All Fall Down

by Jenny Oldfield

  At Number 32 he turned the key and opened the door into the dark, cold house. Sadie and Meggie weren’t back, though it was half past eleven, on the mantelpiece clock. He turned on the radio. ‘Jairmany calling, Jairmany calling.’ The jackass tones of Lord Haw-Haw droned over the airwaves as Walter went through to the kitchen to boil the kettle and wait.

  ‘You ain’t carrying your gas mask.’ Edie looked up from her desk. Tommy was setting off for the bank to fetch the wages. She tut-tutted in a maternal fashion.

  He hitched up his jacket collar. ‘It ain’t me you’re worried about, Edie Morell, it’s your blessed pay packet.’ Teasing her was one of life’s few remaining pleasures.

  ‘How did you guess?’

  ‘ ’Cos I know you women, you’re all the same. You’re only ever after a bloke’s money.’

  She smiled. ‘Anyhow you should take your mask.’ She went to the filing cabinet to fetch it for him. He ducked sideways as she tried to sling it around his neck.

  There was something about her that knocked him off balance; not physically, though he pretended to stagger across the room. Well, yes, it was physical; her slim figure and wavy golden hair sent him reeling in earnest. He felt again that one of these days he would let this reaction slip, when he should do his best to conceal it. They could all do without that sort of complication in their lives.

  ‘Righto then, it’s your neck you’re risking.’ She hung the mask from the door hook and went bade to work at her desk, totting up hours for Lorna Bennett who’d recently stepped into Dorothy’s shoes behind the furnishing fabric counter. Tommy’s wife now refused to serve in the shop; she preferred to spend her days dolling herself up ready for her nights out.

  ‘If I’m not back in an hour send out reinforcements,’ Tommy joked. He set his hat at an angle, one foot on the bottom step of the basement office. ‘If you want a sack of flour send out three and fourpence.’

  ‘Come again?’ She glanced up, trying not to laugh. It only encouraged him.

  ‘Chinese whispers.’

  ‘I’ll whisper you,’ she warned.

  ‘Is that a threat or a promise?’ He’d pushed his luck. He saw her blush and pointedly ignore him, so he took the stairs two at a time, whistling his way past Lorna, who arched her already arched and pencilled eyebrows and wriggled her skirt smooth over her hips.

  ‘Remember my bonus, Mister O’Hagan,’ she called out over the head of Dolly Ogden, in to price up net curtain material for Charlie’s room. Lorna had all the cheek Edie lacked.

  ‘What bonus is that, Lorna?’

  ‘Danger money, for staying open like the Windmill Theatre. You know, “We never close!” ’ She’d taken to ignoring the warning sirens, like many of her friends. And now she resented all the business with identity and ration cards. It made everything so drab. She was even having to consider using curtain fabric from the shop to make herself a new dress.

  ‘Pigs might fly.’ Tommy sniffed and went out. His trip to the bank might take in the market at the back of the cathedral, where he would see what he could pick up on the sly. He didn’t mind doing his best for the girls who worked for him; they, at least, would appreciate his efforts.

  He came back with the wages and a pair of nylon stockings each for Lorna and Edie.

  ‘You’ll never guess what I heard,’ he told Jimmie, just come into the shop from his job serving petrol outside Powells. His kid brother hung around luscious Lorna like a bee round a honeypot. ‘They say in the market that the whole of the cathedral crypt is stacked high with empty coffins, just in case. You can’t move for the bleeding things, thousands of them, horrible boxes made of plywood.’

  ‘Cheerful, ain’t we?’ Lorna took her nylons and stuffed them into her bag.

  ‘No point hiding your head in the sand, that’s what I say.’

  ‘Well they got it wrong, ain’t they?’ She tilted her head defiantly. ‘Might as well chop them all up for firewood, all the use they’re gonna be.’

  ‘Touch wood.’ Jimmie tapped the counter. ‘See, wood – coffins – touch wood. See?’

  ‘Yeah, yeah.’ Lorna screwed up her red mouth and told him to shove off. Meanwhile Tommy went down to deliver the wages to Edie.

  He caught her off-guard, reading a letter which she hastily pushed into a drawer as he came in.

  ‘Gotcha!’ He flung his hat onto the filing cabinet and dumped the wages bag on her desk. ‘You heard from Bill, I take it?’

