Clover's Child (25 page)

‘There we go, gorgeous.’

Paolo placed the dinky cup and saucer in front of her and she stirred the thick, frothy contents. It smelt lovely. He loitered before returning to the sanctuary of his counter. Wiping his hands on his apron, he slid into the seat opposite: Sol’s chair.

‘Your fella coming in?’

Dot shook her head. ‘Nah, we split up.’ It surprised her how easily she could utter the words that stung her mouth like poison.

‘I did wonder, as we haven’t seen you both for a while. But I have to say, I’m shocked, I really am.’

‘Really?’

‘Yeah! I see all sorts in here – charmers who think they can woo a dozy tart with a bacon sandwich and a few words of chat, players who come in with a different bird every week. And then there was you two. I thought you made a smashing couple.’

‘I thought so too, but he did a runner!’ She chewed her bottom lip, trying to make light of her heartache.

‘What? Never! Gawd, he didn’t seem the type. Well, all I can say, he must’ve had a bloody good reason, cos he was as smitten as ever I’ve seen.’

Dot stared at him, her eyes wide. She swallowed the bubble of happiness and excitement that rose in her throat. ‘Did you think so?’

It was the first time that anyone had confirmed what she thought she knew. Paolo, a witness with no axe to grind or any background knowledge, was able to tell her what she had longed to hear, confirmation that it hadn’t all been in her mind.

‘Yeah, absolutely. I don’t mind telling you that I used to watch you together. That was the real deal if ever I’ve seen it, the way you looked at each other, the way you were together. It was something else. I thought that you two would have gone all the way.’

Dot beamed. Maybe, just maybe what Paolo was saying was true. Sol
had
loved her after all, and maybe he did have a bloody good reason for disappearing in the way he did and if that was the case, she wasn’t mad after all.

‘It felt like love.’ She smiled

‘Well, mate, it certainly looked like it.’

‘Thanks, Paolo, that means a lot to me. You’ll never know how much.’

‘You’re welcome. D’you know, I don’t even know your name.’

‘It’s Clover.’

The euphoria of Paolo’s words didn’t last long; in fact it had worn off by the time she got home. It had only confused her more. If Sol had loved her as he said he did, why did he bugger off? Dot dozed, curled up like a little ball, lying on the mattress and wishing she could sink into it.

The rapping on her door roused her. ‘Yep?’

Barb pushed the door open and popped her head around the frame. ‘You decent?’

‘Come in.’

‘I was worried about you leaving on your own the other night, thought we’d agreed we’d all travel home together. You didn’t even stay for the music. They were brilliant. Wally said you just upped and left like you’d had enough.’

Dot remembered his sarcastic tone, his jibe. ‘Yeah, something like that. Sorry, Barb, I just wasn’t in the mood.’ As she spoke, her fingers plucked at the tiny loops of the candlewick bedspread.

‘D’you fancy a walk? Thought we could go and sit on the docks, it’s been a while.’

Dot looked at her friend; it had been a while, a while since they had spent any time together, a while since they were close. She felt a pang of guilt.

‘Why not? That’d be lovely.’

Barb visibly brightened; she had clearly missed her mate.

The two strolled along as the sun sank behind the buildings and the chimneys puffed away, shooting plumes of fine black fog up into the night sky. Dot pictured her neighbours in those houses, gathered around the hearths, with gravy-filled turkey and ham pies made up of Christmas leftovers and mugs of tea. In a few days’ time it would be another year. Dot looked forward to putting 1961 behind her, but, equally, the thought that 1962 would be a year in which she wouldn’t see her son, that this time next year she would be thinking,
I have not seen him this year
, was too awful to contemplate.

The water shimmered, reflecting the street lights and red and green flashes from the lamps on the boat decks. The girls took up their familiar seats on the dockside bollards.

‘It’s been a while since we came down here. We used to do it all the time, didn’t we; just sit and natter.’

‘Yep, it was all we did, Barb!’

‘But funny how it was enough. I’ve had some of my best times sitting here in all weathers mucking about with you.’

‘Same.’ It was true, before Sol, that was normal life and she had been happy.

‘D’you remember that Russian bloke, that day when I chucked a fag in your hair?’

‘Yes!’ The two rocked and giggled. That had been a funny day, one that would stay with them.

