After the War is Over (3 page)

Iris would have preferred to stay up, but Tom would be hurt. She stretched her arms. ‘I’d sooner go to bed,’ she lied.

‘It’s time we started trying for another baby.’ He stood and pulled her to her feet.

Iris nodded, but didn’t speak. Tom would never know, but she had been trying desperately for another baby since she’d joined the army six years ago, losing track of the number of men that she had slept with. What she would have told Tom had she fallen pregnant, she had no idea. She would cross that bridge when she came to it, she had told herself. As things had turned out, there was no need to tell Tom anything.

On Saturday, Iris was already in Jenny’s Café when Maggie burst through the door, creating a terrible draught. She wore a bright red coat and a fur tippet around her neck. The café was full – Iris had acquired the last table. Her camel coat was draped over the back of her chair. Her rather severe matching hat sported a speckled feather.

The chatter in the café was deafening. Everyone was in a good mood for this very special Christmas. A strip of white material hung in the steamy window with ‘Happy Yuletide’ cut from red crepe paper stuck to it. The wireless was playing Christmas carols sung by a children’s choir.

‘Is that fox?’ Iris enquired of the tippet as Maggie more or less threw herself on to a chair.

‘No, me dad swears it’s rat. I got it off me Auntie Kath. Mam sprinkled it with talcum powder and gave it a good shake in the yard. It’s lovely and warm.’ She created an even bigger draught by removing her coat and flinging it backwards over the chair, laying the fur on her knee. ‘Eh, you’ll never guess,’ she said breathlessly. ‘Me mam’s only expecting another baby. It’s due in May. She doesn’t care whether it’s a boy or a girl.’

‘You must give her my congratulations,’ Iris said, keeping the envy out of her voice. ‘Where’s Nell? I thought you two lived right by each other.’

‘I called for her, but she was busy and promised to be along in a minute. Oh, and don’t ask her about going to London, poor thing. She’s had to give up on the idea and look after her mam and the house instead.’

‘But that’s not fair!’ Iris was outraged. She knew how much Nell had wanted to go to London. She had grown very fond of both girls, but Nell was such a vulnerable young woman, easily hurt. In her unquestioning willingness to help, she was often taken for a fool. Iris had always felt the need to protect her. She could imagine how easy it would have been to persuade the girl that her duty lay in Liverpool, not London.

A waitress came, and Iris ordered a pot of tea for three and three scones. ‘Do you have butter?’ she enquired.

‘I’m sorry, madam, but we only have margarine.’

‘Then can we have jam as well, please. It’ll disguise the taste,’ she said to Maggie when the waitress had gone. ‘I can’t stand margarine.’

‘Even before it was rationed, we only had butter on Sundays,’ Maggie told her. She smiled. ‘We’re not dead posh like you.’

Iris rolled her eyes. ‘That was very tactless of me. I’m sorry.’

‘It’s all right,’ Maggie said generously.

‘But it really is about time we were able to get butter again. The war’s been over for more than seven months, yet rationing is as tight as it’s ever been. Same with so many other things. I couldn’t buy a lipstick anywhere in town yesterday. Not one of the big shops had any in stock, nor did they have cologne for my husband, apart from in Woolies, where it costs sixpence a bottle and can’t be any good. Oh, look, here’s Nell now.’

In contrast to her friend, Nell almost crept into the café. Her eyes were downcast when she joined them at the table. ‘Hello, Iris,’ she whispered.

‘Hello, love.’ Iris seized her hand and squeezed it. ‘How are you?’

‘All right.’ She raised her eyes and they looked terribly sad.

‘I’ve been thinking, why don’t both of you come round one day before Christmas for afternoon tea?’ She had already bought them presents: boxes of handkerchiefs embroidered with a flower in the corner – there’d only been three boxes left in Owen Owen’s and she’d bought the third for Constance. ‘Have you found a job yet, Maggie?’

‘No. I thought I’d start looking for work in the new year. It was me dad’s idea. He said I deserved a bit of a holiday first.’

‘My husband said more or less the same. I’m not going back to being his receptionist until January. My mother-in-law has been doing it in my place and she doesn’t mind sticking it out for another week or so. And you, Nell love?’ she asked. ‘What are you up to?’ The girl looked as if she’d died a little since Iris had last seen her.

