‘And you’ll have Maggie pretty soon,’ Sadie reminded her. ‘But you’re going to be a lady of leisure for some time to come. Well, if you’re bored, you can always hop on the tram and come to visit me. I wish you would, because I’m certainly going to miss you. Perhaps you’ll get lonely when Maggie’s in school,’ she finished hopefully.
‘I’ll have Merry, don’t forget,’ Patty reminded her friend. ‘She’s grand company even if she is only three. I’ve often wished I could spend more time with her and Maggie.’
Sadie was beginning to reply when the doors at the end of the ward shot open and a large, red-faced woman in a scruffy white apron appeared, pushing an enormous trolley. ‘I’ve brung your suppers, lassies,’ she shouted. ‘It’s mince and mashed spuds wi’ a nice spoonful of swede on the side and a good old chunk of jam roly for afters. Is anyone bedbound or can you all come and get your plates filled up here?’
‘I think mince and mash is the meal they do best,’ Patty said presently, scraping her plate clean. ‘It’s a pity the jam roly-poly is always cold by the time we finish our first course, but I suppose they can’t perform miracles. What’s more, I’d dearly like a cup of tea to follow straight away instead of having to wait twenty minutes for it.’
‘Yes, and I could drink a gallon of tea instead of just a cup,’ Sadie agreed as the two girls waded their way through the rather solid jam roly-poly. It was not easy for Sadie to eat anything, lying on her back as she was, but she had perfected the technique of leaning up on one elbow, just as Patty had grown accustomed to eating everything with either a spoon or a fork and no other implement. ‘Never mind, me old feller’s visiting this evening, and my sister Maisie, because my Auntie Flo’s baby-sitting.’
When both roly-poly and tea were finished, the two girls settled down, Sadie to continue doggedly knitting a jumper for her youngest son whilst Patty performed the gentle exercises which the staff had taught her, moving her fingers as though playing an invisible piano and then balling her hand into a fist and stretching her fingers out as far as she could. She was engaged in this exercise when the ward doors swung open once more and a familiar figure came through them. It was Toby Rudd, drenched to the skin and looking, for a change, thoroughly bad-tempered. ‘I fell gettin’ off the bleedin’ tram,’ he announced crossly. He looked down at himself with distaste. ‘I put on me best clothes an’ that, to make a good impression, ’cos Sister telled me you were goin’ home tomorrow, and now look at me.’ At this point, his sense of humour got the better of him and he began to laugh. ‘Here was me, wantin’ to show you what a respectable feller I am an’ I end up lookin’ like one of the Chaps in ragged old kecks.’
Patty laughed too and took his hand, giving it a reassuring squeeze. ‘I don’t care what you look like,’ she said bracingly, ‘it’s what you
are
that counts and you’re my oldest friend, whether you’re dry as dust or wet as water. But fancy you coming out on such a night! Even in here we can hear the rain lashing against the window panes and the wind screaming down the sides of the building. I bet it was a sickly sort of voyage on the ferry, wasn’t it?’
‘Oh, it weren’t so bad,’ Toby said airily. He was clearly recovering his aplomb, Patty thought. He began to struggle out of his overcoat, saying as he did so: ‘D’you mind if I hang this over the end of the bed? Only it’s so wet … oh, damn and blast it!’ A bunch of what looked like violets had fallen to the floor and scattered in the pool of water that had formed around Toby’s feet.
Patty could not help herself; she began to laugh as Toby threw his coat on to the floor and started to gather up the violets, muttering curses as he did so. ‘Are they for me?’ she asked gaily. She picked up the coat and his discarded trilby whilst he was still collecting the flowers, and headed for the ward kitchen. ‘I’ll hang this up for you and then fetch a vase for them. Poor Toby, what a catalogue of disasters!’
When she came back, order had been restored. Toby was sitting in the visitor’s chair, holding the now neatly bunched violets and teasing Sadie for having grown too lazy even to swing out of bed and help him to pick up a few flowers, but as soon as Patty returned his attention switched back to her. He pushed the violets, now more than a little crushed, into the vase she offered him, and stood them on her bedside locker. Then he got to his feet and took her good hand in his. ‘Come into the kitchen with me for a minute,’ he cajoled. ‘I told Sister I wanted to be private with you and she said it would be all right, just for a few minutes. After all, today’s your last day on the ward so I’ve got to make the most of it.’
