After the War is Over

by Maureen Lee

  When she told him about Quinn and Kev he just looked resigned, as if by now everything was quite beyond him. ‘Is Paddy O’Neill Kathleen Curran’s agent?’ he asked tiredly.

  ‘Yes, you’ll probably meet him one of these days. And Kath is Paddy’s sister-in-law. It’s all desperately complicated.’ Nell rose to her feet. ‘I’ll go and make that tea now. Would you like something to eat?’

  ‘I wouldn’t mind a sandwich.’

  ‘Won’t be a mo. I’ve got a tin of corned beef open.’

  It was all terribly surreal. Not only had he been starving hungry when he’d thought he’d never eat again, but now William felt quite calm as he waited for the tea and a corned-beef sandwich, as if somewhere deep down inside he knew that everything was going to be all right. He liked his real mother. He liked the way she didn’t fuss or cry or drool over him, just accepted that fact that he was there. He liked the way she’d sat beside him and held his hand, patting it gently from time to time. And perhaps he was being prejudiced, but he thought her truly beautiful, with her gentle brown eyes and smooth forehead. He also liked her plain clothes and unaffected manner. And he liked her house, which was tidy but full of books, pictures and photographs. It was also very colourful, and there was an old piano against the wall with sheet music on the stand.

  There were footsteps on the stairs and a man came into the room. He was as thin as a stick, fortyish, not very tall, and his hair was the reddest William had ever seen.

  ‘Hello, there,’ the man said. ‘Are you the one that knocked?’

  ‘Yes,’ William conceded. ‘I hope I didn’t disturb you.’

  ‘No, I was already awake. I’m Red Finnegan, Nell’s husband.’ The man approached and shook his hand. He had a strong grip and a marked Irish accent.

  William, who’d never had anything to do with Ireland in his life before, suddenly found himself with Paddy O’Neill for a father and Red Finnegan as a stepfather of sorts, probably both Catholics, while he had never been near a Catholic church in his life. ‘I’m William Grant,’ he said. He wondered, panic-stricken, if Nell had told this man that she’d had a child – long before they were married, he assumed.

  ‘Aha!’ Red’s green eyes lit up. ‘That William!’

  ‘I hope you don’t mind my coming.’

  Red Finnegan spread his arms in a generous gesture. ‘Glory be to God, no. I couldn’t be more pleased that you’re here.’

  All the bits of William’s body that had fallen awkwardly out of place slowly began to settle back to where they should be, and he found himself breathing evenly again.

  William slept for hours in the little narrow bed in his mother’s spare room. He still felt strange, would do for a long time, but yesterday had had a bad side and today a good side, and he couldn’t help but feel grateful that things had turned out the way they had.

  He woke up from time to time and could hear noises downstairs, people talking, the piano being played, a violin – a violin! He was tempted to go downstairs and investigate, but felt too sleepy, though he did venture down later when a car drew up outside and several people came in, amongst them a girl who sounded very much like his sister Louise, though it couldn’t possibly be.

  It turned out that it was Louise, who was even more surprised to see him than he was her.

  ‘William!’ she cried when he appeared. ‘What on earth are you doing here? I didn’t know you knew the Finnegans.’

  ‘I’ve only known them for a little while,’ he said.

  It was Maggie who summed up the various events later in the week.

  ‘In a matter of days, so many lives have changed,’ she said to Jack one night after they’d had dinner. She was no longer speaking to Iris or Tom Grant, who she was convinced had tricked poor Nell out of her baby. She would have liked to fall out with Nell, too, for keeping the baby secret, but she didn’t want to cut off too many ties. ‘Our Holly’s got a broken heart, claiming that she was madly in love with William; William’s left London and gone to live with Nell in Liverpool; and Louise has left Liverpool and taken over William’s bedsit in London.’ She put her finger to her lips and glanced at her husband. ‘Is that everything?’

  Jack smiled. ‘Not quite everything. This morning Grace gave in her notice at the bank. It appears she’s going to live in the bedsit with Louise.’

  Maggie’s face turned beetroot red. ‘Over my dead body,’ she said threateningly.