‘I’ve put off going to London for a while and I’m helping at home instead. In fact, that’s where I should be, home, like. I told me dad I wouldn’t long. And I’ve got shopping to do, we’re out of bread.’ She jumped up and almost ran out of the café.

Iris gasped. ‘But she hasn’t touched her tea or scone!’

‘I’ll pop in and see her later,’ Maggie promised. ‘I’ll make sure we come to your house, and she’s coming to ours on Christmas Day when we’re having a party. Me mam’s sister’ll be there and some of me dad’s friends from work. And our Ryan’s bringing his new girlfriend. I’ve invited Nell. If she doesn’t come, I’ll go to their house and drag her there.’

It was then that Iris made up her mind that she had to do something about Nell.

Iris couldn’t stand Tom’s brother, Frank. The two men couldn’t have been more different, in either body or brain. Tall and sharply thin, Frank had dark, piercing eyes and an eternally bitter expression on his long face. Iris wouldn’t have wanted him for her doctor. After dinner on Christmas Day, he denounced the planned introduction of a National Health Service in the strongest possible terms. The adults remained at the table and the children, Beth and Eric, had gone into the parlour to listen to the wireless and examine their presents, mainly books.

‘I shall never join,’ Frank insisted forcefully, ‘even if it means I’m the only doctor left in England who’s not part of it. I intend to go on choosing my own patients, thanks all the same, and treating them in the way
I
consider best without interference from the socialist crowd that make up this useless government. The idea that people will no longer have to pay to see a doctor is an insult to our profession.’

‘We’ll be paid by the government,’ Tom said mildly. He was an ardent admirer of the new scheme and already treated his poorer patients free of charge.

‘You’ll probably end up without a single patient,’ Constance said to her husband. The pair didn’t get on and argued relentlessly. ‘No one in their right mind is going to pay to see you when they can be treated for nothing by another doctor. They will even be getting their medicine for free, as well as spectacles and bandages and cotton wool and stuff like that.’

Frank spluttered. ‘It’s disgraceful.’

‘What’s disgraceful about it?’ Adele glared at her elder son. ‘I think a National Health Service is a marvellous idea. Poor people can have the most frightful things wrong with them, yet they can’t possibly afford to see a doctor. I didn’t vote for Mr Attlee, the prime minister, but I shall from now on. He’s a wonderful man.’

Frank opened his mouth to splutter again, but Adele banged her spoon on the table. ‘No more arguments, if you don’t mind, Frank. It’s Christmas, and from now on we will only talk about nice things.’ She turned to Iris. ‘I’m so sorry I barged in on you the other day when you had invited your army friends to tea. They were such lovely girls; one so incredibly pretty, the other with the face of a saint. I was really taken with them.’

Constance frowned. ‘You had them to tea, Iris?’

‘Yes, what’s wrong with that?’

‘It looks like the class system is coming to an end.’ Constance smiled ruefully. ‘It’s the war, I suppose. We fought together, went hungry together, did without the same things like coal and cigarettes. In a way, it’s made us all equal. Our lot can’t very well look down on poor people any more.’

Not far away, in another part of Bootle, Christmas Day was being celebrated in a happier vein, though just as argumentatively.

Paddy O’Neill, Maggie’s dad, was a stalwart of the Labour Party, as was her Auntie Kath, an attractive woman in her mid-thirties who had the same black curls as her sister and niece, though her eyes were more blue than violet. Labour had won the ‘khaki election’ held in July, so-called because it was the troops returning home after the long fight against fascism who were demanding social reform, a country that was fair for all its citizens, not just a favoured few. Labour had promised change in the form of nationalisation of the utilities, the gas and electricity companies, the railways and coal mines, and, of course, the provision of free medical care for everyone. The election had been won with a huge Labour majority.

Maggie’s dad thought there was enough in the pipeline to please most of the electorate, whereas her aunt considered Labour ought to nationalise virtually everything that moved, including properties with five or more bedrooms, which would solve the housing shortage at a stroke.

‘It’s a great idea, Kath,’ Paddy said, nodding his head approvingly, ‘but the people won’t stand for it. This isn’t an extreme country. The population prefer things done by halves, not wholes. Unlike the last war, this time men are returning to a land genuinely fit for heroes. They fought to protect their country and it’s time they had a share in it.’

‘Hear, hear,’ Kath said enthusiastically. ‘But don’t forget it’s men
and
women who are returning, including your own daughter.’

