Josephine Cox - Live the Dream

Marie kept on dancing. ‘Happen I’ll let your dad get his own dinner. Happen I’d rather put on my glad rags and go to the pictures with you and Daisy.’

Knowing how devoted to her father Marie was, Amy laughed. ‘I can’t see you letting Dad come home to an empty house, not even for Charles King! Besides, you’ve always said how nobody could ever take Dad’s place.’

Exhausted, Marie stopped dancing and leaned over the counter. ‘You’re right, lass,’ she said breathlessly. ‘There’s not a man in this world can ever tek the place of your father.’

Her face wreathed in a smile, she let her mind wander back over the years. ‘Me and your dad have been wed almost twenty-five years, and I wouldn’t swap a single minute.’

In fact their anniversary was only eight months away. ‘I were just turned eighteen when we walked down the aisle,’ she confirmed. ‘Your father was twenty … though o’ course he weren’t your father then … he were just my Dave.’ She sighed. ‘I loved him with all my heart then. And I’ve loved him the same ever since.’

Amy sighed longingly. ‘I wish I could find someone to love like that.’ All her life Amy had witnessed the love and devotion between her mam and dad, and it was a wonderful thing. She had thought that marriage to Don would have been just the same – had envisaged a life of devotion to her gorgeous husband – and even now flashes of that golden future that would never be occasionally passed through her mind. She couldn’t see how she could ever love that way again. Her parents’ happiness was a living example of an idyllic marriage Amy now feared she might never have. She shrugged away the thought.

Having bagged up the takings, she came across the room and, placing the bags on the counter, she wrapped her arms round that small, delightful figure. ‘After all this time you still adore him, don’t you, Mam? What woman in her right mind would give up a night with Charles King to be with “your Dave”, as you call him?’

Marie gave it some thought. ‘Well, I’ll admit your father’s not as slim as Charles King and it’s no wonder, with all that dancing an’ tapping an’ flinging himself about. By! It’s a marvel he’s not worn down to his kneecaps.’

Amy loved to tease and she did so now. ‘Whereas Dad can’t dance; and he can’t tap, although I have known him “fling himself about” a bit, when he comes home three sheets to the wind.’

‘No!’ Marie flew to his defence. ‘You’ve never seen your father three sheets to the wind!’ she protested, half smiling. ‘He’s only ever been the worse for drink once in the whole of his life, and that was when Grandad Atkinson got wed for the second time. Even then he didn’t have the strength to “fling himself about a bit”.’ She chuckled. ‘Though he did manage to fall down the coal-hole and bruise himself from top to bottom.’

Amy laughed. ‘I bet that sobered him up.’

‘It did, yes. It weren’t the first time he’d fallen down the coal-hole,’ she revealed. ‘A natural disaster, that’s your dad.’

Marie told a tale or two about what Amy’s dad had got up to before she was even born, and for the next few minutes the two of them rolled about with laughter. ‘On the night I decided I loved your father we were holding hands as we walked from Atkinson Street. A horse and cart ran through a puddle and splashed him from top to bottom. How could I not want to marry him after that?’

‘A couple of old romantics, that’s what you are.’ As always, Amy’s heart went out to Daisy, whose own parents were forever feuding and fighting. Tonight would be as much an escape as an entertainment for poor Daisy.

‘I wish he hadn’t gone driving for Hammonds, though,’ Marie said thoughtfully. ‘I really miss him. Why in God’s name did he have to take on that delivery work? He was offered work inside the factory, but he said he didn’t fancy “being cooped up”. All the same, I wish he’d taken it. At least he’d have been home of a night-time.’ Her frown deepened. ‘I do hate him being away all week!’

Hammonds had two lines of business: a brush factory, and delivery of their own and other people’s goods in a small fleet of motor lorries.

In an effort to bring back the smile to her mother’s face, Amy quipped, ‘Why d’you need Dad, when you’ve got me ?’

Collecting up the money bags, Marie groaned. ‘That’s another thing. I feel guilty about you giving up your job at Wittons factory, so you could come and help run this place. And you were about to be promoted to the office.’

Amy was astounded. ‘How did you know that?’

‘Rosie Salter told me a few days after you left.’

‘She should never have done that!’

‘Well, she did, and I’ve felt bad about it ever since. I mean, you can’t deny, it’s a bit of a come-down for you.’

‘Oh, Mam! You’re not to feel guilty.’ Amy enjoyed working in the shop and she told her mother so. ‘Do you know what I think?’

‘What?’

‘I think you’re sorry you asked me to come and work with you, because now you think I’m no good at shop-keeping.’ By deliberately going on the defensive, Amy cunningly turned the tables on her mother. ‘The truth is, you want rid of me, and you don’t like to say. That’s it, isn’t it?’

Just as Amy suspected, Marie was mortified. ‘Aw, lass, nothing could be further from the truth! I love having you here and, what’s more, you’ve learned the business like you’ve been at it all your life. As a matter of fact I don’t know what I’d do without you.’ Collecting the money bags and the ledger into her arms, she sighed. ‘It’s just that, well, I really loved working with your dad, and I miss him terrible when he’s not around.’

‘He’ll be home soon.’ Amy gave her a hug. ‘You go and make yourself beautiful for him, while I mop the floor and clear up in here.’

‘You’ll do no such thing, my girl!’ Marie insisted. ‘We’ll clear up together, same as always.’

A short time later, having cleared up, swept the floor and tidied away the large blocks of butter and cheese, and canisters of loose tea and broken biscuits, Marie walked with her daughter to the living quarters at the back.

‘When me and your father started this business, I thought we’d be doing it together until we retired, but he just got more and more restless. He’d always been a driver, y’see, lass – first with the horse and carts, then the beer wagons, and now with these new-fangled motor vehicles … dangerous things if you ask me!’

At first Amy’s father had seemed to settle into his new life as a grocer. Then a few months back, he’d spotted an advert in the post office for a driver at Hammonds distribution business. He applied for the job and got it. ‘I’m fed up of being behind a counter all day,’ he’d told Marie. ‘I need to get back on the road. I’d rather not be staying away nights, but it’s all they’ve got for the minute.’ Once he’d decided, there’d been no dissuading him.

‘I miss him too,’ Amy confessed, ‘but he’s a lot happier now he’s away from the shop. He loves the driving, and anyway, the week goes by quickly enough.’ Amy glanced at the kitchen wall-clock. ‘Look! It’s already half-past five. Another hour and he’ll be home,’ she winked, ‘with another present for you, I expect.’

Every Friday was the same. He would bounce through the door, beaming from ear to ear, with a little present in his pocket for his beloved wife, and a small posy of flowers for Amy.

Talking of her husband and knowing how sometimes Amy was lonely for the same kind of love, Marie grew serious. ‘Do you ever think of Don?’

Surprised by her mammy’s unexpected question, Amy nodded. ‘Sometimes, yes, but it doesn’t hurt in quite the same way as it did. There was a time when I would have had him back with open arms, but not any more.’ When her fiancé dropped her only a few days before they were due to be wed she had thought she would never get over it, but somehow she’d survived. The pain had faded; maybe one day it would go altogether. ‘I’m over it now, Mam. If he walked in that door right now, I’d speak to him, yes, but I wouldn’t feel anything. Not any more.’ This was in part true: nothing for it but to move forward. The love she once felt for him had long since gone.