After the War is Over

by Maureen Lee

  On the final day, he sang ‘The people’s flag is deepest red, It shrouded oft our mortal dead’ while holding hands with his neighbours on either side.

  But even that wasn’t the end of it. On the Blackpool train, William spoke to Stuart George, editor of a small-circulation magazine based in London. He only employed a handful of staff, he told William. ‘But occasionally I commission free-lancers to write articles. Would you like to do one on the conference? It would be interesting to have a fresh eye. You’ll be paid, of course, though not very much.’

  ‘Willingly,’ William replied. He would have written it for nothing.

  Chapter 15

  William wasn’t surprised as he approached Nell’s house in Waterloo to see a small crowd outside. Even from so far away he could hear music – guitars being played very loudly – coming from inside. It sometimes happened that an audience would gather during rehearsals.

  The front door was open. The lovely weather of the past seven days had changed; now, a cold wind blew and there was rain in the air. As soon as he could manage it, he intended shutting himself in his bedroom and translating the copious scribbled notes he’d made in Blackpool into clear English.

  When he went in, the place was full of people he’d never seen before. It turned out later that most were Nell’s relatives, her sisters, their husbands, their children and their children’s children. Being Saturday, nobody had to be at work or school. There was no sign of Nell.

  ‘What’s going on?’ he asked a thin, starved-looking chap who happened to be passing.

  ‘It’s Red,’ the man explained. ‘The other night he was leaving this club in Manchester and was knocked down by a drunken driver.’

  ‘He’s not dead?’ William’s voice came out in a croak, as if all the breath had left his body. ‘He can’t be dead!’

  ‘Killed outright, poor sod. Our Nell’s heartbroken.’ The chap turned out to be Nell’s brother, Kenny. ‘Red Finnegan was a really decent bloke.’

  ‘One of the best,’ William gulped. He hadn’t known Red for long, but he was one of the nicest people he’d ever met. ‘Where is Nell?’

  ‘In the dining room with Red,’ Kenny replied somewhat mysteriously.

  The mystery was explained when William went into the room where Red Finnegan lay in his coffin, his long red hair spread like a fan on the white satin pillow. One of the fiddles that he had played with such brilliant dexterity throughout his too-short life lay at an angle upon his breast. There was a scent in the air that William at first couldn’t recognise. It turned out to be partly incense and partly the candles that were flickering madly on the mantelpiece. It was the first time in his life that he’d seen a dead person.

  It was in this room that Quinn and Kev were loudly strumming their guitars, their eyes closed, quite lost in the music, and Nell was seated beside the coffin, where she seemed to be carrying on a conversation with her dead husband. She was leaning over and touching his face, an expression of such tenderness on her own face that all William wanted to do was rush upstairs to his room to escape from these alien beings with their strange religious habits and rituals.

  He went over, touched Nell’s hand, mouthed, ‘I’m sorry,’ and fled.

  Halfway upstairs, he bumped into an elderly man wearing an atrocious cream and brown checked suit. The man caught his arm, blocking his way, and growled suspiciously, ‘Who are you when you’re at home?’

  ‘I’m William, a friend,’ William said raggedly.

  ‘Oh, aye. Our Nell spoke about you. I’m Alfred Desmond, her dad.’ He stood aside to let William pass. ‘She was wondering when you’d be home.’

  ‘I need to go to the bathroom.’

  ‘I’ll see you later, lad.’

  William bolted the door of his bedroom and sat on the bed. He was shaking. Just then, what he wanted more than anything was to be in his old house with his old parents. They would want to know every detail of his time at the conference in Blackpool, hanging on his every word. They would be thrilled to bits to hear about the offer from Stuart George to write an article for his magazine. His father would grumble about it sounding a bit left-wing. Then his sisters would come in and they’d all sit down to tea together, laughing and joking.

  That was his world, the one he was used to, not this other Catholic one with candles and dead bodies and incense. He was used to going to church once or twice a year, at Easter and Christmas, and the house had been completely free of holy statues and pictures.

