All Fall Down

by Jenny Oldfield

  ‘I know, I know. Keep your voice down for God’s sake.’

  ‘No, listen here. You’re too soft by half, that’s your trouble. All these years on, I miss my chance to pay him back. Who’d have been any the wiser? A tramp, dead drunk, walks under the wheels of my cab. Good riddance.’

  ‘Well, it ain’t happened like that, Rob.’

  ‘Worse luck!’ He worked himself up. ‘But I’m stupid, I am. I have to come and tell you all about it. And now you’ll go blabbing to Sadie and Meggie, and that’ll send them off up Shaftesbury Avenue to Bernhardt Court and they’ll be able to track him down. And what’ll you do then?’

  Walter hung his head. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘And what’ll they do? You know Sadie. She ain’t gonna be able to take this in her stride, is she?’

  She had a lot to cope with these days. She could still be strong and determined, but the worry was definitely undermining her health. Walter would often find her in bed with a terrible headache, or so silent in her routine chores that it was like being in the house with a ghost, a hollow shell, when she turned in on herself and refused to let him come near. ‘But what about Meggie? Don’t she have a right to find out about her own pa?’

  Rob didn’t answer at once. He’d had this argument before, at home with Amy. He saw it as a practical issue: if Meggie succeeded in her hunt for Palmer it would only cause more problems. Amy argued for allowing Meggie to go on looking for him. If she found him, they would clear the air and she would know the truth about her lousy father. Then she wouldn’t have to spend her whole life caught on the hook of ‘if only’.

  Outside the door, sitting barefoot on the bottom stair, Meggie pulled her dressing gown around her. She’d been awake from the first knock, when her stepfather opened the door to her uncle. Their raised voices had brought her downstairs.

  ‘For God’s sake, Walt, keep this under your hat. Ain’t we got enough to worry about?’

  Meggie held her breath. She was on the point of standing up, opening the door and saying, ‘It don’t make no difference, I already heard every word.’ But something made her stay put. Perhaps she wanted to test Walter’s loyalties. Maybe her own mind was so shocked and confused that she lacked the presence of mind to act. So she sat and shivered in the dark.

  Walter rapped the newspaper on the edge of the table. ‘Have another drink, Rob. And stop going on about it, will you?’ Never, not once in their married life, had he kept anything from Sadie. He sighed and shook his head.

  ‘I will if you promise you’ll keep stumm.’

  Meggie heard Walter stand and walk across the stone-flagged floor. She shot upstairs like a scared rabbit, too quick and sudden to hear his final answer:

  ‘Have it your way, Rob. I won’t say nothing to Sadie. Let’s keep this between you and me, eh?’

  All week Tommy had laid off the drink and given Edie his sober, undivided attention. Instead of repairing to the Duke in the evening, he stayed late in the office, letting her know that he was there, a shoulder to cry on if she should need it. It was the most private and most neutral place he could think of.

  To look at her from the outside, coming into work each day in a smart dress, her hair pinned up at the back but falling over to one side of her face in a gentle, shiny wave of honey-gold, always with a cheery word and an instant answer to queries about stock, hours worked, wages, no one would have guessed that she had troubles of her own. Edie had pulled herself together and out of his arms on Monday evening. He was left with the memory of her burying her beautiful face against his shoulder, as if the imprint of her slight figure had left an indelible impression. At night in bed, he would turn half-expecting it to be Edie there beside him, finding only an unresponsive Dorothy, lately in from her gallivanting.

  ‘Everything all right?’ he asked again on Friday, after Edie had dealt as usual with the wages. He’d told Loma and the others to go on home. He would lock up and finish things off.

  Loma made no bones about wanting to be off.

  ‘You coming Edie?’ She shouted down the stairs.

  ‘No. I’ve to finish cashing up.’

  ‘Ta-ta, see you later, then.’

  They’d arranged to meet to go to the cinema. ‘Half seven at the bus stop.’ Edie heard the shop bell ring and the door slam. She looked up as Tommy came down.

  ‘Everything all right?’

  ‘Fine, ta.’ She piled the sixpences into silver columns next to the chunky threepenny bits.