Patty hung back, suddenly all too horribly aware of what he was about to ask her. She felt it was too soon – much too soon. He still hadn’t met Merry, scarcely knew Maggie, had only known Patty herself out of her natural environment. Oh, he had spent Christmas Day with her and they had both enjoyed themselves very much, but that was not an ordinary day. He could not possibly realise how all-consuming her work was, nor how having Merry complicated things. Slowly, she followed him obediently into the kitchen and sat down on a table.
She had half expected Toby to stammer and stutter, but she had underestimated him. He came straight out with the question which, she supposed, was uppermost in both their minds.
‘Patty, I guess you know how I feel about you. We were old friends from way back but now we’ve met up again and got to know one another properly, I hope we’ll be more than friends. I want to be with you always and I don’t want to waste any more time. I want to start our new life together at once. If you want a smart white wedding, I dare say it’ll take a bit longer, but if you’re content with a register office and a special licence, we can tie the knot in a week to ten days. I know you’ve a nice home and you’re fond of it, but it’s only rented, ain’t it? The green caravan’s my own property and there’s plenty of room for three.’
‘Three?’ Patty said. ‘Why three?’
Toby looked puzzled. ‘Well, seeing as how Maggie’s your daughter, I thought… I thought you’d want her to come along,’ he said rather lamely. ‘Does she have other plans? She seems rather young to go off on her own, don’t you think?’
Patty laughed. ‘Maggie isn’t my daughter,’ she said. ‘She’s a dear good girl and a great help, but in fact I pay her a small wage and her keep so that when I’m working she can look after Merry for me.’
‘Merry?’ Toby said blankly. ‘But I thought she were Mrs Knight’s granddaughter? I thought she were Darky’s get? I remember you telling me Darky’s wife died in childbirth, and then Mrs Knight took the kid to Scotland …’ He hesitated, the bewildered look deepening. ‘What else were I to think?’
Patty was about to reply when she was struck by a sudden recollection. As clearly as though it were happening now, she could hear her own voice on that Christmas morning, carefully explaining to Toby things which she had told no one else in the world. She had explained how she had attended Mrs Mullins’s lying-in and how the poor woman had given birth to twins, one dead, one alive, before dying tragically herself. She had gone into details then, explaining how she had taken the baby in, pretending that it was hers, because she could not bear to see the tiny scrap put in an orphan asylum to suffer as she herself had suffered all those years ago. She had told him about Selina, to explain why she had become a nurse; in fact she had bared her soul to him, confiding things that she had kept locked inside her heart all her life.
And now, looking searchingly at him, she really saw him for the very first time. Toby was handsome, charming and excellent company, but he skimmed the shallow waters of life, she concluded, and never descended to the depths. When she had been pouring her heart out in the kitchen of No. 24, he had not even bothered to listen, because she had been talking about herself and her worries and responsibilities, and not about Toby Rudd. She had no doubt that if she told him about Merry this minute, repeating everything she had said in the kitchen almost a month ago, he would listen with attention because now, he believed, it concerned him. With another flash of intuition, she realised that Maggie was an asset, a growing girl who would be useful on the fair, might take to it and look forward to a career amongst the fair folk. She did him the credit to believe that he would accept Merry, maybe even enjoy the baby’s company, for he was not ungenerous, merely self-centred in a way she had never come across before.
‘Patty?’ His voice was anxious now. ‘What does it matter, anyhow? It’s you an’ me that matter. Damn it, queen, I’m askin’ you to be me wife. I’m not askin’ Maggie, nor this Merry, I’m askin’ you, Patty Peel.’
Patty took a deep breath, meaning to be kind and gentle and explain that she needed more time to get to know Toby better, and suddenly realised that she knew him very well indeed, that she did not need more time, that her mind was made up. ‘No,’ she said baldly. ‘No, I won’t marry you.’
