Angel of the North

by Annie Wilkinson

  ‘I haven’t got anything to wear,’ Marie protested, and then realized that she had. She had Margaret’s dance dress. Not over-posh for a Lord Mayor’s dinner dance, but it would pass muster. And to abandon her worries for the space of an evening of good food and toe-tapping music was too tempting to resist. The place would be packed with people out to enjoy themselves – not Charles, not the partner she would have chosen, but very passable substitutes in the shape of foreign servicemen, all themselves probably sorely missed by the sweethearts and wives back home: charming Poles; polite Canadians; tall, tanned Aussies; men dressed in unfamiliar uniforms, speaking with unfamiliar accents from every corner of the globe. She wouldn’t lack for partners, and many of them would have fascinating stories to tell.

  She would go. It would certainly take her mind off her troubles, if only for an evening.

  The buzzing night life of the bomb-blasted city struck Marie as bizarre. Incredible, really. It had never ceased to amaze her, since the first really serious air raids had started. Hull wore both the comic and the tragic mask at the same time. Bombs rained down destroying everything in their path, razing people’s homes to the ground, killing people, maiming people, destroying everything they owned but the clothes they stood up in and sometimes even them, and the city picked itself up and danced on. The dance halls were usually packed with young people. And now homelessness itself was the occasion for a grand dinner dance at the City Hall, so that the better-off could go out and have a lot of fun and get a glow of satisfaction at the thought of all the good that their enjoying themselves was doing for the bombed-out worse-off, who patently were not enjoying themselves – or hadn’t been. Though bombed out herself, Marie had every intention of forgetting her troubles for an evening and enjoying herself as much as the next person. Amid all the grief, misery and devastation, people could dine and dance their feet off not only without conscience, but almost feeling it a duty, since they were doing it for the sake of the homeless. For the price of a ticket they could hobnob with the great and the good of the city, bask in their approval, and get their money’s worth in sheer pleasure. ‘Enjoy yourself while you can’ seemed to be the general feeling, and most people were doing just that, for fear the next bomb might ‘have their name on it’.

  Marie sat at the table surrounded by the wreck of the dinner, drinking coffee and listening to the band, and watching the scene. Nancy was there, as Marie had known she would be, and she was not at all sorry to have left George to trample on Nancy’s feet. They were just out of sight among the throng of couples when she felt a tap on her shoulder. ‘Do you come here often?’ a familiar voice behind her asked.

  ‘Terry! Fancy seeing you here!’ She turned, suddenly horribly conscious of the fact that she was wearing Margaret’s dress.

  He recognized it and smiled, but made no comment. ‘Aye, just fancy. I didn’t expect to see you out so soon.’

  ‘Nor did I. I got knocked about a bit, didn’t I? I’m still black and blue and sore in places, but I’d still be black and blue and sore if I’d stayed in the house, wouldn’t I? So I might as well be out. And being out takes your mind off things.’

  ‘Is your young man with you?’

  ‘No, Chas is away with the East Yorkshires. I’m here with George Maltby.’

  His eyes widened. ‘George Maltby that was courting Nancy Harding?’

  ‘That ghost you saw on Spring Bank? Yes, George Maltby that is courting Nancy Harding – just. She’s here as well, and she didn’t walk through the wall,’ Marie said, and burst into laughter at the look on his face.

  ‘She’s . . .?’

  ‘Yes, she’s alive. It’s a long story. I’ll tell you another time.’

  ‘Let me take you for a dance, and tell me now.’

  ‘What about your partner? Won’t she mind?’

  ‘I haven’t got a partner. One of my mates and his wife came and dragged me out. They reckoned it would do me good.’

  ‘What a coincidence. Well, then, you’re on. Just be careful not to hold me too tight. My ribs won’t stand it.’

  ‘Mind my ribs. Is that a variation on “Mind my bike”?’

  She laughed at that catchphrase from one of those comedy shows that lightened the dark days of war. Margaret’s husband was refreshing company. He was every bit as good a dancer as Chas, and he had a sense of humour. As he whisked her round the dance floor, Marie gave him the gist of Nancy’s tale, discreetly leaving out her latest bad news.

  ‘He’s not much of a dancer, is he?’ he commented, as they passed George and Nancy on the dance floor.

