After the War is Over

by Maureen Lee

  Auntie Kath had made the tea. Nell finished off the sarnies and arranged them artistically on a plate. Rosie appeared almost straight away and took them downstairs. The other women took the tea into the living room and sat down.

  ‘Have you read that book, Nell – Nineteen Eighty-Four, by a chap called George Orwell?’ Auntie Kath enquired.

  ‘I never have much time for reading,’ Nell said regretfully. She kept on top of things by listening to the BBC news on the wireless.

  ‘You should find the time to read this. It has some pretty terrifying things to say about the future. Would you like me to lend you my copy?’

  ‘Yes, I would, thanks.’ That way she would feel obliged to read it and perhaps learn something for a change.

  They chatted until the music below stopped and they went downstairs for the interval. Auntie Kath made a little impassioned speech. She thanked everyone for coming and said what an enormous difference the introduction of the National Health Service had made to the nation’s well-being, as well as the nationalisation of the railways and other forms of transport in Britain. ‘It means the trains and buses are owned by you, the people, rather than the millionaires.’

  There was a cheer when she said that she thought it likely that food rationing would end during the forthcoming year.

  ‘Let’s hope that by next New Year’s Eve we’ll be having ham sandwiches for refreshments. And by the way, please join me in thanking Nell Desmond for making the food this year. Thank you, Nell.’

  ‘Thank you, Nell,’ the room chorused.

  The music started again and Nell saw Flynn and Finnegan for the first time. She had never heard of them before, but they were apparently well known in the world of Irish jigs and ceilidhs. They were a colourful pair, dressed in shamrock-green shirts and black trousers. The fiddler had a head of violent ginger curls, which shook while he played, dancing like a maniac to his own frantic music, leaping and skipping to and fro across the stage.

  His partner on the piano didn’t sit, but sort of tap-danced while he pounded the keys, jabbing at them carelessly, running his fingers up and down the keyboard, yet there wasn’t a single note out of tune. He was tall and thin and remarkably agile.

  Nell made her way towards the little stage to see better. She stood at the front, watching the wild activity. It was impossible not to smile at the antics of the duo. Where did they get the energy from? she wondered.

  To her surprise, the fiddler came to the edge of the stage and bent towards her. He shouted something, but she couldn’t understand. He shouted again, louder this time. ‘Are you Nell, darlin’?’

  ‘Yes.’ She nodded furiously.

  ‘Then will you marry me, Nell?’ he bellowed.

  Because it was New Year’s Eve and she felt uplifted by the music and the crazy atmosphere, she laughed and nodded again. ‘Yes!’

  ‘I’ll hold you to that, darlin’,’ the red-haired fiddler promised.

  Just then, Paddy O’Neill came and whisked her away. He was as drunk as Davy’s sow, but still able to trip the light fantastic as well as a man half his age.

  It was time for the new year to arrive. The music stopped, the lights went out, a wireless was turned on and with it the sound of Big Ben ringing out the last minutes, the final seconds of 1949, followed by a cheer.

  It was 1950!

  ‘No more wars in this century!’ someone yelled.

  A circle of crossed arms was hastily formed to sing ‘Auld Lang Syne’. When it finished, everyone turned to kiss or shake hands with their neighbour. To Nell’s astonishment, she found herself in the arms of the red-haired fiddler, who was kissing her more soundly and thoroughly than she’d ever been kissed before.

  ‘Okay, so what date shall we pick for the wedding?’ he asked when he stopped kissing and grinned into her face. His own face was thin and pale and his twinkling eyes were bottle green, with gold flecks. His nose was a mite too big and his mouth a touch too wide. Nell liked him immediately.

  ‘Don’t be daft.’ She couldn’t help but laugh when really she should have been annoyed. He had no right to kiss her, a stranger, like that.

  He pretended to look hurt. ‘But you promised . . .’

  ‘I didn’t mean it.’

  ‘You mean you lied? Oh, well, look, if you won’t marry me now, can we start courting? I’m Red Finnegan, by the way, and the bloke who plays the piano is my very good friend Eamon Flynn.’

