Part 22 (2/2)

The sickly sweet, cloying smell became stronger. He wouldn't let it bother him. He'd just look at the picture and think about the good times. There had been good times! Leah stared at him from the photo. She seemed to come alive. His gaze devoured that shyly smiling face. She was looking at him, joyfully. There was no one else, no one but the two of them. On the day the photo was taken, on their wedding day, he'd sung to her. The song he always sang to her. The picture was getting dim. He couldn't think straight, but he could remember what he'd sung. Sweet Sixteen! To him she would always be that. Sweet and sixteen! His eyes closed; the picture slipped from his hand. He was singing, singing as he'd never sung before, his voice soaring. It soared over the meadows, over the moors and dales, to the heavens and beyond...

'When you were swe...eet sixteen...'

CHAPTER TWENTY TWO.

Walter Hargraves made his usual weekly morning walk to the train station. From there he would take the train to Accrington where he worked as head clerk for the prestigious firm of solicitors, Lawson, Dunne and Grey.

Walter was a bachelor, thirty-nine years of age and moderately good looking in a rather prim way; neat suit, polished shoes, dapper moustache and hair slicked back from a narrow face. He turned to wave to his mother who always saw him off, then proceeded on down St. Hubert's Road, his mind not, as usual on what he would do that day, but on a visit he'd paid the day before to a certain Mrs. O'Shea.

His mother, Martha, watched his dapper walk down the street, a smile of satisfaction on her face. She was proud of her son, that his employment as head clerk in a law firm gave him some status in the town and, in doing so, also her. She waited for his usual last wave as he turned the corner. Yes, there it was! She raised her hand, then walked slowly back up the path.

The houses on St. Hubert's Road were larger than those in Glebe Street, just round the corner. Furthermore, the front door didn't open onto the pavement, but was separated from it by a low fence with a gate. There was a path to the front door and on one side a small area suitable for growing flowers. There was even room for a few shrubs. At the back of the house was a long, sloping lawn down to the back gate which led onto the back lane, the lawn divided by a path leading to the outside toilet. However, there was a bathroom upstairs, which again put them above Glebe Street. Martha's house was always spotless and 'you could eat off her floors' as most people, who had been inside, would tell you.

Walter continued on his walk to the station. He couldn't ever remember feeling as he did at the moment. For so long his life had been orderly; a life of specifics, schedules strictly adhered to, which gave him a feeling of security that all was as it should be. But since that visit to Leah Hammond at her shop on the Square he was at 'sixes and sevens', as his mother would have said. Even after the war, when most men had found it hard to adjust to civilian life, he'd picked up the thread of his existence with the same law firm as though nothing untoward had happened. Granted, there had been times when visions of the Front returned to him in his nightmares, when he'd wake sweating and wished he smoked. Unfortunately his mother had absolutely forbidden smoking and he'd never think of going against his mother. So he would turn over and turn his mind off any unpleasant thoughts tending to surface. Even the presence of three very bossy, spinster older sisters and a complaining semi-invalid father could not ruffle his outwardly placid and correct exterior.

His mouth was set in its usual prim line as he boarded the train, his briefcase clutched tight. He looked what he was, severe, correct, proper and parsimonious.

Not until recently had Walter thought much about women except that they were not like men (he had noticed this!) His relations.h.i.+p with his mother and sisters was cordial, yet distant. He really knew little at all about women and it hadn't worried him unduly. Until now! It was not in his nature to pursue women. Conversely women found they were not drawn to him. So, with regard to this situation there was a kind of stalemate.

Now, however, he suddenly had the desire to get to know a woman (Leah Hammond) in a more intimate way, but he'd no idea how to go about it. He'd no real male friends, for again men found him wanting. Not that he was inclined towards men. He would have been horrified at the intimation, although there had been a bit of surmising about this by those who knew him. But he was as straight as a dye as the saying went, proven by that day when he'd walked into the shop. When Leah Hammond levelled those pansy blue eyes at him he felt as though he'd been hit by a thunderbolt (he was not p.r.o.ne to exaggeration, but this is how he felt at the time, had anyone asked). He had been momentarily struck dumb and it wasn't until she'd asked him three times what he wanted that he'd collected himself, stuttering his name and his business like Simple Simon.

He was still pondering on how he could woo Leah when the train pulled into Accrington station, unaware that he'd been talking to himself and that people were staring at him as though he'd lost his senses (which he had, for the first time in his life).

The clock said a quarter to two. Leah took her dress out of the wardrobe. Walter wasn't coming to take her out until two thirty so she had plenty of time to get ready. She inspected the blue linen dress she intended to wear: it was pristine! Even Walter's mother would approve. After a walk in the War Memorial Park they were to have afternoon tea with Mrs. Hargraves. Leah wasn't looking forward to it at all. How that woman annoyed her! One day she might be her mother-in-law? Although Walter hadn't said anything yet she knew he had ideas on those lines. She shuddered. The last time Walter's mother had paid a visit to Belmont Road Leah caught her running her finger along the dresser. Mrs. Hargraves had not looked at all guilty at being 'caught out', just sniffed in that disdainful way of hers and asked when tea was ready.

'Why are your mirrors so high,' she said as she tried to look in the one above the mantelpiece.

'I can see quite well,' Leah said, trying to hide a smile. She knew how much it annoyed Martha that she was too short to see into the mirrors at Belmont Road.

Martha was vain (amazing for a woman who was so righteous), always primping and preening when at the house in St. Hubert's Road (which had a mirror, hung low, in every room). Leah had also recently discovered that Mrs. Hargraves had a secret vice. She liked a 'sup' of rum! More than a sup from all accounts!

