Marie put on the brightest face she could manage and went to the theatre with him, determined not to spoil what Charles called his last night of freedom. Driving through the centre of Hull for the first time in weeks, she saw the wrecked streets, with half-demolished buildings, craters and broken masonry everywhere, but Hull New Theatre had been lucky enough to survive the bombing. She took her seat, determined to forget her troubles for a while and immerse herself in the play, but her mind kept flitting to thoughts of her missing father, her injured mother, Alfie’s misery, Pam’s apparent indifference, and the awful responsibility of having all of it dropped squarely on her shoulders. During the interval she pretended enjoyment, smiled, nodded and agreed with the people who were raving about the performance, and when they left the theatre she couldn’t have told anybody what the play had been about.
‘Lucky you’re on a late tomorrow,’ Charles said, as they drove home.
She agreed, her thoughts elsewhere. The journey continued with Charles making conversation, and Marie replying in monosyllables until he brought the car to a halt outside her front door. They sat for a while, idly watching a couple approaching from the far end of the street, the man with his arm round the woman’s waist.
‘Are you going to ask me in for a cup of tea?’
Marie appeared not to have heard. ‘You know, I think I’m going to have to bring Alfie home. I can’t get him out of my mind. There’s something wrong there.’
‘Are you insane? You said yourself that if they hadn’t been evacuated, they’d almost certainly be dead. And at least half of what’s wrong there is Alfie, if you ask me. Your mother was summoned to school to hear complaints about him twice, to my knowledge, and we hadn’t been courting ten months before they went to Bourne. If you want my opinion, the happiest day of your parents’ lives was the day they waved him off.’
‘It was not. How can you say such a thing! Alfie’s a bit impish, but he’s not a bad lad at heart.’
‘A bit impish? Always up to no good, you mean, always playing some stupid prank on somebody. And even if he were the best lad in the world, how can you manage with him at home, with no one to look after him?’
‘He’s eleven. He should be able to look after himself.’
Charles gave a wry smile, and shook his head. ‘There might be some 11-year-olds you’d dare trust in the house on their own, but I wouldn’t take a chance on Alfie. Just don’t do anything hasty, Marie. My mother gave in to Danny and brought him home, and now she’s got even more reason to be terrified during the bombing, and he’s got her on a string, the crafty little twerp. Don’t let Alfie pull the wool over your eyes. Give it a bit longer, see how things go. It’ll probably do him the world of good to be somewhere where he’s not coddled. Toughen him up a bit.’
‘He might not survive being toughened up by a lad twice his size; Ernie strikes me as a nasty piece of work. And his mother’s face would turn the milk sour. They haven’t a good word for our Alfie, either of them.’
‘Well, just let’s forget about Alfie for a bit. Are you going to ask me in?’
She nudged him and nodded towards the couple who were approaching, linked arm in arm.
‘That’s Hannah, that woman who cleans for your mother, isn’t it?’ Marie said. ‘I thought her husband was on the convoys.’
‘He is.’
‘That’s not him, then. He’s in an army uniform.’
Charles eyebrows shot up, and his eyes widened. ‘So he is!’
‘Mam! Mam!’ A little girl dashed out of a gate and ran to greet her. As soon as she was within striking distance Hannah landed a slap on her face that sent her reeling off the pavement and into the road.
Marie jumped out of the car and bounded down the street, reaching them just as Hannah was inserting the key into her front door.
‘Just hold on,’ she shouted, ‘just hold on a bit. I saw that.’
‘Saw what?’
‘I saw what you just did to that bairn. I saw the crack you gave her. You ought to be ashamed of yourself.’
Hannah looked her up and down. ‘You get away and mind your own business. It’s no concern of yours how I look after my own daughter.’
Marie exploded. ‘I’ve just watched you walk down this street, and this bairn’s been sitting on the doorstep, waiting for you. How old is she? About six? You leave her roaming the streets on her own till this time of night and you call that “looking after”?’
Hannah flung the door open. ‘Jenny! Get in that house.’
