The Heart of the Family (29 page)

By rights she ought to be sleeping, Grace knew. After all, she was starting night duty tonight, but she couldn’t sleep, not after what had happened.

All she could do was simply lie here, her eyes wet with her tears as she went over it all again and again; every word, every look, every kiss. Even now she could hardly believe that it had actually happened. She looked down at her left hand, where Seb’s ring was back in its rightful place, and fresh tears flowed.

With a cold railway carriage all to herself for the return journey to Liverpool after she had left him in Whitchurch, she had cried the whole way, knowing that no matter what her future might hold it could never hold a man she could love as much as she loved Seb, nor a pain as bad as the one she was now feeling.

Only her pride had had her dabbing at her eyes when the train had finally pulled into Lime Street, and adding a touch of lipstick to lips that were still trembling with misery and loss. Hugging her winter coat around herself she had kept her head down as she made for the barrier, so that she hadn’t seen Seb at all and had no idea that he was there until he reached for her hand – but miraculously, as they had
both said to one another, she had known immediately that the hand reaching for hers belonged to him. She had stopped dead where she was, of course, unable to believe it was humanly possible for him to be there. She had left him in Whitchurch, after all.

But before she had been able to say a word or ask any questions, Seb had placed his finger to her lips and then with his other hand he had slid her engagement ring back on her finger and told her, ‘How could you possibly think that I don’t love you and only you, and that more than anything else I want to make you my wife? I could shake you, Gracie, I really could, but instead the minute I get you to myself I’m going to kiss you silly instead, and then I’m going to make you promise me that you will never ever take off our ring again.’

To which Grace had only been able to reply breathlessly, ‘Oh, Seb …’ before giving in to her overwhelming need to hurl herself into his arms and hold him as tightly as she possibly could whilst she wept a few tears and gave a small laugh, and then shamelessly, or so she told herself now, flung her arms tightly around him and kissed him for all she was worth. It had taken the wolf whistle of a grinning soldier to break them apart and even then Seb had kept an arm wrapped tightly around her as they had left the station and Grace had cuddled as close to him as she could whilst asking him the questions that tumbled from her lips.

‘How on earth did you get here before me?’ she marvelled, to which Seb had grinned and said, ‘Come and let me show you,’ before guiding her outside the station to where he’d paid a young boy of about twelve years old to stand guard over the
motorcycle that he explained to Grace he’d borrowed from a colleague.

‘I told him that it was a matter of life or death, the life or death of my heart,’ Seb had told her tenderly, before asking her in disbelief, ‘How could you ever think that I wanted to end our engagement?’

‘It was because of what I’d overheard Sybil saying whilst I was in the ladies,’ Grace had admitted, going on to explain to him exactly what had been said and then pointing out quietly, ‘You did seem to enjoy her company, Seb, and whenever I tried to tell you how unhappy she was making me feel you didn’t really seem to want to know or, even worse, you were cross with me.’

‘I did behave selfishly and unfairly,’ Seb admitted, ‘and I want to ask your forgiveness for that, Grace. It never occurred to me that you’d think what you did. It was just that I’ve been having a bit of a problem with this new temporary superior I’ve got whilst Jim Langdon is in hospital having that bad leg of his sorted out. Rory has been making things a bit difficult for me, throwing these girls on me and telling me that the powers that be have said that it’s very important that they are made to feel they want to come and work at Whitchurch, and telling me that if they start saying they’d rather work somewhere else, it will reflect on me. I suppose I was trying to give them the same leeway I’d have given Sasha and Lou if it had been them I was training, hoping that I’d be able to win them round to be good workers. I’m afraid I was worrying more about what Rory was going to do than what Sybil was doing. I never dreamed that Sybil would start acting like she did.’

His admission softened Grace’s heart even more.

‘It was really mean of Rory to be like that with you, and so unfair.’

‘Well, he’s got a bit of a chip on his shoulder, I think. He isn’t really a service chap. He’s someone who’s been drafted in, but he is still my superior.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me all this?’ Grace asked.

‘Because I didn’t want anything to spoil our weekend,’ Seb had answered her so ruefully that Grace had started to laugh, and then so had Seb, so that they’d ended up laughing their heads off and then hugging one another all over again, and then, of course, kissing one another all over again until the boy watching over the motorcycle had objected, ‘Hey, mister, you said you was only going to want me to look out for yer bike for half an hour.’

