After the War is Over (41 page)

‘How are your daughter and her baby?’ he asked. Iris could tell he was only being polite, that he really wanted to tell her how much he’d missed her and hear her say the same to him.

She told him about Louise and George, about the house on Beacon Hill, and Monica Dixon. ‘She’s a dreadful woman,’ she said. ‘Of course, now Tom and I are really worried about our daughter.’

She’d forgotten he didn’t like her mentioning Tom. A few times he’d tried to talk her into getting a divorce so that they could get married, but she’d refused to discuss it. She had no intention of breaking up her family.

‘I missed you terribly,’ he said huskily. He put his finger beneath her chin and raised her face so they could kiss.

‘And I missed you,’ she assured him. She was longing for them to make love. Some nights they didn’t bother having a drink, going straight to the hotel instead because they couldn’t wait to be in bed together. This seemed to be one of those nights.

‘I thought about you all the time,’ he whispered. ‘It was strange, but I kept thinking of when we were in the army and we made love in the back of your car. It was the best I’d ever known, far better than with my wife.’ He frowned slightly and said almost petulantly, ‘You had quite a reputation. I suppose I was just one in a long line of lovers.’

‘You are the only one I remember,’ she said. It wasn’t strictly true, but he’d been the best. She decided to tell him the truth, why she’d allowed so many men to make love to her. ‘Before I joined up, I lost a baby. Tom and I tried, but I never had another. That’s why I slept around, as it’s called. I was trying to get pregnant.’

He thought about this for a while, before saying, ‘But you eventually did?’

‘William, our eldest, is adopted. By then, the war was over and Tom and I managed to have three daughters of our own.’

‘I see.’ He leaned forward and kissed her on the forehead, running his hand through her hair. ‘You are a remarkable woman, Iris Grant, and I can’t wait to make love to you. I have booked us a room in The Temple hotel by the Town Hall. I suggest we leave this very minute and get a taxi there.’

Iris finished her drink in a single swallow. She couldn’t wait either.

His car, the blue Jaguar, had been left in St John’s car park. They strolled towards it after leaving the hotel at ten, exhausted from lovemaking, but deliriously happy too. He drove her home and dropped her at the top of Balliol Road. Neither said much on the way. Iris rested her head on his shoulder. She was already thinking about tomorrow, Saturday, when the same pattern would be repeated. She told him she preferred them not to waste time by going to the pub first.

Matthew said he couldn’t agree more. He would reserve a room at the Temple and meet her there instead. ‘I shall have a bottle of champagne on ice waiting for you.’

She went into the house expecting it to be completely quiet – Dorothy had gone to her friend Rachel’s house with the intention of staying the night, and Clare to the hen party of a girl she worked with who was getting married tomorrow. She wasn’t expected home until late. But Iris could hear Dorothy’s distressed voice coming from the living room followed by Tom’s quiet one.

Dorothy, it appeared, had arrived at Rachel’s only to find she had started her period a day early. She usually had very heavy periods. Neither she nor Rachel had a sanitary towel, all the chemists were closed, and as Rachel lived quite close, she returned home for a towel.

‘But then she fainted,’ Tom said, ‘in the bathroom, and banged her head on the rim of the bath. When she came to, she managed to crawl downstairs and ring me. She’s hurt her knee really badly too.’

‘I’m going to have a horrible bruise, Mum.’ Dorothy touched the pink swelling above her right eye. She was lying on the settee with Tom sitting beside her. Her knee was heavily bandaged. The room reeked of disinfectant. ‘I thought you’d be in,’ she said accusingly to her mother. ‘Where on earth were you?’

‘I’ve been to the theatre with Blanche,’ Iris lied. She’d become best friends with Blanche Woods, or so she told her girls, to explain away the time she spent with Matthew. She and Blanche often visited the theatre together or went for a meal after work. Her children had grown up aware that their parents didn’t live together, but she knew they would be upset if they discovered she was going out with another man. Tom was always there when they needed him. He no longer showed a preference for William over his daughters.

‘I’ll make a hot drink.’ Minutes later, she returned with three cups of tea. She gave one to her daughter. ‘There’s two heaped spoons of sugar in there. It should make you feel better.’

‘I’m worried she’s anaemic,’ Tom said. ‘I’ll give her a blood test next week.’

