Faded Dreams (28 page)

   Her mother was sure Betty would finish
up in the asylum and was relieved when the ECT came to an end. But even though she wasn’t sitting around crying or staring into space any more, her memory had gone haywire. Her struggle at the butcher’s shop to recognise the different coins in her purse was followed  by bewilderment as she unwrapped  meat she didn’t remember buying.

   A year on, and strictly against doctor’s orders, she announced that she was coming off the drugs that were doing little more than dulling what was left of her senses. There was a reason for her new-found confidence and determination – romance.

1954

   Sitting on the park bench gently pushing the pram to and fro, Betty was oblivious to the world around her until the dog jumped up and licked her face, returning her sharply to the here and now. The young man apologised profusely and slipped the collar and lead over the brown mongrel. Betty stared at the floor without replying, but as he turned to walk away she found her voice.

   ‘What’s your dog called?’ she shouted after him. 

   ‘Laddie…what’s your baby called?’

   ‘Janet.’

   With a smile and a wave he was gone. Clasping her clammy hands to stop them shaking Betty gazed after him down the long Broad Walk hoping he would reappear.

   She couldn’t believe she’d had the nerve to talk to him. It wasn’t as if she was interested in boys. Weren’t they all either animals like Manfred, or lunatics like her dad? In those few brief moments the stone that for so long had been her heart began to soften. The following day she made sure she was in the same place at the same time.

   ‘Mummy… look…doggie.’ Janet squealed with pleasure,

   ‘Hiya Janet,’ he paused by the pram. ‘Hiya Janet’s mummy...er...whatever her name is.’‘It’s…it’s…  B…Betty,’ she stammered.

‘Mine’s Jeff,’ his tone was casual, ‘what’s that husband of yours doing letting you and the child sit here all on your own, it’ll be dark in half an hour?’

   ‘There’s…there’s no husband.’ There, she’d said it! Now he’d be off down the park quicker than you could say Jack Robinson and she’d never see him again.

   ‘Well then, I bet there’s nobody that’ll object if I take the weight off my legs and sit down for a bit.’

   And so began a sweet and tender romance that Betty could only have dreamed of;  a romance that gave her the incentive to throw away the pills that had held her in limbo for so long. She was tired of slurring her words, shaking and sweating for no reason, and having to concentrate before she could take in the things Jeff was talking about.

    She told him about Janet’s father but not in any great detail, (thankfully Manfred was buried deep in her memory, one of the few advantages of the ECT.)

   She learned that Jeff’s parents had died when he was a boy, he had lived with his sister and brother-in-law since he was 14, had just finished serving his apprenticeship as an electrician and now had a job at The Royal Ordnance Factory.

   It seemed that Betty fell in love more with what Jeff
wasn’t
than what he
was.
He
wasn’t
a silver-tongued, courteous foreigner with a mysterious or adventurous past like Manfred. He
wasn’t
handsome in the same way as her favourite film stars, Paul Henreid and John Payne. He
wasn’t
hilariously funny either, like her dad on his better days.

   He was down to earth and ordinary. Yes, ordinary, that was it. No fancy words or bunches of flowers from him, no preening himself in front of the mirror. No tantrums, and no broken promises either, or not turning up when he said he would, like her dad.

   He was barely an inch taller than her so she’d had to give up her high heels. With his long face, straight hair that was neither one colour nor another, brown eyes that blinked more
than
they should have, he wouldn’t turn any other girl’s head that was for sure; oh yes, and he was a year younger than her.

   None of these things mattered to her. The way her heart turned over when she saw him he might as well have been Paul Henreid or John Payne. As for the blinking, which happened whenever he was anxious, well she even found that endearing. His family was just as kind as he was and she felt sure her own family would like him too.

   She broached the subject. ‘I’ve met this lad, is it okay if he comes for his tea on Sunday?’

