After the War Is Over (13 page)

She was thirty-three, and in the course of her adult life, she now realized, she had
never, not
ever,
allowed herself an entire day of fun without being overcome by guilt or anxiety or
the fear that there were worthier things to do. Having fun was for other people—people
who had earned the right to be carefree.

Even as a child, she’d been set on proving her goodness to others, her parents in
particular. Not because they didn’t love her, for their affection was abundant and
genuine, but because she had always felt she needed to earn that love. In adopting
her, they had taken an almost incalculable leap of faith. And so she had decided,
when she was very young, that she would never give them cause to regret their decision.
She would become the daughter they deserved.

Yet such strivings hadn’t made her a better person. In fact, they had done quite the
opposite. Without ever meaning to do so, without really noticing, she had become—oh,
the shame of it—she had become a bore. She was a high-minded, tedious, and entirely
tiresome bore. “Saint Charlotte,” indeed.

She was so boring she couldn’t even follow her friends to
the top of Blackpool Tower. They hadn’t asked her to climb the Matterhorn, only ride
a lift with them to the top of a perfectly sturdy structure and enjoy the view. So
what was stopping her from joining them?

Nothing
.

Before she could change her mind, she paid the admission to the observation decks
and joined the queue for the lifts. The ride to the top was slow and creaky and Charlotte’s
knees were weak with nerves by the time the doors finally opened, but she gritted
her teeth and forced herself out of the lift and onto the glassed-in expanse of the
main platform.

There was no sign of her friends; they must have gone to one of the upper platforms.
A short flight of steps led her to the first, which a sign told her was a full 390
feet from the ground, and there she found Mabel. Here it was open to the elements,
with nothing but a high wrought-iron railing to keep her safe, and in the end she
decided to leave a good five feet between herself and the edge of the platform.

“Mabel?”

“Charlotte! You changed your mind.”

“It seemed a shame to come all this way and not go up the Tower. Where are the others?”

“They went up to the higher decks. Do you want to join them?”

“No, thank you. I’m quite happy here.”

“You don’t look it, I have to say. Can you see anything from where you are?”

“Oh, yes. The view is wonderful.”

“Let’s walk around the perimeter, shall we? If we walk to the southeast corner we
can see Liverpool, even if you’re quite far from the railing.”

The view really was extraordinary. It seemed as if most of Lancashire, and a good
deal of the Irish Sea, was spread out around them, with Liverpool a smoky blur in
the distance. If a great city like that could be reduced to a smudge on the horizon,
then what was she in comparison?

By the time Rosie and Norma rejoined them, she was feeling much steadier on her feet,
though no more inclined to stand at the edge of the platform, not even when they pleaded
with her to come to the rail so she might look down and see the town below.

“Thank you, but I had better not risk it. Not unless you wish to carry me back to
the lift after I’ve fainted,” she joked.

It was nearly six o’clock by the time they returned to solid ground. For supper they
had fish and chips, eaten straight from their newspaper wrapping, and then, with only
a half hour remaining before the charabanc’s departure for home, they started back
for the station.

Along the way they found a souvenir shop that was still open, and Charlotte spent
the last of the money she’d set aside for the day on a clutch of postcards, sticks
of Blackpool Rock for Meg and her colleagues at work, a little penny bank shaped like
the Tower for Janie, and a set of antimacassars, embroidered with the inscription
A Gift from Blackpool,
for the Misses Macleod.

It had been a good day, the charabanc excepted, the sort of day that everyone needed
from time to time. From now on, she resolved, she would try to remember that life
could be more than work and study and serious-minded contemplation of society’s failings.
She could know joy, and light, and relief from sadness.

She could have—she
would
have—another day in the sun.

T
he nineteenth of July was as fine a day as anyone could have wished, dawning clear
and bright, the sort of weather tailor-made for celebration. The tea party and games
organized by the families of Huskisson Street to celebrate Peace Day weren’t especially
grand, not when compared to the parades and victory tableaux and fireworks displays
taking place in every corner of the Empire, but she liked them all the more for that.

