After the War is Over

by Maureen Lee

  He was clearly impressed by the grandeur of the British Parliament. They took their place in the visitors’ gallery and Maggie saw Auntie Kath, dressed entirely in bright red, in her usual position in the chamber: in the back row behind where the prime minister normally sat. So far, Maggie hadn’t seen Clement Attlee, the man who’d led the Labour Party to its overwhelming victory during the last months of the war. Auntie Kath had promised to let her know next time he was likely to be present in the evening so she could be there.

  Her aunt nodded slightly to let her know she’d been seen. She didn’t take part in the debate, a rather dull one about farm subsidies, no doubt of great importance to some people. After only a few minutes, she got up and left the chamber.

  Maggie nudged Jack and they left too.

  In the lobby, she introduced them. Auntie Kath wasn’t as appreciative as some women – no, most women, thought Maggie – of having her hand kissed by the charming Jack Kaminski, though she showed keen interest when Jack explained his role as an employee of the Polish state bank. She asked him to describe in detail the economic state of his country after its brutal occupation by the Germans throughout the war years.

  ‘Or is it too soon to ask that question, Mr Kaminski?’ Auntie Kath frowned earnestly, her entire attention directed upon Poland and its economy, as happened with every matter that came her way. It was what made her such a good Member of Parliament. She put her heart and soul into everything.

  ‘As far as I know, things are slowly getting back to normal,’ Jack said. ‘I haven’t been back to Poland since I left to join the RAF at the start of the war. I would not be made welcome now that we are under communist rule.’

  ‘Do you have any family there?’

  Jack shrugged. ‘My parents died in a concentration camp. I left behind other relatives, but don’t know their fate.’

  ‘Are you Jewish, Mr Kaminski?’ Auntie Kath asked bluntly.

  ‘No, Miss Curran, but my mother and father were pacifists. They died for their beliefs, not their religion.’

  Listening, Maggie felt ashamed. It hadn’t entered her head that Jack might have a history, a tragic history. Her aunt would be understandably shocked if she knew her niece looked upon him in a purely superficial way, imagining what it would be like if he kissed her or how she would feel in his embrace.

  Auntie Kath looked at her watch and said she had a committee meeting and it wouldn’t do to be late. ‘I’m never late,’ she said firmly.

  Jack shook her hand and said it was a pleasure to have met her. ‘I hope one day that we will meet again.’

  Auntie Kath smiled a little smile and looked at Maggie. ‘Oh, I’m sure one day we will, Mr Kaminski. And it was lovely meeting you.’

  ‘What a remarkable woman,’ Jack murmured as Auntie Kath marched purposefully away, shoulders back, red skirt swishing, determined to do all she could to make the world a better place.

  They left the building. It was a beautiful summer evening, the sun a huge red ball as it made its slow journey towards the horizon. The day had been hot, but now the temperature was perfect. The area outside Parliament was full of people lying or sitting on the grass or strolling along in their summer clothes. Jack commented that he wished he was wearing something more casual. Maggie suggested he take off his jacket and tie.

  ‘I’ll put your tie in me bag,’ she offered.

  Jack divested himself of his jacket and rolled up his shirtsleeves. Maggie folded his navy and gold striped tie neatly and put it carefully in her handbag. She was aware that his shoulders were very broad, he was wearing a belt instead of braces and his waist was very slim.

  ‘Would you like something to eat?’ he asked.

  Maggie immediately realised she was starving. ‘Yes, please,’ she said with enthusiasm. The road they were in contained only large important buildings and houses, no shops or restaurants.

  ‘There’s a hotel not far from here, just around the next corner, the Meredith; a rather grand place. I think only a grand place will do for our first meal together, don’t you, Maggie?’

  Maggie felt herself go hot, then cold, then faint. She almost stopped walking, feeling dizzy on top of everything else, and was scared she’d fall over. It came to her like a rocket out of the blue that Jack wanting to meet Auntie Kath was merely an excuse; that it had been a roundabout way of asking her out, that if he’d asked in the ordinary way for a date she would have refused on the grounds that he was still going out with Daphne, which would have complicated matters and made her feel she was being disloyal.