   ‘Does he sup?’ her father grinned, he’s no good if he doesn’t sup, Betty. We don’t want no fellas here unless they like a pint or two of Thwaites.’

   He took to Jeff straight away. A lad that not only “supped”  although it had to be said not as often as he did, but a quiet enough lad who was good with Betty and more important, good with Janet as well.

   When Jeff first proposed marriage it was enough to fill Betty with panic. After all that trouble with Manfred she had sworn she would never get married, she’d have to be out of her mind to go for the sort of life her mother and Granny Sefton had led, at the beck and call of a fella for the next fifty years.

   ‘No, let’s stay as we are Jeff,’ she told him. ‘I could never make you happy… I’m not your type.’

   ‘You mean
I’m
not
your
type.’ He dropped his chin to his chest and when he raised it again tried to control his eyelids relentlessly battering his cheeks. ‘I’m not like your dad… or that German bloke,’ he said softly.

   ‘I know, I know. It isn’t that there’s anything wrong with you, Jeff. It’s me… it’s just that I’m not ready to get married, to you or anybody else.’

   ‘You love me don’t you Betty?’

   ‘Well, I
think
I do, I like you more than anyone I’ve ever known, but as for getting married…it’s too big a step…I think we’re too young.’

   Jeff was undeterred. ‘I’m going to keep on asking you but I won’t wait forever Betty.’ So every couple of weeks he asked her but her answer was always the same.

   Ellen thought she was pushing her luck. ‘He’ll get fed up Betty and chuck you, and then what’ll you do? He’ll make a good husband y' know.’

   ‘Well,
you
marry him then!’ Betty gave her sister a playful slap. ‘You’re only shoving me into getting married because you want to be a bridesmaid!’

*

   Her father's coughing and spluttering were as much a part of him as eating and drinking. But it was when he started coughing blood and was drenched in sweat during the cold winter nights that Florrie began to worry.

   ‘Stop fussing like an old ‘en… I’m all right,’ he told her, ‘just a bit tired, that’s all.’

   ‘Don’t tell lies, whose leg
do you think you’re pulling?' Florrie was losing her patience. 'Weight’s dropped off you these last few months and you know it. That suit looks like it’s one of Fatty Arbuckle’s, it fits you
nowhere. N
ow do as you’re bloody-well told for a change and get yourself off to the doctor’s.’

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

   Tuberculosis was diagnosed and Joe was swiftly dispatched to the seaside. Not to the Blackpool of his youth with its bright lights and noisy pubs, but to the Devonshire Road Isolation Hospital where he was measured and weighed and was found to have lost a third of his normal weight.

   The consultant ordered ‘bed-rest’ to a man who found it hard to sit still for ten minutes. Frequent transfers by ambulance to the x-ray facility were followed by anxious waiting for the good or bad results.

   Florrie had been warned that depression went with the illness and that his personality would alter but this would be nothing new. She had lived with his moods for years, gentle and funny one minute, cruel and abusive the next.

   But Joe became more and more morose and even though Frank Randle, one of his comic heroes from stage and screen,  lay in the next bed it did nothing to raise his spirits. How could it, with him and Frank nervously knocking on death’s door?

   With his frail frame swamped by the out-sized tartan dressing gown, its plaited cord pulled tightly around his middle, he looked like a gaunt, grown-up “Wee Willie Winkie” that had stepped off the page of a nursery rhyme book. When he gained a couple of pounds he was optimistic, then miserable when
he
didn’t but somebody else
did
.

   Florrie and the children tried to comfort him with letters and visits. They told him how much they all missed him. How Rusty, his two year old dog, missed him so much that it had taken to destroying shoes and anything else lying around, which the vet  explained was a reaction to the stress of being parted from him.  Joe was unmoved. ‘Give him a good
hiding
that’s what he’d get if I were there. Give him a good leathering afore he tears the bloody house up… that’ll learn him. Our  Bess would never have destroyed stuff like that.’