Leah had discovered this amazing bit of information on a surprise visit one day to the St. Hubert's Road residence? Walter had opened the door and immediately she smelt burning feathers.

'What on earth's that for,' she said, indicating the feather in Walter's hand, from which a corkscrew of brown smoke made its way to the ceiling. He hid it behind his back, flus.h.i.+ng.

'Oh, just getting rid of the smell. Come in, come in.'

'What smell?'

Then she realized. Burning feathers were evidently supposed to do this, with not much success this time. As she stepped into the hall she was aware of Walter's sisters, Ida, May and Bella running from room to room like demented banshees, holding up their burning feather.

'It's because of me Dad,' Walter said. 'He can't abide the smell of drink, or anyone who drinks.'

'Who drinks?' Leah said in surprise.

'Me Mam,' he said, looking embarra.s.sed.

You could have knocked her over with a feather!

Leah walked over to the bedroom window, which looked out onto the back garden. Her mother's voice drifted up.

'Watch out for that ball, Stephen love or you'll break a window.' Emma sat on a deck chair watching Stephen and Christine. Leah looked down on them from the bedroom window. What would she have done without her mother?

The deaths of Julia and Paddy had devastated her. She had wanted to die! Afterwards she realized just how strong her mother had been at the time, in spite of her own grief. Julia had meant just as much to her mother as she had to her. Even now, after two years Leah could hardly bear to form the name of her youngest child. She still had nightmares! In them she would be running home, a silent scream on her lips. Running to warn Paddy, but she was always too late. She'd wake up sweating, her heart hammering in her chest, that silent scream of anguish becoming an agonized moan as she surfaced; the reality worse than the nightmare.

She'd never forget that film, The Sheik, starring Rudolph Valentino, or what it came to signify: the death of her baby! It would be forever imprinted on her mind. How could the human body survive such grief? She had really thought she would go insane, had wanted to kill Paddy, especially when she smelt the drink, hurling abuse as she held her dying daughter in her arms. She was demented for weeks on end, the pain like a giant hand, which wrung and twisted her heart as though trying to squeeze out every drop of blood. Death would have been a blessed relief. Only the thought of Stephen and Christine had brought her back.

She'd wept until worn to a shadow. Then there had been the added sadness of Paddy's death, also the guilt, for although she blamed him for Julia's death, and rightly so she thought, when she recovered a little she knew she should have considered his feelings, for he had adored Julia.

When they found him, (her and her mother), lying on the kitchen floor, pathetically clutching the photo, she'd been cut to the heart. She couldn't have coped but for her mother!

She walked back to the bed and picked up her dress. She put it on over her slip and b.u.t.toned the front, gazing pensively at her reflection in the mirror. She looked better than she had in a long while. At last she'd lost that thinness, that wan look and her skin had regained that satiny l.u.s.tre. Her hair had been lank and lifeless for months. Now there was a s.h.i.+ne and bounce to it and she picked up the comb and flicked it into place.

As she walked down the stairs she jumped as the knocker on the front door was being banged with force. How many times had she told Walter not to do that? He never took a bit of notice! He knew her nerves were still fragile. She wondered, sometimes, why on earth she had ever accepted his stuttered attempt to ask her out: boredom, probably and the fact that she was fed up of doing the same thing day in and day out. She never got out of the shop except to go home and look after the children. Walter had been a means of escape.

When she first met Walter she had thought him presentable enough, quite good looking. Strange, now she didn't think this at all! He was a bit of a fuddy duddy if she was honest with herself. And now she was just as imprisoned as she had been, but in a different way.

She opened the front door just as Walter was ready to knock again. He dropped his hand and flushed when he saw Leah. He hadn't got over this habit of turning a bright red, even after almost six months of courting.

'You're early, Walter,' Leah said, trying to hide her annoyance.

'Yes, sorry, but you know I don't like being late.'

He followed her down the pa.s.sage into the kitchen. He wore his suit (out-dated). This irritated her as well. Why couldn't he buy himself some decent clothes? He wasn't poor, just tight and she couldn't abide meanness in people. He needn't have worn a suit, either, since they were only going for a walk in the park. Just something casual would do, but Walter was always overdressed (and out of date). He must have had that suit before the war!

'Just sit down for a minute, Walter, and I'll call Stephen and Christine.'

Emma looked up as Leah walked towards her. 'I was just about to come in, la.s.s. I'll be on me way in a minute. Has Walter come yet? I thought I heard the front door.'

'Yes, he's just arrived.'

Emma nodded and patted Leah's hand. They found displays of affection difficult and Leah knew that the pat meant a lot. It meant, I love you, I'm worried about you, try to keep your chin up and so on and so on. Had it not been for her mother she would have left Harwood a long time ago. She would have gone to America, to California where Darkie and Marion still lived and where Janey was now in films (and making quite a name for herself). But she could never have left her mother and Emma, when asked tentatively how she would feel about going, had been adamant she didn't. She was aghast at the suggestion and Leah wondered why she'd even bothered to ask. Getting her to Blackpool was an effort.

'Darkie and the family will come over one of these days and till then I'll bide my time here,' she had said.

Leah must be mad, Emma thought to even think she'd contemplate going. Look what had happened to the t.i.tanic! Leah hadn't mentioned it again, especially when Annie Fitton had dropped dead of a heart attack six months ago so Emma's dependence on her daughter was now total.

She often wondered what it would be like to get away from this stuffy old town, but she'd have no peace of mind if she left her mother.

She watched for a moment as Stephen and Christine threw the ball backwards and forwards to each other.

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