by Janet Tanner
‘There you are!’ Elaine said triumphantly to Marie. ‘I told you, didn’t I? She wouldn’t go off to America without us!’
But there was no look of answering delight on Marie’s face and her thumb went into her mouth in the childish gesture she still reverted to when she was upset. Elaine nudged her impatiently.
‘Don’t be stupid, you!’
‘Don’t want to go to America!’ Marie mumbled over her thumb.
Margaret put an arm around her. ‘Come along, both of you. Tea will soon be ready,’ she said brightly, though it occurred to her that whatever the outcome of Mrs Cooper’s visit it would be impossible to please both girls.
On Saturday the girls were ready for the visit by mid morning, dressed in their best fair isle jumpers and pleated kilts. Elaine was excited, Marie solemn, though Margaret did manage to enlist her help in making a ‘treacle tommy’tart for dinner and as she rolled a piece of pastry into strips to criss-cross the pie, her small face pale and set above the apron Margaret had put around her to protect her best clothes, Margaret’s heart went out to her.
She had been so pathetic when she had first come but this was her home now. At her age, four years must seem like a lifetime and her mother a virtual stranger. I’ll fight for her – I will! Margaret promised herself.
By noon Mrs Cooper had still not arrived. Elaine had spent the last hour watching for her out of the front bedroom window and Marie was following Margaret around like a nervous puppy dog, getting under her feet at every turn.
‘Do you think they’re coming?’ Margaret asked Harry when he brought her in a freshly cut cabbage.
‘They’ve just been held up, I expect. Stop worrying, love.’ At times Harry’s unruffled attitude, so like his father’s, could be infuriating.
‘I’m not worrying!’ she snapped.
He grinned. ‘All right, you’re not worrying. So why are you putting sugar instead of salt into the potatoes?’
‘Am I? Oh!’ She glanced down at the jar in her hand and shook her head in disbelief. ‘Oh Harry, whatever is the matter with me?’
Ten past twelve and she was beginning to hope that perhaps Mrs Cooper might not turn up after all. She was ashamed of the thought for she knew she was being selfish but she could not help it. She was not looking forward to the meeting, and to its outcome even less.
At twenty past twelve she heard Elaine’s footsteps flying down the stairs.
‘They’re coming! They’re coming!’
She ran past Margaret and Marie out of the back door to meet them. Margaret tried to untie the strings of her apron and found Marie clinging to her skirt. Her face was upturned, her eyes huge and afraid.
‘Oh Auntie Marg – I’m scared!’
‘It will be all right,’ Margaret comforted with more confidence than she was feeling.
‘Don’t let them take me away! Please!’
Margaret rumpled her hair, bent down and kissed her. Her heart was full. There was nothing she could say to comfort her. She resorted to bustle.
‘Come along, darling, we’d better open the front door for them.’
Marie was still hiding behind her as she opened the door. They were just crossing the road, Joe looking enormous in his GI uniform, Mrs Cooper ‘done up to the nines’, Elaine hanging onto her arm.
‘There you are, Marie. There’s your Mum,’ Margaret said.
She was aware of Marie peeping from behind her as they came up the path. ‘Hello. So you made it,’ she said.
‘We sure did.’ Joe’s voice was hearty.
‘Marie? Where’s our Marie?’ Mrs Cooper asked shrilly.
‘She’s here. She’s …’ Margaret broke off. At the sound of her mother’s voice Marie had emerged from behind her skirts and now she darted forward, running down the path and throwing herself at Mrs Cooper with all the enthusiasm of the young puppy she so often resembled.
‘Oh, our Marie!’ Mrs Cooper, almost bowled over by the onslaught, teetered on her high heels and made to hold the child away. ‘Mind my skirt! Oh, you’re all over flour!’ Her welcome was less than warm but Marie seemed not to notice. All her reservations, all her fears, had flown as if they had never been and she was oblivious to everything but that her mother, whom she had not seen for four years, was here. She clung to her legs, sobbing, and Margaret felt the emptiness yawn inside her.
