She had never been terrific in bed, but Jeff had thought all woman of that social standing were probably the same, and sometimes she could be persuaded. When Paul was born, she was ecstatic. She engaged a nurse to care for and feed the child, but in her way she more than loved him; she worshipped and adored him.
Jeff could have felt jealous of the child, in fact he realised now that he
had
been jealous of him, for Emma had no love or thought for her husband after that. At any rate, Jeff had to redouble his efforts in the still shaky firm now that he had a son to provide for too, and as he was leaving the house before dawn and was never home before ten each evening, he seldom saw Paul for the first few years of his life and when he did see him, he was only too grateful that he hadn’t to do that much with him.
Matthew had been born when Paul was four and Jeff saw that the baby only had the scrapings of affection from Emma, which made the child surly, whining and demanding, and so less likeable. When Jeff did try to get to know both boys in the rare free time he had, Emma made it quite plain their rearing was up to her, together with her parents and the servants she had engaged to help her. Jeff’s job as a father, it appeared, was in the implanting of the seed and providing the money for them all to live comfortably.
Not a full year after Matthew’s birth, Jeff came home one day to find that Emma had arranged for their double bed to be disposed of and single beds installed instead. Emma said that a double bed could cause all sorts of unpleasantness starting and single beds were better altogether, for they had two sons now and didn’t have to deal with all that messy business ever again.
Even then, Jeff settled for a sexless and loveless marriage and said nothing. Now he wondered why he had. He was not a weak man generally, and was known as a hard knock in business—a man to be reckoned with, not one to stand any sort of nonsense. Yet he had always given in to Emma. This meant he had backed away from fatherhood. His life centred around the factory and his club. He seldom saw his sons and certainly didn’t know the remotest thing about them.
Now he realised what a disservice he had done the growing boys in taking this, the coward’s way out. He hadn’t even known about Paul’s love of medicine, his dreams of being a doctor. He had assumed as the eldest son Paul would inherit and run the engineering works, and it had been a shock to find out the boy had other
plans. Jeff had had to do an about turn in his dreams, and at first he’d been disappointed and surprised.
Emma had a great deal of influence with Paul and had always been able to turn him to her way of thinking, but this time she had come up against a brick wall. Paul told her he wanted to be a doctor, he had always wanted to be a doctor and wouldn’t be happy doing anything else. In desperation, she had drafted in Jeff to ‘talk sense into the lad’. However, when Jeff had spoken to Paul, he had been impressed by the boy’s commitment and supported him, once he realised he was serious and had nurtured this idea for years. And now he had done it: he was Dr Connolly, soon to be a married man.
Suddenly Jeff decided to go to take a look at the house Paul seemed so proud of. He got to his feet cautiously, trying to ignore the pounding in his head and queasy stomach. He bitterly regretted he hadn’t made this stand sooner.
He knew that Paul would be at home that day because he had said he had the next day off duty, and Jeff knew where the house was for Paul had told his parents the first time he had roared up on the motorcycle he had acquired.
‘Come and see the house,’ he’d urged. ‘See what you think.’
Emma’s nose had lifted in the air. ‘If you think for one moment that your father and I are going visiting some slum that you have the ridiculous notion of living in, then you can think again,’ she’d said.
Emma had nearly always answered for Jeff too, and that day it had irritated him, but before he had had chance to give voice to this, Paul had retorted angrily, ‘It’s no
slum. If you were to come and see for yourself…’
‘It is all a matter of degree,’ Emma said, waving her hand dismissively. ‘And why,’ she demanded glancing out of the window, ‘did you buy that ridiculous machine that your brother is now examining with such interest?’
‘I’ve already told you this,’ Paul said, deciding to leave the matter of the house to one side. ‘I needed wheels. I work such awkward hours I couldn’t use public transport.’
‘I see that,’ Emma said. ‘But why didn’t you buy a car?’
‘Because I can’t afford one.’
‘Don’t be silly, Paul. Your father would have bought you a car.’
‘Then it would have been Dad’s car, not mine. And probably bought with conditions.’
‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘Oh, I think you do.’
‘Look, Paul,’ Emma had said. ‘That motorbike is totally unsuitable. For one thing it is a death trap, and for another it is not the mode of transport for this type of area. I mean, what would the neighbours think?’
‘Bugger the neighbours! Who cares what they think?’
