The Cobbler's Kids (27 page)

Vera looked puzzled. ‘He’s been out of the army for years and years, though, and he’s only recently started having these attacks.’

‘That’s the way it is, luv. They push all the terrible sights they saw and all the horrible things they experienced to the back of their minds to try and forget about them. Then suddenly it all comes back to them. Has he had any sort of bad shock lately that could have triggered it?’

Vera nodded thoughtfully, hoping he wouldn’t ask her for details.

He looked at her shrewdly, then drained his cup and passed it back to her. ‘Better get on. We don’t want your dad coming in here and finding a pile of work waiting to be done. It would only worry him, now, wouldn’t it.’

It was late afternoon before Vera heard her father stirring. A wave of panic swept over her as he blundered down the stairs. She glanced at him anxiously, trying to gauge what sort of mood he was in. She was nervous about what his reaction would be when he saw a stranger working at his bench.

‘Afternoon, guv. Feeling a bit better?’

Michael Quinn stared at Sam Dowty in a dazed way, then rubbed his hand over his unshaven chin and shook his head from side to side as if trying to clear his mind.

‘Who the hell are you? I don’t know you!’

‘Of course you do, guv. Sam Dowty. You asked me to come along and give you a hand.’

Vera held her breath, waiting for her father to explode. Instead, he ran his hand over his chin again and slowly nodded as if in agreement.

‘I’ll go and make you both a cup of tea,’ Vera said quickly.

As she waited for the kettle to boil Vera watched through a crack in the door to see what was going on. Sam Dowty went on with his work as if there was no one else there. Her father sat with his head in his hands, looking up from time to time to watch what the older man was doing.

When Vera took the tea through, Sam Dowty signalled for her to leave them alone. Back in the living room she could hear the rise and fall of their voices and to her surprise she heard her father going into detail about his attacks.

‘My son had the same problem,’ she heard Sam Dowty tell her father. ‘Some of the things he told me about the sights he’d seen would turn your guts. He wasn’t a bloke who was squeamish, either, but he couldn’t get them out of his mind. Haunted him they did. Made his life hell.’

Vera could hardly wait for Benny to come home so that she could tell him all about Sam Dowty and how well everything had gone.

‘To hear him and Dad talking things over and exchanging confidences, you’d think they’d been buddies for years,’ she enthused.

‘Does this mean I won’t have to do any more work in the shop?’ Benny asked as he lowered his heavy satchel with all his homework in it from his shoulder onto the floor.

‘No, you needn’t do anything at all to help,’ Vera told him happily.

‘What about all the deliveries?’

‘No, I’ll do those. Now that I’m not working at Elbrown’s I’ll have plenty of time during the day,’ she pointed out.

‘Couldn’t you get your job back at Elbrown’s now that this old chap is here to help Dad out? If the two of them are as friendly as you said then he probably wouldn’t mind keeping an eye on him.’

‘I don’t think that’s possible, even if I could get reinstated. Mr Dowty is quite old and it wouldn’t be fair to impose on him. I’m grateful enough that he’s agreed to put in a full day until the backlog of work is cleared. Mind, I doubt if he will be able to work at that pace all the time. Once we’ve got things running properly again I should think he will only be working part time.’

‘Yeah, well, that’s better than nothing, I suppose.’

‘It certainly is because it will give you time to study for your exams!’

‘True! And once I’ve passed them, and managed to find a job, perhaps we could sell up and you could find another position. If Dad didn’t need to work then …’

‘Hey! Steady on!’ Vera laughed. ‘You can’t plan that far ahead, who knows what is going to happen over the next few months.’

As it happened, Vera was right to be cautious. Although Sam Dowty and their father got on far better than she had ever dared to hope it wasn’t the answer to their problems by any means.

Their father’s attacks became more and more frequent and left him in such a dazed state that it became impossible for him to do any work at all.

Sam Dowty did his best, but his eyesight was not too good and with the approach of winter, and the need to use gas lighting most of the time to see what he was doing, the standard of his work began to suffer.

Vera was at her wits’ end. She liked Sam Dowty so much, and she was so grateful for the way he was helping them out, that she didn’t like to say anything about it to him.

