Now the War Is Over

by Annie Murray

  He was fascinated when she said they worked the Rag Market and wanted to know all about it and she asked him about his work.

  He smiled, topping up her teacup and offering the biscuits again. She took a Bourbon, nodding her thanks. She definitely felt better for something in her stomach.

  ‘I was always mad about taking pictures,’ he said. ‘My uncle had a camera, just a little box Brownie, that he let me loose on when I was only about seven. And that was that. It was all I ever wanted to do, really. As soon as I got out of school I went and got a job with a photographer here and – well, I’ve been at it ever since. In the war the navy let me carry on – Fleet Air arm, reconnaissance photographs.’

  ‘You mean out of aeroplanes?’ She was impressed.

  ‘Mostly, yes.’

  ‘Did you take that one?’ she asked, nodding at the portrait of Ellen.

  ‘Oh, yes – and I’ve got a much more recent one, just done it in fact.’ He jumped up with nimble energy and went to the table where from a paper folder he produced a close-up of Ellen, obviously very recent. She was facing the camera diagonally as if looking dreamily at the corner of the room, her hair arranged softly back over her shoulders. Her face wore a sweet but wistful expression.

  ‘It’s lovely.’ The girl looked beautiful in it, a little older than in real life. It had captured the essence of her. ‘You’re so pretty, Ellen,’ Rachel said, and then a wave of discomfort passed through her – she’s probably never seen her own face . . .

  But Ellen just smiled.

  ‘You’d be rather photogenic, I think,’ Michael said. He stood back and appraised her, a professional at work suddenly. ‘You have very good cheekbones.’

  ‘Do I?’ Rachel blushed. No one had ever said that before! ‘That’s news to me I can tell you!’

  ‘You only have to look in the mirror,’ he said. ‘Here –’ For a second he ran a finger down her cheek, so softly that it was barely a touch, a butterfly’s footsteps. ‘They create interesting shadows. Perhaps you’d let me photograph you one day?’

  ‘Oh – well!’ Rachel laughed, startled. ‘That might be nice, yes!’

  Michael sat again. He told her that he had been born in Kings Heath, not far away, and lived all his life in the area. His parents were dead but he had a brother who lived in Shirley.

  Rachel wondered how old he was. Ellen was about Cissy’s age, but the couple in the photograph must have been . . . Well, obviously older than she and Danny were when they set out. She thought Michael must be well on in his thirties.

  In turn she relayed a little about herself – that she lived in Aston, that she had a daughter about Ellen’s age, two more sons of six and four. Somehow she never quite mentioned Danny or that she was carrying another child.

  By the time she got up to go, they had had an amiable couple of hours of talk and laughter. It had been such a relief to talk easily, to feel a kind friendliness coming from him. There was nothing to be ashamed of. Yet, going to the door to leave, she felt self-conscious about being seen leaving his house.

  ‘Rachel,’ Michael said as she stepped outside. She turned. He was speaking in a low voice and sounded suddenly tense. He joined her out on the step and drew the front door almost closed.

  ‘I didn’t want to explain in front of Ellen. It’s not that she doesn’t know, obviously, but she doesn’t like to hear me say it . . .’ Rachel waited.

  Michael spoke, looking down at the blue bricks of the front path. ‘Ellen’s mother left me. We were married in 1940 and the year after that I went into the navy – the Air Arm. Ellen came along the next year. She was born blind. They don’t know why, of course . . .’ He shrugged. ‘Just one of those things, I suppose. By the time I came home, she – Nancy – had had another child, by someone else. She . . . Well, she didn’t want Ellen in her new life. Never really could accept the fact that Ellen was never going to be able to see. It’s not so bad in a baby, but of course as they get older and start to move about . . .’

  Rachel listened, horrified. Fancy leaving your child, leaving a nice man like Michael. Then she ticked herself off, inwardly. Who was she to be judging other people, when she had just spent the afternoon visiting a man who was not her husband?

  ‘She left Ellen with me when Ellen was nearly six. Of course, it all took a lot of getting used to, for both of us.’ He stared grimly along the path. ‘There’ve been times, I can tell you . . .’

