After the War is Over (5 page)

Oh, but she loved the music, particularly the tunes that had been played in the camp, where she’d been asked up for every dance like all the other girls in uniform. ‘I’ll Be Seeing You’, ‘Yours Till the Stars Lose Their Glory’, ‘There’s a Boy Coming Home on Leave’ – and her favourite song of all, ‘Goodnight, Sweetheart’. She began to sing it quietly to herself.

Maggie came back with the drinks. ‘I love that song,’ she said. ‘The last time we sang it, we were halfway through when you collapsed in a heap on the floor. It was at that victory party in the sergeants’ mess.’

Nell looked shamefaced. ‘Someone gave me a glass of dandelion and burdock and it had rum in it. It was really hot there and I drank the lot. You know alcohol doesn’t agree with me.’ She hadn’t found out until she’d joined the army, as she normally never allowed alcohol to pass her lips. She’d had to leave the dance early and go to bed, where she’d slept like a log for hours and woken up as sick as a dog.

‘There’s no need to be embarrassed about it, Nell. It wasn’t your fault.’

‘Hello, girls.’ A man had stopped in front of them and was regarding them with interest. At least he was regarding Maggie with interest, having given Nell merely a brief glance. Maggie looked desperately pretty in her blue taffeta dress, which had been made years ago when she was a bridesmaid at someone’s wedding. It had since been shortened.

‘Hello.’ Nell could tell from the tone of Maggie’s voice that she was interested. Her admirer was quite tall, with a thin, handsome face and dark green eyes. His brown wavy hair could have done with trimming and his grey suit badly needed a good press. Despite his shabby appearance, Nell couldn’t help but admire his elegant stance; one knee slightly bent, one hand in his pocket, a cigarette in the other. You’d think he was a lord or something. He was quite old, about twenty-seven or twenty-eight.

He came forward and shook hands with Maggie. ‘Chris Conway,’ he said.

‘Margaret O’Neill, but most people call me Maggie.’

‘How do you do, Maggie?’ He was still holding her hand. Without waiting for an answer, he released her, turned and offered his hand to Nell. ‘And you are?’

‘Nell Desmond,’ Nell stammered. His hand was strong and lean. She felt herself blush.

Without bothering to ask if it was all right, Chris Conway fetched a chair and placed it in front of them. He stubbed out his cigarette and sat down, crossing his legs.

‘And what do you girls do?’ he enquired. He was well-spoken, but not posh.

Maggie told him she worked for a roofing firm as a secretary, but didn’t mention Iggy Reilly’s disgraceful behaviour. Nell was wondering how to describe her own occupation, but her friend did it for her. ‘Nell looks after her invalid mother, but she was a cook in the army, the best there was.’

‘A cook!’ Chris turned his green eyes on Nell. ‘In the army!’ She was aware of the intensity of his gaze, the glow of his eyes, and felt as if she was being hypnotised, brought under his spell. ‘I’ve never met a cook before. How do you do, Nell?’

Despite knowing for certain he was only there because of Maggie, Nell could tell he was going out of his way not to make her feel like a gooseberry. She couldn’t help but warm to him.

‘I’m very well, thank you. What did you do in the war?’ It was the question everyone asked of each other these days when they first met. The band had started to play ‘You and the Night and the Music’.

‘I was a second lieutenant in the Royal Air Force.’ He paused to light another cigarette. ‘I’ve not long been demobbed. My plane was shot down during one of the last raids over Berlin and I suffered internal injuries.’ He slapped his stomach. ‘Nearly better now. I’m so sorry, I should have offered you both cigarettes.’ He removed the silver case from his inside pocket and snapped it open.

‘I don’t smoke,’ Maggie said. ‘Neither of us do.’

‘You are two extremely sensible young ladies. Maggie, would you like to dance?’ He smiled at Nell. ‘Don’t go away.’

‘I won’t.’ Nell felt as though she was glued to the settee. Leaning forward slightly, she watched over the balcony until Maggie and Chris came into view. They were only dancing one step to everyone else’s two and their bodies seemed to fit quite snugly together, as if they’d been made for each other.

She sighed wistfully, remembering the proposal of marriage she’d had in the army. There’d never been the opportunity to dance like that with Jim Harvey, who she’d met at the pictures in Plymouth – she’d gone by herself because there’d been an emergency in Maggie’s office and she’d had to stay late. Afterwards, she and Jim had gone for a walk. In those dangerous days, it had been possible for people to feel they’d known each other all their lives when they’d only met a few hours before.

