Someone Special (61 page)

‘You’re as normal as you ever were, and that’s normal enough for me,’ Nell said, giving his hand a quick squeeze and smiling teasingly at him. ‘When you reach Lynn and find yourself a proper job and start making new friends, you’ll probably decide you don’t want me, not the other way round!’

He took it wrong. He clutched her hand so tightly that she thought her fingers would snap like twigs and he turned in his seat to smile joyously at her, his eyes lit up like stars.

‘Then you will marry me? Oh Nell, sweetheart, you don’t know how happy that makes me! Ever since we were kids I’d told meself that when we were older we’d make a go of it. You mean everything to me, but you know
that, don’t you? I must’ve written it in a hundred letters, teased you about it, talked about after the war, when we could be together. But I was afraid, with me arm an’ all … Some girls wouldn’t be able to take it – I should’ve known you were different.’

Nell was silent for a moment. He had laid it all before her, his love, his dependence; how was she to tell him that she had not meant she would marry him? But why should she tell him, break his heart, she thought suddenly? Why was it impossible to marry Snip? It would not have seemed so impossible once. She could never marry Dan, and he had not written back to her so perhaps he guessed that her letter had not just been a whim. If she were safely married to someone else by the time he came home, explanations would be unnecessary. She was very, very fond of Snip and unlikely to fall in love with yet another young man … she might just as well marry Snip, who needed her so badly. It was all very well to tell herself that Snip would meet someone else, but privately she doubted it. He was staunch and loyal was Snip Morris, his feeling for her had been a while growing, she did not think it would die easily.

But was she being fair to him? Could she marry one man while knowing she was in love with another?

She looked around the crowded carriage. It seemed that every other passenger was either watching her or listening to her words; she shrank from explanations in such a public spot. She leaned closer, lowering her voice to a quiet whisper.

‘Darling Snip, this is neither the time nor the place. We’ll discuss the details when we get home to Lynn.’

He leaned back in his seat; his hand found hers again and closed convulsively over her fingers. His smile was blissful.

‘Home! Details! Oh Nell, Nell!’

*

The Burroughes were delightful, insisting that Snip should sleep on the couch in the living room so that the two of them could be under the same roof. Nell, mindful of what had happened at the boarding house in Southampton, pointed out to Snip that, should she wish to leave the house, she would have to pass the door he slept behind, but he just smiled and squeezed her hand. They were sitting side by side on that same couch, Nell waiting for Mrs Burroughes to make her a cup of cocoa, and Snip, it was easy to see, still in a daze of happiness, his worries forgotten, for the moment at any rate.

‘Leave? Why should you? And why should I worry if you did go out early, anyway?’ he pointed out with infuriating logic. ‘We’re going to get married, we love each other … I shall sleep like a log tonight.’

He may have done, but Nell, lying resentfully awake in her small bed, did not. Round and round in her head the disquieting thoughts buzzed: if I marry Snip I give up the hope of ever marrying Dan. I love Snip in a way, of course, but not in the way I used to love Dan … but I can never marry Dan, the thought of it makes me squirm, so why not be sensible and give Snip what he wants? People fall in love after they’re married – look at Mum and Ugly Jack. Well, they weren’t married, but they did most definitely love each other… Oh dear, why can’t I go to sleep and forget all about it for a while? But sleep continued to elude her and at six-thirty, when she heard Mrs Burroughes getting up and sneaking down the stairs to make the doctor his early morning cup of tea, she got out of bed and followed her old friend down to the kitchen.

Mrs Burroughes, in the act of putting the kettle on the gas stove, jumped as Nell opened the door, then sighed and relaxed. ‘You naughty girl, I told you to lie in today! You won’t be going back to work anyway; you and Snip have too much to arrange from what I gathered last
night.’ She smiled with real affection at her companion. ‘Come for a nice quiet chat, dear?’

‘I’ve come for some advice, I think,’ Nell said, closing the kitchen door carefully behind her. ‘Mrs Burroughes, I never did actually say I’d marry Snip, he just sort of read it into something I did say. And you know I’m not in love with him. He’s changed and so have I, and you needn’t tell me he needs me, because I know it, but is that a good enough reason for marrying someone?’

Mrs Burroughes picked up the teapot and stood it on the side of the stove to warm. Then she began to sort out cups and saucers.