  Rachel felt tenderness awake in her. This poor man – what a homecoming!

  He shrugged again and gave a strained smile. ‘It’s just all rather lonely. People don’t really want to know, do they? So it’s been nice to have some company – especially someone who has some idea . . .’

  ‘Yes,’ Rachel said. ‘I’ve barely met anyone – not ’til Tommy started at the school.’

  They stood for a moment, not speaking.

  ‘Well –’ Michael became brisk and cheerful. ‘I must let you go. But if you’ve ever got time – I’m usually here.’

  ‘Don’t you go out to work?’ she said.

  ‘I rent a place where I have a darkroom and I can do studio portraits. I’m there some of the time. I have to be flexible – because of her.’

  ‘I suppose . . .’ Her heart beat faster. She looked up at him. ‘I could . . . Maybe, I mean, manage a morning in the week?’

  Michael smiled. The flesh round his eyes crinkled and the clown-like curve of his lips made her smile back.

  ‘That’d be nice.’

  A turmoil of feelings swirled in her on the bus back into town. There’s nothing going on, she told herself. Danny could have sat in that room with them all afternoon. But the feelings of ease with this man, of understanding, tenderness – Danny could not have seen that, still could not see it.

  In town, with her bags of fruit and veg, she walked into the bustle of the Rag Market. The stallholders were all shutting up now, folding away the clothes, packing up bags and prams and basket carriages. Rachel smiled as she looked around. The place brought back so many memories, both good and bad, but above all of her early days with Danny, of the Danny she had adored . . .

  As she moved towards their two stalls, both along the back wall of the market, Danny was busy piling up pairs of men’s trousers and jackets and talking to the man on the stall next door. She drew closer and then he looked up and caught sight of her. He stopped what he was doing. For a second he looked startled, then faintly hostile, and then she saw a hunger in his eyes which seemed to say, My wife – here she is . . . As if all their quarrels were behind them.

  He thinks I’ve come to make up, she thought, with a longing in her. But nothing’s going to be made up unless he gives up this stupid idea of going to Australia . . .

  She breezed up to his stall. ‘Thought I’d come and help,’ she said. She held up her bags to Gladys. ‘Got some fruit and veg.’

  ‘Stick it under here,’ Gladys said, indicating her stall. ‘You can help me fold up this lot.’

  By the time they got home, their argument had gone off the boil for the moment and when they reached Alma Street and found Mo dancing about the yard – for the time being, all else was forgotten.

  Twenty-Two

  ‘How much?’

  Gladys seemed hardly able to take in the news when Dolly told her a few days later. She had come straight round to see them as soon as they’d heard.

  ‘You’d best sit down as well, Dolly,’ Rachel said. Dolly’s face was very pale and she looked as if her legs were about to give way. ‘I’ll make some tea.’

  ‘Got anything stronger?’ Dolly said, lighting a cigarette with trembling fingers.

  Gladys nodded at the half-empty bottle of port wine next to the wireless on the sideboard. It might have been only ten o’clock on a Monday morning but this was medicinal.

  ‘It’s . . .’ She gulped, accepting the glass of port. ‘God, I can hardly say it, Glad. It’s . . .’ She lowered her voice to a whisper, ‘Thirty-two grand.’

  Rachel heard
herself gasp at the same time as Gladys. Thirty-two thousand pounds! It was an unimaginable amount of money. It was beyond thinking of, beyond envying. If Dolly had said five hundred, she might well have burned with desire for it to be hers.

  ‘So that means . . .’ Gladys struggled to get her mind round it. She took a fortifying mouthful of port. ‘There’s four of them, did you say?’

  ‘There’s Mo and Alf and Fatty Jenkins and – oh, I can’t remember but yes, four. It’s going to be in the papers, Glad. Only we’ve asked them not to print our names.’

  ‘That’s eight thousand each,’ Rachel said. Even that was beyond seeming real.

  Dolly looked from one to the other of them, wide-eyed like a little girl. ‘I feel all knocked for six. I mean, you think you might win a tenner – or even a hundred quid if you get a really good day. But this . . . I don’t know if I’m coming or going at the moment.’