‘I won’t go to work tomorrow.’ Iris didn’t like letting people down, but Dorothy couldn’t be left on her own all day in the state she was in, and Clare would be going to the wedding.

‘I haven’t got surgery in the morning. I’ll look after her.’

‘It’s all right, Tom.’

‘There’s no need to fight over me.’ Dorothy chuckled. For all her injuries, she seemed in a very good mood. She was the most easy-going of the Grants’ daughters. Louise was oversensitive, Clare demanding, but Dorothy had always been very laid-back. Perhaps, just now, she was enjoying being made a fuss of. ‘I’ll manage on my own.’

Tom said she’d do no such thing. ‘You might have difficulty walking when you get up. No, your mother will go to work and I’ll come and read you some of those super Enid Blyton books you had when you were little. I’ve noticed they’re still around. I really miss those books. I think I enjoyed them more than you girls did.’

Early next morning, Iris telephoned Matthew at home to say she couldn’t meet him that night. Sarah Holmes, his housekeeper, answered. ‘He’s gone to Chester for the day.’ It appeared there was to be an auction of old cars at the home of Lord Something-or-other.

‘Will you please tell him Mrs Grant won’t be able to meet him as arranged and I’ll telephone on Sunday?’

‘Yes, Mrs Grant, I’ll do that.’

At work, Iris found herself far more worried about her daughter than she was about missing her date with Matthew. Why had she fainted? It was worrying. Even in the army, living among hundreds of women, she’d never known one to faint because of a period.
Feel
faint, yes, but not drop unconscious to the floor. Hopefully it was just anaemia as Tom had suspected, and all their daughter needed was a course of iron tablets.

Even travelling home on the train rather than catching a taxi down to the Temple where Matthew would have been waiting with a bottle of champagne, she found she wasn’t exactly bothered. In fact, she would sooner see Dorothy than her handsome, passionate lover. She couldn’t love him as much as she’d thought, she concluded. Or it was a case of loving him with her body, whereas Dorothy she loved with all her heart and soul, as she did all her children.

Her daughter looked pale when she went in, but still managed to sound cheerful. Tom was in the kitchen making tea.

‘Did your father seriously read you the Enid Blyton books?’ Iris enquired.

‘He read all three of the
Faraway Tree
s and both
Wishing Chair
s,’ Dorothy confirmed, ‘and some
Mr Meddle
s.’

‘Silly idiots, the pair of you,’ Iris said fondly.

Tom came in with drinks. ‘We had a lovely time,’ he commented. ‘Very nostalgic.’ He glanced at her. ‘Are you going out tonight?’

‘Of course not. I wouldn’t dream of going out again and leaving Dorothy. What about you? Are you and Frank going for a drink?’ He sometimes went to the pub at weekends with his brother.

‘I wouldn’t dream of leaving Dorothy either. I suggest we ring that rather nice Indian restaurant in Stanley Road and order a takeaway, then sprawl on the settee and watch television. It’s a very unhealthy way of spending the evening, but it won’t hurt for once.’

‘Goody!’ Dorothy rubbed her hands. ‘I love curry.’

Matthew telephoned just after nine the next morning. ‘What happened?’ he snapped. ‘I sat in that hotel for nearly an hour, unsure whether you were coming or not. It so happened I called home about something and Sarah said you’d left a message. That was pretty sudden, wasn’t it? Why couldn’t you have let me know sooner?’

‘It was very early when I phoned. Sarah said you’d gone out for the day; that you wouldn’t even be at work. I wasn’t to know you’d go straight to the hotel, was I?’ Poor Matthew! She felt upset at the idea that he’d been sitting there waiting for her to arrive. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said, filled with remorse. ‘I’d have phoned the Temple if I’d known you hadn’t got my message.’

‘I know you would,’ he conceded. ‘Look, when can I see you again?’ His voice dropped. ‘I love you, you know, but you spent a whole fortnight with your other daughter. I was really looking forward to last night.’

‘So was I.’ Yet she’d had a very nice night without him. Dorothy had sat between her and Tom, shoulders touching, while they watched television. Clare had come home from the wedding with a hilarious tale about an aunt who’d got drunk and done a genuine striptease. It had only needed William and Louise to be there and the evening would have been perfect.

She didn’t like to suggest to Matthew that they leave it until Friday before they met again. ‘Can you take a few hours off on Tuesday afternoon and we can meet in the Temple?’ He had an assistant in his garage.

