Across the Mersey - Annie Groves [107]
‘You mean that you don’t want to go steady with me?’ said Grace. She could feel tears pricking the backs of her eyes. Everyone knew that when a lad didn’t really want you he made out that he was holding himself back for your sake.
She heard Teddy curse suddenly and then he put out his cigarette and reached for her hands, holding them tightly.
‘No! Of course I want to go steady with you, but I can’t, Grace. Like I just said, it wouldn’t be fair or right. You see the thing is …’ he took a deep breath, ‘well, you know that thing I told you about when we first met, about how I wasn’t medically fit for the services, on account of me having had rheumatic fever when I was a kiddie?’
‘Yes …’
‘Well, after I’d had me medical they sent for me, and seemingly, this rheumatic fever wot I’d had has left me heart a bit dicky.’
Grace felt her own heart give a sudden flurry of anxious thuds.
Teddy was still holding her hands but he wasn’t looking at her, and Grace remembered how badly the cold weather had affected him and how he’d struggled to walk and breathe in the cold. She’d thought nothing of it at the time, but now …
‘The medics wanted me to wrap meself up in cotton wool and lie in bed for the rest of me life ’cos they’ve said that me heart won’t stand me doing too much. But I can’t do that, Grace. That’s no kind of life for a grown man. In fact it’s not living at all and I might as well be dead. It’s like I’ve told them, I’d rather have a few months of proper life than years of lying in me bed watching others get on with their lives around me.’
‘A few months of life?’
Grace wasn’t aware that she had spoken the shocked words aloud until she realised that Teddy was now looking at her. In his eyes she could see confirmation of what he had said, along with his fear and his pride.
She wanted to reach out to him and hold him as tenderly as she might have done a child. She wanted to comfort him and tell him that everything would be all right and he would be well, but she knew that she could not do those things.
‘That’s why I haven’t said anything to you about you and me. No matter what I might feel about you, Grace, it would be wrong of me to let you fall in love with me, knowing that I’m not likely to be around for very long. When I do go I don’t want you getting yourself upset and grieving, and thinking that you’ve got to mourn me on account of us being an item when you should be out enjoying yourself and falling in love with a chap who’s got his health and strength, and who can give you the future that I can’t.’
She must not cry. She must not, not when Teddy was being so brave and so decent. Why hadn’t she thought of something like this for herself? She had seen how he sometimes struggled to walk and breathe. She knew from her lectures that there was a connection between childhood rheumatic fever and heart weakness.
‘I wasn’t going to tell you any of this because … well, I just wanted to live like any other chap would and … and I didn’t want to go burdening you with all of this or have you pitying me. But when you said what you did today, I knew that I wasn’t being fair to you, not being straight with you, and that I’d have to say summat. I couldn’t have you thinking that I don’t care about you, Grace, or that I wouldn’t ask you to be my girl like a shot if I could and I thought it would be right. You’re all the girl I could ever want, and if things were different …’
He was making it all sound so cut and dried. So final and unavoidable.
‘You shouldn’t be doing what you’re doing, Teddy, not with a bad heart. You should be resting.’
‘No! I’m sorry,’ he apologised when he saw how upset she was. ‘It’s just … well, I can do all the resting I want when I’m dead, can’t I? I want to live my life, Grace, even if that means I won’t have as much time to live it in. I don’t want to look at life through me bedroom window, I want to feel it. I want to be part of it. That’s why I volunteered for this lot. I want to feel I’m part of what’s happening