‘I wish I had a few nice biscuits,’ she observed, taking her biscuit barrel off the dresser and peering into its depths as though she hoped the plain biscuits might have spawned fancy ones overnight. ‘Still, the homemade ginger ones are quite nice – does Snip like ginger nuts?’

‘He likes everything,’ Nell said despondently. ‘He had a tough childhood, his father used to hit him whenever he stayed still long enough and his stepmothers were always too busy raising their other children to worry about someone as self-reliant as Snip. He fed himself half the time; he told me once that he lived on raw crops from the fields the year his real mother died.’

‘Poor lad,’ Mrs Burroughes murmured, tipping the biscuits on to a plate. ‘Childhood’s an important time; you were much loved, Nell. Your confidence goes deep because you’ve never been unappreciated. Perhaps in a way it’s the price you pay for happiness – that other people, people like Snip, want to warm themselves at your flame.’

‘He wouldn’t have been like that once,’ Nell said quickly. ‘He’d have barged back into my life, tried to persuade me to marry him, and then, if I said no, he’d have barged right out again. Only now, it’s different. He’s different.’

‘I don’t agree,’ Mrs Burroughes said calmly. ‘He’d go now, Nell, if he thought you didn’t love him. Perhaps he knows you better than you know yourself, love. Why say you would, or why let him think you would, if you meant you wouldn’t?’

‘He misunderstood,’ Nell said reproachfully. ‘Didn’t you hear me, Mrs B?’

‘Yes, I heard you, but it didn’t make sense. You could have told him he was mistaken at once, quickly, before he had gone too far. He would have backed off you know. He’s very sensitive to the fact that folk may judge him useless. I suppose you considered marrying him and decided it was the sensible thing to do, because you’re fond of him.’

Nell got the jug of milk out of the scullery, and came back, chuckling and shaking her head. ‘Oh, Mrs B, you know too much! Yes, I thought I might just as well marry Snip, because the chap I thought I loved … but I’m not sure, any more. Snip isn’t himself, not yet. He depends on me so much, and … look, can I tell you the whole story?’

‘Of course, dear. But first, pop this teatray up to my dear old Sam, would you? Mondays are always busy in surgery and visiting and I like him to wake comfortably and relax before he comes down for his breakfast.’

‘Right; we’ll talk when I get back,’ Nell said.

It was a long story and Mrs Burroughes listened attentively; how Dan and Nell had met, their friendship, the long parting and the eventual reunion. Then to the painful moment when Hester had told her daughter that she and Dan were half-brother and sister.

When it was over she looked at Nell and smiled, but Nell could tell that she was neither shattered nor horrified by the news. ‘It must have been a shock for you, I do see that,’ she said cheerfully. ‘But I find it difficult to believe
that you could possibly be deeply in love with someone you’d only met a couple of times since you grew up. If you ask me, dear, you had a crush on a very handsome young man and that’s about it.’

‘I was in love with Dan when I was seven,’ Nell pointed out crossly. ‘I was, or I thought I was.’

‘At seven, Nell dear, that was a crush, a pash, not love a such,’ Mrs Burroughes said serenely, slicing bread and putting the slices, two at a time, under the hissing gas grill. ‘Believe me, a child of seven isn’t capable of deep emotional love, which is what a woman feels for a man and vice versa.’

‘I’m not sure what you mean by deep emotional love; I don’t see how anyone can feel love like that until they’ve been close for ages and ages,’ Nell protested. ‘But when Snip said he’d loved me from the first moment he saw me you seemed to think that was possible, and indeed I do think it’s true, so why can’t it be true for me, too?’

‘Because Snip went on seeing you on an almost daily basis until he went into submarines, so his “crush”, if you like, turned into the deep love he feels now. Whereas you knew Dan for a year, from the time you were around six until you were around seven, and then you didn’t see him again for a very long time. You wrote to him, I grant you that, but he never wrote back, not so much as a word. Did he?’

‘No-oo, but he couldn’t, because he didn’t have my address,’ Nell said defensively. ‘He wrote once we met up again though, and visited me on the farm, when I was in the Land Army.’

‘How many times? And did he visit you before you joined up?’

‘He didn’t write much, and he didn’t come and see me until I was at the farm,’ Nell admitted. ‘But men don’t write as often as girls, do they? He said he would have come to see me more, only I was always moving about.’

