All the Days of Our Lives (40 page)

When Norm got in late that afternoon, he held her close in their room while she had a little cry. ‘It’s awful seeing him like that,’ she wept. ‘Just lying there – I didn’t even know him at first. He can’t speak and he can’t move: all down one side of his body . . . He knew us all right, but oh, Norm – he was so upset. I’ve never seen him like that before.’

Norm seemed to come into his own. He stroked her back and said, ‘Now look, love – our mom’s right. You need to pay attention to your mom and dad, the way things are at the moment. Don’t you worry about anything here.’

‘Everyone’s being so kind,’ Em sobbed, ashamed of the moaning she’d done. ‘I don’t deserve it.’

‘What’re you on about?’ Norm stepped back and looked into her blotchy face, laughing. He leaned in to give her a peck on her freckly nose. ‘You’re a daft thing sometimes. Now, come on – I’m going to walk you over to your mom’s, and you can stay there for a day or two till we see how things go.’

She looked up at him, full of emotion. ‘Oh, Norm, I do love you.’

He kissed her lips this time. ‘Love you too, silly.’

Days passed. They visited the hospital and tried to get on with things. Em did go into work, at least for the mornings. There was nothing much else she could do, and the hanging about was worse than being busy. And she popped home to see Robbie and Norm when she could.

But she knew she was in the right place for the moment – with her own family. Violet was relieved to have her there. Though Joyce still lived at home, she and Violet had never been close and Joyce spent nearly all her time out with her boyfriend, Larry. Violet would have found it hard to be on her own at home just with Cynthia.

As the days passed, Bob showed very little sign of improvement and all they could do was wait and hope. They got through the evenings together, trying to distract themselves, but in the end there was only one topic of conversation and all of them were full of their memories.

‘I remember the first time I saw your dad,’ Cynthia said, as the three girls sat in the back room one evening, spinning out weak cups of tea. Now summer was here, they didn’t need to light the fire. They all knew this story, but they loved her telling it. ‘I’d moved out to get away from my stepmother . . .’ Her faced creased with bitterness. ‘Mom was dead – and Geoff, my brother, who was killed in the first war. Anything was better than living with her. I had a factory job, was earning my keep just about – no great hopes. Then I met your dad on the tram.’ Her lips curved up at the memory. ‘The way he was looking at me – oh, it makes me blush even now, thinking about it!’

‘Love at first sight,’ Violet said dreamily.

Cynthia got up, seeming to move more slowly, as if stunned and disorientated by what had happened. She fetched the old wedding photograph that had been sitting on the mantel for years. Two handsome faces smiled out of it, young and full of hopes.

‘Let’s see,’ Violet said. She drew the picture right up to her face.

‘For heaven’s sake, Vi,’ Em said. ‘I told you: you need to get some specs – look at you, squinting like that! I’m going to take you and make sure you get some.’

‘All right,’ Violet said, gazing at the picture. ‘You look so pretty, Mom.’

‘And happy,’ Joyce said, leaning in to look.

‘It was a happy day.’

The tears came without warning. She put her hands over her face. ‘Oh! I can’t stand seeing him like that!’

‘Oh, Mom,’ Violet said, starting to cry as well. These last years their mom had been like a rock, always there. They hated it when anything upset her: it shook them, bringing back the days when she had not been able to be there always, when she had been taken into hospital.

Joyce, biting on one of her fingernails, looked helplessly at Em.

‘It’ll take time, Mom,’ Em said. ‘But they said he could get better.’ She could only just speak, through the lump in her throat.

‘I know,’ Cynthia said, wiping her eyes. ‘But he looks so poorly. I don’t see how he can get better.’

During those days, because of her father’s illness and being back in her mom’s house, Em found more of these painful memories kept coming back to her: things that had happened when they were all very young, things that usually she tried to forget. The years of her mother’s worst illness, when Em had been left to look after the others, were the most awful. Bob had taken comfort in the arms of another woman and Em had been like a worn-out, harassed mother at the age of eight. In those days they hadn’t known if their mom would ever get better and come home. Bob had been so sad, so lost without her.