  ‘What about Daphne?’ she asked in a small voice.

  ‘I talked to Daphne last night and she agreed our relationship was going nowhere. I told her I was in love with you, that I had been since we met in Trafalgar Square on New Year’s Eve, and she agreed that it was only right that we part.’ He stopped in the street and so did she. People walking by had to dodge around them, but Maggie didn’t notice and neither did Jack. He kissed her lightly on each cheek, then tucked her arm inside his, and they made their way towards the Meredith.

  Today was the day when her life had changed for ever. Nothing would ever be the same again. Jack Kaminski loved her and she loved him. One day soon they would get married, have children and grow old together. All the things that had happened before were as nothing compared to what would happen once she became a wife to Jack and a mother to their children.

  She would never forget that night, the air touched as if by magic, every single little thing about it perfect, almost surreal. She had never eaten such a wonderful meal before, or drunk such delectable wine in such desirable company.

  ‘Oh, Maggie, your eyes!’ Jack raised his glass and drank to them. ‘They are such a beautiful colour and they shine like stars.’

  ‘It’s you that’s made them shine,’ Maggie said shyly. Any minute she would come down to earth and find she was imagining things, or wake up and discover it had all been a dream.

  But it was real, all of it. Jack Kaminski had been in love with her and she with him ever since they’d met. Within a week, they were discussing when they would get married and where they would live.

  ‘Where would you like to live, Maggie?’ he asked one night when they were in Drugi’s uncle’s restaurant in Soho – Drugi didn’t seem to mind Maggie dropping him in favour of his friend.

  ‘I hardly know London,’ Maggie confessed. ‘I’m only familiar with the West End and Shepherd’s Bush. I’ll leave it to you to choose.’

  But first of all, they had another wedding to go to. At the beginning of August, Alicia Black married Philip Morrison in St Mary’s Parish church in Twickenham. All the members of the Thomas Cook ex-servicewomen’s club were there. Alicia and Philip had met earlier in the year at Maggie’s sickbed, and as Alicia didn’t have any sisters or female cousins, she had asked Maggie to be her only bridesmaid.

  On the day, Maggie wore a long rose-pink dress and carried a posy of white roses. Jack had only recently bought her an engagement ring, three diamonds in a white-gold setting. It was their first outing as an engaged couple.

  It was another perfect day – most days were nowadays. The sun shone, the scent of the flowers in the church was overwhelming, the choir sang gloriously. The reception was held in the garden of Alicia’s parents’ house and the only black spot occurred mid-afternoon when Maggie ran upstairs to the lavatory and heard a woman sobbing in one of the bedrooms.

  When the weeping woman was tracked down, it turned out to be Daphne Scott, who had gone out with Jack for more than half a year. She was lying face down on the bed, her face buried in the pillow.

  ‘You are so lucky,’ she wept when Maggie attempted to comfort her. ‘Only twenty-three and about to get married. I’ll be thirty-one soon and I have no one. I loved Jack and I thought he loved me, but he loved you instead.’

  Maggie had no idea what so say. She stroked Daphne’s blonde head, muttering, ‘There, there.’ It was no use promising that the right man would turn up one day –
what did she know about it? The right man for Daphne might have died in the war. Or pointing out that Alicia was thirty-three, or saying that her friend Nell in Bootle had claimed she was looking forward to being an old maid.

  ‘There, there,’ she said again. ‘There, there.’

  Jack took her to view a house he had found for sale in Finchley. It was semi-detached with a big square bay window in the lounge, a dining room, breakfast room, a modern kitchen with built-in units, four bedrooms, a huge bathroom, and a garage. The present owners were leaving behind the curtains and fitted carpets.

  ‘Can we buy it?’ Maggie asked when the estate agent had shown them round the spacious rooms and the neat, very ordinary garden. She was already planning a rockery, a rustic arch and dozens of rose bushes.

  ‘If it’s what you want, love. But this is the first house we’ve looked at. Don’t you think we should look at others before we make up our minds?’

  ‘We have a number of prospective buyers on the list waiting to view this one,’ the estate agent said smoothly. He looked as if he had been polished all over, including his dark blue suit.

  ‘I can’t imagine liking another house as much as I like this one,’ Maggie said.

