Wives at War

by Jessica Stirling

  She hung up the telephone, which immediately began to ring again. Ignoring it, she went to unearth the files on the three girls from the tall metal cabinet in the outer office.

  Her American friend was leaning in the doorway, camera in hand.

  ‘I shouldn’t have done that,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Done what?’ said Babs.

  ‘Photographed you without permission.’

  ‘Why did you then?’

  ‘You looked good,’ he said. ‘You looked right.’

  ‘Right for what?’ said Babs.

  The phone was still ringing next door and she wished, sort of, that Archie hadn’t gone out and left her alone.

  ‘I’ll send you prints,’ he said.

  ‘How can you send me prints when you don’t know where I live?’

  ‘I’m hoping you’ll tell me,’ he said.

  ‘I’m not in the habit of giving my address to strangers.’

  ‘Isn’t this a welfare office?’

  ‘Yes, but what does that have to do with you?’

  ‘I’m looking for welfare,’ he said.

  ‘Welfare?’ said Babs. ‘What sort of welfare?’

  ‘A place to stay. Digs.’

  ‘For – for how long?’

  ‘Couple of months. Maybe three.’

  Babs closed the door to Archie’s office, muffling the sound of the telephone. She seated herself at her desk, extracted a form from the drawer and uncapped a fountain pen. The form was an application for maternity leave, but the photographer didn’t know that.

  ‘Name?’

  ‘Is this necessary?’ he said.

  ‘Of course it’s necessary. We’re a government department. Name?’

  ‘Cameron. Christopher Ewan Cameron. Everyone calls me Christy.’

  ‘Date of birth.’

  ‘November tenth, nineteen-nought-five.’

  ‘Nature of current occupation?’

  ‘I’m a professional photographer,’ he said.

  ‘It isn’t just a hobby then?’

  ‘Nope, I’m in Scotland to cover the war for Brockway’s magazine. When my security clearance comes through I’ll be shipping out to do a series about the hazards of the North Atlantic crossing.’

  ‘Brockway’s magazine?’

  ‘You’ve heard of it?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Babs. ‘It’s not as good as the Picture Post.’

  ‘I’ve sold stuff to the Post too, and Life, and even Ce Soir.’

  ‘Really!’ said Babs. ‘Current address, please?’

  ‘I’m billeted with a unit of the Civil Defence in a concrete bunker with no running water and no cooking stove.’

  ‘Who dumped you there?’

  ‘Brockway’s London office. Their idea of a joke, I guess.’

  ‘What sort of accommodation are you looking for?’

  ‘A clean bed and a bathroom where the taps work.’

  ‘You’ll have to pay through the nose for a place like that.’

  ‘I’m sure I will.’

  Babs scribbled away with the fountain pen, filling boxes at random on the useless form. When she glanced up she thought how forlorn he looked, how far from home. ‘Well, Mr Cameron,’ she heard herself say, ‘I’ve a spare room at the moment and I’m prepared to take in a lodger on a temporary basis. You can come home with me if you like.’

  ‘Oh yeah,’ said Christy Cameron. ‘I definitely like.’

  ‘Five o’clock at the depot? Is that a problem?’

  ‘No problem, Miss…?’

  ‘Babs,’ Babs told him. ‘You’d better just call me Babs.’

  2

  ‘Well,’ Rosie said, ‘I think it’s a scandal and someone should put a stop to it.’

  ‘I hope you don’t mean me,’ Kenny said.

  ‘You?’ said Rosie. ‘Oh no, dear me no. You’re far too busy.’

  ‘For God’s sake, Rosie, there’s a—’

  ‘A war on – yes, I huh-have noticed.’

  She had been deaf since childhood and had never mastered sign language. Her talent for lip-reading was almost uncanny, however. Her sisters, mother and stepfather, Bernard, had learned to shape their vowels without effort but Kenny still had to apply a degree of concentration that Rosie regarded as unnecessary and, in the worst of her moods, insulting.

  It had been different in the early months of their marriage when his sister, Fiona, had shared the flat with them or, more correctly, they with her.

  As soon as war was declared, however, Fiona had enlisted in the WAAF. She was currently attached to a Fighter Command sector station at Kenley and had manned the communications system during the worst of the German air attacks in August and September. Kenny had been sick with worry. He had said a prayer for her every night, a gesture that Rosie had regarded as pure superstition, bordering on the unhealthy.

