Someone Special (60 page)

He looked at the tiny café and his stomach contracted with alarm. It was tiny, womblike – worse, tomblike! He would never be able to stay there long enough to order coffee, let alone drink it. He looked down at her, formulating excuses, but his mind wasn’t quick enough.

‘All right, if you want,’ he muttered. ‘A quick coffee then.’

Nell drew him into the café, a firm hand on his wrist. Her heart had nearly broken when she had first seen him – so pale, so woebegone, so utterly unlike the Snip she had known so well. Every instinct told her that he’d had a terrible time and wasn’t over it yet, told her, also, that he needed her. He can come back with me to Lynn if he doesn’t want to get work down here, she thought, going over to the counter to order coffees and a couple of cheese rolls. He’ll want to work the fairs again, of course, but that may take time. His father wouldn’t want him in any event, and though the Gullivers always needed chaps they would be doubtful about Snip’s ability to move heavy equipment with only one arm.

She stood by the counter watching the short, stumpy man behind it preparing the drinks. He had a huge pot full of hot milk and an even bigger one full of hot coffee;
they simmered on a tiny stove and he mixed them together with great panache. A headwaiter at the Savoy couldn’t have done it better, Nell thought, never having been to the Savoy in her life. Beside her, Snip was moving uneasily; she looked across at him, then stared. Sweat beaded his brow and his good hand was clenched into a fist. He was biting his lower lip; she could see how his teeth were digging into the soft flesh – was he in pain? Something was very wrong.

‘Snip? Go and sit down, I’ll bring the coffee over to a table. Go on, you look ghastly.’

He nodded and went. He chose the table nearest the door and she saw that his eyes had fixed themselves on the tiny, steamy panes of glass nearest him. They were the only customers – why had he chosen that table? It was colder over there, but then it was more private, she supposed. She carried the coffee and cheese rolls over, slid into one of the slatted chairs and smiled reassuringly. She pushed a cheese roll into his hand, and watched it clench on the roll, clench and clench until the roll was hidden, squashed to almost nothing.

‘Snip?’ she said uncertainly. ‘Is – is something the matter?’

He bent forward until his nose was a couple of inches from her face. ‘I – can’t – stay – here!’

The words were forced between stiff lips. Nell shook her head and took his hand in hers. Gently she uncurled his fingers and removed the soggy ruin of a roll.

‘Darling Snip, what is it? Are you ill?’

‘I – don’t – know, Nell …’ His hand, abandoning the cheese roll, clutched at her hand. ‘It’s too – sm-sm-sm …’

‘Hush, sweetheart, hush.’ She bent forward, stroking the hair from his forehead, feeling the sweat ice-cold on her palm. She moved her chair round, so that they were
sitting side by side instead of opposite. ‘Nell’s here, Nell’s with you, nothing will hurt you.’

He began to relax. It was strange to see the limbs which had been rigid as iron become flesh and blood once more. He let her take his hand and carry it to her mouth. She kissed it gently, one finger at a time, then each knuckle. He was crying again, tears raining down his cheeks, but at least that anguished rigidity had left him for the moment.

‘You won’t go, Nell? You
really
won’t go? I don’t know what’s been happening to me, but I’ve been so bloody frightened! All sorts of things scare me now: I don’t sleep, I can’t bear closed doors; I’m nothing but a useless hulk if the truth were known.’

She rubbed against him as a cat might, looking up at him, her glance teasing, affectionate. ‘What nonsense is this? My dear Snip, that door has been closed ever since we came in and you’ve managed to bear it. You’ve been ill and in hospital for a long time and horrid things have happened to you. It’s natural and normal that you shouldn’t be too keen on small spaces, if that’s what you mean. It happens to lots of men.’

‘It does?’ He stared at her, the beginnings of a smile twitching his mouth. ‘No one told me that. I thought I was the only bloke in the universe to go through the war in … to go through the war the way I did and then end up scared of … not liking …’

‘I think it’s called claustrophobia,’ Nell said wisely. ‘Want to leave? You can, of course, but I’m going to stay and drink my coffee and eat the cheese roll. Tell you what, if you stay you can have the nice one and I’ll have the squashed one.’

‘I’ll – I’ll try to stay.’

Companionably, side by side, they drank their coffee. Nell pressed against him, a hand resting on his knee. He would not let her eat the squashed roll; he ate it himself,
in huge nervous bites, scarcely chewing at all, but he did eat it. And he stayed. Only when she rose did he get to his feet and then he followed her to the counter when she took their cups and plates back, thanked the man, turned back to the door.