The matter was brought to a head when an irate customer returned a pair of recently repaired boots. He started making a fuss at the top of his voice in front of Sam Dowty.

‘Look at the mess someone’s made of these,’ he shouted, waving the boots menacingly at Vera. ‘They were black, but they’ve been finished off with brown polish! What’s more, the polish has been splashed all over the upper of one of them. I can’t wear them in this condition so what are you going to do about it?’

Vera had no idea, but she tried to placate him. ‘If you leave them with me I’ll make sure it is put right,’ she promised.

‘Put right? They’re ruined! Any fool can see that,’ he ranted.

‘The young lady has already said we will rectify the matter,’ Sam Dowty intervened. He took the offending boots from the customer, examined them critically, then put them down on the counter.

‘You’d better, and make sure you do a good job. I don’t expect to be charged for it, either. Daylight robbery! You’ve ruined a good pair of boots …’

The rest of his sentence was lost as he slammed out of the shop.

Vera sighed as she picked up the boots from the counter. She could see that his complaint was fully justified. He wasn’t the only customer who had complained about the standard of their work recently and she wondered how many more there were going to be.

‘It was my fault,’ Sam Dowty said quietly. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll see what I can do to put matters right.’

‘It’s a mistake anyone could have made,’ Vera told him, squeezing his arm reassuringly.

He shook his head. ‘No, only a half-blind old fool like me could have messed things up so much. What you need is a younger man working here. There’s too much for an old codger like me to do and your father is no help at all these days, now is he.’

Vera knew he was right, but she still didn’t have an answer to the problem.

‘I could recommend a bright young chap if you would consider taking him on permanently.’ Sam Dowty told her. ‘Nice fellow, good workman. I can vouch for him.’

‘It’s certainly the sort of person we need, but I wouldn’t be able to afford to employ anyone else,’ she murmured regretfully.

‘I’m talking about a young chap to replace me.’

‘You don’t want to give up work, surely!’ Vera said in surprise. ‘I thought you were enjoying being back in the harness.’

‘I did at first,’ he admitted, ‘but I’m beginning to realise why you have to retire. I’m knocking seventy and I can’t put in the hours like I used to do. I can’t do the work the same, either,’ he said sadly.

‘You seem to be doing all right to me,’ Vera told him loyally.

‘You know that’s not true. I’ve heard the complaints being fired at you over the past weeks. You’ve never said anything to me, but it’s not good for your business. Your father has worked hard to build up a reputation for good service, now you don’t want me to go and ruin all that, do you?’

‘I’m sure you won’t …’

‘No!’ Sam Dowty took off his leather apron and rolled it up into a ball. ‘This needs to go back into the cupboard under the stairs. My wife said I was a silly old fool when I told her I was going back to work. I don’t like having to admit she was right, but there you are, she seems to have been. You women!’ He shook his head in mock dismay. ‘You’re always right, aren’t you?’

Vera knew he was trying to break the news to her gently that he was leaving, but even though his work wasn’t as good as she would have liked it was better having him here than no one.

She had to keep the business going until Benny was through with his schooling. She’d promised him she would and she didn’t intend to let him down.

‘Stay on for just a few more weeks, until I can find someone,’ she begged.

‘I’ve already told you that I know of a young chap,’ he reminded her. ‘I can recommend him because I trained him. That was in the days when my eyesight was as good as yours is, young lady, and I was able to take pride in my work,’ he added with a wry smile.

It wasn’t until after Sam Dowty had gone home that Vera realised he hadn’t told her the name of the young man he’d suggested might come and work for her.

She wondered if he would remember and come back in the morning with the details. Or, because of her lack of enthusiasm, would he assume that she wasn’t interested?

As she locked the shop door and went through into the living room, she decided she was too tired to worry about it any more. She wasn’t too sure if it was the right thing to do, so it might be better if she slept on it anyway and made up her mind in the morning.

She prepared their evening meal, took her father’s upstairs on a tray and then called Benny down from his bedroom where he’d gone to study the moment he got home from school.