   Some visits he was impossible to cheer up but other times they found him much improved and regaling his fellow-patients with funny stories.

   ‘We could do with a Joe in every one of our wards, he certainly livens everybody up,’ Sister told them, then lowering her voice, ‘though we never know how long his good mood will last.’

   Florrie shook her head. ‘He’s one on his own, our Joe is, he’s been telling us for years that there’ll never be another one, and happen that’s just as well!’

   One Sunday afternoon Ellen took her old school friend, Mary Kingsley to see him and found his sense of humour and energy back to normal. He was standing on top of the square wooden table in the centre of the ward entertaining everyone with his jokes and impersonations of popular singers. Much to Mary’s embarrassment he pulled her on to the table beside him. “Baby Face, You’ve Got The Cutest Little Baby Face”, he sang in Al Jolson’s voice, as he stroked her hair and twirled her round.

1955 

   Plans were made to celebrate Ellen’s 21
st
birthday on the hospital ward with a birthday cake and a bottle of sherry. Her dad had once promised her a big ‘do’ with all her workmates  from the nursery there;  that was now out of the question.

   There would just be her mum, Betty and Billy, the nurses and patients, and Mary who had been like one of the family for years.  Mary was unenthusiastic - 
she had a lot of other things to do that day or she may not even be home from college that weekend -
which wasn't like her.

  ‘Well that’s what you keep telling me but it’s not good enough,’ Ellen said, finally, ‘I’ll be 21 next week and you’re supposed to be my best mate. So come on, you’d better tell me the real reason.’

   Mary made a few more feeble excuses that didn’t convince her, before taking a letter from her handbag.

   ‘I don’t know what to do about
this
, Ellie,’ she said in a low voice.

   Staring down at her father’s neat, familiar handwriting Ellen fought against the urge to throw up. She had forgiven her father for just about every miserable day he had brought to the family, mainly because the bad times were to some extent balanced by the happy times, but she could never forgive him for this.

   No doubt about it, it was a love-letter. He wrote of how his feelings for Mary had grown stronger… how he couldn’t keep quiet any longer and it was time the beautiful young lady who had stolen his heart knew how he felt… how he wished he was younger and had met her at a different time… how all he wanted was to hold her in his arms and tell her how deeply he loved her… how he wished he wasn’t already married… how he would always love her.

   ‘What do you think I should do about it?’ Mary’s quiet voice pierced the dizziness and wave of disgust sweeping over Ellen.

   ‘Just ignore him, the daft sod. Give it here, or rip it up and chuck it away,’ she plastered a fake smile across her face then just as quickly wiped it off. ‘You ought to know by now what he’s like, Mary… always acting the goat… he lives in a dream-world… he’s just having you on, the daft bugger.’

   Both of them knew it was more than that, they knew each other too well. The shame in Ellen’s eyes met the discomfiture in Mary’s. They reached out their arms instinctively to each other, wanting to touch, to feel the warmth of their friendship before it drained away, then took a step back instead. Ellen felt that any physical contact with Mary would feel like it was her
dad
who was touching her friend.

   ‘I’m sorry Mary,’ she mumbled, then turned and staggered away.

*

   The big day came and Florrie placed the bottle of sherry and birthday cake on the table next to the vase of mixed flowers. Joe lay on top of his blanket staring despondently at the ceiling.

   ‘Come on, Joe, cheer up for God’s sake, it’s our Ellie’s 21
st
.’

    Ellen took her father’s hand and forced herself to kiss his cheek.

   ‘Happy Birthday, cock,’ he muttered half-heartedly, handing her a birthday card. ‘Where’s Mary?’

   ‘She can’t come,’ her words snapped at the heels of his like an angry terrier. She cringed at the thought of Mary uppermost in his mind today of all days. He turned his face to the wall and spoke not another word for the next two hours, while his family handed out cake and sherry to the patients and nurses and everyone pretended to have a party.