After the War is Over (30 page)

‘I don’t want to become an MP,’ William said hurriedly.

‘I understand. Your mam said as much in her letter. Well, you look a nice enough young lad. When can you start?’

William was astonished. ‘But aren’t you going to interview me? You haven’t asked any questions.’

‘The less I know about you the better, lad. People don’t normally tell the truth in interviews. They give answers they think the interviewer wants, which can lead to all sorts of complications and possibly lies.’ She gave him a truly wonderful smile. ‘As I said, I like the look of you; I’ve known your mam for more than twenty years and I like her too. Your dad could do with a firework up his arse from time to time, but he’s a decent enough chap. So, what d’you say, William? Do you want to work for me or not? The pay’s five hundred pounds a year, which’ll just about cover your expenses.’

‘Oh, I do, I do,’ William stammered. ‘And the pay is fine.’ He was to discover later that she only took half her salary as an MP and gave the rest to charity.

‘Good.’ She smiled again. ‘I hope you don’t mind, but I find William a bit of a mouthful and am going to call you Will. Is that all right?’

‘It’s what I was called at uni.’ Sometimes he was called Willy, but he wasn’t going to tell her that.

‘You can call me Kath,’ she told him. ‘Now, Will. Shortly, Parliament will break up for the holidays, just like school. I am visiting various African countries to write a report on the poverty there. You can stay and tidy up this office. Get rid of most of the papers, only keep the ones that look important. Can you type?’

‘A bit.’ It was an awful little bit.

‘Well, you can get some practice in on this ancient machine.’ She laid her hand on a dust-covered typewriter. ‘It has difficulty typing “e”. Perhaps you can see a way of fixing it.’

‘I’ll do my best,’ William promised. ‘More than my best.’

‘Well I can’t ask for more than a person’s best. Oh, there’s another thing. There’s no need to dress so formally.’ She nodded at his well-cut charcoal-grey suit, sparkling white shirt and mildly patterned tie. ‘Jeans and a T-shirt will do, but be careful with the message – on the T-shirt, that is. Nothing rude about the Pope or the royal family, otherwise it might get in the papers that me researcher is a bolshie bastard and me reputation will go even further down the pan.’ She got to her feet and William did the same, just as a woman knocked on the open door.

‘Morning, Auntie Kath,’ the woman sang, followed by a gasp of ‘William Grant, what on earth are you doing here?’

‘Will is my new assistant,’ Kath said. ‘Of course, you two know each other, don’t you? I first met your mam,’ she said to William, ‘at Maggie’s mother’s funeral.’

William shook hands politely with the newcomer. He remembered her well from over the years. She was a cracker like her aunt, and, he recalled, had an extremely pretty daughter called Holly. He accepted with alacrity when she invited him to tea on Sunday. London was turning out to be a pretty wonderful place.

He returned to the tall, shabby house in Islington that he was renting along with four other students whom he’d been with at university; two boys and two girls. He’d been the first to arrive yesterday and had taken the first-floor front room after touring the house and deciding it was the best. The room below was bigger, but it was by the front door and the occupier might feel obliged to answer every knock.

After unpacking a few more things and hanging them in the wardrobe that could have accommodated at least half a dozen adults, he lay on the bed, stared at the ceiling, and wondered how many other young men would look forward with such heady anticipation to the idea of tidying up an office. Tomorrow he would buy some jeans and T-shirts – his parents had never approved of either – and he vowed never to iron a shirt again.

The weather was glorious that summer, continually warm and sunny, only raining during the night, when it refreshed the earth and plants and didn’t inconvenience anybody. William realised that until he’d come to live in London, he’d only been half alive. At university, he’d mixed with the earnest hard workers, studied a lot, drank little, and only bothered with girls who felt the same. Mind you, he had lost his virginity a long time ago. Studying hard didn’t stop a chap from having sex.

