Angel of the North

by Annie Wilkinson

  Mrs Elsworth bristled slightly. ‘Quite,’ she said. ‘Anyway, we told her Charles will shoulder his responsibilities.’

  Charles was shouldering his responsibilities now, then, Marie thought, and wondered whether the offer to bring the baby up had been withdrawn. She didn’t like to ask.

  Chapter 36

  ‘I shouldn’t be in a pub really,’ Marie said, as she walked into the Queens Hotel on Charles’s arm on the first evening of his leave. ‘Nurses have been sacked for less.’

  They had come out to set a date for the wedding and make plans for the future, including finding a house – and there were a few other matters to be discussed.

  He squeezed her close and dropped a kiss on her forehead. ‘You’re not in uniform, and it’s in your own time. You can do what you like in your own time. It’s a free country, or what are we fighting for?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter whether I’m in uniform or not. Nurses are not to be seen in pubs, and if Matron hears I’ve been in one I’ll be on the carpet.’

  ‘We’re here to talk, somewhere warm and congenial, and out of the way of my parents,’ he said. ‘It’s too dark and too cool to be tramping round the park, and it’s probably going to chuck it down with rain. Anyway, you’ll be leaving soon, so what does it matter? You’ll be married before she can sack you, and after you’re married, she’ll sack you anyway.’

  ‘You’re absolutely right. But I still can’t get over it, so let’s sit in that far corner, where we won’t be noticed.’

  He went to the bar and came back with a pint and a bitter shandy, and sat facing her, hiding her from view with his back to the room. ‘Well, I’ve been to see Hannah,’ he said. ‘I got that job over with before I came to meet you. I told her I’m glad that her poor bloody husband’s come back, and I’m sorry for the trouble I’ve given him. I gave her a substantial contribution to the baby’s upkeep, and I said we’d be getting married before my leave’s ended. So that’s it.’

  ‘Did she say anything about your mother and dad offering to bring the baby up?’

  ‘She did.’

  ‘What do you think to it?’

  ‘I think it’s a terrible idea, but I don’t know what would be a good one, under the circumstances. Hannah says her husband’s adamant he won’t take her back with the baby.’

  Marie sipped her shandy in silence, turning that information over in her mind while watching the people huddled in the quiet corner on the opposite side of the pub. They had evidently wanted to escape too much notice as well, since they were doing a brisk trade in black market goods, probably looted from shops whose owners had been unlucky enough to have had windows blown out and walls blasted off during the raids. The landlord and the barmaids were studiously turning blind eyes.

  ‘What do you think to her, then?’ she asked. ‘The baby, I mean?’

  ‘She’s a pretty little thing. It’s funny what a difference seeing her makes. Everything’s suddenly become hideously real. It really brings it home. What a shitty situation, and there’s no way out of it without hurting somebody. I feel sick to my stomach.’

  Marie was quiet again for a minute, deep in thought, wondering whether she herself was capable of making the heroic sacrifice it would take for her to bring up Hannah’s baby: a baby that his mother was insinuating might not even be Charles’s. ‘Your mother said she couldn’t see any likeness to anybody in your family,’ she said.

  ‘Neither can I, but I seem to be the most likely candidate, and although I’m bloody sure there are others I don’t know them personally. And the timing’s right, so it would be pointless to argue, as well as beneath my dignity. There’s a child, somebody’s got to feed and clothe her, and it looks as if I’ve been elected. I’m only sorry it involves you. It makes a dent in your housekeeping money before we’re even married.’

  ‘That doesn’t worry me unduly,’ Marie said drily. ‘We’ve got living on next to nothing off to a fine art in our family, so I’m well equipped for making a little money go a very long way.’ She grimaced and, despite his letter, full of solemn promises that he would stick to his marriage vows, she couldn’t help adding: ‘Just make sure you don’t get any more babies where you shouldn’t.’

  He frowned. ‘You do like to rub it in, don’t you? I’ve given you my word I won’t.’

  ‘Speak of the devil,’ Marie breathed, and pressed hard on his foot, her eyes wide as she glanced meaningfully to where Hannah stood, and then looked back to Charles. ‘Don’t turn round yet. In fact, don’t turn round at all. She’s just walked in, and she’s got the baby!’

