After the War is Over

by Maureen Lee

  ‘The girl had confetti in her dear little hat. And it was the look on their faces as well. I could tell they’d never done it before and they couldn’t wait to get their hands on each other.’ She glanced at her diamanté watch. ‘I wonder if they’re undressed yet.’

  ‘Would you like to go upstairs and watch through the keyhole?’

  ‘If I were capable of kneeling down, I might well have done. I say, Belle, have they only drunk half the champagne out of that bottle?’

  ‘They have indeed.’ Belle rose unsteadily to her feet. ‘I’ll fetch it, shall I, before the chappie comes to clear the table?’

  ‘Clever girl,’ Hettie said when Belle returned. ‘Fill my glass up, there’s an angel. In a minute I shall go to bed myself. If I can’t actually do it, then I shall dream about it instead.’

  Maggie had been married a month. She had left Thomas Cook’s to become a housewife instead of a shorthand typist. It had been her own decision to leave; Jack hadn’t minded whether she stayed at work or not. She was really looking forward to being at home during the day.

  ‘Dusting and washing and ironing and shopping and making our dinner.’ She sighed happily, entirely forgetting how hopeless she’d been at housework after her mother had died. She’d bought a Good Housekeeping recipe book and studied it carefully. She also wrote to Nell to enquire about simple recipes. She made pastry and it stuck to the bread board, made omelettes, using up two weeks’ egg ration, and they didn’t rise at all, and neither did the bread she attempted, though she didn’t give up. She didn’t want to become a master chef; adequate would do.

  At half past ten each morning, she stopped to make tea or coffee, listened to the wireless, and read ten pages of a novel. She vacuumed the carpets every day until Jack said she’d wear the pattern off, and there was no need to clean the windows quite so often either, nor wash the bedding.

  Occasionally, in the afternoon, she went to Selfridges and John Lewis in the West End to look at the curtains they would buy once they had enough coupons. Neither she nor Jack liked the curtains and carpets kindly left behind by the previous owners of their house, but every single one of Maggie’s coupons, some of Jack’s and some of her father’s had been used up on her wedding dress and the bridesmaids’ outfits.

  She visualised the big square bay hung with cream chintz curtains dotted with pink rosebuds. Oh, but I’m being really selfish, she thought. Mam would have loved the rust and gold curtains that are there now. I’m too lucky for me own good.

  She returned to her lovely house feeling ashamed. Life was so wonderful, what did the colour of the curtains matter?

  She loved Jack so much that it hurt, literally made her throat ache each morning when they kissed goodbye and she watched through the window as he walked away towards East Finchley Underground station. Even if there’d been enough petrol, it was far more convenient to travel by tube than car in London. It would be hours until they saw each other again, and she wasn’t sure if she could bear it. At six o’clock she would be at the window once more, waiting for him to appear, her heart leaping as he came closer and closer. Then they would shut the door and stand in the hall and kiss for ages. Sometimes they were tempted to make love there and then, downstairs on the settee, but as Maggie would point out, somewhat breathlessly and very reluctantly, the potatoes might burn or the casserole get too dry or the sponge cake collapse, if it hadn’t done so already.

  She had never had a telephone at her disposal before, and she spent hours sitting on the stairs talking to her friends, some of whom were pregnant: Rosie, her sister-in-law, whose baby was due to arrive shortly, Alicia, who’d only just discovered she was in the club, Iris, expecting her second baby around Easter. And of course Nell, now living in the flat over the Labour Party office on the Dock Road. Nell wasn’t even married, let alone pregnant, and Maggie couldn’t understand how she could be so happy.

  ‘Don’t you want a family of your own one day?’ she said crossly. It irritated her that her friend didn’t want what she herself had – a husband, a lovely home and the prospect of having children.

  ‘One day, maybe,’ Nell said casually. Maggie imagined her shrugging her thin shoulders. ‘I love where I live and Crown Caterers is becoming more and more successful. I’m actually doing well enough to take on staff if I wanted to expand.’

  ‘But it’s not the same, Nell.’ Maggie was exasperated. Mind you, although she wanted Nell to have what she had, there weren’t enough men like Jack Kaminski to go around. In fact, she had the only one. Every other woman could only have second best.