  And those people downstairs, most were now his relations; half-brothers and half-sisters. Alfred Desmond was his grandfather, for God’s sake; his genuine maternal grandfather. He recalled his other grandfather, Cyril, who had died about five years ago. He’d been very much a gentleman, courteous and kind. Nell had remarked that her father was a crook.

  ‘During the war he was what’s called a spiv. Do you know what a spiv is, William?’

  He’d said that he did. He’d seen spivs in the cinema, read about them in books, and now he had one for a grandfather. He badly wanted to get away from the house, although he really should stay and comfort Nell, but not in front of so many people who would want to know who he was. Just imagine if they discovered he was a relative! They would want to shake his hand, possibly kiss him, possibly hate him. They would want to know his story – and Nell’s story. Where had he come from? As far as he knew, only a handful of people were aware of who he really was. The longer it stayed that way, the better.

  Not even his own father knew he had another son. He wasn’t to be told. Apparently, it would upset him. Tough! William thought cynically. If he wasn’t to be upset, then he shouldn’t go around impregnating young, innocent women. A case of mistaken identity, according to Nell. He squirmed at the thought of how casually he seemed to have come into the world.

  He left the room, crept quietly down the stairs and out of the house. He knew exactly where he wanted to go.

  ‘William!’ exclaimed Addy when she opened the door of her little house in Woolton. Addy was the name he’d given Grandma Adele when he’d first learnt to talk. His sisters had followed his lead and called her by the same name. She was sweet and gentle and thought he could do no wrong. ‘Come in, darling. It’s ages since I’ve seen you.’

  He followed her down the hall. Nowadays, she needed a stick just to get around the house. Her health had deteriorated swiftly after Cyril had died. She was little more than a bag of ancient bones, and he got the feeling she herself was waiting patiently to die.

  They sat in her sitting room in front of a small fire. The book she’d been reading was laid face down on the table beside her chair. It was by Agatha Christie. The wireless was on low, a medley of old songs.

  ‘I would have the world on a string, do anything, if I had you,’ a man with a haunting voice was singing. The tuneful music and wistful words caught at his heart in the way that rock’ n’ roll never had. The words actually meant something.

  ‘You look awfully unhappy, darling,’ Addy said. Her face was vastly more wrinkled than he remembered.

  William had no idea what to say to this. He felt as he must look. ‘I don’t know where I belong any more,’ he gasped, and felt tears come to his eyes.

  ‘Your mother told me you’d left home, but not why.’ Addy shrugged. ‘I could tell she was more upset than she need be, and was left to guess the truth for myself. She thought knowing would upset me, but I’ve known the truth all along. I’ve always worried that one day you’d find out and it’d come as a terrible shock.’

  He was astonished. ‘You mean you’ve always known I was adopted?’

  Addy nodded. ‘Not exactly adopted, darling; I don’t know what the actual arrangements were.’ Her forehead furrowed in an effort to find the right words. ‘Let’s say Nell handed you over with a great deal of reluctance. But you were better off with Iris and my son,’ she hastened to assure him. ‘Nell was a lovely young woman, but she was single and that father of hers was a terrible man, still might be for al
l I know. Lord knows what would have happened if he’d discovered his girl was pregnant. She could have ended up giving birth in one of those awful homes for unmarried women, for instance, and you might have been brought up in an institution run by nuns or sent to Australia, or something horrible like that.’

  William felt more confused than ever. The only world he’d ever known had been comfortably middle class, but could easily have been so very different. And rather nasty, he realised.

  ‘Iris and Tom couldn’t possibly have loved you more,’ Addy continued. ‘They’d been desperate for another child since Charlie died—’

  ‘Charlie?’ William interrupted.

  Addy sighed. ‘Of course, you don’t know about Charlie, do you? Charlie was born just before the war, nineteen thirty-eight or nine. He was only a few months old when he died in his sleep. Afterwards, Iris and Tom tried for years to have a baby until by chance, like a miracle, you came along, though in a most unexpected way. You brought joy into all our lives, William love.’

