After the War Is Over: A Novel

by Jennifer Robson

  “Leave ’er be, won’ ya?” said one of the men. “Whas’ harm in ’avin’ a bit o’ fun?”

  The man was three sheets to the wind already. What kind of degenerate got drunk at a children’s party, for heaven’s sake?

  “I don’t mean to spoil everyone’s fun, I assure you. But Miss Barnes is needed back home. It isn’t fair for Janie to do all the work herself.”

  Norma sighed dramatically. “You’re such a stick in the mud, Charlotte. Why do you always have to ruin everything?”

  “You ’eard ’er,” said another one of Norma’s companions. “Now sod off, won’ ya?”

  “I beg your pardon—”

  “Clear off, the lot of you.” This from Mr. Williams, who now stood just behind Charlotte. “Sorry to interrupt, Miss Brown, but we can’t have them spoiling the party.” He jabbed a finger at the younger men, one after the other, looking each one straight in the eye. “I’ll give you two minutes, then I’m calling the coppers.”

  “Norma,” Charlotte implored. “Come inside with me. You don’t know these men.”

  “ ’Course I do. This is Bert, and this is Joe, and these are their friends from work. I’ll be as right as rain with them, won’t I, Bert?”

  “Right as rain. Say good-bye to your nosy friend, Norma.”

  “Don’t fuss, Charlotte. I’ll knock on your door when I get in. Promise I will.”

  IF THE MISSES Macleod and Meg were worried for Norma’s sake, they said nothing of it, and supper was occupied by pleasant recollections of the day’s events. Charlotte spent an hour in the sitting room with the others before retreating to her room to work on her next column for Mr. Ellis.

  It had been a lovely day, one that the children of the street wouldn’t soon forget, a beacon of life and hope amid the perpetual gloom of postwar austerity. It had done no harm, as far as she could tell, and might even make the coming days easier for some.

  But what of the elaborate parades of military might, the lavish luncheons for dignitaries, and the epic displays of fireworks that had taken place elsewhere across Britain, most of them paid for out of the public purse? Wouldn’t that money have been better spent on the hungry and needy, among them tens of thousands of demobilized servicemen? What of the people whose only memory of this Peace Day would be the empty promises of politicians?

  It might be too radical a subject for even Mr. Ellis to countenance, but she just might be able to persuade him. “The Improvidence of Peace Day,” she would call it.

  She had completed a fine first draft, and was ready to set down her pen for the night, when she heard an odd noise at the front door—a muffled howl, as if a stray dog or cat were in distress. She went to her window, which faced the street, and pushed aside the curtains to get a better look.

  There was nothing, no trace of movement beyond. And then . . . a rustle of fabric, an anguished moan, and she flew to the front door.

  Norma. Huddled on the stoop, her head bowed, her shoulders shaking with muffled sobs.

  “Ch . . . Charlotte . . .”

  “My goodness, Norma. What on earth has happened to you? No—don’t try to answer. Not yet. Let me get you inside and up to your room.”

  “No! No, please. The others can’t know. They mu . . . mustn’t know.”

  “Then come into my room. Let me help you. I used to be a nurse. I can help you.”

  She guided Norma to her feet and led her by the shoulders into her room, where she settled her at the edge of the bed.

  “I’ll have to switch on the ceiling light, my dear, so I can see what has happened.”

  “Don’t. You’ll hate me. You will.”

  “Of course I won’t. I swear I won’t. Let me turn on the light. We’ll start with that.”

  Her desk lamp, at the far side of the room, was too dim to illuminate more than her work surface. She went to the door, to the switch that was next to it, and harsh electric light flooded the room. Returning to Norma’s side, she crouched before her and, gently but firmly, pulled the girl’s hands away from her face.

  It was worse than she’d expected. One eye blackened and swollen almost shut. A nasty scrape on one cheekbone. A split lip already crusting over with blood.

  “Are you hurt anywhere else?”

  “My . . . my side. I tripped, I think. When I tried to run. He kicked me. Or it might have been his friend.” She began to cry again, silently, her tears welling steadily from her eyes. She was so young, scarcely more than a child. Why would anyone do such a thing to her?

