Shelter from the Storm by Elizabeth Gill Page A

wasn’t any longer. Her face was white and pinched and her eyes were guarded. She didn’t say anything. It was just as if Dryden came every Sunday for dinner, whereas in fact it was the first time he had been invited anywhere. It was such a contrast to the Sundays he remembered the last time he had been in anybody’s house, when he was twelve. Sundays had been filled with church, twice, Sunday school, once, bible-reading in between and food that was only memorable for being scant and badly cooked. In the summer the house was hot and musty and in winter it was freezing. He had never seen a house like Tom’s with a huge fire and platefuls of good food, and in spite of the fact that he was there it made him feel more left out than ever for all those years of nothing better than Mrs Clancy’s boarding house. Surely he deserved better than that.
    Dryden had not experienced a woman like Vinia, who ran about after them, refilling plates and topping up beer. After he had been there for an hour, and Tom had finished his meal and lain down upon the settee and gone to sleep, Dryden’s greatest fear in life was that he would not be asked back. Vinia went in and out of the pantry, clearing up and washing up. She didn’t look at him or speak to him and Dryden felt that he ought to go. He didn’t know what to say to her. The only woman in a house he had had anything to do with was Mrs Harmer, who quotedthe Bible a lot and made him eat burned porridge. Vinia was another world to him. He made himself go to the pantry door. It was fairly dark in there, nothing but a tiny window and a flagged floor and the sink and her. She wore a neat black dress. There was something about her. Dryden didn’t know what it was, something he almost remembered, and then she turned around, frowning, and he didn’t know what to say. She was not pretty like Esther Margaret nor horrible in a birdlike, beaky way as Mrs Harmer had been. She was neat, the opposite of Mrs Clancy, no spilled food down her front. The black dress had a little white collar and her hair was pulled back without a single curl, each strand perfectly held.
    ‘Did you want something else?’ she said.
    ‘No, I … thank you very much.’
    She looked surprised.
    ‘It was only a dinner,’ she said.
    ‘It was wonderful. It was very kind of you. Thank you.’
    He thought she might have given him a smile but she didn’t and there was nothing else to be said, so Dryden left Tom snoring on the settee and went out into the afternoon.
    He could not bring to mind anything about the evening that followed other than Tom’s presence. It was frustrating in a way, because all he ended up with was a rosy glow in his mind. He couldn’t remember what the conversation had been or what the beer had tasted like or even what Tom’s face looked like. The good part was that he didn’t have to remember it because Tom talked to him at work the next day and they went drinking together the next evening and the one after that and the one after that.
    Other people began to talk to him in the pub and at work. Dryden had never felt happiness before and it was a surprise to him. He didn’t take it for granted. Each day he woke up and told himself that it might be the last day that Tom would ever speak to him, but the days went on, they ran one into another. Even Wes talked to him. Ed and Tom played him at dominoes and the world was quite suddenly a wonderful place.
    ‘Eh, lad, I think your face has cracked,’ Mrs Clancy teased him.
    Sundays were the best. Sundays had once been a day to be dreaded because there was nothing to do but hang about and wait for Monday, but Sundays had turned into the kind of day that made you smile the minute you woke up. He would have a late breakfast and then sleep until the pubs opened and then he would meet Tom and the others on the doorstep. They would drink until halfway through the afternoon and then go back to have some dinner and a sleep and then they would get together