When Marie got back to Clumber Street Uncle Alfred and Auntie Dot had arrived, with Alfie.
‘She’s not going to die, is she?’ Alfie demanded, the usual light of mischief absent from his eyes.
Marie put a warning finger to her lips. ‘Ssh. People can hear, even when they seem to be asleep sometimes.’
‘Make them a cup of tea, Marie, and talk in the dining room. I’ll stay in here with your mam,’ Aunt Edie said.
‘She’s not going to die, is she?’ Alfie repeated, the minute they were in the kitchen and out of earshot.
Marie stroked back his hair, and looked into his eyes. ‘You’re beginning to get some sense now, Alfie, so I’ll give you it straight. Truth is, I’m no wiser than you. All I can say is the doctor’s been, and he says if she’s got any fight left in her, she might get better. And it’s only a might.’
He stood back from her, and folded his arms. ‘Well, I’m staying here, until she does.’
Marie shook her head. ‘Oh no, you’re not, my lad. For one thing, this isn’t our house, and Aunt Edie’s got enough to do with looking after Mam. I’ll have to wake her to give her her pills soon, so you can stay and have a few words with her, and as soon as she’s too tired to talk, you’re going back with Uncle Alf and Auntie Dot.’
Uncle Alfred backed her up. ‘That’s right. If you want your mam to get better, the best thing you can do is leave her in peace, and not give her anything to worry about.’
‘You all right, Alfie?’ their mother smiled, as he squeezed her hand half an hour later.
Alfie nodded. ‘Yeah, but I’m staying here until you get better.’
Alarm filled their mother’s eyes. ‘No. No. Go back to . . . Dunswell . . . safe there.’ She gave him a wan smile, the rest of her effort concentrated on getting her breath.
Marie ushered him out of the room. ‘All you’re doing is upsetting her,’ she said. ‘It’ll make her worse, not better. You get back to Dunswell, like you’ve been told. I’ve got enough to worry about, without any of your nonsense.’
‘Well, I’m coming every day after school, then. I’ll come on my bike.’
‘All right, and you go back well before it gets dark.’
There was a raid that night. The warning came at five to one, and George took Aunt Edie to the shelter, begging Marie to go with them. But taking her mother to the shelter, or even to the understairs cupboard was out of the question, and Marie insisted on staying with her. The bombs began their screeching descent at about ten to two, exploding so near that while trying to comfort her mother by holding her hand, Marie began to shake uncontrollably, unable to stop her teeth from chattering. Whether her mother felt any terror or not was hard to tell; if she did she was too ill to show any sign of it. When the all clear came at twenty minutes past three, Marie could have collapsed with relief.
‘None of them had our names on it tonight, then, Mam,’ she said, marvelling that they were still alive and whole.
‘Thank God,’ her mother whispered. ‘Thank God. My poor lass.’
Thank God indeed, Marie thought, wondering if they’d be quite so fortunate next time there was an air raid.
George got home from work just as Marie was laying the table for tea.
‘Sidmouth School copped it,’ he told her, ‘and some houses on Anlaby Road and North Hull Estate. A bit too close to home, that, wasn’t it? Twenty-five people dead, and about thirty seriously injured. Plenty of clearing up for us to do, as usual. I’m starving.’
Half of those seriously injured would probably die before they were much older, just like her mother was threatening to do now, Marie thought. Half of the seriously injured might as well be counted among the dead from the outset. Some might not even last the day, like that burned fireman she’d seen in the infirmary. And Sidmouth School was right next to Dad’s allotment, barely half a mile away. Thank God she’d insisted on Alfie going back to Dunswell. He’d probably have gone dashing off to the ARP station and maybe got himself killed otherwise.
Alfie emerged from the kitchen, where he’d put some eggs on to boil. ‘Hello, George.’
‘What are you doing here? I thought your mam told you to stay in Dunswell.’
‘Don’t be like that,’ Alfie said. ‘I am staying in Dunswell. I only came to see my mam and our Marie. And I’ve brought you six eggs for your tea.’
