Faded Dreams (29 page)

   On the bus home Ellen fought to contain her anger. How dare he? How dare the father she had spent her life defending, making excuses for, repay her foolish loyalty by writing that letter to her best friend of all people?

   And how, on her 21
st,
birthday when  strangers were more than happy to drink her health, could he refuse a glass of sherry? This time he had gone too far.

   From the seat behind, Betty saw her sister’s angry tears reflected in the window. ‘He’s an awkward bugger, he never alters,’ she muttered. 

   ‘Don’t upset yourself, love,’ Florrie gave her an affectionate nudge. ‘It’s his illness and the depression that goes with it that makes him act like a big kid. The doctors told me to expect him to be a different person. He thinks he’s gonna die, he can’t help how he behaves or what he says . Think of all them letters he sends us, sometimes two a day, saying how much he loves us and how every time he goes to sleep he’s frightened he’ll not waken up. He’s frightened to death of losing us  Ellie  and frightened to death of dying. We’ll all have to be a bit more patient with him, that's all.’

   Ellen had to admit to herself that since he had been away he had written passionate letters to her mother, some like love-letters from a lovesick young lad full of heart-rending declarations of devotion, some full of boyish attempts at poetry. Her mother would read them first to herself and then out loud through her tears apart from what must have been  personal bits when she would lapse into silence.

   Perhaps  it
was
his illness, perhaps people did strange things when they believed they were going to die...things like writing love letters to their daughter’s 20-year-old best friend and forgetting they were 50 and married. There she went again, making excuses for him. 

   By the time the bus reached Blackburn Boulevard her father’s struggle to regain his health had become more of a concern than her friendship with Mary, which was just as well. Mary returned to college, finished her teaching course and moved to Nottingham, and on rare visits to Blackburn kept her distance from her ageing Lothario and his family. The friendship between the two girls would never be rebuilt.

   A month later Joe scooped  his few belongings into a bed-sheet labelled, “Devonshire Road Hospital”, slung them over his shoulder and walked out of the hospital. Hitch-hiking the thirty or so miles he arrived home just after midnight; the bed-sheet never made its way back to Blackpool and became just one of his many hand-picked “souvenirs”.

   His story was that one of the male nurses  had made a pass at him and he wasn’t staying in that place with that nancy a minute longer. It all seemed a bit vague and unbelievable but Florrie, thankful that the newly discovered streptomycin had at least brought his illness under control, was glad to have him home,

    And now his dog must be brought under control; there was a pile of chewed-up wadding from inside the couch in the middle of the kitchen floor. Rusty, frozen with fear, was crouching trembling under the table. In an instantaneous explosion of rage Joe snatched the bread knife from the table and ,bending double, lashed out blindly in the direction of the terrified hound, not knowing whether or not his blows were hitting their mark. It was his first day home but his ranting and raving were as familiar as the day he’d left.

   Betty screamed at him to stop while 13-year-old Billy, the man of the house in his father’s absence, risked his own life by hanging on to the arm brandishing the knife. Ellen, true to custom, fought against the hot muzzy feeling overwhelming her and found herself a chair to collapse into.

   Moments later their father flung the bloodstained knife to the floor, ran down the backyard and slammed the lavatory door behind him.

   Billy coaxed Rusty from his sanctuary and flinched in horror at the sight. The poor dog was foaming at the mouth, the snowy white patch across his chest already turning a bright pink where the knife had struck.

   Betty marched down the yard, flung open the lavatory door and found her father sitting there, head in hands, trousers round ankles, moaning in torment.

   ‘You barmy sod, he’s only a pup,’ she shouted. ‘You’d better come and see what you’ve done, it’s a wonder you haven’t killed him.’

   He pushed her aside and ran, hauling his braces over his shoulders, calling the dog’s name in a strangled cry and reached the house before her.

