Custard Tarts and Broken Hearts by Mary Gibson Page A

knows what we’ve got left, though.’
    Her face clouded with worry as her thoughts turned to the problem of feeding the family; without her wage she knew her father had been struggling. Alice and Freddie watched her go to the larder. When she opened the cupboard door, the astonished look on her face made Alice smile through her tears.
    ‘Where did all this lot come from?’ Nellie gasped. The larder was fuller than she’d seen it in weeks.
    ‘We got a parcel of food from the neighbours, they’ve all been so good,’ said her sister, ‘and Sam Gilbie even brought some eggs from his mother.’
    Tears pricked Nellie’s eyes as she imagined the sick woman sending Sam off with his precious gift. ‘Oh, Alice, his own little ones could do with ’em, you shouldn’t have taken them.’
    ‘I tried to tell him that!’ Alice protested. ‘But Sam said no, his mother was adamant, the eggs was for Nellie’s family. Kind of her, eh?’
    Nellie nodded, wondering how Lizzie Gilbie was. ‘And she’s not well herself either.’
    Full of gratitude, she set about making them a breakfast of toast and dripping, and tea sweetened with condensed milk. They ate mostly in silence and though she tried to cheer them up, her own thoughts were with the little boy upstairs. As soon as Freddie had finished eating, she sent him up to sit with Bobby.
    While she and Alice were washing up the breakfast plates in the scullery, Nellie heard the front door open. ‘Let me speak to him first.’ She shot a look at her sister. ‘You stay here.’
    She wanted to make sure her father knew how much the younger ones needed him now. The prospect of losing Bobby had seemed to weaken his spirit to the point of inaction. She couldn’t get through this without him and she hoped that after their shared grief of the night before, he would listen to her.
    She was astonished to see him walk into the kitchen with a domed-headed, bespectacled man who carried a leather bag. His face looked familiar. Her father said nothing to Nellie, but the look he gave her begged her not to show surprise. She had no idea how he’d found money for a doctor, but she certainly wasn’t going to question him about it now.
    ‘Follow me, Doctor, he’s upstairs,’ her father said meekly.
    She walked back into the scullery where Alice was waiting patiently.
    ‘Well, where’s he been?’ Alice whispered.
    ‘He’s been to fetch the doctor, but how he’s paying for it I don’t know.’
    Realization dawned on Alice’s face and she explained that her father had gone out carrying a bundle. ‘He’s been to the pawnshop!’
    If anything could have persuaded Nellie that her father was changed this was it. Though she and her mother were regulars at the pawn shop, her father’s pride would never allow him to step into the place or even acknowledge how his income was supplemented each week. His Sunday suit was available to wear every weekend, and what happened to it during the rest of the week he pretended not to know.
    ‘Then it’s just as well he never joined the strike, otherwise they’d have refused him!’
    In an attempt to break the strike, the government had ordered all pawnbrokers to close their doors to strikers, and Nellie wondered now at the irony that her stubborn father’s anti-union stance might actually be the saving of Bobby. When the doctor finally left, George Clark returned to the kitchen. ‘He wouldn’t take a penny! What d’ye make of that?’ her father said with a puzzled look on his face.
    Now Nellie remembered where she’d seen the doctor. He’d been a great supporter of the strike, speaking at all the rallies. ‘That’s Dr Salter,’ she said. ‘He’s a strike supporter… he knows how tight things are, Dad.’
    Her father grunted, repeating almost to himself, ‘Well, give him his due, he wouldn’t take a penny!’
    ‘So what did he say about Bobby? Will he be all right?’ Nellie asked anxiously.
    ‘He’s given the boy something to help