Christmas Wishes (38 page)

‘I think you’d better count me out,’ Ada said regretfully. ‘You’ll have had quite enough of me for one day and the twins will want to tell you how they got on. They won’t want me cluttering up their kitchen.’

Alex sighed and took hold of her arm. ‘You will come home with me and eat your share of the fish and chips,’ he said firmly. ‘I don’t believe I need to tell you how much I’ve enjoyed our day out … surely it’s natural that I don’t want it to end.’

Ada Clarke snorted. ‘You’re afraid you’ll find Irene hiding behind the kitchen door, rolling pin poised,’ she said accusingly. ‘You want me to protect you, but I’m afraid I can’t possibly do so. Dilly has been alone since early this morning and has probably torn up a couple of cushions and reduced at least one chair to matchwood by now. She can be very nasty when she feels hard done by.’

‘Right; I’ll come home with you and escort you and Dilly back to our place,’ Alex said. ‘If the girls are home, the fish and chips will be keeping warm in the bake oven, and if they aren’t home you can make a big pot of tea and feed Dilly anything you can find whilst I go down to the chippy for supplies.’

At this point the tram they wanted drew up alongside and they got aboard, though Ada was still protesting that there was no need for Alex to accompany her. ‘I hadn’t meant to come back with you, but I’ve just had a rather daunting thought,’ she said as they settled on to a hard, slatted bench. ‘You’ve obviously not remembered that you told Gillian to get fish and chips for seven.’

Alex clutched his forehead dramatically. ‘Oh my God,’ he moaned. ‘I forgot! That just goes to prove we need not only yourself, but also Dilly. I bet she’s a champion at getting outside two spare portions of fish and chips!’

Chapter Fourteen

It was midway through September by the time Joy found work. She had attended a dozen or so interviews, always accompanied by Gillian, Edward or her father, for though Mrs Clarke had offered to take her to one interview, and had in fact done so, she had been so nervous and ill at ease that Joy thought it would be best not to trouble the older woman again.

Despite her hopes, it had taken much longer than Joy had anticipated before she struck lucky, partly because at first she had only applied for secretarial work, knowing that her Pitman certificates proved that she was both fast and accurate on the typewriter. However, she soon realised that employers were put off by the fact that she was blind, so she had lowered her sights and decided to apply for other jobs.

Gillian had been back at school when an import/export firm called Wittard’s had advertised for a switchboard operator and Joy had applied and been given an interview. Her father had been on call, so Joy had telephoned Edward at his uncle’s farm and he had agreed at once to come back to Liverpool to escort her.

He had taken her to the large block of offices down by the docks, and had waited for her in reception whilst she had the interview, rejoicing with her when, flushed and excited, she had re-joined him. ‘Got it!’ she had exclaimed. ‘It’s only part time to start with; three days a week whilst they train me to recognise which socket belongs to whom. The girl I’m replacing is partially sighted, so each socket has been numbered and you can feel the numbers below each hole because they’re raised. They gave me a test, and though I fumbled at first the boss, Mr Murchison, said I’d passed with flying colours, so once they see I can cope it will become full time, which is nine to five Monday to Friday and nine to noon one Saturday a month.’

So now Joy was a switchboard operator with a large board on the wall before her, earphones upon her head and, on occasion, a queue of callers waiting to be connected. She enjoyed the work and liked her colleagues, and on this particular morning, as a brisk little wind blew off the Mersey, she set off for work at an especially early hour, since it would be the first time she had undertaken the journey alone.

Tapping briskly along the pavement, she knew when she reached the tram stop because, though she would have been hard pressed to explain why, she had noticed many times that a large number of people congregated together and standing motionless gave off a different sort of vibration, if you could call it that, from the vibration of people moving in one direction or another.

When she reached what she thought was the back of the queue, she cleared her throat and asked in a general way whether everyone was waiting for the 8.35 and if she had joined the tail of the queue and was not pushing in. The man behind whom she stood was beginning to answer when a voice called her name and Joy turned her head. ‘Hey up, Joy, is you goin’ to work? If so, you can come along o’ me; I dare say no one will mind if you skip a few bods so’s we can travel together.’

‘Oh, it’s you, Ducky,’ Joy said, a little disappointed that her solo trip was not to be, yet also slightly relieved. She would have had to enquire of someone the number of every tram which drew up alongside the queue. Ann Drake, nicknamed Ducky by common consent, also worked in Joy’s building, as tea girl and messenger, with no qualifications other than a pair of sturdy legs to work the bicycle and a cheery disposition.