  William ran his fingers through his already tousled hair. Nowadays he was forever learning things that surprised him, not always welcome.

  ‘I’ve got all these relatives,’ he mumbled. ‘Nell’s husband’s died and the house is like a church. His body’s there,’ he gulped, ‘lying in a coffin.’

  ‘Nell’s husband,’ Addy gasped. ‘That lovely red-haired man who sang Irish songs! Oh, what a shame. I shall go and see her soon. She won’t mind my coming, even after all this time. We got on really well in the old days. Would you like some tea or coffee, darling? Or a drink? I still have some of Cyril’s whisky. I expect it must taste better with age, though I can’t stand it myself.’

  ‘Whisky, please.’ Perhaps this was one of those times when it would be good to get a little bit drunk.

  William stayed the next two nights with his grandmother. She was the only relative from his old life to whom he felt he belonged. He slept in a narrow bed under a patchwork quilt and stared at the moon through cream lace curtains.

  Sunday, Addy made a trifle, his favourite pudding, while he swept up the leaves in her garden, trimmed the hedge ready for winter and hoped Iris and Tom wouldn’t turn up for a visit.

  Next morning she woke him with a cup of milky tea and told him it was Red Finnegan’s funeral that afternoon. ‘It’s in St Helen’s church in Waterloo at two o’clock. I telephoned the house and someone told me. They didn’t want to know who I was. I think you should go, darling.’

  ‘Of course I should.’ William sat up and took the tea. ‘And I should take flowers; a wreath or something.’

  ‘There’s a florist not far from here,’ Addy told him. ‘I’ll give you the money and you can get a wreath from me too. And if you have the chance, darling, tell Nell I’ll come and see her soon.’

  ‘I will,’ William promised.

  The funeral wasn’t as sad as he had expected. Perhaps Catholics really did expect to meet the dead person in heaven one day so that they didn’t get as upset as those who thought they’d lost their loved one for ever.

  Maggie was there with Grace and Louise and asked how he’d got on at the Labour Party conference. William had forgotten that he’d been there. It felt hardly credible that a week ago he’d been embroiled in political debates, either listening in the conference hall or arguing in the bars and cafés.

  Perhaps it was to be expected that music, none of it holy except in the church, played a big part in the proceedings. Red’s mother had returned to live in Ireland years ago when her husband had died. She was over for the funeral and looked almost starry-eyed as she sang ‘Ave Maria’ and ‘Your Tiny Hand is Frozen’, in a quivery soprano voice. Red’s friends from long ago played his favourite tunes; his sons sang a song they had just written dedicated to their father. Instead of making everyone cry, it made them laugh.

  Early in the evening, William packed his suitcase, looked for Nell, and told her he was leaving.

  ‘I knew you wouldn’t stay for long,’ she said. She wore a green dress, her husband’s favourite colour. ‘But you’ll come back and see us from time to time, won’t you? I don’t want to lose you, William, as well as Red.’

  ‘And I don’t want to lose you. I promise I’ll come back often. But I need to learn to live on my own.’ He had just started to do so when the secret of his birth had been revealed and all hell had broken loose – or so it seemed to William. He had lost his place in the world and needed to find it again. He wished he hadn’t given up the bedsit in Islington. Now Louise and Grace were living there.

  ‘Where will you sleep tonight?’ Nell asked. She was bearing up remarkably well.

  ‘With my grandmother, Addy.’ He had the strongest feeling that she wasn’t long for this world.

  ‘Adele!’ She smiled fondly. ‘I always loved Adele.’

  ‘She intends to come and see you, but it mightn’t be a bad idea if you went to see her instead.’

  ‘I’ll do that.’ Nell kissed him on both cheeks. ‘Ta-ra, my lovely lad,’ she whispered.

  ‘Ta-ra, Nell.’

  That night in his grandmother’s house, William cried himself to sleep.

  Grace and Louise were having the time of their lives in the flat in Islington. Both worked as barmaids in a pub called the Green Man off Holloway Road, a huge place that catered for hundreds of customers. The pay was derisory, but the tips were enormous.

