Time Goes By (20 page)

‘Your dad and I have decided it’s time to sell up,’ she said. ‘Guests are wanting so much more these days. A bar, for instance, because they would like to be able to order drinks – alcoholic ones, I mean – with their meals. It’s not that your dad and I are against that, but it would mean applying for a licence, and then paying extra bar staff. And there’s another thing … A lot of the hotels now have gone over to what they call “en suite” facilities.’ Kathy knew what that meant: a private bathroom or shower – or both – and a toilet attached to the bedroom.

Winifred shook her head. ‘That would be
no end of an upheaval for us, but if we stayed much longer we would have to do it. Times have certainly changed, Kathy. In the old days it was a jug and bowl in each room. Mind you, that was jolly hard work carrying water up the stairs every day …’

‘And a “gazunder” underneath the bed,’ laughed Kathy. ‘I remember that up in the attic rooms.’

Winifred smiled. ‘Yes, but it wasn’t often that we had guests sleeping up there. We put in the required number of toilets, one on each landing, and a bathroom on each landing too, and washbasins in every room. It used to be quite acceptable – the norm, in fact – but folks seem to want a bath every day now instead of once a week.’

Kathy nodded. ‘Yes, that’s true …’ So did she and Tim and the children, but she guessed her aunt still stuck to the tradition of bath night on a Friday. Winifred was always very clean and tidy, though, and still quite modern in her outlook in many ways.

‘Anyway, we’ve decided to put Holmleigh up for sale,’ Winifred went on. ‘It would be best to let the new owners do any renovations they want in their own way.’

‘And they’ll be getting a place with a very good reputation,’ said Kathy loyally.

‘Yes, I must admit that’s true,’ said Winifred. ‘And it’s time for us to have a change – and a rest. I’m seventy now, so is Jeff, and your dad is sixty-five. It’ll be a big upheaval for us and no doubt it’ll take some getting used to. Do you know, I have lived in this house all my life, and so has Albert, apart from his time in the army, of course, and you were born here, Kathy …’ Her aunt looked pensive for a moment.

‘So … where will you retire to?’ asked Kathy. ‘You’ll want to stay in Blackpool, I suppose?’

‘Of course,’ said Winifred. ‘I’m a true “sandgrown ’un”. I don’t think I could live anywhere else now. Jeff and I rather fancy living in Bispham. We’re going to look for a semi-detached house, not too far away from the sea. We’ll have time to walk on the cliffs and ride on the trams! Things we never have time to do now. And your dad will be coming with us. We’ve talked it over with him and he agrees it’s the best thing to do. We get along very well, the three of us. And if we get a large enough house he can have his own rooms. A sitting room as well as a bedroom, I mean; then he can be private when he wants to be.’

They did not have much difficulty in selling the property. A youngish couple from Blackburn, who seemed to be ‘not without a bit of brass’ as Albert put it, bought Holmleigh. They said they would carry on as usual with the visitors who
were booked in for that summer, then start the alterations they required when the season came to an end. Albert, Winifred and Jeff found a house that suited them all on an avenue leading off the promenade, in the area known as Little Bispham.

In 1971 Kathy and Tim and their two children moved to a larger house, a semi-detached, not too far – but not too near – to that of their relatives. Tim was doing well at work and had been made a partner in the firm. On the strength of this they had bought their first motor car, a second-hand Morris that was roomy enough for a family of four. Sarah, aged six, was now at school, and Christopher would very soon be starting; he already went to a playgroup a few mornings a week.

Kathy now had more time to herself. She had continued with her story writing and was determined not to give up despite the inevitable rejections. Sally, whose friendship still meant a great deal to her, had insisted that she must keep on trying. It was a great day when, in the autumn of 1971, her first children’s story was published by the magazine
People’s Friend.
That was only the beginning. By the summer of 1972 her stories, both for adults and for children, were to be found in several of the women’s magazines.

‘I knew you would do it!’ Sally told her delightedly. ‘I knew when you were in my class
that you had a talent for storytelling.’ And Kathy knew that it was thanks to Sally and to teachers who came later for fostering her love of literature, without which she would not have been able to express herself so well.

And no one was more proud of Kathy than her father when her first serial story was published. ‘That’s my girl,’ he said. ‘I always knew you were a clever lass. My goodness! An authoress in the family. Just wait till I tell them all at the club and at church!’

