After the War is Over

by Maureen Lee

  A week after Maggie’s visit, Iris gave birth to a second daughter, Dorothy.

  ‘I hope people don’t call her Dottie,’ grumbled Tom, who had been hoping for a boy. He showed no interest in suggesting names for girls.

  ‘I think Dottie sounds all right,’ Iris said. Though she’d rather they stuck to Dorothy. Despite her small build, she had little trouble having babies, hardly any pain at all. She had already decided that she would have one more child, then stop. Four children made the ideal family. She supposed it would be nice having two boys and two girls, but she really didn’t mind what sex her children were. She wondered if Maggie’s husband minded only having daughters.

  When the new half-century was only a few months old, Britain found herself at war again. This time it was with North Korea, who, backed by Russia, had invaded the south. Kenny Desmond, who was too young to have fought in the war that had not long ended, was called up to fight. Yet again parents were forced to watch their young lads go off to battle, this time to a country that most had never heard of.

  After Nell and Red had returned from their honeymoon in the Isle of Man, Red moved into the flat over the Labour Party offices and helped with Crown Caterers when he was home. Flynn and Finnegan performed regularly at workingmen’s clubs and ceilidhs. Their earnings varied from a few pounds one week to as much as twenty or thirty the next. Red would return from a performance laden with roses for his wife or whatever flowers happened to be in bloom at the time

  Three months after the wedding, Red’s mother, Eithne, returned to live in Ireland, with instructions to call in the Garda should her brutal husband come near once he was allowed out of prison for brawling.

  In November, Nell realised she was pregnant. She had always known that she was lacking in certain ways, that she didn’t experience the range of emotions of someone like Maggie who could move from a state of utter despair to one of total bliss within the space of minutes. But now, married to Red, with a baby on the way, she was as happy as she had ever been. She and Red began to look round at houses – the flat wasn’t nearly big enough for two adults and a baby. Eventually they settled on a semi-detached house on a new estate being built close to the sands in Waterloo, a mere few miles away from Bootle.

  And although she hadn’t thought it possible to be happier than she already was, she felt happier still when she saw the wonderful modern kitchen with its black and white tiled floor and cream fitted units that would shortly be hers.

  Quinn Finnegan kicked his merry way into the world almost a year after the wedding, by which time it was 1951 and Nell and Red were living in Waterloo. Quinn had his own room, hastily painted blue.

  At about the same time, Iris Grant gave birth to another girl, Clare, and so did Rosie O’Neill, who called her daughter Laura after the picture of the same name starring Dana Andrews, who she claimed strongly resembled her Ryan. She, Ryan and their children moved into a modern house in Lydiate, on the very outskirts of Liverpool, taking Bridie with them and leaving Paddy alone in the house in Coral Street, not that he minded. As agent for the Labour Party he was always busy, and was able to hold meetings whenever he pleased now that he had the house to himself.

  Maggie wrote to Nell.

  All these babies! Lots of my London friends are having them too. I’d love more, but Jack always puts me off. Secretly, I’m glad. Now that Grace is out of nappies and she and Holly can both walk and talk, I’ve realised that babies aren’t nearly as much fun or as interesting as toddlers. You’ll find that out soon.

  I used to imagine us going for walks with our babies at the same time, taking them to school and chatting over a cup of tea in each other’s kitchens, but that’s not possible, is it? Did you know Iris and Tom have bought a big posh house in Balliol Road, Bootle? I’d love to see it. Tom’s surgery will stay in their old house and they’ll rent out the upstairs.

  PS Tomorrow we are going to the Festival of Britain pleasure gardens. I understand they are truly beautiful. If only we could have gone together . . .

  The Balliol Road house had been decorated from top to bottom. There were enough bedrooms for each child to eventually have his or her own. The kitchen was rather old-fashioned, but Iris had decided to leave the modernisation till later. There was a vast dining room that housed the big wooden table from their old house. The dream she had always had, of a table full of children demanding food or passing the jam and the toast to each other, would shortly come true. William and Louise were already old enough to sit there for their meals – Louise needed a cushion; that was all.