One dinnertime, when it was just Em and Cynthia at home, they had been cleaning the house, trying to keep themselves occupied. They’d done upstairs most of the morning, Em cleaning her old childhood bedroom. She stood for a moment, thinking back. She remembered once, when things were really bad with Mom away, she had lost her temper with her father. That time he had come and sat on her bed while she wept bitter, desperate tears, and he had been sorry, and kind in his rough way. The memory brought her to tears again now. He’d been a quiet man all their lives, just always there, sleeves rolled up eating his tea, or in his chair, tired and mucky from work. But she knew his life revolved round them – all of them, but especially Cynthia, his wife. He was lost without her.

Em leaned on her broom, tears rolling down her cheeks, and a sudden extra dread seized her. How might she be without him? If Dad didn’t get better, would it make Mom poorly again as well? They had all hoped those days were over, and Em prayed from the bottom of her heart that they were.

Downstairs, at dinnertime, they listened to
Worker’s Playtime
and cleared up a bit. Cynthia cut some bread, holding the loaf under her arm. She fetched a couple of plates, then clicked off the wireless. Not looking at Em, she said, ‘I’ve always loved him. Your dad. Even with what happened.’

Em was completely taken aback. From the day Dad had come back home, after his time away with
that woman
, until now, none of them had ever mentioned it or her – Flossie Dawson – again. Everything about that heartbreaking time had been locked away in the past as they tried to heal and keep going as a family. But Mom must have been thinking back, just the way she had. Em felt the blood banging in her ears.

‘I know, Mom . . .’

‘See, it wasn’t his fault, what happened . . .’ She looked towards the window, her face full of pain. She seemed smaller suddenly, Em realized. In that moment she could see how her mother was going to look as an old lady.

‘It wasn’t yours, either, Mom.’ Em felt as if her chest was going to tear open as the grief of it all rushed back to her. ‘You were just poorly, that’s all.’

Cynthia turned to her, eyes welling. ‘I know. But I always felt I should have been able to help it, to stop it. And leaving you and the others . . .’ She put her hand over her mouth and shook her head for a moment, then reached for a knife to spread margarine on the bread. ‘Bob’s a man – he didn’t know what to do . . .’

‘Mom.’ Em couldn’t stand any more. She went and took the knife off Cynthia. ‘You sit down – I’ll do this. Look, we’ll go and see Dad this afternoon.’ Her words came out in a rush. ‘Don’t go over it all. We’ve been all right, haven’t we? Don’t make a rod to beat yourself.’

Cynthia looked up at her and bravely pulled herself together, even managing a smile. ‘All right, love. Yes – you’re right. Let’s talk about something else. You heard from Molly?’

Em pulled the corners of her mouth down. ‘Not for months. I had a card, from Skeggy – she was at another of them camps, working, I s’pose.’

Cynthia took a mouthful of bread, resting her elbows on the table, frowning a little.

‘She does seem to drift, that one.’

‘Yes,’ Em said sadly. ‘I don’t know what she’s thinking of, really. I thought she was going to get on all right – in the war and that. But now . . .’

Cynthia shook her head. ‘Poor Molly.’

That afternoon they found Bob looking a bit brighter.

‘He’s trying to say more,’ the nurse told them when they arrived. ‘And I think there’s a bit more feeling in his hand.’

Encouraged, they went to his bedside, finding that he had been moved a bit further along the ward. As they approached, Em saw him catch sight of them and recognize them. He raised his right arm, the good one, in greeting.

‘Hello, love,’ Cynthia said softly, leaning to kiss his cheek. He was propped up on pillows, looked clean and had been shaved, but his face seemed sunken and had not yet regained its normal colour. He tried to say something in reply, but could not manage the words and looked stricken when all that came out was a kind of groan.

‘Never mind,’ Cynthia said. ‘It’ll get better – you just wait and see. Look, we’ve brought you a couple of bananas, love – those’ll do you good.’