  ‘It’s no good trying to stop her,’ Jack said easily. ‘What’s more, her notice has been accepted. She’s leaving at the end of the month.’

  ‘But Jack, she has a really good job at the bank.’

  ‘It was as dull as ditchwater. Young people need a bit of adventure before they settle down. You had it in the army and I did in the RAF. She won’t be stopped, Maggie,’ he warned, ‘and I shall be on her side if there’s an argument.’

  Maggie was silent for a while. ‘I expect you’re right,’ she said with a sigh. ‘We had a great time in the army.’

  ‘I didn’t exactly have a great time in the RAF, but I wouldn’t have missed it for worlds. It helped me grow up.’

  ‘Well all I can say,’ Tom muttered bitterly, ‘is that Nell is certainly taking her pound of flesh. She must think we treated her very badly. It can only be due to her that William hasn’t been in touch.’ There had been neither sight nor sound of William for more than a fortnight. Louise had told them he was living with the Finnegans in Waterloo, which she considered mighty odd.

  Iris drew in an exasperated breath. ‘We did treat her badly,’ she snapped. ‘At least you did.’ She couldn’t be bothered going over the details again so many years later. ‘And it just shows how little you know Nell if you seriously think her capable of taking some sort of revenge for what happened with William. Even if she could stop him from seeing us, she wouldn’t. In fact, she’s more likely to encourage him. We’ve seen nothing of William because he doesn’t want to see us.’

  If only she’d gone to visit Nell years and years ago, assured her that she still wanted to be friends, but she’d felt so ashamed of Tom’s behaviour. Eventually, too much time had passed and it was too late. It was frightening the way life could change, completely alter course, over the space of a day or so – even a few hours. Who would have thought that William, who she loved with all her heart and soul, would no longer be her son? What was more, as a result of all the upset, Louise, her eldest daughter, had gone to live in London with Grace Kaminski, with whom she’d become as thick as thieves.

  Tom began to cry, but Iris felt no sympathy for him. She left her husband to get on with it and went upstairs to cry alone.

  William had always loved music. Ever since the Beatles had burst out of Liverpool on to the world, he’d been particularly drawn to rock ’n’ roll. Though never, in the wildest of his dreams, had he imagined joining a group and playing on stage, as he had over the last two weekends.

  Quinn and Kev Finnegan had accepted him as their half-brother with such ease and lack of formality that you’d have thought strange relatives turned up out of the blue on a regular basis. He’d been co-opted into their act playing the tambourine at a working men’s club in Wigan last weekend, and a wedding reception the week before. Quinn and Kev played guitars and sang. William discovered he had quite a pleasant voice and sang with them, mostly songs they’d written themselves or that had been composed by their father, who was moderately well known along with his friend Eamon as a double act who played wild Irish music at places all over the British Isles and sometimes on the radio.

  It was an odd world in which he now lived, on an entirely different plane from the one in which he’d lived before.

  ‘What were you planning on doing with your life, William?’ Nell asked him one day.

  ‘I wanted to get involved with politics,’ he told her. ‘It was why I was working for Kathleen Curran, learning from the bottom up.’

  ‘I hope you haven’t given up on that idea. It sounds dead interesting to me. You d
on’t want to let what’s happened knock you off course, as it were.’

  William grinned. ‘Is that a roundabout way of telling me I’m a lousy tambourine player?’

  ‘No, luv. You play really well, but being a musician is a hard life if it’s not in your blood like it is with Red and the lads, and it’s not what you really want to do, is it?’

  She was looking at him with understanding in her steady brown eyes. It was what William loved about her: she never pretended to be annoyed, never did anything for effect. She was just herself, completely honest and down-to-earth without being hurtful. Her husband and sons loved her to death. It was a very happy home that he’d wandered into.

  ‘I don’t really know what I want to do at the moment,’ he confessed. He’d already written to Auntie Kath – she genuinely was his auntie now, though she didn’t know it – to inform her he didn’t want to work for her any more. He hadn’t given a reason.

  ‘Well, there’s no need to hurry. You’re only young, there’s plenty of time to make up your mind.’

  September came. Kev returned to school to study for his A levels and Quinn retired to his bedroom to compose new songs. Red and Eamon continued to tour with their frenetic act.