  He stood looking at her, hands in pockets. ‘Sure? You don’t want to go to pieces all over again?’

  She laughed. ‘Don’t you wish?’

  ‘As a matter of fact I do.’ He walked a fine line between joking and meaning what he said. ‘I like it when you go to pieces.’

  Since Monday’s confession, Edie had been deliberately brisk with Tommy. Not another soul knew about her row with Bill. Edie’s mother was dead, her father lived up in Shoreditch with his spinster sister. They weren’t close and, as an only child, she’d grown up used to living an independent emotional life. What others might have called lonely, she thought of as normal. It still wasn’t her habit to go sharing her troubles; it altered people’s opinion of you too much and, generally, there was little they could do.

  ‘I hope you don’t think I was leading you on?’ She left off from her counting, frowning up at him.

  He bit his lip. ‘Silly joke. Sorry.’ He’d risked the rebuff, but still it knocked him back.

  Edie stood up. ‘No, I’m the one that’s sorry. You were good to me, Tommy. I was very grateful.’

  He felt them drifting, all at sea, her flying the flag of politeness, him making all the wrong semaphore signals in his confusion. There was a knot of tension gathering under his rib cage. ‘I meant what I said; you ought to think why you stay with that old man of yours. But then, I ain’t the one to be doling out advice, am I?’

  She knew that he meant he had a vested interest. She wanted to be straight with him. She liked her boss. The way he handled himself by joking his way through difficulties, but never at another’s expense, and how the tough shell disguised kindness. He looked after Jimmie, didn’t he? And his generosity over the little gifts and bonuses was done to please, not out of ulterior motives. This week she’d even begun comparing him with Bill; the solid muscularity of her husband, set against Tommy’s wiry, lithe stance.

  ‘I got to finish this.’ She gestured towards the heap of uncounted coins on her desk, blushed and turned away.

  ‘Leave it.’ He caught hold of her wrist, bent forward and kissed her.

  She took half a step back then stopped. She wanted him to kiss her again, she realized.

  Her tilted face was all he saw, all he thought about; her clear grey eyes, the curling lashes, the open mouth. He pressed his own lips against hers, saw her close her eyes, felt her arms slide around him. He was kissing her again and again.

  ‘Tommy, stop!’ She struggled to bring her arms up to his chest, to push him away. ‘No, don’t stop.’ Changing her mind as she opened her eyes and saw his face so close. Her arms went up and around his neck.

  They melted together, the kisses grew less urgent, more tender. Edie tilted her head back as he brushed her neck with his lips. ‘Tommy, what are we gonna do?’

  ‘You said that before.’ He was breathing in her perfume, not wanting to talk.

  ‘No, what I said then was, what am I gonna do? Now it’s we. That’s different.’

  ‘You sure?’ She nodded.

  ‘I ain’t just a shoulder to cry on?’

  This time it was a shake of the head. ‘I ought not to be saying this, ought I?’

  ‘Me neither.’ He wouldn’t let her go, though. He drew her close and swayed with her.

  ‘I want you, Edie. I want another chance.’ He rested his chin on her shoulder, she felt warm and soft.

  Again she nodded. The vital move had been made: the first kiss and her decision to respond. From now on some things were relatively str
aightforward. ‘Will you come to my place?’

  He held on more tightly. ‘Sure?’

  ‘About that, yes.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Soon. Let me telephone Lorna to tell her I can’t meet her. You lock up here.’

  ‘We could go along together.’ He feared she would change her mind.

  ‘Better not.’

  ‘Half an hour, then?’

  She leaned back and looked earnestly at him. ‘Be careful, won’t you?’ She lived above the post office, near the railway bridge that ran across the top end of Duke Street.

  ‘Leave the door open, all right? I’ll slip in quietly and lock it behind me.’

  They made their arrangements, still without quite believing that their tryst would take place. In a fumble, back towards normality, Tommy swept the uncounted cash into a cloth bag and stashed it in a drawer, promising to deal with it in the morning. Saturday was Edie’s day off, in any case. She took her cream-coloured jacket from the stand by the door and put it on over her pink flowered dress. She came to kiss him on the cheek, then slipped away, her footsteps light and quick on the stairs.

