After the War Is Over (14 page)

“What happened then?”

“His friend followed us. And they said . . . they said I was the sort of girl who
knew how to have fun. And would I have some fun with them. I didn’t realize what they
meant, not at first, not until he’d backed me against the wall.”

For a moment Charlotte thought she might be sick. “Go on.”

“So I said no. I said he was wrong. That I wasn’t that kind of girl, not at all, and
I wanted to go home. But he kept pulling at my frock, at my skirt, and then he ripped
it. I suppose I must have screamed. He put his hand over my mouth, so I bit him, and
that’s when he hit me. Oh, Charlotte—it hurt so badly. I thought I was going to faint.
I tried to run, but his friend tripped me, and then one of them kicked me, and . .
. and . . .”

“And what?” Charlotte took Norma’s hands in hers and squeezed them tight, her heart
aching for the girl. She was so young, so terribly young.

“He . . . he
spat
on me. As if I were a piece of rubbish. And that’s what I am. Everyone will know,
Charlotte. They’ll know, and they’ll
see
. What am I to do?”

“Norma. You are not rubbish. You are the farthest thing from rubbish.”

“You were right. I shouldn’t have gone with them. I was dressed like a, like a
whore,
he said . . .”

“Norma,
listen
to me. Are you listening? Even if you had paraded up and down the street wearing
nothing more than rouge on your cheeks, naked as the day you were born, you wouldn’t
deserve what happened tonight. They were in the wrong, not you.”

“You’re only saying that to make me feel better.”

“I am not. It’s the truth. As God is my witness, it is the truth. Now, my dear, I
think we ought to get you cleaned up. It’s a good thing that tomorrow is Sunday. You
can rest, and the worst of the swelling will have gone down by then.”

“What will I tell the others?” Norma asked, her eyes glassy with fear. Clearly the
prospect of telling their landladies was terrifying to the poor girl.

“I think we’ll tell them part of the story. Not a lie. Simply . . . well, simply leave
out the parts that might upset the misses. We can say you went out dancing, and a
man at the dance hall was rude to you, and there was a tussle, and you got caught
in the middle. How does that sound?”

“Likely enough, I suppose. Though Rosie’ll sniff out the truth.”

“Probably, but that’s a worry for another day. Now, sit here
while I fetch the first-aid box from the kitchen. I’ll see if I can work some magic
on that eye of yours.”

The kettle on the range was still warm, with enough water to fill a small basin. Armed
with that, a roll of cotton wool, a pot of arnica cream, and a bottle of tincture
of iodine, the only antiseptic she could find, Charlotte returned to Norma’s side
and set to work. She washed clean the cuts and abrasions and swabbed them with iodine
as lightly as she dared, not wishing to leave a telltale brown stain. Last of all
she dabbed a liberal layer of arnica cream on Norma’s eye and swollen lip.

As tenderly as she had once done for her patients, she helped Norma change out of
her ruined clothes and into a spare nightgown, and then she settled her friend in
bed.

She would not sleep, not for hours, for she was far too angry. Not at Norma, of course,
but at men who thought a young, impressionable woman was fair game simply because
she was intoxicated and scantily dressed. The only thing that ought to be troubling
Norma right now was a headache and the beginnings of a cold.

Charlotte had never been especially maternal in her sentiments, but she felt a mother’s
rage for what had been done to her friend tonight. If she had a pound for every woman
she’d met in the course of her work who’d had an eye blackened by her husband, she’d
have been as rich as the Queen of Sheba.

What sort of world allowed such things to happen? The same world, she supposed, that
allowed millions of young men to die over a few miles of Flanders mud, and let children
starve in one of the richest nations in the world.

Life was unfair; she knew it down to her bones. From time to time she forgot that
essential truth, but tonight had reminded her. She wouldn’t be so foolish as to forget
it again.

M
idday already and she had barely made a dent in the reports from the pensions review.
There simply wasn’t enough time in the day, when it came down to it. Even if Miss
Rathbone were to hire another five constituency assistants . . .

