Prudence awarded the boy a tight smile. ‘No.’ Oh, she might well go, but not yet, not for a while. That all depended on the man’s level of recovery . . .
‘Why?’ He leaned against the window sill. ‘He’s your husband, isn’t he?’
‘Yes.’
‘And he’s been hurt and he’s got a bad heart.’ As ever. Red felt not the slightest twinge of conscience. In fact, the kick he had delivered to Worthington’s groin had been deliberately wiped from his thoughts. Of course, should the memory ever become useful, then details of that fateful day would rekindle themselves in glowing colour.
‘That is correct. Now, will you go outside while I make Sally comfortable? Or must I get Mrs Crumpsall to deal with you? That poor lady needs a rest.’
Arthur ‘Red’ Trubshaw, for all his tenacity, was not in the market for another load of earache from Sally’s gran. Mrs Worthington seemed to know what she was doing, he thought grudgingly. Sally had been too ill to be taken to the hospital, had deteriorated considerably while being carried from the woods and into Rose Cottage. So Red, Ivy and Rosie had watched over the child during something called a crisis. And now, this important woman had turned up to tell everybody what to do. Still, she and Mrs Miles would return to their hotel soon. ‘What’s a crisis?’ Red asked Andrew Worthington’s wife.
She wiped Sally’s face with a flannel. ‘In pneumonia, it’s the height of fever. Sometimes, people die during a crisis. But Sally’s fever broke and she’s still with us.’
‘So are you,’ the boy muttered softly. ‘Why did you come?’
The woman shrugged. ‘Because I was needed.’
‘What about Mr Worthington?’
Prudence shook a finger at this frightful but lovable boy. ‘It’s all far too complicated for a child of your tender years.’
Nothing was too complicated for Red. He seemed to have been born old and knowing, had been dragged up in a crowded household where feelings ran amok, where the behaviour patterns of maladjusted adults were on display for all to see. Still, at least Mr and Mrs Trubshaw still communicated, even if half of their conversations were accompanied by flying fists, plates and swearwords. ‘Stopped talking to him, haven’t you?’ he asked, wisdom etched prematurely into every plane of his homely face. ‘You don’t care about him no more.’ He sniffed. ‘Me mam says he’s horrible, and Sally’s nan calls him a monster.’
Prudence studied this dreadful creature. The grey socks had slid into wrinkles above battered clogs, his hair stood on end like a forest of flame, while all points in between were untidy, as if he had thrown himself into the clothing from a great distance or while blindfolded. ‘You need to tidy yourself,’ she said.
Red glanced at Sally. ‘I will when she wakes up.’
‘She may not wake until tomorrow.’
He shrugged. ‘Right, I’ll get meself straight tomorrow, then.’ Red was no coward. He was cock of the school, had survived Basher Bates’s cane, Ivy Crumpsall’s earachings, his dad’s iron-bottomed clogs. But something in this woman’s face suddenly made him squirm. She was quiet, but very, very strong – as if she had lived through much worse things than the business ends of Basher’s cane and Mrs Blunt’s posser. Almost unawares, he tucked the shirt-tail into his trousers, rubbed the toe of a clog against a rolled-down sock.
Prudence found herself grinning. The lad had spirit enough for two men with plenty to spare, she thought. ‘Arthur, she is—’
‘Red,’ he told her as firmly as possible. It was difficult to be firm with someone so . . . so nice, so reasonable.
‘Red, then. Sally is in a very deep sleep. Sleep is the cure now. Please go outside quietly. Mrs Crumpsall and Mrs Blunt are exhausted. You might, perhaps, take charge of Mr Blunt for a while, take him for a walk or—’
‘He’s nobbut tenpence in the bob. What if he starts looking for pigeons again? Or pitchforks?’
‘Take him out, Red.’
He smiled. ‘If he had a collar and lead, I might.’
‘Red!’
‘I’m going, I’m going,’ he cried.
‘Don’t go,’ said a tiny voice.
Woman and boy turned in perfect harmony, strode to the bed. ‘You’re awake,’ pronounced Red.
‘Yes.’ She was so, so tired. She wanted to look at the lady and at Red, but her eyelids wouldn’t stay up, not without props. ‘I’ve seen me dad,’ she said softly.
‘He weren’t your dad,’ advised the boy. ‘He were just a troublemaker – this here woman’s his wife – and I reckon he’s had no visitors at the hospital. Even Mrs Worthington can’t be bothered going to see him. He’s nobody’s dad, Sal.’
