Gilding the lilly, p.22
Gilding the Lilly, page 22
‘You said I couldn’t even mention Da’s name,’ Sarah said reasonably.
Lily nodded, then glanced down at Imogen trotting by her side and whisked the little girl up into her arms, running with her a short way to make her squeal and laugh. She concentrated on her niece for the next minute or two and Sarah was wise enough to take the hint and say no more.
When they turned into the road which led to Canon Cockin Street John was standing at the corner. He raised his hand, his face lighting up, and began to walk towards them. ‘By, lass, he’s keen,’ Sarah murmured on a smothered giggle, before raising her voice and saying, ‘Look, Imogen, who’s this? It’s Uncle John, come to meet us.’
John made a fuss of Imogen when he reached them but when Lily went to walk on with Sarah, he caught her hand.‘We’ll be along shortly, Sarah. Tell them, would you?’ he said, and without waiting for an answer he pulled Lily along the pavement in the opposite direction, crossing the road and not stopping till they were in the grounds of the old glass works which had been disused for some time. ‘I want a minute with you on our own without all that lot,’ he said softly, his eyes warm on her flushed face. ‘How have you been?’
‘All right.’ She didn’t know why she was whispering, it just seemed right.
‘I’ve missed you. Have you missed me?’ His eyes had been roaming her face as he’d spoken but now they remained on her lips. Before she could answer his mouth was on hers and he was kissing her hungrily and she was kissing him back. When they finally drew apart they stared at each other for one moment before he laughed out loud, lifting her right off her feet and swinging her round and round in his arms till she was dizzy and begging for mercy.
‘I can’t believe you’re mine,’ he muttered as he set her down on her feet but still within the circle of his arms. ‘You are mine, aren’t you, Lily?’
‘You know I am.’
He trailed a blond curl that had escaped the bun on top of her head through his fingers. ‘You’re beautiful, Lily. So beautiful.’
She didn’t deny this as she would have done if anyone else had said it. Instead she lifted her fingers and touched his face, privately amazed he felt so strongly. ‘If you think so that’s all that matters.’
‘Everyone thinks so.’ He grinned at her. ‘Mam was bowled over when I told her we were courting. She thinks you’re a grand lass.’
Nora’s approval was warming. Her voice soft, Lily murmured, ‘I like your mam, John, I always have. She was so kind to me when I met her in the park that day.’
‘How could anyone not be kind to you?’ He kissed her again and they clung together for long moments before he straightened, tucking her arm in his. ‘Come on, we’d better go and join the menagerie. Cissy and Florence and the rest of them were arriving as I left, no doubt Mam’s told them the news by now.’
Lily felt suddenly shy.
‘Don’t look so nervous, I won’t let them eat you.’ He smiled at her, his dark brown eyes glowing. ‘Although I feel like eating you up myself.’
He looked so tall and handsome standing there, the sunlight bringing out chestnut streaks in his black hair. And she was his lass. The wonder of it swept over Lily again. Everything had been so horrible for so long but now the world seemed a wonderful place where anything could happen. The fact that she was John Turner’s lass was proof of that. And the summer was in front of them. Long evenings when she could slip out of the house once the bairns were asleep and now he wasn’t studying they’d be able to see each other often.
‘What?’ He’d watched the way her thoughts were mirrored on her face. ‘What are you thinking?’
‘Just that we’ve got the summer together.’
‘The first of many, I hope.’ Again he swung her round a few times before they started walking back the way they’d come. ‘I heard about my exams today, by the way,’ he said after a moment or two with deliberate casualness.
‘You did?’ It was a squeal. ‘That’s early, isn’t it?’
He nodded, and then looked down at her, his face alight. ‘I passed, Lily, with distinction.’
She beamed up at him. ‘I knew you would.’
‘I’m going to make myself known to all the accountants in the town and ask them to bear me in mind for when a vacancy comes up. I want to get out of the docks as soon as I can.’ Just before they left the grounds of the glass works he stopped, moving her to face him once more. ‘I’m looking to the future, lass. I want to be in a position to provide well for a family.’