  ‘That’s putting it mildly,’ Marie grinned. ‘Nancy had a job to drag him out dancing before, but since she came back he’s taken it into his head he ought to learn. Maybe he’s turning over a new leaf. Nancy hardly ever got to a dance at all unless she came with me and Margaret. Now his mother’s egging him on as well; she had him trampling all over my feet yesterday.’

  The music came to a stop, and they stood looking at each other, waiting for the band to strike up again with the next dance, and then Marie saw Nancy and George, back at their table.

  ‘Shall we sit this one out? Go and join them?’

  ‘If you like. I’ll go and get us a drink.’

  Marie pulled out a chair beside George and Nancy. ‘How’s the dancing going, you two?’

  ‘He’s definitely getting the hang of it, aren’t you, George?’ Nancy said, smiling adoringly up at him.

  Marie just managed to keep a straight face. George’s dancing was atrocious, and before her flight to London, Nancy would have made some crushing witticism at his expense, but crushing witticisms belonged to the pre-Monty era. Getting back into George’s good books was her main objective now.

  Terry was soon back with the drinks. The two men had been casual acquaintances for years. Although George’s standing as a qualified engineer now put him on a higher social plane than Terry, he didn’t put on any side with him. Since the start of the blitz, the firemen had had the status of gods in Hull.

  ‘Not many women here without a male escort tonight, are there?’ George commented. ‘Although I suppose formal dinner dances are a different proposition to most hops. I used to be amazed at the number of women the few times I used to come, out dancing while their husbands were away in the Forces. I used to wonder what they would say if they could see them, cavorting with any Tom, Dick or Harry.’

  ‘Or George, or Terry,’ Terry laughed.

  ‘Not this George,’ George frowned. ‘I don’t believe in messing about with other men’s women. That’s not my style, at all.’

  ‘It’s not obligatory,’ Terry said. ‘Some people are just out with their friends for a bit of innocent fun, strange as it might seem.’

  ‘And there’s a fair proportion not just out with their friends for innocent fun,’ George scoffed. ‘They’re out on the prowl, looking for men – Yanks, Poles, Canadians, anything that falls in their path. Dances are the best happy hunting ground ever invented.’

  Terry laughed at that, then with a wink at Marie and Nancy said: ‘Well, maybe you’re right. If Margaret hadn’t been out on the prowl with these two, I’d never have met her, and she gave me the happiest few months of my life.’ His face lost its smile, and he added, quite seriously, ‘I’ll never find another Margaret, that is a certainty, but one day I might be lucky enough to bump into another gem, out on the prowl.’

  ‘That’s different,’ George said.

  Terry’s smile returned. ‘I’ll take Nancy for a turn round the floor, then, shall I? If you don’t mind taking Chas’s woman.’

  George stiffened. ‘If you like.’

  They watched them go, then George led Marie onto the dance floor. ‘I’m sorry about his wife, and everything,’ he said, ‘but I can’t stand people who twist everything you say. I wasn’t talking about him and Margaret, I was talking about people who do the dirty on people. That is different.’

  ‘I know. Don’t take him seriously, he’s only pulling
your leg,’ Marie said. After a turn round the floor she realized that her toes weren’t being trodden on quite as often. ‘You know, George, Nancy’s right. I think you are beginning to get the hang of it.’

  ‘Oh, I’m determined to learn,’ he said. ‘Absolutely determined. I’m going to book myself in for some private coaching.’

  ‘Just try and relax a bit more, listen to the rhythm of the music, and let it flow through you.’

  George took the advice to heart. With coaching from Marie and Nancy, and encouragement from Terry, he made steady progress, and the evening passed quite harmoniously.

  ‘I don’t suppose you’d fancy coming dancing with me now and again, Marie?’ Terry asked as they left the hall. Glancing down at her engagement ring, he added: ‘Strictly as pals, I mean. No prowling.’

  ‘Well, as long as that’s understood, I wouldn’t mind,’ she said. ‘But it will be strictly as pals.’