With a great effort of will, Sally forced her laden eyelids to raise themselves. ‘Not him,’ she whispered. ‘Me dad. He spoke to me. Told me to come back to Granny Ivy.’
Prudence Worthington felt the girl’s forehead, found it to be cool. ‘You saw Mr Crumpsall?’ she asked, her tone normal, as if she were asking the time of the next tram.
Red thought all this was bloody daft, though he kept the sentiment and expletive away from his tongue.
‘He were covered in coal dust,’ Sally said quietly. ‘He’s got a new job.’
‘Really?’ Prudence patted the sick child’s hand. ‘What does he do, Sally?’
‘Fetches the miners up. After explosions and collapses. Fetches them up to heaven. Says he doesn’t mind, like.’ Sally yawned. ‘Says he’s me proper dad no matter what. Says Mr Worthington’s nowt a pound. He’s not ready to die yet, Mr Worthington. Years, he’s got. Years and years. Dad told me to watch out . . . Not frightened no more. Not frightened . . .’ She closed her eyes and slept.
Prudence shuddered. It was all nonsense, of course. The child was ill, had suffered appallingly high temperatures, had fought for every breath. Sick people were prone to fancies, she told herself firmly. Mother had ‘spoken’ to Father many times before going off to join him. For a split second, Prudence was standing at her own mother’s bedside, was listening while her female parent went into details about the hereafter. ‘Your father is not singing,’ Mrs Spencer had said. ‘God is good, but even He could not tolerate George’s total tone-deafness.’ In a perfect heaven, would not Father’s voice have been mended? And in a perfect world, would not Andrew Worthington perish before he got the opportunity to inflict more damage on innocents?
Red thought it was time to speak up. ‘Mrs Worthington, I—’
‘Spencer,’ she said automatically. She dragged herself back to the here and now. ‘Go and tell Ivy that her granddaughter is improving. Then take Mr Blunt for a walk.’
‘Aye aye, sir. I mean madam.’
Prudence fixed the wayward lad with a glare that was not quite severe. ‘How do your parents cope?’ she asked.
‘They don’t,’ he replied in a low voice. ‘They just ignore us.’ He left the room and went in search of Ollie.
Prudence Spencer, recently Spencer-Worthington, patted her hair absently. ‘I shall take that boy in hand,’ she murmured before tending her patient. ‘It’s time somebody did.’
Everything was pale green or white. At first, he hadn’t noticed much, but the place was beginning to get on his nerves. Hospitals. He’d never liked them much, hadn’t enjoyed calling in on the sick. Not that he’d been a regular visitor . . . He remembered the last time he had entered a torture chamber – Bert Simpson had been in one of these high and far from comfortable beds. A stomach job, that had been. How had Simpson fared? Worthington wondered idly. Had it hurt like this? Had it hurt like hell?
‘Time for your medicine, Mr Worthington.’
He rolled his eyes, allowed them to rest on the uncomely creature that stood by his bed. ‘Bugger off,’ he mumbled.
‘I see. We’re naughty today, are we?’
The ugly bitch always spoke in the plural, as if attempting to copy the late and great Victoria, that one and only woman who had been as good as any man. ‘I’ll not take it.’
The sister’s apron crackled with starch as she lowered her bulk into the bedside chair. ‘Then what colour shall we use to line our coffin?’ she asked.
‘You can please your bloody self about that,’ he replied. Still tired, he had not the energy to remind her that she would not find a place on any man’s list of chosen bedfellows – even in death.
‘You’re a lucky person,’ she reminded him for the umpteenth time.
Lucky? Of course he was lucky. After all, few people of his acquaintance had suffered heart disease and both prongs of a pitchfork thrust between their ribs. He bared his teeth at her, made sure that she would not interpret this gesture as a smile.
‘No need for faces,’ she went on, her voice monotonous. ‘We are extremely fortunate, believe me. That poor man who accidentally stabbed you did a great service, Mr Worthington. So now, we must take our medicine like—’
‘A service?’ he managed.
She nodded vigorously, though not one carefully ironed hair changed position, and the rigid cap remained in situ on top of the grey coiffure. ‘It gave our surgeon the opportunity to do some minor repairs. Had you not required an operation to clean the stab wounds, your life might have been very short. As things are, your mended heart will carry on beating for some years. With the medicine, of course. If we do not take the medicine, then we are ruining the work of our wonderful surgeon.’
Surgeon should have a capital S, decided the man in the bed. When she spoke of the mechanic whose tools were used on humanity, she bowed her head as if she were in church. He opened his mouth, accepted the spoonful of vile liquid.
‘We’ll get used to it,’ she said.
