All Fall Down

by Jenny Oldfield

He could see her eyes were wide open, but had to lean down to catch her voice. ‘You put your arms round my neck here and hang on tight. That’s right. We’re gonna take our time, you hear?’ As ever, Edie brought out the gentleness in him.

  She’d never known what it was like to be considered, to be herself, Edie, in the act of making love. First steps took a long time to master; that he should kiss her more, that she should be able to ask for what she wanted. ‘Talk to me, Tommy.’

  ‘What for? What do you want, for me to tell you a joke?’

  They rolled apart laughing. Then she raised herself on one elbow and let her hair fall onto his chest which was smooth and pale. She ran her fingers down his ribs, he caught hold of her hand and pulled her down onto him.

  In the end, it was for her a perfect time with the man she adored; passionate and funny, a journey in which she felt she’d come home. ‘What did I do to deserve this?’ she asked as they lay side by side.

  ‘Hey, I thought I was the joker round here,’ He had one arm under her neck, hooked over her shoulder.

  ‘I mean it. I’m the happiest woman alive.’

  ‘Tell me.’ He turned his head sideways to look in her eyes. ‘Go on, say how you feel.’

  ‘I never knew anything till I met you, and how old am I? It’s like I’ve just been born into a new world with everything shiny as if it’s never been used.’

  ‘You’re a funny girl.’ Stroking her neck, he kissed her.

  When the siren sounded and the old world broke in, they were slow to dress and go downstairs. Outside a drizzle was falling, a metal shutter banged against the window of the chemist’s shop opposite. Tommy took her to the door of the Duke, kissed her again and said she should take shelter as usual. She went down into the cellar as he headed for Borough, taking his time through the war-torn streets, feeling in a mad way that he was invulnerable, that nothing the Germans had thought up so far could get him, not tonight.

  Chapter Thirteen

  ‘Nice girls don’t do that, that’s why!’ Sadie was indignant with Meggie. Walter had taken the hint and taken the boys down the park to kick a football and stay out of the way.

  ‘Anyone would think I’d committed a murder, the way you go on.’ She’d only heard late in the day that Ronnie was coming home on a spot of New Year’s leave and asked her mother if she could stay at the Bell overnight. ‘After all, no one felt much like celebrating Christmas this year. And Gertie don’t mind.’

  ‘You’re sixteen years old!’ she said bitterly.

  ‘And what do you think we’d get up to if I stayed? It ain’t what you’re thinking anyhow.’

  ‘I’m not thinking anything.’ Sadie banged dishes in the sink, whisking up a froth of soap bubbles in the hot water. ‘But others might. What would your gran say if she got to hear? No, Meggie, it ain’t on.’

  ‘But Ma, he’s only got forty-eight hours. We want to be together.’ She felt Sadie’s resistance harden and grew more desperate. ‘What’s the use? You ain’t got a clue what it’s like.’

  ‘Oh ain’t I?’ Sadie knew all too well how it felt to be under a man’s spell. She’d gone overboard with Richie, risked everything to win that man’s love. ‘You listen to me; you’re chasing too hard. It don’t look nice.’

  ‘I don’t care.’

  ‘Then you’re a little fool.’

  For a while Meggie maintained a silence. Then she tried to conciliate. ‘Look Ma, you gotta trust Ronnie and me. He’s decent, not like you think.’

  ‘Says you.’ A reminder that so far Meggie hadn’t seen fit to introduce them. Sadie dried her hands and turned away.

  ‘He is. And things are different, with the war on and everything. It’s only natural for us to want to be together, ain’t it? We have to snatch our happiness while we can.’

  ‘Oh?’ Sadie’s monosyllable carried much weight. She didn’t need to say that she considered her daughter had been watching too many Hollywood films.

  It bounced Meggie back into open defiance. ‘Well, you can’t stop me. Ronnie starts his leave tonight, and I already wrote and told him I’d be at the station to meet him.’

  ‘Why bother asking me then?’ She took out the carpet sweeper and began to push it vigorously across the living room rug. ‘Since you had it all nicely arranged.’

  ‘Righto, I won’t ask. Forget I mentioned it. I must have been stupid to open my mouth in the first place.’

  ‘Yes, and I’d like more respect from you, Miss.’ Sadie’s temper was up. She took it out on the carpet.

