The Liverpool Trilogy (78 page)

She checked her son’s pulse. ‘You saved him, Tom. Thank goodness you found them, Mr Greenhalgh. Eileen?’

‘Yes?’

‘Hot, sweet tea for the upstanding and floor-sitting. Keith, is it?’

‘Aye, that’s me.’

‘Blood group?’

‘A positive.’

‘Good. Will you give? No bad illnesses, hepatitis, TB, blood disorders?’

‘No.’

‘Will you give?’ she repeated. ‘Because I will be stitching his wounds, so I need to remain intact.’

‘Of course I’ll give. I already donate regularly for the war effort.’

‘Sit on the windowsill and keep your arm up as high as you can. Another pint will suffice. Now. Sutures.’

Like a well-oiled machine, Marie Bingley set up the crude transfusion system, plucked packing and debris out of her son’s wounds, washed them, stitched her baby back together, checked the
flow of Keith’s blood, shone a light in his eyes to make sure all was well. ‘Drink your tea,’ she ordered. ‘You need it.’

Tom was picking up. He glared at Mel. ‘It was all your doing,’ he accused her vehemently. ‘Had it not been for you, this would never have happened.’

Marie tutted. ‘Oh, do shut up, dear. He’s been after her for months, and well you know it. Fourteen is like twenty these days. But no babies, Mel. I’ll say the same to this
fellow when he comes to. There. He’s all stitched up like an old darned sock.’ Only then did she react. When the last stitch was in, she sat in her husband’s chair and wept like a
child.

Eileen joined in. She wasn’t one for allowing anyone to weep without company. She looked at Marie Bingley with respect, because the quiet little woman had proved her worth tonight. Eileen
liked her. More than that, she knew she had a friend, as the woman was trying to smile at her.

Mel stepped forward and hovered over Tom, who was sitting up and drinking tea. ‘I’m sorry. I don’t know what else to say to you. We’re young, but we love each other.
We’re probably older in our heads than most people our age.’

‘I shall send him to boarding school,’ he barked.

She shrugged. ‘Send him where you like, because he’ll come straight back.’

‘She’s right, I will.’

‘You said that without moving your lips, Dr Bingley.’ Mel squatted down and stared into the eyes of her beloved Peter. ‘Thank goodness you’re back, you dirty stop-out.
You’ve a road map on your back. Very colourful. Keep still, because my dad’s blood’s going in, so don’t waste it.’

Keith grinned. This was the first time he’d been called Dad by any of Eileen’s children.

‘Where does the map go, Mel?’

‘All the way to Cambridge.’

Peter turned his head and looked at his father. ‘We’re like a pair of gloves, Dad. She’s the left-hander, because she’ll be the one voting Labour. She’s still not
forgiven Churchill for bombing the French fleet in Oran.’ After this lengthy piece of oratory, he passed out again.

Marie pulled herself together before separating Keith from the recipient of his blood. ‘Thank you so much. Now he’s fit to travel to hospital. We aren’t going to bother the
ambulance service; from the sound of the symphony down the road, they’ll be up to their eyes. I shall drive. Eileen, if you and Keith would walk home when he gets steady, we’d be
grateful. Mel can come with us. It’s plain now that these two will not be separated.’

Throughout this speech, Tom’s eyes stared directly into Mel’s, and she gazed back at him without fear or embarrassment. He was a doctor, a clever man, a member of polite society. Yet
she scarcely blinked, because that unswerving arrogance granted to the young and gifted was alive and well in her soul. He was a man; he was an adult. Yet she was his superior, though she
didn’t know why or how. Perhaps she would learn in the future; perhaps she would come to realize that the females of the species were born old, while males sometimes remained forever
children. Tom Bingley was vulnerable, and he wore his heart on his sleeve. Mel kept hers hidden . . .

‘What do you mean?’ Gill cast an eye over the two invaders. They seemed very worked up and out of sorts, and that would be Jay the Joker’s fault. A great
charmer of women, he could persuade the fairer sex to believe just about anything. She would put their minds at rest immediately. ‘He’s at work. He isn’t in hospital, he’s
fixing a sink somewhere and putting shelves up in a pantry. Four Oaks, I think. Anyway, Maisie wants changing and she needs a feed, so I’ve no time for his larking about. He needs to grow
up.’

Elsie looked at Jean; Jean looked at Elsie. They would probably have got more sense out of the baby had she been capable of speech. ‘Gill?’ Elsie walked up to the young mother.
‘Look at me. He fell in the trough at Four Oaks and came out soaked to the skin in ice-cold water. He’s got hypothermia, and that’s the top and bottom of it.’

