All the Days of Our Lives (39 page)

‘All right, love?’ Norm asked, when she pulled the bedclothes up rather huffily.

Underlying her anger was the answer she never gave him.
We can’t have a baby, because you went with that woman and caught some horrible disease, and now you can’t make babies.
She had laughed at the time – well, in the end – and tried to forgive him. Norm thought that was all long forgotten. But they had made Robbie before –
so why not now?

But she knew she wasn’t going to say it – not that. She lay back, looking at the ceiling for a moment. Things could be better between them, even despite that. They had to be. She turned to him suddenly.

‘Norm, you know what you said tonight, about us getting our own house?’

‘Huh, yeah. Pigs might fly.’

‘But d’you want us to get our own place – really?’ Sometimes she thought he’d be just as happy living here forever with his mom.

‘Well, yes, course. But you know what it’s like.’

‘But if we really tried – there must be places to rent if we looked around. If we tried a bit harder.’

‘Oh, I dunno,’ Norm said fatalistically. He gave a huge yawn. ‘We’re on the council list. I don’t know there’s much else we can do about it.’

Em lay back, suddenly burning with determination. ‘But if we tried,’ she insisted. She could tell Norm was almost asleep. Norm nearly always seemed to go to sleep whenever she wanted to talk about anything.

‘Night, love.’ He patted her haunch and turned on his side, soon dead to the world.

Well, you may not be prepared to try and make it happen, but I’ve had enough, she thought. I don’t want to go on like this, so something’s got to change!

Em’s determination to try and find a new place to live unfortunately could not overrule the reality – that there was nowhere to be had. The odd room would come up for rent, but precious little else. The bombing had destroyed many houses, and others were rotting away of their own accord. Families anxious to settle after the years of war were having babies at a rate of knots, and many were in her position, crammed in with parents and in-laws, or even living in old prisoner-of-war camps or disused railway carriages. There was simply not enough to go round. The council had tens of thousands on the waiting list. The newspapers talked about slum clearance.

Bob, her dad, kept saying, ‘They’ll have this place down, then – you wait and see.’

‘We’re not living in a slum, Bob!’ Cynthia would protest crossly. ‘I’ve always kept our house nice.’

There was much talk by the city planners, but the action was very slow. Set against all this, Em felt guilty.

‘It’s not so bad where you are,’ another young mother reproached her, when she talked about her longing to find somewhere else. ‘You don’t even have the babby sleeping in with you – that’s flaming luxury, that is! Some people don’t know when they’re well off.’

It was true, Em thought. There were so many worse off – and Edna’s house was clean into the bargain. And it wasn’t as if Edna was a tyrant, like some. Em felt almost ashamed of her sense of frustration. After those war years, married but stuck at home with Mom and Dad, was it asking too much to hope for a married life where she could run her own house and be in charge of her own kitchen?

‘What about one of them prefab places?’ she said to Norm one night, once they were alone. ‘They look quite nice.’

‘Aren’t they on the council list like the rest?’ he said.

Em sighed, knowing he was right. Suddenly she started crying, curling up on her side in bed.

‘Eh, Em! What’s brought all this on?’ He sounded bewildered.

‘I just want things to be different,’ she sobbed. As usual what she wanted to say came out wrong. She couldn’t seem to say what she really meant: that she wanted to feel that the two of them were close again and that, despite living with all these people, she was lonely. ‘I wish we had our own house.’

‘Oh now, love,’ Norm said. He snuggled up behind her. ‘I know you do – but we haven’t got a magician with a wand to find one just like that. We’ll have our own little place eventually. But it’s not so bad here, is it? Mom and Dad’ve been good to us and they could’ve kicked up a fuss, having us foisted on them. I think our mom’s enjoying having her grandson living with her. Come on – let’s look on the bright side, eh?’

He leaned over and kissed her cheek and she twisted round and cuddled into his arms, sniffing.

‘D’you still love me, Norm?’ she asked sadly.