She blinked, her heart beating faster.
Then he laughed again, a joyous sound, and lifted his gaze to the blue sky. ‘I’m on the up and up, lass. I can feel it in my bones. Everything is going to work out from now on, and do you know why?’
She shook her head, smiling at his enthusiasm.
‘Because you’re my girl. This time last week I didn’t think I’d got a hope with you, but now? Now I could conquer kingdoms, that’s how I feel.’
His boyishness was endearing and another quality to the personality she was fast realising was a complex one. Her father had used to say that still waters ran deep and that was true with this man. Her da . . . Sarah’s words had been in the back of her mind like a constant refrain. But he wasn’t her da. She shook herself mentally, putting that problem aside. She was with John and she wasn’t going to think of anyone or anything else.
Throughout the long hot summer, a summer which saw thousands die in a record heatwave that baked the back lanes to dust and dried up rivers, Lily lived in a state she likened to heaven on earth. And this in spite of the mounting trouble and unrest in the country in general and the north-east in particular.
A shipping strike in June escalated in July to include railwaymen, and in Wales nine people were killed in a night of furious rioting, three by soldiers’ bullets and six when burning trucks, filled with railway detonators and bottled carbide, exploded in their midst. Things worsened still more in August when the country was brought to a standstill and armed troops patrolled the streets in all the big cities.With the temperature soaring to ninety-seven degrees Fahrenheit in the shade, and the country forced to live on food reserves while a famine was predicted, the mood was ugly.
But none of this could puncture the bubble of happiness which encircled Lily. She only lived for the moment she saw John each evening, merely existing in the hours between.
Shortly after the dockers came out on strike and the industrial unrest spread like wildfire, John was offered a post as junior accountant in a long-established firm in the town, a job he accepted with alacrity. It was the best of times and the worst of times for him to leave the docks. With the unions locked in a battle with the Government, families were existing on subsidies which amounted to next to nothing, but in spite of the fact John’s old dock colleagues knew he’d been studying and working to that end for years, some of them saw him as a rat leaving the sinking ship. And an upstart rat at that. One of them, a foul-mouthed bruiser named Archy McHaffie, had even gone so far as to spit in John’s direction when he and Lily had been walking home from an evening at the picture house at the end of August. It had taken all Lily’s strength to hold on to John when he would have gone for the man.
Once they were alone she had questioned him at length and he had finally admitted that there had been threats and intimidation from some quarters over the last weeks.
‘But why didn’t you tell me before?’ She was horrified this had been going on and he hadn’t mentioned it.
‘Because most of the blokes are fine, it’s just the odd hot-head ones like McHaffie who spout off but he’s all wind and water. Don’t worry’ - he took her face in his hands, kissing her lips - ‘it means nothing. He’d have been the same whenever I left; he was always jibing at me for wanting to better myself. He was one of Ralph’s mates and when Ralph used to wind me up about the studying and all, he’d join in. He’s as thick as two short planks.’
Lily stared at him. McHaffie might be thick but there had been something vicious in the man’s little piggy eyes as he had stood there laughing at John’s efforts to disentangle himself from her grip. She’d hung on like a limpet, though, determined not to let go. As tall and fit as John was, the other man had been built like a brick outhouse. ‘Be careful,’ she said flatly.
‘I told you, don’t worry.’ He kissed the tip of her nose. ‘Like I said, he’s one of Ralph’s mates and he wouldn’t want to get on the wrong side of him by hurting me.’
‘But you never see Ralph these days.’ And she was thankful for it. ‘Your mam said none of the family have seen anything of him for months.’
‘That doesn’t mean he isn’t still around and McHaffie knows it. He’s a funny bloke, Ralph, and he’s got funnier as he’s got older, I’m not denying it, but him and me have always been all right in our own way. He always looked out for me when we were bairns.’
