‘It can do no harm,’ the doctor said, and those words more than any other conveyed to Steve the seriousness of Lizzie’s condition.
Lizzie felt as if she were surrounded by sticky treacle and across her chest was a hot, tight band, so that she found it hard to breathe. She was semi-aware sometimes of someone sitting by her side, holding her hand, talking to her, but it was as if she were outside of it. Strange images disturbed her dreams, mixed up with her home back in Ireland, the hotel, and, most of all, Steve.
He’d arrived every evening since he’d been told Lizzie had pneumonia. ‘We have got a visiting policy,’ the matron had said to the nurses, ‘but I haven’t the heart to turn him away. And after all, it’s a private room she has, so he’s disturbing no one else.’
‘He wouldn’t disturb anyone else anyroad,’ one of the nurses replied. ‘He just sits there. God, to have someone love you like that.’
Lizzie’s mother, who’d come over to see her daughter, while desperately worried about her was also impressed by Steve’s diligence. When she was informed he was Lizzie’s fiancé, she believed it, though thought it odd. Lizzie had not asked their permission and she said as much to Steve.
Steve had no wish to alienate Catherine and yet was unable to tell her the truth in case he might not be allowed to see Lizzie any more, but he was anxious to assure her their relationship was above board. ‘Neither of us had the time to ask your approval,’ he told Catherine. ‘We were just toying with the idea of becoming engaged, with your blessing of course, when Lizzie became ill.’
Catherine accepted Steve’s version of events and the hospital gave a very good account of Steve Gillespie; and while his cronies at The Bell and the women of the street could have painted a different picture, even they would have had to admit that since this business had started he’d been a changed man.
Catherine was staying at Longbridge with Arthur and Doreen, whom she’d met and got on well with at Tressa’s wedding. It was a long haul every day into the city centre, and while she stayed with Lizzie most of the day she tended to leave the evenings free for Steve, which suited him fine.
He 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
