‘I think,’ Basil said, ‘that’s enough.’
‘Go back to your husband, Susan,’ Bob told her. ‘That’s all you ever wanted to do anyhow. Go back to your poor dim schmuck of a husband and play games with him. Me, I’m out of here.’ He stepped to the desk and shook Basil’s hand. ‘I can’t say it’s been much of a pleasure, Baz, but I wish you well. I wish you luck, you and Vivian. Keep your heads down and stay healthy.’ He turned to Susan. ‘You too, I guess. You too,’ and then, without another word, he was gone.
‘Well,’ Basil said, after a pause, ‘that’s a shocker, a real shocker. What are we going to do now?’
‘Find someone else,’ Susan said. ‘Someone better.’
‘Don’t tell me you have someone in mind?’ Basil said.
‘For the programme?’
‘Yes, for the programme.’
‘Unfortunately not,’ said Susan.
Susan was the last person Breda expected to see wading through the crowds in Paddington railway station that blustery Thursday morning. She was having a hard enough time coping with her emotions without having to face up to the woman who had married Danny Cahill. Ronnie had never been second-best, certainly not. She had loved her husband as much as she had ever loved anyone, but she had loved Danny Cahill too with a possessive kind of affection that her marriage to Ronnie hadn’t dented but that Susan’s marriage to Danny most certainly had. Now, by several ugly quirks of fate, she might have Danny all to herself again.
It had been a relatively quiet night with nothing much more than a shower of incendiaries sent down from Goering’s assassins, though, according to Matt, who got all his news from the Daily Express these days, fires were raging in Berlin after a huge RAF bombing raid, and Hitler was having fits.
With money Nora had given him Matt had bought them breakfast at one of the vans and in shabby, half-ruined Fawley Street Breda had said goodbye not only to Shadwell but to her mother, her father-in-law and in a queer sort of way to Ronnie too.
Nora had wanted to accompany them to the station, to snatch a last precious hour with her daughter and grandson but Matt had said his foot wouldn’t stand up to it; besides, she didn’t have time, not when they’d be heading for Euston to catch a noon train to Liverpool to link with the night boat to Dublin.
So there in Fawley Street, not two hundred yards from Brauschmidt’s high-class butcher’s, where Ronnie had served his apprenticeship, not three hundred yards from the fish bar in which Leo had met his femme fatale and less than a mile from the spot where Breda’s brother, Georgie, had been struck down in the wake of the Cable Street riots, there they parted, not knowing if or when or where they might all be together again.
Nora had wept buckets; Breda too.
Bewildered and truculent, Billy had butted his granddad in the belly when Matt had tried to hug him and, until they’d squeezed on to the bus with the other refugees, had growled, snarled and sulked. Only when he saw his grandma running alongside the bus with tears streaming down her face did he cry too, two big fat tears trickling down his cheeks, his bottom lip, no longer pugnacious, trembling like a raspberry jelly.
The government’s scheme to evacuate as many women and children as possible from the East End before winter made living in shelters a serious hazard to health was in full swing. The major railway stations swarmed with young children and their harassed mothers and Paddington, just reopened after its recent pounding, was no exception.
With Billy trotting by her side and clutching two bundles containing their few belongings, Breda was in no mood for confrontation. She cut across the narrow concourse in the direction of Platform 4 which, a porter informed her, was where the train for Evesham would depart as soon as it was assembled.
The platform was already crowded with women and children, though just where they were all going, Breda couldn’t imagine. There were soldiers, too, laden with kitbags and packs, a little troupe of RAF bandsmen awkwardly burdened with cornet and trombone cases and, in the same muddled group, a Guards’ officer lugging a bag of golf clubs.
‘Breda. Breda. Over here.’
She swung this way and then the other, bobbing her head, but it was Billy, at hip height, who spotted his aunt first.
Susie was standing not far from the platform gate and, Breda thought uncharitably, looked less like a million dollars than a couple of bent pennies. She wore an old tweed coat and a tweedy sort of skirt that was far too large for her and a knitted cap that would have looked better on a trawler man than it did on an employee of the BBC.
‘What you doin’ ’ere?’ Breda asked.
‘Danny asked me to see you off safely.’
‘Danny? How did you—’
‘He telephoned,’ Susan said. ‘Took him ages to get through, but he did in the end. He told me what train you’d be on and asked me to give you these.’
‘What?’ said Breda suspiciously.
Susan held out a brown paper bag. ‘It’s not much. Couple of veal and ham pies, some cut cake and a bottle of ginger pop. I had no idea it would be so busy.’
Breda shifted one bundle to her armpit and reached for the brown paper bag but Billy, stepping up, carefully detached it from his Aunt Susan’s hand and, after peeping inside, pressed it securely to his chest.
‘Yum?’ Susan said.
‘Yum,’ Billy agreed and almost managed a smile.
‘Is this a peace offerin’?’ Breda said.
‘I’m sure I don’t know what you mean,’ said Susan.
‘Yeah, but I’m sure you do,’ Breda said.
‘Danny’s not doing it for you. He’s doing it for Billy.’
Breda sighed. ‘Long as he ain’t doin’ it to get back at you, that’s okay with me.’
‘Danny isn’t the spiteful type,’ said Susan. ‘He’s far too down-to-earth to take revenge. Not,’ she added, ‘that I’d blame him if he did.’
‘You still got your feller,’ Breda said. ‘Ain’t one man enough for you, Susie?’
‘My – my “feller” has gone back to New York.’
‘Oh, really?’ Breda said. ‘Why didn’t you go with ’im?’
‘I have work to do here.’
‘Does Danny know – about your feller, I mean?’
Susan smiled. ‘I did rather make a point of telling him.’
‘I’ll bet you did.’
‘Ah, yes,’ Susan said. ‘You may have – what do they call it? – territorial advantage but Danny’s still my husband.’
‘Ooo,’ Breda said, smiling too, ‘if there’s one thing I love, it’s a challenge.’
‘I haven’t given up on Danny just yet, you know.’
‘Maybe not,’ Breda said. ‘The big question is, has Danny given up on you?’
‘That’s something we’ll have to find out, isn’t it?’
‘It certainly is,’ said Breda.
The piercing shriek of a train whistle cut across their conversation followed by a massive explosion of white steam. Stragglers on the concourse surged towards the gate, dragging small children by the hand and rolling behind them on trolleys all sorts of bits and pieces, from cribs to baby baths to wireless sets and electric fires, as if London had become the site of a rummage sale and they were making off with the spoils.
‘Never gonna get a seat now,’ Breda said. ‘We better go.’
‘Yes,’ Susan said. ‘You’d better.’
Breda watched her sister-in-law crouch, look Billy straight in the eye and heard her say, ‘Be a good boy now and take care of Mummy,’ before she delivered a kiss from which Billy did not flinch but, to Breda’s surprise, returned in kind.
‘Ain’t you the lucky one,’ Breda said.
‘That,’ said Susan, ‘remains to be seen,’ then, tugging down the knitted cap and wrapping the coat around her, turned and hurried away.
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The Wayward Wife Page 30