Charlotte, like most people she knew, had nearly forgotten that the Armistice last
November had been just that—a setting down of arms. The war itself had not ended until
the twenty-eighth of June, when the Treaty of Versailles had been signed. A few days
later, the king’s proclamation of peace, with its promise of a day of celebration
on the nineteenth of July, had appeared in all the papers, and preparations had begun
for parades and festivals and parties.

No one had questioned the rightness of such a thing, of marking the end of years of
death and brutality and soul-searing loss with a
tea party
. There had been a solemn day of remembrance a fortnight before, and churches across
the land had been packed to the rafters; surely that would have sufficed.

Yet today, standing in the glorious sunshine, the laughter of her neighbors’ children
bright in her ears, Charlotte wondered if she had been wrong to disapprove. What harm
could it do, after all? The cost to everyone had been minimal—no more than a few shillings
for the food and a share of the cost of the prizes. Charlotte could well afford it,
as could most of the people around her. No one here was rich, and many families on
the street had been driven to take in boarders to make ends meet, but all had enough
to eat, had decent clothes to wear, and had sturdy shoes upon their feet. Riches,
indeed, compared to many.

Every last table and chair in every house had been dragged into the street, which
had first been swept and scrubbed so thoroughly that the cobbles fairly sparkled in
the morning sun. Overhead, garlands of Union flag pennants crisscrossed the street,
while white bunting softened the stone lintels of the houses’ front doors and windows.

The tables, which stretched almost the entire block between Bedford and Sandon Streets,
were covered with a draper’s worth of tablecloths and bedsheets. Little could be seen
of the tabletops themselves, so stacked were they with plate after plate of sandwiches,
buns, biscuits, dainties, and, towering above all, the bright-hued blooms of larkspur,
foxglove, and gladioli from the street’s tiny back gardens. With sugar and butter
still rationed, every house on the street had been saving up for a fortnight, and
the results were impressive indeed.

Any stranger wandering into their midst would have thought it was May Day, for the
women and girls were arrayed in their Sunday whites, the men wore their best suits,
and the boys, still stinging from the Lifebuoy soap with which they’d been scrubbed,
scowled and squirmed as their hair was smoothed and their collars were straightened.

The clock at St. Luke’s a half mile away chimed the hour, eleven o’clock, and all
fell silent. Philip Storey, a dentist who lived at number forty-nine, climbed upon
a chair and began to speak. His only son had been killed at the Battle of Jutland.

“Neighbors and friends: today is Peace Day, and with it the end of the war. It’s a
war that has cost us dearly. So dearly . . .” At this he looked to his wife, who nodded
and tried to smile.

“But they are losses we are proud to bear, for we know they are shared. Let us pray,
now, for our glorious dead, for our brave men who have returned to us, for our country
and Empire, and for His Majesty the King.”

As soon as Mr. Storey had clambered down from his perch, he was replaced by Huw Williams,
a retired actuary who lived across the street from the Misses Macleod. Welsh by name
but not by birth, being a Liverpudlian down to his shoelaces, he nonetheless had a
beautiful tenor voice and was the mainstay of the choir at the Methodist church on
Princes Road.

Mr. Williams extracted a pitch pipe from his waistcoat pocket, sounded a note, and
then, his arms beckoning everyone to join in, he began to sing the national anthem:

           
“God save our gracious King,

           
God save our noble King,

           
God save the King.

           
Send him victorious,

           
Happy and glorious,

           
Long to rule over us,

           
God save the King!”

With formalities observed, it was time for the party proper to begin. The children
were led to their seats at the long table,
and soon were tucking into their sandwiches with the single-minded attention reserved
for those occasions when sweets were promised at the end of a meal. Cakes and biscuits
devoured, hands and faces wiped, they were shooed away so the table might be refreshed
with fare for the men of the street: sandwiches again, but filled with gammon rather
than egg salad, and with mugs of ale instead of the sweet, milky tea that had been
given to the children.