  Meggie, who had followed her from the kitchen to stand, arms crossed, leaning against the doorpost, now sprang forward to snatch her coat from the back of a chair. Her mother caught hold of one sleeve and tugged it from her grasp. The coat fell on the floor between them. They were both past reason, shocked by the sudden violence of feeling.

  It was Sadie who spoke out, voice strangled, rising to a shout as she cornered Meggie and slammed the door shut. ‘You listen to me; I never brought you up to behave this way. I brought you up decent, didn’t I? Not to chase the first bloke you can lay hands on. And don’t you tell me it’s the war that makes things free and easy. What kind of excuse is that? What I say is, staying the night with him ain’t nice, and it’ll lead you into all sorts of trouble.’

  ‘I ain’t staying the night with him!’ Meggie shouted back. ‘I’m staying at his Ma’s.’

  ‘It’s the same thing. Do I know this Gertie Elliot? No. What’s she like? For all I know she could be encouraging you two to go further than you ought.’

  ‘That’s stupid.’

  ‘How do I know it is?’

  ‘Because I say so.’

  ‘And I say the opposite. Meggie, I’m telling you once and for all, you ain’t old enough to know what you’re letting yourself in for.’

  ‘And I suppose you were?’ She blurted it out, then immediately wished it unsaid.

  Sadie backed off as though she’d been punched in the stomach. Meggie made as if to help her, but she warded her off. Her voice dropped to a whisper. With one arm across her middle, she held on to the back of an armchair. ‘Right, while we’re about it I’ll tell you a thing or two. You mean me and Richie, right? Well, I was a good bit older than you for a start, and I tell you now, he was the worst mistake I ever made in my life.’

  Meggie shook her head.

  ‘He was, believe me.’ Sadie’s anger had melted into the pain of remembering. ‘Oh, he was handsome. He was the most beautiful man I ever saw. Dark and tall, and his eyes spoke to me, though he never used words to flatter me and draw me in. But he did want me though, and I fell for him.’

  ‘You loved him?’ Meggie had always clung to this idea.

  ‘I adored him, but I was badly let down, Meggie. We both were.’

  ‘But all men ain’t the same. Ronnie won’t do what my pa did.’ She cried for her mother now, who had never before spoken so openly about her past.

  ‘Listen, I ditched everything for him. I just about broke Pa’s heart. And Rob couldn’t stick him neither. So there I was all alone with him, and expecting.’ She put out a hand and let Meggie grasp it. ‘He couldn’t take it, the responsibility. By the time you came along he’d already decided he couldn’t cope. He was drifting off. He never even wanted to see you after you was born, and wouldn’t have come back for those few weeks, if he hadn’t wanted to get his own back against Rob. Then Frances and Ett had to come along and rescue me; and Walter, of course.’

  ‘You don’t need to tell me no more. Stop now.’ She hung her head.

  ‘You see, it wasn’t you he ditched. It was the idea of you. Not ready to be a pa, see?’ Sadie put both arms around her daughter. ‘And it all happened because I rushed into things with Richie. I’ve been paying for it ever since.’

  Meggie sobbed harder.

  ‘No, not that way. Not through you. You’ve been the light of my life right from the start.’

  ‘I ain’t been in the way?’

  ‘Never.’ Sad
ie spoke softly. ‘Without you I don’t think I’d have pulled through. I don’t say I wasn’t low when Richie left us in the lurch. I was; very low. But I only had to look at you in your little crib and you would fill my empty, aching heart. You did. So don’t cry.’ She rocked her gently. ‘I’m sorry I shouted at you, Meggie. You’re the last one in the world I want to hurt.’

  ‘Are we friends?’ She wiped the tears with the back of her hand.

  Sadie nodded. ‘But that don’t mean to say I ain’t worried sick about you.’

  ‘Is that what this is all about? You don’t really think I’m a painted lady, do you?’

  ‘It ain’t that. But you’re a lovely, warm-hearted girl, Meggie, and people can take advantage.’

  ‘Not Ronnie.’ She stared earnestly at her mother, hoping and praying.

  In the end, Sadie had to trust her judgment. ‘And you’re sure you have to stay the night?’ This was still the sticking-point.

  ‘It’s all above board, don’t worry. Gertie’s letting me share her room. She says it makes sense not to have me traipsing about town in the blackout. Ronnie’s promised to take me ice-skating tomorrow.’