  “Oh, my dear. My dear, dear girl. Did he hurt you anywhere else, Norma? In any other . . . in another way? I won’t be upset with you if he did. Not in the slightest. But you must tell me.”

  “No . . . no. He didn’t rape me.”

  Rape. The word sounded as evil as the act itself. “Who did this to you?”

  “One of Bert’s friends. The one that told you to sod off. Sorry about that.”

  “Never you mind. I’ve been called worse.”

  “We were out dancing, and I was having ever so much fun. And he told me, Mick told me, that I was so pretty, the prettiest girl he’d ever seen, and would I come away with him. Go to another party. It sounded fun, so I did. We went out the back way—we’d gone to the Palais, and it was full to bursting. He said it would take too long to go through the front.”

  “What happened then?”

  “His friend followed us. And they said . . . they said I was the sort of girl who knew how to have fun. And would I have some fun with them. I didn’t realize what they meant, not at first, not until he’d backed me against the wall.”

  For a moment Charlotte thought she might be sick. “Go on.”

  “So I said no. I said he was wrong. That I wasn’t that kind of girl, not at all, and I wanted to go home. But he kept pulling at my frock, at my skirt, and then he ripped it. I suppose I must have screamed. He put his hand over my mouth, so I bit him, and that’s when he hit me. Oh, Charlotte—it hurt so badly. I thought I was going to faint. I tried to run, but his friend tripped me, and then one of them kicked me, and . . . and . . .”

  “And what?” Charlotte took Norma’s hands in hers and squeezed them tight, her heart aching for the girl. She was so young, so terribly young.

  “He . . . he spat on me. As if I were a piece of rubbish. And that’s what I am. Everyone will know, Charlotte. They’ll know, and they’ll see. What am I to do?”

  “Norma. You are not rubbish. You are the farthest thing from rubbish.”

  “You were right. I shouldn’t have gone with them. I was dressed like a, like a whore, he said . . .”

  “Norma, listen to me. Are you listening? Even if you had paraded up and down the street wearing nothing more than rouge on your cheeks, naked as the day you were born, you wouldn’t deserve what happened tonight. They were in the wrong, not you.”

  “You’re only saying that to make me feel better.”

  “I am not. It’s the truth. As God is my witness, it is the truth. Now, my dear, I think we ought to get you cleaned up. It’s a good thing that tomorrow is Sunday. You can rest, and the worst of the swelling will have gone down by then.”

  “What will I tell the others?” Norma asked, her eyes glassy with fear. Clearly the prospect of telling their landladies was terrifying to the poor girl.

  “I think we’ll tell them part of the story. Not a lie. Simply . . . well, simply leave out the parts that might upset the misses. We can say you went out dancing, and a man at the dance hall was rude to you, and there was a tussle, and you got caught in the middle. How does that sound?”

  “Likely enough, I suppose. Though Rosie’ll sniff out the truth.”

  “Probably, but that’s a worry for another day. Now, sit here while I fetch the first-aid box from the kitchen. I’ll see if I can work some magic on that eye of yours.”

  The kettle on the range was still warm, with enough water to fill a small basin. Armed with that, a roll of cotton wool, a pot of arnica cream, and a bottle of t
incture of iodine, the only antiseptic she could find, Charlotte returned to Norma’s side and set to work. She washed clean the cuts and abrasions and swabbed them with iodine as lightly as she dared, not wishing to leave a telltale brown stain. Last of all she dabbed a liberal layer of arnica cream on Norma’s eye and swollen lip.

  As tenderly as she had once done for her patients, she helped Norma change out of her ruined clothes and into a spare nightgown, and then she settled her friend in bed.

  She would not sleep, not for hours, for she was far too angry. Not at Norma, of course, but at men who thought a young, impressionable woman was fair game simply because she was intoxicated and scantily dressed. The only thing that ought to be troubling Norma right now was a headache and the beginnings of a cold.