  Meanwhile, early that same evening, Sadie had stepped off the train in Manchester Piccadilly. The steam from the engine swirled along the dirty roofs of the carriages and engulfed the alighting passengers in an acrid, damp cloud. She shook herself alert after the seemingly endless journey and walked determinedly along the platform under the giant glass arch towards the barrier where Jess would be waiting.

  The sisters spied each other at the same moment. Sadie passed through the barrier, put down her case and embraced Jess, too moved to speak. Only after they’d wiped their eyes and picked up the luggage again did they begin to exchange the latest news. Grace, Jess’s twenty-five-year-old daughter, was waiting for them at home. Mo, her son, was at work in the office of his father’s cinema business. Like all young men in their early twenties, he was nervously waiting to be called up. Jess dreaded him having to go.

  ‘It doesn’t seem five minutes since I was sending him off to school with a clean hankie and his dinner wrapped up in a napkin,’ she sighed. ‘And now look at him, old enough to get himself shot.’

  ‘Don’t.’ Sadie stowed her case in the back of Jess’s Austin. At nearly fifty, Jess had, like all the Parsons sisters, kept her slim figure and remarkably good features, her brown eyes still large and vital, her dark hair with hardly a hint of grey. She wore it fashionably long and wavy, with just enough make-up, and a modern style of dress. This evening, to meet Sadie, she had on a pair of high-waisted navy blue slacks and a tailored white top, one of her own outfits from the city centre shop. ‘You look lovely, as per usual,’ Sadie said, half envious.

  ‘And you look worn out,’ came the frank reply. They slammed the car doors shut and Jess started the engine. ‘Let’s get you home. First thing you have is a nice long soak in the bath. Then tell me all about what’s going on.’

  Things had worked out differently for Sadie, you only had to look. Jess, too, had had an illegitimate child, the result of a violent attack by her one-time employer’s son. But her family had stood by her and she and Hettie had set up in the rag trade, in a very small way at first. Then Maurice had come along and claimed her and, eventually, whisked the family up here to Manchester, to develop his chain of cinemas. He had succeeded but she had missed her sisters sorely. Gradually she’d built up a new business, a new life. Sadie meanwhile, the youngest and in some ways the most reckless of the girls, had echoed her own misfortune. Meggie was also illegitimate, only Sadie had made it much harder for herself and the child, running away with Richie Palmer and cutting herself off from the family, until the inevitable had happened and Palmer had brought them all to the brink of tragedy, with Walter in hospital at death’s door.

  They motored out of the grimy city up a main road, past the redbrick university buildings. Jess and Maurice lived beyond the university in a gracious house set well back from the road, screened by trees and a high wall. Though not modern, it was well proportioned, with wide steps to a double doorway surrounded by leaded glass, leading into a square entrance hall where a long staircase window shed plenty of light. Jess had kept the furnishings simple but good, while Maurice had insisted on many of the latest design improvements, including the Ascot water heater from which Sadie filled a luxurious, deep bath.

  She soon came down refreshed, having changed into a tailored powder-blue dress with padded shoulders and a neat buckled belt.

  ‘Better?’ Jess was ready with a light teatime snack, served by Grace, a shy, smiling young woman who might easily have stepped from the pages of a fashion magazine, with her beautifully made grey two-piece, a feminine touch of white silk at the collar, showing long, slim legs encased in a good pair of seamed nylon stockings.

  ‘Much.’ Sadie took her niece’s hand and gave it a squeeze. ‘You look just like your ma.’

  Grace handed her a cup of tea. ‘People say we look like sisters.’

  ‘The same with you and Meggie, I expect.’ Jess didn’t want Sadie to think that the house, the car, all the new gadgets put a barrier between them. ‘Now go ahead and tell us what all this is about. I could hardly make you out on the telephone.’

  Sadie gave them the full story of Bertie’s secretly written letter and their recently aroused suspicions about the Whittakers. Jess and Grace listened attentively, their foreheads furrowed. They wished that Manchester had been free of the threat of air raids so that they could have taken the boys themselves. Both agreed they must go to Rendal with Sadie the following morning.