  Tom was often home late for his evening meal, not that she minded. He kept all his notes and his medical library in the old house and stayed there to write prescriptions and keep the records up to date. Nowadays she found his presence rather inhibiting and preferred the place without him. He rarely smiled, and didn’t show much interest in the children apart from William. He had even started to talk about Charlie, their little boy who had died in his sleep all those years ago. She guessed it was because he wasn’t pleased to have so many daughters. For some silly reason, it must make him feel less of a man.

  Iris was glad they had moved. She felt happier in this house and was sure the older children did too. Within a few weeks, their faces had acquired a far healthier colour from playing in the big garden full of mature trees with a vegetable patch in a corner at the bottom. With memories of Maggie saying she had swung from a lamp post when she was a child, Iris had bought a stout rope and hung it from an equally stout branch of a leafy elm tree. William loved it.

  Another advantage was that there was a little independent school further along the road where the children could go – William was due to start school next year. Tom was determined that they be educated privately. Honestly, Iris thought impatiently, the older he got, the stuffier he became. It was almost like being married to his brother, the revolting Frank.

  There had been a general election in 1950 and Labour had emerged with a majority of a mere six seats. The people were restless. Food rationing was still in force, there was a desperate shortage of houses along with building materials and thousands of people had resorted to squatting in no-longer-needed army and prisoner-of-war camps and empty properties of any sort. In central London, squatters took over a row of luxury flats that had been used as offices during the war. Sometimes it was possible to smell imminent revolution in the air.

  Maggie’s Auntie Kath became a well-known supporter of squatters’ rights, attending rallies, waving banners and making speeches all over the country. Her photograph was frequently to be seen in the newspapers, and she was termed a ‘heroine’ or a ‘troublemaker’, depending on which political view the paper supported.

  The country was hard up. The United States had lent money to help fight the war, but now demanded it back. Politicians on the other side of the Atlantic weren’t too pleased at the idea of supporting a left-wing government, despite it having been elected by the people.

  Late in 1951, another election was called in the hope of Labour increasing its majority. Instead it lost even more seats, despite achieving almost a quarter of a million more votes than the Conservative opposition. The Member for Bootle Docklands increased her already massive majority by more than ten per cent. Kathleen Curran was loved by the left and hated by the right, which she considered was exactly as it should be.

  Early in the following year, when King George VI died of cancer, Auntie Kath publicly conceded that just because a person was royal it didn’t mean they were automatically bad. The late King had been a gentle, modest man who had shared the privations of the war with his people. Although he and his family could have gone to live in Canada, he insisted they stay in London and live on ordinary rations like everyone else.

  His daughter, Elizabeth was crowned Queen in June 1953. Unlike virtually the entire population of the United Kingdom, Auntie Kath declined to watch the coronation on television – many thousands of sets having been purchased beforehand for that very purpose.

/>   Nell’s neighbours on one side were an elderly couple, Maude and Edwin Carter, who had grown-up children and several grandchildren. On the other joined-on side lived Susan and Harold Ramsey, who’d only recently been married. The older couple adored Nell’s little boys, Quinn, who was now four, and Kevin, who was three. The pair were admittedly a handful, and the Ramseys complained bitterly about the noise the boys made both inside and outside the house. They remonstrated with them for peering through the hedge into their garden or climbing trees to do the same thing. They kept any balls that happened to land anywhere on their property and even accused Nell of allowing her lads to wee on the flowers in their front garden and make them die.

  ‘I saw them with my own eyes,’ Susan Ramsey raged.

  ‘You can’t have done,’ Nell stammered. Quinn and Kevin could do many things, but they couldn’t have got out of the house on their own.

  She was incapable of answering back or losing her temper, but she was deeply upset by the Ramseys’ attitude, which she considered unreasonable. She hoped that when Susan Ramsey became pregnant, she would have twins or even triplets.

