Patsy of Paradise Place, page 22
She hadn’t been anywhere since Liam had been born, except when Elaine asked her to go to the nearby corner shop to buy groceries, and she found the thought of going that far on her own quite daunting.
She wished Billy was well enough to go with her, but he could still only walk very short distances on his crutches.
She could always ask Maureen Murphy, she supposed, but that would mean waiting until the weekend when Maureen wasn’t at work and she wasn’t sure if Maureen would come with her or not. They didn’t have much to do with each other these days. They’d quarrelled the day she’d gone round to ask Mrs Murphy if she knew where her mam might have gone.
Mrs Murphy had told her that she had no idea at all. Maureen had insisted on taking a look at the baby and then she’d refused to believe it was Bruno’s.
‘It wouldn’t have such light-coloured skin and fuzzy red hair if it was his,’ she pronounced.
‘Rubbish!’ Patsy defended. ‘Liam takes after my side of the family. He looks like my dad. Anyway, he will probably change as he gets older. Babies often lose all their hair and the new lot is quite different to what they were born with.’
‘And what about the colour of his eyes, then?’
‘All babies’ eyes are blue when they’re born, everyone knows that!’
‘His aren’t!’ Maureen exclaimed triumphantly. ‘If you look closely they’re a funny shade of green or hazel, I can’t tell which.’
‘They’re blue,’ Patsy insisted. It’s the light in here, you can’t see them properly.’
Maureen was not convinced. ‘He’s a lovely little thing, but he’s not a bit like Bruno,’ she’d insisted stubbornly.
Since then, on the few occasions when she’d seen Maureen in the street, Patsy had tried to avoid her. She’d often wondered herself why Liam had not the slightest trace of Bruno’s Latin swarthiness and build, but she didn’t want to listen to Maureen telling her so.
Each morning Patsy found some reason to put off her trip to New Brighton. One day it was because it was too wet, the next because it was too hot.
When Billy became increasingly irritable with the way she was prevaricating she finally forced herself to go. She dressed Liam in a white cotton romper suit that Elaine had bought for him and laid out her blue-and-white spotted voile dress that her dad had bought her. She hadn’t worn it since Liam was born and she hoped she would be able to get into it.
Tears came to her eyes as she dressed. Her dad’s birthday had been such a momentous night, she thought sadly. So many things had happened since then; things that she struggled daily to push to the back of her mind.
Much to her surprise Patsy found that she enjoyed the journey over to New Brighton. It was mid-morning so the trams were not very busy and no one was pushing or shoving. When she reached the Pier Head, though, it was a different story. The Royal Iris was at the landing stage and it was packed with day-trippers making the most of the last few days of late summer sunshine.
The Mersey was as calm as a millpond. Patsy managed to find a seat on deck and sat there in the warm sunshine, holding Liam in her arms, watching the boats moored alongside and the white gulls soaring and screeching around them.
As she gazed out over the blue-grey water to where New Brighton Tower rose high against a clear blue sky her heart began to pound at the thought of seeing Bruno again.
It was almost six months since she’d last seen him, before Liam had been born, even. It seemed a lifetime ago since they had strolled along the promenade and made love in the sandhills. She still felt bitter because he had never made any attempt to find her.
You don’t know that for sure, she reminded herself. He’d known where she lived so he might have come looking for her and not been able to find her. After all, Billy had once gone across to New Brighton looking for him and not found him.
As the Royal Iris grated alongside the landing stage she joined the throng of people who were making their way on to the pier and along the promenade to the Tower Fairground.
She stood for a moment taking in the busy scene. The roundabouts, dodgem cars, and the variety of stalls selling everything from ice-cream and candyfloss to funny hats and trinkets were all busy. There were crowds at the hoop-la booths and at all the other sideshows; even a queue outside the fortune teller’s tent.
She looked for the spot where the menagarie was normally housed, but couldn’t see the huge green-and-white awning anywhere. In the end, because Liam was so heavy to carry around in such a crowded place, she asked one of the stall holders where it was.
