Secrets to Keep

CHAPTER EIGHT





It was after seven when the family all gathered round the sofa upon which Bertha was lying, a worn, patched blanket covering her.

Marion knelt on the floor beside her, looking at her grandmother earnestly. ‘I don’t like to see you hurt, our Gran,’ she wailed.

Despite her extreme discomfort, Bertha managed to quip, ‘I’m not that happy about it meself, ducky.’

‘D’yer want my comic to read?’ offered George from the other end of the sofa.

She flashed him a pained smile. ‘Not now, love. Maybe later, eh?’

‘I hate that Mrs Nelson,’ piped up Betty, perched on the arm of the sofa to one side of her brother. ‘I’ve a good mind to push her out the door meself. See how she likes it.’

‘I’ll come with yer and help yer do it,’ offered George, his face screwed up in hatred for the woman who had caused his beloved grandmother such agony from a broken leg and wrist as well as bruising to other parts of her face and body that had hit the cobbles.

‘You’ll do no such thing,’ Aidy told them in no uncertain terms as she arrived in the room carrying a cup of sweet tea for Bertha. Although she was having a hard job herself controlling a desire to confront her mother-in-law and repay the compliment. But all that would do would be to lower herself to Pat’s level, plus show her siblings that it was all right to repay violence with violence. ‘If there is any justice in this world, that woman will get her comeuppance one day. But not from us. So if I hear of any of you going anywhere near Mrs Nelson, then none of you will be able to sit down for a week. Is that clear?’

Their sister’s warnings were never idle. They all vigorously nodded their heads.

‘Good. Now clear out of the way and give Gran air to breathe and me room to give her a drink,’ she ordered them, adding as an afterthought, ‘In fact, go out and play, but be back in an hour.’ When they had done as they were told she knelt beside the sofa, picked the cup up out of its saucer and held the rim to Bertha’s lips so she could take a few sips.

After she had had her fill for the time being, Bertha looked gratefully at Aidy and in a weak voice said, ‘Strong and sweet, just what the doctor ordered. Thanks, me duck.’ Her face then clouded over. ‘Talking of doctors, there’ll be a bill of his to settle. I’m hoping there’s enough to cover it in me remedy tin.’

‘Don’t worry about that now, Gran. I told him I’d sort it out, and I will as soon as I can. I could tell he wasn’t happy about that, but it’s hard luck ’cos we can’t give him what we haven’t got, can we?’ There was still an outstanding fee from his visit to her mother that Aidy hadn’t settled, and he’d have to wait for that too. More important things had to be paid for out of her wage first, like the rent and food.

Bertha pulled a face. ‘I don’t know quite what to make of the new doctor. He seems to know his stuff, didn’t take him long to work out what I was ailing from and get me sorted, but he was very brusque, made me feel like I was an inconvenience to him. He comes from money, judging by the posh voice he’s got. And his clothes might be old but they’re the best quality. I wonder why his sort has come to live and work round these parts?’

Aidy gave a nonchalant shrug. ‘I don’t know, Gran, and I don’t really care. I don’t like him. He spoke to me in a manner you wouldn’t address a dog in when I went to fetch him for Mam and yourself. Anyway, considering the pain you must have been in at the time, still are for that matter, you noticed a lot about him?’

‘Well, I had to concentrate me mind on something while he was resetting me bones.’ Bertha seemed intrigued. ‘There’s a story behind that new doctor coming here, I’d bet my life there is. Someone with his obvious breeding doesn’t voluntarily give up the high life to slum it with us.’

Aidy had no time to waste on conversation about a person she didn’t care a jot for. ‘Can I get you anything else?’ she offered.

‘You can, if you don’t mind. Could you make me a bread and vinegar poultice to put on me bruises, to help bring them out and ease the throbbing? Also, from me store in the pantry, can you bring me through the bottle with “Headache Relief” on the label?’

Aidy looked at her quizzically. ‘What do you want that for?’

‘Help with the pain, ducky.’

‘But aren’t the pills the Doc gave you, to tide you over, helping at all? I’m going to the chemist for the rest tomorrow.’ She was already worried whether she had enough money in her purse to cover that outlay, along with what food they’d need until she got her next pay in two days’ time.

Bertha was pulling a face. ‘The pills and prescription are for morphine. I’ve seen what that does to people. I’d sooner be in the pain I am than end up reliant on that stuff. And I’m not giving the pharmacist any of my hard-earned money when I can sort meself out.’

