The Guest Who Stayed

Chapter 11 - August 1921

Alice rushed to comfort Jed, throwing her arms around him, not believing at first what he had just told her.

        “What do you mean he’s dead? What’s happened Jed? Tell me what’s happened to Dan!”

 Jed recounted the story in between sobbing and gulping for breath. He explained about their row, how he had accused Dan of not pulling his weight. He admitted to losing his temper and swearing then regretting it terribly when he saw how deeply he had hurt Dan. He told them about the wind that had caught the ladder and blown it away from the platform and how he had stretched out to grab it and how it had brushed past his fingers and fallen to the ground, crushing Dan onto the concrete floor below.

 Flora and Alice were crying too as the story unfolded, Alice with her arms wound around Jed and Flora held tight in Jack’s arms as he tried to comfort her. Jack suggested that he take Flora home in the car, sensing that Alice and Jed needed time alone.

 As the Austin retreated slowly down Duck Lane, Alice and Jed sat in silence, contemplating the enormity of what had happened.

 “Jed, my love, terrible as this is, you’ve got to see it as an opportunity,” suggested Alice as her mind began to function again. “With Dan gone, you’ll take over the business and be the boss. That’s what you wanted, isn’t it? It’ll be your business now and you can run it as you want.”

 “How can you be saying that with Dan just dead? We haven’t had time to mourn him yet.”

 “It’s a terrible thing, Jed, and I’d never have wished it on poor Dan. But it’s happened and it’d be foolish not to see that it gives you an opportunity.”

 “It ain’t that simple,” replied Jed, lifting his head from its slumped position on the table. “Without the two of us I doubt I can make the money to pay the rent on Dan’s premises. I know that he owed the landlord money and there’s people who owed him money who won’t pay now he’s dead.”

 “So we’ll move the business back here. We’ve already discussed it. There’s plenty of room outside for a builder’s yard and you could make yourself an office. It’d be nice, you working from home, Jed.”

 “You don’t understand, Alice. We may not even have a home. There may not be enough money to pay the loan on this place and then we’d have to sell it. It looks like all our dreams are crumbling, Alice, and there’s nothing we can do about it.”

 They both lay restlessly awake in bed that night with jumbled thoughts preventing the anaesthesia of sleep from numbing their pain.

 Jack guided the big Austin through the streets of Frampton with Flora providing peremptory instructions.

 “Here, Jack, stop just here, please,” she ordered as they came to a small road junction.

 “Can’t I take you to your home? It’d be no trouble,” suggested Jack softly.

 “No, really, it’s better here. I’ll be alright.”

 Suddenly Flora was crying again, tears streaming down her cheeks. Jack pulled a crumpled handkerchief from his jacket and wiped the wet trail.

 “It was an accident, Flora, no one’s fault. Life’s like that - just when you think you’re up you take a tumble and you’re back down again. But you’ll get over it, I promise you. I’ve seen some terrible things in my life and you do manage to carry on living afterwards.”

 “What sort of things? What terrible things?” enquired Flora, wiping her eyes.

 Jack regretted the course that the conversation had inadvertently taken. He didn’t like talking about the war years but he had begun to open his heart to Flora and now he had a duty to satisfy her curiosity.