‘You might,’ he grumbled. ‘It tastes like cat doings.’
She patted his hand. ‘Now, how can we be sure of that?’
Worthington fixed his eyes on her. ‘We can be sure because four fifths of taste is really smell. Did we not learn that in order to become a nurse?’
The sister removed her hand, placed the spoon on a locker, closed the bottle. ‘This afternoon, you will sit in a chair. It is time for you to begin healing, Mr Worthington. After all, we shall want to return to our families.’ There was a barbed edge to the words, as she, like everyone else with functioning eyes, had read about Worthington’s many misdeeds. ‘And to our businesses,’ she added belatedly.
She knew. In that moment, Worthington realized that the whole affair had gone public. ‘Newspapers?’ he asked. ‘Has there been any . . . publicity?’ He should never have handed over that bloody document! And whoever had taken it should have waited before sending it on to some flaming newspaper. ‘I wasn’t in my right mind when I gave the letter to somebody’s visitor.’ He had expected death, not recovery. And before death, he had made sure that the whole country would know about Sally Crumpsail’s real father. Now, he had to live with all that.
The nurse jerked her head just once. ‘Well, your letter started the publicity. Without that, you would have been just another statistic. People who work the land are killed and maimed in accidents every day.’ She sniffed. ‘It’s been on the wireless, too, I believe. Home Service.’
It would hardly have provided material for the Light Programme, he thought. So. It was out in the open now. Would the authorities search him out; would they try to enforce the agreement he had signed at what amounted to knife-point? Would they lay a dozen or more paternity orders at his feet? He had some money, enough to provide for himself. How on earth could he be expected to maintain all his so-called offspring?
She read his mind. ‘They’ll not bother you while you’re in here. But afterwards . . .’ She raised both shoulders.
Afterwards, he would make himself scarce. ‘Thank you,’ he snapped.
‘You’re welcome.’ The large woman rose and walked into her office. After a pause of about ten seconds, she lifted the telephone receiver and asked for a number. ‘Mrs Spencer-Worthington?’
‘Yes,’ replied the distant voice.
‘You asked me to keep you informed of your . . . of Mr Worthington’s progress. He will live. In fact, he is probably in better health than he was before the accident. I think he’ll be out of hospital in about three weeks.’
‘Oh. Thank you so much for keeping me informed.’
‘Hello? Are you still there, Mrs Spencer-Worthington? Hello?’ Sister Gladys Merton rattled the telephone, realized eventually that Worthington’s wife had cut herself off. And for that, decided the nurse, the woman could not be blamed.
‘Joseph, you are like a man on fire. Sit, or shall I bring a bucket of water to put out the flames?’ Ruth forced her husband into a chair, kept her hands on his shoulders, tutted quietly. ‘You will be ill. There is no man on earth who can be here and there at the same time. You are dealing with this, that, these and those all at once. Soon, you will meet your own shadow as you walk up and down Paradise.’
‘I hope my shadow has a good brain,’ replied Joseph. ‘He can help me to study these plans.’ He gestured towards the table where blueprints lay in place of a cloth. ‘While I sit here doing nothing, the architect is trying to squeeze a quart into a pint pot. Should we have four baths or six? Will the medical room be on the ground floor, what size must the apprentices’ classroom be, when will Tom come home?’
‘This is too much for you,’ sighed Ruth.
Joseph shook his head, wagged a finger under his wife’s nose. ‘No, I am truly alive. This project is awesome and brilliant. I do not understand why no-one thought of it before. So simple, it is.’
Ruth walked to the other side of the table, poured tea into cups on the trolley. ‘Soon, I shall get my table back,’ she pretended to grumble. Joseph was carrying so much responsiblity. Tom and Maureen were away, as were Ivy, Sally and the Blunts. Fotheringay had flitted up and down the country a few times, had brought people from London stores and factories. Simple? Here they sat, two displaced Austrian Jews who used to deal in antiquities, and they were situated at the helm of a ship that intended to dock across the road from Harrods. She swallowed a sip of tea, toyed with a small piece of strudel. ‘Harrods,’ she whispered reverently. ‘So near to Harrods.’ It was a daunting prospect. The new company intended to treat and spin cotton, to weave it, send some for dyeing, then turn it into finished products intended for sale in many major cities, including London.
Joseph laughed. ‘This is a free country, Ruth. If a man can pay his way, he can set up shop where he will. Tom has vision. This enterprise reeks already of success. We buy the raw and sell the completely finished. Except for dyeing, we keep the business in the family from start to retail. Many middle men will be cut out, so our prices will be low.’