  Charlotte had never been especially maternal in her sentiments, but she felt a mother’s rage for what had been done to her friend tonight. If she had a pound for every woman she’d met in the course of her work who’d had an eye blackened by her husband, she’d have been as rich as the Queen of Sheba.

  What sort of world allowed such things to happen? The same world, she supposed, that allowed millions of young men to die over a few miles of Flanders mud, and let children starve in one of the richest nations in the world.

  Life was unfair; she knew it down to her bones. From time to time she forgot that essential truth, but tonight had reminded her. She wouldn’t be so foolish as to forget it again.

  Chapter 15

  Midday already and she had barely made a dent in the reports from the pensions review. There simply wasn’t enough time in the day, when it came down to it. Even if Miss Rathbone were to hire another five constituency assistants . . .

  “Miss Brown?”

  Charlotte looked up to find Gladys hovering at her door.

  “There’s a telephone call for you. From Mr. Ellis at the Herald.” This last piece of information she imparted with a jaunty wink.

  “Thank you, Gladys.”

  She certainly hadn’t been expecting a call from him. The Monday after Peace Day, a little more than a week ago now, she had sent him the article she’d been crafting when Norma had collapsed at the front door. She had expected him to reject it, or at the very least whitewash it with a coat of anodyne paint, but once again he’d surprised her.

  Her column had run yesterday, every angry, outraged word of it, and Charlotte was already dreading the arrival of that evening’s edition of the Herald at the office. It would be brimming over with outraged letters to the editor, she was sure of it, and try as she might she wouldn’t be able to stop herself from reading every last one.

  Perhaps that was it. Perhaps he had called to warn her. She wouldn’t be surprised if people were branding her a Bolshevik, calling for her head, demanding that she be flogged through the streets.

  She went to the telephone table and picked up the earpiece.

  “Hello? Mr. Ellis?”

  “Hello, Miss Brown. Sorry to trouble you at work.”

  “That’s quite all right.”

  “The thing is, Miss Brown . . .”

  He was going to sack her. The Herald’s publisher had finally had enough. That was it. He was calling to—

  “Well, you see, it’s about tomorrow evening.”

  “Yes?” she asked, feeling quite perplexed by his hesitant manner. Normally the man was so forthright she could barely get a word in edgewise.

  “There was a dinner planned, by my publisher, and I was meant to go to it. I’d arranged things so I wouldn’t have to be at the paper in the evening, and then, just now, I learned that the dinner has been canceled. So I was thinking, ah, that if you weren’t otherwise engaged, that I should like to ask you to dinner instead. And the pictures, as well.”

  “Dinner and the pictures?” This really was most unexpected.

  “Yes. At six o’clock, if you can be spared that early. We don’t have to go to the pictures, you know. Not if you’re tired. But I thought . . . well, it’s been an age since I went to them myself.”

  “I see,” she said, although she didn’t, not really. Was he asking her as one colleague might ask another? Or was his intention rather less collegial?

  “But you may well be tired at the end of the day.”

  “No, not at all. I should love to go.” That was true enough, for she did enjoy his company. “You said six o’clock?”

  “Yes. I’ll come round your office and we can walk into the city center from there.”

  “Very well. I look forward to seeing you tomorrow, Mr. Ellis. Good afternoon.”

  “Good afternoon, Miss Brown.”

  She hung up the earpiece on the telephone but made no move to stand. Could it be . . . ?

  “Don’t look so surprised,” said Gladys, who had returned to her desk. “You’d think no one’d ever asked you to the pictures.”

  She ought to have chided Gladys for eavesdropping, but she only shrugged and walked back down the hall, back to her tiny office, where she fell into her chair and stared, her eyes unfocused, at the papers littering its surface.

  The truth was that she hadn’t ever been asked to the pictures. She’d had male friends when she was at Oxford, and later when she’d first moved to Liverpool, but none had ever showed an interest in her beyond the platonic. And then the war had come, and the most she’d ever hoped for was a few more hours of sleep, a cup of tea that was a little stronger, a day on the ward that was a little less taxing.