Only when the men had eaten and the table had been cleared and set for a third time
did the women sit down to eat. There was a practical reason for this, Charlotte knew,
for it was the women who had cooked and prepared the food, and they had been needed
during the children’s and men’s meals to fetch and carry. Yet it stung her, as quick
and sharp as a wasp, to be last once again.

Women always put themselves last. Either it was the mothers she visited in the slums
of Scottie Road who only ate after their husbands and children had had their fill,
or it was the women from Huskisson Street who, after cleaning and cooking for days,
were left with the rag end of the delicacies, with scarcely a slice of cake to share
between them.

The men were called upon at last, given the task of clearing away the tables and chairs,
and then it was time for the children’s games: bobbing for apples, hopscotch, and
a hard-fought tug-of-war between the north and south sides of the street. Last of
all were the footraces: a hundred-yard dash for the boys and men, and a fifty-yard
egg-and-spoon race for the girls. The prize for each was a commemorative mug presented
by Britannia, known on common days as Mrs. Tomlinson from number forty-four, and dressed
for the occasion in white robes and a coronet of aspidistra leaves.

A trill of too-loud laughter landed in a rare moment of calm, catching Charlotte’s
attention. She turned her head, though she already knew its author. It was Norma,
once again dressed inappropriately for the occasion, once again drawing attention
to herself at the most inopportune moment.

Charlotte wore her best summer frock, the same one she had worn for Lilly’s wedding,
and most of the other women at the party were dressed in a similar manner. The older
ladies, the Misses Macleod among them, wore rather more old-fashioned frocks, with
hemlines that grazed their ankles, but the younger women—Charlotte didn’t feel especially
young, but she still counted herself among them—sported hemlines that were a few inches
higher.

Norma’s dress, by contrast, stopped just south of her knees, was constructed of an
alarmingly lightweight artificial silk, was an eye-watering shade of pink, and had
a neckline that left absolutely nothing to the imagination. She wore no hat, only
a diamanté clip in her chin-length hair, and her legs were bare.

How had she failed to notice what Norma was wearing? Her housemate had been dressed
in a perfectly inoffensive outfit at the beginning of the day, at least as far as
Charlotte could recall. But it had been so busy since then, with all of them fetching
and serving the food, and in all those hours she hadn’t spared a single thought for
the girl.

If Rosie had been at the party she surely would have noticed, but she was at work,
having volunteered so another nurse could spend the day with her sweetheart. Charlotte
alone would have to manage this.

There was nothing for it but to approach Norma and see if she could be coaxed back
inside. It wouldn’t be easy, for the girl was perched on a table and was surrounded
by at least a
half-dozen young men, some of whom Charlotte recognized as boarders in the street’s
larger houses. She was sipping from a half-pint of ale, her lipstick leaving a garish
crescent upon the glass, and a smoldering cigarette dangled from her other hand, though
Charlotte had never before known her to smoke.

“Hello, Norma,” she said in as friendly a tone as she could conjure. “I was wondering
if you might help me with the clearing-up. I know the Misses Macleod would be very
grateful.”

“Leave ’er be, won’ ya?” said one of the men. “Whas’ harm in ’avin’ a bit o’ fun?”

The man was three sheets to the wind already. What kind of degenerate got drunk at
a children’s party, for heaven’s sake?

“I don’t mean to spoil everyone’s fun, I assure you. But Miss Barnes is needed back
home. It isn’t fair for Janie to do all the work herself.”

Norma sighed dramatically. “You’re such a stick in the mud, Charlotte. Why do you
always have to ruin everything?”

“You ’eard ’er,” said another one of Norma’s companions. “Now sod off, won’ ya?”

“I beg your pardon—”

“Clear off, the lot of you.” This from Mr. Williams, who now stood just behind Charlotte.
“Sorry to interrupt, Miss Brown, but we can’t have them spoiling the party.” He jabbed
a finger at the younger men, one after the other, looking each one straight in the
eye. “I’ll give you two minutes, then I’m calling the coppers.”