Aidy couldn’t believe her grandmother had endured the agony of her broken bones and their resetting without any strong relief. She could, though, see Bertha’s reasoning for the refusal, but regardless said, ‘You will promise to take the pills the Doc gave you if your own remedy doesn’t work, though?’ She saw the look Bertha shot her and quickly added, ‘I didn’t mean your remedies aren’t any good, Gran, I know they are as they’ve sorted my ailments out enough times over the years, but the pain you’re suffering is not just a headache and your remedy might not be strong enough to ease it. So you will, won’t you?

Bertha was in far more pain than ever she would let on to her granddaughter, but to be knocked into oblivion by the effects of morphine was not an option she’d choose. To appease Aidy, though, she said, ‘Yes, all right.’

‘Good. Now I soak the bread in hot water with a good measure of vinegar … that’s how I make the poultice, isn’t it?’

Bertha nodded and quipped, ‘And there’s me thinking you never took any interest in what I do.’

As Aidy went off to do what she was asked, a worried expression appeared on Bertha’s face. Easing the pain of her injuries was not what was really concerning her so much as the situation her injuries had left her in. Her broken leg and wrist had rendered her practically incapable while they healed. She couldn’t even go to the toilet without help. It was a hard enough job looking after a family of five for a normal housewife who didn’t work. Aidy did, full-time, and on top of that, she now had the problem of covering the chores Bertha herself would have been doing, plus the care of an invalid. The kids would help when they came home from school and at weekends, but there was only so much youngsters their age could manage. Pat Nelson certainly had a lot to answer for but Bertha doubted the woman was feeling the slightest glimmer of remorse for what she’d done. In the kitchen, as she was mashing the soggy bread and vinegar together to form the poultice, Aidy too was worrying about just how, on top of working full-time, she was going to manage all the household chores while her grandmother recovered, her only help being with the lighter tasks her siblings could perform. But somehow she would just have to. And no matter how tired she was, she must not let her grandmother know and make her feel any more guilty than she already was.

It was approaching nine o’clock and Aidy had just finished mopping the kitchen floor. Bertha’s home-made pain-killing remedy certainly seemed to have done something for her. At the moment she was asleep on the sofa, although looking quite a sight with clumps of the bread poultice resembling grotesque growths covering her bruises, in the hope they’d help speed up their healing. The children had all gone to bed without so much as a murmur of protest tonight. Usually they put up some sort of lame excuse to delay bedtime for a while longer. Aidy was grateful they hadn’t. They’d obviously sensed that with all she had on her mind, their sister wasn’t in the mood to put up with any nonsense from them. Since their mother’s death, before going up, Marion’s parting words were always the same. ‘Mam might be back when I get up in the morning.’ All the others were always too choked to respond to her. Betty and George still cried themselves to sleep, although George would deny it. How Aidy wished she could magic away their pain, and her own, Gran’s too, but she couldn’t. It was only time that would help ease that.

Despite her efforts not to, she started to think about Arch then. He had been an important part of her life for the last ten years, the most important for the last five as her husband. They had been very loving and supportive of each other. She was angry with him, hurt and shocked to have witnessed a side to him she hadn’t known about before and didn’t like at all, but regardless she was still missing the Arch she knew and loved dreadfully. A future without him in it seemed very bleak to her.

Why couldn’t she be like the majority of other women, who managed to turn a blind eye whenever their husbands were discovered to have been dishonest with them? But then a simple white lie, such as saying their wives looked nice when they looked awful or that the food was delicious when in truth it was unpalatable, was a far cry from voicing the sentiment that you were happy giving up your house and all your plans for the future, when in truth you weren’t at all. And there was still the matter that Arch had stood by and done nothing when his own mother had been verbally and almost physically attacking his wife and her family.

As desperate as she was for a way to resolve matters between herself and her husband and to return to the happy couple they had been before this, Aidy didn’t believe they could be reconciled.

She was just cleaning the dirty mop head in a bucket of cold water when her ears pricked as she heard the click of the latch on the yard gate, announcing the arrival of a visitor. The back door was already open to aid the drying of the floor. Propping the mop up by the pitted pot sink, she went over to look through and see who the visitor was.

It was a lovely, warm late-August evening. The voices of women gossiping on doorsteps and the laughter of children still playing out, filled the air. A keen sense of loss filled her. It was the sort of evening when she and Arch would have gone for a walk into a better-off area that had a park, or else they’d have taken chairs outside into their tiny backyard and sat there chatting about nothing in particular, just enjoying each other’s company.