  Jess’s soft heart melted. If only she’d known, she would have driven over to see for herself how they were treated. ‘I know you and your pride, Sadie, but you should have said instead of having all this heartache.’

  Sadie blew her nose into her handkerchief. ‘I wanted to give them time to settle in. And we ain’t sure yet. Bertie and Geoff might be right as rain for all we know.’

  She found herself adopting Walter’s cautious role. ‘I’ve just come up to make sure.’

  She went early to bed, with loving hugs and kisses from both Jess and Grace, in a guest room overlooking the back lawn, edged with white and purple lilac trees just coming into blossom. Her bed was wide, the linen smooth and crisp. Yet she couldn‘t sleep; she wondered how Walter and Meggie were managing, of the surprise that lay in store for Bertie and Geoff. Half of her hoped that they would arrive at Rendal and the decision would be a simple one. The boys’ obvious misery would remove any doubts. On the other hand, how could she possibly hope that her own sons had in fact been badly treated?

  Jess seemed to know what she must be going through. As she passed the door on her own way to bed, she looked in on her sister. ‘You awake?’

  ‘Wide awake.’

  She came in, hair freshly brushed, in a white satin dressing gown, and sat on the edge of Sadie’s bed. They talked until the early hours about family, about the war. Sadie realized that just at the point when she hoped soon to have her two boys safely back home, Jess must expect to lose her only son to the glamorous uniform and the dangerous missions of the RAF, Mo’s chosen branch, of the armed forces. It made her cry all over again that families should suffer such grief, that young lives should be put at risk and their very futures clouded over by the immense shadows of war.

  ‘I brought this.’ Tommy pulled a half-bottle of whisky from his pocket and put it by the parchment lamp on Edie’s living-room table. Half an hour was long enough for her to have had second, third and fourth thoughts. ‘Dutch courage.’

  ‘Who for? You or me?’ She’d heard him come upstairs, tried to look busy by drawing the curtains and turning on the table lamp.

  ‘Both. Got any glasses?’ He looked round the room. She’d done it out in striped green wallpaper from the shop, with plenty of shiny bronze and chrome finishes on the fender, the mirror frames, the low table for the gramophone.

  She watched him size up her home.

  ‘Who did the
wallpapering?’

  ‘Me.’

  ‘Not your old man?’

  ‘He ain’t interested. That’s fine by me; it means I get to do the choosing.’

  ‘And the paying?’

  She shrugged, handing him two small glasses. She’d changed out of her frock into slacks and a short-sleeved jumper, and let her hair fall loose.

  Tommy caught sight of the fading bruises on her upper arm. Somehow it made him want to go very gently. ‘Anyhow, you got a nice place.’

  ‘Ta.’ She offered him a seat beside her on the fawn moquette sofa. They sat like two acquaintances on a works outing, glasses in hand. What had they rushed into, back there at the office?

  ‘What did you tell Lorna?’

  ‘Not much. I just said something came up.’

  ‘Well, she won’t be stuck.’ He drank and clenched his teeth.

  ‘No. She said she’d ask Dorothy instead.’ Damn. She bit her tongue and glanced away.

  ‘Well, she’ll be game for anything. I’d have thought the pictures a bit tame for her though. What were you going to see?’

  ‘George Formby in Trouble Brewing.’

  He looked at her with a grin. ‘Never.’

  ‘Yes.’ She thought about it. ‘Oh, I see, trouble brewing. Yes, I suppose there is.’

  There was a silence. ‘Edie—’

  ‘We could—’

  ‘What?’

  ‘No, after you.’

  ‘There you go again.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You’re always so bleeding polite!’

  ‘Am I?’ She blushed. ‘I was going to say we could listen to some music if you liked.’

  He breathed a sigh of relief, nodded and watched her as she bent to choose a record and placed the needle carefully on the black disc. It scratched and fuzzed along the outside grooves. ‘Electric?’

  ‘We’re up-to-date, you know. At least electricity isn’t on ration yet.’

  The music began, a Jack Payne number with the full big-band sound.