  Edie nodded. ‘At last.’

  Winter was already almost over.

  ‘Not bad news, I hope?’

  ‘No, he’s due a bit of leave. He missed out at Christmas, like the rest of us, really, ’cos he was off in North Africa somewhere. Malta, as it happens. They’re on their way back to Portsmouth. He’ll get seventy-two hours, he thinks.’

  ‘That’s good ain’t it?’ He couldn’t work out why she still seemed flustered.

  ‘Yes, but reading between the lines he’s been having it rough. He can’t say in his letter, of course, but he’s been drafted onto a minesweeper, I know that much.’

  Tommy nodded, at a loss over what to say. To his surprise, tears welled up in Edie’s eyes. Normally a cheerful and practical sort, she seemed to be letting the worry get on top of her. ‘Here.’ He pushed a clean, folded hankie towards her and tactfully turned his back.

  After a pause she began to explain. ‘It’s not what you’re thinking.’

  He turned again. She was staring at her hands, twisting a corner of the handkerchief. ‘Look, there ain’t no need . . .’

  She glanced up, eyes still moist. ‘I’m such a fool.’

  ‘No.’ He went and sat on the edge of the desk, facing her.

  ‘You think I’d be glad to see him.’

  ‘And ain’t you?’

  She shook her head.

  This startled him. As far as he knew, Edie was happily married. She’d always behaved that way, like a respectable married woman. She was the sort other girls turned to when their own relationships hit difficulties, knowing they could rely on her common sense and kindness. But she always kept her distance; she didn’t seem to gossip like the rest. Come to think of it, he knew practically nothing about her situation at home.

  ‘It’s the letter; it’s knocked me sideways. When he didn’t get leave at Christmas I thought that was it, that they’d hang onto him till the end of the war.’

  ‘And now that could be longer than we thought,’ he warned.

  ‘I know. Giving him leave before he’s drafted to another ship means they must think it’s going to drag on, don’t it?’ She looked up again.

  ‘Could do. Is that what’s eating you?’

  ‘No. The thing is, I ain’t gonna be glad to see him and that’s the truth.’

  Tommy felt he was getting in deep. The next thing was to ask her why not. Why was the prospect of three days of married bliss making her cry?

  But Edie felt she’d gone far enough. ‘Don’t mind me.’ She took a deep breath. To reach the wages she had to stretch her arm across him.

  The action did for him. He held onto her wrist, she looked up in surprise. He stooped to kiss her before she could pull back.

  ‘Tommy, don’t.’

  He sprang to his feet. ‘Forget I did that, will you? I don’t know what came over me.’

  She’d gone pale. Her complexion was the sort that showed her shifting emotions. ‘My fault,’ she whispered, ‘crying all over you.’

  Tommy stood by the door, tense and silent. He could hear footsteps corning downstairs. It seemed an age before Lorna swept in, brushing past him in her tight blue jumper.

  ‘Edie, are your rayons the right size for you?’ she demanded, ignoring him and going right up to the desk.

  ‘What rayons?’

  ‘These.’ He pulled them abruptly out of his inside jacket pocket, the cellophane crinkling as he went and put them on the edge of her desk. Edie blushed fiercely. ‘I picked them up in the market.’

  ‘You’re sma
ller than me, aren’t you?’ Lorna seized them. ‘These ones are my size. Fancy doing a swap?’

  He left them to it and gave himself a good talking to. If he was going to start any funny business and get his own back for the way Dorothy was carrying on, it had better not be with someone like Edie. She was too good for him; he wouldn’t want her getting hurt. Calling in at the Duke for a quick pint, he tried to put her firmly out of his mind.

  Chapter Five

  ‘Conchie!’ Dolly found the word chalked roughly on her front doorstep one morning early in April. It meant Charlie had been sounding off in the pub again. He would go ahead and argue, that was his problem. If Rob Parsons got up on his hind legs to say the only good German was a dead one, Charlie couldn’t help answering back. He reckoned that Hitler wasn’t the only guilty party, that Churchill wasn’t all that he was cracked up to be. Charlie’s idea was that they’d been conned into fighting again, and all because the politicians had got it wrong after the last big do. ‘You won’t win no popularity contests round here if you go on like that,’ she would warn.