  Chapter 22

  As he’d said himself, Charles was no poet, but he wasn’t a bad correspondent. Since Marie and her mother had been bombed out, she’d had three or four letters from him for every one she’d sent. She reread his latest on Sunday, the day after the dinner dance. It was the usual cheery letter, full of news about life at base, observations on the men around him, and ended as always by telling her to listen to the wireless because he kept putting in requests for her, and how much he longed to get back to her. She sometimes wondered how that could be when he seemed to be having such a good time where he was. She wrote a long letter back, determined to make it as optimistic as his, and included a reassuring account of her outing to the City Hall.

  . . . I’m a lot better now. I went out dancing yesterday, to a charity do for the homeless. Ironic, isn’t it, me forking money out to help the homeless? But it wasn’t my money. George paid for me and Nancy, and got his money’s worth in dancing lessons. Nancy seems to be climbing back onto that pedestal he used to keep her on, but I’m not sure how long she’ll manage to stay up there. There might be more trouble on the horizon.

  We met Terry, Margaret’s husband. He’s good company. Make the most of life, while you can, he says. He says he’s stopped worrying about anything. If it happens, it happens. He wants to take me dancing again, strictly as pals, of course. He knows I’m engaged . . .

  Marie travelled back from the hospital with her mother and helped to carry her into the Maltbys’ front room on an ambulance chair. ‘Her heart’s quite weak, but we can’t do any more for her, I’m afraid,’ the doctor had warned. George arrived home from work just as the ambulance left. Marie elevated her mother’s ankle, still in the plaster, and Auntie Edie fussed around arranging cushions to make her comfortable.

  She sank gratefully back against them. ‘Our Marie thinks I shouldn’t trouble you. She says it’ll be too much for you, you being nearly blind. I told her, you’re not nearly blind.’

  ‘We’ll manage. We’ll manage together, Lillian. I’m a bit short-sighted, but you’ll be my eyes, when George is out.’

  ‘Well, give it a trial,’ Marie said, with no great hopes that they would manage, since apart from her heart condition, her mother looked as if she’d aged twenty years in the past month. ‘If it’s too much for you, we’ll have to make other arrangements. Mrs Elsworth has offered us one of their big bedrooms.’

  ‘I don’t want to go to the Elsworths,’ her mother said. ‘I don’t know them. I know Edie’s ways, and she knows mine. I think you’re the only woman on earth I could bear to share a house with, Edie. I’d rather stay here. This used to be your second home, Marie. Many’s the night you’ve gone to bed here, while we’ve played cards until one o’clock in the morning, and we’ve carried you home in a blanket.’

  Aunt Edie gave her a beaming smile. ‘We’ll be good company for each other when George is out.’ Turning to Marie, she added, ‘She’ll be comfortable with me, more comfortable than anywhere else now her own home’s gone.’

  ‘That’s the truth. Well, Edie, I’ve never had much, as you well know, but I’m a real pauper now. I haven’t a stick of furniture left. I haven’t a roof. I’ve no nest for my poor chicks. My husband’s dead and gone. I just thank God I’ve still got a friend.’

  Their eyes met, and two pairs of work-worn hands clasped and held each other for a moment. The look of gratitude on her mother’s face, and the compassion on Edie’s, brought a lump to Marie’s throat and tears to her eyes. George had to look away.

  ‘I’ll come down every day, and do anything you want done, housework, shopping, and I’ll come and help you get her up and put her to bed,’ Marie said, ‘I’ve been to see the hospital almoner, so there should be some money soon, and I’ll stay off work as long as I can to help you. And some of the stuff at the allotment will be ready before long.’

  ‘Well, I’ll help get you up, before I go to work. We’ll manage, don’t you worry,’ George assured Marie’s mother. ‘We don’t turn our backs on our friends. Ever. We’ll see you right. I’ll have something to eat later, Mam. I’m going to get washed and changed, and then I’ll be out. I’ve booked a dancing lesson.’

  ‘All right, son.’ Aunt Edie gave him a look that managed to convey pity and disgust in equal measure. It convinced Marie that she knew he was seeing Nancy again.

  As soon as he’d gone Aunt Edie challenged her. ‘He thinks I don’t realize what’s going on. Did you tell your mam the filthy trick she played on him?’

  ‘What trick?’ her mother asked, before Marie had a chance to answer.