“Norma,” Charlotte implored. “Come inside with me. You don’t know these men.”

“ ’Course I do. This is Bert, and this is Joe, and these are their friends from work.
I’ll be as right as rain with them, won’t I, Bert?”

“Right as rain. Say good-bye to your nosy friend, Norma.”

“Don’t fuss, Charlotte. I’ll knock on your door when I get in. Promise I will.”

I
F THE
M
ISSES
Macleod and Meg were worried for Norma’s sake, they said nothing of it, and supper
was occupied by pleasant recollections of the day’s events. Charlotte spent an hour
in the sitting room with the others before retreating to her room to work on her next
column for Mr. Ellis.

It had been a lovely day, one that the children of the street wouldn’t soon forget,
a beacon of life and hope amid the perpetual gloom of postwar austerity. It had done
no harm, as far as she could tell, and might even make the coming days easier for
some.

But what of the elaborate parades of military might, the lavish luncheons for dignitaries,
and the epic displays of fireworks that had taken place elsewhere across Britain,
most of them paid for out of the public purse? Wouldn’t that money have been better
spent on the hungry and needy, among them tens of thousands of demobilized servicemen?
What of the people whose only memory of this Peace Day would be the empty promises
of politicians?

It might be too radical a subject for even Mr. Ellis to countenance, but she just
might be able to persuade him. “The Improvidence of Peace Day,” she would call it.

She had completed a fine first draft, and was ready to set down her pen for the night,
when she heard an odd noise at the front door—a muffled howl, as if a stray dog or
cat were in distress. She went to her window, which faced the street, and pushed aside
the curtains to get a better look.

There was nothing, no trace of movement beyond. And
then . . . a rustle of fabric, an anguished moan, and she flew to the front door.

Norma. Huddled on the stoop, her head bowed, her shoulders shaking with muffled sobs.

“Ch . . . Charlotte . . .”

“My goodness, Norma. What on earth has happened to you? No—don’t try to answer. Not
yet. Let me get you inside and up to your room.”

“No! No, please. The others can’t know. They mu . . . mustn’t know.”

“Then come into my room. Let me help you. I used to be a nurse. I can help you.”

She guided Norma to her feet and led her by the shoulders into her room, where she
settled her at the edge of the bed.

“I’ll have to switch on the ceiling light, my dear, so I can see what has happened.”

“Don’t. You’ll hate me. You will.”

“Of course I won’t. I swear I won’t. Let me turn on the light. We’ll start with that.”

Her desk lamp, at the far side of the room, was too dim to illuminate more than her
work surface. She went to the door, to the switch that was next to it, and harsh electric
light flooded the room. Returning to Norma’s side, she crouched before her and, gently
but firmly, pulled the girl’s hands away from her face.

It was worse than she’d expected. One eye blackened and swollen almost shut. A nasty
scrape on one cheekbone. A split lip already crusting over with blood.

“Are you hurt anywhere else?”

“My . . . my side. I tripped, I think. When I tried to run. He kicked me. Or it might
have been his friend.” She began to
cry again, silently, her tears welling steadily from her eyes. She was so young, scarcely
more than a child. Why would anyone do such a thing to her?

“Oh, my dear. My dear, dear girl. Did he hurt you anywhere else, Norma? In any other
. . . in another way? I won’t be upset with you if he did. Not in the slightest. But
you must tell me.”

“No . . . no. He didn’t rape me.”

Rape. The word sounded as evil as the act itself. “Who did this to you?”

“One of Bert’s friends. The one that told you to sod off. Sorry about that.”

“Never you mind. I’ve been called worse.”

“We were out dancing, and I was having ever so much fun. And he told me, Mick told
me, that I was so pretty, the prettiest girl he’d ever seen, and would I come away
with him. Go to another party. It sounded fun, so I did. We went out the back way—we’d
gone to the Palais, and it was full to bursting. He said it would take too long to
go through the front.”