  Rosie leaned across the kitchen table, soup spoon dripping.

  ‘My sister is living with another man, a man who isn’t her husband and you’re not the slightest concerned.’

  Kenny said, ‘She’s taken in a lodger, that’s all.’

  ‘Who told you that?’

  ‘You did,’ said Kenny, ‘not ten minutes ago.’

  He was tired. He was perpetually tired these days. He was still several years short of forty but felt like an old man.

  Frayed nerves, overwork and worry, magnified by her handicap, had changed Rosie too. She was no longer the girl he had fallen in love with, and in spite of the fact that he loved her still there were times when he wished he’d heeded Fiona’s advice and remained a bachelor.

  ‘Who told you about Babs and her lodger?’ he asked.

  ‘Polly.’

  ‘How did Polly find out?’

  ‘Babs couldn’t wait to run round to Manor Park Avenue to impart the news that she’d ditched Jackie and found another man.’

  ‘Whoa,’ said Kenny. ‘A lodger isn’t the same thing as another man.’

  ‘As good as.’ Rosie paddled her spoon in her soup. ‘You know what Babs is like. She’ll have this chap in her bed before he knows what’s hit him.’

  ‘Thousands of women are taking in lodgers,’ Kenny said.

  ‘Americans?’

  ‘If he’s American he probably won’t stay long.’

  ‘Just long enough to nin-knock her up.’

  ‘Oh, Rosie!’

  ‘I don’t know what Mammy will have to say about it.’

  ‘Doesn’t your mother know yet?’ said Kenny.

  ‘No, and I am not going to be the one to tell her.’

  When war had broken out he had assumed that his clever little wife would continue to work in Shelby’s bookshop but within weeks she had gone out to find – to demand – her share of highly paid war work. Now this silly squabble, this storm in the family teacup had blown up and Rosie was off again, blaming him for her sister’s indiscretion just as she blamed him for everything else that displeased her.

  A precious hour, that’s all the time they would have together this evening; Rosie seemed determined to squander it fretting about her sister’s moral welfare. He had dragged himself home after a twelve-hour shift and would have to go out soon to fire-watch; ten until two, perched, freezing, on the roof of the CID building in St Andrew’s Street. The canteen at police HQ would have supplied him with an unrationed supper and congenial company. He wished now that he hadn’t bothered coming home at all.

  ‘Where,’ he said, ‘did Babs meet this chap?’

  ‘At the Welfare Centre, I think.’

  ‘Not the Sweethearts Club?’

  ‘I don’t think she’s ever been to the Sweethearts Club.’

  Rosie broke bread into her soup and mopped it up with her spoon. She looked deathly pale and there were panda-like circles around her eyes. Eleven hours a day assembling tiny components in an ill-lit cubicle in Merryweather’s electrical factory was ruining her health. Soon, Kenny thought sadly, Rosie would look as old as he felt.

  ‘Perhaps h
e’s an old chap, this lodger,’ Kenny heard himself say.

  ‘He is not an old chap,’ Rosie retorted. ‘He’s young. Take my word for it – Babs is doing the duh-dirty on poor Jackie.’

  Kenny wondered where Rosie had heard such a coarse expression and, come to think of it, how she had heard it. Probably at Merryweather’s where the girls were more worldly-wise than his wife even though she’d been raised in one of Glasgow’s toughest neighbourhoods and had had a gangster for a father.

  He pushed away his plate. ‘This American chap, what’s he doing here?’

  ‘Working for a newspaper, I think.’

  ‘What? Like a journalist?’

  ‘Photographer.’

  ‘Really!’ Kenny said.

  ‘I don’t know much about him,’ Rosie said, ‘only what Babs told Polly and Polly told me. I don’t think Polly was interested, to tell you the truth.’

  ‘I wonder,’ Kenny said, ‘why Babs told Polly in the first place.’

  ‘To impress her,’ Rosie said. ‘It’s always been Babs’s ambition to go one better than Polly.’

  ‘Taking in a lodger is hardly going one better.’

  ‘Nuh, but taking on a lover is.’

