Aunt Edie seemed to be determined to get all those cards on the table. Marie took a deep breath, and chose her words carefully. ‘George has been a good friend to me, Aunt Edie, and I love him for it – as a friend. As a brother, even.’
‘You’re too hooked up with that Charles Elsworth –’ Aunt Edie spat his name – ‘even after everything he’s done.’
Marie didn’t dispute it.
Aunt Edie fixed her large blue eyes on Marie’s face. ‘Well, George needs a woman who’s all for him. He’s just about got over that Nancy,’ she stressed, ‘but Eva’s a different kettle of fish altogether. A straightforward, honest young lass. If you see them together, you can tell she thinks the world of him. He’s lucky to have found her. I think she’ll make him a good wife. In fact, I’m sure she will. And I’m sorry to say this, thinking about your mam, but he doesn’t want to be kept dangling by somebody who doesn’t know whether she wants him or not.’
Those big, supposedly half-blind eyes saw plenty, and Aunt Edie was warning her off. She wasn’t having anybody mucking her boy around again, and she couldn’t be blamed for that. Marie wondered if she’d got wind of George’s yearning to emigrate, but to hear that conversation she would have had to get out of bed and creep halfway down the stairs. Marie wouldn’t have put it past her. Her lips twitched into a tiny smile at the thought. And a girl from a farming family might be the very thing to keep her George near his mammy – especially if she had no brothers.
So, whether Chas came back or not, Aunt Edie was telling her she’d better pass up her chance of travelling the world as the wife of a civil engineer. It was a pity, in some ways, but she was right. Maybe it was to do with being an only child, with a father who’d died when he was young and a mother who had no other interest in life but him, but George seemed to have been born old. He fitted with his parents’ generation better than with his own, and they’d been creeping into middle age when they’d had him. As his mother was so fond of saying, George was a good lad, but Marie lacked that feeling for him that a woman ought to have for the man she marries. There was no spark there. None at all.
‘Don’t worry, Aunt Edie. Everything will work out for the best,’ she said, certain of the truth of her words in their case, and trusting to fate in her own.
Marie and George strolled together in the park after tea, reminiscing about their childhoods, the kindness between their two families, and the feeling, at that time, of total security in their peaceful little homes. George would always be a part of her happiest memories of childhood, Marie thought, more precious to her now than ever.
‘I sometimes think,’ she said, ‘that they must have had a struggle to survive at times, but we knew nothing about it. At least, I didn’t. All I saw was that they were always busy, busy, busy, always doing, never idle, making the most of everything. But I never felt any of the strain.’
‘That’s the thing that sticks in my mind,’ George said, ‘how peaceful it was, and how safe I always felt before my dad died. That’s what shattered it for me. That’s when I realized what a cold, hard place the world can be.’
‘It shattered the whist playing as well,’ Marie said, ‘You remember them trying to teach us, months later? But neither of us was much good at it, and they went on to play brag after that. Your mother was dead keen, I remember that. Her eyesight must have been a lot better then than it is now.’
George gave a sceptical little laugh. ‘My mother’s eyesight seems to come and go, a bit. There was nothing wrong with it before my dad died. I sometimes think it’s a way of clinging on to me, or maybe making me feel indispensable. She’ll survive, if we go on our travels.’
There was an expectant silence, as George waited for her answer.
‘I don’t know how it’ll work out between me and Charles,’ she said hesitantly. ‘I only know I can’t marry anybody else.’
He paused for a moment, then sighed. ‘Well, I can’t say I’m not disappointed, but you’ve never been dishonest. And I’d no real hopes that you would marry me. I’ve always known you were too gone on him. But bloody good luck to you; I hope you’ll be all right. And Eva’s the best consolation prize going. We’ll be all right together.’
‘I’ve no doubt she’ll have a better dowry than mine. All I’ve got to offer is a set of garden tools, and the cobbler’s last you rescued from the ruins.’ She grinned, as a thought hit her. ‘Eva might giveth what Nancy tooketh away,’ she said.
He lifted his chin, and grinned back. ‘Well, there is that,’ he nodded.