  Hannah was not quite her old self; she had that bit of extra fat round her middle that Marie had often noticed on women just after they’d given birth. But her hair was carefully arranged, and she was made up. The widow’s weeds were gone. She was well dressed, but the baby in her arms was wrapped in a matted, yellowed, old knitted shawl. She approached a quiet couple who were sitting with friends in the centre of the room. ‘I’ve just been round to the local, looking for you,’ Marie heard her say. ‘Somebody said you’d be here.’

  ‘Yes, better beer,’ the man said. ‘Better class of customer, as well.’

  Hannah put the baby in the woman’s arms. ‘You have her,’ she said. ‘I’ve listened to you harping on about wanting a baby often enough, so now you’ve got one. I can’t keep her. Larry’s home and he wants me back, but he won’t have her.’

  The man gave a sardonic smile, and shook his head. ‘He wants you back? He must be puddled. He’s swallowed too much seawater; it’s affected his brain. But then, it’s probably not his brain doing his thinking for him.’

  Hannah ignored him, focusing solely on his wife. ‘You have her. Here, there’s a bag of nappies and things, and there’s the bottles and the National Dried. She should make something, she’s from clever enough people.’ With that, Hannah dumped two carrier bags on the chair beside the woman and walked away.

  ‘Hey, hold on a minute! Haven’t you forgotten something?’ the man protested, scraping back his chair, and getting to his feet.

  Hannah turned to him, but didn’t move a step. The bargaining in the opposite corner had ceased, as every eye turned towards the momentous trade being conducted in the middle of the room. Completely unabashed, Hannah continued as if she and the woman she was dealing with were the only people present. ‘If you’ll have her, I promise I’ll never take her away from you, no matter what. She’s yours for good.’

  The sight took Marie’s breath away. She had an impulse to spring to her feet, to drag Chas to Hannah and knock their heads together, and order them to love and to cherish this infant they’d so carelessly brought into the world. Had she been certain that Hannah would make a half-decent mother, had she not had a tiny, niggling doubt planted in her mind about Chas being the father, she might have done it. As it was, she froze.

  ‘Oh, aye, she’s ours till you change your mind, knowing you,’ the man said.

  ‘She is a beautiful little lass, Bert. She’s beautiful,’ the woman said, looking intently into the baby’s face and holding her tighter. ‘I’m for keeping her.’

  Hannah went and sat close to her. ‘She’s good, as well,’ she said. ‘She never cries, and she’s nearly sleeping through the night already. She’s no trouble at all.’

  Bert looked at the baby, and then his wife, and then at Hannah. His eyes narrowed and his mouth contracted into a hard line. ‘If we take her, it’s going to be done legal. You sign her over to us. I’m not having you coming round to stake any claims, once she’s settled with Molly.’

  Hannah’s face was unreadable. ‘I won’t,’ she said. ‘I’ll be with Larry. I’m giving her up for good. Just look after her, that’s all.’

  Marie jumped up and swept past them all, out of the Queen’s Hotel and into the dark, wet October evening. She unfurled her umbrella with its flapping spoke and sped across the road and down Princes Avenue, feeling as if she’d swallowed a brick. A baby – she’d just witnessed a baby being
given away with about as much ceremony as if she’d been a stray animal, or one of those black market tins of corned beef or packets of cigarettes the corner party had been selling.

  ‘Marie! Marie!’ Chas was running after her. He caught her elbow.

  ‘That’s the most awful thing I’ve ever seen in my life,’ she gasped. ‘She gave her own baby away, and she acted as if it was nothing!’

  ‘What can you expect?’ he demanded. ‘A woman like that, who’ll betray her husband and let other men do anything they like with her. If she’ll do that, well, what won’t she do?’

  ‘A woman like that?’ she echoed, breaking free from him and walking rapidly away. ‘What about a man like that,’ she called over her shoulder. ‘What about a man who’ll romp around with somebody else’s wife until he gets her pregnant, and then sit and watch their baby being given away in a public house!’