  Eamon was back on stage and had started to play again.

  Red gave Nell a squeeze and promised to see her later. ‘Let me know what you think about it, then. Oh, and by the way, Nell, you are a vision of loveliness, a wholesome lass with the purest of hearts and the kindest of eyes that I have ever seen in the whole of me unholy life. If I can’t have you, then I shall die.’ He laid his hand on his chest in the area of his heart and staggered mournfully on to the stage, where he picked up his fiddle and began to play.

  ‘Marry him,’ said Auntie Kath, who had overheard everything. ‘You might well have more dinner times than dinners over your life, but you’ll never go short of a good laugh.’

  Nell went to bed before the party was over and lay listening to Flynn and Finnegan playing their wild music as she slowly fell asleep. Maybe it was a line he used on many of the women he met at venues all over the country.

  They played mainly in the north of the country and in Ireland, Rosie said when she came next day to tidy up after the party. It was their Ryan who’d booked the twosome, having had excellent reports on their performance from mates at work. They would play again at the Irish club at Easter.

  And Easter, Nell assumed, was when she would next see Red Finnegan.

  Instead, he arrived that afternoon while she was getting the food ready for a children’s party. Lemons were available in the shops again, and she was making lemon flummery. She had bought an electric mixer and been obliged to demonstrate its usefulness in the kitchen to every woman she knew. She poured the resultant creamy mixture into little paper moulds to set and proceeded with the ginger buns and Bourbon biscuits.

  Finished, and with everything spread out ready to put in tins or on a tray when the time came to leave for the party, Nell sighed, made tea and sank into an armchair in her little sitting room. She felt a trifle discontented, not quite her usual calm, unruffled self, unable to get any sense of satisfaction out of her baking that afternoon, or the comfortable chair in the cosy room that belonged to her and her alone. She knew she lacked imagination, that her contentment with her lot was a trifle unnatural in that it didn’t include eventual marriage to a yet unknown man, followed by children.

  She really liked her life and the way it was, but today . . . Nell knew she was no oil painting, yet men had frequently shown an interest in her over the years. The trouble was, they were often old or married or both. She remembered how Frank Grant, Iris’s brother-in-law, was forever brushing himself against her or stroking her arm – she hadn’t liked him a bit. It was rare she met men the same age as herself. But Red Finnegan wasn’t much older than she was, and she’d liked him. It was stupid to believe he really wanted to marry her, but had he been just flirting, was he genuinely interested in her – or had it all been a joke and they would next meet at Easter and during the intervening months he would have pretended to ask dozens of other women to marry him and entirely forgotten about Nell?

  Her doorbell rang. Nell had her own personal entrance at the side of the building down a narrow set of steps. She went down and opened the door.

  ‘Good morning.’ Red Finnegan raised a rather dusty-looking trilby.

  For some unreasonable reason, Nell felt cross with him. ‘It’s afternoon,’ she snapped. ‘It’s been afternoon for at least two hours.’

  He raised his hat again. ‘Good afternoon, then,’ he said affably.

  Nell rolled her eyes. ‘I suppose you’d better come in.’

  He stepped inside, clutching the hat to his chest. ‘I detect that that welcome isn’t exactly warm.’
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br />   How could she explain that he’d made her feel very mixed up, not quite herself, out of kilter, as it were. She wished he hadn’t come if all he intended to do was play silly buggers again. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, aware that she didn’t sound it. ‘Would you like a drink: tea, coffee, or something stronger?’

  ‘Strong coffee would be nice; one sugar. I’ve a bit of a head on me this morning.’

  ‘Afternoon,’ she reminded him.

  He dipped his head. ‘Afternoon,’ he agreed. ‘It was a good night, last night. I enjoyed it. Trouble is, we get a thirst, me and Eamon, what with all the fiddling, the ivory-tickling and the jumping around. Folks insist on giving us pint after pint of ale, when we’d be perfectly content with water,’ he finished virtuously.

  ‘I’m sure you would.’ She took him into the living room, told him to sit down and went to make coffee. Her heart must have taken over her entire body, because every bit of her, from the top of her head down to her feet, was thumping just a bit. She made the coffee and a milder one for herself, took them into the living room, and sat in the other armchair so they were facing.