The man in her thoughts stood framed in the gateway, looking hesitantly over at her. For a moment all that had happened between them flew from Aidy’s mind as a desperate need to rush across to him, wrap her arms around him and feel his around her, filled her. Then the reasons that had brought them to this sorry situation flooded back, along with renewed hurt at his betrayal of her. ‘What do you want?’ she called curtly across.

‘To talk to you,’ he said tentatively.

She responded, ‘As far as I’m concerned, I can’t think of anything we have to say to each other. You finished work three hours ago, so what kept you? You don’t need to tell me … it was your mother. Had to wait until her back was turned so you could slip out, did you?’

‘No, not at all. She encouraged me to come and put things right with you. Was on at me as soon as I got in from work.’ Then he added sheepishly, ‘I’d have been here sooner but I needed a couple of pints for Dutch courage first.’

Aidy wasn’t surprised he needed Dutch courage to face her, but she was very surprised to hear of the change of attitude in her mother-in-law, encouraging her son to make up with her, when Aidy knew that for the last ten years Pat had been doing her best to cause trouble between them, in the hope they’d part. And what about her plan to keep Arch away from her so Aidy could learn the hard way she couldn’t manage to care for her family on her own and then go begging Pat to let her take up her offer? The truth slowly dawned. Of course, Pat no longer had any need to continue with that plan as she’d already succeeded in achieving a comfortable new home for herself.

Aidy wondered if Arch had twigged by now that his mother had no intention of moving out again? But, knowing lazy Pat as well as she did, it was no wonder that she was encouraging her son to mend his marriage. She herself didn’t want the burden of doing his washing and cooking. But she’d still expect to receive the money she got from him each week, supposedly to pay the rent, and she’d demand that be increased from now on as the rent on his and Aidy’s house was much higher than on the two-roomed hovel Pat had moved out of.

Now wasn’t the time, though, to be dwelling on thoughts of her devious mother-in-law. Arch deserved to be heard, but Aidy doubted he’d anything to say to her that could resolve matters between them.

She returned back inside the kitchen to await him. Although the distance from the gate to the back door was only short, the clatter of Arch’s boots on the cobbles as he made his way over seemed to go on forever to Aidy. Finally he appeared in the doorway, looking uncertain. She was standing by the old, well-scrubbed kitchen table, both hands clutching the back of a chair for support.

‘We’ll talk in here as Gran’s asleep on the sofa and the kids are in bed. We’ll need to keep our voices down. Oh, and mind the floor, it’s wet. I don’t want to have to fetch the doctor again today.’

His face screwed up quizzically, he asked, ‘Why have you had to fetch him? Has something happened to one of the family?’

His mother wasn’t stupid. She must have known at the time that what she did to Bertha was not something an older woman would walk away from without some damage. By not even mentioning the incident to her son, she had obviously not given it a second thought. Aidy enlightened him.

‘I went to our house today to collect some of my personal belongings. Gran came with me for company. While I was upstairs, Gran and your mother had words and Pat bodily threw Gran out of the house. She ended up on the cobbles with a broken wrist and leg, and covered in bruises. Your mother must have known that what she’d done would cause serious harm to my gran, but she just shut the door on her.’

Arch was staring at her, both astounded and appalled. ‘Mam never said a word to me about it! Not even that you’d been round. I don’t know what to say … really I don’t. I’ll go and apologise to your gran.’

He made to go through to the back room but Aidy held up a warning hand to stop him. ‘I told you, she’s asleep. Anyway, it’s not you who should be apologising to her. And we both know the person who should, never will.’ She prompted him, ‘So what did you come to speak to me about, Arch?’

‘You know what, Aidy.’

Of course she did, but she wasn’t going to make it easy for him. ‘I’m no mind reader.’

He took a deep breath. Aidy could be exasperating at times. But then, that was one of the many things he loved about her: that she wasn’t the submissive type who only did exactly what her husband dictated, whether she wanted to or not. Now, though, she was looking drained, obviously worried how she was going to manage in the future, both financially and physically, and he fought a desperate urge to go over to her and hold her, tell her he’d an answer to their every problem. But knowing she would only rebuff any advance in the frame of mind she was in now, he decided against it. But she would think better of him when she had heard him out, he was positive of that.