  ‘In that case, we shall buy it.’

  Even so, over the following week Jack took her to half a dozen other properties that were for sale, only looking at them from the outside, but Maggie still preferred the first.

  ‘The road has the nicest name too: Coriander Close, and seven is my lucky number.’ She was a lucky person. Everyone in the army used to say so. Of course, that was before Mam died in such a horrible way. But she was still lucky. Hadn’t Daphne told her so at the wedding only a few weeks ago?

  The wedding of Margaret O’Neill, Paddy O’Neill’s eldest girl, became the talk of Bootle for a while. It took place in the middle of December, with Christmas decorations up everywhere. Early on the day, a charabanc turned up outside St James’s church hall, where the reception was to be held, full of foreigners, all jabbering away to one another in German, or so claimed Elsa Moody, who lived opposite and was worried Bootle had been invaded by the Hun.

  ‘Don’t talk such drivel, Ma,’ her son Edgar said derisively. ‘They’re speaking Polish, you daft ould biddy. It’s people like you that start wars.’

  ‘So Paddy O’Neill’s girl’s marrying a Pole, eh! What’s the matter with her, wouldn’t a decent English feller have her?’

  ‘Shurrup, Ma.’ Felix had had a crush on Maggie O’Neill since they’d been at school together. He was a decent English feller and she hadn’t looked twice at him.

  Maggie’s dress was white sculpted velvet with long sleeves and a small train. She carried a bouquet of red roses and was attended by three bridesmaids in scarlet brocade: her little sister Bridie, her friend Nell, and Rosie, her sister-in-law, who was six months pregnant. The bridegroom wore a grey morning suit, as did Drugi Nowak, his best man.

  The bride, with her black curls piled on top of her shapely head, made an impressive and truly beautiful sight. All in all, it was the most lavish and striking wedding to be held in Bootle in most people’s lifetime.

  When the newly married couple left to catch the train from Lime Street station to Euston, and thence to Paris, the bride threw her flowers in what she perceived was the direction of her friend Nell; sensing this, Nell moved aside so that the woman called Daphne who she had discovered earlier crying her eyes out in the ladies’ toilet caught them.

  ‘That means you’ll be married next,’ Nell said to the red-eyed woman.

  ‘Oh, do you really think so!’ Daphne gasped.

  As Nell watched the taxi drive away with Maggie and Jack waving out of the rear window, she worried a little about her friend. Jack was a decent chap, of that there was no doubt, but Maggie seemed besotted by him, hanging on his every word, agreeing with him, looking at him adoringly. Everything was perfect, she kept saying, in particular Jack, but also the house he’d bought, the furniture, the car to go in the perfect garage, the life they would lead, their future together.

  Nell was only twenty-three, but one thing she had learned in her short life was that things never remained perfect for long. Sooner or later they would turn sour. She hoped for her friend’s sake that they wouldn’t, but she would bet a pound to a penny that at some point in time she would be proved right.

  Eight-month-old William was standing up in his cot; without help from anyone, he had actually pulled himself to his feet by holding on to the bars. He was a remarkable child, very advanced according to Tom.

  ‘He’ll be walking soon,’ Tom predicted. ‘We have a very clever son, darling.’

  He seemed to have hypnotised himself into thinking that William genuinely was their son, born out of his seed and her womb. She no longer bothered to remind him he was wrong, that William was Nell’s son, father unknown. For the umpteenth time she wondered if the unknown father was Tom himself. She would have liked to face him with it, see what his reaction was, but it was an outrageous, offensive thing to accuse him of if he was innocent.

  ‘You are a genius,’ she told William.

  The little boy made an untranslatable noise, sat down with a thump and grinned mischievously at her through the cot’s bars. Iris threw him a kiss and looked at her watch. Maggie’s wedding would be over by now – or at least her and the bridegroom’s part in it. No doubt there’d be a dead-rowdy party going on in St James’s hall, which she would have loved to have gone to. She and Tom had been asked to the wedding, but had declined the invitation claiming a previous engagement. The truth was she didn’t want Nell to know that she was five months pregnant. She had this stupid, unreasonable, absolutely ridiculous idea that Nell would see this as an excuse to demand her own baby back once she realised that Iris could have one of her own.