  ‘Let’s see how she copes then,’ she would say to Red when he came home. Red got his own back by playing his fiddle and singing as loudly as he could, ignoring the furious knocking on the door when one of the Ramseys came to complain. Some days Eamon would drop round and they would play together. Eamon had lodgings in Seaforth. His landlady made him huge meals because she claimed he needed filling out a bit. She was also doing her utmost to seduce him.

  The Finnegans were a popular couple on the little estate in Waterloo. In his own way, Red was a minor celebrity. Few people had heard of Flynn and Finnegan, but it was known that they travelled about the country entertaining miners and the like. Once they had actually appeared on television, though only to accompany a troupe of Irish dancers, and their records were on sale in town.

  When Red came home, Nell would yelp with delight and fling her arms around him, and all four Finnegans would sit on the big settee kissing and cuddling till they got fed up and went their various ways.

  In December 1955, Maggie sent a letter with the Christmas card made from a new photograph of her and Jack and their growing daughters.

  Do you realise, Nell, she wrote in her barely readable scrawl, that it’s ten years since the three of us returned to Liverpool after the army. Just think how our lives have changed since then. Eight children between us, husbands for you and me, a lovely house each. It’s an awful pity that Iris and Tom have broken up. At least I think so. She hardly ever mentions him in her letters, and Rosie reports that Tom seems to live permanently in their old house in Rimrose Road. What’s more, there’s a woman living there too, though maybe she just rents the flat upstairs and people are spreading nasty gossip – me included!

  It had started with Tom coming home late most nights, or sometimes staying overnight in Rimrose Road. When he did come home, he mumbled something about being overladen with work, being at his desk till all hours, bringing the filing up to date and all sorts of other excuses that Iris found difficult to believe – he’d never had to work late before.

  Iris just mumbled something back. It was horrible to think the way she did, but the less she saw of him, the better. Now she had enough children, she no longer wanted to sleep with him, not even if he used a French letter or she one of those horrible rubber caps women were supposed to insert inside themselves. It was ages since she’d had pleasure from sex.

  She had come to the unwelcome realisation that she no longer loved her husband, though she remained fond of him. It had taken her a long time to reach that conclusion. Since coming home, she had tolerated him and, in a way that she was very ashamed of, used him merely as a means of achieving a family.

  Even when she discovered he was having an affair with Frances Blake, the receptionist who’d been there for years, she didn’t mind. In fact, she was glad. It meant he had a woman who had taken on Iris’s role as a wife, making her own behaviour seem less selfish.

  He still turned up to take eight-year-old William out to museums, football matches, the pictures – they were both fans of Tarzan films.

  ‘Why don’t you ever take the girls with you?’ Iris once asked.

  ‘They squeal too much,’ he claimed.

  And that was that.

  In the Kaminski family, all was sweetness and light. Jack could not possibly have loved his girls more than he already did. Holly was the sweetest little thing, a real daddy’s girl, all sugar and spice and able to twist Jack around her little white finger with her captivating smile.

  Maggie was also her elder daughter’s willing slave. At seven, Holly was the prettiest girl in her class, if not the entire school. She had her father’s fair hair and the same steady blue eyes.

  ‘You spoil her,’ people remarked from time to time, in particular Rosie when the Kaminskis went on their yearly visit to Liverpool, staying in one of the best hotels.

  ‘We love her,’ Maggie would say simply. ‘Too much love can’t possibly spoil a child.’

  It was a statement with which Rosie couldn’t disagree. ‘Poor Grace must feel neglected,’ she said once.

  ‘Grace hates to be made a fuss of,’ Maggie would say confidently. She regarded herself as a perfect mother to her perfect children, as well as a perfect wife to Jack.

  Grace was possibly too independent for her own good. She insisted on tying her own shoelaces from an early age, resulting in several nasty falls when they came loose.