  He took a sip of his coffee and put the cup on the floor. He wore a suit of sorts, grey, except the jacket was tweed and the trousers made of shiny material. His shirt was blue and white check and his tie off-white. It was a most peculiar outfit. His red hair was wet and plastered against his skull so it looked like a baby’s bonnet. ‘I meant what I said last night. I’d very much like us to start courting with a view to getting married in a few months’ time. I’ll ask your dad, formally like, if that’s what you want, like men used to do in olden days when they asked a feller for his daughter’s hand in marriage. I’ll even go down on bended knee.’

  ‘Me dad’d think you were having him on,’ Nell said, wanting to laugh, but managing not to. ‘He’d tell you to go and jump in the lake. Anyroad, if you want to go around raising serious matters like marriage, it’d help if you could bring yourself to stop grinning all the time.’

  ‘Sorry, but I was born grinning, or so me mammy says. I can’t stop.’

  ‘What happened when you hurt yourself; fell off your bike or something?’

  ‘Well, I never had a bike, but when I hurt meself, I still couldn’t stop grinning.’

  ‘Excuse me a minute.’ Nell jumped to her feet and rushed into the kitchen, where she leant over the sink and laughed until her stomach ached and her throat hurt. She was still laughing when Red Finnegan came in and started kissing her as thoroughly as he’d done the night before. After a while, she agreed that they should start courting as from today. By then it was time for her to leave for the children’s party.

  When this was explained to Red, he offered to take her as his van was parked outside. His fiddle was in the back and he came in with her to the party, where he played, sang and danced around the furniture and in and out of the rooms, much to the delight of the young guests.

  The mother of the boy whose birthday it was said it was the best party she’d ever known and would Nell please bring the fiddler with her again next year?

  Nell hesitated. Would she still know him next year? Would he still be around? She hoped so. ‘This time next year we’ll be married,’ she said daringly. ‘I’ll bring him, I promise.’

  Iris hadn’t entirely forgotten that she owed Alfred Desmond a favour of sorts. He had removed Major Matthew Williams from her life – how, she had no idea – on condition that one of these days she did something for him in return. That had been nearly four years ago, and she hadn’t set eyes on him since, thank goodness. She prayed he had forgotten all about it, yet knew in her heart that he wasn’t the sort of person to forget unreturned favours.

  She was therefore not totally surprised when, having just bought the weekly rations, she came out of the Maypole grocery shop one Friday morning in January to find him outside talking to William, who was in his chair on top of the pram. Louise was fast asleep beneath the hood.

  ‘He said he’s two and a half and will be three in May,’ Alfred chuckled. ‘Clever little lad you’ve got there. He’ll be a doctor too, I reckon, when he grows up.’

  ‘Let’s hope so,’ Iris said weakly.

  ‘Earn a few bob, doctors, so I’m led to believe.’ He looked at her slyly. ‘More than a few bob, even.’

  At first she thought he was going to ask for money as Matthew Williams had done, and she wondered if she could refuse. After all, who else would know that he’d scared the man away at her request? He could prove nothing and she could deny everything.

  He lifted a paper carrier bag with a string handle and Henderson’s, a department store in Liverpool, printed on the side, and swung it in front of her eyes. ‘One good turn deserves another,’ he said with a smile. ‘There’s something I’d like you to do for me.’

  Iris swallowed. Despite her previous thoughts, she felt no desire to argue; she knew exactly what he meant. ‘What?’ she enquired.

  ‘There’s been a spate of burglaries in our street over the last few weeks, and I’d like you to keep this till the bobbies have caught the thieving sod.’ He swung the bag again. ‘Wouldn’t want anyone finding what’s in here.’

  ‘What is in there?’ Iris asked fearfully.

  He winked. ‘That’d be telling.’ He removed a parcel wrapped in brown paper from the bag. It was wound with brown sticky tape and sealed with blobs of red wax.

  Iris looked worriedly both ways. ‘Put it back in the bag,’ she gasped. ‘How long will I have to keep it? I mean, it might be months before the thief is caught.’