‘There’s no menagerie here this year, luv,’ he told her.
‘No animals here at all? What about the lions and tigers?’
He shook his head. ‘No, there’s no circus this year.’
‘Why is that? What’s happened?’
The stall holder shrugged. ‘Don’t really know, luv. They never came back. I did hear the trainer had gone to Rhyl, or some other Welsh seaside place with the animals this year. Wanted a change, I suppose. Not such a bad idea really. Might try Margate or Southend myself next year. You get fed up with being in one place all the time, gorra try and see a bit of the world, haven’t you?’
Patsy smiled and thanked him, but she still wasn’t satisfied so she crossed to another part of the fairground to see if she could find out anything more.
No matter whom she asked the answer was always the same. Bruno Alvarez had not been there that season. No one was quite sure where he was, but they didn’t think he had gone back to Spain. Everyone seemed to know that he’d been at Blackpool during the winter. Some of them even told her that he had come back to New Brighton to put on a show over Christmas, but after that they had no idea where he’d gone.
Dispirited and disappointed, Patsy decided that since her trip had been a complete waste of time she might as well go straight back to Liverpool. The Royal Iris pulled away seconds before she reached the landing stage. Her heart sank as she stood there watching it sail into midstream and head for Liverpool. It would be another hour before there was another boat.
She was in no mood to walk along the crowded promenade. She wondered whether to wait for the next boat or take a bus to Seacombe and pick up the Royal Daffodil from there. The day had become oppressively hot and as she saw the dark clouds building over the Welsh mountains in the far distance she thought there might be a thunderstorm brewing up. If there was, then the sooner she was back in Liverpool the better.
She felt utterly drained. She’d been so tensed up about seeing Bruno again after all this time that now she felt bewildered and out of her depth. It was like having a door slammed in her face.
All the way back to Liverpool she wondered what she should tell Billy. He’d want to know how she got on, so how would he react when she told him the truth?
‘I’m as disappointed as you are,’ he scowled. ‘I was hoping this trip would clear the air between you and Bruno for good and then the rest of us could get on with our lives.’
She stared at him nonplussed. She realised that getting rid of the stable had been a turning point for Billy. His apathy about life and the future had disappeared and understandably he wanted her to come to some decision about her future. The trouble was, she was pretty sure he meant their future.
She waited for Billy to speak out, to elaborate, but he said no more. There was an uneasy air of tension between them. She turned away quickly: from the look on his face Patsy was sure he was waiting for her to say she was going to forget all about Bruno now that she knew he was gone.
How could she do that when every fibre of her being cried out for the handsome Spaniard? He was not only the father of her child, he was her only love. How could she go into another man’s arms when Bruno possessed her heart?
She was so fond of Billy that she couldn’t bear to hurt him by telling him this. If only he was her brother! She’d wanted him to be that from the very first day he’d come to work for her dad, when she’d been little more than a child herself.
For the next few days Billy stayed morose and brooding, but he kept his own counsel about Bruno. Now that he realised that there was no longer a business waiting for him, even when he was well enough to pick up the reins again, he seemed anxious to start making plans.
He began to strive to walk further and further each day without crutches. Although it caused him considerable pain he insisted on trying to walk up the stairs and his look of triumph when he managed it brought a lump to Patsy’s throat.
She had hated to see him so helpless. It was terrible that a man who was so well built and who had been so fit should be reduced to shambling around on crutches. Now, as each day he managed to walk a little bit further without them, she felt as pleased about his progress as he did.
‘It’s still going to be a long time before I’m fit enough to work again,’ he said gloomily. ‘No one will want to employ a cripple. What can I do? I can’t lift anything and I can’t walk very far or very fast. Even a job as a doorman is beyond me since they’re expected to carry the guests’ luggage up to their rooms.’
‘You might manage to get a job as a night-watchman.’
