If she was hoping for some reassurance from Alma, she was disappointed.
‘Well, bloody hell, girl, why didn’t you?’
‘I didn’t think he’d listen! You know what he’s like when it comes to getting a bargain. There’s no stopping him. And he never believed in the strike. He never said it, but I knew what he thought. He thought it was a nuisance, getting in the way of trade.’
‘You still could’ve tried! For God’s sake, girl . . .’
‘I told him to be careful –’
A nurse appeared, stiffly disapproving, and told them to keep their voices down or they would be asked to leave.
Alma was not cowed. ‘How much longer are we going to be kept waiting here? That’s my son in there. I got a right to see him. I’m his mother.’
‘You’ll not be allowed to see him if Doctor thinks you’ll disturb him,’ the nurse said chillingly. ‘Patients’ welfare always comes first.’
After another excruciating wait in which neither Alma nor Ellen said anything to each other, an exhausted-looking junior nurse came and informed them that Mr Billingham had been taken to one of the wards upstairs.
‘Can we see him?’ both women chorused.
‘I don’t know.’ The young girl was confused.
‘You take us there,’ Alma told her.
‘I can’t, I’m on duty here.’
‘Tell us where it is,’ Ellen urged.
They were both of them far too upset to listen properly. They got lost round the endless stairways and corridors and argued over which way to go next. At last they found a porter who was willing to help them and discovered they were in quite the wrong part of the building. With his directions, they finally got to the right ward.
The sister barred their way.
‘All patients are settled for the night now.’
‘But he’s my son.’
‘My husband . . .’
‘I can’t have my patients disturbed.’
Ellen laid a hand on her immaculate arm. ‘Please, just tell us how he is.’
The sister regarded her for several seconds, her lips pressed closely together.
‘I want to see him,’ Alma insisted.
But the sister was adamant: no visitors outside visiting hours. That was the rule. If they tried to disobey, a porter would be fetched to evict them.
‘I’m staying till he wakes up,’ Alma decided.
‘Then you will have to wait downstairs. We have no facilities for relatives here.’
Defeated, Ellen and Alma made their way back to the hall.
‘Old cow,’ Alma muttered. ‘Keeping a mother from her sick son. Ain’t right.’
On and on she went, making dire threats. Ellen could hardly bear it. She was doing no good here, and Tom must be wanting her at home. Her breasts ached with unused milk. But if she went now, Alma would suspect the truth, the secret she had kept so carefully all this time, that she was not the devoted wife she made herself out to be, that there were others that came way before Gerry in her heart. But Tom might be awake, he might be crying for her, he might have taken a turn for the worse . . .
First Gerry pulled at her guilt, then the baby at her heart, turn and turn about, until she did not know what to do. Time ticked slowly by, measured by the large clock on the tiled wall.
Something made her turn and look towards the big double doorway. Her brother Jack stood there, searching the room with his eyes. Terror clutched at her, taking her breath away, striking her speechless. In that moment, she knew. Jack spotted her and came striding across, his boots ringing on the stone floor.
‘Ellen.’ His voice was unusually gentle, his eyes large with compassion. ‘Mum says she thinks you ought to come home.’
Ellen ran as she had never run before. On and on through the dark streets she ran, till she felt as if her legs were about to splinter and her lungs to burst. She had no breath even to whimper. Only the terrible fear pressing round her heart drove her on.
How she got the last half-mile down the West Ferry Road she did not know. She was dimly aware of Jack clutching her waist and holding her up. Round the last corner and into Trinidad Street they went, and then they were there at her parents’ house.
Martha was sitting in the kitchen with little Tom in her arms. A stub end of candle lit her worn features.
‘Ellen, love.’
Ellen licked her dry lips. ‘Is – is he . . .?’ she croaked.
Martha held out the baby to her. Ellen took him, searching his tiny face by the feeble light of the candle flame. He seemed to have shrunk even in the short time since last she saw him. His little nose and chin were not softly rounded but pointed, so that he took on the look of a wizened elf. But he was still breathing.
Silent tears of relief slid down her face. She dropped on to a chair and held Tom to her. It was all right. He was alive. Her whole body throbbed from the nightmare journey home, but it did not matter. She hardly noticed Jack going off to bed or her mother wearily making a cup of tea and asking after Gerry. Her entire being was focused on the little bundle in her arms. Gradually she realized that she could feel his bones through the threadbare shawl.