  ‘What could I do?’ he asked, catching up with her. ‘What could I do to stop it? I’ve no say in it. Should I have jumped up and said: “She’s mine! Give her to me!” What would you have felt about that? Would you have wanted her in the middle of our marriage?’

  A surge of anger made Marie irrational. ‘I’d have wanted it never to have happened! I’d have wanted you not to meddle with anybody else’s bloody stocking tops, and promised lands!’

  ‘You’re just being childish! It’s too late for that. It all started before we even started courting!’

  ‘Then it should have stopped.’

  ‘You know what I sometimes think?’ he exploded. ‘You don’t want a flesh-and-blood man at all. You want a bloody eunuch!’

  She ran until she could run no longer, then slowed to a walk to get her breath back. Chas had stopped following her by then. She walked on, thinking about what he’d said, and wondered – could she? Could she have brought that baby up, a baby whose mother she so heartily detested? She doubted it very much, and she tormented herself with that thought until she got back to Aunt Edie’s and fell, weeping, into George’s arms.

  Chapter 37

  ‘Leave him, then,’ George said, when she’d spilled it all out to him and the storm had passed. ‘Leave him to look after his own illegitimate children. Why should you have to be bothered with it?’

  She drank the remains of the watery cocoa he’d made for her. ‘I’m on an early tomorrow,’ she said, picking up both empty beakers. ‘I’ll just rinse these, and then I’ll have to get some sleep, or I’ll be fit for nothing.’

  ‘No, think about it, Marie,’ he said. ‘When this war’s over, there’ll be plenty of work in reconstruction. I’m a civil engineer, there’ll be openings for me everywhere, at decent pay. We could travel England, the world even, me taking work on contract, save up, and then go to America, maybe settle there, where they’re more interested in what a chap can do than in his accent, or whether he went to a bloody council school.’

  ‘You’d leave England?’ she said.

  ‘Not half,’ he assured her. ‘New start, new system. America’s the best.’

  ‘I never knew you felt like that.’

  ‘No. There’s a lot people don’t know about me. Anyway, think about it. We could get married, and travel the world.’

  ‘You couldn’t leave your mother.’

  ‘Think about it,’ he said, ignoring her last comment.

  She went to wash the beakers, thinking about it. Perhaps George had forgotten his mother’s existence in his flights of fancy, or envisaged taking her along with him. Or putting her in cold storage somewhere until his return.

  The kitchen door opened. ‘Marie,’ George said. ‘It’s Chas. He’s at the door.’

  ‘Tell him I’ve gone to bed,’ she said.

  ‘He’ll know you haven’t. He saw me come through to the kitchen.’

  ‘Never mind. Just tell him.’

  George was back in the kitchen within a minute, carrying a huge tin of jam.

  ‘He’s gone. He left you this. He says he’ll see you after work tomorrow.’

  Marie shook her head. After everything that had happened who but Chas would have thought of going back into the Queen’s for a tin of black market jam? The answer came to her almost at once. Alfie. Another one with a strong practical streak in his make-up – Alfie might have done something like that, she thought, and it suddenly struck her how alike they were, at bottom.

  George was looking expectantly at her, still holding the jam.

  ‘You have it, George,’ she said.

  ‘Well,’ he said, eyeing the tin with evident longing, ‘it’ll liven the rations up, won’t it? I won’t say no to a scrape of it, now and then.’

  ‘Open it now, if you like,’ she said. ‘I’m going to bed. I feel drained, as if somebody’s pulled the plug, and all my energy’s gone down the sink hole.’

  ‘Think about what I’ve said, Marie,’ George repeated, already rummaging in a drawer for the tin-opener. He stopped, and turned to her, quite serious. ‘About us getting married, I mean.’

  ‘All right, George,’ she said, too sickened by the sins and sorrows of the world to be capable of adding to them by turning him down just at that moment. And her mother’s dying wish had been that she should marry George. So what was to stop her? He was kind, capable, hard-working, and good-looking, in his quiet way. He’d never had any entanglements with any married women, and he had no children to complicate matters. They had similar backgrounds, and to any impartial observer it would look like a perfect match. It might even be a perfect match.