  She was pleased, though, really pleased. ‘How can it have happened?’ she’d asked Tom when she realised she was expecting. He was just as thrilled. ‘I’ve gone for years without conceiving.’

  ‘It often happens,’ Tom said. ‘If a couple adopt a baby because they can’t have one of their own, the woman will quite often conceive. I suppose it’s to do with the fact that she is no longer desperately anxious for a child and relaxes.’

  ‘It probably means that we can have more.’

  Tom smiled. ‘As many as you want, darling.’

  ‘Four, I’d like four,’ she said eagerly. ‘I mean, four altogether, including William.’

  ‘Then four it shall be.’

  ‘You’re going to have a brother or a sister in four months’ time,’ she told William.

  He pulled himself to his feet again and gave a cry of triumph.

  ‘You are a genius,’ she told him again.

  Of course, Nell wouldn’t dream of taking him back. She wasn’t that sort of person. Dear Nell wouldn’t hurt a fly, let along another human being. If only Tom hadn’t been so downright horrible the day William had been born. Remembering the way he’d spoken to the girl could still make Iris’s stomach curl. She and Tom were getting on all right nowadays, but she would never forgive him for the way he had behaved that day. Because of it, she had lost the best friend in the world. And she would have loved to have gone to Maggie’s wedding.

  Maggie and Jack were drinking champagne in the sumptuous bar of the Ritz Hotel in Piccadilly in London. Tomorrow they were going to France on the ferry, where they would be staying in Paris in another hotel called the Ritz.

  Why didn’t I think of it before? Maggie hoped her inner turmoil didn’t show on her face. She wasn’t a virgin! Would Jack notice? Was it possible for a man not to notice? If only she’d thought of it earlier, she could have asked someone if it was possible for the thing – the hyphen or something – to be broken for any reason other than intercourse. Perhaps she could claim she’d had something as a child, appendicitis, say, and it had been taken out. Where on earth was her appendix? Was it approached through the womb?

  For some inexplicable reason she giggled. S
he wouldn’t be surprised if Jack didn’t care if she was a virgin or not. After all, she didn’t care if he’d been with dozens of women. All that mattered was what happened from this moment on and in the future. The past was over.

  ‘What’s so funny?’ Jack asked.

  ‘Nothing.’ She giggled again. ‘Everything.’

  ‘That makes sense.’ He laughed and stared at her. ‘You suit blue,’ he said. Her going-away outfit was more turquoise than blue; a plain costume with a white jumper underneath and a little pork-pie hat with a veil.

  ‘You suit grey. It goes with your eyes.’ His suit was navy with a subdued dark grey stripe, made for the occasion by a Polish tailor.

  He claimed never to have seen anyone with striped eyes. ‘You’re making me out to be a freak.’

  Maggie giggled even more and couldn’t stop. ‘You’ve had too much champagne, my love,’ Jack said. ‘I think it’s about time we went to bed.’

  She stopped giggling. ‘Bed?’

  ‘It’s what married people do,’ he said gravely. ‘This is merely the first of a million times.’

  ‘A million?’

  ‘Or perhaps two million. And that’s only the first year.’ He reached for her hand and pulled her to her feet. ‘Will you sleep with me tonight, Mrs Kaminski?’ he whispered in her ear.

  ‘Yes, Mr Kaminski, I will.’

  He put his arm around her shoulder and led her towards the lift.

  Two elderly ladies were sitting in armchairs next to Maggie and Jack’s now vacant table. ‘I wish I could be in that young woman’s shoes for the next few hours,’ one said longingly to her friend as she watched the couple get in the lift.

  ‘Why, Hettie?’ the friend asked.

  ‘It’s their first night together. My first night was awful, Harold hadn’t a clue what to do and he was a dead loss. I feel I should be entitled to another first night, and that young man,’ she nodded at the empty table, ‘would have done nicely. Extremely well built, couldn’t wait to get his hands on the girl.’

  Her friend’s jaw dropped. ‘Hettie Weatherspoon!’ she gasped. ‘You disgraceful old woman. How did you know it was their first night?’