After Seb had paid off the boy, naturally Grace had insisted that Seb must come back with her to her parents, and after snatching a wonderful precious hour together in her parents’ front room, they had rushed out again to make the evensong service so that, at Seb’s insistence, they could see the vicar together and make arrangements for the banns to be read for their late December wedding.

Seb had even told her that he had decided to ask for a transfer back to Liverpool, even if that meant losing his promotion, but Grace had vigorously rejected the very idea.

‘I’ll be qualified by then, with a bit of luck,’ she had pointed out, ‘and I should be able to get a transfer to Whitchurch, to that hospital they’ve got down there, and seeing as you are already living out I dare say we’ll be able to rent somewhere there more easily than we can here, even if it’s only one room.’

‘All I want is for us to be together and for you to be happy,’ Seb had told her, and Grace had known that he meant it.

Fresh tears filled her eyes. She was just so lucky; the luckiest young woman she knew, and all that she felt for Sybil now in place of her earlier bitter jealousy and misery was pity.

‘I want us to be married.’

Francine couldn’t have been more astonished or appalled if Brandon had suddenly grown two heads.

They were in the American Bar at the Savoy, where he insisted on taking her even though she kept on telling him that the prices were outrageous and that he should be spending his money on impressing someone much younger and more suitable for him than she was. She should have ended things between them after their first date, she knew, but the truth was that she liked Brandon and felt ruefully protective and fond of him in exactly the same way that she would have done someone like her elder sister’s son, Luke. Just like Luke, Brandon was old enough to squire a more mature auntie around but at the same time far too young for their relationship to be anything other than that of a sisterly inclined older woman towards a charming well-mannered young man. And although she was less happy about admitting it, his company helped to ease the loneliness she felt both for Jack, her lost son, and Marcus, her lost love. They both held places in her heart that would be forever empty without them. They were irreplaceable,
but too many long lonely hours spent alone grieving for what she had lost had made Brandon’s company a temptation she had wrongly given in to. Wrongly for his sake, she recognised guiltily, rather than for her own.

She had wondered why he continued to pursue her when not once had he made any attempt to institute any kind of physical intimacy between them. For a while she had even wondered if he might be homosexual, but nothing he had said or done whilst in her company had indicated that that was the case.

He had taken her to events at the American Embassy, he had treated her with respect and he had shown great affection for her; he would, if she had allowed him to do so, have lavished far too much money on her by way of expensive treats and gifts, but although he had claimed virtually all her free time since they had been introduced she had never for one moment been expecting anything like this.

She leaned towards him and told him lightly but firmly, ‘That is the most ridiculous suggestion I have ever heard.’

‘I mean it,’ Brandon returned. ‘I need you to be my wife, Francine.’

It was the word ‘need’ that warned her that there was more to his outrageous and unwelcome proposal than he had so far told her.

‘Need?’

She could also see him relaxing slightly, as though her question was the one he had been hoping for.

‘Yes, need. You see, the thing is, well, I may not be around much longer.’

Francine’s eyebrows shot up, and she gave him a pained look. This was the kind of line that every
young would-be Lothario in uniform, and some who weren’t, handed out to girls naïve enough to be seduced by it and them, and she had thought better of Brandon than to have to listen to him trying such a line on her.

‘I realise the Eagles have a reputation for taking risks, but you’ve said yourself that you’ve been grounded on your father’s orders.’

‘I’m not talking about buying it via Hitler,’ he told her abruptly. ‘That was why I joined the Eagles originally, it’s true, but it looks like fate isn’t going to do me any favours and make things easy for me, and now Dad’s got me grounded anyway. Besides, the other guys don’t like it when they’ve got a guy on board who’s got a death wish. They say it puts a curse on them all, so I guess for their sakes it’s best that I don’t fly missions with them. I was just running scared, though, at first – at first.’ He gave a jerky sound somewhere between a laugh and a sob that tore at Francine’s heart. ‘What do I mean “at first”? I still am and I guess that the coward that I am I will be right up until the end. That’s what all this is about, France.’

‘France’ was his nickname for her and one that no one else had ever used.

‘You see – and you won’t like this – there’s enough of my dad in me to have me going all out for what I want. OK, when we first met I just thought you were a fine-looking woman but then there was something about you that kinda drew me closer to you, and since I’m one that believes in fate – well, I’ve had to, I reckon – I did a bit of checking-up on you and I found out about your boy Jack, and about your major. More fool him for dropping you like he
did – on account of your past, I suppose – and not realising what he was losing.’