  It was on Good Friday that she noticed her period was late; only a day or two, but she was usually as regular as clockwork. She didn’t tell Jack until she was a whole week late, and he took her for dinner at the Meredith hotel to celebrate. His first order was for a bottle of champagne.

  ‘To you, to me, and to our baby,’ he said by way of a toast.

  Maggie’s baby was due at Christmas. She would call it Noel if it was a boy and Holly if a girl. Jack approved of both names. Although there were babies being born all over the place, she just knew that theirs would be extra special.

  In Liverpool, Rosie had had a boy, Patrick, named after his grandad, and in May, exactly a year after she’d had William, Iris gave birth to a girl she called Louise. Alicia’s little girl, Marian, was born with a serious heart defect and was still struggling to survive three months later.

  Holly or Noel Kaminski wasn’t a very active baby. He or she rolled dreamily around Maggie’s stomach, stretching occasionally, never kicking, just moving smoothly, as if having a little lazy swim. Maggie claimed her baby was waltzing, whereas other babies did the quickstep or a tango, making sharp staccato movements and giving the odd vicious kick. She sang ‘Who’s Taking You Home Tonight?’ and ‘We’ll Meet Again’ as she did the housework, dancing from room to room and down the garden when she went to hang the washing out. If Jack were home, he would dance with her.

  The baby was born in a nursing home in London on Boxing Day after a long, excruciatingly painful labour. It positively refused to budge even though Maggie was pushing like mad, and the contractions hurt so much she almost fainted with each one.

  ‘It’s a girl,’ the midwife announced at some point in the proceedings. Maggie became aware that the pain had stopped and she was so tired she could have slept for a week.

  ‘It’s a what?’ she asked blurrily.

  ‘A girl, dearie. A fine baby girl, about six and a half pounds, I reckon.’

  Maggie was convinced she must have been twice that big. It had been like giving birth to a baby elephant. She was pulled to a sitting position on the bed and the baby, Holly, was placed in her arms. She was so tiny, so totally perfect, incredibly beautiful – and so utterly defenceless. Even so, there was a moment, the briefest of moments, when she felt resentful of her daughter for all the suffering she had caused, but the feeling was quickly replaced by a rush of love so fierce, it was almost like another contraction.

  ‘Jesus!’ she muttered, wriggling uncomfortably.

  Jack came in. He was in tears, having listened for hours to the cries and moans of his wife. ‘A few times I thought you might be on the verge of death,’ he confessed. He looked down at their small daughter. ‘I hope she’s worth it,’ he said. Then he put his arms around both of them, his wife and child. ‘Maggie, my darling girl, I don’t ever want you to have another baby. I couldn’t stand it.’

  ‘If I can stand it, then so can you, Jack Kaminski,’ Maggie said wearily, but with a hint of steel in her voice. ‘I don’t want Holly to be an only child. As soon as I feel up to it, I want us to try for another.’

  Jack laid his head on her lap and groaned.

  She was still in the nursing home six days later, on the eve of 1949. When Jack came, she reminded him that it was exactly two years since they’d met in Trafalgar Square.

  ‘I think I fell in love with you at first sight,’ she told him.

  ‘And me with you,’ he
swore. He looked at Holly, who was sleeping peacefully in a cradle beside her mother, and shook his head in wonder. ‘She gets more beautiful every day,’ he remarked.

  ‘Doesn’t she,’ Maggie said fondly.

  ‘And how are you feeling, love?’

  Maggie felt as if various parts of her body had been torn to pieces and were very gradually melting back together. ‘Wonderful,’ she lied.

  She wasn’t a very efficient mother. There didn’t seem to be enough hours in the day to do all the things necessary for a baby, as well as for a man with a healthy appetite who liked a clean shirt every day. She often ran out of nappies and had to make do with towels till the ones she’d already washed had dried.

  Jack never complained. She didn’t notice until she hadn’t washed a shirt for more than a week that he was sending them to the laundry.

  ‘It won’t always be like this,’ she promised him one night when she’d burnt the gravy and the custard had burnt the day before. Frequently she hadn’t found the opportunity all day to brush her hair before he came home, she was usually wearing the first clothes she’d grabbed that morning, and Holly might be patiently waiting for her afternoon feed.