She had lost her. All her pleas to be allowed to stay had been merely the whimperings of an abandoned child, clinging to the one person who had offered her love and understanding in this alien world. But now her mother was here and nothing else mattered. Not the privations of life in London, not the neglect, not the days of waiting for a letter which did not come. She was here, a highly coloured figure in a two-tight skirt and a pair of American nylons, and everyone else had faded into shades of sepia. Even Margaret, who had fed her, cared for her, tucked her up in bed at night. She had been a caretaker mother only, now Marie’s real mother had come to claim her and Margaret knew the child would go with her without a backward glance.
She should have been glad for her, Margaret knew, but she could not be. She felt numbed, empty, heavy as lead. Automatically, her lips formed a smile and she heard her own voice, steady and amazingly normal.
‘Won’t you come in? If the children will let you, that is! You’ve had a long journey.’
‘That’s it then. It’s all decided. There’s nothing more you can do,’ Harry said.
It was late evening, Mrs Cooper and Joe had departed, the children were in bed and Harry and Margaret were drinking cocoa by the fire. Harry was tucking into the last of a pound of Osbornes but Margaret felt as if even a nibble of biscuit would choke her.
‘Just a few more weeks and they’ll be gone,’ she said forlornly. ‘Oh Harry, I shall miss them so!’
‘You’ll get over it,’ Harry said placidly.
It had all been arranged that afternoon in the stiff formality of the front room. Mrs Cooper had decided the children should definitely accompany them to America after the war and Joe thought they should return to London as soon as possible so that they could become accustomed to living with their mother again and get to know him.
‘Seems safe enough now,’ he had stated in his slow drawl.
‘Are you sure?’ Margaret was still clinging to any straw in an attempt to keep the girls in Hillsbridge.
‘We haven’t had a raid now for months,’ Mrs Cooper assured her. ‘They’ll be as safe at home as they are here, judging by the look of Bath.’
‘Oh, we don’t get bombed out here,’ Margaret said quickly, omitting to mention the incendiaries and the bomb which had demolished the chapel.
‘That’s decided then,’ Joe said. ‘The girls will come back to London.’
‘As soon as I can get things ready for them,’ Mrs Cooper added. Margaret heard the slight reservation in her voice and was heartened. Even now, she was not sure that Mrs Cooper was sincere in her desire to have them back.
‘Why don’t you let them finish out this year at school?’ she suggested. ‘They are doing so well. It’s a pity to unsettle them just now.’
Mrs Cooper hesitated but Joe was clearly the force behind her new found interest in her children.
‘I reckon they should come as soon as possible, sugar,’ he insisted.
And so it was arranged. As soon as she was ready for them Mrs Cooper would send for Elaine and Marie.
‘They can come on their own, can’t they?’ she said. ‘I don’t have to trek all the way down here again, do I? You put’em on the train here, Mrs Hall, and I’ll meet them at Paddington. That’ll be all right, won’t it?’
Margaret thought it would be far from all right, but did not see how she could say so.
They were, after all, not her responsibility any more.
The knowledge hurt more than she would have believed possible.
Chapter Twenty-five
On 6th June 1944 Charlotte sat down to a solitary meal of a rasher of bacon and potatoes moistened with
fat from the pan. The house was very quiet for she was unable to use her wireless as the batteries had run low and she was waiting for Jim to recharge them for her when he came to visit. She ate slowly, because one of her teeth had come loose and ached a little when she bit on it and also because she suffered from terrible indigestion these days if she swallowed a meal too quickly.
When she had finished she washed the dishes and went outside to hang her tea cloth on the line to dry. Perhaps she would sit out for a while on the bench in the sun, she thought. It was a nice afternoon and she had nothing to hurry back inside for. How different from the days when she had had all her family at home and there had never been a moment to spare!
As she settled herself, Peggy Yelling emerged from the outbuilding across the yard where Colwyn carried on his shoe-mending business.
‘Afternoon, Peg!’ Charlotte called, glad of someone to pass a few minutes with.