‘But Snip came. He didn’t always know where the fair was, but he came, didn’t he?’

‘Ye-es, but it wasn’t just to see me, the fair was his life, his whole existence. All his friends were fair folk, all his relatives …’

‘His parents, you mean? Brothers, sisters?’

‘Well, not his relatives, then, because Abel Morris moved his people on when the war started. But friends, yes.’

‘But he had limited leave, and he had to search for you all; right?’

‘Yes,’ Nell said sulkily, seeing what her old friend was getting at and not liking it one little bit. ‘But Dan would have come if …’

‘If he’d cared enough, he would certainly have come. I don’t mean this unkindly, I’m just trying to point out that Dan’s love, at that point, was not equal to the love you believed you felt for him. You dreamed about Dan, of course, made up little scenarios where you met and fell into each other’s arms, pinned photographs on the wall and talked about him to all your girlfriends?’

‘Mrs Burroughes, you must have been just like me when you were my age. Yes, I dreamed, and I hardly got through a sentence without mentioning Dan’s name. Girls do talk all the time about the men they love, don’t they? Everyone at the farm did anyway.’

‘Oh yes, that’s true. But they need more than dreams, dear Nell, they need telephone calls, meetings. Yet you were quite content to worship from afar for the most part, weren’t you?’

‘In a way, but what has this got to do with me marrying Snip?’

‘Well, if I honestly thought you were truly, deeply in love with Dan Clifton and he with you, I suppose I might have to think very hard indeed before advising you to marry Snip, even though marrying Dan is obviously out
of the question. But I think you were in love with love, which is a very different thing, and quite possibly Dan was the same. You must take into account, as well, that love works both ways. Dan didn’t seem to put himself out unduly for you, whereas Snip did, didn’t he? I expect he wrote weekly?’

‘Daily,’ Nell said, trying not to sound sulky. ‘I didn’t always get them, but he wrote reams.’

‘And you’ve already gone to a lot of trouble for your old friend Snip, which seems to prove something. Nell, my dear, I was going to advise you, but I can’t. This is one decision that only you can make.’ She snatched a round of toast from under the grill and turned to scrape off the burnt crust. ‘Dear me, look what you’ve made me do! What was I saying?’

‘You were saying I’d have to make up my own mind,’ Nell said gloomily, beginning to lay the table for breakfast. ‘Which isn’t much help, Mrs B.’

‘No? But then I don’t think you need help, do you, Nell? I think you’ve made up your mind already and nothing is going to change it. Come on, let me into the secret; what are you going to do?’

Nell laughed.

‘I didn’t know I’d made up my mind when we started talking, but you’re right, I have. I’m going to marry Snip. What’s more, I’m taking him home. Home to Pengarth, I mean. I daresay Mum and – and Dad will let him sleep on the couch, and then we can get a room somewhere. Snip’s never been to North Wales and I have such a yearning to go back, to see Pengarth again!

The journey back to North Wales by train and bus was absolute hell for Snip, despite his giddying happiness at the start of the journey. Perhaps it was because he relaxed and was not on his guard, or perhaps it was because he had become aware that his happiness was not fully shared
by his beloved. Whatever the cause, he was attacked not only by the dreaded claustrophobia but what he called, to himself, the black dog and the terrors.

The bad feelings began to manifest themselves on the train down to Liverpool Street Station. It was crowded and Snip had given his seat to an elderly lady within ten minutes of leaving King’s Lynn. Standing by Nell, with her knees pressed gently against his calf, he was all right for about ten minutes, then he knew he would have to move.

The train was a slow one; it jerked to a halt at a small station. Snip got off, and found he couldn’t get on again. He was twitching like a dog, sweating like a pig, shaking like a tree in a gale. He stood on the platform, then tried to force himself to climb back into the carriage. He got in, among the smelly, damp-coated crowds in the corridor and just as the train began to move he jumped out.

He couldn’t even stay on the platform but ran into the dusty road beyond, then came back red-faced and told the uninterested ticket clerk that he had got off the train to relieve himself and missed it.

Nell came for him by bus, having realised what had happened and abandoned the train at the next station. She said no word of reproach and would have booked them both into a boarding house for the night, so that he could recover himself, but he would not hear of it.