‘Not a chance! Once the burglars found out that I couldn’t run after them they’d be breaking in every night of the week.’
Patsy chewed her lip thoughtfully. Perhaps this was the right time to suggest again that Billy should look after Liam and she should be the one to find a job.
‘What sort of job were you thinking about?’ he asked dubiously.
‘I don’t know really. Perhaps working in a shop or something. Only part time,’ she assured him quickly.
‘And there’s a lot of that sort of work around, is there?’
She shrugged. ‘No, probably not. Perhaps I could get some work cleaning, then.’
‘Charring? You? The girl who was a partner in her own business?’
‘Well we haven’t got a business now, have we,’ she snapped. ‘I don’t want to go as a char, cleaning up other people’s messes and I don’t particularly want to work in a shop pandering to the whims of people who can afford to buy things that I can’t, but what else is there for me to do? Tell me that, Billy Grant.’
‘Wow! Temper, temper, Patsy Callaghan. It must be right what they say about red hair,’ Billy laughed. ‘Well, I’ll tell you what you could do – you could become a nurse in a hospital.’
Patsy stared at him in disbelief. ‘Are you mad, Billy? Do you know what I’d have to do to become a nurse?’
‘Yes, you’d have to enrol for training. It’s like an apprenticeship and it’s hard work, but you’re used to that so you’d manage.’
‘So where would I go to train?’
‘A hospital, of course. It takes about three years to become properly qualified and you’d have to live in the hospital.’
‘You know all about this, do you?’
‘Yes, I do,’ he told her smugly. ‘The nurses talked to me a lot, especially the night nurses when I couldn’t sleep. They told me about how they had trained and all the rest of it.’
‘And did they tell you what I’d do with a baby while I was training?’
Billy’s face clouded. ‘I’d forgotten about Liam.’
‘Yes, well you may have managed to do so, but I can’t.’
‘Now he’s weaned you could leave him with someone, couldn’t you?’ Billy asked mildly.
‘That’s what I was planning on doing when I said I’d get a job. I was planning to leave him with you! Only for a few hours each day, though,’ she added swiftly.
‘If you were training to be a nurse and earning some money then you could pay someone to look after Liam for you permanently.’
Patsy shook her head. ‘I know it seems a good idea, Billy, but I couldn’t bring myself to do that. Look at him!’ She gazed down at the baby who was lying on a rug by her feet, kicking his legs and waving a rattle in the air. ‘He’s far too precious for me to hand over to anyone else to look after permanently.’
‘Not if it was someone you knew really well, someone who’d loved him as much as you do,’ he persisted.
She stared at him, puzzled. ‘I don’t follow. When I suggested that you should look after him for a few hours each day you didn’t seem to like the idea.’
‘No, not me! I’d be no good at looking after him. I mean my mam, of course! Liam would be perfectly safe with her so you’d have no worries about him at all.’
‘I couldn’t expect her to take on a young baby!’ Patsy exclaimed, aghast. ‘Think of all the work that’s involved, Billy! Your mam’s brought up one family. She probably can’t wait for the day when I leave and she can have her home free of nappies airing on the fireguard and baby clothes all over the place.’
Chapter Twenty-Eight
PATSY KEPT TOYING with Billy’s suggestion that she should train as a nurse. In many ways she liked the idea, because it would mean that she would be doing something worthwhile.
It would also make life easier for the Grants if she wasn’t living there, she told herself. Now that Billy could manage to get up and down stairs he could have his bedroom back instead of having to sleep on the sofa.
The really big problem was Liam. Could she bear to leave him in someone else’s care even if Elaine agreed to look after him?
He was now almost six months old and he was becoming aware of all that went on around him. He wasn’t a robust child, but he was certainly very active and Patsy wondered if it would be asking too much of Elaine to have him all the time.