They went out into the rainy afternoon. He put his arm around her waist, and they walked like competitors in a three-legged race, arms around each other, she trying to match her stride to his, laughing, getting tangled up with her overnight bag, telling him to stop fooling around and show her which turnings to take.

They reached a tall, thin house which Snip told her belonged to his landlady, Mrs Bancroft, and went around the back. Down a narrow alley, through a battered wooden door, across a small yard and in the back door. The front, Snip told her, was for the postman and visitors; he no longer counted as a visitor so she would not either.

Mrs Bancroft took her to her room; once there, with Snip in his own room changing out of his wet things, she faced the older woman.

‘He’s not well, is he?’ she asked, rubbing her hair on the towel the landlady provided. ‘He’s changed a great deal.’

‘He’s a prince to what he was,’ Mrs Bancroft said shortly. ‘There’s no bathroom but there’s cold water in the jug there and I’ll do you a cup of tea at eight tomorrer, wake you up. And don’t you try to get up to no hanky-panky, no funny business,’ she added flatly. ‘Not under my roof, Miss. I wouldn’t stand for it, young Morris would be out on ‘is ear I tell you straight.’

Nell drew herself up to her full height and glared at the woman. ‘Snip Morris and I are old friends, we’ve never been lovers and we never intend to be,’ she said furiously. ‘How dare you insinuate that I’d misbehave with anyone, let alone an old friend, Mrs Bancroft!’

‘Oh! Well, judgin’ by the way Mr Morris looks at you
and talks about you, he’s of a very different persuasion,’ Mrs Bancroft said sourly. ‘However, I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings, and I’m sorry. I’m sure you’ll
both
behave just as you ought.’

Nell nodded and began to unpack her nightdress and lay out her toothbrush and a tiny piece of soap. The landlady departed, telling Nell a trifle stiffly that though she could not undertake to supply tea, there would be supper laid out in the kitchen between ten and eleven that night.

‘Mr Morris said he’d take you out for tea this evenin’ and tomorrer dinner,’ she said. ‘He knows the situation regarding food. But as I said, I’ll do you both a supper, and breakfast tomorrer, of course.’

They went out for a meal and had fish and chips, tea and bread and butter and a small helping of trifle at a local café. They talked a great deal, but managed, Nell thought, to say very little.

Snip’s obvious dependence dismayed her; how would he get through life if he couldn’t face more than a few minutes in a small café? He seemed fine when she was with him, but when she got up from the table to go to the cloakroom she returned to find him white-faced and sweating, terror in every line of his rigid body.

Never having suffered from claustrophobia herself, she found it difficult to understand how he felt, but one glance was enough to convince her that he was undergoing a terrifying and cruel experience. And she could help, to some extent. So she sat very close to him, and touched him constantly, talked, laughed, told him stories about her life as a landgirl and then her experiences working in factories and shops. She made him laugh when she told him about Ariadne and poor Ted Smith and he was truly sorry to hear of Ugly Jack’s death though Hester’s story fascinated him, especially that she had a husband who was, of course, also Nell’s proper father. Nell did not think it necessary to tell Snip the full story; indeed,
she owed it both to her mother and to Matthew to do no such thing.

When she asked him, he told her a little about some foreign ports, notably Trincomalee, and even managed an amusing story or two about hospital, though the mention of the word made him clench his good hand. He told her about the other hand, the hand that wasn’t there but hurt and ached and gnawed at him, and she kissed the side of his face and smoothed his hair and told him that none of it mattered, not now she was with him again, and watched him relax.

‘I knew I’d be better with you,’ he said on the landing outside her room, tilting her chin gently with one finger and looking into her eyes with more emotion in his own than she cared to interpret. ‘It’s like magic the way you make me feel I can cope with it all. Magic.’

‘You’ll cope,’ Nell told him. ‘It takes time, that’s all. I’m incidental.’

‘You’re central,’ Snip said. He grinned at her with some of his old humour. ‘Oh, Nell, what’ll I do?’

‘Come back to Lynn with me if you don’t want to stay here, and see if you can find a job,’ Nell said promptly. ‘You’ll soon settle in. Goodnight, Snip, see you in the morning.’

‘Goodnight, darling Nell. I wish …”

But she had turned away and was closing her door, not wanting to hear the words she knew would follow.

