Through the Storm Read Online Free PDF

Bootle.’
    ‘Age?’
    ‘Twenty-seven.’
    ‘And what sort of work are you experienced to do?’
    Kitty cleared her throat. ‘Well, I worked in Williams Toffee Factory when I first left school. When I was sixteen, I started training to be a florist. But the thing is …’
    ‘A florist!’ Miss Ellis wrinkled her nose. ‘There’s not much call for florists in wartime.’
    Kitty ignored the interruption and pressed on, ‘… the thing is, there’s something I want to explain first.’
    The girl looked irritated. ‘And what’s that?’
    ‘I know I’m single and I don’t appear to have any dependants, but the fact is, I do. Me dad’s an invalid and he needs me to look after him.’
    ‘It’s amazing how many women turn out to have invalid fathers, invalid mothers and even invalid cousins and grandparents, when they’re called up for war work,’ Miss Ellis said sarcastically.
    ‘But it’s true,’ Kitty protested, hurt. ‘He had this terrible accident on the docks and he’s never recovered. He needs his sticks to go everywhere. I have to get him up of a morning and put him to bed at night.’
    ‘Can he make his own meals?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘Wash himself?’
    ‘Yes.’ He’d never wanted her to do intimate things, like wash him. When he took his weekly bath in front of the fire, he would only allow her to fill, then empty the tin tub. Whilst he bathed, she had to go upstairs or shut herself in the back kitchen till he finished.
    ‘Is he under a doctor?’
    ‘No.’
    Miss Ellis paused and looked at Kitty, her perfectly plucked eyebrows raised enquiringly. ‘No? How can he be an invalid, yet not be under a doctor?’
    ‘We can’t afford it, can we? Anyroad, he doesn’t need a doctor. He’s not
ill
, he just can’t get around as well as he should. If his legs ache, he takes a couple of aspirin for the pain.’
    ‘Is he incontinent?’
    Kitty looked at her blankly. ‘What?’
    The girl said impatiently, ‘Does he wet the bed?’
    ‘Good gracious me, no! He goes to the lavatory at the bottom of the yard like everybody else.’
    ‘Alone?’
    ‘Of course.’ Kitty tried vainly to remember the things Dad had written down which she’d learnt by heart. Something about him needing twenty-four-hour care and it being dangerous for him to be left alone in case he fell during one of his dizzy spells, though she couldn’t recall him having had a dizzy spell in years. She racked her brains, but nothing else would come.
    ‘He has dizzy spells,’ she said desperately.
    ‘So do I,’ Miss Ellis said bluntly. ‘I’m epileptic. No-one would employ me before the war. It’s wonderful feeling useful for the first time in my life. I can’t understand women,’ she went on coldly, ‘who perform contortions in order to avoid doing their bit.’
    Epileptic! Kitty stared at the girl, who stared back in a slightly aggressive way as if she expected the remark she looked quite normal, which she did.
    ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t know,’ Kitty stammered.
    ‘There’s no reason for you to be sorry, and even less reason why you should have known. I don’t usually tell anyone, it’s just that people like you give me a pain. Working for one’s country during a war is a privilege, not a chore. I’d far sooner be in a factory, but office work is all they’d let me do.’
    ‘I’m sorry,’ Kitty said again, feeling as if she would like the floor to open up and swallow her. She hated being regarded as a shirker when she’d been dying to work for years. The women on either side of her seemed to be having quite animated and friendly conversations with their interviewers, which only made her feel worse.
    Miss Ellis shrugged. ‘As to your father, it appears he can do everything for himself except cook, but if he can get as far as the lavatory in the yard, he must pass through the kitchen where you keep the food. Surely he could prepare a small meal for himself, even if he does it sitting down?’
    ‘I suppose he