Kathy was touched at her father’s pride in her. She had seldom known him to be so excited about anything. The father and daughter were good friends now, something that at one time she could never have imagined. They all settled down to what seemed to be a period of stability, all of them well contented with the lives they were leading.

I
t was in 1972 that Albert’s health started to fail. He had two minor heart attacks and was warned to take things easy.

‘I’ve done nowt else but take it easy ever since I retired,’ he grumbled, showing a little of the tetchiness that at one time had been typical of him. ‘I don’t see how I can do much less than I’m doing now.’

Albert had not settled too well into retirement, although he had thought it was what he wanted. He still rose early every morning from force of habit. Then he bought a newspaper from the local shop, and after reading it he took a leisurely walk along the cliff top, if the weather was fine. He found then, for the rest of the day, that he had too much time on his hands. He still played darts, he watched Blackpool’s football team – now, sadly,
relegated – on a Saturday afternoon, and carried on with his church duties each Sunday.

His grandchildren were a source of delight to him. He had to admit, though, to a feeling of self-reproach as he realised that he was finding much more pleasure in their company than he had in that of his daughter at a similar age. He knew that this had been entirely his own fault, and he hoped that he had made it up to Kathy in later years. Indeed, he and his daughter were closer now than they had been at any time.

There was still a void in his life, though, after so many years in the cut and thrust of hotel life. Kathy discussed her fears about him with her aunt one afternoon when she called to see her. Winifred was on her own as Albert had gone to the bowling green. He didn’t play himself but he liked to watch the team from his ‘local’.

‘Dad’s not himself,’ she said. ‘At least, he’s not the same person that we’ve all come to know and love. You remember we said how much he had improved? And I’ve been getting on with him much better than I did when I was a little girl.’

‘Yes, it’s since you had your accident, dear,’ said Winifred. ‘He realised then how much he loved you. He always did, you know, but he found it difficult to show it.’

‘I was so pleased about the change in him,’ Kathy went on. ‘But now it seems to me as though
he’s going back to how he used to be. You know – those bouts of moodiness and silence. Sometimes I think he has something on his mind.’

Kathy thought then that her aunt gave her an odd look, as though there was something that she knew, but wasn’t divulging it. ‘Oh, I think he just gets a bit fed up sometimes,’ Winifred replied. ‘Retirement has not been quite what he expected. He’s been so active all his life that he can’t adjust to all this freedom. And those heart attacks he had scared him quite a lot.’

‘He appears to have recovered from them, though,’ said Kathy. ‘He looks quite well in himself … but I still have the feeling that there’s something troubling him.’

‘He’s probably just concerned about his health,’ replied Winifred, a trifle too quickly. ‘We are inclined to be, you know, as we get older and we find we can’t do everything that we used to do.’

‘Well, I’ve really come to invite you all to come to tea on Sunday,’ said Kathy. ‘You and Jeff and my dad. That might cheer him up a bit. I know how much he likes to see the children …’

But the tea party did not take place. It was on the Thursday prior to the planned event that Albert had another heart attack. Winifred knew at once that this one was much more severe. It was now
September, 1973, over a year since the two minor ones he had suffered. She called an ambulance and he was taken to hospital without any delay. Kathy and Tim were informed and they, too, rushed to the hospital. All the family spent an anxious evening awaiting news of him. Eventually they went home to rest, knowing there was nothing else they could do but leave him in the capable hands of the doctor and nurses.

He had recovered a little by the following day when Winifred and Jeff went to see him again in his private room. He stretched out his hand towards Winifred and she took hold of it. He looked imploringly at her and he began to speak in an urgent manner.

‘When’s our Kathy coming?’ he asked. ‘I want to see her …’ It was clearly an effort to speak. He was short of breath and his voice was husky and weak. ‘There’s summat … summat I’ve got to say to her …’

‘Kathy will be here very soon,’ his sister told him. ‘But … leave it be, Albert. It’s too late now.’ She had a good idea what it was that Albert might want to tell his daughter. Kathy had been quite right when she had said that her father appeared to have something on his mind. She, Winifred, had noticed it as well. ‘Just concentrate on getting better, there’s a good lad,’ she told him. ‘Things are best left as they are.’