It did not end there, of course. Returning to the ward after one of the most miserable and exhausting half-hours she had ever lived through, Patty told herself that she had earned all the disappointed, angry and ultimately spiteful comments which Toby had delivered. She had not intentionally led him to believe that she would become his wife but she had certainly never attempted to push him back and had always fallen in eagerly with his plans. The trouble was, she told herself now, going over to her bed and loosening her hair from its bun, that she was more than half in love with the fair and the life which Toby led, and this had blinded her to faults in his character which she would otherwise have spotted at once.
Perhaps it was best to know a man’s bad side first, to be thoroughly disillusioned in fact, and then gradually to begin to see the good things about him, she decided as she brushed out the long blonde curls. She remembered how she and Darky had disliked one another, how he had snarled and shouted at her, or completely ignored her. At the time, she had almost hated him, but even her strong dislike had not blinded her to his many good qualities. Perhaps if she had not seen Toby through the rose-coloured spectacles she had worn as a child, she might have been less eager for his company, less willing to accept the faults which she now saw so clearly. After all, he had started letting her down years ago, when he had failed to turn up at their first rendezvous. It was not until he met her by chance in New Brighton that he had attempted to resuscitate their old friendship. Patty now acknowledged, sadly, that it had been need of someone to help him with the shooting gallery, rather than a deep affection for an old friend, which had prompted Toby to begin courting her. And because of her own attitude he had been far too sure of her, so sure that he had actually purchased a small sapphire and diamond ring to celebrate their engagement.
Patty sighed and began to roll her hair up once more, ready for when the visitors arrived. She had felt most dreadfully guilty over the engagement ring, but one of Toby’s less pleasant remarks led her to wonder now whether he had purchased it for sixpence from Woolworths. When she had offered to give him back the gold clover-leaf brooch, he had told her that she might as well keep it. ‘I gorra job lot as prizes for the shooting gallery, an’ I’ve given ’em away to any girl who’s been willing, from Land’s End to John o’ Groats,’ he had said nastily. ‘So you can have it as a keepsake or chuck it into the bleedin’ Mersey; please yourself.’
The remark had been meant to wound but, unfortunately, Patty had laughed and this had led Toby to make other, even less pleasant comments. He told her she was a tease, had deliberately led him on, had lied about her child, kidding him that Maggie was hers and not mentioning the other brat. ‘I suppose you an’ that black-browed bugger what lives next door made the kid between you,’ he had flung at her. ‘Well Toby Rudd don’t need to accept another man’s leavings, even though that hair of yours would have been worth a deal o’ money to me shooting gallery, so I ought to be grateful that you’ve let me down.’
Patty had bitten her lip and had tried to tell herself that the things Toby was saying came from disappointment and not from the heart, but in the end her temper had got the better of her. ‘Let
you
down?’ she had screamed at him, completely forgetting to keep her voice down. ‘You’re saying
I
let
you
down? Why, Toby Rudd, you let me down once a year because
I
turned up on Lime Street station for six bleedin’ years, hoping – and expecting – that you would come. I told myself you were probably miles away, couldn’t make it, didn’t understand that you could have left a message with the station master, but now I know better. And talking of messages, I never told you that I got yours on the day I had my accident … some tomfoolery about running your shooting gallery. As if I’d do any such thing on the day the Knights and Merry came home! It just shows that you never knew me at all. In fact, we never really knew one another and the only reason you want to marry me is to get free housekeeping and someone to help with the shooting gallery, so let’s stop kidding ourselves. Love doesn’t enter into it. What you were proposing was a business arrangement and that’s what I’m rejecting, so why all the hysterics?’
For a moment, she had thought he was going to laugh and, somehow, that would have made everything all right. But instead, he had snatched his coat and hat from the hook on the back of the door, crammed his trilby down over his ears and marched out of the kitchen. She had followed him, reluctant to part on such very bad terms, but he had been unable to resist a parting shot. ‘Well, this is goodbye, Nurse Peel,’ he had shouted over his shoulder, setting off along the corridor. ‘At least when you’re an old maid tottering on the brink of the grave, you’ll be able to tell folk that you had one proposal from a decent, hardworking chap – and turned it down like the silly bitch you are.’