“Miss Brown?”

Charlotte looked up to find Gladys hovering at her door.

“There’s a telephone call for you. From Mr. Ellis at the
Herald
.” This last piece of information she imparted with a jaunty wink.

“Thank you, Gladys.”

She certainly hadn’t been expecting a call from him. The Monday after Peace Day, a
little more than a week ago now, she had sent him the article she’d been crafting
when Norma had collapsed at the front door. She had expected him to reject it, or
at the very least whitewash it with a coat of anodyne paint, but once again he’d surprised
her.

Her column had run yesterday, every angry, outraged word of it, and Charlotte was
already dreading the arrival of that evening’s edition of the
Herald
at the office. It would be brimming over with outraged letters to the editor, she
was sure of
it, and try as she might she wouldn’t be able to stop herself from reading every last
one.

Perhaps that was it. Perhaps he had called to warn her. She wouldn’t be surprised
if people were branding her a Bolshevik, calling for her head, demanding that she
be flogged through the streets.

She went to the telephone table and picked up the earpiece.

“Hello? Mr. Ellis?”

“Hello, Miss Brown. Sorry to trouble you at work.”

“That’s quite all right.”

“The thing is, Miss Brown . . .”

He was going to sack her. The
Herald
’s publisher had finally had enough. That was it. He was calling to—

“Well, you see, it’s about tomorrow evening.”

“Yes?” she asked, feeling quite perplexed by his hesitant manner. Normally the man
was so forthright she could barely get a word in edgewise.

“There was a dinner planned, by my publisher, and I was meant to go to it. I’d arranged
things so I wouldn’t have to be at the paper in the evening, and then, just now, I
learned that the dinner has been canceled. So I was thinking, ah, that if you weren’t
otherwise engaged, that I should like to ask you to dinner instead. And the pictures,
as well.”

“Dinner and the pictures?” This really was most unexpected.

“Yes. At six o’clock, if you can be spared that early. We don’t have to go to the
pictures, you know. Not if you’re tired. But I thought . . . well, it’s been an age
since I went to them myself.”

“I see,” she said, although she didn’t, not really. Was he asking her as one colleague
might ask another? Or was his intention rather less collegial?

“But you may well be tired at the end of the day.”

“No, not at all. I should love to go.” That was true enough, for she did enjoy his
company. “You said six o’clock?”

“Yes. I’ll come round your office and we can walk into the city center from there.”

“Very well. I look forward to seeing you tomorrow, Mr. Ellis. Good afternoon.”

“Good afternoon, Miss Brown.”

She hung up the earpiece on the telephone but made no move to stand. Could it be .
. . ?

“Don’t look so surprised,” said Gladys, who had returned to her desk. “You’d think
no one’d ever asked you to the pictures.”

She ought to have chided Gladys for eavesdropping, but she only shrugged and walked
back down the hall, back to her tiny office, where she fell into her chair and stared,
her eyes unfocused, at the papers littering its surface.

The truth was that she hadn’t ever been asked to the pictures. She’d had male friends
when she was at Oxford, and later when she’d first moved to Liverpool, but none had
ever showed an interest in her beyond the platonic. And then the war had come, and
the most she’d ever hoped for was a few more hours of sleep, a cup of tea that was
a little stronger, a day on the ward that was a little less taxing.

But now the war was over, and with or without her, the world would continue to spin
on its axis. Life went on, a man she liked and respected had asked her out to dinner
and the pictures, and she would go with him and enjoy every minute.

And not once, not even for an instant, would she spare a thought for another man who
had never been hers, who would never be hers, though he had never left her thoughts
or fled her
dreams, not in all the years she had known him, despaired for him, and longed without
hope or expectation for his wounded, solitary soul.

T
HE NEXT EVENING
she waited outside for Mr. Ellis, not wishing to endure the giggles and whispers
of her younger and sillier colleagues. It was a beautiful evening, the temperature
pleasantly cool after the heat of the day, and there was no sign of rain in the purpling
sky.