Joy moved up the queue until Ducky’s hand slid into hers and Ducky’s voice said in her ear: ‘Mornin’, Joy. Ain’t it a nice one for October, eh? But why’s you so early? I have to be at work betimes to take parcels in and sort the post, but you don’t start until nine o’clock.’

Joy sighed. ‘I decided it was high time I came to work by myself,’ she explained. ‘Usually, a neighbour or a pal sees me on to the tram and the conductor tells me when to get off and suggests that anyone bound for the Liver Building might give me a hand crossing roads and dodging lampposts. And I can’t see the destination board, of course, so I’d have had to ask either someone in the queue or the conductor himself whether I was about to climb aboard the right tram. But honest to God, Ducky, I can’t always depend on other people, and I’m getting to know the journey to work like the back of my hand, so today was to be a sort of test.’

‘And I’ve bleedin’ well ruined it all,’ Ducky said, but she spoke without remorse, clearly not understanding how important independence became for someone who could not see so much as a flicker of light.

But now Ducky was helping her up the step and telling the nearest seated passenger brusquely that if he were half the gent she thought he was he and his pal would perishin’ well give up their seats to a couple of young ladies, one of whom was—

‘Oh do shut up, Ducky; I don’t need to see to strap-hang,’ Joy hissed, thoroughly embarrassed, but the men had clearly taken Ducky’s point, as Joy realised when she was pushed on to a seat still warm with recent occupancy, and felt Ducky slide into the one beside her. She began to remonstrate with the younger girl, but Ducky was having none of it.

‘Think o’ me as a total stranger, chuck,’ she said. ‘You know very well you’d have asked someone which tram were which, and whether it were safe to cross the road. Well, now you won’t need to ask, ’cos I’m here to tell you. Or if you like I’ll leave you stranded on the kerb and whizz into the office by meself.’

Joy couldn’t help laughing. ‘Oh all right, I give in; I really am grateful for your help, Ducky. Besides, I reckon there’ll be plenty of opportunities to go it alone now that I’m working full time, though my sister’s boyfriend will be back at university in a couple of weeks, so Gillian and I will start to go around together again. Of course she can’t come to and from work with me because she’s at St Hilda’s, studying for her Higher, but I expect we’ll spend our evenings together, and all day at weekends, of course.’ As she spoke, Joy realised that she was not being strictly truthful. Of late, Gillian had made excuses even when she and Joy had both been free, and Joy thought rather sadly that it was a sign they were growing up. They still loved one another, that went without saying, but they had their own lives now, in a way that they had not done even when Joy had been at Blinkers. However, she had not even told Edward how she felt about this, so she had no intention of confiding in Ducky.

The two girls chatted idly until the tram reached their stop, when Ducky nearly caused an accident by dragging Joy bodily off the tram and into the crowd of men and women waiting to board. Joy bumped into a child who squawked indignantly, got tangled up with her own white stick and cursed Ducky roundly for impatience, but once again Ducky waved her words aside. ‘It’s awright for you, queen,’ she said breathlessly, yanking at Joy’s arm so hard that Joy dropped her stick for the second time. ‘You don’t have to be collectin’ the keys from the night watchman and startin’ on the post by eight o’clock, but I does. Oh, you’ve dropped your stick. I’ll pick it up for you … no, don’t bend down now, for God’s sake!’

The warning came too late; Joy’s head met that of someone else. Both grunted with shock, though not with pain, for their two heads had only grazed.

‘I say, I’m extremely sorry, but it doesn’t do to bend down without warning on a busy pavement,’ a man’s voice remarked ruefully as Joy straightened up, her stick in her hand.

She felt the man’s shadow fall on her and took a step backwards. ‘I should be the one to apologise, it was my fault …’ she began, but got no further.

‘Haven’t I met you somewhere before?’ the man said. ‘You look familiar …’

Joy hesitated. Now that he mentioned it, she realised she had heard his voice before, though she could not put a name to it. She was about to say so when Ducky interrupted. ‘Oh, shurrup, mister, that’s the oldest chestnut on the tree,’ the girl said with all her usual insouciance. ‘She and meself work at the Liver Building, so we’re always around this area.’ She turned to Joy. ‘Mustn’t linger if I’m to be in work punctual like,’ she said briskly. ‘If you’re lookin’ to pick up a feller, this ain’t the time nor the place. Come
on
, will you?’