   Rusty shook violently from the tips of his ears pinned flat against his silky head to his tail curled protectively underneath his backside. Gulping audibly and with his belly close to the floor he crept towards his master.  Joe dropped to his knees and took the bewildered animal in his arms, rocking him backwards and forwards while nuzzling the soft fur of his head.

   ‘Christ, what have I done? What have I done? I only meant to learn him a lesson… I don’t remember picking up the bloody knife… I just reached for the first thing that come to hand. I only meant to
chastise him with the flat of it… not the blade.’

   He couldn't believe that in just a few minutes he had done all that damage to his faithful pal, the poor little bugger.

   ‘I’ll soon make him right… you can be sure of that, and I swear to God I’ll never do anything like that like again.’ He reached under the sink and pulled out a bottle of Dettol.

   ‘That’s what them cuts  need, summat strong and antiseptic,' he muttered to himself, 'better not dilute it or it’ll take longer to start working.’

   Rusty whimpered pitifully as neat Dettol was poured liberally over his chest and gently smoothed in by Joe’s none-too-clean hands. Then, as if realising that this new “torture” was being metered out with compassion rather than cruelty, he bravely but gently wagged his tail and licked the sorrow from his master’s face.

   ‘What the hell’s been going on here?’ Florrie stood in the kitchen doorway holding on to its frame at both sides.
                                    

CHAPTER THIRTY

   ‘Don’t ask
us
, ask
him
,’ Betty’s tone was contemptuous.

   Nobody was forthcoming but Florrie could guess what had happened. She struggled to keep her temper, after all it
was
Joe’s first day home.

   ‘You can’t carry on like this or you’ll finish up back in Devonshire Road, or worse still, the asylum. I’ve already told you that the vet said Rusty can’t help chewing stuff up…it’s because he’s been missing you.’

   ‘I know, I know, I’m sorry, don’t go on about it Florrie you’ll make me feel worse than I do already.’ He was in tears, so was Ellen, so was Billy. Only Betty was stony-faced.

   All through that night he sat up comforting the dog and repeating the Dettol treatment three more times. The bond between man and dog might was healed that same night but the knife wounds took until the end of the week.

*

    Betty had had enough. There had been peace in the house while her father was in hospital but she might have known he’d be up to his old tricks as soon as he came home. And after what he’d done to Rusty, well that had ‘put the tin hat on it’, so to speak. Walking home with Jeff a few days later she stopped and perched herself on the long stone wall that encircled the Corporation Park.

   ‘Let’s sit down a minute,’ she tugged at his jacket. ‘Jeff… do you still want to marry me?’

   A smile a spread across his face and his eyelids thudded against his cheeks fifty to the dozen.

   ‘Do I? Do I? Oh Betty love, I promise you I’ll make you and Janet happy. I’ll look after both of you for ever and ever amen.’

   She took his face in her hands, gently smoothing the tension from his twitching lids and said the words she had said to no other man, ‘I love you.’

   As soon as things had calmed down regarding the incident with Rusty, she left home and moved with Janet into Jeff’s sister’s spare bedroom. She would keep in touch with her mother and Ellen and Billy, but as for her father - if she never saw him again it would be too soon.

*

   Betty would have liked a church wedding if they could have afforded it. On the other hand she knew that a family as unpredictable as hers would never survive a big affair. It would all be too much for them. Ellie would be fainting all over the show and her dad would make a complete fool of himself with his daft antics. 

   Her mother would have liked her to have a proper wedding, but Betty being an unmarried mother instead of a virgin meant that a white wedding was out of the question, just as it had been for herself more than 25 years before. Still, Betty could have a nice frock in a pastel shade like she did, and with some hymns sung in a church, it would be just like a proper wedding.

   It wasn’t to be. Betty stood next to Jeff not in a church but in front of a polished desk in The Registry Office with a handful of guests looking on while a few words were spoken. Florrie glanced at Joe, dabbing his eyes in his usual emotional way, and wondered if he too was thinking back to their own wedding.