  ‘I know it won’t, my love.’ He pulled her on to his knee. ‘But in the meantime, I don’t care. I worship everything about you and I will send my shirts to the laundry until kingdom come.’

  She cradled his head in her arms. ‘You are a dead-perfect husband,’ she told him before kissing him passionately on the lips.

  He muttered something about not minding being perfect, but he’d sooner not be dead, thanks all the same.

  Had she been the sort of person who thought using the word ‘perfect’ so much might be regarded as tempting fate, then perhaps Maggie might not have said it. But there was no denying that Holly was a perfect baby. She scarcely ever cried, and smiled long before the time when babies were reputed to smile. Her eyes sparkled with what could only be described as sheer happiness when her mother’s face appeared over her pram or her cot in the bedroom.

  ‘Have you been awake all this time without uttering a single word?’ Maggie would say. ‘You are without doubt a little angel, Holly Kaminski. I think the good lord himself must be keeping a close eye on you.’ It was because she was lucky, had always been lucky, always would be.

  A mere eleven months after Holly had made her painful way into the world, Grace Kaminski arrived rather more sedately, but making a great deal of noise.

  ‘Another girl.’ The midwife had to shout to be heard above Grace’s lusty yells. ‘That’s the first time that’s happened,’ she gasped when the baby kicked her in the eye. It was a moment that became part of Grace’s history, and was told and retold numerous times throughout her life.

  It was November. In another six weeks it would be 1950, the start of a new half-century. Maggie and Jack invited a photographer to the house to take a photograph of the happiest couple in the world with their two beautiful daughters. A month later it was sent to their numerous friends along with a hand-embroidered Christmas card made by Drugi’s Aunt Kazia.

  Alicia Morrison opened it and cried when saw the photo, thinking of her own little delicate daughter who continually failed to thrive. In Liverpool, Rosie showed it to Ryan, snorting, ‘Wouldn’t it make you sick! They’re just showing off. Pair of silly buggers if you ask me – the grown-ups, not the kids.’

  Not far away, in Rimrose Road, Iris said to Tom, ‘I think our two are better-looking, don’t you?’ She handed the photo to Tom, who merely glanced at it. ‘Much better,’ he said automatically. He wasn’t interested in other people’s children, only his own.

  ‘Oh, what pretty little girls!’ Nell remarked to herself when she opened the envelope and removed the contents. ‘And what a lovely card.’

  She put both the photo and the card on the mantelpiece in her flat. After Christmas, she would buy a frame for the photograph and keep it for ever.

  Chapter 11

  Judging by the excited whoops and stamping of feet, everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves downstairs. The music was really catchy, an Irish jig played by an Irish duo, Flynn and Finnegan, one on the piano, the other on the fiddle. Nell hadn’t seen them yet, so didn’t know who played what.

  She spread margarine on another slice of bread. This wasn’t a Crown Caterers job, just something she was doing as a favour for the Irish-night party being held in the Labour Party offices below. She had worked every day except for Christmas Day. When she’d finished the sandwiches, she would go down and join in the party herself.

  Rosie O’Neill came in. She was expecting her second baby soon and was enormous. ‘Shall I take them sarnies down, Nell? It’ll be the interval soon. What’s on this lot?’

  ‘Grated cheese – it goes further when it’s grated – and brown sauce.’

  ‘Yum, yum.’ Rosie’s eyes glowed. ‘I’m starving.’

  ‘Well, you’re eating for two, aren’t you?’

  Iris Grant was also expecting another baby, her third – or so everyone thought. Only Nell knew that the first, William, hadn’t been the fruit of Iris’s womb, but her own. She didn’t think about it often, but sometimes, when she did, the memory hurt, and she would recall the feel of her baby in her arms, his mouth tugging on her breast. How many teeth did he have now he was more than two and a half years old? And had Iris breastfed her daughter, Louise? There’d been no chance of that with William.

  ‘He’s a fine little feller,’ her mam had said a few times after seeing Iris shopping in Marsh Lane with her little boy in the pram. ‘Really big for his age and full of mischief; you can tell from his face.’