‘Will you marry me when this is over, Nell?’ Jim had asked. Nell had promised that she would, though she knew the chances of him taking her up on it were most unlikely. Even if he returned all in one piece, he would almost certainly have forgotten about it by then, perhaps wouldn’t even remember her name.

Maggie and Chris were out of sight. They appeared again dancing in exactly the same way as before. Nell drank some of her lemonade. It was warm and had lost its sparkle. She contemplated hiding in the ladies’ for the rest of the evening, or going home by herself claiming to have a headache. She felt certain that Chris would invite her up for the next dance, and she would sooner be a gooseberry any day than dance with a man who’d only asked out of a sense of duty.

She’d hardly been home five minutes when someone tapped on the front door. It could only be Maggie, who she’d left with Chris Conway on the back seat of a taxi barely five minutes ago. She let her friend in.

‘He’s a real gentleman,’ Maggie whispered. ‘He only kissed me the once. I thought he’d expect a long snog – not that I would’ve let him, mind.’ She sat in the easy chair in which Mrs Desmond spent most of her life. ‘He just told me the truth about himself.’

‘The truth! Does that mean that what he told us before was a lie?’

‘Yes.’ Maggie made a face. ‘He was in the RAF, but not as an officer. He was an aircraft engineer and only had a single stripe. He wasn’t injured, either.’

Nell was puzzled. ‘But why did he come out with all that other stuff before?’

‘He wanted to impress me. It’s what he tells all the girls, but with me he said it was different.’

‘Different in what way?’

Maggie looked at her, her remarkably coloured eyes wide with wonderment. ‘Because he wants to marry me one day. “I don’t want us getting off on the wrong foot,” he said.’

‘But there’s nothing wrong with being an aircraft engineer.’ Nell was annoyed. ‘I didn’t think any better of him when I thought he was an officer than I do now.’ In fact, he’d gone down in her estimation.

‘That’s because you are such an honest person, Nell. I’ve never known you tell a lie.’

Nell contemplated the last statement. It was flattering, but made her sound like a prim old maid. ‘Are you going to marry him?’ she asked gruffly.

‘I don’t know.’ Maggie looked dazed, as if she wasn’t sure if she was dreaming or not. ‘Anyroad, he’s taking me to the pictures on Wednesday night. ‘We’re going to the Forum to see
Buffalo Bill
with Joel McCrea.’

‘What sort of job does he have?’

‘I don’t know.’ She shrugged. ‘I didn’t think to ask.’

‘Well, it must pay well if he can afford a taxi all the way from the Grafton to Bootle.’

‘Maybe.’ Maggie leapt to her feet. ‘I’d better be getting home. Look, don’t tell anyone about Chris, will you, Nell? I’m not going to tell me mam or anything, not yet at least.’

‘All right,’ Nell said reluctantly. ‘But can I tell Iris?’

‘Yes, it’s all right to tell Iris. Perhaps we could meet in Jenny’s Café one Saturday for a chat.’

After Maggie had gone, Nell went into the kitchen to find the sink piled high with dishes and dirty clothes thrown on the floor. She ran the water, which was still warm enough for the dishes. When she’d finished, she filled the kettle and made tea. There was no sugar left, but she’d stopped taking it in the army. The dirty clothes she’d put in the wash house in the yard when she went to the lavatory before going to bed.

She shivered. It was freezing in the kitchen, where there was no heat at all except when the gas was lit. It was like one of those buildings made out of snow that Eskimos lived in. She wondered how they were kept warm. They couldn’t light fires, surely.

She took the tea into the living room, where a few embers in the fire were still red. In the street, two men walked past arguing violently. ‘I’ll bloody kill you,’ one of them shouted. People could be heard singing outside the Queen’s Arms in Pearl Street. ‘Bless ’em all,’ they bellowed. ‘Bless ’em all.’

Monday, she thought gloomily, she’d have the washing to do, stacks of it. Mam, who loathed any sort of physical activity, was inclined to leave her visits to the lavatory until the last minute – or well after the last minute – and the washing usually included several pairs of knee-length bloomers that really stank. Dad wouldn’t dream of giving his dirty clothes to Rita Hayworth to launder, so there’d be his to wash too. Kenny didn’t leave much, but the moleskin trousers he wore for clearing up bomb sites were difficult to get clean, and it was impossible to get the heavy material through the mangle.

