Angel of the North

by Annie Wilkinson

  ‘No I wasn’t,’ Marie protested. ‘I like our Alfie. We work pretty long hours in nursing, anyhow, so I didn’t see much of him before he was evacuated, and I never minded his cigarette cards and his marbles. I even played battleships with him sometimes.’

  Charles threw his coat on top of hers and followed her into the front room. ‘Oh, well, you might be singing a different tune when he gets older, and starts sticking his nose into everything you do.’

  Marie moved the fireguard to stir the coal fire into life. ‘Like the tune you sang, when Danny told that story about how your mother had found my hairclips in your bed?’

  An indignant flush rose to Charles’s cheeks, and he pulled at his tie. ‘Quite. I hope you don’t take any notice of him, little shit-stirrer.’

  ‘I don’t think he means any harm by it. It’s just his heavy-handed idea of humour. You were a boy yourself once.’

  ‘I was a different boy from him, then. I say, I’m starving, aren’t you?’

  She stood up and went to draw the curtains hanging at the long bay window. ‘We should have stayed at your house for some of your mother’s steak and kidney pudding, instead of having to faff about making something here.’

  He caught her and held her close. ‘So we could listen to Danny’s tittle-tattle and attempts to be funny all night? No fear. I’d rather be here with you, just our two selves with no ghastly younger brothers around; that’s enough company for me. We’ll have a cosy evening in.’

  ‘That’s if the sirens don’t go. We used to have some lovely cosy times here, before the war, with our Alfie on the carpet playing with his train set, and Mum and Dad teaching me and Pam how to play whist. She was only eleven then, but she soon learned to play a decent game, and she could shuffle like a cardsharp. It seems like a different world when I look back on it, it was so peaceful,’ Marie said, and the thought struck her that of the two children it was Pam that she missed the least. Alfie might be a bit of a scallywag, but he was a real companion. Whatever was going on, he wanted to be in the thick of it. Pam was quieter, and more self-contained, a very stately little body, with a high opinion of herself – maybe because she’d always been their mother’s favourite.

  ‘With just you and me, it will be a lot more than cosy,’ Chas said, holding onto her more determinedly this time, brushing his lips against hers.

  A surge of dangerous desire made her take fright, and back off. A lot more than cosy might be a lot less than safe.

  ‘Shall we find something to eat? You’re not the only one that’s starving.’

  He held her at arm’s length, and kept hold for a moment or two. ‘I think you realize I’m starving for a lot more than food,’ he said. ‘But we’ll go and forage first – if you insist.’ He released her, led the way through the dining room into the kitchen and began opening cupboard doors.

  ‘There’s a dance on at the Baths,’ she suggested. ‘I wouldn’t mind going for a jig.’

  Chas turned from his foraging, and looked directly into her eyes. ‘When we’ve got a house entirely to ourselves, for the first time ever? How long do you think it will be before this happens again? You are joking, I hope?’

  ‘No. And the cupboards are bare, except for a few bread cakes and some potted meat Dad made. And a few jars of pickles and bottled pears from last year. I told you we should have eaten at your mother’s.’

  ‘Potted meat on bread cakes will do. I say, what’s this?’ He pulled a couple of corked bottles out of the cupboard.

  ‘Dad’s wine, elderberry and parsnip. Be careful of that.’

  ‘Your dad won’t begrudge a drop to a serviceman defending his country, will he?’

  ‘You’re not defending his country, you’re standing about in his kitchen. But it’s not that he’d begrudge it – it’s just that it’s a lot stronger than you’d think.’

  ‘Oh, it won’t be too strong for me. I can hold my drink all right. You make the sandwiches, and I’ll pour the wine. Where are the glasses?’

  ‘Oh, Chas, not with beef paste and pickled beetroot. A cup of tea will do for me, thanks. I might have a glass when I’ve done the washing-up.’

  At half-past eight, Marie drew all the blackout curtains, and then joined Charles on the sofa in the front room. He poured her a glass of parsnip wine, and raised his own glass. ‘Here’s to us,’ he said, and took a sip.

  ‘Hey, this stuffs not bad. Not bad at all.’

  ‘Glad you like it. Usually kept for high days and holidays, like Christmas and New Year. We popped a few corks for Mam and Dad’s silver wedding last year as well.’