He was nearly on time, only five minutes late, and after he had greeted her with a
handshake and an apology, they began the half-hour walk north into the city center.

“Is there anywhere in particular you’d like to have dinner?” he asked.

“Not really,” she said, not wanting to admit that the tea shop near her office represented
the sum total of her dining experience in Liverpool.

“Then let’s go to the Phil on Hope Street. They’ve good food, and the interior is
. . . well, I’m not sure how to describe it.”

“You, lost for words?”

“It doesn’t happen often.”

Their conversation continued on in a similarly light vein. He seemed younger, away
from the office and the myriad pressures weighing down on him, and it was clear he
was making an effort to be charming and funny and possibly less single-minded than
usual.

How old was Mr. Ellis? It wasn’t the sort of question she could ask him outright,
nor was there any easy way of finding out. He looked to be in his early thirties at
most. Most men like him, in his position, were married at that age. She couldn’t divine
any flaw in his character or person, at least not at this
juncture of their friendship. Perhaps it truly was the case that he’d let the pressures
of work take over his life. In that, at least, they were well matched.

They were soon at the corner of Hope and Hardman Streets, and facing what looked like
a misplaced homage to an Oxford college. With an oriel window overhanging the street,
elaborately carved stone façade, and exuberant use of architectural styles from several
different centuries, the Philharmonic Dining Rooms certainly bore no resemblance to
any public house that she’d ever seen.

The interior was magnificent, if not entirely to Charlotte’s taste, with every visible
surface decorated in jaw-dropping turn-of-the-century style. Everywhere she looked,
her eyes were assaulted: jewel-bright stained glass, panels of exquisite mosaic work
on the bar, intricately carved wooden trim, ornate plaster ceilings.

“You see what I mean?” Mr. Ellis said.

“I do. I’ve never seen the like.”

“The Phil is an institution here in Liverpool, if that’s a term one can properly use
for an establishment that’s only been around for twenty years or so.”

“I’ve walked by it often enough, but I never had any reason to come inside before.
All this for a public house.”

“We’d best go along to the dining room. It isn’t quite as eye-catching, but it’ll
do.”

He led her upstairs to a chamber that was somewhat more restrained in its interior
decoration. At his request, the waiter seated them at a table in the corner of the
room, away from the noise of the other diners. “So that we may talk without shouting,”
Mr. Ellis explained.

The menu, as she’d expected, had been devised with the
tastes of men in mind, with an emphasis on meat and potatoes. She wasn’t feeling terribly
hungry, so she ordered the chicken-and-leek pie, while he asked for a mutton chop,
roast potatoes, creamed spinach, and a pint of ale.

“Would madam care for anything to drink?” the waiter asked.

“Do you have any wine? Or cider, perhaps?”

“We have both, madam.”

“Well, then . . . perhaps a glass of white wine? Thank you.”

Rather than pick up the threads of conversation immediately, she looked around the
room, which was rapidly filling with diners. Some of them were wearing evening dress—long
gowns for the women, black tie for the men—which seemed rather grand for a public
house, even one as finely appointed as the Phil.

“Is it me, or are we rather underdressed for the occasion?” She was wearing her second-best
summer frock, a dove-gray linen with white trim, and had thought herself perfectly
dressed for the occasion until a few minutes before.

“The people dressed to the nines? They’re about to go to a concert at the Philharmonic
across the road. You wouldn’t have preferred that to the pictures, would you? I mean,
I could see if there are any tickets still available—”

“I’m quite happy to go to the pictures. And besides, we don’t know what is on the
program at the concert hall. It may be an evening of Stravinsky and the like. All
atonal squeaking and bleating.”

“You aren’t an aficionado of modern music?”

“Of some, yes. I rather like the new jazz music from America. But I prefer my classical
music to be less experimental. A legacy of my upbringing, I suppose.”

“Was your father a musician?”