  ‘The lucky bastards,’ was Danny’s comment. ‘Lucky, lucky bastards.’

  He said it with such feeling that Rachel felt even further from him than she had before. Of course Mo and Dolly were lucky and she tried to be glad for them, especially after losing Wally and all the sadness they had endured. It was time they had some good fortune. But there was a feeling that this changed things, and no one knew quite how yet.

  She couldn’t help thinking about all that money, though. Imagine what we could do with some of that, she thought. A nice house, away from here; a decent car. She didn’t ask what Danny would do. It would probably have involved taking off across the world and she didn’t want to hear it. The two of them had come to an uneasy truce for the moment, but there was still a quarrel between them and neither of them would back down.

  The money brought its complications. The yard was full of talk about it, jokes about buying a mansion, a yacht. Everyone bought copies of the Evening Mail to relish the news. But even though the names of the four families were not published, somehow people found out.

  ‘We’re getting these letters,’ Dolly told Gladys, with a bewildered look on her face. ‘From people we’ve never even heard of. They’ve all got a sob story.’

  Everyone was full of it and Mo and Dolly were in shock. Eight thousand pounds was a fortune. What, in reality, did you do with a fortune? After the initial euphoria – and on top of the other shocks they had suffered – it sent them into a tailspin of uncertainty.

  And in the middle of all this turmoil, of celebration and heart searching, Reggie came home from hospital.

  The day Reggie Morrison came back, Melly walked home from school sick with nerves. Kev and Ricky were whirring round the yard with Frankie ‘Trigger’ Davies and Tommy wasn’t back yet. She dashed into the house and went straight upstairs.

  ‘Cat got your tongue, has it?’ Rachel called up after her. ‘You get back down here, Melly – I need you to peel some spuds.’

  Melly didn’t answer. Mom was even more scratchy with her these days, forever ordering her about. In the bedroom she stood to the side of the window and looked across the yard. It was full of children, a go-kart, a little red tricycle and several lines of washing slanting in the breeze. But of Reggie there was no sign. Her nerves unrelieved, she clomped back downstairs again.

  ‘Why don’t you ever make Kev help?’

  Rachel turned to her, looking irritated. ‘Kev? What use would he be? Anyway, he’s a lad. Here –’ She pushed a large pan across the table, full of potatoes and water. ‘Get started on these. I’m running late.’

  ‘Why are you running late?’ Melly asked, as if to say, is that my fault?

  Rachel kept her eyes on the pastry she was thumping away at on a floured patch of the table. ‘I just am, that’s all.’

  Melanie wondered if she imagined the blush that crept up her mother’s cheeks. Mom was being strange these days.

  The question that was gnawing at her had to come out. Lifting a potato from the muddy water, she asked as casually as she could, ‘Dain’t Dolly say Reggie was coming out today?’

  Melly did not see Reggie until the next evening.

  She was coming back across the yard from the lavs and he stepped out of the house, leaning on a crutch under his right shoulder. He set out in her direction, limping painfully, favouring his left leg.

  Melly’s blood raced and she was filled with panic. There was no one she wanted to see more, no one who she longed to avoid more as well. But there he was. With a jolt of shock she took in his gaunt, drawn face, hardly like the Reggie she remembered. He was looking at the ground, concentrating on walking, and he seemed sad and far away.

  An agony of feelings filled her. She pitied him, wanted to say something nice and comforting, but she had no idea what to say across the gulf of age and of all that had happened. In the seconds during which they moved closer she almost put her head down and walked past without saying anything. But as they met she forced herself to look up.

  ‘All right, Reggie?’ Her voice sounded thin and young to her.

  ‘All right,’ he murmured, raising his head a little.

  She couldn’t bear for that to be all, even though the conversation felt excruciating already.

  ‘Is . . . I mean, are you better?’ She could have cut her tongue off at the stupidity of the question. All she wanted to say, that she was sorry, so sorry about Wally and about his leg and everything, was locked inside her and seemed unable to get out.

  And to her horror, Reggie, in a voice so bitter that it was unbearable to hear, replied, ‘Better than what? Dead?’