Em smiled at him, but Bob laid his head back against the pillow suddenly, as if he was already worn out. They told him little bits of news, though there was not much to tell. It soon became clear that he was very tired and started to doze as they sat with him, his mouth dropping open.

‘I think we might as well go now,’ Cynthia whispered, anxiously. ‘But I don’t like to leave him without saying goodbye . . .’ She didn’t add
just in case
. . . She leaned over him and very gently kissed his forehead. ‘Bye-bye, love.’

They slipped away along the ward. At the door they turned, and Em saw her father still sleeping in the same position.

‘Bless him,’ Cynthia said, distressed.

Em took her arm and together they walked back along the echoing corridors.

It was the last time they saw Bob alive. The next day, they were told, he had had another enormous stroke in the night and had not woken up again.

They left Robbie with Edna when they went to the funeral.

‘I don’t want him to have to come,’ Em said. ‘I know he’s old enough to understand, sort of anyway, but it’s a lot for a little one.’

She knew she also needed room for her own grief, without having to explain things to him all the way through.

It was a heavy August day and Em and her sisters, all in summer dresses, walked red-eyed along the peaceful path, lined with tilting gravestones, from Witton cemetery. Sid, Em’s brother, was arm in arm with his wife Connie, while Violet and Joyce walked together, and Em and Norm walked either side of Cynthia. There were no tears from her now: she was numb and heavy with sorrow.

They saw Cynthia into one of the waiting cars and, before getting in themselves, Norm put his arm round Em’s shoulders.

‘All right, love?’ His eyes searched her face and she looked back at him, deeply. It felt as if, over those days since her father had died, she and Norm had come back together and were really seeing each other properly. She was so grateful to him.

‘As I’ll ever be,’ she said, managing a tiny smile.

‘Oh, love.’ He held her close for a minute and she closed her eyes, face pressed against him. Her Norm. He was a good’un – she knew that really.

‘Come on,’ he said, releasing her. ‘In you get.’

She slid in beside her mother, who was looking out of the far window, up at the trees. Norm got in last, beside her. The car moved off and she felt him take her hand, and in those moments all that mattered was the warmth of his hand and the knowledge that he was there and that he loved her.

August 1948

‘Molly – how lovely to see you!’

As Ruth leaned to kiss her cheek, Molly observed that Ruth had become socially a little more confident and less awkward. She had taken to wearing her long, dark hair swept up and fastened with a big slide at the back and looked a little more sophisticated.

‘Nice to see you too,’ Molly said, feeling awkward herself, as she always did when she first met Ruth, beside whom she felt herself to be an odd mix of glamorous and rough, with her big curvy figure, eye-catching hair and down-to-earth ways. ‘Come on – I’ll show you where your billet is!’ She eyed Ruth’s little shoulder bag. ‘You haven’t brought much with you, have you?’

‘Well, enough for a long weekend, I’d say,’ Ruth laughed, looking around her. ‘This is lovely! It must feel like old times, moving from camp to camp!’

Molly was becoming a regular in summer-camp jobs – this time at Bracklesham Bay, a Pontin’s camp near Chichester.

‘In some ways . . .’ Molly grimaced. ‘Not in others, though. But it’s all right. Keeps me going.’

‘You look very well on it – all bronzed and healthy. How’s the swimming coming on?’

‘All right – I get a bit of practice in my time off.’ One of the lads at a Butlin’s camp where Molly had worked last year had started teaching her to swim, and she loved being in the water and how good she felt afterwards. ‘We can go in a bit, if you like. You can swim outdoors or in – take your pick! Here we are, look.’

They reached the cabin that Ruth had rented for a long weekend. Ruth lifted the strap of her shoulder bag over her head and put it down, looked around inside the little cabin with its simple furniture, excited as a child.

‘Oh, this is so nice!’ She turned from looking out of the little window. ‘It’s wonderful to be here. I love Cambridge dearly, but it can be a bit of a hothouse.’