‘Good. I’ll be doing a bit of overtime after I’ve had something to eat, and you’ll be going straight back to Dunswell.’
‘I know. Our Marie’s already told me.’
After the meal, when George and Alfie had gone, Marie gave her mother another dose of the pills the doctor had prescribed. She collapsed back against her pillows, seeming exhausted by the effort of taking them. ‘Our Pam lives in Bourne now,’ she gasped. ‘She’ll be all right . . . and Alfie’s settled with Dot and Alf . . . There’s just you, our Marie . . . my poor lass. Who’ll take care of you?’
‘Don’t worry your head about Marie, Lillian. We’ll look after her. Me and George,’ Aunt Edie piped up.
‘Don’t worry about anything, Mam. You’re going to be all right. Your breathing’s better already. Just you take your pills for a few more days, and you’ll be as right as rain.’
Her mother shook her head. ‘I doubt that, somehow,’ she said.
When she’d gone to sleep, Marie sank into the armchair opposite Aunt Edie, looking forward to a comfortable hour or two listening to the wireless. But within a few minutes a frantic knocking at the front door disturbed her. She got up to answer it and was confronted by Danny Elsworth, red-faced and sweating.
‘It’s Alfie!’ he gasped. ‘Alfie’s in hospital – going to hospital – in the ambulance. Charles, as well.’
‘Alfie’s in hospital?’ Marie repeated. ‘He should have been back in Dunswell. And Charles – what’s he doing here?’
‘He waited for you all day, Marie, and when you never arrived, he set off to come and find you.’
‘Waited for me? I didn’t even know he was at home.’
‘I brought you his letter!’ Danny protested. ‘Didn’t they give it to you?’
‘I’ve had no letter,’ Marie said.
Aunt Edie called from the doorway of the front room. ‘Oh, sorry, Marie. With your mother being so poorly and everything, I forgot to mention it. It’s still on the mantelpiece.’
‘Well, he’s home,’ Danny said. ‘And if he hadn’t been, Alfie would probably be dead by now.’
Marie’s knees turned to water. ‘Oh, my God, come through to the kitchen, where we can talk without waking Mam. It might finish her off, if she hears.’
He shook his head, and backed away. ‘I can’t wait. I’ll have to go and find Dad, and tell him about Charles.’
Marie stepped out of the house and closed the door, to prevent her mother from hearing anything.
‘Wait, Danny. Calm down, and take two minutes to tell me what’s happened.’
‘I saw Alfie when he was on his way here. He said: “I’ll go and see how my mam is, and then why don’t we go and have that game of billiards before I bike it back to Dunswell? We could go up and see what damage they’ve done to Sidmouth Street and North Hull, as well.” We agreed to meet on Marlborough Avenue after tea, so that’s what we did. And then we saw Jenny. She was playing in the garden of that bombed house, the one that copped it on the same night as yours. We shouted to her to come away, and as soon as she saw Alfie her face lit up and she waved and came running towards us, and then – she just disappeared! We went to see what had happened, and where she’d been standing there was nothing but a hole, as deep as a grave, and it seemed to go into a tunnel. She started screaming, so we shouted to her and she answered, and then quick as lightning Alfie grabbed a length of washing line that was lying in the garden, and jumped down the hole to tie it to her for me to pull her up. And then I had a horrible thought that there might be an unexploded bomb down there, so I started shouting for help. And then both of them stopped talking. I knew then
there was something really bad happening – they were both just sitting at the bottom of the hole . . .’
He paused for breath, his eyes flitting from side to side as he relived it all. ‘Some people were coming out of their houses, rushing across to us to see what was up, and then I saw Charles. He just got into the hole really carefully and lifted Alfie out, and he told the people to call an ambulance, because it was gas, and Alfie was sick all over him, and then he passed out. So I started giving him artificial respiration, and Charles got Jenny up. She’d passed out, and she looked all red, so somebody started giving her artificial respiration. Charles was trying to take some deep breaths and then he just sat on the pavement with his feet in the gutter and his head in his hands. Then the ambulance came and Jenny started having a fit while they were lifting her into it. One of them said “My cat weighs more than this bairn. She’s half-starved.” Oh, it was terrible, just about the worst thing I’ve ever seen. I went straight home to tell Mum, but she must be at the WVS, so I’m going to find Dad now.’