Having three sisters, he got on well with girls and didn’t feel embarrassed as many of his friends did who’d had no experience of the opposite sex. In the pubs, clubs and dark coffee shops where he spent most of his evenings, he met new girls every night. They were usually the sort who were familiar with politics and what was happening in the world. Discussions raged well into the night. They argued about the war in Vietnam, the race riots in the Deep South of the United States, the terrible, dreadful, unbelievable tragedy of the assassinations of Jack Kennedy and Martin Luther King, and then, only a few weeks ago, the killing of Robert Kennedy after he’d won an important primary on his way to becoming the second Kennedy to be president of that strange country where heroes died and bad people thrived – the Mafia being only one example.

His favourite girl, though, was Maggie Kaminski’s daughter, Holly. At twenty, she was such a delicate little thing, an incredibly pretty blonde with the most astonishing blue eyes. She was so very different to the other girls William associated with, who regarded themselves as beatniks and wore slacks and shapeless sweaters and occasionally hobnail boots. They used either no make-up or far too much so that their faces were dead white and their eyes looked like cockroaches. Sometimes their lips were painted black.

In contrast, Holly wore soft, feminine clothes and her face was discreetly made up. Her soft, breathy voice reminded him a little of Marilyn Monroe, who most men he knew were madly in love with. Holly had had a crush on him – it was impossible not to have noticed – for as long as he could remember. She was a receptionist in a beauty salon in Bond Street, whereas the other girls he knew lived on the dole or served in bars and were constantly looking for good causes to march for and bad issues to march against.

He hadn’t yet asked her out. He had the feeling, with Holly, that asking for a date was almost akin to a proposal of marriage. She would take it very seriously, not casually like the other girls, and in view of her relationship to his employer – she was Kath’s great-niece – he didn’t want to blot his copybook by ditching her if he discovered they weren’t made for each other.

The problem was solved one Sunday when Holly’s dad, a charismatic individual with an important job in a Polish bank, produced a pair of tickets for
There’s a Girl in My Soup
starring Donald Sinden, which was on at the Globe Theatre in the West End on Wednesday. He suggested William take Holly to see it. At this, Grace, the other daughter, looked amused. She was as different from Holly as chalk from cheese. Dark-haired like her mother, darker blue eyes, argumentative, wilful, quite rude – at least he thought so, the way she made fun of his opinions and told him to his face that he was full of hot air. Out of the hearing of her parents, she made liberal use of four-letter words.

The show was really good. William enjoyed it, particularly the way Holly kept her hand tucked in his throughout the performance. He was a little perturbed when they came out and she assumed they would take a taxi back to where she lived in Coriander Close in Finchley. He had only a few pounds in his pocket and was terrified he wouldn’t have enough for the fare. Holly had requested a Tom Collins in both intervals, and the drinks had cost a bomb. He had to concede it was hot in the theatre, though lemonade had been enough for him. The cost of the taxi virtually cleaned him out, and he used his last few shillings to get back to Islington on the tube. If he couldn’t borrow money in the morning, he’d have to walk to the House of Commons.

By the time William eventually laid his head on the pillow, he had quite gone off Holly Kaminski. The other girls he knew would never have done that to a fellow. They wouldn’t have expected a taxi or, if they’d wanted one, would have paid for it themselves. And it was boring talking to Holly, who hadn’t a clue what was going on in the world. He would have liked to discuss the end of the Prague Spring in Czechoslovakia and the overthrow of Alexander Dub
č
ek, who had wanted to turn his country into a democracy. But Holly had never heard of Czechoslovakia or Alexander Dub
č
ek and preferred to talk about things like the latest shoes and
The Sound of Music
, a film she’d seen five times and which William wouldn’t have wanted to see had he lived to be a hundred.

He groaned into the pillow, having remembered that the following night, Thursday, he had promised to take Holly to a disco in Covent Garden, and for lunch in Hampstead on Sunday, followed by a walk on the Heath. It meant he’d have to withdraw two or three times as much cash as he normally did. Even if he really fancied her for a girlfriend, he couldn’t afford her.

Next day, he forgot about Holly while he continued with the tidying of Kath’s office. Some of the newspapers were more than twenty years old. They were mainly left-wing: the
Daily Mirror
, the
Daily Herald
, the
Daily Worker
. The headlines fascinated him:
Rationing Ends – AT LAST! Britain Occupies Suez Canal. Death of a President
. Wars started, wars ended, trains and planes crashed, there were floods and fires, countries had famines and people died in their millions, rarely from natural causes. He cut out everything to do with politics and put them in box files.