  ‘Don’t help me,’ she would snap when Maggie went to put on her coat or cut up the food on her plate. Her features were too strong to be classed as pretty; more striking. She had Maggie’s black curls and blue eyes with a touch of lilac. Jack admired her enormously, calling her his ‘little brick’, which was how Greek generals referred to their heroic soldiers, he maintained. Even when she was very young, she refused to sit on his – or anybody’s – knee, though she condescended to listen to the stories that he told, sitting sternly beside him on the settee, while Holly curled up in his arms, the adoring daughter.

  If Jack had a fault, it was a minor one. He was intent on tracking down his relatives who had disappeared from Poland during the war, a task that took up many hours of his time – too many as far as Maggie was concerned. He would sit well into the night in the dining room, only used to eat in at weekends, and which he regarded as his study, the table covered with papers. They had been married a few years before Maggie realised that the Kaminskis had been a rich, highly respected family in the small town in Poland where Jack was born. They had owned acres of forests and farming land as well as dozens of cottages.

  The Polish set in London that Jack was part of had in the main been servants or neighbours of his family. Some of these people were also trying to find family members who had disappeared. They could well be dead, but it was not certain.

  Letters often arrived at the Kaminski house from countries all over the world, though mainly from the United States, addressed to Jacek Kaminski. The envelopes contained many sheets of paper full of strange handwriting, rarely in English. Phone calls would come at all times of the day, providing bits of information as to where a certain person might be.

  ‘Who are you trying to find?’ Maggie had asked more than once. She knew his parents were dead, and his sister was married and living in Russian-occupied Poland. They had no idea when they would see each other.

  ‘Cousins,’ Jack would answer vaguely. ‘Aunts and uncles, friends.’

  Maggie hoped that one day soon he would discover relatives living in America, and that she, Jack and the girls could cross the Atlantic in one of the big liners and visit them.

  The Finnegan brothers were ear-achingly loud, they laughed too much, were too darned happy, couldn’t keep still, and were too clever by half. Aged five and six, they didn’t exactly terrorise the school, had never bullied a soul, yet they just seemed to dominate the place. When a Finnegan laughed, it could be heard in every corner.


  Everyone felt sorry for the mother. She seemed such a nice quiet woman, who didn’t deserve to have two such rowdy lads. And their dad was that singer chap who could occasionally be seen on telly playing the fiddle and singing Irish songs.

  ‘I suppose that explains it,’ some people said. ‘The kids are Irish.’

  Nell would have been upset had she known that people felt sympathy for her. As far as she was concerned, she was mother to two exceptional little boys who were the most popular in the school – with the other pupils, that is, if not their parents and the teachers. Scarcely a week would pass without them being invited to a birthday party somewhere in Waterloo. The party might turn into chaos, but the young guests would have a good time, having battled with Red Indians or won the war a second time under the leadership of General Quinn or King Kev Finnegan. Quinn could do a perfect imitation of Winston Churchill making a speech while smoking a big cigar, and Kev could stand on his head and do the splits upside down.

  One Monday, Red came home after a tour of concerts in Yorkshire.

  ‘I’ve written you a song – or I should say I’ve written a song about you,’ Red said in between kisses. ‘I sang it twice, and each time I was asked for an encore. It’s called “Ode to Nell”.’

  ‘Sing it to me,’ a dazzled Nell requested. She’d like to bet she was the only woman in Liverpool whose husband had written a song for her.

  Nell, sang Red, looking at her adoringly, my darling Nell,

  When you smile, a bell chimes in my heart.

  In my heart.

  Nell, my dearest Nell

  If you should leave, hot tears will blind my eyes.

  My eyes.

  You are the light of my life,

  And I want you for my wife.

  Oh Nell, my sweet Nell,

  Please be mine.

  ‘That’s lovely, Red. I’m flattered beyond belief.’ Nell burst out laughing and they collapsed together on to the settee. ‘I really love my song.’

  ‘It still needs a bit of polishing,’ Red said modestly. ‘But I expect the record to come top of the charts one day soon.’