  Now she went inside for a bucket of hot, soapy water and a scrubbing-brush before he crawled out of bed and spotted the offensive slogan. No point tackling him about it. No point talking to him about anything these days. Grimly she got down on her hands and knees and began to scrub.

  ‘Your Charlie in?’ a woman’s voice asked.

  Dolly glanced over her shoulder at a pair of shapely legs in black high-heeled shoes. Dorothy O’Hagan had come calling. ‘He’s in, but not up.’

  Dorothy fished in her handbag for a bunch of keys which she dangled from her finger. ‘I came by to give him these. He left them at my place.’

  Dolly stood up. ‘You’re sure they’re his?’

  ‘Who else’s?’ She didn’t care about Dolly’s insinuation; they could say what they liked. If she and Charlie wanted to see each other, what business was it of theirs? ‘Tell him I popped by with them, will you?’

  She was about to slip them back into her bag, but Dolly held out a hand to intercept her. ‘You can give them to me. I’ll see he gets them.’

  Outstared by a determined opponent, Dorothy gave in. She handed the keys to Dolly, who watched her go, trip-tripping up the pavement in her shiny shoes. With a shrug of disgust Dolly took up the bucket of dirty water and swilled it into the gutter after her. Then she pocketed the keys and went inside.

  By now Charlie had roused himself and come down into the kitchen, still in rumpled pyjamas, with two days’ growth of stubble on his chin.

  ‘Who was that?’

  ‘Wouldn’t you like to know?’ She rattled the enamel bucket into position under the sink and began to hum loudly.

  ‘Cut it out, Ma.’

  She chose the tune, ‘There’ll Always Be An England’, expressly to annoy him.

  Charlie glowered at his shapeless, worn out mother, wrapped in her floral pinny, headscarf around her curlers, scrawny legs poking into fleece-edged slippers.

  ‘Give me the keys.’

  ‘I thought you never knew who came calling.’ She took the broom and began to sweep around him.

  ‘Well, I heard, as a matter of fact, so just hand them over.’ He had to step smartly out of the way to save his bare feet.

  Dolly hummed on. ‘I expect you didn’t want her ladyship to catch sight of you, the state you’re in.’ She refused to give him the keys until she’d had her say. ‘I’ll say one thing for her, Dorothy O’Hagan must be an early riser.’

  ‘How come?’ Resigned to a ticking off, Charlie reached for a packet of cigarettes on the window sill.

  ‘I reckon it must take her a good couple of hours to get herself dolled up like that.’ Dorothy had appeared at the door in an immaculate and fashionable spring outfit; a two-piece in fine lilac wool, her blonde hair set in perfect waves, a mannish hat of black velvet framing the curls and the carefully painted face.

  ‘Ha, ha, very funny.’ He ran a hand through his hair. It felt lank and greasy. ‘Cut it out, Ma, will you.’

  Dolly’s broom came to rest. She leaned on it.

  ‘You’re showing me up, Charlie, you know that?’ She couldn’t help remembering her son’s early promise. The boy had been bright at school, won a scholarship, thought of himself as a cut above the rest. Now look at him.

  Charlie bridled. ‘Look who’s talking.’ Immediately he regretted the insult.

  But Dolly wasn’t one to back off, even though she felt his scorn like a sharp stab under her ribs. ‘Since we’re calling a spade a spade, you’d better sit down.’ She pulled out a chair at the kitchen table. ‘Charlie!’

  He did as he was told, pretending to retreat behind the morning newspaper, angry with himself. His ma had had it hard all her life, scrimping and saving. Half his childhood had been spent down the pawnshop with her, taking in stuff on a Monday that they would aim to redeem at the weekend, in time to scramble together a decent outfit for church. She’d always done her best.

  Dolly sat heavily opposite. ‘I look at you now, Charlie, and you know who I see?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘Your pa.’

  ‘That ain’t fair.’

  ‘I ain’t saying nothing against him, don’t get me wrong. But he weren’t the world’s best at getting up in the morning. And look at you. You know it’s half past nine? And your pa had times when he was out of work, lots of them. We all did. It got to him just like it’s getting to you.’

  ‘What do you want me to do, start up my own bleeding school?’ The idea that he’d fallen into the indolent, head-in-the-clouds ways of his own father got right under Charlie’s skin.