  ‘No!’ She said, ‘No, I mean . . .’

  But he was already moving away. Despair filled her. Why had she said that? Tears burned her eyes. She got everything wrong when all she wanted was to say something nice. And then, while she was already punishing herself for these things that were not really her fault, she thought with a terrible pang of the little Christmas present she had bought for him, what seemed now like years ago. A motorcycle! Did he still have it? And if so, did it just remind him of nothing but the accident and the death of his brother? If she had tried she could not have bought a worse present!

  Hurrying back to the lavatory she bolted the door and stood in the half-dark, crying quiet, despairing tears. She had said and done everything wrong. She had her little weep and went back inside to peel the potatoes in silence. More tears fell in the bowl of water but her mother didn’t notice.

  As she lay in bed that night her thoughts went round and round. None of it meant anything – she could see that really, with her more grown-up self. Reggie gave her no thought in the first place and he had much bigger things on his mind. Bigger things than her, certainly. Dolly had said that GEC were going to take him back and make sure he had a job where he could sit down. Thank goodness, she thought, at least he’d be at work like any other lad. But now he was around again. She’d keep bumping into him, if she did not do her best to avoid him.

  A few days later, Rachel came along the entry into the yard in time to see Gladys walking back into the house with her stiff, rocking walk. Rachel had noticed that Gladys was moving more slowly recently, what with her bunion and her sore hips. But today there was an extra heaviness about her, as if life was weighing her down. Rachel often felt intense irritation towards Gladys, having to live in her house and do things her way. And her desperate feelings now that she had another baby on the way, as well as secret meetings with Michael Livingstone, were making her both more restless and more guilty and tense because she could not seem to help herself.

  But seeing Gladys’s face this afternoon, the feelings drained away. Gladys was sixty now. In that moment Rachel saw, almost as if for the first time, how much Gladys had changed. There was a fragile, papery look to her skin. From being the most active, fearsome person Rachel knew, she looked suddenly tired and faded. As Rachel walked into the house she saw Gladys sink down at the table with a heavy sigh.

  ‘You all right, Auntie?’ she asked, finding a gentleness in herself. However much she resented Gladys sometimes, she knew
how much she owed her.

  Gladys slumped down, leaning her head on one hand. ‘Oh – I dunno.’ For a moment she eyed the bottle of port wine again. ‘No . . . Pour us a cuppa will yer, bab? I’ve just filled the pot. I need summat to pull me round.’

  Rachel poured them both one and sat down with her. ‘It’s Mo and Dolly, isn’t it?’ she said.

  Gladys straightened up again, sugared her tea and sipped it.

  ‘Dolly says she wishes it had never happened. The pools. In a way. And what with Reggie . . .’

  They had all seen the state Reggie was in, pale and thin, only able to get about, agonizingly, with the crutch and very low in himself.

  ‘I know Doll would give anything in the world to have Wally and Reggie both back as they were, rather than the money,’ Gladys said. Her eyes filled. ‘Cruel. Terrible cruel.’

  They sat for a moment in silence before Gladys heaved another sigh.

  ‘And now they’re talking about buying a house. Course they are – with all that money they could buy a dozen houses.’ She rolled her eyes. ‘If there were any houses to buy, any road.’

  ‘You mean leave here?’ Rachel said.

  ‘Well, of course leave here,’ Gladys said brusquely. ‘Why would anyone live in a dump like this when they’d come into a fortune?’

  Rachel saw then why Gladys was upset. She had banked on her old friends always being here. If Mo and Dolly left Alma Street and this yard, nothing would ever be the same again. They would be leaving everyone behind in more ways than one. But in her own heart Rachel felt a guilty jolt of hope. If Mo and Dolly were to move out of number one, then what was to stop them getting out of number three as well?

  ‘We don’t know what to do for the best.’ Dolly came round the next afternoon, after Melly was home from school. She sat at the table smoking one cigarette off the end of another, offering them round. Rachel took one and lit up. ‘All these letters we keep getting.’ She mashed her cigarette butt into the pale blue saucer on the table.