hadn’t told Flo where he went every evening after a swift wash and a bite to eat, but the news filtered through to her at last. Flo wanted to tell her son to waste no time on the girl, that it would be better if she died altogether, but the sorrow on his face checked her and, uncharacteristically, she made no comment.
‘The crisis will be reached in the early hours,’ the doctor told him when Lizzie had been in hospital a fortnight. ‘Sometime between two and four.’
Catherine had been informed too, and that night they sat either side of the bed, holding Lizzie’s hands, watching her struggling to breathe, the sweat pouring from her. Steve was bone-weary for he’d sat there many days now, but he felt that if he took his eyes off Lizzie for one moment she would die.
It was the early hours when Catherine got to her feet. ‘God, I’m stiff,’ she said, ‘and I need some air. I feel as if I’m suffocating in here.’
Steve had barely noticed, but when she said, ‘Would you mind if I pop out for a few minutes?’ he nodded. He’d be glad for a few minutes alone with Lizzie to speak of what was in his heart.
He began as soon as the door had closed behind Catherine. ‘Come on, Lizzie. You must fight this, for God knows I can’t live without you. You know that. I love you. Jesus, I’ve always loved you. I’d lay down my life for you, Lizzie, please…’ On and on he went, in the same vein.
Lizzie felt as if a furnace blazed within her and her eyes burned too, and she was so tired she had the feeling she could just float away, but always that voice would drag her back. She liked the sound of it. It soothed her, though the words were indistinguishable, and she liked the feel of a large hand encircling her own. Maybe, if she could raise her other arm from the bed, she could tell whoever it was she could hear them and that she liked what they were doing.
But her arm felt like lead. She couldn’t lift it. She tried again and again and eventually, slowly, her fingers moved. Steve wasn’t aware of the slight movement straight away, but when her arm lifted oh so slightly, he jumped from the bed as if he’d been shot and was out of the room in seconds, yelling for a nurse.
He stood at the threshold of the room, unable to see her for the doctor and two nurses grouped about the bed as Catherine returned to the ward. She hurried when she saw Steve standing outside the room, but before she was able to frame a question the young doctor came out of the room towards them, and he was smiling. ‘The fever has passed,’ he said. ‘The crisis is over and she is sleeping normally. I won’t tell you how worried I was. She will be weak for some time, but she will live.’
‘Oh thank God! Thank God!’ Catherine said fervently.
Steve thanked the Almighty too, but in his head. He couldn’t speak for the torrent of tears pouring from him. Catherine put her arms around him and they cried together and took comfort from one another.
It seemed to Lizzie that nearly every time she opened her eyes, Steve was by her side, his large muscular hands holding hers, especially after her mother had returned home. Her mother and the nursing staff had often referred to Steve as her fiancé and she’d not corrected them and wasn’t sure why she hadn’t. Maybe, like Steve, she’d thought he wouldn’t be able to visit so often, and she’d not have liked that. In fact, he had become very important to her and she longed to see his large frame almost filling the doorway each evening and his heavy strides across the floor to sit by Lizzie’s bed, when he would take her small hand in his and talk to her.
She’d been in hospital a month when the manager of the Grand Hotel came in one afternoon with a hamper of fruit, and when he told Lizzie he was very sorry but he couldn’t keep her job open any longer, she wasn’t really surprised.
‘I’m sorry you’ve been ill and everything, and I am delighted you’ll make a full recovery in time,’ he went on to say. ‘But, you see, it’s Easter in a few weeks. We’re coming up to our busiest time and with you off I’m one member of staff down already.’
It was only what Lizzie expected and she could see the man’s dilemma, but she knew when she left hospital she would have to work at something and jobs were desperately hard to find. Finding somewhere to live that she could afford would be just as bad and she was nervous and scared of the future.
She told Steve her concerns that same evening, but he told her not to worry, something would turn up. He had plans of his own for Lizzie and they involved her marrying him so he could look after her for good. But first he had to find a place to live, for he couldn’t really expect Lizzie to move in with his parents and Neil. Time enough then to ask her to marry him.
In early March, Steve heard of a house in a courtyard off Bell Barn Road that would be coming vacant in a month or two, when the old man living there alone would be moving to stay with his daughter. It wasn’t much more than a few hundred yards from his parents’ house in Grant Street, but that couldn’t be helped, for many would give their eye teeth for any sort of house at all.
That night at the hospital, he took Lizzie’s hand in his. ‘Lizzie, you once told me you didn’t love me. Is that still true?’
‘Ah, Steve. Don’t do this. Why torture yourself?’
‘Please, I need to know. There is a reason.’
Tears sprang to Lizzie’s eyes and she opened her mouth to say she didn’t love Steve and she still felt the same, but then she stopped. Once she definitely hadn’t, it was true, but people change and circumstances can alter the way a person views things. There was no doubt that she liked his company, had depended on it while in the hospital and longed for him to come in each evening. Wasn’t that a kind of love? True, it wasn’t the aching, bittersweet passion enjoyed by Tressa and Mike, but she and Steve were different people, so the way they loved would be different too, surely. ‘I don’t know how I feel about you now, Steve,’ she answered honestly.
‘Do you like me?’
‘Of course I like you.’
‘A lot, or just a bit.’
‘A lot, bighead.’
Steve gave a sigh of relief and knelt beside the hospital bed, but still kept hold of Lizzie’s hand. ‘Marry me, Lizzie?’ he pleaded. ‘I love you more than life itself.’
‘Oh, Steve…’
‘Please think about it?’ Steve begged. ‘I know this isn’t ideal and you didn’t want to get married so young, but your illness changed a lot of things and I will have a house for us to move in to.’ And then, as Lizzie’s eyes still looked troubled, he said gently, ‘If you refuse me, what is the alternative?’
And Lizzie couldn’t answer that. She had no job and no place to live, and even if she had both, Birmingham was a lonely place where she knew no one. Tressa, as a friend to go out with, or even as a confidante, was almost lost to her. Betty was getting married, Pat would soon follow, and Marjorie had never been a true friend.
‘Can I think about it, Steve?’
‘Oh yeah, bonny girl,’ Steve said, delighted that Lizzie hadn’t said no outright. ‘You can think about it. But don’t keep me waiting for weeks.’
‘I’ll not do that to you, I’ll give you the answer within the next few days,’ Lizzie promised.
The following day, she was leaving the hospital and had been offered a temporary home with Mike’s aunt and uncle at Longbridge, till she was on her feet and could decide what to do. Arthur and Doreen had taken to Lizzie at the wedding and Doreen had gone to see her a few times in the hospital after Catherine had left. Catherine had told them Lizzie wasn’t keen on going back to Ireland at all and yet there was little else for her to do as far as she could see. That had decided Doreen. ‘The girl can bide here a wee while until she is fully recovered and then she can decide what is to be done,’ she declared one evening.
Arthur nodded his head sagely, knowing agreement was the only and safest course to take with his wife over certain issues. He collected Lizzie the following evening after work, and