With her nose and eyes streaming and stifling her sobs, the little girl pulled her cardigan round her skinny frame, and with a wary eye on Hannah, dodged quickly under her arm and went inside. Three strides brought Hannah to the gate, where she tried to stare Marie down – while addressing her comments to Charles, who was just approaching them. ‘Can’t you control your young woman, Charles?’
‘I’m sorry, Hannah, you’ll have to excuse her. She’s got a lot on her mind. Come on, Marie. Come away,’ Charles urged.
‘That’s right, you get her away, tell her to mind her own bloody business, before she gets a piece of my mind. It’s nothing to do with her if I give my own bairn a tap.’
Marie couldn’t believe her ears. ‘I’m sorry, Hannah? That wasn’t just a tap!’ She turned to Charles, outraged. ‘She nearly knocked the bairn’s head off her shoulders. You saw it yourself! And who’s that she’s with, while her husband’s away risking his life on the convoys? Standing there watching her knock the poor man’s bairn about?’
Charles grabbed her shoulders, pulling her away. ‘Come on, Marie. Come away, it really is nothing to do with us.’
The soldier with Hannah shrugged and gave Charles a wink before following Jenny into the house.
Marie shook Charles off, and advanced on Hannah. ‘I saw what you did, and if I see any more of it, I’ll have the law on you. Don’t think I won’t.’
Hannah went in and slammed the door.
‘Marie, let’s go,’ Charles begged. ‘It’s really none of your business.’
She gave him a blistering look. ‘What’s wrong? Are you scared of falling out with her? She’s your mother’s charwoman – it’s her that should be scared of falling out with you! Are you worried your mother might have to scrub her own bloody floors for a change?’
‘Marie, you’re not being rational.’
‘Rational! Is it rational to leave a bairn her age roaming the streets on her own till this time? Anything could have happened to her. What if there’d been a raid?’
‘She’d have known to go to the shelter.’
‘A 6-year-old? What if she’d been hurt?’
‘Come off it, Marie. She’d have been among neighbours. People pouring out of their houses, neighbours who knew her. Somebody would have helped her.’
‘At times like that, people might be too busy looking after themselves and their own. And it’s her own mother that should be the one helping her.’
‘Yes, of course she should, but you can’t impose your standards on other people. And how do you know she’s six?’
‘She can’t be more. I’ve seen her going to school, and she’s not been going that long.’
Marie could barely speak to Charles when they got back to the house.
‘You’re tired,’ he said, trying to placate her, ‘and overwrought. With good reason, I know.’
‘Yes, I am.’
‘Too tired to invite me in for a cup of tea?’
‘Yes, I am.’
‘Don’t I even get a kiss? I’ll be off tomorrow.’
She kissed him on the cheek with as much grace as she could muster.
He held her waist in two strong hands, and gazed deep into her eyes. ‘Will you come and see me off?’
‘I’ll come and see you tomorrow morning before you go,’ she said, turning her face away to evade a kiss. ‘I’ll just have time before I start work.’
She watched him get back in the car and managed to wave him off fairly civilly
as he drove away, then went in and closed the door, not best pleased with Charles for taking Hannah’s side when she was so clearly in the wrong.
Within half an hour she was in bed, desperate to get enough sleep to see her through her next shift at the hospital. Again sleep eluded her. There was nothing she could think of with an easy mind; nowhere she could rest her thoughts and feel tranquil. Her mother had been transferred to the hospital in Beverley, and was out of danger, but still gravely ill. As soon as she was a bit better the hospital would want to discharge her, and who was there to care for her but her daughter? She would have to leave work, and then what would they do for money? No, she couldn’t leave work, she’d bring Pam back from the Stewarts to help, but that might not be easy. Pam had her feet well under the table there, and it was a better spread table than anything Marie could provide. Pam seemed to belong more to the Stewarts now than to her own family. Never mind! If Pam was needed at home, she’d have to come home, and that was the end of it.
And that bloody woman Hannah, having men round while her husband was risking his life on the convoys. He might already be dead; hadn’t Mr Elsworth said that 700,000 tons of shipping had gone to the bottom already? And God knows how many men. But that obviously didn’t bother Hannah. And poor little Jenny – left out all evening and then nearly getting her head knocked off. Poor little scrap – somebody had to stick up for bairns like that.