  Mam and Iris didn’t have proper conversations, they had never formally met, but they always nodded to each other, and since William had come along, Mam would ask after him in the painfully polite voice she used when she considered that the person she was talking to was posh.

  ‘I can’t understand why you two aren’t friendly any more,’ she would say to Nell after she’d finished reporting on William. It was Mam who’d told Nell that Iris was having another baby. She claimed she was able to tell from a woman’s face that she was expecting before the woman actually knew herself.

  Rosie left with a plate of sarnies and Nell continued to make more. There were jam tarts for later, and a tin of almond cookies from America that someone had donated to the party.

  This new year, 1950, was pretty significant, denoting the end of the first half of the century and the start of the second. A few nit-pickers pointed out that the new half-century didn’t start until 1951, but people weren’t prepared to wait that long. They were only too glad to bid farewell to the first half, which had seen two world wars, not to mention the Boer War, the Spanish Civil War and no doubt many others they hadn’t heard about.

  What seemed like a great leap in time made people conscious of their own mortality.

  ‘I won’t be around when the next half-century starts, that’s for sure,’ Nell’s dad had said dolefully the other day, and her mother had agreed. Nell wondered if she would last that long herself. When the year 2000 came, she would be seventy-five.

  ‘Seventy-five!’ she said aloud. Maggie would be the same. Gosh! What would their lives be like then? She paused over the bread and margarine and tried to look into the future, but couldn’t imagine herself and Maggie fifty years older, or where they would be living or who they would be with. Why, even Maggie’s little girls would have turned fifty. She shook her head. Thinking so far ahead was a bit depressing. She resolved not to do it again.

  Aunt Kath came marching upstairs. ‘I’ve come for a rest,’ she announced. ‘I need to sit down for a few minutes. Is there any tea made, Nell? If there isn’t, I’ll make some meself. Would you like a cup?’

  ‘Please. I’ve nearly finished. I wouldn’t mind a sit-down either. I’ll just put the kettle on.’

  Aunt Kath took two cups and saucers out of the wall cupboard. ‘You’ve turned this place into a real little home from home. I like t
he colour you’ve distempered the kitchen. What’s it called?’

  ‘Eau de Nil.’ It was a pale, powdery green with a hint of blue. Nell had taken over the flat more than two years ago. Before that it had been occupied by an elderly man for no one could remember how many years. The flat consisted of four small rooms: a living room, bedroom, kitchen and bathroom. Some decent second-hand cupboards had been acquired for the rather squalid kitchen, a newish sink fitted, and the bathroom updated. While Nell was wondering if she could possibly live with the old bits and pieces the man had left, her father had turned up with a collection of furniture that wouldn’t have disgraced the poshest house in Bootle.

  ‘Where on earth did it come from, Dad?’ she asked. She imagined some poor soul – well, they wouldn’t have been poor to have owned this stuff – returning from holiday and finding their house stripped bare.

  Dad tapped his nose. ‘Don’t ask, girl, and you won’t be told no lies.’

  She felt uneasy living with the furniture until Dad confessed, somewhat ruefully, that he’d come by it in a perfectly honest way. ‘There was this family emigrating to Canada; I bought the entire contents of their house dead cheap. I sold a lot of the stuff elsewhere.’

  From then on, Nell was able to sit on one of the tapestry armchairs – there wasn’t room for the settee – and eat at the small wooden table without feeling guilty. She made pretty draped curtains out of an old sheet dyed blue and felt really proud of her home.

  The thing she was proudest of, though, was the garden she had made at the back, a small area approximately twenty feet by twelve. When she had arrived, it had consisted of waist-high weeds mixed with tough grass that had to be dug out rather than tugged. It had taken months to clear. When she had finished, she had borrowed a fork and other gardening tools, turned the black soil over and chopped it to pieces with a hoe. She’d bought grass seed and created a lawn, by which time members of the Labour Party realised what she was doing and brought bushes and flowers to create a border. A couple of benches were donated and a pretty little garden had been created behind the office to which older members were drawn in the warm weather to sit and smoke and knit and discuss politics and football in equal measure.