‘I hadn’t forgotten.’

‘And what about the monarchy?’

Paddy wanted to laugh. ‘What about the monarchy, Kath? Do you want them taken into the countryside and shot, like the Russians did with their royal family?’

‘Well, no, but they could just live in an ordinary house like this one.’

This time, Paddy really did laugh. ‘There isn’t enough room here for the Queen to keep her furs.’

They were standing in the kitchen and he took Kath’s arm. ‘If we don’t go in the parlour soon and join the gang in there, girl, our Sheila’ll come looking for us and we’ll be in trouble.’

He pushed her out of the room, through the living room and into the parlour, already packed with friends and relatives dancing a polka. He took his sister-in-law in his arms and they began to dance. ‘Don’t you ever think of anything except politics, Kath?’ he asked.

‘What else is there?’ she said simply, spreading her hands.

‘There’s clothes and jewellery,’ Paddy suggested, ‘films and books, there’s listening to the wireless, going for walks.’

‘I go for walks sometimes on the shore,’ Kath said, ignoring most of the suggestions, ‘but then all I do is think about politics.’

Paddy thought it was about time she found a feller, got married, had a few kids and thought about something else for a change, though it was more than his life was worth to suggest it.

When it got to eight o’clock, Maggie slipped on her coat, went round to Amber Street and knocked on the Desmonds’ front door. Nell’s sister Ena opened it. She was smaller than Nell and nothing at all like her.

‘Hello, Maggie. Come in, girl, out the cold. The chaps have gone to the pub, our mam’s asleep in the living room, and us girls are in the parlour with the kids, who are nearly asleep. We’re all a bit merry if the truth be known, apart from our Nellie, who only drinks lemonade.’

‘You’re in the club again!’ Maggie remarked. Ena was about six months pregnant with her third baby, yet had only been married two years. The first must have been well on its way when she promised to love, honour and obey Billy Rafferty on their wedding day.

‘Yeah, I’m really looking forward to it.’

The parlour looked as if a battle had just taken place, with bodies sprawled everywhere, large and small. Maggie nearly fell over a baby lying on a pillow half tucked beneath the sideboard.

She was met by a chorus of ‘Hello, Maggie’ from Nell’s other sisters, Gladys and Theresa. From across the room, Nell met her eyes and smiled, and Maggie felt a sense of relief. Clearly Christmas Day hadn’t been so bad with her sisters there. Perhaps her loathsome spiv father had spent the day with Rita Hayworth.

‘Are you coming to our party?’ Maggie asked. ‘They were doing the polka when I left.’

Nell nodded and picked her way over the bodies. ‘Will someone please put our mam to bed.’

Gladys, who looked totally sozzled, said thickly, ‘It’s about time she started putting herself to bloody bed. There’s nothing wrong with her, you know, Maggie. She’s just pretending to be ill to get people’s attention, try and make our dad feel guilty, like, but nothing could make him feel guilty, not even if the bobbies raided our cellar and found all the stuff stored there.’

‘Shurrup, girl,’ Ena snapped. ‘Walls have ears, or so it says on that poster.’

Gladys made a show of looking around the room until her neck creaked. ‘Well I can’t see any bloody ears on these walls.’

‘How are you getting on?’ Maggie asked as they walked round to Coral Street.

‘All right,’ Nell assured her. ‘I only wish me sisters could come round every day.’

There were quite a few parties going on with sounds of merriment coming from many houses. They sang mainly war songs: ‘Run Rabbit Run’, ‘It’s a Long Way to Tipperary’, ‘We’re Going to Hang out the Washing on the Siegfried Line’.

‘Was there a Siegfried Line?’ Maggie asked Nell, who seemed to know lots of unexpected things.

‘It belonged to the Germans and was opposite the French Maginot Line. Neither was any use. The enemy just went round them.’

Maggie wondered what was happening in the silent houses, the ones with dark drawn curtains. Either the people who lived there had gone to someone else’s party, or the war wasn’t something they wanted to celebrate, over or not. Enough men had been killed in the fighting, enough people lost in the Liverpool Blitz. Some of those people might have lived in these very houses, and the ones left behind were inside mourning the loss of their loved ones, wondering how they would live the rest of their lives without them.

She rested her open hands on the door of a silent house and could almost feel the sorrow seeping out. ‘Oh Nell, it’s all so sad,’ she said softly.