A Daughter’s Courage: A powerful, gritty new saga from the Sunday Times bestseller. Kitty Neale

Чтение книги онлайн.

       Chapter 1

       Battersea, London, 1956

      Crimson nail polish was the only splash of colour in the dank kitchen as Dorothy Butler painted her nails in preparation for her date with Robbie Ferguson. It was mid-September and she was sitting at the battered kitchen table. While waiting for the varnish to dry, she watched as her mother, Alice, flicked soapy suds from her hands before wiping them down the front of her washed-out apron.

      Now twenty-two years old, Dorothy had been a child when her father returned from fighting in France, a broken man, unable to resume his work as a groundsman in Battersea Park. Since then, with only a small army disability pension to live on, her mother had taken in washing, which helped to pay the rent and buy the coal needed to warm the house during the long winter months. It was all Alice could manage as her fear of going outside kept her a prisoner in her own home. However, constantly leaning over the sink and scrubbing clothes had damaged her back, and Dorothy saw her grimace as she stirred the three cups of tea she’d just made.

      Dorothy winced at the sight of her mum’s hands. They looked blistered, red raw, and she wished she could do more to ease her burdens. Her own job as a baker’s assistant didn’t pay well and, though they had sufficient to eat, there was only just enough money left to pay the bills.

      ‘Dottie, be a love and take this cuppa through to your father, will you?’ Alice asked.

      Dottie blew on her freshly polished nails, hoping they were dry, as she obligingly took the weak tea which had seen the leaves stewed three times. She carried it through to the sparsely furnished front room. She wasn’t surprised to find her father Bill in his usual place, sat on a faded brown wing-backed armchair, staring up at the bare light-bulb hanging from the ceiling rose. Dorothy knew that her mother didn’t believe in luxuries, neither could she afford them. If it wasn’t practical or didn’t serve a purpose, then it wasn’t needed, and lampshades came under the latter heading.

      ‘Here you are, Dad,’ Dorothy said gently as she knelt next to her father’s chair. ‘I’ve brought you a nice cuppa.’

      She studied her father’s pale face. His skin was almost translucent and etched with lines. He had an especially deep furrow across his brow which Dorothy thought had been caused by a constant frown. He looked in a permanent state of anguish and rarely spoke or acknowledged anyone. She wondered if her father even knew who she was. It had broken Dorothy’s heart when she had first seen him in this state, but it was something she’d now become accustomed to.

      Having got no response from her father, she returned to the kitchen, where her mother was putting some freshly washed clothes through the mangle. For the umpteenth time she tried again to challenge her.

      ‘Mum, why won’t you let Dr Stubbs get some treatment for Dad? He’s not getting any better and this has been going on for over eleven years now. It’s pretty obvious that he’s out of his mind.’

      Alice wiped her forehead with the back of a ravaged hand as she turned to look at her daughter. Her greying hair was held in a loose bun with thin strands hanging scraggily down. Though only in her forties, the hard life she’d been forced to live had prematurely aged her, and she said wearily, ‘I’ve been through this with you before, Dottie. I won’t have your father put in one of them places ’cos you know what they do to them in there. They electrocute them! He just needs lots of love and patience from his family. You’ll see, one day we’ll have your dad back to how he was, but if he goes into that nuthouse, that’ll be the last we ever see of him.’

      ‘What if you’re wrong, Mum? What if he never gets better?’

      ‘He will, love. You know that Mrs Brigade, the woman from up Lavender Hill with the nine boys all with ginger hair, well, I saw her the other day in the haberdashery shop. She told me that three of her sons had come home from the war as very changed young men and it took years to get back to normal. The point is, they did eventually, and remember they’re a lot younger than your father, so of course they would get better quicker. But mark my words, gal, your father will be back to his silly old self soon enough.’

      Dorothy wasn’t convinced and would rather have put her trust in modern medicine but she didn’t want to push her mother any further. ‘If you say so, Mum. I reckon it’s a bloody travesty though. The army should never have sent him home like that. They should have sent him to one of those centres first, you know, the ones where they have special head doctors to sort out soldiers with that combat stress thing.’

      ‘Perhaps you’re right, love, but at the end of the day they washed their hands of him. Many years ago I did apply to have his pension increased, but they turned the application down.’

      ‘You could try again.’

      ‘No, love, your dad isn’t physically disabled and, as they sort of hinted that he could be putting it on, it would just be a waste of time.’

      ‘Of course he isn’t putting it on,’ Dottie said indignantly.

      ‘You know that and I know that, but I’m not going to put him through one of those medicals again. Now come on, go and do something with your hair before that lovely young man of yours arrives. Is he taking you dancing tonight?’

      Dorothy couldn’t help but smile at the mention of Robbie, even though she knew her mother was changing the subject, which she always did whenever Dorothy brought up her father’s health or his pension. ‘He is, and tonight there’s a band on who sound just like Bill Haley and His Comets. I’ve made myself a smashing pencil skirt to wear, but I’m not sure I’ll be able to dance very well in it.’

      ‘I don’t know, you youngsters and your funny fashions. Don’t get me wrong, Robbie’s a lovely lad, but those trousers he wears are so blinking tight they’re nearing indecency, and as for his daft floppy hair …’

      ‘His hair is just like that film star Tony Curtis, and I don’t hear you knocking him. And as for his trousers, well … I think he looks dishy in them!’

      ‘Dishy? What sort of word is that?’ Alice asked, laughing.

      Dorothy joined in and then left her mother at the mangle as she skipped up the stairs to her bedroom to change her clothes and plait her long blonde hair.

      Alice was so pleased to see the joy Robbie had brought to her daughter’s life over the past few months. After all, the girl didn’t have it easy. She worked long hours in the bakery and deserved a bit of fun.

      A pang of guilt struck Alice again, the same feeling she’d harboured since Dottie first started work aged fifteen. Her daughter was such a beautiful girl and could easily have been a model, but instead she’d had to take the job with Bertie Epstein, the baker in town. Dorothy never failed to hand over most of her wages and she never complained about it. Alice tried hard to contribute herself, but couldn’t earn enough to cover all the household expenses from taking in washing.

      She was grateful to her neighbours for helping her out. It wasn’t as if most of them could afford the privilege of someone to do their dirty СКАЧАТЬ