  But now the war was over, and with or without her, the world would continue to spin on its axis. Life went on, a man she liked and respected had asked her out to dinner and the pictures, and she would go with him and enjoy every minute.

  And not once, not even for an instant, would she spare a thought for another man who had never been hers, who would never be hers, though he had never left her thoughts or fled her dreams, not in all the years she had known him, despaired for him, and longed without hope or expectation for his wounded, solitary soul.

  THE NEXT EVENING she waited outside for Mr. Ellis, not wishing to endure the giggles and whispers of her younger and sillier colleagues. It was a beautiful evening, the temperature pleasantly cool after the heat of the day, and there was no sign of rain in the purpling sky.

  He was nearly on time, only five minutes late, and after he had greeted her with a handshake and an apology, they began the half-hour walk north into the city center.

  “Is there anywhere in particular you’d like to have dinner?” he asked.

  “Not really,” she said, not wanting to admit that the tea shop near her office represented the sum total of her dining experience in Liverpool.

  “Then let’s go to the Phil on Hope Street. They’ve good food, and the interior is . . . well, I’m not sure how to describe it.”

  “You, lost for words?”

  “It doesn’t happen often.”

  Their conversation continued on in a similarly light vein. He seemed younger, away from the office and the myriad pressures weighing down on him, and it was clear he was making an effort to be charming and funny and possibly less single-minded than usual.

  How old was Mr. Ellis? It wasn’t the sort of question she could ask him outright, nor was there any easy way of finding out. He looked to be in his early thirties at most. Most men like him, in his position, were married at that age. She couldn’t divine any flaw in his character or person, at least not at this juncture of their friendship. Perhaps it truly was the case that he’d let the pressures of work take over his life. In that, at least, they were well matched.

  They were soon at the corner of Hope and Hardman Streets, and facing what looked like a misplaced homage to an Oxford college. With an oriel window overhanging the street, elaborately carved stone façade, and exuberant use of architectural styles from several different centuries, the Philharmonic Dining Rooms certainly bore no resemblance to any public house that she’d ever seen.

  The interior was magnificent, if not entirely to Charlotte’s taste, with every v
isible surface decorated in jaw-dropping turn-of-the-century style. Everywhere she looked, her eyes were assaulted: jewel-bright stained glass, panels of exquisite mosaic work on the bar, intricately carved wooden trim, ornate plaster ceilings.

  “You see what I mean?” Mr. Ellis said.

  “I do. I’ve never seen the like.”

  “The Phil is an institution here in Liverpool, if that’s a term one can properly use for an establishment that’s only been around for twenty years or so.”

  “I’ve walked by it often enough, but I never had any reason to come inside before. All this for a public house.”

  “We’d best go along to the dining room. It isn’t quite as eye-catching, but it’ll do.”

  He led her upstairs to a chamber that was somewhat more restrained in its interior decoration. At his request, the waiter seated them at a table in the corner of the room, away from the noise of the other diners. “So that we may talk without shouting,” Mr. Ellis explained.

  The menu, as she’d expected, had been devised with the tastes of men in mind, with an emphasis on meat and potatoes. She wasn’t feeling terribly hungry, so she ordered the chicken-and-leek pie, while he asked for a mutton chop, roast potatoes, creamed spinach, and a pint of ale.

  “Would madam care for anything to drink?” the waiter asked.

  “Do you have any wine? Or cider, perhaps?”

  “We have both, madam.”

  “Well, then . . . perhaps a glass of white wine? Thank you.”

  Rather than pick up the threads of conversation immediately, she looked around the room, which was rapidly filling with diners. Some of them were wearing evening dress—long gowns for the women, black tie for the men—which seemed rather grand for a public house, even one as finely appointed as the Phil.

  “Is it me, or are we rather underdressed for the occasion?” She was wearing her second-best summer frock, a dove-gray linen with white trim, and had thought herself perfectly dressed for the occasion until a few minutes before.

  “The people dressed to the nines? They’re about to go to a concert at the Philharmonic across the road. You wouldn’t have preferred that to the pictures, would you? I mean, I could see if there are any tickets still available—”