Terry arrived an hour or so after they got back to the house, to take her dancing. For a split second Marie hesitated, toying with the thought of going, and then decided not to risk it. If Charles arrived while she was gone, it might be the final straw. Taking a leap of faith, she said: ‘I’m expecting Charles any minute. We’re getting married next week, by special licence.’
Terry put on a face of mock devastation. ‘Oh, no, you can’t be! Not when I’ve been pulling all the stops out to get you into my clutches all the time he’s been away.’
‘’Fraid so.’
‘You’re throwing yourself away! I’m the one you should be marrying! Black armbands on for me, then,’ he grimaced.
She laughed as she closed the door on him, thinking what easy company he was, never too many demands, never any awkwardness. But the black armbands summed Terry up for her. She could never see him or think of him without thinking of Margaret, and Margaret’s death.
She returned to the front room to listen to the radio with George and Auntie Edie, their companionable silence interspersed with laughter at the jokes. After half an hour she started surreptitiously twitching the curtains, looking for Charles. The street was empty. She went to get her coat.
‘I’m just going for a quick walk. I won’t be more than half an hour,’ she said.
She walked to the end of the street, and crossed Princes Avenue to Park Grove. At the entrance to the park she stood and looked at a well-kept house. She was tempted to knock on the door, but there was no excuse she could have given. She walked away, hoping to bump into Charles on her way back to Aunt Edie’s. There was neither sight nor sound of him, and no mention of his calling when she got back to Clumber Street. Marie couldn’t bring herself to ask whether he’d been. Aunt Edie would have told her if he had, since she no longer had a motive for keeping it from her.
Chapter 39
There was no Charles waiting for her when she finished work on Sunday, either. She felt an awful pang, but pride forbade her to go to Park Avenue to find out what was happening. Charles had run off, and Charles would have to come back, with no prompting from her. She lifted her chin, stiffened her back, and walked swiftly down to Clumber Street, stubbornly fighting back the tears that were pricking her eyes.
Alfie was waiting for her with a few chrysanthemums he’d brought for them to take to the graves, and the usual half a dozen eggs for Aunt Edie. Marie hugged him with the pent-up fervour she would have loosed on Charles, had he come to meet her.
Alfie’s eyes widened at this effusive display of affection. ‘You all right, Marie?’
‘’Course I’m all right,’ she said. ‘Why shouldn’t I be all right?’
‘I don’t know. You just seem a bit . . . keyed up, somehow. I don’t know.’
‘I’m all right,’ she repeated. ‘I’ll just get changed, and then we’ll be off.’
The day was bright but cold, and she was glad of her slacks, thick jumper and jacket on the bike ride up to the cemetery. After laying the flowers on their parents’ grave, they went to Jenny’s.
‘They’ve got her a nice headstone,’ Alfie commented as he reverently laid his flowers on her little grave.
Marie read the inscription: ‘Beloved daughter of Hannah and Lawrence Reynolds’. ‘Hmm,’ she said. Maybe that was true in Larry’s case, but she doubted it very much in Hannah’s. Divorce could never be an option for Marie, but she wouldn’t have blamed Larry for ending his marriage to Hannah. S
he didn’t deserve him.
‘We ought to get a headstone for our mam and dad.’
‘Well, we will, as soon as we’ve got some money,’ Marie promised.
‘It’s getting real cold. It’s Hull Fair weather,’ Alfie said, when they left their bikes in the yard at Aunt Edie’s, and went into the house. ‘I used to love going after dark, with everything lit up.’
‘Well, Hitler’s put paid to that. He’s put paid to a lot of things,’ she said, ‘including our family.’
She rode with him half the way to Dunswell, then turned back to Aunt Edie’s, hoping to see Charles on the way, but there was no sign of him. It was beginning to get dark, and the last thing she wanted was to go back to Clumber Street, to sit in the house with George and Aunt Edie listening to the wireless with minutes dragging by as if they were hours, while she waited for a knock on the door that never came.
