As they re-entered the living room, she added playfully, ‘I have high ambitions for you. I’m very keen
that you work with this Philpotts man and that it grows into a proper business and is a success.’

Celia smiled a little ruefully. She collected the tea things to take them to the kitchen sink. She said, ‘It all depends on Mother. And she’s going to be furious at the very idea.’ She opened the back door and emptied the tea leaves round an anaemic-looking fern growing near the door. ‘Edna, it is ferns that like tea leaves, isn’t it?’

Edna came out to view the slightly yellow-tinged plant. ‘I’ve no idea. I think we’d better buy a gardening book.’

Unexpectedly, Celia chuckled. ‘What a useless pair we are! We don’t know anything, do we?’

‘Not much. I could try addressing it in Portuguese to find out if it likes tea leaves. It may not know English.’

Laughing, they turned, to face Louise, who had come silently through the front door and was astonished to see such levity in a house of mourning.

They greeted her, and Edna said she hoped she had enjoyed her walk.

Louise drew off her gloves and took out her hatpins. ‘Well, yes and no,’ she replied grudgingly. ‘Have either of you done anything about dinner?’

Celia and Edna looked guiltily at each other. In one shot, their mother had put them in the wrong. ‘No,’ they admitted in chorus. When they followed Louise into the living room, Celia surreptitiously leaned over towards the fire and pulled out the oven damper, so that the oven would be hot if they needed it.

‘I might have known it,’ their mother said dolefully. Then, as she went to hang up her coat and hat, she asked Celia to make some tea and put some cheese and biscuits on a plate for her.

‘I haven’t had any lunch,’ she explained. She made her request mechanically, however, as if her thoughts were elsewhere. ‘I think I’ll lie down for a little while. Bring it upstairs.’

‘Yes, Mother.’ Celia’s response was equally mechanical. She had been gritting her teeth to keep down her sense of panic. She had been certain that her mother would open the subject of the furniture by asking how she had got on with Mr Philpotts. But she appeared to have forgotten all about him.

Celia was disappointed. The problem was weighing so heavily upon her that she was anxious to discuss it as soon as possible. Now it seemed that she herself would have to broach the subject, and she had no idea how to do it without, straight away, bringing Louise’s wrath down on her head. She wished suddenly that Mr Philpotts could be with her to support her when she did so. He seemed such a calm, sensible person.

Muttering irritably under her breath that she was old enough to know, roughly, what time dinner should arrive, Edna retired to the kitchen, to open the meat safe hanging on the wall and take out the remains of yesterday’s chicken and see if she could make another dinner out of it. Celia pushed past her to fill the tea kettle at the tap.

Edna looked gloomily at the dried-out chicken remains. ‘Better take Mother a lot of biscuits with her tea,’ she advised. ‘This bird is going to take some resurrecting.’

In spite of her inward qualms about facing her mother, Celia smiled. ‘Cut lots of veggies up small, parboil them and then mix the chicken scraps with them,’ she suggested. ‘You can thicken it with a bit of flour mixed with water.’

‘Aha! Wonderful! You can take over the cooking. Do you know how to make dumplings? They’d fill it out, too.’

‘No. You could get down the cookery book which Winnie packed for us,’ Celia suggested, and whipped the kettle away to put it on the fire.

After ladling tea leaves into the pot and putting it to warm by the fire, she returned to the kitchen.

‘I wonder what has happened to Winnie. Has Mother said anything to you about her?’

‘No.’

‘Do you know if anyone has asked for confirmation of the written reference Mother gave her?’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘I hope she has found a place. She was going to find a
room to live in, while she kept on looking. I’d write to her, except that I don’t have an address. I gave her our address, because she told me that sometimes a new mistress likes to write directly to the old employer, in case the reference the servant is carrying is a forgery.’

With her finger poised over a recipe for dumplings, Edna asked idly, ‘Did Mother do anything about trying to get her a position? She was with us a long time – since before I was married.’

‘Not to my knowledge.’

Edna put down the cookery book slowly and said, ‘I hope she did. I know I turned off my servants the day I left – but at least I knew that the next company man to be the tenant of the house would probably rehire them – and they knew it.’ She shrugged. ‘I expect she’s OK. A good cook shouldn’t have much difficulty in getting a place.’

Celia sighed. ‘She was a good friend to me.’

‘Was she? You knew her much longer than I did.’