Francine didn’t bother to correct him; she was too shocked and angry to say anything. The thought of him digging into her past alienated her and made her feel she wanted to get up and walk out of the bar without looking back, but something, some sense of maternal duty that she felt could only have been invoked by his use of Jack’s name, kept her where she was despite the revulsion and dislike she was feeling.

‘I can guess what you’re thinking,’ he told her. ‘It’s not nice to go digging into people’s private lives, not even for Americans, although my dad does it all the time – that’s what being a billionaire does for you. He even had my mom investigated after he’d divorced her in case she was spending his alimony on another man. Not, of course, that their divorce stopped him spending money on the girls he was squiring around, but then he’d been doing that behind her back before they were divorced so I guess he felt it was OK anyway.’

He had already told her about his parents’ divorce and the enmity that now existed between them, intensified on his father’s side at least by the fact that
his
father, Brandon’s grandfather, had left his will in such a way that it meant that the billions Father was now enjoying had to be passed on to his own first-born male child. And only to him.

‘Dad’s sworn he won’t marry a fourth time, but I reckon he will once he knows the truth – he’ll have to because I’m not just his eldest son, I’m his only son. His other kids – at least the ones he’s prepared to acknowledge – are all girls, and once this thing
that’s eating me away inside finally gets me and I’m gone, that will mean there’s no one to inherit under Granddaddy’s will.’

So at last they had come to it and it was there, out in the open between them. Something that felt like a slimy cold octopus seemed to have wrapped its tentacles around Francine’s heart, squeezing it so painfully that just feeling its irregular beat hurt.

It had to be impossible – some sort of stupid joke, surely – that this healthy, fit strong-looking young man seated opposite her could really mean that he was terminally ill and about to die, but when Francine looked at him she could see the shadow in his eyes that told her that it wasn’t a joke and that it was real and happening.

She took a deep breath, suddenly very much in the role of a mother, as she questioned him firmly, ‘Are you sure things are as bad as you think? Sometimes doctors say—’

‘I’m sure. I’ve been to every expert there is, including a couple in Switzerland, and there’s no mistake. It’s a form of brain disease – rare and incurable, so all the experts have told me. Of course, my mom will blame my dad, and he will blame her, but the truth is that there is no one to blame – not them, not me and not even God. It’s just the luck of the draw and I drew the wrong card, that’s all.

‘I had hoped to take a short cut and get it all over with – get shot down or, better still, shot up and go in a blaze of glory kind a thing. Better for my folks that way: to lose a son who’s halfway to being a hero and not one that’s gone all the way to being a coward and who’s going to die in a mental hospital bed with his mind gone.’

‘There must be something that the doctors can do.’

Francine wished she hadn’t spoken when she saw the tears gather in his eyes, along with a look of helpless grief and despair, as he shook his head.

‘Nothing. There is no cure, no anything.’

‘You must tell your parents. They love you, they—’

‘Yep, they love me but they love themselves more. If I told my mom she’d have a breakdown on the spot, and if I told my dad he just wouldn’t accept it. He’s a billionaire and he thinks he can buy everything and everyone he wants, but you can’t buy your way out of something like this and you can’t buy life. Until I met you I didn’t know what I was going to do. I’d thought of jumping out of a plane without my parachute or, even more effective, perhaps trying to cross Piccadilly during the blackout.’

He waited, so obediently Francine responded to his weak joke with an attempt at a smile.

‘But then when I met you I knew that God had answered my prayers and that he’d sent you to me to be with me; to be my strength and my succour, if only I could persuade you to be those things for me. I need you, France. I can’t do this alone. I’m so damned afraid. Please help me. Please tell me that you’ll be there for me, that you’ll be my mind when my own has gone and that you will see right done by me with dignity and all those things that you Brits are so damned good at. I need you. There is no one else. There is only you.

‘The reason I want us to be married is that that will give you certain rights. It will enable me to name you as my chosen next of kin so that when the time comes – and it isn’t far off, I know – that I can’t do
things or make decisions for myself you can make the decisions for me that I want to have made. I want to die here, in this country, Francine. I want to die in the arms of someone who cares and who understands, not in some nameless hospital surrounded by medics whilst my mom is locked away in a padded cell somewhere and my dad is out fucking his latest girl in a desperate attempt to get another son. I’m already weaker than I was. I guess you must think it strange that I haven’t taken you out dancing since we met or made a move on you. The truth is that when we say good night I go back to my hotel room and I’m done.’