When the laughter subsided, Barb coughed, gathered her courage. ‘I’ve been worried about you, mate.’

‘Oh, you don’t have to worry about me. I’m all right.’

‘I know you say that, but I have and I am. You ain’t yourself, Dot, and you haven’t been for a while.’ Barb fell silent. Having given her friend the cue to open up, she waited for the explanation. None was forthcoming.

She tried again. ‘I’ve missed you.’

Dot knew Barb was sincere. ‘I’ve missed you too,’ she replied, although in truth she had been so preoccupied over recent months that her friend had rarely entered her head.

‘I’ve been wondering, did that farmer do something to you?’

‘What?’ Dot momentarily forgot the lie that had been cast. The question caught her off guard.

‘That farmer at the hop-picking place, did he do something to you or someone else there? Were his kids mean cos you were looking after them and not their mum?’

Dot sighed and gazed at the water.
If only…

‘No, no. Nothing like that. I’m fine, honest!’

‘But you ain’t fine, despite what you say. I know you ain’t. You haven’t been fine since you were seeing that black bloke…’

‘Sol.’ Dot would only tolerate him being referred to by name.

‘Yeah, him. I’m trying to figure it all out, Dot. You and me was real close and then you started seeing him an’ it was like I didn’t exist, an’ I’m not moaning, I understand what it’s like when you just wanna be with someone, I do! But then you bugger off to work for the farmer bloke and I had to find out from me Aunty Audrey, you never even said, you just went and we were supposed to be best friends. And then you come back and it’s as if someone has put a Dot lookalike in your house, someone that looks like you and sounds a bit like you when you do eventually talk, but it’s like… it’s like someone turned your spark off, put out your flame, you look empty.’

Dot was grateful for the encroaching darkness and the fact that she could cry into the night without being seen. That was exactly how she felt, as if someone had put out her flame – empty. She placed her hand on her flat stomach – empty. Her nipples tensed inside her cotton bra, desperate to feel the seeking mouth of her newborn, her son, her Simon.

‘I’m sorry, Barb—’

‘No, I don’t want an apology,’ Barb fired back. ‘That’s not what I mean. I just wanna know if I can do anything to make it better. I want the old Dot back.’

Dot laughed; the old Dot didn’t exist any more. The old Dot had drifted along with her head full of inconsequential rubbish, preoccupied with how to make people laugh and the state of her fringe, working hard to get enough money to have fun, an easy life. The state in which she now existed allowed no space for frivolity; her experience had left her so changed, so broken.

‘I am sorry, Barb. I’ve neglected you, I know, but the thing is, I fell for Sol completely and I thought he was the one.’

‘I thought so too, never seen you so smitten and he couldn’t take his eyes off you! I was planning the bloody wedding!’

Dot smiled, still unable to control the rising tide of happiness at having a second person in a week give her this sweet information. She had loved him so much, missed him so acutely that even this felt like a connection of sorts, a link across the miles and confirmation that even if their relationship had been only temporary, it had been real.

‘And then he left without saying so much as goodbye; no explanation, nothing. It broke my heart, mate, literally broke my heart and I don’t think it will ever feel better, I really don’t.’

Barb crouched beside where her friend sat and placed her hands on her mate’s knees, like a mum trying to console a fallen toddler. ‘Look at me, Dot. It will get better, I promise you it will. We’ve all been there, love, and it does get better, it gets easier and the next amazing bloke that comes along will rub out the old bloke that you used to think about all the time, he’ll take his place. It’ll all be okay.’

Dot knew this was Barb’s truth and she appreciated her friend’s concern, but she also knew that what she had felt for Sol was a once in a lifetime love that no ‘new person’ could ever come along and erase. And even if this wasn’t the case, the longing she felt for their child put her loss in a whole other league. Dot hoped that Barb would never know that sort of heartache.

‘Thanks, Barb, you’re probably right.’

‘I am right. I ain’t as stupid as I look!’

‘And what’s been happening with you, what’s your news?’

Barb stood and plunged her hands into her pockets, facing the water with her scarf wound around her neck to ward off the chill.

‘Not much change, really, except I’ve been seeing quite a bit of Wally – he’s all right. We haven’t… y’know… but I reckon we will and then who knows?’

‘Be careful.’