‘Yes,’ he said eagerly. ‘That would be wonderful.’

He told her again how much he loved her and they rang off.

On Friday night, William was in a cinema in Leicester Square watching a very dull picture with a very dull friend from the House of Commons. Douglas Meredith was possibly the most tedious chap alive, obsessed with detail, never using one word when three, four or even five would do.

The picture finished, Douglas began to dissect it frame by frame, droning on and on as they left the cinema. William knew he would continue in the same dreary voice when they went to the pub or for a coffee. He decided he couldn’t stand it another minute and made an excuse that he was expecting a telephone call from the United States and had to rush home straight away. ‘It’s from my sister, she’s in Boston,’ he explained.

‘You’ve never mentioned you had a sister,’ Douglas remarked. He was incapable of sounding surprised.

‘I have three, old man.’ They shook hands and William hurried back to his flat in Lambeth. He’d sooner talk to himself than Douglas. And although it had been a lie that he was waiting for a call, he’d actually heard from Louise in Boston only the other day.

After sending her a card and a teddy bear for George, she’d telephoned him in his flat late one evening. She’d thanked him for the things. ‘We seem to have lost touch over the last year,’ she said. ‘You went off to London and forgot all about us, Mum and Dad too. What’s more, William Grant,’ she said accusingly, ‘you didn’t come to my wedding.’

‘I’m sorry, I’ve been frantically busy.’ William felt awful. In fact, he couldn’t remember having received an invitation. He changed the subject. ‘How’s married life?’

‘Not so hot, bruv,’ she said unexpectedly.

He was slightly shocked. ‘But someone told me,’ he couldn’t remember who, ‘that you’d fallen madly in love with this chap.’

‘Oh, I did, I did,’ she assured him. ‘Trouble is, his slavish attitude to his horrid mother has completely put me off him. He loves her more than he does me.’

‘Oh, Louise.’ He wished he’d known before, not that there was anything he could have done about it. ‘You must feel very lonely over there.’

‘Grace Kaminski is here. She stayed at the house for a while, then got a job in a diner and went to live in a hostel. We manage to see each other every day. Anyroad, William, I’d better ring off. I’d like to bet that Monica, my blessed mother-in-law, goes through the phone bill with a fine-tooth comb and I’ll be told to go easy if she finds I’ve spent ages telephoning England.’

The news that Louise was unhappy had upset him, but at least he felt slightly engaged with his family again. On Saturday, he decided, he’d catch an early train to Liverpool, spend the day with his real mother in Waterloo, and the next day with his other mother in Bootle – no, with
Iris
. From now on, he’d think of them as Iris and Tom; it would make things so much easier.

He could really do with a car, but would never be able to afford one with the money he earned as Kath’s researcher. She was right, it was time he moved on, got a proper job, wore proper clothes and earned a proper wage.

Nell held his face in her hands for a few seconds before kissing him on both cheeks. ‘It’s really lovely to see you, William,’ she said tenderly.

He’d already been told about the Hollywood film producers who were using Red’s music in a film, and she showed him the cutting from Jack Kaminski. ‘I hope you’re getting a nice fat fee,’ he said. She could do with some money. The house looked run-down and he’d like to bet she didn’t earn much in that job of hers. Quinn and Kev made peanuts from their occasional gigs.

‘Oh, I’m not getting a fee, but a share of the profits,’ she told him. ‘Jack thought it the best thing to do. It’s like gambling in a way, and Red was always a bit of a gambler himself. Well, more than a bit,’ she added. ‘He would have approved.’

William considered it too damned risky. She might end up with nothing at all.

Quinn and Kev were still in bed and pleased to find their half-brother present when they came downstairs. William took them all into town for lunch. That night, the lads had a gig over the water in Birkenhead. He went with them in their van with his tambourine and was a member of the Finnegan Brothers for two highly enjoyable hours.

Next morning, all four of them went to nine o’clock Mass. William couldn’t think why, but Nell liked him to go with her. Maybe she thought she’d convert him to Catholicism in the course of time, but he knew there was no chance of that.

After a massive fried breakfast, he caught the bus to Balliol Road to see Iris and Tom.

Both his sisters were sitting on him, Dorothy on one knee, Clare on the other. Each was twisting one of his ears. ‘You’re hurting,’ he yelled. ‘Tickling and hurting. I can’t stand it.’