Speaking hesitantly, Arch said, ‘Look, Aidy, after yesterday and today, there’s no point in me trying to cover up the fact any longer that my own mother terrifies the life out of me. I’d sooner face an axe-wielding lunatic than her when she’s annoyed, and it don’t take much to get Mam’s dander up, as you well know. I promise, though … swear on God’s honour … cross me heart and hope to die … that I’ll never be such a coward in future and let her treat you and the kids and Gran the same way again. You have my word on that.

‘And about what me mam told you, about me not wanting to help you look after your family … Well, I admit, after she pointed some things out to me, I did have a few reservations. After all, it’s a big thing for a man to give up everything he’s worked for and take on someone else’s family, but that doesn’t matter now. Looking after your brother and sisters is not our responsibility … not when there’s someone else whose responsibility goes beyond that.’

Aidy frowned at him, bemused. ‘You know it’s not possible for Gran to care for them, so just who are you talking about being responsible for them? We haven’t got any other family.’

He smiled at her, looking pleased with himself. ‘But you have. Your father.’

Aidy gawped at him, utterly astounded and appalled by his suggestion. ‘Are you serious?’ she exclaimed.

He looked taken back. ‘Yes. He is their father, Aidy. It’s his job to look after his kids now their mother’s no longer here to do it.’

She stared at Arch in shocked disbelief that he could even contemplate such a diabolical option. Her husband was well aware what type of man her father was, and what Aidy herself thought of him.

‘Even supposing he would do it … provided we could find him, that is … do you really think that I would leave my own brother and sisters in the care of that … that … bastard who’s already abandoned his family twice! Marion has never even met him.

‘And what about Gran? Do you think he’d ever agree to look after her when she’s not even related to him, except by marriage. And do you actually think she’d ever agree to live with the man she hates and blames for her own daughter’s death?’ Her temper kindled, Aidy cried furiously: ‘I can’t believe you hate the thought of helping me look after them so much you’d suggest handing them over to a devil like that. How could you, Arch? How could you?’

He looked stunned, totally shocked by her reaction to his suggestion. He really had thought she would jump at his idea, be relieved to have the burden of her family lifted from her, allowing them both to get on with their own lives. He couldn’t believe he’d been so badly mistaken. Aidy was looking at him now with such shock and disillusionment that panic ran through him. He saw a gulf widening between them that was in danger of becoming unbridgeable. He saw his life without her in it and the thought was unbearable to him. He would agree to anything, suffer it all in silence, sooner than lose her.

He beseeched her, ‘Aidy, please, forget what I suggested! It was only a thought. I … well, I don’t know what I was thinking, even suggesting it. Of course I’m willing to help you. I love the kids and your gran, you know that. I’ll do anything you want so long as we’re together.’

She eyed him coldly. ‘But you did suggest it, Arch, and I can’t forget you did. You’d sooner the kids and Gran lived a life of misery with the likes of … of … that man, than you be lumbered with them.’ She swallowed hard to stem the flood of miserable tears that threatened to choke her. ‘You’re not the man I thought you were.’ Finding she had nothing more to say to him, she heaved a deep sigh before adding, ‘I’ve a family to look after. If you’ll excuse me, I need to get back to them.’

Arch couldn’t believe it was all over between them. His thoughts raced wildly, frantically searching for a way to turn this situation around. Nothing but pitiful excuses materialised. In pure desperation, he blurted, ‘Which you can’t do without my help, Aidy. Without my wage packet, you’ll all be on the streets in no time.’

She gasped, hurt filling her at this lack of faith in her abilities. Her eyes brimming with contempt for him, she hissed, ‘Oh, can’t I? Well, I’ll show you that I don’t need your money. And now I’ve seen you for what you really are, I don’t need or want you either.’

She shot over to the door. Catching him offguard, she gave Arch a hard shove on his shoulder. He stumbled back out of the doorway into the yard, and the next thing he knew the door was slammed shut in his face and he heard the key turning in the lock.

Numb with shock, he stared blindly at the closed door. He’d come here tonight to save his marriage; instead he had managed to end it. Aidy had left him in no doubt that there was no going back for them. His broad shoulders slumped in despair, he turned and walked from the yard.

In the back room, the sound of raised voices had roused Bertha from sleep. She had recognised them immediately and hope had soared within her that her beloved granddaughter and her husband were resolving their differences and putting their marriage back on the right track again. But that hope was instantly dashed by the tone of their voices, especially Aidy’s, and she knew that her wish for a reconciliation between them was not going to be granted. When she heard the slamming of the back door, and moments later the sound of Aidy weeping, her own heart broke then for the sorrow she knew her granddaughter was suffering. Bertha wept herself back to sleep.