  She relaxed against his shoulder, sipping her wine and gazing into the fire, the strains of the Glenn Miller Orchestra wafting peacefully over them. He gave her a gentle squeeze and nuzzled her ear. ‘I’m certainly in the mood, Marie. Aren’t you?’

  She pushed him away, but not too far, and saw his eyes, dark with desire. He pressed towards her again until she felt his breath on her neck. ‘Come here,’ he persisted, and turning to kiss her he let his hand fall on her knee and began gently stroking her leg. ‘You’ve got no stockings on. Oh, for the day when women start to wear nylons again. It’s so exciting when you get to their suspenders, and a bare stretch of skin, and you know you’ve nearly reached the Promised Land.’

  ‘The allotment’s the only Promised Land I’ll be going to, and I’m not likely to be wearing nylons to go there, am I? Or to help in your garden.’

  ‘No, and you’ve still got dirty feet. Tell you what,’ he murmured, ‘I’ll run you the regulation five-inch bath, and help you to undress . . .’

  There was a faint scent of fresh sweat on him, warm, male, and wildly erotic. ‘And just whose suspenders did your hands ever get to, Charles Elsworth?’

  ‘None that matter, certainly,’ he said, caressing that area of her thigh as he spoke. ‘Yours are the only ones I care about.’

  ‘If I had any on. Stop it, will you?’ she murmured, tilting her head back as he kissed her throat and making no effort to hold him off.

  ‘Stop it, why? Stop it because you like it? You do like it, don’t you, sweetheart?’

  ‘It’s too dangerous.’

  ‘That’s why it’s so exciting,’ he murmured, kissing her briefly on the lips, while his hand moved ever higher, until his fingers were inside her knicker leg. ‘I do love you, Marie.’

  ‘I love you too,’ she breathed, knowing she must be mad to let him carry on. She ought to stop him for both their sakes, but something primeval in her thrilled to his touch. She felt herself on the brink of something profound and powerful, some forbidden knowledge, deep and carnal, from which there could be no return, and despite her parent’s oft-repeated warnings about ‘not bringing any trouble to this door’ running through her mind, she couldn’t summon the will to resist. She let him push her onto her back. Oh, well, to hell with it, she thought. Let nature take its course . . .

  The wail of the air-raid siren jolted her back to sanity. With her senses aflame and knees trembling, she pushed Charles away and got up unsteadily. Laughing with relief at her escape, she threw a bucket of slack on the fire and put the fireguard up.

  ‘There’s still some hot water in the kettle, Chas. Boil it again, will you, and chuck a couple of spoons of coffee in the Thermos flask? You’ll find it in the cupboard nearest the outside door. I’ll get us a blanket apiece.’

  ‘Relax. It might be a false alarm.’

  ‘Relax nothing!’ she said, beginning to feel even more jittery than usual when anticipating a raid. ‘It’s coming, I tell you, and seeing I’m off duty I want to be in the shelter. Especially if it’s as bad as the one we had a fortnight ago.’

  ‘Bugger! Bugger! Buggeration!’ Charles swore. ‘Bloody Hitler, bloody Goering, bugger them all!’

  Poor Chas! Nearly reached his promised land, then foiled by the Luftwaffe. Her honour, saved by Herr Hitler! Marie exploded into laughter and ran upstairs for the blankets. Life, survival, first and foremost. And virginity keeps
pretty well, she thought. She was beginning to think she’d kept hers almost too long, but maybe it wouldn’t hurt to preserve it a bit longer, seeing that, for all his protestations of undying love, Chas had made no serious commitment as yet. And going by all that talk about bare thighs and suspenders she wasn’t his first. ‘Who runs for a bus they’ve already caught?’ she’d once heard said, and Chas had caught one or two, by the sound of it. No, if he was a very good boy, he could have her honour at a more convenient time – maybe after he’d given her that engagement ring – and she wanted one just as good as Nancy’s. ‘Do you good to wait, my lad,’ she murmured. ‘Nobody values anything they get too easily.’

  On her return downstairs she threw the blankets down by the front door and then put on her coat and went into the kitchen to lock the back door and toss the first-aid kit, a torch and a bottle of brandy into a bag. Charles was still waiting for the kettle to boil.