‘What about Hannah? Have you told her?’
As if to hide sudden tears, he turned quickly away and mounted his bike. ‘Yes,’ he choked, and sped off without another word.
‘Which hospital, Danny?’ Marie called after him.
He stopped, and shouted from halfway down the street, ‘Children’s, I suppose. And they said they’d take Charles to the Naval Hospital. He was still in his uniform.’
Marie went first to the Children’s Hospital on Park Street. When the gabled red-brick building came into view, she thought she ought to be sick of the sight of hospitals but the façade looked solid and comforting. She hurried through the tall double doors and a sympathetic porter confirmed that the two children had been admitted. He let her in, and as she sped across the tiled floor she felt as if she were coming home. Here, as in Hull Royal, the patients’ washbowls would be given out at six, then would come breakfast, and the making of beds. Temperatures, dressings, doctor’s rounds, surgical lists – all would be done at the proper times and in the prescribed manner in an invariable routine that left you little time to worry about anything else. The predictability of it all was deeply reassuring. The gates of Hell could not prevail against hospital routine.
‘He’s very poorly,’ Sister told her when she got to the ward. ‘The doctor’s only just left him. He put him on oxygen. You can see him for a minute or two, and come back tomorrow during visiting hours. He should be a bit better by then. Second bed on the left.’
‘How’s Jenny?’
‘Are you a relative?’
‘Just a friend,’ Marie replied, failing to add: to Jenny, but not to her mother. How she detested Hannah. If she had been anything like a mother, none of this would have happened. Why couldn’t she have left Jenny with Trudie, if she couldn’t be bothered to take care of her properly?
‘Then I’m sorry, I can’t give you any information. We need to speak to her mother. I’ve asked the police to contact her.’
‘She’s that bad, then?’ Marie said. ‘Well, her mother got the message before I did, so she’s had as much time to get here as me.’ With that, she went to find Alfie.
He looked unnaturally rosy under the mask that almost covered his face. His eyes were red and he looked so gone that her heart nearly stopped. Please, God, she prayed, don’t let our Alfie die. I don’t think I’ll ever get over it if he dies. There’ll be a sore spot on my heart until the day I follow him.
He gave her a wan smile.
‘I think this is the first time you’ve ever kept still since you learned to crawl,’ she said softly.
‘My head aches,’ he whispered, ‘really bad, Marie. I think my brain’s trying to burst out. And my eyes are really sore.’
He was suffering, but she nearly wept with relief to find him conscious, and rational. ‘They’ll only let me stay a minute. Try to go to sleep when I’ve gone, and I’ll come and see you tomorrow.’
‘Head hurts too much. Go and see Jenny.’
‘They won’t let me. I’m not a relative, and I can’t see her on the ward, so I can’t even sneak a minute with her.’
Chapter 26
Of course they’d need to speak to Hannah, Marie thought, as she left the hospital. Jenny must be in an even worse state than Alfie, having been trapped in that awful hole for longer. She probably hadn’t regained consciousness. And where the hell was Hannah? There should be no need for the hospital authorities to send the police to find her; she’d had the news even before Marie herself. She’d had ample time to get to Park Street. It was barely a ten-minute walk from where she lived.
But thoughts of Hannah receded during the short walk past the bombed ruins of Clarendon Street, towards the Naval Hospital on Argyle Street. She was going to see Charles, to thank him for rescuing Alfie and Jenny, and that was all she cared about. What might have happened to them, but for him, was something she didn’t dare to dwell on. Bursting with love and gratitude, and even ready to overlook his affair with Hannah, she entered the heavy oak doors of the hospital, and after a few brief words with the porter she found Charles’s ward – and stopped in her tracks.