  They only worked nights. The pub was supposed to close at ten, but it was well gone eleven by the time it emptied, the tables were cleared and the glasses washed. One of the barmen usually gave them a lift home. If none were about, then the landlady, Phyllis Goddard, would pay for a taxi. She was a glamorous blonde in her fifties who was reputed to have been a prostitute in a previous life. Some people said she was a widow, others that her husband was serving life for a horrific murder. Her apartment on the top floor was full of pink mirrors and white carpets.

  The girls slept till late. By the time they got up, most of the other tenants in the house had either left or were staying in bed even later, so they had the shared bathroom to themselves. They indulged in long, leisurely baths wearing face packs and slices of cucumber on their eyes, after which they would do their hair. It was essential that Grace’s natural dark curls be straightened a little so it didn’t look as if they’d been permed to death, and Louise experimented with her long blonde tresses, arranging them in different styles decorated with coloured slides, flowers and ribbons.

  Afternoons, they went to the West End or one of the numerous markets, on the lookout for cheap clothes and shoes.

  ‘I never thought I could be so happy,’ one of them would say from time to time, or something like it, accompanied by a blissful sigh.

  ‘You’re wasting your life,’ Grace’s mother, Maggie, would say on the occasions she came to visit, usually in the morning when they were having baths, doing their hair, or trying on the clothes they’d bought the day before. Only occasionally did they remember to eat. They consumed coffee by the gallon.

  ‘When I was your age,’ Maggie said only a few days after Red Finnegan’s funeral, ‘there was a war on and I was in the army toiling away on behalf of my country.’

  ‘Toiling!’ Grace hooted. ‘You’ve always claimed you had a marvellous time in the army. And if there was a war on, we’d join the forces, wouldn’t we, Lou?’

  ‘Mmm,’ Louise agreed through the hairpins stored in her mouth while she tried to twist her hair into a chignon or a topknot or something equally complicated. At other times she might be experimenting with black lipstick or seeing how thickly she could apply eyeliner without looking like a clown or a crazy woman.

  ‘I suppose you could say I’m wasting me own life,’ Maggie said thoughtfully. ‘After all, I’m doing nothing with it. I need something useful to occupy me time. Or a hobby, a useful hobby, not like flower-arranging or collecting thimbles.’ While she spoke, she was wandering around the room picking up clothes off the floor, the bed, the chairs, and putting them away
in the wrong drawers or hanging them in the wrong place – the coats went behind the door, not in the wardrobe.

  ‘Have you bought any furniture polish yet?’ she enquired when she found a mark on the table.

  ‘Not yet, Mum.’ The girls rolled their eyes at each other. Grace usually got rid of marks with spit and the corner of her hanky. Louise didn’t even notice them. Housework wasn’t on their agenda.

  ‘Would you like me to see if there’s a job going in the pub, Mam?’ Grace enquired. She winked at her friend and Louise grinned.

  ‘Don’t be daft, girl. Though I wouldn’t mind working for a charity, like. I mean, it’s not as if your dad and I need the money.’

  ‘My mum has got a job,’ Louise announced. ‘She works Fridays and Saturdays in Owen Owen’s ladies’ clothes department.’

  ‘Does she really!’ Maggie was genuinely interested. ‘Owen Owen’s was one of our favourite shops when we were young. Sometimes we’d have afternoon tea in the restaurant, Nell and all. Ah, those were the days,’ she said nostalgically. ‘You girls,’ she went on changing tack completely, ‘you’re doing the right thing. Enjoy yourselves while you can. I’m lucky having such good times to look back on. Would you like me to make you some coffee? I wouldn’t mind a cup meself.’

  ‘Yes please,’ the girls chorused. Once she’d drunk the coffee, she would go away and leave them in peace.

  William had returned to London. He was in Auntie Kath’s office in the House of Commons somewhat painfully typing the report he’d written on the Labour Party conference while staying with Addy. Last week, the Conservatives had held their conference in Brighton. Next Monday, Members of Parliament would return and the house would sit again with a full programme of legislation to debate and possibly pass.