‘I do. I care a great deal.’
‘So, I can’t come and see you if I come on the bike, is that what you are saying?’ Paul had asked with a voice like steel.
Jeff had held his breath, knowing that if Emma was to say that was what she meant, Paul would leave and God alone knew when they would see him again.
Fortunately, Emma had recognised that fact herself. ‘No,’ she’d said. ‘You have me all wrong-footed.’ She’d
crossed the room and laid her hand on Paul’s arm. ‘I’ll not have one minute’s rest while you are on that thing. You’ll drive me into an early grave. As for the neighbours…well, they will think there has been some sort of altercation between you and your father when he didn’t buy you a little run-around when you graduated.’
‘Perhaps the neighbours will think I am standing on my own feet and some might even think it about time,’ Paul had replied. ‘Isn’t that sort of attribute valued any more? As for an altercation with Dad, that would be fairly difficult to do. He seldom takes any part in these discussions, do you, Dad?’
It had hurt—not the words but the look he’d cast his father, which was one of almost pity, as if he wasn’t a real person with opinions of his own.
Jeff knew that he deserved little better, but that day, the morning of 1 January 1935, he decided he was going to change. Only minutes later, he was turning his car towards Erdington.
Paul spotted his father outside the house and thought something had happened. Surely only some disaster would have brought him to his door. He dressed hurriedly, flew down the stairs and flung it open.
‘What is it?’ he cried.
‘What?’
Paul’s teeth were chattering, both with the cold and the expectation of bad news. ‘Come in, for God’s sake, and tell me what has happened.’ He drew his father inside. ‘It’s proper brass-monkey weather out there and we’d best go into the breakfast room. We have a paraffin stove there.’
Jeff stood gazing around the quite large room Paul
led him into. The hall had had patterned tiles, but here lino had been laid once, and it was pitted and ripped. Set upon it were a rickety wooden table and four chairs nearly as bad. There was also a kitchen cabinet that had seen better days, filled with an assortment of odd crockery and cutlery, and a battered kettle, which Paul lost no time in filling and placing on top of the paraffin stove that held pride of place in the middle of the room.
‘Sit down,’ Paul said. ‘I will make us some tea.’
Jeff sat down at the table on one of the rickety chairs and said, ‘Nothing has happened. That is, nothing bad. It’s just…Paul, can we talk?’
Paul could hardly believe his ears. As he bustled, setting out cups and saucers, he thought of the years of when he was growing up when he would have given his eyeteeth for his father to say, ‘Paul, can we talk?’ If ever he had asked his advice when he was a lad, his father would always ask what his mother thought and his mother’s decision was always the one he would uphold, even when Paul sensed that he didn’t agree with it.
Other boys at school would tell him of going to cricket, or football matches, or fishing with their fathers. How he had envied them. However, when he asked his father if they could do any of these things together, he would shake his head sadly. ‘Your mother would never stand it, son.’
‘Why not?’
‘Well, be a bit mean, leaving her on her own, don’t you think? Best say nothing about it.’
And now this father, whom he barely knew, had turned up unannounced at the house he said he would never visit—or at least his mother had said that, and
he hadn’t contradicted her—and claimed he wanted to talk. It didn’t make sense.
The silence in the room stretched out and Paul, busy with his thoughts, was unaware of it. And Jeff watched him apprehensively and wondered what he was thinking. Suddenly the kettle came to the boil, the shrill whistle sliced through the silence and Paul lifted it up and started to fill up the teapot.
‘The milk will have to be condensed,’ he said. ‘We never bother buying fresh. It doesn’t keep.’
‘That’s all right,’ Jeff said. ‘I’ll take it as it comes.’
‘Can I get you something to eat?’ Paul said, handing his father a cup. ‘I mean, I haven’t much in, but I could probably do a jam sandwich or something.’
‘Nothing,’ Jeff said. ‘Tell the truth, I’m feeling a little delicate this morning.’
Paul grinned, ‘Yeah, I’m a bit hungover myself,’ he admitted. ‘But I could sell my granny for a cup of tea.’
Jeff gave a small laugh. ‘I know just what you mean.’
And then, because he knew whatever this visit was all about, there was nothing to be gained by going all around the Wrekin, he sat down opposite his father and said, ‘Go on then. You said you wanted to talk.’