There were tears in his eyes and his hands were shaking.

Francine looked at him, her heart aching with pity and understanding. Here, in the man boy, she would have the care of both the boy she had lost in Jack and the man she had lost in Marcus. Here, in Brandon, they met, and she, the woman who had lost her son and her love, could out of those losses give to this boy growing into a man, who would never become that man, the comfort of a mother’s love and the tenderness of a woman’s love. She reached for his hand, and squeezed it gently.

‘Very well then, I will marry you.’

The relief she could see in his eyes compounded her appalled pity.

‘It will have to be soon – as soon as we can – and I’ll make it worth your while, France. I’ve already made my will and you—’

Immediately she released his hand and shook her head, telling him fiercely, ‘No, I can’t be bought and I won’t be. Leave your money to whoever or
whatever you choose, Brandon, but please don’t burden me by leaving it to me.’

‘Mmm, I think it needs to be just a touch more golden, sort of like the yolk of an egg only a teeny bit lighter,’ Bella pronounced, standing back to study the neat one-foot square of yellow distemper Gavin had just applied to the walls of the smallest bedroom, soon to be the nursery.

‘But it must be Lena who decides,’ said Bella generously. ‘After all, the nursery is for your baby, Lena.’

‘A second coat of paint will deepen this,’ Gavin assured both young women with a calm male certainty.

‘Well, I do know what you mean, Bella,’ Lena agreed – Lena thought so highly of Bella that she knew she would agree with whatever Bella said – ‘but I don’t want to put Gavin to too much trouble,’ she added hesitantly.

‘Who said anything about it being any trouble? Not me,’ Gavin assured them both.

‘Oh, well, in that case I do think that Bella is right and that it does need to be just a touch more golden.’

‘That way it will pick out the yellow of those little teddies in that fabric I just happened to come across the other day,’ Bella smiled approvingly, without going on to say anything about the fact that far from coming across the fabric, she had actually already had it, having bought it when she had expected to be having a little one of her own. It would only upset Lena to hear about Bella’s lost baby, and there was no way that Bella wanted to do that. As the girls who worked with Lena were always saying, she was like a little ray of sunshine with her smile and her
happiness, and she lifted the spirits of everyone who came in contact with her.

Everyone, that was, except Vi, Bella reflected ruefully, her heart sinking with a mixture of guilt and dread at the thought of having to leave the happy atmosphere of her house to go round and check that her mother was all right. It was her duty to do so, though, and Bella – the new Bella she had somehow almost miraculously become from that very moment she had stopped in the street to help Lena – would not have dreamed of ignoring that duty, no matter how onerous she might find it.

She gave a brief discreet look in the direction of Lena and Gavin, both of them now poring over the second patch of distemper Gavin had applied to the wall. Although perhaps neither of them was aware of it as yet, Bella somehow sensed that they were two people who were beginning to share a closeness that could become special. Bella wasn’t naïve. The very best thing that could happen for Lena and her baby was for Lena to marry a kind, generous man who would love both her and Charlie’s baby and who she could love back in turn. But if that happened it would mean that she would lose the special closeness that had developed between the two of them, she knew. In Lena she had found someone who had brought into her life a love that was the combination of the best kind of friendship and the deepest kind of sibling love. But more probably, having watched the way in which Gavin watched Lena, Bella thought if they married then she was bound to lose that special place she now had in Lena’s life and heart. It would be the easiest thing in the world for her to drop hints in Lena’s ears about the problems that could occur
when a very pretty and charming young girl, who had already shared intimacy with one man – dangers that included jealousy and even the risk of physical violence – attracted the interest of a new young man. Lena held her in high regard, Bella knew that, and it was only natural that she in turn should want to protect her. No one would blame her if she urged Lena to be cautious and pointed out to her that she and her baby would always have a home with her and that there was no need for her to feel she needed to marry anyone. Lena was already unconsciously mimicking the way Bella spoke, her manners were excellent, she was bright and quick. In a few more months she would easily be able to pass herself off as a girl from the middle classes rather than a girl from the slums. Then there would be no reason why she shouldn’t stay here in Wallasey for ever. She and Bella could bring the baby up between them and he or she (and Bella was hoping it would be a girl) would want for nothing, especially not love.