Lily lowered her head in case he could read what she was thinking. Ralph might have played the big brother when they were young but they weren’t bairns any longer. And John might think he knew his brother but he didn’t, not the side she had seen on occasion anyway. None of the family did. Only she and Sarah had experienced it in their own ways. It had been over two years since she had last seen him but he still featured in her nightmares now and again; a dark, ominous presence without a face, but she knew who it was all right. Even in that chimeric world of the subconscious she recognised Ralph Turner.
Perhaps it would be better when she actually met him face to face again? It was a thought which had occurred more than once over the time she had been seeing John. He’d have to find out about John and herself at some point, it was a miracle he hadn’t already. Only the fact that he spent every minute at the boatyard, sometimes - according to Sarah - not going home for days at a time, had prevented it to date. But sooner or later there would be a family occasion that he’d attend and then he would know.
A chill flickered down her spine but then it was dispelled as John pulled her close, wrapping her in his arms. ‘I like it that you worry about me,’ he murmured into the soft curls of her hair, ‘but I promise you I’ll be all right. As long as I’ve got you, that is.’
She smiled up into his face. ‘For ever and ever,’ she said lightly. He didn’t smile back. ‘I know we’ve only been seeing each other for a little while but we’ve known each other far longer, even if we did fight like cat and dog most of that time,’ he said quietly. ‘What I’m trying to say is, I know how I feel, Lily. This is no passing fancy with me.’
There was a question hidden in the low tones and she answered it. ‘Me neither.’
‘I’m on what they call a trial period at Sheldon & Todd’s. Six months. Once that’s up my wage will nearly double.’
He had told her this before when he’d taken the job but she knew this was different.
‘If they take me on permanently it’ll mean I’m set up, not like the docks where the foreman can cut your shifts and play silly devils at the drop of a hat. At Sheldon & Todd’s I’ve got security.’
She nodded, her eyes soft on him. ‘You could be prince or pauper and I’d feel the same.’
‘Aye, I know that,’ he said a trifle impatiently, ‘but what I’m trying to say is once I know for sure I’m in then all the plans I’ve got in my head for the future can become a reality. And . . . and you feature in them, you know you do. Will you wait till then? Till I’m free to say what I want to say?’
She wanted to tell him he could speak now, that she didn’t care about his wage or the lack of it, but knowing him as she did she knew it wouldn’t do any good. She nodded. ‘I’ll wait for ever, there could never be anyone else for me.’
‘Oh, Lily.’ He cupped her face in his big hands. ‘I love you so much I ache with it, do you know that?’
She had been waiting for him to say it. He had expressed his love in a hundred and one ways but he had never said the actual words and she hadn’t felt she could say them first. Now she took his hands from her face, pressing her lips to one and then the other. ‘And I love you, more than you can ever know.’
It was exactly a week later, after a freak September storm that had seen torrential rain run off the baked fields and lanes and flood numerous dwellings, that Sarah came to the Grays’ house. It was just on eight o’clock and Lily had been ready to leave to meet John at the end of the road when her sister knocked at the back door. As soon as Bridget ushered Sarah into the kitchen where Lily was adjusting her bonnet in front of the old speckled mirror and Lily saw her sister’s face she knew something was terribly wrong.
‘What is it?’ The bonnet forgotten, she leapt across the kitchen and clutched Sarah’s hands. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘Oh, lass, lass.’
‘It’s not the bairns?’
‘No, no.’ Sarah took a deep breath. ‘It’s John. He’s all right, I mean, he’s still alive, but he’s been beaten something awful. Oh, sit down, lass. I shouldn’t have told you like that. I’m sorry, me and my big mouth.’
Lily had gone as white as a sheet and but for Bridget’s stout grip would have crumpled to the floor. Once she was seated and Sarah was beside her, Molly bustling about getting a cup of tea and Bridget holding her hands, she said, ‘Tell me.’
‘I don’t know much. It happened on the way home from work, apparently, not far from the house. He was in the habit of taking a short cut through that waste ground at the back of the synagogue, that’s where he was found by one of their priests, rabbis they call ’em, don’t they? Anyway, this rabbi saw two men kicking another who was on the ground and called out to them and they ran off.’