As they ate their meal she talked to Benny about the day’s happenings and the problem over the ruined boots. She also told him about Sam Dowty’s decision to pack in work and his advice that they should hire a full-time younger cobbler.

‘If you know where this Sam Dowty lives then I’ll nip round and ask him the name of the chap,’ Benny offered.

‘I don’t know where he lives, though,’ Vera confessed. ‘Mr Brown sent him along.’

‘Then you’ll have to wait and see if he comes back tomorrow.’

Vera sighed. ‘I’m not too sure he will. I wasn’t very keen on the idea when he mentioned it so he may think I’m not interested. I did tell him later on that I thought it was a good idea,’ she added quickly as Benny raised his eyebrows questioningly.

A noise from upstairs distracted them. Vera rushed up to her father’s bedroom to find that he was once again in the throes of an attack.

As she walked in through the door he hurled the plate of food she had brought up for him at her, then cowered down under the bedclothes, screaming at her to go away.

Wearily she picked up the broken plate and went to fetch a cloth to clean up the mess.

‘We’ll have to call in a doctor to take a look at him,’ Benny told her. ‘He needs something to quieten him down when he has one of these attacks. We can’t go on like this any longer.’

‘Perhaps we can persuade him to go and see the doctor at his surgery.’

‘Don’t talk daft, Vee! You know he won’t do that. You’ll have to get in touch with the doctor, explain what is happening, and ask him to call here.’

Benny sounded so determined that this was the right course of action to take that Vera accepted his decision. She felt too drained to argue.

In bed that night, her brain spinning like a top, she thought back over the things that had happened lately.

Sometimes she felt as if other people were taking over her life. There always seemed to be someone deciding what she should do. Leonard Brown had told her she couldn’t work for his company any more; a man she didn’t even know had told her that the standard of work she was providing at the shop was not good enough; Sam Dowty had told her she needed a younger man to work in the business; and now Benny was telling her that she must call in a doctor to see her father.

Did they all know better than her? Or was she so tired out with looking after her father, and trying to keep their home and business together, that she could no longer think for herself?

As she opened up the shop next morning she toyed with the idea of not taking in any more work until she’d had a chance to talk to Sam Dowty. Perhaps he was right and the only way forward was to take on the young chap he had recommended.

She was still mulling over the problem when the shop door opened and a youngish man came in. He was tall and thin and his mid-brown hair flopped down over his hazel eyes. As he raised a hand and pushed it back there was something familiar about the gesture. Vera stared at him in disbelief. It was as though she was seeing a ghost from the past.

An older version; the same, yet not the same. There was a big difference between the physique of a very young schoolboy and a man in his twenties. Yet, though the face was more mature, the expression on it was one she would never forget.

‘Jack … Jack Winter?’

‘Vera Quinn?’

They spoke in unison and both of them answered ‘Yes’ at the same time.

He reached out and grabbed her hand. ‘It must be twelve years?’

‘No, it’s much longer than that!’

‘Yes, you’re quite right! It was at the end of the war!’

‘It was in 1919!’

He shook his head in disbelief. ‘What happened? You suddenly vanished!’

‘We moved here,’ she explained, freeing her hand from his grasp.

‘Yeah! Without even saying goodbye.’

‘I didn’t know you cared,’ she quipped.

‘Of course I did!’ He pushed back his hair. ‘You were my first and only heartthrob. Black hair, big blue eyes and such a special smile … In fact, that’s why I recognised you the moment I walked through the door.’

Vera laughed and shook her head. ‘You don’t change, do you!’

Jack Winter’s hazel eyes twinkled. ‘Didn’t you have a couple of big brothers?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ Vera nodded. ‘There was Charlie. He was six years older than me, but he died from flu …’

‘At the same time as your grandparents, Mr and Mrs Simmonds. I was only about nine, but I can remember what a dreadful time it was. People were dying within days of being taken ill.’

‘Yes, it was dreadful.’ Her face clouded for a moment. ‘It happened at the same time as my dad came home from the army.’

Jack nodded understandingly. ‘And what about Eddy?’

‘He’s at sea now. I have a younger brother, too, called Benny. He was born after we left Wallasey.’