Patrick stifled a sneeze as he removed the box from under the stairs. So much dust underneath there! He would have to remind Shelagh that under the stairs could do with a proper clean up after the toys had had their bath too.
The house was quiet, Shelagh paying her usual Sunday visit to Sister Julienne and with Timothy still with the Noakes' it seemed the perfect opportunity to take a look at exactly what was in that toy box. By rights he had probably forgotten that most of the objects in there even existed.
Carefully he placed the wooden box down on to the middle of the sitting room floor and sat down himself, pushing away the low coffee table so he could spread out as he began to rummage around.
Patrick laughed to himself at the first thing he laid eyes on. That pink rabbit; lying on the top winking at him with its squinty eye. It looked almost pristine. He knew why. Grandma Pilkington – his mother's mother – entirely convinced that her eighth born grandchild was going to be a girl had presented Helen with the handmade toy three days before Timothy was born. The rabbit, cross eyed, had thus found its way into the back of the wardrobe and never to see the light of day again when young Timothy failed to co-operate in being a boy.
Patrick placed it carefully down on the rug; one ear flopped over its eyes smiling at the image of his late wife leaning up, hiding it away and swearing him to secrecy that Grandma Pilkington would never know as the thing would probably scare the life out of their son if he ever laid eyes on it.
Carefully he delved back into the box. Three carriages of a train, bashed and paint wearing significantly on the wheels found his hand. He smiled. That had been Timothy's obsession for longer than he would perhaps care to remember. Trains, trains and trains everywhere. It had been more luck than judgment that they used to live in a flat that overlooked the railway line and Helen would leave him there for hours on end just staring out of the window. Then it was the train stencils on the wall of the flat on top of the surgery in Leytonstone and then that time that they had taken a holiday in Cornwall and Timothy had been in wonderment of the steam clouding up the air as the train pulled into the station. He must only have been about three or was it perhaps five? Patrick could really not remember.
Those carriages definitely needed a clean, and perhaps a touch of paint, and what on earth was that? Patrick's hand fell on wool.
Something thumped him in the chest. "How on earth did that get in there?" he whispered to himself. He remembered that cardigan greatly. The first and only garment Helen had knitted for her son. She would be the first to admit that she could not knit for toffee and that cardigan had taken weeks to finish. Once complete, she never took up a set of knitting needles every again.
"There you go Patrick" she had announced. "One cardigan and if I ever see another pair of knitting needles again in my life it will be a day too soon!"
Ever so gently he pressed the cardigan into his hands, balling the wool into his palms memories flooding his mind of that tiny form, the good doctor expelled from the room like any other father before him, until he was summoned by the midwife to meet his first born child.
"I hadn't really thought about again until I fell in love with you" he started. "Then I thought about it again".
"Why did you say that you eejit? You probably made matters a hundred times worse" he muttered, putting the cardigan down on top of the rabbit to keep it off the floor. He knew something was wrong, but just wished she would say something, anything to him so he could try and make it better.
He swallowed and folded the cardigan up again, making it neater, pausing before his hands would find their way into the box again. A handmade wooden Spitfire. Maybe this wasn't such a good idea after all.
"There's no need to do that Mrs Noakes, Mum will do them. I'll just take them back" Timothy said as he stood by the sink watching Chummy.
"Now Tim. What did Peter tell you about me?", Chummy started, the boy's cricket trousers now in her hands, streaks of green on the knees.
"To call you Camilla" he replied, although she could see he was highly uncomfortable.
She smiled at him and swiftly moved on. "When I was your age and my brothers played cricket, the housekeeper always used to say you had to get grass stains out quickly and always use methylated spirit" she concluded, screwing the cap back on the bottle of the said liquid. "That should do them!"
The trousers stayed where they would soak for as long as it took.
"Do you want me to do anything else?" he asked, already having tidied up Freddie's toys and helped take out the bins.
"Well," she began, "you could go and get Fred's coat and put some shoes on him, but there's absolutely no need".
"No, I don't mind" he smiled. "Its practice for when I get a brother or sister!"
"Go on then. His brown shoes with the buckle; not the laces. They are at the bottom of the stairs". Chummy watched him shoot out into the hallway and pick up the shoes before disappearing in to the living room. She could hear Freddie and him exchanging a conversation and couldn't help but smile at the ease in which the older boy dealt with the younger and the fact that Fred had become so co-operative all of a sudden with his new friend.
"Are we going out for tea?" Timothy asked enthusiastically, Fred with one shoe on and one shoe off, toddling beside him.
"I was thinking fish and chips and how about ice cream?"
"Can we?" he asked, kneeling on the floor to put Fred's other shoe on as he raised his foot at the command of 'up' from Timothy.
Chummy sighed and glanced at her watch as the boys rushed away to find their coats. Almost three o'clock. A nice walk around the park and then to the end of Dacre Street for tea sounded delightful. It would have been lovely if Peter could have been there but Sunday shift called him and they had reluctantly packed him off hours ago; him having to reassure her that she would be just fine with two children in the house.
Shelagh would be back from visiting Sister Julienne by now too and as Chummy and the boys stepped out of the house, she wondered what the evening was going to bring.
The truth in fact was that Shelagh wasn't at home. Well, not quite. Dawdling feet had caused her to hop off the bus two stops early and she was hovering waiting to cross the road, the house within a very short distance and visible. Shelagh knew she had been quiet during her visit to Nonnatus and the Sister Julienne had been trying to coax her into talking but she still felt that it was all too much of a betrayal. How she wished that Broughton Terrace was on the way home and she could pop in to see Chummy and have ten minutes. A married woman wanting a child would know how she felt. As much as Sister Julienne had been as close to a mother as she could to her all these years, she had never by her own admission felt the pang of a child of her own. Trouble was Broughton Terrace was two miles further on, well past the Turner residence, and it was all too impossible.
"Need a hand to cross the road, Mrs Turner?" came a voice from behind her as she was lost in her own world. She turned to see Peter standing beside her.
"Sorry!" she smiled. "I was a million miles away!"
"That's no trouble" he said. "Seen that face on Camilla many a time! Come on" he said crooking his arm towards her. "I can spare a diversion on my beat and deliver you safely to your door!"
She slipped her arm in his and they walked across the road her fate drawing near. Peter left her with a smile and walked off down to the street, Shelagh watching him, his back turned and striding away. She rooted around in her bag for the house keys and before she could slide the key into the lock, the door opened.
"Oh!" she exclaimed, smiling apprehensively as Patrick stood before her.
"I heard your voice. Was that Peter too?" he asked, trying to look out of the door.
"Yes" she replied, wavering in tone. He had turned into George Street and was now out of sight. "I was just having a break" he said as she stepped inside.
A break? What from? He walked back off towards the kitchen, intent on filling the kettle again leaving Shelagh to walk into the sitting room. She stopped abruptly in the doorway suddenly almost horrified at the sight before her. Everything, absolutely everything in that wooden crate from under the stairs set out neatly on the rug.
A host of toys and suddenly they taunted her.