Gill shook her head. ‘No. He gets hypo-something or other, but it’s not thermia. It’s to do with sugar if he doesn’t eat right.’

‘Well, he’s got that on top of the other.’

Gill expressed the opinion that Phil Watson was a good minder, and he wouldn’t allow anything like that to happen to her husband. ‘He’s a grand lad, is that. More sense in his
little finger than Jay has in his head. He wouldn’t let anything go wrong, because it’s his job to make sure Jay’s in one piece.’

‘Phil’s in Liverpool,’ Elsie said. ‘Visiting his mam. He, Nellie and Rob set off this morning. Seems they haven’t got back yet.’

Gill Collins blinked, picked up her child and changed the nappy. She wondered what Elsie and Gill were talking about. He was out. He went out every day and came back every day. No matter what,
he always came back and made a thorough nuisance of himself. The clock ticked and hiccuped. It was old and slightly unpredictable. Jay was young and very unpredictable, and this clock had been his
dad’s. ‘He was eccentric,’ she said to no one in particular.

‘Eh?’ Elsie placed a hand on Gill’s arm. ‘He’s still eccentric,’ she said.

Gill shook her head. ‘No. He’s dead.’

‘Who’s dead? Heck, yon lad’s not dead, love.’ Jean smiled reassuringly. ‘He’s in hospital with hypothermia and trouble with his sugar too, I shouldn’t
wonder.’

Gill tutted. ‘He’s in Tonge Cemetery with a nice headstone. Italian marble, it is.’

Jean, thoroughly confused, did what all Lancashire women do when their environment deteriorates – she put the kettle on. When she thought about Fighter Pilot Night, she knew how silly and
confusing men were capable of becoming. And when Jay was included in the recipe, there was no chance of anybody’s remaining on an even keel.

Gill continued. ‘After his wife buggered off, he lived over the brush with a woman from Fallowfield. He combed his hair across the big bald spot on his head, so he grew it dead long on one
side. Every time the bloody wind blew, he looked like he should have had a frock on, because his hair streamed behind him – it was very, very silly. The clock’s nearly as
daft.’

Jean and Elsie busied themselves with cups, saucers, milk and teapot. There seemed to have been a marked deterioration in the mental health of their hostess. According to Gill, Jay had been
fixing a sink, but now he was dead and buried. Elsie suddenly stopped what she was doing. She stared ahead at nothing in particular before addressing their neglectful host once more.
‘Gill?’

‘What?’

‘Who are you talking about?’

‘Jay’s dad, of course. He gave us that clock, and it’s nearly as doolally as he was. He’s been dead a while now. No loss. Her from Fallowfield buggered off with the
window cleaner, and that was that. We got the clock and that rocking chair, end of story.’

Elsie was growing tired. She lowered herself into a chair and took a long, hard look at Gill. The girl wasn’t mad; she was simply overloaded. The chattering was a distraction; she probably
talked to the child and to herself most of the time. Yes, it was all getting Gill down. One baby might not seem much, but for a woman who had expected to be barren, it was clearly one too many.
Gill’s dedication to Maisie, all the watchfulness, all the feeding and holding and worrying, came from guilt.
I was the same
, Elsie said silently.
My kiddies were more burden than
joy. She wanted Maisie till Maisie became a reality.
But what could be done to help?

Jean Dyson drank her tea before excusing herself. She had daughters and hungry Land Girls to feed. Her husband was at the infirmary with Jay, and the chances of his finding transport home today
were remote, so she would have to do his early morning jobs as well as her own. But, as she reminded herself inwardly, Willows folk stood by Willows folk, and Neil was doing what needed to be done,
as must she.

Elsie stayed where she was. If she waited until Nellie came back, they could unite and tackle this lot together. But it was Jean who returned unexpectedly, slightly out of breath and with a
message. She had met Miss Pickavance, and Nellie was not expected back tonight because Liverpool was being bombed again, a close friend of Mel’s had been hurt, and Miss P’s house in the
city no longer existed. ‘She was going on about how she should have saved more photographs and her mother’s knitting. So as if we haven’t got enough with this one here,
there’s another fretting in the big house. I swear, Elsie, the world is going to the dogs. And I’ve a meal to cook.’ She left the scene and ran home.

Elsie realized that without Nellie she was just half of something useful. Nellie would have found a way of making Gill Collins listen, whereas Elsie Openshaw didn’t know how to kick off.
All those years of banishment were still telling on her; although she was now treated much the same as anyone else, her communication skills remained slightly corroded, despite the fact that Nellie
had dragged her back into the realms of humanity. But Nellie wasn’t here. God alone knew when Nellie would be here.