‘Course I do – you’re my wife!’ He pushed his body against her. ‘D’you want me to prove it?’

Em edged away. ‘No, it’s all right. Let’s go to sleep.’ Why did Norm think that doing
that
would always make everything all right? In some ways it made things worse.

She lay awake once he was fast asleep, the darkness broken by a dim streak of light from between the curtains. More tears ran silently down her cheeks. If only they could have another baby. If Norm was there to see it grow up this time, things would be different and he’d be more enthusiastic than he had been about Robbie. Em had loved looking after a baby, feeling its need of her. With a heavy sigh she turned on her side to try and sleep. It was no good moaning. She’d just have to keep going and make the best of things.

A few days later, when the front doors were all open to let in the warm evening air while they were eating tea, there was an urgent hammering from the front.

‘Sounds like trouble,’ Edna said, getting up.

They all listened. Em heard sobbing from the front door.

‘That’s our Vi!’

She hurried to the door and had time to take in Edna’s sorrowful expression before Violet burst out, ‘Oh, Em – it’s our dad. They’ve taken him to the hospital! He went all funny and he can’t speak or walk properly or anything.’

‘Sounds like a stroke,’ Edna said, half to herself.

Norm had joined them in the hall by now. ‘You go back with her, love,’ he said. ‘Go and look after your mom.’

‘Joyce is with her,’ Violet said. She was shaking from the shock.

‘You’d best take a few things in a bag – you’ll need to stop over,’ Edna said.

Em did as she was advised, glad suddenly of Edna’s practical nature when she couldn’t think straight.

‘Go on, love,’ Norm said, when she came down.’ He kissed her cheek. ‘You do what you’ve got to do. Robbie’ll be all right.’

Em looked gratefully at him. ‘Thanks, love – but I’ll be back soon. Thanks, Edna. Come on, Vi – let’s get over there.’

Bob had been taken to Dudley Road Hospital.

‘I could see in his eyes how frightened he was,’ Cynthia wept when Em and Violet got back to the house. She and Joyce were sitting at the table, both red-eyed. Cynthia dabbed her face with the hem of her apron. ‘He’s never been in a hospital in his life, except when I was – you know – when I was in there. But that was different. And that place . . . To him it’s still the workhouse. I hated having to see him go in there.’

The three girls exchanged looks. They all hated the thought of it too.

‘We must tell Sid what’s happened,’ Cynthia was fretting. She got up and then sank back down again, wanting to busy herself with something, but unable to think what.

‘Just sit down and have a rest for a bit, Mom,’ Em said. She felt older and, as usual, as if she was the one who had to take charge. ‘Tell us what happened?’

‘It just came on, when he came in from work – gradual like. He couldn’t seem to find his words to start with, and then suddenly the side of his face went all sort of twisted and funny . . .’ More tears came as she recalled it all. ‘He was all mithered – I could see there was something really bad wrong with him. I said, “Bob, what is it? Can you tell me?” And I could see he couldn’t . . . That was when I sent Violet down to the phone box . . . Oh!’ She looked round at them all, frightened. ‘I don’t think he’s going to come home!’

The next days were spent waiting, taking it in turns to visit the hospital with Cynthia.

The first time Em visited the hospital she felt sick with nerves. They went through town, and it would have been nice, a trip out with her mom on their own, had it not been for something so sad. The day was warm, but drizzly, the sky grey and oppressive. They walked along the Dudley Road together in summer frocks and cardies, sharing an umbrella.

‘Mom, your bag keeps banging against me.’

‘Sorry – here, I’ll put it on the other arm.’ Cynthia had a string bag containing some offerings for Bob, including bananas that Em had got from Mr Perry and a few sweets.

‘I don’t like it round here much,’ Em said, peering out. ‘Gives me the creeps.’

In that small area just north of the centre of Birmingham, the hospital, which had once had the workhouse attached to it, the prison and the asylum had all been built huddled together, almost like one vast and forbidding red-brick institution. The asylum in particular brought back too many dark memories, though Cynthia had never been in this particular one.