  ‘Still, I wish she’d thought to ask me.’ Gradually Sadie relented.

  ‘But we ain’t on the phone. How could she?’

  ‘Still . . .’ She went back into the kitchen deep in thought.

  ‘You don’t mind then?’ Meggie’s face was clear, bright with expectation.

  ‘Oh, I mind. But then you’d expect that – oh, go on!’

  Meggie grabbed her coat from the floor, hardly pausing to comb her hair and fix her face.

  ‘What’s the rush?’

  ‘I’m late. Ronnie’s train’s due in at Victoria in half an hour.’ She was ready and halfway to the door.

  ‘Be careful.’

  ‘I will. Thanks, Ma!’ She flew back to kiss her cheek.

  ‘We’ll see you tomorrow . . .’ Standing on the doorstep, watching Meggie run up the Court, she felt a heavy sadness settle on her.

  As a teacher put out of work by the closure of the schools during the Blitz, it was one of Charlie Ogden’s tasks to help with emergency relief. Though he struck up a cynical casualness when talking about having to take the names of the homeless at the War Damage Centre, when it came to actually issuing replacement ration books, providing food, transport and a roof over people’s heads, he found a new energy to deal with the problems. He struck those he helped as cheerful and efficient.

  It was a Sunday in early January. Christmas had come and gone and the whole country was digging in for another long year of fighting, listening to Churchill on the wireless and growing ever more determined to take it on the chin.

  Charlie came away at teatime from a church hall on Blackfriars Road, where several families under his wing had been given temporary shelter. He’d promised to follow up a request to have a mobile laundry van sent along, and hoped to have things under way by early next morning, but he hadn’t reached the street corner when the sirens went and he had to change his plan to get back to Duke Street. Instead, he accepted the offer of shelter in the basement of the vicar’s house attached to the church where he’d been working.

  Annoyed, he took cover, impatient for the raid to be over.

  But tonight the Germans really had it in for the City. Not the docks, but the old square mile itself. Hundreds of fires sprang up, fanned by the wind. Deep in the cellar, the vicar got reports on the telephone of the heart of London ablaze, of buildings which had been locked up for the Christmas week razed to the ground, of temperatures rising to 1,000 degrees centigrade, of historic churches gutted.

  This was ‘taking it’ with a vengeance, Charlie thought, watching the distress on these religious folks’ faces as they feared for the stray bomb that would set their own church alight. For three hours they were stuck in the makeshift shelter, hearing a bomb blast overhead at last, but not daring to move.

  ‘That was close,’ a woman said, staring up at the cellar roof. Following the muffled sound of the huge explosion, there was silence.

  ‘Come on, we’re going to take a look.’ Two of the men could bear it no longer.

  Charlie followed them out of the cellar, lured by the eerie quiet. He lost them at ground level as they were swallowed by smoke and dust. Then he lost his own way back to safety. Feeling along the side of the vicarage as best he could, he heard an ambulance, could just see the glimmer of its blue light as it crept through the wreckage.

  A rotten smell overcame him; perhaps gas and sewage from fractured mains. His throat constricted and he edged forward. By the light of the fire that blazed where the church hall had been, he understood that all those whom he had helped that day were dead.

  The building blazed. Its windows shattered, flames poured out through the arched frames. Burning beams crashed in on the ruined shell and the wind fanned the flames towards the church itself. He stayed until he could see that this fight, too, was hopeless. The firefighters’ hoses quickly ran dry. The Thames was at low ebb, they were unable to draw water from the river and the mains had burst. Charlie stood ankle deep in a gushing, muddy stream, watching the water trickle uselessly down the street. Flames soon flickered into the church towards the altar and, at last, he heard the great bells fall from the tower in a rush of flames and deep clanging metal.

  Charlie turned and made for home, to the drone of Heinkels, with the whole of the London skyline red with flames.

  Charlie copped it during the night they were calling the Second Fire of London. Dolly blamed herself. She should have put her foot down and made Amy find space for him in the cellar at the Duke. Then he wouldn’t have been out in the street when it happened. She sat now by his bedside holding his white hand.

  ‘Ma, he was working. He wouldn’t have got to the Duke in any case.’ Amy tried to comfort her.