The man with whom Joy had bumped heads laughed, albeit ruefully, and Joy could imagine him rubbing the sore spot as he turned away from them, whistling a tune beneath his breath and causing Joy to gasp and open her mouth to speak …

Ducky, however, heaved an impatient sigh and positively dragged her companion across the pavement. ‘I wonder if he really knew you or if he were just tryin’ it on,’ she said conversationally as they walked. ‘You can never tell with fellers.’ She giggled. ‘I mean, you’d never know where his hands were goin’ till they got there.’ She giggled again. ‘I suppose you didn’t reckernise his voice?’

‘Well, I thought I did. What did he look like?’ Joy asked, but Ducky’s reply was unsatisfactory.

‘Oh, he were just a feller, dark-haired and about thirty, though I’m not too good on age,’ the girl said airily.

She continued to chatter but Joy no longer heard her. She was wondering whether it was the man who had rescued her from the bullies, or even Amy’s partner from the Blinkers Christmas treat, but after her experience in Llandudno she did not try to follow, and let Ducky, scolding, lead her into Wittard’s.

After three or four weeks Joy was thoroughly at home with her switchboard, and on occasion was called upon to type out invoices and letters to customers. She did this by means of an object called a Dictaphone that recorded dictated memos for her to type out, and she was very soon as competent upon her Remington typewriter as she was with her switchboard.

When the Christmas holidays arrived and the twins spent more time together, Joy was uneasily aware that Gillian was either withholding something from her or was in some way unhappy, but questioning merely made her cross and defensive and no one else seemed to have noticed anything wrong.

But Joy very soon realised that she was not the only one being targeted by her sister; Gillian was not comfortable in her relationship with her boyfriend, home from Cambridge for the vacation. She was never antagonistic to him, was often very sweet, but on other occasions she was offhand to the point of rudeness and Joy knew now she was not the only one who noticed. Keith had not said anything but Joy could tell from the tone of his voice that he too was uneasy, and one dark and icy cold evening, with Christmas almost upon them, Joy came tapping out of Wittard’s, heading for the tram stop, when someone said her name and put a detaining hand on her arm.

‘Joy? It’s me, Keith. I happened to be in the area so I decided I might as well meet you out of work and take you home. Gillian’s busy; she said she had to meet an old girlfriend to go Christmas shopping.’ He took Joy’s hand and tucked it into the crook of his elbow. ‘She said I’d just be in the way and to amuse myself until six o’clock when she’d be back from shopping and I might share your evening meal.’ He laughed a trifle bitterly. ‘It was a put-off; I’d have to be pretty dense not to realise that, but of course I went along with it. Well I would, wouldn’t I? It’s no secret that Gillian is the most important person in my life and I’d always planned that our future would be together. Look, would you mind if I took you to the nearest café, where we can talk in the warm?’

Joy hesitated. She knew just what Keith meant, but she did not know him terribly well and anyway her first loyalty would always be to her twin. However, she liked Keith and was sorry for him too, so she agreed that it might be pleasant to share a cup of tea and a bun at a café she knew quite near the tram stop. And soon the two of them were seated on opposite sides of a small table, with a pot of tea and a plate of buttered crumpets in front of them.

Once the waitress had left them Joy waited for Keith to speak, and when he failed to do so she raised her brows interrogatively. ‘Well?’ she said, rather truculently. ‘What’s this all about, Keith? If something’s worrying you about your friendship with Gillian, she’s the person you should be discussing it with, not me.’

‘Oh, I know, I know,’ Keith said hastily. ‘But I can’t discuss this with Gillian because – look, will you let me explain without interrupting? Only I’ve simply got to tell someone and I know you’re good at keeping secrets.’ He laughed rather bitterly. ‘Gillian told me ages ago, when we first started getting serious, that she could confide in you without any qualms, knowing you’d never tell on her.’

‘That’s true,’ Joy said, thinking that while that might once have been the case she was no longer in Gillian’s confidence, though whether what her sister was keeping from her was something important or merely what you might call a Christmas secret she could not say. So she smiled apologetically at her companion before completing the sentence. ‘That’s true,’ she said again, ‘but if you want me to keep a secret from my twin, I’m telling you now I won’t do it, or rather I can’t.’