Albert shook his head regretfully. ‘I’m done for, Winnie. I know that, and I know I’ve not been fair to the lass … I should’ve told her.’

‘Leave it, Albert,’ she said again. ‘It would be for the best.’ She stooped to kiss his pale cheek and he closed his eyes. It was obvious that he was exhausted and he said nothing more. He appeared to be sleeping, so they decided after a while that there was no point in them staying any longer.

‘We’re going now, Albert,’ said Winifred, just in case he could hear her. ‘We’ll see you tomorrow, Jeff and me. Goodbye, dear. God bless …’

‘He’s not good at all, is he?’ she whispered to Jeff as they made their way out of the hospital.

‘No, I’m afraid not, my dear,’ said Jeff, ‘but he’s in good hands. All we can do is trust, and say our prayers.’

‘I’m worried about Kathy,’ said Winifred. ‘I’m bothered, Jeff, about what he might say.’

‘I think he’s too weak to say much at all,’ replied Jeff. He kissed her cheek. ‘Don’t worry, darling. He probably wants to tell Kathy that he loves her, that’s all.’

Kathy and Tim went to see her father later that afternoon. He was awake again but looked very frail and ill. He reached out a hand to his daughter. ‘Kathy … Kathy love, come here … I want to tell you summat.’

She moved closer and took hold of his hand. ‘What is it, Dad?’

‘I’ve not been a good dad to you … I should have told you … I know I should … but I couldn’t do it. But I always loved you, Kathy … I loved you, so much …’

‘I know that, Dad,’ she replied. ‘I always knew. You’re worried that you didn’t tell me so, aren’t you? But I always knew that you loved me.’ She leant over to kiss his papery cheek. At that moment his head lolled sideways and his hand dropped away from hers. She knew that he had gone.

‘Tim, Tim … call the nurse!’ she cried. ‘But I think it’s too late. Oh dear! I think my dad has … gone!’

Kathy was filled with a deep sadness at the death of her father. She could not have said, truthfully, that she was heartbroken. She reflected that she might well have been more grief-stricken if it had been her aunt who had died. She had always felt much closer to Winifred, who had been everything to her that a mother might have been. However, this was her father, and she knew he had done his best, according to his lights, especially of late. She recalled how, when she was a child, he had seemed remote at times and uninterested in her, but she knew he had been coping with his resentment and
bitterness at the death of her mother. Following her accident, however, he had been much more approachable and caring, and this had awakened in her a strong affection for him. She had had a premonition, though, that he would not ‘make old bones’ as the saying went, so his death had not been too much of a shock to her.

He had died on a Friday, and the funeral was arranged for the middle of the following week; a service at the church followed by the burial at Layton Cemetery. Kathy went round to her aunt’s home on the Saturday morning to help to sort out certain matters. Sarah and Christopher stayed at home with Tim, who worked a five-day week.

‘We’ll have to find your dad’s will,’ said Winifred. ‘There should be a copy in his bureau, and the original one is with our solicitor. It’s pretty straightforward, though.’

Kathy knew that the house belonged jointly to her father, Winifred and Jeff. It had been bought with the proceeds from the sale of the hotel plus a contribution from Jeff. The house would now belong to her aunt and uncle, and after their deaths would be willed to Kathy. Also, the remainder of Albert’s share of the profit from the hotel and any other monies he had accrued in his lifetime would now go to his daughter.

‘I’ll have a look in his bureau, shall I?’ said Kathy. ‘Although I must admit I shall feel rather
guilty, as though I’m prying. He was always very secretive about the contents of that bureau, wasn’t he? I know it’s always kept locked, and once, when I was a little girl, I tried to open it and he was furious with me.’

‘Well … yes,’ replied her aunt, evasively. ‘There were certain things that your dad was secretive about. Never mind about it now, Kathy love. I’ll see to it later. I’m not quite sure where the key is anyway.’ Winifred looked flustered and ill at ease.

‘It’ll be on that jug on his chest of drawers where he keeps – sorry, kept – his odds and ends,’ said Kathy. ‘I know his spare door key is in there and his football season ticket.’

‘Yes, perhaps so,’ said Winifred. ‘Go on, then, you’re his daughter. I daresay you’ve more right than anyone to look at his private papers.’ She looked doubtful, though, and more than a little anxious.