‘I know what you mean,’ Cynthia said. But her face was tight and preoccupied. She had aged overnight, little lines round her mouth.

‘Will it be different now?’

Cynthia glanced round. ‘Different? How d’you mean?’

‘Well – with all this National Health Service thing coming in.’

‘I wouldn’t say all that different, except . . . The doctor who was there when he first came in – I went with your dad, because he couldn’t say anything. He was full of it: said he was proud to be a doctor now, and how everyone’d be looked after. I was in that much of a state I’d forgotten it’d all changed, and I told him Bob was on the panel – you know he’d paid up over the years. So he said that didn’t matter any more, and how if I was taken ill, it’d be free for me too now. I’d just forgotten. I was too mithered. He looked ever so pleased with himself. Here we are, look.’

They turned into the grand, forbidding entrance and walked the corridors to the ward. Em didn’t recognize her father at first. Cynthia led her to a bed just inside the ward, where a stubbly cheeked, grey-faced man lay with his eyes closed.

No
! Em wanted to cry out.
That’s not our dad!

The sight of him really frightened her. Mom had kept saying he wasn’t going to come home, and she thought it was just her panic speaking. But as Em took a seat by the bed she could see, with a chill to her bones, how ill he was. He was dressed in a pair of green pyjamas that she’d never seen before, and which made him seem more alien.

‘Bob?’ The way Mom spoke, gentle and caressing, nearly broke Em’s heart. For a moment she imagined Norm lying there like that. She leaned forward and touched his hand. It felt cool and lifeless.

‘Dad – it’s Em.’

‘Can you hear us?’ Cynthia asked.

He stirred, and his eyes slowly opened. For a moment he looked at the ceiling, obviously not sure where he was.

Cynthia clasped the hand nearest hers and stroked it. Em heard her father make a noise in the back of his throat, but no words came out. A desperate look passed over his face, and Em swallowed down the tears that threatened to take over.

A nurse appeared beside them, pretty black hair just showing from under her white veil. Em found her awe-inspiring. With a pang she wished for a moment that she could have been a nurse.

‘He’s really not very well today.’ She spoke quietly, to Cynthia. ‘We’re just hoping to see an improvement. But you’re doing the right thing. Do talk to him.’ With a smile she moved away.

Cynthia began to talk to him, telling him they were all getting on all right and that various of his pals had asked after him. Then Em took over for a bit. She was in full flow, telling him about Robbie and his pranks with the other lads, some of which had upset her at the time, but she made them into a joke for his granddad.

Then her eyes met her mother’s, both of them stricken, when they saw Bob’s welling eyes, and a tear roll down the side of his face to the pillow.

‘You come in if you can, bab,’ Mr Perry said. ‘But if you can’t, I’ll manage for a day or two, or find someone to stand in for yer.’

‘I’ll try and get here, Mr P,’ Em promised. ‘I think I’d rather be busy. But Mom needs some help, and it’s not easy for our Joyce or Vi to get time off.’

‘Don’t you worry.’ Mr Perry patted her shoulder in a fatherly way. ‘Family comes first. I remember when my missus was taken bad – you’ve got to do your bit.’

Em was touched by everyone’s kindness. Bob, in his quiet way, had been a popular man. He’d worked in the same place, at the power station, for most of his working life and had made loyal friends, who came and asked after him. Most of all, though, Em was humbled by the way her in-laws treated her.

‘He’s no age,’ Edna said sorrowfully when she went back after her first visit to the hospital. In fact Edna and Bob were almost exactly the same age: fifty-three. ‘But there we are, bab – there’s no telling. He might be right as rain in a few months. Now, don’t you worry about things here. Robbie’ll be all right with us. You go and look after your mother.’

Em, with a pang, realized that Robbie would indeed be perfectly all right without her. She hated handing him over to anyone else to look after, but was grateful for Edna being so kind and capable. Her father-in-law, Bill, was also quietly concerned and asked after her dad.