There he sat, with an oxygen mask clamped to his face, and she was with him – her chair right beside his! The face of it! With her luxuriant auburn hair done in the latest style she was dressed to the nines in black widow’s weeds so cunningly cut that they managed to disguise her pregnancy. She looked like a fashion plate. No trouble or expense seemed to have been spared on this magnificent parade of her terrible grief. The outfit must have cost a packet, not to mention the clothing coupons. Marie’s first instinct was to turn and march out of the ward, and then she stopped herself. She had a message to give.
She approached them, and gave it. ‘They want to see you at the Children’s Hospital, Hannah. Jenny’s there.’
‘Oh, she’s in safe hands, then, isn’t she?’ Hannah smiled. ‘She’s a disobedient child, that girl. I’ve told her a million times not to play on bomb sites.’ Hannah’s eyes flickered over Marie’s unmade-up face and workaday clothes so pointedly that she was glad she’d remembered to take her apron off before dashing out of the house.
She gave Hannah a sour look. ‘That girl, as you call her, is probably at death’s door, considering they’ve sent the police out to find you.’
‘They haven’t given me much chance then, have they? I’m going there now.’
‘You’ve had enough chance to get here, and it’s further away.’
‘Well, naturally, I came to thank Charles, and give him the news. In case you hadn’t. But this one will be a boy,’ she said, patting her bump. ‘I’m sure of it. I’m carrying him different from the way I carried Jenny.’ She put a caressing hand on Charles’s shoulder and gave him a seductive smile. ‘Bye for now, Charles. See you later, love.’
Marie watched her out of the ward, and then sat in the empty chair, still disgustingly warm from her. All the words of gratitude and thanks she’d meant to pour into Charles’s ear were scorched to ashes by burning resentment.
‘She was quick off the mark. I bet she was putting the lipstick on before Danny had finished telling her.’
Charles lifted his mask. ‘She needn’t have bothered on my account. I certainly didn’t ask her to come, but I couldn’t stop her. I haven’t exchanged two words with her. I have got a headache, though, in case you’re interested.’
‘Well, I’m sorry about that, and I’m sorry I was so slow getting here, as well. I’m obviously not as fast as her, in any sense of the word. Trust her to be first on the scene to mop the fevered brow. Most mothers would have gone to their own child’s bedside before anybody else’s. What did she say?’
‘What do you think she said? I’ll give you three guesses.’
‘Oh, yes. She told me, didn’t she? She “came to thank Charles and give him the news”. Would the thanks be for saving Jenny’s life, or for putting her in the family way? I suppose she told you she’s free to marry, as well, now her husband�
��s conveniently dead. So why don’t you get a move on and put up the banns? You might just manage to get the ring on her finger before she goes into labour, if you’re quick enough.’
He looked at her as if she’d slapped him. ‘You certainly know how to put the boot in when somebody’s down, don’t you? You’re in a bigger rush than her. Don’t we have to wait seven years before disposing of a man’s wife and chattels when he’s lost at sea? He might come back and claim them, after all.’
‘In wartime? When his ship went down with all hands, after being torpedoed? When his name’s going on the roll of honour of men who gave their lives for their country? I shouldn’t think so,’ Marie said acidly. ‘Knowing her, I should think she could easily get a dispensation from any seven-year rule.’
Charles tore off his mask. ‘All right, then. You look me in the face and tell me you definitely don’t want me. Now. And I will, I’ll marry her. Just to please you.’
Marie looked him in the face – and couldn’t bring herself to tell him any such thing.
A staff nurse heard the argument, and came hurrying down the ward to her. ‘I’m afraid you’ll have to go,’ she said. ‘You’re upsetting the patient.’
‘If she’s going, I’m going with her,’ Charles announced.
‘I wouldn’t advise it,’ the staff nurse told him, ‘and neither would the doctor. He might report you to your commanding officer.’
‘Bring me the discharge papers at once,’ Charles insisted. ‘I’ll sign on the dotted line.’
Marie was appalled. What was she doing, picking a quarrel with the man who’d just saved her brother’s life? ‘No, you won’t, unless you want your discharge papers from me as well,’ she said. ‘You stay here, and do as the doctor tells you. I’ll come and see you tomorrow.’
Angel of the North Page 24