The noise started in the night; a moaning, followed by a terrified shout. Feet thudded down the stairs and Nell, only just awake, sat bolt upright in bed as the door burst open. Snip stood in the doorway, white and sweaty, panting hard.

‘Snip, whatever …?’

‘I thought you’d left,’ Snip said hoarsely. ‘I woke up and heard you going quietly out of the gate so’s not to
wake me. I’m going to sleep outside your door, Nell, so you can’t go off and leave me. I couldn’t bear it if you went; I’d kill myself, I swear I would.’

‘I won’t go, Snip,’ Nell said gently, but her heart sank. He couldn’t come back to the Burroughes’s house with her, it wouldn’t be fair. And housing was impossible, he’d be lucky to get a shared room even in Lynn, which wasn’t exactly the centre of the universe. She had to work, she couldn’t be with him day and night.

‘You might go,’ Snip said wildly, sitting down on the landing and eyeing her with such distress and uncertainty that she could have wept. ‘You might go, and then where would I be? But if you’ll leave your door just the littlest bit open I’ll be able to see you, all night. I won’t have to worry then.’

‘All right, all right. Come in and pull up one of the chairs close to the bed. If you can snooze in that, we’ll hold hands and both get some sleep.’

He came in. On tiptoe, shyly. ‘Nell, am I going mad? I’m so scared of going mad. I saw men go mad and it’s not a nice thing, not nice at all.’

Nell was not yet twenty; her courage and resolution gave a distinct jerk and she was conscious of a desire to run away or lock her door and bury her head under the pillow. But then she reminded herself that this was Snip, her childhood hero and dear friend. He wasn’t going mad, he was just ill and unhappy, and he needed her, for now at any rate.

‘No, of course you aren’t going mad,’ she said robustly. ‘Do you think I’d ask a madman to sit by my bed all night, and hold my hand? If I did such a stupid thing, it would be I who was mad.’

He looked at her doubtfully for a moment. Then he smiled, a broad, happy grin. ‘You’re right. I’m all right really, I know I am. Especially when I’m with you, dear Nell.’

16

MRS BANCROFT TOOK
the promised cup of tea to Nell next morning and found her guest already out, the bed stripped, the girl’s small bag neatly packed. She then went up to the attic and found only her own son slumbering in his bed. The young couple returned for their breakfast, Snip looking better, Mrs Bancroft considered, than she had ever seen him look. He fairly bounced across the kitchen and gave her a hug.

‘Mrs Bancroft, you’re about to see the last of me,’ he said exuberantly. ‘Nell and me are going back to Lynn this afternoon. I’ll get work up there, so we can be together.’

Snip Morris’s money had been welcome but, truth to tell, Mrs Bancroft had worried about him, about his funny turns, the shouts in the night. She would not be sorry to see him leave, she decided.

‘That’s good news, Mr Morris,’ she said. ‘I’ll be sorry to see you go, of course, and Benjamin will miss you, but it’s for the best, I’m sure.’

She turned a considering gaze on Miss Makerfield, to find her looking white and strained and not nearly as delighted with the way things had panned out as Mr Morris plainly was. Ah well, Mrs Bancroft concluded, it’s only natural. The boy’s a big responsibility as things are at present, but he’s got sense and he’s young. He’ll come through all right, given time.

What to do next had not been easy to settle, and when Snip brought up the subject of marriage it muddied the waters even further. At first, that was. Snip suggested marrying as they sat in the train travelling from
Southampton to Waterloo, clutching her hand, beads of sweat forming on his brow and trickling down the sides of his face as he tried not to mind the enclosed space.

‘I would’ve asked you right off, if I’d been meself, like, but it’s different, now,’ he mumbled into her ear. ‘I’ve got nothing to offer, not like I did have. Oh, I’ve got me savings, but no job, no prospects … I thought I’d get work wi’ engines when I got back to civvy street, but no one wants an engineer wi’ only the one arm, and anyroad, I don’t reckon I could work shut up. Not now, not any longer.’

‘You’ll be all right, honest you will,’ Nell said in a desperate undertone. There was a woman in WRNS uniform sitting opposite who couldn’t take her beady eyes off them. ‘Give yourself time, dear Snip, don’t try to rush anything.’

‘I’m not,’ Snip muttered. ‘I daresay you wouldn’t want half a feller, even if it was me, eh? Because I am only half a feller, what wi’ only the one arm and my brain all shook up. I daresay you’ve got your eye on a normal bloke, eh?’