‘He’s so thin, Mum. He’s – he’s fading away. Has he been sick much?’
‘No, love. Not at all.’
‘Perhaps he’s getting better.’ She refused to acknowledge the worry in her mother’s voice.
Martha sat down beside her and put an arm round her shoulders. ‘Ellen, he’s very poorly. You know that?’
Ellen nodded. ‘But he’s getting better, Mum. He’s sleeping quiet and you said he’s stopped being sick.’
‘He’s got a very bad dose, love. Very bad.’
‘But Billy, he had the same and he’s pulled through, ain’t he?’
‘Yeah – I think he’s on the mend.’
‘And Billy was always sickly. Tom’s a strong baby.’
‘Don’t always follow, lovey. You know we none of us raise all our kids.’
Ellen closed her mind. ‘He’s going to be all right,’ she stated.
She repeated it as his shallow breathing quickened a little and his eyelids flickered open to show dull, sunken eyes too big for his pinched face.
‘See – he’s awake.’
The small mouth opened as if to cry but no sound came out.
‘What is it, darling?’ Ellen whispered. ‘What do you want, eh? A feed?’
She pulled at the buttons of her blouse, her fingers useless with fatigue. But before she could get them undone, Tom’s eyes had closed again. Frustration filled her. The only thing she could do for him was
feed him, and he was too weak to stay awake.
‘You must wake up, darling,’ she begged him. ‘You must feed. I got to make you strong and well again.’
She stared at the pointed features, and somewhere in her heart a cold terror started. Even as she spoke to him, he had slipped away.
Alma stood in the waiting hall. The morning activity washed round her: crying children, shuffling old folk, people limping and moaning from road or work accidents. She saw none of it. She was cold and numb, unable to think or even feel very much.
They had let her see him. They led her behind the screens and drew back the sheet from his poor bruised face. Internal bleeding, they said. He had never regained consciousness, so he had felt no pain.
He hardly looked like her son, lying there so still and white. He belonged to them, to the starched and stiffly efficient nurses. She reached out to touch him, feeling for the hands crossed over his chest. He was cold. A great shudder of revulsion went through her, followed swiftly by anger. She would not let him go. They would not have him.
‘Gerry, Gerry!’ She gathered him up in her arms, trying to rouse him, to give him her life, to banish the suffocating smell of hospital and death. She cradled his head to her breast, great sobs tearing from her.
‘Come back to me, Gerry. Speak to me. Oh, please don’t go, Gerry, don’t go.’
They tried to pull her away, but she fought them, with tears streaming down her face, and threw herself forward on to the bed, her large living body covering and protecting his fragile dead one. Frantic in her grief and loss, she knew only that she must not let him go.
It took three strong porters to pull her away. The nurses clucked with disapproval at the disturbance to their orderly ward. She did not know what happened next. There were rooms and faces and voices and papers to sign. And then she was here, in the hall, with a small bag of Gerry’s belongings at her side. She was quite empty, a great hollow shell, and totally devoid of any idea what to do next.
‘Alma?’
The name meant nothing. She ignored it.
‘Alma, it’s me, Perce. What’s the matter, girl? He’s not . . .?’
Slowly her eyes focused, her brain took note. Percy, large and familiar, his battered face creased with concern – Percy had come to find her. The numbness dissolved. The pain came back, but with it was life. She fell into his arms and buried her face in his barrel chest, weeping anew.
He held her tight, patting her shoulder and rocking her. He was warm and alive, he smelt of sweat and pipe smoke and beer. She clung to him, crying until she could cry no more. Only then did he release his hold. With one arm still round her, he bent to pick up the pathetic little bag.
‘Come on,’ he said gruffly. ‘I’m taking you home.’
She let him take charge, raising no protest against the criminal expense when he hailed a cab and bundled her into it. They sat squashed together in the stuffy interior. Percy was still holding her hand.
‘He – er – he . . .’ Percy began, and faltered to an embarrassed halt.
‘Yes,’ she whispered. She had no tears left now. Her voice was hoarse and her throat aching, but it was nothing to the terrible pain inside. One son dying, the other dead. Everything had been taken away from her.