  Rosie lifted away the soup plates and put them on the draining board beneath the blackout curtains at the sink. She opened the oven door and brought out two small meat pastries. On top of the stove was a pot, a pot that gave off no steam or smell. She opened the pot lid, spooned luke-warm peas on to the plate with the pastries and put it down before her husband.

  Kenny studied his supper without comment.

  ‘What are you having?’ he asked, at length.

  ‘I’m not hungry.’

  ‘Did you have lunch?’

  ‘I bought something off the trolley.’

  ‘You should eat something, Rose,’ he said mildly.

  ‘I told you, I’m nuh-not hungry. This business with Babs has ruined my appetite.’

  Kenny cut into one of the pastries, more onion than meat within.

  ‘What do you want me to do about it?’ he said.

  ‘Go see her,’ Rosie said.

  ‘I can’t just barge in out of the blue and ask Babs if she’s sleeping with her lodger.’

  Rosie frowned, eyes darker than ever, the circles around them like huge blue bruises. ‘Tell her you’re checking his visa?’

  ‘Checking visas isn’t my department.’

  ‘If Dominic were still here, he’d take care of it. He’d sort Babs out.’

  Kenny knew better than anyone that Dominic Manone had been fortunate to escape imprisonment for his crimes. He was stung by the unfair comparison with his brother-in-law. ‘Do you really want me to talk to Babs?’

  ‘Yuh, I really want you to.’

  ‘I can’t go tonight. I’m fire-watching in half an hour.’

  Rosie’s frown deepened. ‘You’re not wriggling out of it?’

  ‘I’ll go tomorrow as soon as I finish my shift.’

  ‘Is that a promise, Kenneth?’

  ‘Yes, dearest,’ he said, ‘that’s a promise.’

  * * *

  Hallop’s Motoring Salon, once Jackie’s pride and joy, had been taken over by the Civil Defence. The plate-glass windows behind which a selection of desirable second-hand motorcars had once reposed were crisscrossed with sticky tape. A water supply tank had been erected in the forecourt and only the pumps and repair pit behind the main building remained functional, reserved, Kenny guessed, for servicing emergency vehicles.

  It was here on the forecourt of the salon during an investigation into Manone’s shady dealings that he had first encountered Jackie Hallop and Babs and had become involved with Rosie and the rest of the Conway clan. If anyone had told him then that he would fall head over heels in love with the sister-in-law of a notorious Glasgow criminal and wind up married to her he would have called them crazy.

  Kenny hadn’t clapped eyes on Babs since early summer. He had been far too busy. The Special Protection Unit was no longer the paltry wee sideshow it had been under the late Inspector Winstock.

  Kenny had spent that afternoon with a liaison officer from Naval Intelligence at the old Greenock Prison, interrogating two so-called ‘businessmen’ who had been arrested for running shipments of British-made arms to neutral ports in Portugal in contravention of about three dozen laws, at least four of which might see them hanged. The liaison officer had invited him to dine at the Royal Greenock Yacht Club – now a naval establishment – but mindful of his promise to Rosie, he had politely declined.

  Instead he had hitched a ride in an RN gharry as far as Paisley, had caught a tram from there to Holloway Road and trudged the last half-mile to Raines Drive. By right he should be back at HQ, or with Rosie in the flat in Cowcaddens. He had rigged up red light bulbs in the flat’s kitchen and bedroom and Mr McVicar, the local warden, had been instructed to press the button on the landing door the instant the siren sounded, for Rosie, being deaf, couldn’t hear the warnings of air attack and he emphatically didn’t want to have to rake among the rubble in search of his wife’s broken body, thank you very much.

  He stood on the doorstep of Babs’s bungalow and listened to a wireless set playing dance music for a moment, then he rang the bell.

  The door opened. Babs peered out at him.

  ‘If it’s the blackout again—’ she began.

  ‘No, it’s me,’ said Kenny.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Kenny. Rosie’s husband.’

  ‘Blimey!’ said Babs. ‘What a surprise.’

  ‘May I come in?’

  There was a faint sheen of light under the door of the living room but the hallway, sensibly, was in darkness. The sound of the radio orchestra was louder now and Kenny recognised the tune – ‘Only Make Believe’.

  Babs frowned. ‘What is it? Is Rosie ill?’