Upstairs, Louise had taken off her dress and put on her brown velvet dressing gown. She had propped herself up on her bed with her writing case on her lap. She was chewing the end of a pencil, as Celia carefully edged the tea tray round the door. She looked up and inquired, ‘Celia, do we have the address of the School for the Blind – I’m sure there is one in Liverpool?’

Astonished at such an odd remark, Celia put the tray down on the bedside table, and responded that she was sure they did not have it. ‘I would have kept a record of the address, if you had ever contributed to it, Mama – but I don’t think they ever solicited funds from us.’

‘Hmm, I wonder how I can get it?’

Celia straightened up and winced as an unaccustomed pain shot up her back; carrying buckets of coal from the coal shed outside the back door was not very kind to backs, she decided.

In answer to Louise’s query, she said, ‘I’m not sure, Mama.’ She stood staring at her mother’s lap desk for a moment, and then said thoughtfully, ‘I remember that I once got an address for you from the library – they have a number of reference books.’

‘Is there a library in Hoylake?’

‘Yes. I passed it yesterday.’

‘Well, you can walk along to it tomorrow and see if the librarian can find the address. And also the address of St Dunstan’s.’ She added testily, ‘Don’t dawdle there. Pour the tea.’

Celia swallowed uneasily; it seemed as if her mother had revived the almost feverish activity which had always been a prelude to giving a party or organising the removal of the family to Rhyl for its annual holiday. She asked, ‘Are you having trouble with your eyes, Mother?’

‘No. But I want to learn Braille.’

Very puzzled, Celia exclaimed in surprise, ‘But Braille is for blind people.’

‘I know that.’ Louise turned herself to face her daughter. She said, ‘Do you know, Celia, in Hoylake there is a house full of blind soldiers waiting to learn it before being discharged. If I can learn it quickly I can help to teach them.’ She sighed and turned to stare across at the open window. ‘Even worse, Celia, two of them are both blind and deaf – and the matron says that no one really knows how to communicate with them at all.’

Celia handed her mother tea and biscuits and then sank down on the side of the bed. ‘How dreadful. Poor things!’ She was honestly shocked, and looked at her mother as if she had never seen her before, while Louise jotted something down on a list she appeared to be compiling. When her mother began to compile a list, it was certain that she was about to embark on, what was to her, a serious undertaking.

Louise flung her pencil down on the bed. ‘Yes, Celia.
Poor things indeed. Can you imagine what it would be like if one of your dear brothers had been sent home to us in such a state? Where would we begin? What could we do?’

‘I don’t know, Mother. It would be terrible. How did you stumble on these soldiers?’

Eagerly now, Louise described her morning. She finished up by saying, ‘I feel an urgent need to help if I can.’

Celia nodded. She did understand. It was yet another shocking revelation of young men’s suffering in a merciless war.

She sat quietly for a moment or two. It looked as if her mother might be in the process of casting off the role of impoverished widow, which Celia had imagined she would play for the rest of her life. Was she reverting to that of a society woman who knew that rank had its obligations, a person who knew exactly how to plan a charity ball or banquet and had the strength to do it? Perhaps it would not be the best of roles, but at least it might put some life back into her. Most of her mother’s acquaintances in Liverpool had a pet charity to which they contributed money or voluntary work.

Celia recalled that when Phyllis’s baby had arrived so precipitously it had revived her; she had become the domineering matron who had been the scourge of less efficient Red Cross volunteers during the war. More shrewd than Celia, Edna had remarked only a few days earlier that their mother was a perfectly capable woman if she would only bestir herself.

And here she was, trying to bestir herself to some purpose on behalf of two ordinary soldiers, as if they were her own sons.

As she remembered her two brothers, Celia wanted to burst into tears. She had always recognised her mother’s grief over the loss of them.

She made herself smile at Louise. Wounded soldiers in their helplessness could, indeed, be cared for as if they were
Tom and George. At least it was worthwhile giving them a hand, if it could be done; it would also make her mother focus on a definite goal instead of drifting miserably from day to day. Celia forgot, for the moment, her own problems, the greatest of which was the unexpectedly dedicated lady reclining beside her, and said with real enthusiasm, ‘Mother, I think you’re wonderful! I believe the library is open in the evenings. I can try to get those addresses tonight.’

Her mother’s face glowed at the unexpected praise.

‘May I tell Edna?’ Celia asked. ‘I should go downstairs to help her.’

‘Of course.’