But what rankled most was Charles. He’d been a dead loss, not only failing to back her up, but apologizing to that slut! ‘I’m sorry, Hannah, you’ll have to excuse her,’ he’d said. Outrageous! Talking about her as if she were deranged! Her thoughts flitted back to Alfie then, crying and pleading to come home, and she pictured herself as hard and cruel as Hannah, fobbing him off instead of comforting him, and then waltzing off and leaving him to the tender mercies of the widow and her son. Alfie wanted to come to the funeral, and it might be soon – something else to face.
She got up and wrote a letter to Pam but left it unsealed. She’d finish it and send it as soon as she knew something definite. That done, she went back to bed to toss and turn, sleep little and fitfully, and wake from time to time in the middle of dreams of attacks on defenceless children who changed from Jenny into Alfie and then back again, until they were one and the same. She awoke at dawn to the awful realization that she truly was on her own. There was no one else to shoulder any of the responsibility for them all. Everything that had to be done would have to be done by her, and her alone.
Hannah opened the door of the Elsworths’ house the following morning, and gave Marie one long, silent, hard-faced stare, but she had misjudged her opponent. Marie stared straight back, boring right into her eyes, and Hannah was the first to look away. Then she turned her back and sauntered up the stairs. Marie stepped inside and closed the door after herself.
‘Hello?’ she called.
‘In the kitchen!’ Mrs Elsworth answered.
Marie walked along the hallway past the telephone on the polished table, and found her by the Rayburn, pouring steaming coffee into four cups.
‘You see, you were expected,’ she said. ‘We’ll just have time to drink this before Charles has to leave.’
Marie went and stood beside her. ‘I thought Hannah might have had her orders to register for employment in some government work by now,’ she commented.
‘If she has, she hasn’t mentioned it to me.’
‘Have you ever seen her daughter?’
Mrs Elsworth’s manner became guarded. ‘Once or twice.’
‘Did Charles tell you about last night?’
‘He mentioned something, very briefly.’
Marie gave her version, also briefly, and as dispassionately as she could.
‘I’m afraid I agree with Charles,’ Mrs Elsworth said. ‘I never get involved in other people’s family affairs. Hannah’s worked here for three years, and she’s been very reliable. I really prefer not to know about her private life. It’s not my concern.’
Marie felt she’d been properly put in her place, and resolved to say no more – not here, at any rate. What would be the point? It was clear that she would receive no back-up from this quarter.
Charles and his father provided a welcome interruption.
‘I’m glad you’ve come.’ Charles gave her a wide smile and pulled out a chair for her.
‘Thanks, Chas,’ she smiled back, using the nickname more as one in the eye for Mrs Elsworth than because she felt much friendlier towards him. He dropped a kiss on the back of her neck as she sat down. His father carried two of the coffee cups to the table, and pulled a chair out for his wife. Mrs Elsworth brought the other two, and put one down in front of Marie, her lips compressed into that increasingly familiar thin line of disapproval.
When the coffee was finished Mrs Elsworth took the cups to the sink. Charles got up, and putting his arms round his mother, gave her a squeeze.
Marie saw the tears start to her eyes. ‘Come back safe,’ she whispered. ‘I won’t come to the station. I’ll say goodbye here, and here’s where I pray I’ll see you again.’
She followed them to the door, brushing tears away with a lawn handkerchief and Marie regretted her childish insistence on her pet name for Charles. She was just about to say so when Hannah came downstairs with her yellow duster and thrust herself into the gathering.
‘So long, Charles,’ she said, with a knowing wink. ‘When you’re at that camp, and they bring a lorry load of Land Army girls in for you to dance with, don’t do anything I wouldn’t do!’
Marie’s jaw dropped at the cheek of her, and Charles gave Hannah an unfathomable look. ‘I certainly won’t,’ he said.
Mrs Elsworth stopped crying in an instant, her face taut and her manner icy. ‘You’ll find some washing-up in the kitchen, Hannah, and the floor needs mopping,’ she snapped.