  ‘Everyone’s fine. I just happened to be in the neighbourhood…’

  She stood back and admitted him to the hallway. In the darkness he could smell her perfume, her warmth, and sense, he thought, her agitation.

  ‘I’m not disturbing you, am I?’

  ‘Course not. Come in.’

  She stepped ahead of him into the cosy, lamp-lit living room. There was even a fire in the grate, though the room was hardly what you would call warm. The wireless set, one of several that Jackie had collected over the years, was on a stand by the window. Babs switched it off.

  The chap in the armchair by the hearth wore a heavy pepper-and-salt sweater, thick corduroy trousers and a pair of well-darned woollen stockings. A newspaper was folded across his chest and Kenny guessed that he had been catching up on his shut-eye.

  ‘Where’s your daughter? Where’s April?’

  ‘In bed, fast asleep,’ Babs told him. ‘Drink? We have Scotch.’

  ‘No. No thanks,’ said Kenny.

  He thrust his hands deep into his overcoat pockets and tipped his hat back, his blue eyes watchful and assessing, not hard.

  The man in the armchair rose and offered his hand. ‘Hi,’ he said, ‘I’m Christy Cameron. I guess we haven’t met.’

  Kenny shook the chap’s hand.

  ‘This is my sister Rosie’s husband,’ Babs said. ‘He’s a copper and I think he’s here to give you the once-over.’

  Christy Cameron spread his hands. ‘Well, here I am, in all my glory. You sure you don’t want a drink, Mr…?’

  ‘MacGregor. Kenny.’

  ‘Inspector Kenny?’

  ‘Just Kenny will do.’

  Babs brushed his shoulder as she passed out of the room into the hallway to check on the blackout curtain or to make sure that April was asleep.

  ‘Have you come to give me the once-over?’ Christy said.

  ‘More or less.’

  Christy laughed and seated himself in the armchair again. He nodded towards the sofa that faced the fireplace. ‘Best make yourself comfortable if I’m gonna regale you with the story of my life.’

  Obediently Kenny unbu
ttoned his overcoat, took off his hat and seated himself on the sofa.

  ‘I guess you’re wondering what I’m doing here?’

  ‘I assume you’re a lodger,’ Kenny said.

  ‘Yeah,’ Christy said. ‘It wasn’t my idea, but when Barbara offered me room and board – would you have turned it down?’

  ‘I imagine not,’ said Kenny.

  ‘You get sick of hotels in my game.’

  ‘What exactly is your game, Christy?’

  ‘Nobody told you? I’m a photographer.’

  ‘What do you photograph?’

  ‘Anything and everything.’

  ‘For instance?’ Kenny said.

  ‘If you wanna check my credentials call the London office of Brockway’s Illustrated Weekly.’

  ‘Where’s your head office? New York?’

  ‘Yeah, in Plaza Center,’ Christy said.

  ‘Are you on staff or do you work on contract?’

  ‘Boy, you sure do come to the point, don’t you?’

  ‘Usually,’ Kenny said.

  ‘I’m not…’ he glanced at the door again. ‘It’s not—’

  ‘Staff or contract?’ Kenny said.

  The rhythm of the afternoon’s interrogation was still with him but quizzing an innocent civilian wasn’t part of his brief. What did it matter if Babs was having a fling? The Yank would be gone long before Jackie got out of uniform. The only danger, Kenny supposed, was that Jackie might arrive home unexpectedly on embarkation leave.

  ‘Contract. I work for other magazines as well.’

  Babs returned with April in her arms. The little girl, wide-eyed and not at all sleepy, was dressed in pink flannelette pyjamas and a pair of fluffy white socks. A dressing gown was draped about her shoulders.

  ‘Hi, kid,’ Christy said, winking. ‘Too rowdy for you, are we?’

  ‘She wants a drink of milk.’ Babs put April down on Kenny’s lap. ‘Hold her for a minute, Ken, will you?’

  Awkwardly he slid an arm about his niece’s waist. He was unused to small children for he had no younger brothers or sisters, only Fiona, and the idea of Fiona ever sitting on his lap was ludicrous. April leaned back and stared up at him for several seconds, then glanced at Christy Cameron, who said, ‘It’s okay, honey. He’s your uncle.’