Instead, she turned into Pearson Park. Quite a few people were out, making the most of the fresh air and what remained of the daylight. The grass and roads were strewn with leaves of red, gold and brown, and the bare branches looked like filigree against the sky. The park was lovely, peaceful and still, but it couldn’t calm the fret arising deep within her. She rode through the whole of it, and then saw a woman pushing a spanking new pram, looking at her and walking in her direction, as if to speak to her. But Marie was mistaken. As she got nearer the woman showed no sign of recognition, and walked past. Marie turned the bike and dismounted beside her.
‘Can I have a look?’ she asked, looking straight into Molly’s eyes.
There was still no sign of recognition. Molly beamed at her, and stopped the pram. The white, beribboned bonnet just visible above the muffling blankets would have given the baby’s sex away, if Marie hadn’t already known it.
‘What’s her name?’ she asked.
‘Lucy.’
‘A lovely name for a lovely baby. I like her bonnet. Who did the knitting?’
‘Me,’ Molly laughed. ‘I’ve got piles of it. She’ll probably have grown out of most of it before she even has it on.’
‘Lucky girl. I can see you’re going to spoil her.’ Marie looked intently at the child’s face. The curve of the lips reminded her of Hannah, but that was all.
‘You can’t spoil babies,’ Molly said. ‘The more you love them, the better they are.’
‘You’re out a bit late with her.’
‘It gets her to sleep. Coming for a walk gets her to sleep better than anything.’
Marie pulled two half-crowns out of her pocket and put them in the pram. ‘For Lucy’s money box.’
Molly’s eyebrows shot up. ‘I can’t take that. It’s half a week’s rent, for some people.’
Again, Marie looked her straight in the eyes. ‘You can’t refuse it. It’s bad luck.’
Odd, after that awful scene in the Queens, that Molly had failed to recognize her. But she’d had eyes only for Lucy, then as now.
Perhaps Charles had been right when he’d said the child might not be his, Marie thought, as she cycled back to Aunt Edie’s. Whatever the truth was, she was relieved the little girl was well cared for and, to her shame, very, very glad that she was not with the Elsworths. Even so, she couldn’t shake off the feeling that there was something not quite right about a child’s not knowing her own parents, or even her own grandparents. Not only not quite right, but altogether wrong. Still, this imperfect arrangement was undoubtedly the best thing that could have happened to Lucy, things being what they were. And if she was honest, it was certainly the best thing that could have happened to Marie and Chas – if there was going to be any Marie and Chas. Serious doubts that there would ever be a wedding began to gnaw at her, and when she got back to Aunt Edie’s she couldn’t resist asking: ‘Has Charles been?’
Chapter 40
Marie couldn’t sit still. The moon was three-quarter’s full, easily enough light to see by, so she left the bike and walked across to Duesbury Street. A very dishevelled Nancy answered the door, obviously the worse for drink.
Marie followed her into the house. ‘Have you been at the home-made wine, Nance?’ she asked, although the question was unnecessary. She could smell it on her breath.
‘Well, if I have, it’s nobody’s business but mine,’ Nancy said.
‘All right, then. Keep your hair on. Is your mam in?’
‘No, she’s not. What’s up? I didn’t expect to see you on a Sunday night. I’d have thought you’d be out with Chas, or one of your other blokes – George, or Terry.’
Marie would have loved to unburden herself, but Nancy’s antagonism put her off. ‘Well, I’m not,’ she said. ‘I’m here. I thought I’d have an hour with you.’
Nancy flopped down onto the settee. ‘Huh! He’s let you down, then, has he, your Chas? Do you want a drink?’
Marie shook her head.
Nancy took another gulp from her glass. ‘All the more for them that do, then.’
‘You should lay off that stuff, Nance. It never makes anything any better.’
Nancy ignored the comment. ‘Yes, you’ve fallen out with Chas, so you’ve remembered I exist. Well, you’ve done right. Come and tell your old pal Nancy what a swine he is. They’re all swine. The lot of them. I hate them all.’