  William was wondering what sort of job he could get that wouldn’t interfere with his own musical career, which he intended to continue with despite Nell’s words, yet would give him enough to pay her for his keep, when Auntie Kath came to see him. To his surprise, she threw her arms around his neck and kissed him on both cheeks. She looked very sunburnt and fit after spending the summer travelling around Africa, where, she said, the poverty was heartbreaking.

  She either hadn’t received his resignation letter or had decided to ignore it. ‘I’ve come to sort out the dates for the Labour Party conference, Will,’ she said cheerfully. ‘It’s being held in Blackpool this year and I’d like us to go together on the train, so we can have a talk about this and that.’

  ‘But I’m part of a group now,’ William stammered. ‘I’m with Quinn and Kev.’

  She patted his arm. ‘I know, lad, and you play the tambourine.’ There was a touch of humour in the way she said this. ‘You’d only be in Blackpool for seven days at the most. I’m sure Quinn and Kev can manage without you if they have a concert during that time. You’ll have to leave a week on Friday.’ She nudged him playfully. ‘That letter you wrote, giving in your notice, like, I tore it up.’ She chattered on about how interesting he would find the conference, the speakers there would be, the fringe meetings that would be held in clubs, pubs and odd places all over Blackpool. He would have the time of his life, she assured him. By the end of the week, there’d be politics coming out of his ears.

  ‘Oh, all right, I’ll go,’ he said eventually, if only to get rid of her. If he could, he’d wriggle out of it over the forthcoming days. And she needn’t think he was going back to work for her when the week was over.

  There was no opportunity to wriggle out of it. Two days later, an envelope addressed to him arrived containing a return train ticket to Blackpool, a hotel reservation, a conference programme and a pass with his name on, along with details of some of the fringe meetings Auntie Kath had mentioned that he had to concede sounded really fascinating; on Northern Ireland, for instance, the invasion of Czechoslovakia, the war in Vietnam, the future of the National Health Service and numerous other interesting subjects.

  He sighed. It was too late to refuse, and should he try, Kath would kill him.

  Before leaving for Blackpool, William went to see his first parents – this seemed a sensible way to think of them. They hadn’t met since the day in London when they’d told him that Nell was his mother.

  He felt embarrassed and stiff and didn’t know what to say. But it had to be done. He had to admit that the love they had given him had been unstinting, and there had always been a happy atmosphere in the house. Even though Iris and Tom hadn’t lived together for a long time, there hadn’t been any rows and their relationship was amicable. He had loved his sisters and they’d loved him.

  ‘So, you’re going away?’ his first mother said, looking close to tears.

  ‘Only to Blackpool,’ William said, ‘and only for a week.’

  He could tell there were questions they badly wanted to ask but didn’t like to. He imagined they would like to know if he would ever live at home again; would he come and see his sisters – not his real sisters, mind – or could they come and see him?

  William didn’t give them the opportunity. He kissed them awkwardly and went home to Nell.

  Next day he caught the train to Blackpool.

  ‘Do you really need to take that with you?’ Maggie asked when Grace threw a heavy suede coat lined with lambs wool on to the bed. Jack was taking Grace and some of her belongings to Islington later that night. ‘I thought you and Louise were sharing a wardrobe. You’ll be using up your entire half with that.’ She nodded bitterly at the coat. She was annoyed that Grace was moving to the bedsit before the end of the month when she finished work in the bank. It was as if she couldn’t wait to get out of the house in which she’d lived her entire life. ‘You can always leave the coat and come back and get it in the winter,’ she went on. ‘I mean, I take it you intend coming back to see us from time to time?’

  ‘Of course, Mum.’ Grace laughed. ‘I mean, it’s not as if I’m leaving under a cloud, is it?’ She wiggled her eyebrows.

  ‘Then leave the coat for now and take more sensible clothes with you.’ They were only halfway through September, and autumn had been lovely so far.

  ‘All right, Mum. Anything to please you.’ Her daughter hung the coat back in the wardrobe and surveyed the contents, eventually removing two summer frocks. ‘I can wear these with cardies,’ she muttered.