   Even with the risk of embarrassment it would have been unthinkable for Betty to ban her father. He had promised to stay reasonably sober and for the most part kept his word. Nevertheless, at the pub where the buffet tea was laid out he couldn’t resist being the star of the show, mingling noisily with the guests, reducing them to tears of laughter with his jokes and silly anecdotes and occasionally going too far causing whoops of disbelief and raised highbrows.

   ‘Why doesn’t he just bugger off?’ Betty whispered to her new husband. ‘I knew it was a waste of time asking him to behave himself.’

                      ‘Don’t bother about him, love. He’s harmless enough and at least he’s keeping the party going. Nobody’ll think any the less of
you
just because your dad’s a bit of a barm-pot. Just relax and ignore him, we don’t want any trouble today of all days, do we?’

   'No, but I might have known he'd show us up. He can't help himself, he's like a big kid who won't grow up.'

   She watched anxiously as her father swung Janet into the air, higher and higher till her head was only narrowly missing the light fitting.

   ‘Now then, you like your granddad swinging you up to the sky, don’t ya, cock?’ he said loudly, ‘and I bet there’s a lot of folk here that thinks I don’t look old enough to be your granddad.’ He looked around the room for encouragement only to find his once-spellbound audience politely turning away from him.

   ‘It’s getting more like a bloody funeral than a wedding in here Janet. Your granddad'll give ‘em a tune on the old Joanna,
that’ll
liven ‘em up a bit.’

   Sure enough, within a short time people were joining in as he pounded  out all the old songs, “Somebody Stole My Gal”, “California  Here I Come”, and then a few of the “latest” for the younger generation; thankfully there were none of his more risqué renditions. When her wedding day came to a peaceful end Betty breathed a sigh of relief.

'Thank God there's been no drunken fights and nobody ended up in jail,'she said to Jeff, 'but it's a poor do if I can't trust my own dad not to make a fool of himself on my wedding day.'

*

   Two days after the wedding Ellen left for California to take up a job as a nanny. Her parents and Billy joined her on the midnight train from Preston to Euston and by early morning were wandering London’s deserted streets gazing in awe at the beautiful old buildings.

   By the time they reached Heathrow Airport the euphoria had worn off and anxiety had set in. They were clearly out of their depth and it was up to Billy to take charge, work out the unfamiliar procedures and calmly guide them though the routine of check-in, ticket, passport, and luggage.

   Farewells were said through kisses and tears and  before they knew it Ellen’s plane was out of sight and Florrie was inconsolable.

   ‘She’s never lived away from home before…how’s she gonna manage without us?’

   ‘What if she gets lost when she gets off in New York to change planes?’ Joe wailed, pessimistic as ever. ‘What if there’s nobody there to meet her at the other end when she gets to Los Angeles?’

   Wise beyond his fourteen years, Billy took his mother’s arm and edged her towards a cafe.

   ‘Let’s go and have a cup of tea. She’ll be all right mum, our Ellie has always had her head screwed on right.’

   High above the Atlantic Ocean, Ellen spent the next few hours squeezing and blowing her nose hard in an effort to control her sobbing, completely oblivious to the worried glances of fellow-passengers. By the time the plane touched down in New York she was horrified to
find
she had pressed a cluster of angry red blisters on to her nostrils and upper lip which was enough to finally get her weeping under control.

   The second  leg of the flight – New York to Los Angeles – was almost dreamlike, each mile taking her further away from the life she knew, though she was already resigned to the fact that back home everything was changing.

   Betty was married and all set to live happily ever after  just a few doors away from her parents. Ellen didn’t envy her one little bit, there was more to life than living in Blackburn and being tied to one man.

   As for young Billy, he was destined for better things than the rest of the family put together. He’d be what he’d always wanted to be, a doctor. Sometimes the kid seemed so mature it was hard to think of him as the youngest. He was the caring sort, bless him, always soothing one or another of them or wiping away their mother’s tears.