  ‘Just like a nurse,’ he said, looking at the first-aid kit, and then at the brandy. ‘Are we going to get sozzled?’

  ‘Medicinal purposes,’ Marie answered, listening to the fearsome rising and falling of the sirens. ‘I wish that kettle would hurry up. You get your coat on while I wait for it.’

  ‘We could go without the flask.’

  ‘You’ve changed your tune. I thought you didn’t want to go at all. Better hang on till it’s boiled. It might be hours before the all clear. We might be glad of a hot drink. Where’s Smut?’

  Charles went to get his coat, and find the kitten. Marie was just filling the flask when she heard a howl of pain followed by a string of curses. He returned to the kitchen holding Smut by his scruff.

  ‘I guessed you’d found him,’ she grinned.

  ‘Vicious little beast,’ he said. ‘He’s scratched my hands to ribbons. Here, you can have him. I’ll carry everything else.’

  Marie followed him out, flicking off the lights as she went.

  Chapter 3

  It was ten o’clock by the time they left the house and joined a group of neighbours trooping to the communal shelter. Feeling even more jittery than usual during a raid, Marie looked skyward at a moon that was a week past full.

  One of the neighbours gave a sardonic laugh. ‘Aye, a lovely bomber’s moon that, lass! I wonder what they’ve got in store for us this time.’

  ‘At least Pam and Alfie are safe,’ she said. ‘Thank God Mam saw sense in the end, and got them evacuated.’

  Edith Maltby, known to Marie since childhood as Aunt Edie, was clinging on to her son, George’s, arm. Her poor eyesight made her very cautious outside, though she managed well enough in her own home. Her late husband had been in France with Marie’s father during the Great War, and the two men and their wives had been neighbours and the closest of friends until his death. ‘Your mam got the bairns out of the way just in time,’ she said. ‘I’ve hardly had two nights’ sleep this past three months. It’s been terrible.’

  ‘She didn’t do it willingly,’ Marie said, linking Aunt Edie’s other arm, ‘especially after so many bairns went off at the start of the war, and then came back home because nothing was happening.’

  ‘Where is she? Are they following us, your mam and dad?’

  ‘No. They’ve gone to East Hull, to my aunt Clara’s. They’ll be going to the shelter on Ellis Street.’ Marie shivered, as the feeling that ‘someone had walked over her grave’ swept through her. ‘I hope they’ll be safe,’ she said.

  ‘I hope we’ll all be safe. Have you packed nursing in, then, Marie?’ George asked.

  ‘No. Just got a couple of days off, before Chas’s leave ends. I’ll go to the infirmary as soon as the all clear sounds, see what the damage is. I’m working in casualty now; there’ll be plenty to do there when the raid’s over, I’ve no doubt.’

  ‘You must wish you’d gone in for being a shorthand typist. They’re crying out for them as well as for nurses.’

  ‘I couldn’t sit still for long enough.’

  ‘Funny, after all the time we spent together as kids, I never pictured you as a nurse. Always imagined you’d faint at the sight of blood.’

  ‘I never pictured you as a civil engineer, come to that. But it’s surprising how soon you get used to the sight of blood. One of our doctors keeps telling us: other men’s pains are easy to bear – and when you’ve seen enough of them, they are! Isn’t that shocking?’

  ‘No, it’s as it should be. Otherwise nobody would be able to do the job, would they? Seen anything of Nancy?’

  ‘Just about every day. I’ve seen the engagement ring,’ Marie said, with a telling glance up at Charles. ‘I did her a big favour, introducing her to you. You’ve done her proud, George.’

  He gave her a satisfied smile. ‘Be a while before we can get married, though. She wants to pass her finals first, and I want to get a bit of money together so we can set up home in style. What about you two?’

  Lieutenant Charles Elsworth gave George a frosty stare. He didn’t approve of men who failed to enlist. Reserved occupations, cowards and conscientious objectors, they were all the same to him, and Marie was embarrassed to see that he took no trouble to hide his contempt for her childhood companion.

  She answered George for both of them. ‘Oh, well, I have to get my finals as well. We don’t want to rush into anything, do we, Chas?’