  ‘What sort of job is it that leaves him stranded in the middle of nowhere?’

  ‘I know, but someone’s gotta do it.’

  ‘What exactly is it?’ Since their row over Dorothy, mother and son had ceased to be on proper speaking terms. ‘Something to do with re-housing?’

  ‘Yes, and he does a good job, Ma. You can’t blame him for doing his bit.’

  ‘No, no.’ She patted his hand. ‘Come on, Charlie, wake up. You ain’t gonna let them Jerries chalk up another victory, son.’

  A nurse passed by and smiled kindly at Amy. ‘That’s all right, let her talk away. He might like the sound of her voice.’

  ‘I thought he was unconscious?’

  ‘It can sometimes help.’

  ‘How long will he stay like this?’

  ‘You’d best ask the doctor.’ She moved off briskly.

  So Amy left Dolly to whisper and scold Charlie, and went out into the corridor in search of further information. It was here that she came across Dorothy O’Hagan, sitting on a wooden bench, crying quietly.

  ‘Dorothy?’ Amy had to look more closely. ‘I never saw you there before.’ She remembered seeing this figure in the corridor when Rob dropped them at the hospital and she’d rushed Dolly into Charlie’s ward, but it hadn’t struck her then that this was the cool and collected Dorothy. She sat huddled inside a man’s grey coat, hair falling lankly over her unmade-up face.

  Dorothy didn’t look up. ‘He ain’t gonna die, is he?’ She sounded drained.

  ‘No.’ Amy forced a bright reply. ‘He’s tough as old boots, is Charlie.’

  ‘He did look dreadful, though, when they brought him in. He’d lost a lot of blood.’

  ‘I know. They told us.’

  ‘I used my jacket to stop it, pressed hard with both hands. We were there I don’t know how long.’

  ‘Until the ambulance came?’

  She nodded. ‘We were just coming down from my place. He came to fetch me, said I should take cover, it was worse than usual. I haven’t bothered much lately.’

  ‘Where had Charlie been?’

  ‘Blackfriars Road. He came to me in
a state, made me promise to go with him to Nelson Gardens. We didn’t get far before it went off in our faces.’ She looked up at Amy. ‘We both got knocked flat. I got up and said to him, “Stay awake, Charlie. Don’t go to sleep!” He tried but he couldn’t hang on. He’d lost too much blood.’

  Amy sat down beside the dazed woman. ‘What about you? Were you hurt?’

  ‘Not a scratch, see.’ She opened up the coat to show a blood-soaked blouse. ‘All Charlie’s!’

  Amy gasped. ‘And has anyone given you a hot cuppa?’ She didn’t wait for an answer, but took Dorothy’s arm, raised her to her feet and led her towards the hospital canteen, where she shovelled sugar into the hot tea and made her drink it. ‘Have they let you see him?’

  Dorothy shook her head. ‘They said to stay outside.’

  ‘Come on!’ Amy made sure she drank to the dregs, then they were on the move again. ‘He’ll want you there when he comes round, so let’s get a move on.’ Back up the tiled corridor past squeaking trolleys and silent, starched nurses, swinging through the doors into Charlie’s ward.

  ‘Ma, here’s Dorothy to see how he is.’ Amy stood the poor woman at the end of the bed where her brother lay, still motionless, tubes feeding into his arm, white bandages strapped across his chest.

  Dolly stiffened. She refused to look round.

  ‘Ma, they stuck her out in the corridor.’

  Still no answer.

  ‘She has a right to see him, like the rest of us.’ Dogged, Amy cut through the resistance of Dolly’s stiff back. No one should have to go through what Dorothy had just gone through; the explosion, the confusion, the blood.

  ‘She ain’t family.’ Dolly echoed the hospital policy.

  ‘So what? She only went and saved his life.’ She watched the news creep up on her mother, heard her sigh and give a small sob. ‘She stopped him from bleeding to death, that’s all.’

  Amy said later that she’d never seen anyone shake as much as Dorothy did when she finally got to sit by Charlie’s bed, on the opposite side to Dolly, holding his other hand. ‘They’re there now,’ she told Rob. ‘Ma on one side, Dorothy on the other, like a pair of bookends. When he finally comes round he’ll think he’s seeing double. Two of them crying all over him and hugging him half to death.’