  ‘That Nancy Harding, your Marie’s friend. She chucked him for an actor, and hopped it to London with him. Now he’s chucked her. She put my lad through hell, and now she’s back in Hull, hanging round his neck again.’

  Marie escaped to the kitchen. When she returned with the tea tray Aunt Edie’s tirade against Nancy had just come to an end.

  ‘You ought to drop her as a friend, Marie,’ her mother said. ‘She’s not our sort at all. We’ve never had much money, but we’ve always been respectable. She’s not somebody you ought to know, unless you want to be tarred with the same brush.’

  Marie was dropping her latest letter to Charles in the postbox when Hannah came out of the post office.

  ‘Are you writing to Charles, by any chance?’

  Marie’s jaw dropped. ‘What business is it of yours who I’m writing to?’

  Hannah looked her up and down. ‘Well, in your next to Charles, tell him he’s going to be a daddy.’

  Marie gave her a disdainful stare. ‘He’s going to be no such thing. Don’t judge everybody else by your own standards.’

  ‘I’m not judging everybody else by my standards,’ Hannah said, returning both stare and disdain, ‘only him. Just give him the message, will you?’

  ‘What are you insinuating?’ Marie demanded, but Hannah was already walking down Princes Avenue, and Marie had no intention of following her to bandy words in the street. Instead, she walked furiously in the opposite direction, towards Park Avenue.

  Mrs Elsworth was in, and so was Danny. The two women went for a private talk in the kitchen.

  ‘You know that baby of Hannah’s isn’t her husband’s, don’t you?’ Marie began.

  ‘Yes. I had realized that,’ Mrs Elsworth said drily.

  ‘Well, you know what she just said to me? “Tell Charles he’s going to be a daddy,” she said! Just like that. You know what she’s insinuating? Unless I’ve got it all wrong, and I don’t think I have, she’s trying to pin that baby she’s having on Charles.’

  Mrs Elsworth sighed, and sat down. ‘I should have sacked her the minute I suspected there was something going on, but I was so busy with the WVS and everything I kept putting it off, I’m afraid.’

  Marie looked aghast. ‘What? You’re not telling me you believe her? She’s lying! We’ve seen her out with other men – who knows who the father is? Charles could never be tempted by somebody like her!’

  ‘I hope you’re right.’

  ‘Of course I’m right
. She’s lying, I tell you! She’s lying! And you – his own mother – how can you believe her?’

  Charles’s mother maintained a discreet and ominous silence.

  ‘Well? Do you believe her?’ Marie insisted.

  ‘You remember when I was questioning her the other day?’ Mrs Elsworth said, looking Marie full in the face. ‘I thought she might have told me then that it was Charles’s baby. I dreaded hearing it, but I couldn’t stop myself from quizzing her. Now I feel drained, as if I’ve had an enormous abscess that’s burst at last.’

  Danny pushed open the door and walked in. He stopped, looking from one to the other. ‘Talk about an atmosphere you could cut with a knife!’ he said. ‘What’s the matter?’

  As Marie turned towards him a dim memory of his jokes about hairgrips in Charles’s bed surfaced in her mind, along with a vision of Hannah’s abundant auburn hair, always pinned up. Could it be true, then? Was she really having his baby? Her beautiful vision of herself, presenting Charles with his firstborn child, the first fruit of their marriage and supreme proof of her womanhood, was dashed to the ground. It had been her fondest hope, even more than taking her vows at the altar on their wedding day. Now it could never be, thanks to Hannah. Hannah had pipped her to the post.

  The bottom dropped out of Marie’s world.

  Jenny was playing in the ruins of a house in Marlborough Avenue, when Marie passed on her way to Nancy’s. It took nearly ten minutes to coax her out, and when she had, Marie decided to kill two birds with one stone. She would take Jenny back home, and have it out with Hannah, straight. But Hannah wasn’t in, and a neighbour who called to her from across the street to tell her so got the full blast of Marie’s anger about Jenny being left alone to get herself into danger.

  ‘Hannah! She’s not fit to have a child,’ Marie ended.

  ‘Her father’s family live just off Hessle Road, Scarborough Street, number twelve,’ the woman volunteered. ‘Take her there if you’re so concerned. She might stand a chance of being looked after there.’