Peggy approached, beaming. ‘Well, Lotty, and what do you think of the news then?’ she asked.
‘News? What news?’ Charlotte asked, puzzled.
‘The invasion of course! What do you think?’
‘Invasion?’ Charlotte repeated blankly.
‘Yes! Where have you been all day?’
‘Here, of course. Where else would I be?’
‘And you haven’t heard? On your wireless?’
‘My batteries have gone,’ Charlotte said. ‘What’s going on?’
‘We’ve gone and invaded!’ Peggy said importantly. She had spent half the morning glued to her own wireless. ‘Our boys and the Americans landed in France about six o’clock this morning. They’re going to show that little blighter Hitler what’s what at last!’
‘Oh!’ Charlotte said. It was news they had waited for for so long; now she could hardly take in the fact that it had actually happened and she knew nothing about it. ‘How’s it going, do you know, Peg?’
‘Quite well, it seems. Not a bit like last time. If you ask me, Lotty, this could mean it’s all nearly over. Thank the Lord!’
‘Oh Peg, that is good news!’ Charlotte said.
‘I’ll have to go.’ Peggy turned back up the Rank. ‘I’ve got some prunes stewing on the stove. But I’ll let you know straight away if I hear anything else.’
‘Oh, I wish you would!’ Charlotte said.
Too excited to sit in the sun now she went back into the house and suddenly she was remembering the day when Charlie Durrant had come running along the Rank, just as Peggy had today, waving his newspaper and announcing that war had been declared. Only that was the last war, Charlotte thought, puzzled that it could seem like only yesterday. That was almost thirty years ago. She shook her head wondering where the years had gone. Then she crossed to her wireless, turning it on and hoping that there might be just a little juice left in the tired batteries. It would be nice to be able to hear that the war was over for herself. Although, if it came to that, it didn’t much matter how she heard it. Just as long as it ended soon.
I should like to live to see the boys come home, Charlotte thought. Our Alec and our Fred and Bob. And as the first thick, slurry crackles emitted from the wireless set she offered up a silent prayer that it would be so.
The day after the D-Day landings Margaret received a letter from
Mrs Cooper saying that she had now completed her arrangements
for the children’s return and giving instructions as to which train they should travel to London on, but no mention of money to pay their fares.
‘She’s the absolute limit!’ Harry said crossly. ‘You’d think she’d have put in a postal order, wouldn’t you? She seems to think we’re made of money!’
Margaret did not reply. Her heart had dropped like a stone when she opened the letter as Mrs Cooper had taken so long to send for the girls that Margaret had begun to hope that she had had second thoughts. Now, however, there was no more room for hope.
‘I think I shall go up with them,’ she said now, trying to be practical. ‘I don’t like to think of them going all the way to London on their own. And I don’t trust that woman to meet the train, either. If something else cropped up she’d leave them high and dry. At least if I go with them I shall know they’re safely with her before I leave them.’
Harry shook his head sadly. He couldn’t imagine Margaret ever being able to stop worrying about the girls even when they were no longer her responsibility. She had allowed herself to become too involved with them emotionally for that.
Margaret wrote to Mrs Cooper telling her of her decision to accompany Elaine and Marie and received a reply by return. This was so unusual she could scarcely believe it when she saw the envelope with the blotchy writing and the London postmark, but when she opened it the reason for Mrs Cooper’s hasty reply soon became clear.
She was very glad Margaret would be with them as she was working at lunchtimes as a barmaid in a pub and meeting the train might prove to be difficult. Could Margaret shepherd them across London? It wasn’t far on the underground, just a few stops down the Bakerloo line, and Elaine would be able to point the way from there. The pub where she was working was almost opposite her house – she would certainly be able to be there when they arrived, but if anything happened to prevent her she would leave a key out – ‘Elaine will know where’.
Margaret was incensed and her misgivings about Mrs Cooper’s intention to turn over a new leaf where the children were concerned redoubled. But there was nothing she could do about it and she kept the details of the letter from Harry, whom she was sure would be furious at the imposition and perhaps even forbid her to act as unpaid nursemaid beyond the confines of Paddington Station.