It was so different to what she’d been planning for herself during her last months in the army. Nell closed her eyes and indulged in the delightful daydream that kept her mind occupied during the long, tedious days that made up her present life. She was living alone in London in a big room overlooking a tree-lined street. The room was on the first floor and she was able to see inside the top deck of the trams and buses that went past. Occasionally people would wave and she would wave back. Weekends, a Salvation Army band played on the corner. The Catholic church was only a few minutes’ walk away, so she could go to Benediction as well as Mass on Sundays.

In her imagination, the room always remained the same, but her job would change. Sometimes she worked behind the counter of a posh shop – the scent counter, for instance, or the department that sold handbags. Or she might have a job in a cake shop – a confectioner’s, it was called, or a bakery. Or a nice little tea shop like Jenny’s on Stanley Road.

She was designing her uniform in her head, when the backyard door opened and someone came in. It could only be their Kenny. She heard him put his bike in the wash house.

‘Would you like some tea?’ she asked when he appeared. She was fonder of Kenny than she was of any other member of her family. He was a slight, delicate lad with butter-blond hair and long dark eyelashes, who’d shot up over the last year or so until he was at least six feet tall. For a boy, he was undeniably pretty, prettier than all his sisters. It must have been the reason why, when he was only a little lad, their father had needed only the slightest of excuses to beat the living daylights out of him, ashamed perhaps of his pretty son, wanting to make a man of him.

‘I’d love some tea, Nelly,’ he said now.

‘Don’t call me Nelly; it’s Nell,’ she remonstrated. She lit the gas underneath the kettle. It started boiling straight away.

‘You always used to be Nelly,’ he argued.

‘Not any more.’ Nell was much nicer. Nelly made her feel old. ‘What’s your new bike like to ride?’ she asked. Dad had come up with a Raleigh racing bike he’d probably taken in payment for something like a wireless or an electric fire that was worth far less. Very little of Dad’s way of making a living was on the right side of legal. There was always the chance that the bike had initially been stolen.

‘It’s the gear, sis, but I’m terrified of it being robbed. Me dad’s threatened me with death by a thousand cuts if I lose it. I think I might stop using it. It’s not worth the worry.’

Maggie’s mam and dad rarely went to bed before midnight. When she reached home, the wireless was on, Dad was writing letters at the table and Mam was knitting a cardigan for the new baby. Tinker was prowling the room looking for something to do.

‘Can’t you ever sit down normally?’ her mother asked when Maggie threw herself into a chair. ‘You fling yourself about like a football.’

Maggie ignored the comment. ‘Is our Ryan in the parlour with Beattie Doyle?’ she enquired. Dad normally used the parlour as an office. He was secretary or chairman of several organisations such as the Labour Party, the Workers’ Educational Authority and the Fabians, which meant having to write loads of letters. That he was writing them in this room meant the parlour was being used for another purpose.

‘Ryan’s in the parlour,’ her mother replied, ‘but Beattie’s been given her marching orders. He’s with Rosie Hesketh. She only lives in Amber Street, opposite the Desmonds.’

‘I liked Beattie, she had lovely nails.’ Rosie Hesketh had been in the same class as Maggie in school, and was the most argumentative person she’d ever known. On impulse, Maggie seized her mother’s scissors and began to cut bits off her hair, while her mother watched, frowning.

‘If you cut that curl off, you’re going to have a gap in your forehead,’ she said. ‘Put them scissors down and tell me about tonight. Did you have a nice time?’

‘It was the gear, Mam.’

‘Did you meet anyone?’

‘No.’

‘How about Nell? Did she have a nice time?’

‘It was the gear for Nell too, but she didn’t meet anyone either.’

‘It sounds to me as if it was nothing but a waste of time,’ her father grunted, lifting his head.

‘How can it be a waste of time, Dad, if it was the gear?’ She and her father stared at each other, trying not to blink, until they both started laughing. Maggie said, ‘Don’t forget I can type those letters for you if you want. I can do them in me dinner hour when Iggy goes to the pub. He usually stays two hours at least.’ He often returned as drunk as a lord, but she hadn’t told Mam and Dad that. Her mother already disapproved of Iggy without having so much as set eyes on him.

‘It doesn’t seem proper,’ she said now, ‘your employer allowing you to call him by his first name. You should address him as Mr Reilly, or sir.’

‘Sir!’ Maggie snorted. ‘He’d laugh his head off if I called him that.’