  ‘Don’t be daft. But there’s other things besides teaching. Look at Walter Davidson; he’s on fire watch every other night, doing his bit, and getting paid for it.’

  Charlie’s silence spoke volumes.

  ‘And he’s not playing about with other men’s wives neither.’ As she came to the nub, she held firmly onto the edge of the table, watching his reaction.

  ‘That’s ’cos he’s happily married, ain’t it?’ Once, in what seemed like another lifetime, Sadie Davidson had been sweet on Charlie himself.

  ‘You missed your chance there,’ Dolly said, unrelenting.

  He sniffed. ‘Lay off, will you.’ He took a long drag on his cigarette. ‘Look, Ma, things ain’t the same.’ He felt he had to explain in simple terms. ‘We got more freedom to do as we like than you had in your day, especially now the war’s on. It’s turned everything upside down.’

  ‘Yes, and look at the mess you’re making.’

  He denied it. ‘Me and Dorothy are having a fling, that’s all. Where’s the harm in that?’

  Dolly sighed. ‘You ask Tommy O’Hagan where’s the harm in that; he’ll soon tell you.’

  ‘Tommy don’t come into it.’

  ‘Tell him that,’ she insisted. ‘I take it he still don’t know?’

  ‘Not unless you gone and opened your big mouth, Ma.’ He stood up to cut the conversation short. He didn’t feel brilliant about it, as a matter of fact. Dorothy was the hard-boiled one, not giving a damn whether or not her husband knew about the affair. She said it was months since they’d opened their mouths to each other, except to hurl insults.

  ‘What about me, then?’ She made a direct appeal. ‘I can hardly hold my head up at the Duke, with you and her carrying on like this.’

  He stood in the doorway and shrugged.

  ‘And you, Ain’t you got no self-respect? That Dorothy O’Hagan, she’s got the worst name in Duke Street, if you must know. Even before you came along and fell hook, line and sinker.’

  ‘I never fell, Ma. I can get out any time I like.’

  She thought he looked miserable, standing in the cold corridor. ‘Well then, I should think about doing just that, if I was you.’ She sighed as he went upstairs. Stubborn, wrong-headed, so sharp he cut himself. Her son.

  ‘Ernie, cop hold of this, there’s a good chap.’

  Walte
r Davidson and George Mann had decided to line part of the cellar at the Duke with a reinforced fabric called Zylex. Amy had got hold of the roll for fifteen bob, and reckoned it was waterproof and untearable. She agreed with Annie, Hettie and Sadie that the barrel-vaulted cellar of the pub was as safe as any shelter in Nelson Gardens, should the worst eventually happen. There was a general feeling growing against the public shelters and, despite the lack of gardens in the terraces and tenements of South-wark, many families had begun to make their own arrangements.

  Ernie held the sheeting in position at one end while Walter hammered it into place.

  Annie had come down to supervise proceedings, and now took it upon herself to explain to her stepson the new plan. ‘Nice and snug, eh, Ern?’

  He looked up and nodded. With only the foggiest notion of the reality of war, which existed for him merely as a wail of sirens and the fear of bombs dropping from the sky, but without any grasp of the devastation they would cause, he still did as he was told.

  ‘This is going to be our shelter now, Ernie. It’s handier than the Gardens, see? We won’t have to run there with all our belongings. What we do when the siren starts is just dive down here into the cellar.’

  ‘What about the others?’

  ‘Rob and Amy and Bobby? They know to head here too. There’s plenty of room.’

  ‘And Sadie?’

  ‘Yes. And Walter and Meggie.’

  ‘And the boys?’

  ‘No, Bertie and Geoff are safe in the country, remember.’

  Ernie frowned and nodded. ‘Not the boys.’

  ‘You got it. When the siren goes, you head straight here. Don’t worry about no one else.’ Not for the first time, Annie wondered if it might have been kinder to evacuate Ernie along with Sadie’s boys. In a way, he hardly understood any more than seven-year-old Geoff. She pictured what the long wait, the stale boredom of the phoney war must be doing to him. Sometimes she thought she saw a haunted look, as if Ernie was playing and replaying some horrid scene inside his head. She resolved to keep an extra special eye on him, knowing that was what Duke would have done.