‘I won’t, if you really don’t want me to,’ said Kathy.

‘No, you carry on, dear,’ said her aunt. ‘It’ll happen be for the best.’

As Kathy had thought, the key to the bureau was in the pottery jug on her father’s chest of drawers, along with other odds and ends: pencils and biros, books of stamps, a screwdriver, a penknife, and his season ticket for Bloomfield Road, the home of his beloved football team.
He had only used it a few times that season, and Kathy pondered that it would be a shame for it to go to waste. Jeff didn’t attend the matches regularly, and neither did Tim, who preferred to spend his free afternoons with the children and herself. Kathy decided, if her aunt approved, that she would give it to Phil Grantley, whom she knew was still an ardent supporter.

But there were other more important issues to be dealt with at that moment. The bureau, a solid-looking piece of furniture made from mahogany, was in her father’s sitting room. It had a pull-down front that served as a writing desk. The key turned easily in the lock, and Kathy looked inside for the very first time. Everything seemed to be very neat and tidy.

The first thing that caught her eye was what appeared to be several photographs in stiff cardboard covers. She pulled them out, then looked in amazement at what she recognised at once was the wedding photograph of her father and the mother she had never known. She gasped as she gazed at the young woman in the photograph, knowing that she might almost be looking at a picture of herself. The bride had the same dark hair that fell in natural waves, framing a rounded face, the same mouth and nose, and she guessed that the eyes, like her own, would have been brown. Kathy realised then that she had
never before seen a photograph of her mother, and what was more strange was the fact that she had never even asked if she might see one; for the life of her, now, she could not imagine why she had been so lacking in curiosity.

The young woman was wearing a dress that was obviously a wedding dress, but not a conventional long one with a veil. It was impossible to tell the colour from the black and white image; it could have been a white dress, or possibly pale pink or blue. It had padded shoulders and a sweetheart neckline, a yoke trimmed with lace, puffed sleeves and a knee-length skirt. The small hat was trimmed at the side with a posy of flowers, and she was carrying a small bouquet of what looked like roses in bud. The bridegroom – Kathy’s father – was dressed in the uniform of a soldier; the three stripes on his arm denoted that he was a sergeant. What year had it been, she wondered? She was born in 1943, so it would be 1941 or 1942, she guessed. The war had been going on since 1939, and she knew it had been a period of quite severe austerity in Britain, hence the less-than-formal wedding dress.

Another photograph showed a wedding group. There were the bride and groom, a much younger Aunt Winifred, and another young man and woman whom she did not know – the bridesmaid and the best man, she supposed. She recognised
her Grandma and Grandad Leigh who had died a few years ago, and there was another middle-aged couple whom she did not know. Her other grandparents? she pondered, the parents of her mother. Then why had she never met them or heard anything about them? Kathy realised now that a whole chapter from the past had been closed to her. When she thought again about her lack of curiosity, she recalled that she had never been encouraged to ask questions about her mother. Her father had always been evasive or short-tempered on the few occasions she had dared to broach the subject, and even her aunt had been unwilling to say very much. She supposed that eventually she must have understood that it was a closed book, and so she had stopped worrying about it.

There were two more photographs. In one of them her father and the woman she had now gathered was her mother were seated, and the woman was holding a baby, a very young one, wrapped in a shawl. The baby’s chubby face was crowned with a cap of dark curls, and the dark eyes seemed to be looking up at the mother, who was gazing at the child with a look of wonderment and love. Myself as a baby, thought Kathy, looking at the photo in bewilderment. The second one showed the same couple with the baby. In this one the woman was smiling straight into the camera, with the same look of joy and contentment in
her eyes. Behind the couple, standing, were Aunt Winifred and, again, the couple whom Kathy had assumed were the bridesmaid and best man at the wedding, two people whom she had never met, at least not as far as she could remember. These, then, must have been her godparents, because these obviously were christening photographs. Curiouser and curiouser, thought Kathy, shaking her head in amazement.

She laid the photos to one side and took out a pile of foolscap envelopes from the next cubbyhole. She opened them one by one, no longer feeling that she was prying, but that she was gradually uncovering a mystery that had been hidden from her, but which she felt she had a right to know about.