‘Where is he?’
‘In the infirmary.’
‘I must go to him.’
As Lily made to rise, Sarah pushed her back in her seat. ‘In a minute or two, lass. Have a cup of tea first. His mam an’ da are with him and they’re only letting two at a time at the bedside. He’s out of it, anyway.’
‘He’s unconscious?’ she asked faintly.
‘Not exactly, I didn’t mean that; Robert said they’d given him something for the pain that had made him so he didn’t know what day it was.’
‘When did you hear about it?’
‘Robert came to tell us what was what just a few minutes ago and I’ve come straight round here. Mam said she wanted you to know. Look, lass, I - I had to tell Ralph you were seeing John. He wanted to know why you had to be told. But he was all right about it.’
Lily didn’t care about Ralph. She didn’t care about anything but John, hurt and lying in a hospital bed. ‘Is he going to be all right?’
‘Aye, course he is, but it’s as well the rabbi came by when he did, by all accounts. They think he’s got a couple of broken ribs and he’s black and blue from head to foot and with concussion an’ all, but they’ll know better tomorrow.’ Sarah stared at her sister’s chalk-white face. She didn’t dare repeat what Robert had said about the men using John’s head as a football. Robert had said his mam had collapsed at the first sight of John.
‘I don’t know what things are coming to when decent men and women can’t walk the streets in broad daylight.’ Molly put two cups of tea in front of Lily and Sarah. ‘Here, drink that, lass.’ She patted Lily’s shoulder helplessly. ‘It’s got four spoons of sugar in it. There’s nothing like hot, sweet tea for shock and if you’re going to see him the night you’ll likely need it.’As Bridget frowned at her sister, Molly said, ‘What? What have I said now?’
‘He - he told me one or two of the men he used to work with in the docks didn’t like him leaving. There was a man, McHaffie, I think his name was, he tried to start a quarrel with John a few days ago when I was with him.’ Lily rubbed her hand across her wet eyes, gulping hard. ‘I told John to be careful but he wouldn’t listen.’
‘Aye, well, happen John’ll be able to tell them tomorrow who it was,’ Sarah said quietly. ‘Now don’t worry, Mops, he’s in the best place and they’ll look after him. He’ll be out in no time, you know how strong and big John is. Likely the law’ll be on to whoever had it in for him.’
Lily had drunk her tea, scalding hot and disgustingly sweet as it was. She stood up, reaching for her coat. ‘I’ll go now.’ She turned to Molly and Bridget. ‘Would you leave the key under the flower pot when you go to bed in case I’m late?’
‘We’ll be waiting up for you, lass, whatever the time is.’ Then Molly added, somewhat naïvely, ‘You’ll feel better when you see him. The imagination is always worse in things like this.’
Molly’s words rang in Lily’s head as she stood gazing down at the still figure in the narrow hospital bed. It was barely recognisable as John and he was much, much worse than she could have imagined. It wasn’t just that his head and face were swollen and his hair matted with dried blood, he was covered with cuts and abrasions and every inch of his flesh seemed to be bruised and turning a bluey-black.
‘Who would want to hurt my lad like this?’ Nora’s face was puffed, her red-rimmed eyes peering out under swollen lids. ‘He’s as gentle as a lamb, my John.’
‘I know, Mrs Turner. I know.’
The two women were standing with their arms round each other, Harold having stepped outside to make room for Lily. John was in a small side room off the main ward and it had taken some persuasion from Lily for the sister to allow her to see the patient. Only the fact that Nora had heard her voice and come out to add her weight to the urging had got Lily inside, and then the sister had been adamant that either the patient’s mother or father would have to wait outside. ‘You must understand, he’s a very sick man and must not be disturbed,’ the sister had said frostily, ‘and visiting time is over as it is.’
‘I’ll only stay a minute, I promise.’ Lily had been all eyes, her face as white as lint.
For a moment the sister’s severity had softened. ‘Very well, but five minutes maximum,’ she said in the manner of one bestowing a great favour. Which indeed it was.