  ‘I can’t understand how anyone in their right mind can bring themselves to leave such a lovely room.’ Maggie sniffed. The wallpaper was lilac with tiny white flowers and the frilly curtains had the same pattern. The furniture was cream with fancy gold handles, and on the bedside cabinet was a pretty white lamp with a lacy shade that Grace had chosen herself. ‘My room in Bootle was less than half the size of this and had lino on the floor. I mean, nobody had carpet in the bedroom in those days.’ The carpet here was cream. Holly’s room was just as nice. ‘And I had to share it with your Auntie Bridie.’

  ‘Is that why you left to come and live in London, Mum?’ Grace asked.

  ‘Well, no,’ Maggie conceded, ‘but if I’d had a room like this, I’d’ve found it hard to leave. It was probably the miserable bedroom that drove me out of the house.’ That wasn’t true and she knew it. She’d left in search of adventure, as Grace was doing now, and nothing Maggie could say would stop her.

  ‘Well I’m being driven out by my horrible grumpy old mother.’

  ‘You’re not, are you, love?’ Maggie was suddenly anxious. Jack had said the other day that she’d lost her girlish love of life.

  ‘That’s because I’m now a woman,’ she’d said to him crossly. ‘Anyroad, you’ve lost your . . .’ She’d stopped, unable to think of anything Jack had lost. In fact, he had hardly changed at all, still as charming as he had always been. He took her out regularly: to the theatre, the cinema, to dinner. Some nights she went reluctantly; she would have preferred to stay in and watch television. His looks had changed, naturally. After all, he was fifty-three and there were glints of silver in his blond hair, but he hadn’t put on an ounce of weight and the lines on his face made him look a trifle worn and terrifically handsome. There’d been a time when strangers used to give the pair of them admiring glances, but nowadays the glances were only directed at Jack. Maggie patted her expanding waistline. She really must go on a diet.

  Jack drove her and Grace and her belongings to Islington that evening. Holly wanted to come with them, but there wasn’t room in the car. Holly was understandably upset that her sister was moving. Nobody liked change apart from the people who were changing. Grace was happy to be leaving, making everyone e
lse sad. Even Jack was sorry to be losing a daughter, though he was all for the idea.

  When they arrived, Louise was attempting, not very successfully, to put together the single bed, which had arrived in pieces. Jack immediately took over and had it done in no time.

  Maggie examined the room. It was at least clean, and the furniture was old but decent. It was rather better and much bigger than the room she’d had in Shepherd’s Bush, but not as cosy.

  Louise asked if Maggie would please telephone or write to her mother and inform her that where her daughter was living was perfectly respectable. ‘She’s worried I’m starting out on a life of utter depravity,’ she said. ‘It would help if you could assure her I’m not living in a brothel or anywhere nasty like that.’

  ‘I’ll get in touch tomorrow,’ Maggie promised. She’d vowed not to contact Iris again, but that would have been mean. Louise was a nice young woman and Iris had far more reason to worry about her welfare from far away in Liverpool than Maggie had about Grace, who was only a few miles away.

  On the other side of the country in Blackpool, William was having the time of his life. It was possible to be somewhere exciting and thoroughly enjoyable for almost twenty-four hours a day, leaving hardly any time for sleep. There were fringe meetings before conference began in the beautiful Tower ballroom, more meetings at lunchtime and after conference finished. The bars were packed, and after they closed there were Irish nights, where the sort of music he’d become so familiar with of late was played well into the early hours of the next day.

  He had never talked so much or argued with so many people. Even when he was totally sober, he felt drunk. One night he went on stage during Irish night and played the tambourine and sang. Another night a girl called Sara came back with him to the hotel. They had hardly finished making love when it was time to get up for conference. He looked everywhere for her throughout the day, but couldn’t find her anywhere. He didn’t even know her surname. They never met again.

  At one social event, he stood right next to the prime minister, Harold Wilson, and watched him smoke his famous pipe. At conference, he listened to a speech from Barbara Castle, a striking and wholly inspiring female politician who made his heart lift and the blood race through his body. He rubbed shoulders with Roy Jenkins and Jennie Lee and other famous representatives of Labour politics.