‘Gill?’

‘What?’

‘We’re not joking, you know. Jay is back in hospital.’

The younger woman glanced at the clock. ‘He’ll be home in a minute. Somebody would have told me if he’d been in the hospital.’

Elsie hung on to her temper. ‘We did tell you. Jean told you and I told you. You don’t listen, love. You don’t hear what people are saying to you.’

‘It’s just a joke,’ Gill insisted. ‘Like being a fighter pilot was a joke. He’s always pulling my leg. One of these days, he’ll pull it so hard that the foot
on the end of it will kick the teeth out of his stupid gob.’

It was hopeless. It was also time for tea, especially for a woman who was breastfeeding. Elsie set to and made poached eggs on toast. While the two women were eating, Elsie noticed Gill’s
eyes wandering from time to time to glance at the clock. ‘It gains, then it loses. That clock’s as much use as a rubber knife, but will he buy a new one? No. There’s an alarm
clock upstairs, and I have to go all the way up there to make sure of the time.’

Elsie knew that the young woman was waiting for her husband. He got on her nerves, but he was part of the scenery, and he seemed to have disappeared.

Gill stared at Mr Collins Senior’s clock again. If the old fool’s son was pretending to be in hospital . . . if he was pretending to be in hospital, he would end up in hospital,
because his insulin was here in the pantry. ‘Elsie?’

‘What, love?’

‘It’s not a joke, is it?’

Elsie shook her head. ‘Nay, I wouldn’t have shut King George’s post office for a joke. And Neil Dyson wouldn’t have abandoned Home Farm for a joke. He’s stuck down
yon at the Royal Infirmary, and he’ll likely not get back till tomorrow. That means Jean and the Land Girls have all to do in the morning and no man to help.’

‘Oh.’

‘You can’t get to the infirmary now, Gill. But you can take the torch and go up to Miss P’s house, ask to use the phone, and the hospital will tell you how he’s going
on.’

Gill stood up and blinked a few times. ‘What about Maisie?’

‘I’ll mind her.’

‘Oh.’ The young mother still didn’t move. ‘You were no good with your own kids, were you?’

Again, Elsie sat on her old self. ‘I’ve changed, Gill. We all have to change, you included. She’ll be all right with me. I promise.’

Thus it came about that Gill Collins left her baby for the first time. More significantly, after expressing milk so that Elsie could feed her, Gill allowed Maisie to be nourished by another
while she was driven to the hospital by an acquaintance of Miss Pickavance. She needed to see the idiot she had married. He was a pest; he was also her husband and Maisie’s dad.

Tom and Marie had done a good job on their son. The hospital doctor looked Peter over, declared him to be disgustingly healthy and, after handing over medicine and some
dressings for the wounds, invited him to leave the premises after resting for a further hour. Throughout his brief time in Outpatients, Peter communicated with his mother and with Mel, but not with
his father. Tom, acutely aware that his son was deliberately ignoring him, made his way to the gents. When he came out, the girl was waiting for him in the corridor. ‘Ah,’ he blustered.
‘So this is where you pick up your men friends.’

Mel folded her arms, lolled against a wall and simply stared at him.

‘What do you want?’ he asked.

‘A bit of honesty would do, doc. Peter knows about you and my mother.’

He swallowed.

‘Beautiful, isn’t she? Of course, she married someone else.’

‘And your point is?’

Mel subdued her fears. ‘We’re young. But you’re not, and maturity doesn’t bring sense with it, or you wouldn’t have been running after my mother. So that’s
you explained, eh? We’re too young? What was your excuse? Retarded? Daft? Special and with rules of your own?’ Her heart was doing a fair imitation of a jungle drum. She should not talk
like this to an adult. As daughter of Eileen and a pupil of Merchant Taylors’, she had been educated in respect. But, as a product of Merchants, she had an advanced sense of language and a
large vocabulary.

He tried to conceal a smile. Always, always, Eileen Watson, now Greenhalgh, would own a huge piece of his heart, and here she came again. The tilt of the head, determined chin, pert little nose,
mouth good enough to eat— He cleared his throat. Like her mother, she could wrap any man round her little finger. ‘Look at it another way, Mel. Love’s an illness. Especially at
the beginning when hormones collide and confusion reigns. Throughout life, we meet people we desire. Fourteen’s a bit young to be considering permanence.’ He could still taste the
kisses he had stolen from Eileen . . .