All Fall Down

by Jenny Oldfield

  The Parsons had arrived in force for the wedding; Hettie with George, Frances over from Walworth with Billy for the day. Even Jess, Maurice and Grace had come down from Manchester, bringing Sadie’s boys home for Christmas. This made the family complete for once. Bertie and Geoff stood on the steps in little tweed jackets, hair parted and brylcreemed, just like their pa’s.

  Annie mingled once more. She didn’t feel the cold, going about with pride, keeping at bay her own sadness over Ernie, her concern for poor Meggie.

  ‘Ma.’ Jess turned to include her in their small group. ‘You shouldn’t be standing out here. Can’t we find you a seat inside?’

  Annie tutted. ‘I’m fine where I am, ta.’ She enjoyed being at the hub of things, asked Maurice if customers were still flocking to his cinemas despite the blackouts and the shortages.

  ‘More like because of them,’ he reported. Tall, distinguished, with his grey hair swept back from his brow, sombre in a black coat, despite the occasion. Jess and Grace were also in mourning.

  ‘People can’t get enough of the Hollywood stars,’ Jess said.

  ‘Nor the home-grown ones neither.’ Business was booming. Maurice had lifted himself out of his poor beginnings through single-minded determination. He was thought of in the family as rather dour, even before the tragedy of losing Mo. Now his face had fixed into serious lines; the set of his jaw, the hollowness of his cheeks. Still, he doted on Jess, gave her plenty of space to run her own life, and looked now to Grace as the one in line to take on everything he’d worked for.

  Annie chatted and moved on.

  ‘All we need now is for the sirens to start,’ Dolly moaned, looking at her watch. She looked askance at Charlie, whose head was full of Dorothy and no one but. The two of them billed and cooed in a. corner. ‘What’s keeping that car, that’s what I’d like to know.’

  ‘Listen, Ma, why don’t you come and sit in the warm in Rob’s cab?’ Amy suggested. She began to steer her mother down the steps, but as they reached the pavement she saw the hired wedding car approach. ‘Here they come!’ she called.

  There was a shuffling, a rearrangement of hats, a jostling for a better view. Lorna Bennett and some of Edie’s old workmates pushed to the front, as the bride and groom stepped from the car.

  Edie wore a knee-length cream wool dress; slim, with wide shoulders and ruched right down the long sleeves. She had a corsage of deep red roses, and roses in her blonde hair.

  ‘One of Hettie and Jess’s creations,’ Annie murmured. ‘They can work wonders, even with what Edie could get on her coupons.’ She didn’t care if it was blowing her own trumpet, letting people know how proud she was of all her stepchildren.

  Tommy stood by the car, holding out his arm and waiting for Edie to slide her hand through. Looking up at the crowded steps and stone portico, he squared his shoulders. Getting married was something to be got through as quick as possible. He marched her up, through the door, into the registrar’s room.

  The plain ceremony, the solemn promises were soon over, but they cured Tommy’s nerves. ‘I, Thomas O’Hagan, take thee, Edith Mary Morell . . .’ Now he knew why he’d put himself through the ordeal. He and Edie could put the past behind them. They were man and wife.

  Edie stooped to sign the certificate, a new band of gold on the hand that held the book in place. It was more than she deserved, surrounded by friends, with her husband at her side.

  The cameras clicked, the confetti flew on the registry office steps. There was to be a small reception at the Duke. The guests trooped to their cars or set off to catch cabs and buses. The next couple filed in.

  Meggie stayed to watch them enter, her mind elsewhere. ‘I, Margaret Davidson, take thee, Ronald Edward Elliot . . .’ Weeks had gone by since the telegram. Not a scrap of further information. Missing, presumed dead.

  Sadie took her hand as Walter went ahead with the boys. They waited for a moment while Meggie regained her composure.

  Meggie sighed, gave a ghost of a smile.

  ‘Lovely, wasn’t it?’ said Sadie. Meggie had insisted on coming, God bless her.

  She nodded.

  That morning a letter had arrived, addressed in her own handwriting to Able Seaman Ronnie Elliot. It was unopened. Meggie went to her room and sat with it in her lap. Every word enclosed in the dog-eared, stained envelope was etched in her mind. ‘This is goodbye, Ronnie. I want you to forget me and live a happy life.’ Without me.

  An hour before Edie’s wedding, Meggie had gone downstairs to the living room, knelt on the hearthrug, taken the poker and thrust the letter, still inside its grubby envelope, to the back of the fire.

  If it had been summer, she would have taken flowers to the river and thrown them in, cast them adrift in Ronnie’s memory. As it was, an icy wind cut through her wedding clothes as she went empty-handed and stood, looking east down the wide estuary, at the turn of the tide.

  A spread was laid on at the pub, courtesy of George, Hettie and Annie.

  ‘Like the good old days,’ Dolly conceded at the height of the music from the piano; the singing and dancing. Old friends met up, had a drink together. Even Charlie and Dorothy showed their faces once things were underway.

  The young ones: Bobby, Jimmie, Lorna and company, made it go with a swing.

  ‘Say it with music!’ Jimmie swirled a girl into the middle of the floor. ‘Roll back the carpet and dance the night away!’ His tweed jacket and silk cravat, bought on the proceeds of his share in Tommy’s new business, set him up in his own mind as a star from the flicks; as a ‘right pippin’, according to Dolly.

  Their energy and enthusiasm were catching. Soon Walter took Sadie away from her stint behind the bar to dance a slow waltz and in the next number even Maurice and Jess circulated amongst the guests.

  When they were sure that the celebrations would continue without them, Tommy and Edie slipped away into the cold night air. They walked up Duke Street past Edie’s old flat to the new one Tommy had rented in the close behind the cathedral. The blackout shrouded the bombed buildings in darkness and gave the inhabited ones a strangely unlived-in air. An ambulance picked its way quietly towards London Bridge. As yet, the night was free of enemy raids.

  They walked as far as the river, hand in hand. Anti-aircraft guns lined Bankside, standing ready beside the fire-pump trailers. The silent current swept by, gleaming in the moonlight.

  Then they turned and passed by the huge bulk of the cathedral, across its flagged court, down narrow streets to the close where they would live from now on.

  Copyright

  First published in 1997 by Macmillan

  This edition published 2014 by Bello

  an imprint of Pan Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited

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  ISBN 978-1-4472-8478-9

  Copyright © Jenny Oldfield, 1997

  The right of Jenny Oldfield to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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