  ‘Some of us might not survive the war,’ Charles said. ‘Men who are at the front, fighting for their country.’

  ‘Any one of us might not survive the war,’ George commented. ‘So far there have been more deaths among civilians than soldiers. Our firemen have got more chance of being killed than them, not to mention the engineers. My mother’s got as much chance of being killed as anybody at the front.’

  Charles did not deign to answer, and knowing George as she did, Marie expected him to drop the argument. To her surprise, he persisted. This was a very different George from the kid she’d grown up with.

  ‘Imagine if every able-bodied man joined up – who’d keep the city functioning after the raids?’ he demanded. ‘Repair the gas mains? The water supply? The electricity? Everything that’s vital to the life of the city? What about the roads, bridges, houses? What would happen to the people? How would the port function – what about the shipping? We can’t leave it all to women and old men.’

  ‘George is an assistant to Mr Morris, the City Engineer.’ Aunt Edie said, her voice so full of pride and awe that she might have been speaking of some sort of deity. And she had good grounds for her pride in her son, Marie thought. Throughout his childhood George had been the sort of quiet lad that nobody took any notice of. He’d never distinguished himself at school, and he’d had a long spell of unemployment after losing his delivery job. But to everyone’s surprise it had been the making of him. He’d used the time to go to night classes and study, and everybody had been staggered when he’d won a scholarship to university, none more so than George himself.

  ‘When every raid is over there’s plenty of hard work for us,’ he went on. ‘Day and night.’

  ‘Don’t the military take on rescue work? Don’t they carry out demolitions?’ Charles demanded. ‘I seem to remember seeing some of our chaps doing that. I’ve even read about it in the papers. In fact, I know some of the chaps who’ve done it, and there are long, hard days of work for them, as well as for the civilians. The military don’t shirk anything.’

  ‘And we’re very glad of the help. But they’re not ultimately responsible for getting everything back in working order, we are. And they help when they happen to be around, and they aren’t, always.’

  ‘Really!’ Charles bristled, and left it at that, since they had arrived at the shelter and George, ever careful of his mother, was helping her down into it.

  ‘I wonder how long we’ll be here this time?’ she said, groping her way along. ‘I hope them Londoners realize how lucky they are with their Underground. They’re a lot safer than we are, with our three sides and a concrete top, and only one step down.’


  ‘It’s the water table, Mam,’ George said.

  ‘Well it’s a poor lookout for us, lad, whatever it is.’

  ‘I’m off to Control Headquarters,’ he said, when his mother was settled. ‘We’re a double act, you and me, Marie.’

  ‘How’s that?’ she smiled.

  ‘You bind the wounds of the people, but the city is our patient. We bind the wounds of the city. We can both look forward to plenty of hard work, I reckon.’ George glanced in Charles’s direction. ‘Will you see Mam back home?’

  ‘We’ll see her all right, lad,’ another neighbour piped up. ‘No fears on that score.’

  ‘Jumped-up delivery boy,’ Charles muttered, glaring at George’s retreating back, ‘Binding the wounds of the city! Pompous ass! Who does he think he is?’

  ‘Shut up, Chas!’ Marie hissed, and glanced towards Aunt Edie, who showed no sign of having heard. ‘You must be very proud of George,’ Marie spoke up. ‘He’s done well.’

  ‘I am.’ A look of anxiety clouded her face. ‘I only wish his work wasn’t so dangerous. If anything happens to him, it’ll be a bad job for me.’

  ‘He’ll be all right,’ Marie reassured her, and then thought how stupid her words were. How could she or anyone else know whether he’d be all right or not? It was just one of those things people said that sounded kind, but was really meant to shut other people up, and make them keep their worries to themselves. She wrapped herself in her blanket and leaned on Charles’s shoulder, listening to Aunt Edie regaling her neighbours about George and his achievements, and how highly the other gods in the city engineering department thought of him . . .

  Marie had dozed off before the first bomb jolted her awake at half-past three. At five o’clock the all clear sounded.

  ‘I’m going down to the hospital,’ she said when they left the shelter, to breath the smoke and smell the bombed city. ‘I might as well go now. I’ll take Smut home and shut him in, and then I’m off. I’ll only feel worse if I try to snatch an hour’s sleep. I’m on an early shift anyway.’