Liam reminded her so much of her own father with his light blue eyes and long thin build. He had her red curls, though, and freckles right across the bridge of his nose the same as she had. There seemed to be nothing at all of Bruno in either his colouring or features. Bruno’s skin had been a warm olive brown that made his teeth look brilliantly white when he smiled. His eyes were as dark as chocolate under his heavy dark brows.
She wondered what Bruno would have thought of Liam if she’d been able to find him. There must be a reason why she hadn’t heard a word from him in all this time. After all, he knew where she lived.
She pondered over all the advantages and drawbacks of having to leave Liam while she trained to be a nurse. Finally, she made her decision and plucked up the courage to mention the matter to Elaine.
‘Billy has already asked me and I said I would,’ Elaine smiled.
‘It will be an awful lot of extra work for you to take on,’ Patsy pointed out. ‘Liam will be crawling any day now and once he starts toddling then you really will have your hands full.’
‘I know all about that, luv! I’ve brought up three of my own, remember. Anyway,’ she added, a wide smile on her plump face, ‘if I can’t look after my grandson then who else can?’
Patsy bit her lip. Her grandson? So Elaine still thought Liam was Billy’s baby!
She opened her mouth to deny it then shut it again quickly, remembering Billy’s warning that if they told Elaine that Bruno was Liam’s father she certainly wouldn’t want to look after him. She might even tell Patsy to get out right away and take her baby with her.
She wondered if Billy also still thought that the baby was his. Was that why he was trying to be so helpful and why he was suggesting that his mother would look after Liam for her?
But he couldn’t be, she reasoned. She and Billy had only ever made love once and she had been meeting Bruno every Sunday all through last summer. Anyway, Liam with his red hair wasn’t a bit like Billy. He wasn’t like Bruno either, she reminded herself.
The more she thought about becoming a nurse the more the idea appealed to her. She asked Billy if he knew the name of any of the nurses he’d talked to when he’d been in hospital so that she could go and ask them how she went about it.
‘Go to the Labour Exchange and ask there,’ he told her. ‘They’re sure to have all the details.’
Patsy followed his advice and a week later, full of nervous trepidation, she was on her way for an interview at Liverpool General Hospital.
When, two weeks later, a letter arrived telling her to report for her initial training, Patsy felt so nervous that she almost had second thoughts about what she was doing. Thinking about leaving Liam in Elaine’s care was one thing; walking out of the house and leaving him there with her was another.
‘After the first month of your training you’ll be able to come home on your day off each week,’ Billy reminded her.
‘Maybe, but right now it’s the first month I’m worried about. That’s four whole weeks! How am I going to last that long without seeing Liam?’
‘It will be over in no time at all,’ he told her confidently.
‘That’s rubbish and you know it, Billy,’ she told him angrily.
‘No it’s not and I do know what I’m talking about. I was in hospital for months and it seemed like no time at all.’
‘You hadn’t left your baby behind though, had you?’
He didn’t answer, but the look he gave her sent a frisson of fear through her and she felt herself colour up in embarrassment.
She tried to laugh it off. ‘Well, you know what I mean, don’t you!’
When he still remained silent Patsy said awkwardly, ‘I’d better go and tell Elaine the news and see if she’s still happy about our arrangement.’
The next two weeks were chaotic. Patsy spent every moment she could with Liam. Sometimes she felt like a drowning man clutching at the only thing that could save her life; at others like a protective lioness with her only cub. She couldn’t bear to let Liam out of her sight or out of her arms.
‘He’ll still be here when you come home in a month’s time,’ Billy told her, when he saw Patsy sitting down nursing Liam instead of putting him into his cot to sleep.
‘Yes, and by then he might be too big to want cuddling. Babies can change quite a lot in a month, you know.’
‘Not him! He likes being cuddled too much, and I’ll be cuddling him every day while you’re away, and so will me mam and Janie and even young Freddie.’
Patsy buried her face in Liam’s red curls. She didn’t want Billy to see the tears in her eyes, not when they were all rallying round to help her.