Nothing daunted, Hannah sashayed down the hallway singing a snatch from an Andrews Sisters number about a boogie woogie bugle boy. ‘Da daah – da da – daah da!’ she bawled. ‘Da daah – da da – daah da!’
‘We’d better be off,’ Mr Elsworth said.
He tactfully said his own goodbyes when he dropped Charles and Marie at the station.
Beneath her all-sweetness-and-light exterior Marie was still smouldering about Charles’s failure to back her up with Hannah, but now was not the time to bring it up and spoil their last few moments together.
He was happily oblivious, or pretending to be. ‘I’m sorry I have to go and leave you to deal with this mess with your parents on your own, Marie,’ he said, and the hazel eyes gazing into hers had a truly troubled look. ‘If I had any choice in the matter, I’d stay and help, but I haven’t, so I’ll have to do it by proxy. Dad’s promised to run you up to Beverley whenever you want to visit your mother, as long as the petrol ration stretches to it.’
‘I should think his petrol ration will stretch a lot further with you away,’ she said.
‘Ha ha. Anyway, keep him to it. I was thinking that if we got married on my next leave, you could get the allowance. At least it would help towards paying the rent and other expenses. Until then you might be able to get some help from the government. Dad will look into that for you, as well.’
She looked up, startled. ‘Is that a proposal? We’re not even engaged!’
Charles pulled a tiny box out of his inside pocket. ‘That’s your fault. We might have been engaged yesterday, if you’d asked me in. What do you say, Marie? Shall we make a go of it?’ He placed the little box in her hand.
She flipped the lid open. On a cushion of deep blue velvet lay a beautiful gold ring. Three bright diamonds twinkled up at her.
‘Oh, Charles, I’m sorry.’
His face fell.
‘I mean, I’m sorry about last night,’ she said. ‘But why on earth didn’t you back me up with Hannah?’
‘Let’s forget last night; it’s water under the bridge. Does that mean yes? Do you like the ring?’
She slipped it onto her
ring finger. ‘It’s a dead fit. I like it better than Nancy’s. It looks real nice, doesn’t it?’
‘Does that mean yes?’
She looked up and laughed. ‘Go on, then.’
‘Don’t go overboard, will you?’ he grinned and, pulling her towards him, gave her a long, lingering kiss before releasing her and looking deep into her eyes. ‘I’ve got some plans for us, my beauty, when the war’s over. Wider skies, and broader horizons. We’re going to spread our wings and fly.’
‘Hull’s got pretty wide skies and broad horizons,’ she said. ‘The countryside’s flat for miles around.’
‘You know what I mean.’
‘I do, but I’m needed here.’
‘I know. I understand what a terrible time you’re going through, Marie,’ he said earnestly, ‘but it won’t last forever. I wish I could be with you but I can’t, so I’ll help in the only way I can.’ He put two five-pound notes into her pocket. ‘Keep them, just in case. I don’t want you to be stuck for money.’
‘I’ll take it, but I won’t spend it unless I absolutely have to. I’ll hand it back when I see you again, if I can.’
He pulled her close and kissed her, then said: ‘You know, I’d trust you with my life, never mind ten pounds. It’s there for you to spend, if you get stuck. You’re the most honest, decent, unselfish girl I’ve ever met, but don’t let that brother of yours con you into having him home. He can’t look after himself, and you’ll find you’ve made a rod for your own back. When your mother comes out of hospital get Pam back instead, and let her make herself useful. She’s old enough to do her share. It shouldn’t all land on your shoulders.’
‘I’ll have no choice if I want to carry on working, but I don’t think she’ll come willingly.’
‘Then make her come however it has to be. I do love you, old thing. Did I ever tell you that?’
‘Once or twice.’ He looked expectantly into her eyes, and she softened enough to say the words she knew he was waiting for: ‘I love you too.’
And it was the truth. She did love Charles. She watched him go, certain they would marry and longing for the day when the war was over and she was settled with him, with a couple of miniature Charleses clinging to her skirts, but she’d lied when she’d said she was sorry about last night. She wasn’t sorry at all, either about having a go at Hannah, or sending Charles home after he’d failed to back her up. He’d let her down, and he deserved to be made to feel it.
Angel of the North Page 6