‘Yes,’ Jeff said. ‘And the first thing I want to do is apologise for being such a poor dad for you, and Matthew too, of course, but it is you I am concerned about now.’
It was the very last thing that Paul had expected. He said, ‘You weren’t a poor dad.’
‘Nice of you to say so, Paul,’ Jeff said. ‘But I let you down badly sometimes.’
‘Come on, Dad,’ Paul said. ‘This is life. Maybe it isn’t
a good thing to have everything you want.’
‘Like your mother does, you mean?’ Jeff said. ‘And you’re right, of course. I never argued with your mother and while it is a good thing in one way to present a united front before children, rules and decisions should be discussed first, maybe compromises made. I found myself agreeing with things that went totally against the grain for the sake of peace and quiet. And I am not blaming your mother here, but myself for being weak enough to just let her get her own way, even when I knew it wasn’t what I wanted and often wasn’t what you boys wanted either.’
‘Look, Dad, isn’t this like so much water under the bridge now?’
‘Yes, of course it is,’ Jeff said. ‘No one has a chance to reclaim years or have another go at getting it right.’
‘And I haven’t grown up too bad, so you must have done something right.’
‘You are a fine boy—man now, of course, a boy no longer—and I think you grew up well despite your mother and me,’ Jeff said. ‘I am proud of you and your decision to work in the hospital rather than to set up in some private practice somewhere. I am even proud of the way you managed to procure this house and settle the problems of affordable transport on your own, but I bet you that there’s not much graduation money left.’
‘Well, no,’ Paul had to admit. ‘Most of the graduation money went on the bike. They were reluctant to let me have terms under the hire purchase scheme as I hadn’t a guarantor. And I hadn’t been working long.’
That brought Jeff up sharp. ‘You didn’t think to ask me?’
‘No,’ Paul said, then added more truthfully, ‘Well, yes, I did, but I thought you wouldn’t approve, or Mother wouldn’t anyway, which was always one and the same thing.’
Jeff smarted under the words said in such a matter-of-fact way.
‘Then there was the trip to Ireland to see Carmel’s parents,’ Paul went on. ‘They are as poor as the proverbial church mice, by the way, and the father a bully of the first order.’
‘Are they invited to the wedding?’
‘Just the mother. Oh, and a nun called Sister Frances that Carmel worked with in Letterkenny Hospital.’
‘A nun on the guest list, eh?’ said Jeff with a quizzical raise of the eyebrows. ‘Better be on our best behaviour then.’
‘I should think that goes without saying at my wedding,’ said Paul with mock severity. ‘There is to be none of that dancing naked on the tables you know?’
‘Ah, Paul, what a spoilsport you are,’ Jeff said, then added with a twinkle in his eyes, ‘It might even be worth doing it for the look in your mother’s eyes. Can you just imagine it?’
‘There is no imagining to it,’ Paul said with a chuckle, ‘for there would be no expression in them. If you did something half as bad, Mother would be lying stone dead of shame on the floor.’
‘D’you know, Paul, I think you are right there,’ Jeff said, draining his cup and getting to his feet. ‘Now, how about showing me around this place?’
‘No problem,’ Paul said. ‘You can even see all of it because Chris stayed with Lois’s parents last night. Mind
you, I am not apologising for the state his room might be in, nor mine either.’
‘Point taken,’ Jeff said. ‘Lead the way.’
The paraffin stove took the barest chill off the air in the breakfast room, but the rest of the house was like an ice-box and their breath escaped in visible whispery strands. Jeff was glad he had not removed his coat and noted that even Paul took a jacket from his room as they passed. But though the whole house was as cold as ice and the furnishing less than basic, Jeff saw that they had a acquired a solid house that, with a little time spent on it, would make a lovely home for the two couples. ‘You have a grand place,’ he said to Paul as they returned thankfully to the breakfast room. ‘What is the rent?’
‘Sixteen and six,’ Paul said. ‘And then we had to pay three months’ rent in advance and fifty pounds’ indemnity in case we break or damage anything.’
‘So with your graduation money virtually all used up, how are you going to furnish the place?’ Jeff asked. As he saw Paul stiffen he said sharply, ‘There is no need to bristle and get on your high horse. Pride and a stiff neck is all very well when you are on your own, but now you have Carmel to consider. You can’t expect her to live in these conditions, nor Lois either.’