She was obviously looking forward to a maudlin session of self-pity and blaming everyone else for their troubles, but Marie had no sympathy. Nancy was getting a dose of her own medicine, but she was so blind to her own faults that she couldn’t see the justice of it. Marie listened to her with scorn, wondering that such a blind, selfish, self-pitying creature could ever have attracted anybody. She’d never had any patience with drunks, wallowing in their misfortunes and slobbering over people, and she had none with Nancy. It disgusted her, but she bit her tongue and heard her out.
‘. . . and now I’m going to be lumbered with his bloody kid!’ Nancy finished.
At that attitude towards the unborn baby, Marie saw red. Red danced and swam before her eyes. ‘You know what, Nance?’ she said. ‘You’ve caused a packet of trouble for people who thought the world of you. You ditched a good lad without a second thought and gave a con man all his savings because he kidded you he was going to get you on the silver screen. You asked for it, Nance, but George didn’t, or your mother either. Your mother’s said she’ll help you. Many a mother would have chucked you out.’ Marie looked pointedly at Nancy’s swelling abdomen. ‘And in case you’ve forgotten, that bloody kid’s yours, as well as his, so if you don’t want to be lumbered do it a big favour, Nance. Once it’s born, get it on the bottle as fast as you can and then nip up to the Queens Hotel and give it away to the first couple you see.’
It took Nancy a minute to absorb Marie’s unexpectedly brutal home truths, but when she did, her face turned to whey. ‘You’re a cold fish, Marie,’ she gasped. ‘You’ve never let your heart rule your head yet.’
Marie gave her a penetrating look. ‘Was it your heart that ruled you, Nance? Really? Or was it your vanity? And maybe your greed? You mistook a plausible con man for somebody who could make you rich and famous, so you chucked George and crushed his hopes of a bright future with you in his little dream bungalow – without even a goodbye. You left him to trudge round the mortuaries, looking for your corpse. Not much heart in that, was there?’
Nancy rallied enough to hit back. ‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry I wasn’t dead. It sounds as if you and George would be happier if I had been.’
‘There’s no heart in that lie, either. Or in the way you’re talking about your baby. That’s going to get a warm and loving welcome into the world, I don’t think. You could do with letting your heart rule you there, but I doubt if you will. So seriously, why not do the same as I watched Hannah do, and give it away? Then you’ll be rid of your lumber, and free to go on your merry way.’
‘You say some nasty things sometimes, Marie. Really nasty.’
‘I know,’ she said. ‘I can’t keep my mouth shut, at times. It does me no good at all, but I c
an’t seem to help it.’
You managed that well, Marie, she thought, on the short walk back. Margaret dead, her friendship with Nancy probably destroyed for ever, George and Terry signed off for good, and Chas driven out of her life. She might even lose her job, if Matron heard about her expedition to the Queens Hotel. The last remaining props of her existence, bar Alfie, and she’d kicked them all away. Deep down, none of it really mattered, except Chas.
And out of those two babies, Hannah’s might have the best chance, all told. She was out of the hellhole altogether, with somebody who had a heart and plenty of love to give. Funny, Marie couldn’t bear to call her Chas’s baby, even in her thoughts, but although she tried to shield herself from it and in spite of all the nonsense about who she didn’t resemble that was exactly what she was – Chas’s firstborn child. ‘So face it,’ she said out loud.
George guessed where she’d been. ‘How is she, then?’ he asked, when she got back.
‘Feeling very sorry for herself.’
Marie saw by the look on George and Aunt Edie’s faces that Charles still hadn’t been for her. Aunt Edie would certainly have sent him round to Nancy’s, if he had. Neither commented.
She went to bed. Instead of fretting herself into her grave she would blank her mind and blot the whole world out, at least until the morning.
Chapter 41
When morning came, she was up and dressed early, on the horns of an agonizing dilemma: whether to swallow her pride and go to Park Street to see Chas, or whether to stick it out and wait until he came to her, and risk losing him altogether. She lit the gas ring and put the kettle on, and then turned it off again. She hadn’t the patience to wait for it to boil. She would go.
She ran upstairs for her jacket, and as she descended she heard a familiar knock. Through the stained-glass leaded light in the door she could see a distorted but recognizable shape. Charles Elsworth. She checked her hurry, and sauntered along the passageway to open it.
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