  She went to bed, and awoke the following morning reliving her parting from Chas at Hull station, when she’d watched him go, certain that they’d marry, and visualizing herself presenting him with his firstborn child. But his firstborn child had gone astray, and was not hers.

  Chapter 38

  Charles was waiting for her outside Endike Lane Council School at the end of her shift at the dressing station there, wearing his army uniform, and on foot.

  ‘I say, I’d have liked it better if you’d come to the door yourself yesterday, instead of sending that twerp George to lie to me about your being in bed,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, well,’ she shrugged.

  Seeing that no apology was forthcoming he said, ‘Come on. I’ll walk you back to your aunt Edie’s, and as soon as you’re out of your uniform, I’ll take you into Hull for your wedding outfit. We should just catch the shops before they close.’

  ‘You can’t do that, Chas. It’s bad luck for you to see it before the day.’

  ‘I’ll give you the money, and you can get Nancy to help you choose it, then.’

  ‘You’re so sensitive, Chas. Asking Nancy to help choose a wedding outfit might not be the most tactful thing to do, at the moment.’

  ‘Oh, well. Somebody else, then.’

  They walked on in silence until they got to the crossroads.

  ‘Did you tell your mother her granddaughter was auctioned off, with the tins of jam?’ she asked, as they turned down Cranbrook Avenue.

  ‘I did not. I didn’t tell her anything about it. I gave Hannah a pile of money for her upkeep, though, and I didn’t see her pass it on to the couple who took her.’

  ‘Bert and Molly, do you mean?’

  ‘All right, Bert and Molly. I think they’ve a better right to it than Hannah. I’ve a good mind to go and demand it back.’

  ‘Well, why not? You can probably take it in kind, if she’s already spent it.’

  She’d hit a nerve. Charles stopped, grasped her shoulders, and shook her. ‘You talk about being sensitive. I can’t listen to any more of this. I’m beginning to think you enjoy sticking the knife in. You’re driving me mad!’ He walked swiftly away from her, then started to run, without a backward glance, his army boots clattering on the pavement.

  She smiled as she watched him go, not the least bit sorry. Charles Elsworth had done wrong, and he deserved to feel it. She walked alone to the end of the avenue, then along Cottingham Road. When she turned down Newland Avenue Charles was out of
sight, not waiting for her, as she had anticipated. She felt a twinge of apprehension, and speedily dismissed it. Surely he wouldn’t let one caustic little comment drive him off for good. He’d loved her too much and too long for that. But the twinge became an ache, as the stark fact that no other man would do for her struck Marie with the blinding light of revelation.

  At the end of Newland Avenue, rather than turn down Princes Avenue she walked along Queens Road. Then, regardless of rules and uniform, she boldly entered the forbidden portals of the Queens Hotel and asked a woman who was doing some cleaning to fetch the landlord.

  ‘That couple who took that baby the other night,’ she said. ‘Bert and Molly. Do you know where they live?’

  He gave her short shrift. ‘No. And I wouldn’t tell you, even if I did.’

  The woman who was doing the cleaning followed Marie to the door. ‘I know a Bert and Molly,’ she said. ‘They live on Park Grove, opposite the entrance to Pearson Park.’

  ‘Did George tell you? He brought Eva here for her tea while you were out at Charles Elsworth’s yesterday,’ Aunt Edie said, when Marie got back.

  Marie’s eyes widened in surprise, and her eyebrows lifted slightly. ‘No, he never said a word, and we were talking for a long time.’

  Aunt Edie gave her a very knowing look. ‘I know. I heard you come in. They’re getting on like a house on fire, him and Eva. In fact, we both like her.’

  Marie’s eyebrows lifted further. ‘What’s she like?’

  ‘A bit taller than you. Brown hair, brown eyes, rosy cheeks. She looks real healthy, but then she would. She comes from a farming family in Holderness; they don’t go short of much.’

  ‘No, I don’t suppose they do,’ Marie said, remembering the milky coffee and buttered scones in Bourne.

  ‘Me and your mam, we’d have liked to see you and George make a go of it at one time. But I don’t think that’s on the cards, is it?’