William became lost in the history of his country and the world until he realised it was time to go home and change for the disco tonight. He had an almost waist-high heap of newspapers to throw away when he came in on Monday. He would be glad when the weekend was over and his life would be Holly-free and his money his own again. It hadn’t taken long for him to realise that she wasn’t made for him after all.

Maggie smiled benignly through the window as Holly linked William’s arm and they made their way to the station. They were going to a disco in a pub somewhere.

‘She’s been mad about him from when she was about ten,’ she said to Jack, who was watching the news on television. ‘Since he’s come to live in London, I could tell he was longing to ask her out. I’m glad you got those theatre tickets. It’s really brought them together.’

‘Seemed a bit mean to me,’ Jack said. It had been Maggie’s idea for him to give William the tickets as a way of getting him and Holly to go out together. ‘He was put in a position where he couldn’t very well refuse.’

‘But he looked pleased when he saw them, not at all put out or anything. They’re going out again on Sunday. Oh Jack, wouldn’t it be wonderful if they got married? Between us, the Kaminskis and the Grants, we could have a really big wedding.’ Maggie rubbed her hands together gleefully. Nell would come to the wedding, and she and Iris might become friends again.

‘Don’t get all worked up about it,’ Jack warned. ‘It might not happen.’

‘On the other hand, it might.’

She saw his lips tighten just a little and recognised the sign. She was getting on his nerves. ‘You always have to have the last word,’ he’d said once.

It had happened gradually over the years, loving each other less and less until one day they wouldn’t love each other at all. She’d had a long conversation about it with Nell over the phone. ‘Maybe you’re just getting used to each other,’ Nell had suggested. ‘Maybe you love each other just as much, but in a different way. It’s just not so passionate any more.’

Maggie hoped that Nell was right; she usually was. She didn’t want to not love Jack any more. She had dramatic visions of him dying, watching his eyes close for the final time, knowing that he would never open them again, never speak, not even breathe. She was surprised when it brought tears to her own eyes.

Maybe she still loved him just as much as ever. She hoped he wouldn’t have to die before she found out for sure.

‘I think I’ll give Nell a ring,’ she said now. ‘She’ll be really thrilled to know that our Holly and William Grant might get married.’

She decided to call Nell from the bedroom, where there was a telephone and she could sit comfortably on the bed instead of the hard seat in the hall. Before sitting, she opened the window and breathed in the cool evening air, then dialled Nell’s number in Waterloo.

Five minutes later, she came downstairs, her face ashen. ‘Can we please go to Liverpool in the car tomorrow, Jack?’

He must have noticed the trembling urgency in her voice. He turned down the television and looked dismayed. ‘Oh darling, you know I can’t. There’s this chap coming from the States and I’ve promised to look after him for the day. I did tell you.’

‘Of course you did, but I’d forgotten.’ It would be unreasonable to expect him to back out at the last minute.

‘What on earth’s the matter, Maggie? You’ve gone terribly pale.’

‘Nell has just told me the most awful thing . . .’

‘Sit down,’ he urged. He got up and pulled her to an armchair, where she sat and he dropped on to his knees beside her. ‘What awful thing, darling?’

She was so outraged, so disbelieving, that she could hardly speak. ‘According to Nell, William isn’t Iris’s child, but hers, and his father is an O’Neill. It can only be our Ryan – she never said anything, but I could always tell she was really keen on him. She only told me now because I said that Holly and William were getting serious about each other and there was a possibility they’d get married. But they can’t, because they’re related to each other; blood relatives, I think it’s called.’

‘And why must you go to Liverpool tomorrow, Maggie?’ He stroked her face. ‘Don’t you know enough already?’

‘I need to speak to Iris about it, face to face, make sure that what Nell said is true. And I’d like to talk to Nell again; properly, this time. Before, she was so upset I could hardly understand what she was saying.’

‘They must have kept the truth from William,’ Jack said thoughtfully.

‘Oh lord,’ Maggie sobbed. ‘What a terrible mess. And you know, Jack, I had always thought Nell was a virgin until she married Red, yet she’d actually had a
baby
! And before I’d had Holly, too.’