“A cleric. He’s attached to Wells Cathedral. I grew up in a house a stone’s throw
away.”

“Are your parents still living?”

“Yes, fortunately. You said you live with your mother. Is your father . . . ?” She
left the question unsaid, for it seemed indelicate to simply come out and ask if the
man were dead.

“He died nearly a decade ago. I came home from school to live with my mother—I have
two sisters, but they’d married and moved away already.”

So he was in his early thirties, just like her. “Had you finished university?”

“I had my undergraduate degree. I read history at Edinburgh, and then the plan was
for me to follow my father into law. He was a barrister here in Liverpool.”

“But instead . . . ?”

“I decided I’d had enough of school. I went to the
Herald
and climbed on the bottom rung of the ladder. Became a subeditor and general dogsbody
to the rest of the staff.”

“From there to editor in chief in a decade. Very impressive.”

“More like twelve years. The war helped, of course. I mean . . . that is, I hope you
know what I mean. So many men were gone, and those who might have competed for positions
with me had left the paper.”

“Don’t apologize. You served your country, too. And I’m not saying that as a sop to
your feelings.”

Their drinks came, then, and their food shortly thereafter, and as they ate and drank
they talked of the strange summer it had been so far. Mr. Ellis was particularly troubled
by the rioting that had flared up in Liverpool and other port cities at the beginning
of June, only to be quelled in days. Quelled, not resolved.

“The dock workers’ anger and discontent that fueled the riots, especially the ones
the police have characterized as racial in nature, hasn’t gone anywhere,” he noted.
“A day or two of fistfights and rocks through shop windows isn’t enough to solve the
problems this city is facing.”

“I agree. I thought it deplorable, the way the papers—yours excepted, of course—characterized
the riots. As if the color of a man’s skin is the only thing worth describing about
him.”

“You’re right, but you also can’t deny that race was a factor in the riots.”

“You don’t mean to say that the rioters ran amok because they were black, or Indian,
or—”

“Not at all. The dock workers rioted because they are treated like the lowest of the
low, are expected to survive on wages that would have been regarded as criminally
low a century ago, and then are blamed by their white neighbors for depressing the
job market. There’s only so much a man can take before he cracks.”

“They didn’t do much for their cause, I’m afraid.”

“No, they didn’t, but I can’t blame them for it. In any case, it’s only the beginning.
Look what happened in Luton on Peace Day—their town hall burned to the ground, the
city center laid waste.”

“You think the same could happen here?”

“I’m almost certain it will. Parliament has just introduced legislation that will
bar the police from unionizing, and already there’s talk of their going out on strike.
Can you imagine what would occur? Anarchy, pure and simple.”

It was a terrible thought. The riots in June had been frightening enough, but if unrest
like that were to spill beyond the confines of a single district and consume the city
as a whole, or even the nation . . .

“Don’t look so downcast, Miss Brown. I shouldn’t have sounded so definite about it.
Times are hard, yes, but we’ve all pulled through worse. We may well do so again.”

“I suppose so. Everyone seems content enough where I live.”

“In your boardinghouse?”

“Yes. On Huskisson Street.”

“Not far from here.”

“Not far at all.”

“Do you like it there?”

“I do. My landladies are two sisters, the Misses Macleod, and there are three other
women at the house besides me.”

“A happy place?”

“I would say so. Certainly we’re very chummy with one another. Do you live in the
city center, too?”

“I’m afraid not. It would be rather easier if I did, but my parents lived in Grassendale,
on Salisbury Road. It would be sensible to live nearer to work, but my mother is very
attached to the house, and to her garden, so we’ve stayed put. It’s not far on the
train, at any rate.”

They had finished their meal; rather to Charlotte’s surprise, she had eaten every
bite of her pie. It was nearly half past seven; the pictures would have started already,
and if they wished to see the newsreels they would have to hurry.

“Is there any film you’re especially keen to see?” he asked as they crossed Ranelagh
and arrived at the foot of Lime Street.