Barb turned her head and smiled. ‘I will, thanks for that, Mum!’

‘I just don’t want you to do anything silly, I don’t want you to mess up your life.’
Like I’ve messed up mine.

‘I won’t! Anyway, I could do worse than end up with Wallace Day. He’s never going to set the world on fire, but he’s reliable, earning, and it’s just easy, cos he knows me mum and dad and your mum and dad and it just feels… easy.’

Dot pictured the tall, thin Wally Day who had worked with her dad on the sheet metal. She saw his gangly arms and legs, his almond-shaped eyes, small chin and large teeth. She couldn’t imagine kissing a mouth that wasn’t perfect like Sol’s. She didn’t want Barb to settle for ‘easy’, throwing her lot in with a strange fish like Wally, who rarely blinked, laughed or expressed an opinion that wasn’t a repetition of what the person before had said. She wanted Barb to know what it felt like to come alive when another human being said your name, touched your skin and promised you sunshine.

But Barb wasn’t finished. ‘Anyway, what’s the alternative? I ain’t getting any younger.’

‘You’re only eighteen; you can do anything you want.’

‘Can I?’

‘Course you can. What would you do right now, if you could do anything, anything at all?’

Barb considered this; her answer was already battering the inside of her lips, clearly not the first time she had thought what she would do if only she could.

‘I’d like to be a hairdresser on a cruise ship.’

‘Really?’

‘Yep.’ Barb nodded. ‘I’d like to sit in a massive ship as it hurtled through the waves. It would have chandeliers and sparkling wine glasses – like the
Titanic
, but without the sinking. I’d do the hair of all the ladies before they went to posh dos in long frocks and they’d all be stinking rich and give me massive tips that I would spend when the ship docked wherever it was going!’

‘Knowing your luck, Barb, it’d dock right here in Limehouse Basin and you’d end up in the local chippie with a fist full of tips!’

‘That’d be all right, I’d treat everyone that came through the door to six a chips and a pickled onion!’

‘Generous to a fault!’

‘That’s me. And what about you, Dot, what would you do if you could do anything for a job, anything at all?’

Dot looked out over the water. ‘Well, it sounds daft, but I’d like to design and make clothes, not just any clothes, but posh frocks, beautiful gowns that ladies wear as they descend grand staircases before getting whisked around a shiny wood dance floor…’

‘Mate, I think you’d be brilliant at that. You’ve always had a good eye an’ I used to listen to the suggestions you made to girls who were getting dresses made, it was always perfect.’

‘I’d call it Clover Originals.’

‘Why “Clover”?’

‘Because clovers are lucky!’ Dot’s response was instant.

‘Well, I’d like to wear a Clover Original.’

‘Would you?’

‘Course, if I had enough money – you sound a bit pricey!’

‘Well, it ain’t going to happen, mate, but thanks for your custom anyway!’

‘D’you know, it’s been lovely tonight, just like old times.’

Dot smiled. Yes it had, almost – if you didn’t count knowing that she would go home now and cry herself to sleep.

Barbara stood up and dusted her palms against her hips. ‘Come on, I’m off to meet Wally up the Barley Mow. You come too.’

‘No, I don’t want to be no gooseberry!’
And I want to go home to be on my own and sit with my shell.

‘Don’t be daft! It’s only Wally. Please, Dot, c’mon.’ Barb took her friend’s hands and pulled her into a standing position.

‘All right then, just one drink.’

Barb was delighted. ‘That’s my girl!’

‘I like being your girl.’

‘That’s good, because I am never going to let you go…’

The three had been sitting around the sticky-topped table at the Barley Mow for a couple of hours. The girls watched as Wally flipped Ind Coope beer mats, adding one at a time until he had mastered seven, for which Barb gave him a small clap. Dot was sipping her third gin and orange of the evening. She was definitely out of practice – it had been a long while since she’d had a drink, but she enjoyed the fuzzy euphoria it brought. It was so pleasant to escape from the exhausting reality of everyday life, so she carried on. She slumped against Barb and as she struggled to angle the rim of her glass correctly, half of it slopped down the front of her shirt.

‘Oooh, Dot’s got wet boobies, again!’ She roared with laughter.

‘I think I’d better get her home!’ Barb chewed the inside of her cheek; this was not how she had envisaged their night out ending.