  ‘The bobbies have got their eye on the culprit. They expect to catch him either this weekend or the next.’ He looked grave. ‘I hope you’re not going to make any objections, Mrs Grant. I went out of me way to help you; I expect you to do the same for me.’

  ‘I had no intention of making an objection,’ Iris said stiffly. She was still curious, even after all this time, to know how he had scared Matthew Williams off. ‘What did you say to the chap in the Sloane Hotel?’

  ‘Took a copper friend of mine with me, an inspector, like. All he had to do was flash his badge and tell the chap to make hisself scarce and not come back again, and he was off like a bloody shot.’ He laughed. ‘Shaking like a leaf he was, too. Take it there’s been so sign of him since?’

  ‘You’re right, there hasn’t.’ She was glad she hadn’t tried to deny owing him a favour. He’d taken a policeman to the hotel and had no doubt told him who she was. He had proof that he’d acted on her behalf in the form of the law. Once again she looked from left to right. ‘Put the bag in the pram, please.’ It was safer that way, neither hidden or too exposed. There was nothing suspicious about a Henderson’s carrier bag.

  ‘In the bag, out the bag and shake it all about,’ he chanted. ‘Oh no you don’t, young feller,’ he said when William made a grab for it. ‘It might explode.’

  ‘It’s not a bomb, surely!’ Iris was horrified.

  ‘Course it’s not a bomb,’ Alfred Desmond said playfully. ‘I was only joking. Look, I’ll be outside the Maypole at the same time next week, or it might possibly be the week after. Oh, and don’t open it, whatever you do. If you open it, there’ll be all hell to play and I might have to have you killed.’

  Iris assumed he was joking again.

  She crept home, wheeling the pram as carefully as she could, tipping it off pavements and on again with the greatest care, not wanting to disturb whatever was in the parcel. Morning surgery was in full swing when she arrived – Tom’s load had lessened now that the National Health Service had been officially brought in and all doctors apart from a few like his brother Frank, had agreed to join. Adele was no longer his receptionist except in emergencies, and Iris hadn’t done the job for years. Frances Blake, a widow in her thirties with two teenaged children, whose husband had died in the war, was now Tom’s receptionist.

  Iris wheeled the pram down the side of the house into the yard, lifted William out, picked up the bag and went into the kitchen
, leaving Louise, who was still asleep, outside for now. Louise was a sweet baby with a lovely lazy smile who slept a lot. Tom kept remarking on the fact that his real child wasn’t as clever or lively as William, who had Nell for a mother and a father who was unknown.

  ‘I wouldn’t be surprised if our Frank wasn’t the father,’ he said once.

  Iris was so angry at the implication that William’s intelligence could only be due to the presence of Grant blood that she had thrown the tea cosy at him, only wishing the teapot had been inside. She was expecting another child, and as long as it was happy and healthy, she didn’t give a damn how bright he or she was.

  William made straight for the stairs, but was thwarted by the gate at the bottom. He rattled it, but it stayed in place, much to his annoyance. There was no doubt he was a real handful, but Iris never allowed herself to complain, not even to herself. Getting him had been such a dramatically unpleasant experience that she felt she had no right to. His real mother would never have found fault with her little boy, of that Iris felt quite sure.

  She stared at the Henderson’s bag, picked it up, but didn’t remove the parcel. It wasn’t heavy, so it couldn’t contain expensive – stolen? – jewellery or gold bars. Maybe there was money inside, a few hundred five-pound notes – stolen, of course. She picked at one of the blobs of sealing wax. It fell off and she panicked briefly, but realised there were loads more blobs and the missing one wouldn’t be noticed.

  Where was she to hide it? There were plenty of places where Tom would never look, but there was always a first time when he might search for something under the sink or look on the top shelf of the cupboard in the hall or beneath their bed or in the wardrobe in the guest room.

  In the end, she decided to put it in the outhouse, which had never been used for any reason at all since they’d come to live there. What was more, she would put it in the old rusty boiler. If Tom should discover it there, she would claim she knew nothing about it.