During their last week she helped the girls get all their things together, providing them with an old brown suitcase she got out of the attic, for they now had a great many more clothes and possessions than when they had arrived. Jumpers, skirts, raincoats, sandals as well as their walking shoes … what would happen when they grew out of them? Margaret wondered.
Their books, too, she packed, along with their crayons, jigsaws and Marie’s collection of pressed flowers, and her feeling of utter desolation grew.
On the last Friday afternoon, Marie came home from school proudly clutching a ‘pattern’she had made that afternoon in art class.
‘It’s called a potato cut,’ she told Margaret, offering the smudge of blue, green and violent orange for approval and Margaret felt her throat thicken. Next week there would be no footsteps on the path, no noisy yells as the girls came in from school, no garishly painted artworks to adorn the kitchen walls.
‘It’s lovely,’ she said. ‘Do you think I could keep it when you go back to London tomorrow?’
Marie’s face clouded. She folded the paper protectively against her chest. ‘Oh, I don’t know …’
‘I’d like to put it on the wall,’ Margaret said. ‘And you won’t miss it, will you? I’m sure you’ll soon do lots more like it.’
‘Yes, but …’ Marie was still hugging the painting as if she was afraid Margaret might snatch it from her, ‘this one’s special. I did it for my Mum.’
‘Oh, I see,’ Margaret said. There was a pain inside her. ‘Well, in that case you’d better go and put it away safely, hadn’t you?’
The child looked at her as if suddenly aware of Margaret’s hurt but she ran upstairs with the painting. When Margaret went to their room later to finish the last of the packing it was still on the dressing table and she wondered if Marie had had a change of heart. But next morning she had it with her when she came down ready to leave for her train.
‘You can’t carry that loose,’ she told her. ‘It will get spoiled. Look, we’ll put it in this carrier bag along with the things you want for the journey.’
Harry drove them to Bath to the station. As usual the train was late – did they ever run on time these days? Margaret wondered. Harry waited with them until it arrived, packing them into a carriage and putting the brown case on the rack and telling Margaret to telephone him
when she got back so that he could come and fetch her. Margaret agreed. She knew that when she returned alone she would be feeling totally bereft and she dreaded the thought of returning to the quiet house.
As the train pulled out Harry stood on the platform waving but the girls hardly bothered to wave back. It was as if they had already put their life in Hillsbridge behind them.
The journey seemed endless. There were repeated stops, often in the middle of open country with nothing to look at from the windows but green fields stretching away beneath a blue June sky. The girls played ‘I-Spy’, joined by an American serviceman who shared their carriage and who reminded Margaret of Joe in his open friendliness, if not his physique. During the game he continually ‘gave her the eye’so that she was forced to stare out of the window to avoid encouraging him.
At last, there were houses and factories instead of fields alongside the railway line, thin at first, then fast thickening into a concrete jungle, and the train was slowing as it came into the great smoke-blackened glass dome that was Paddington Station. The platforms, were crowded with travellers, many of them in uniform, and Margaret was glad she had decided to accompany the children. She guided them across the platform to the Underground noticing that they seemed a little awed by the rush and noise after their years in the peace of Hillsbridge and somewhat bemused herself by the overpowering bustle.
A cold rush of air came up to meet them as they descended into the caverns beneath the streets and Margaret found herself remembering that many Londoners had practically lived in warrens like these when the Blitz had been at its height, sleeping in rows on the cold hard platforms and trying not to think of the bombs that might have reduced their homes to rubble by the time they emerged into the grey morning light.
When the tube train slid from the tunnel like a great curling rattlesnake with glowing eyes the girls became excited again, jumping aboard so eagerly that Marie almost left her precious carrier bag on the platform and Margaret had to rescue it and give it back to her.
Margaret had only been on a tube train once before, when she and Harry had spent a week in London seeing the sights and she was a little worried about missing their station. She need not have worried. Four years or not Elaine knew exactly where she was and she was on her feet, strap hanging, when the tube whined to a stop.