He gave her hand a squeeze. ‘He was a good boy, your Gerry. And you was always a good mum. No one could’ve had a better mum than you. He was lucky there.’
She nodded. It did nothing to ease the hurt, but she recognized that he was trying to comfort her. She gave voice to the very worst part of all.
‘Oh, Perce, I never said goodbye to him. I was in bed when he left for work and I never got up to say goodbye. And then he never woke up in the hospital. Oh, Perce, if only I’d got up.’
‘You wasn’t to know, girl. It was just another day. You wasn’t to know that he wasn’t, well . . .’
‘I know, but it don’t make it any better. He’s gone without me saying goodbye.’
She would never be able to make it right now. The awful finality of it washed over her again. He had gone. A low moan escaped from her very soul.
Percy took her hand between his two great meaty paws. ‘We’ll give him a good send-off, girl. The whole works. And drinks for everyone to remember him by in the Puncheon after.’
‘Oh, God.’ She had not thought of the funeral. She hadn’t a penny to pay for it. All her life she had spent everything as soon as it came into her hand.
‘Now don’t you go worrying about anything. I’ll see to it. I got savings. I’ll see he’s sent off proper.’
‘Oh no, Percy.’ She came out of her miasma of loss enough to realize that this was not right. ‘No, you can’t do that. He’s –’ She stopped, and for the first of many times, corrected herself. ‘He was my boy.’
For a while they were both silent, while the cab creaked round them. Alma had no idea where they were. Percy could be taking her anywhere, and she did not care. Nothing mattered any more.
‘Look, er –’ Percy began, an unusual hesitancy in his voice. ‘I know this ain’t the best time for it. In fact, I s’pose it’s the worst time for it, but I got to say it. I been wanting to say it for a long time now. Weeks. I want you to marry me, Alma. I want you to be my old lady. Will you, Alma? Let me take care of you, eh? What d’you say? Will you?’
‘What? Oh I don’t know, Percy, I can’t say. I just can’t say.’ She could not fully take in what he was saying.
‘I’ll take care of you, Alma. A woman like you, you need someone to take care of you. Since you come to work at the Puncheon, I been looking forward to you arriving each day. It don’t feel right when you’re not there. I need you there, Alma. I – well – got very fond of you.’
The words buzzed and jangled round her head, making no sense. She could think of nothing but the still figure on the bed, the great aching void in her heart. But this solid male presence was a vague comfort. She would certainly rather he was there than not. She gave his hand a feeble squeeze.
‘Later, Percy,’ she said. ‘Later.’
‘Yeah, right.’ He was contrite. ‘I knew it was the wrong time. I just couldn’t help it. But let me take care of the funeral, Alma. Let me do that.’
‘Yeah.’ She hadn’t the strength to resist him. ‘Yeah, if you want to. Thanks.’
He patted her knee. ‘I’ll do it right. You wait and see. You won’t regret it.’
People were in and out all day, saying what a fine man Gerry had been, what a dear little boy Tom had been, saying how sorry they were, what a loss it was, how they felt for her. And all the while Ellen mechanically thanked them and said no, there wasn’t anything they could do for her right now. After all, nothing was going to bring them back. Jessica and Teddy clung to her like two little wraiths, bewildered by what was going on around them, not understanding why their mother was crying and their granny was crying, or why their father did not come home. Ellen hugged them to her, taking what scant comfort she could from the small round bodies.
Then there was the agony of the funerals. First Tom was buried, in his pathetically tiny coffin, then, after a post-mortem, Gerry. Ellen did not know how she got through the days. Having to look after the little ones helped. She could not be totally absorbed in her grief when they needed her so much. And her family was around her. Martha came every day; so did Daisy, and so did Maisie, though Ellen usually ended
up supporting her. But it was Florrie who helped the most. With Florrie she could be totally open.
‘Aunty Alma’s off up the Puncheon again, then,’ Florrie remarked one day.
‘Yeah, she spends all her time up there now.’
‘D’you reckon she’ll marry Percy?’
‘Wouldn’t be surprised. When she’s got over it a bit. She was that close to Gerry.’
Florrie looked at her for a moment, then she said, ‘Just as you was to little Tom.’