After the War is Over (35 page)

Afternoons, they went to the West End or one of the numerous markets, on the lookout for cheap clothes and shoes.

‘I never thought I could be so happy,’ one of them would say from time to time, or something like it, accompanied by a blissful sigh.

‘You’re wasting your life,’ Grace’s mother, Maggie, would say on the occasions she came to visit, usually in the morning when they were having baths, doing their hair, or trying on the clothes they’d bought the day before. Only occasionally did they remember to eat. They consumed coffee by the gallon.

‘When I was your age,’ Maggie said only a few days after Red Finnegan’s funeral, ‘there was a war on and I was in the army toiling away on behalf of my country.’

‘Toiling!’ Grace hooted. ‘You’ve always claimed you had a marvellous time in the army. And if there was a war on, we’d join the forces, wouldn’t we, Lou?’

‘Mmm,’ Louise agreed through the hairpins stored in her mouth while she tried to twist her hair into a chignon or a topknot or something equally complicated. At other times she might be experimenting with black lipstick or seeing how thickly she could apply eyeliner without looking like a clown or a crazy woman.

‘I suppose you could say I’m wasting me own life,’ Maggie said thoughtfully. ‘After all, I’m doing nothing with it. I need something useful to occupy me time. Or a hobby, a useful hobby, not like flower-arranging or collecting thimbles.’ While she spoke, she was wandering around the room picking up clothes off the floor, the bed, the chairs, and putting them away in the wrong drawers or hanging them in the wrong place – the coats went behind the door, not in the wardrobe.

‘Have you bought any furniture polish yet?’ she enquired when she found a mark on the table.

‘Not yet, Mum.’ The girls rolled their eyes at each other. Grace usually got rid of marks with spit and the corner of her hanky. Louise didn’t even notice them. Housework wasn’t on their agenda.

‘Would you like me to see if there’s a job going in the pub, Mam?’ Grace enquired. She winked at her friend and Louise grinned.

‘Don’t be daft, girl. Though I wouldn’t mind working for a charity, like. I mean, it’s not as if your dad and I need the money.’

‘My mum has got a job,’ Louise announced. ‘She works Fridays and Saturdays in Owen Owen’s ladies’ clothes department.’

‘Does she really!’ Maggie was genuinely interested. ‘Owen Owen’s was one of our favourite shops when we were young. Sometimes we’d have afternoon tea in the restaurant, Nell and all. Ah, those were the days,’ she said nostalgically. ‘You girls,’ she went on changing tack completely, ‘you’re doing the right thing. Enjoy yourselves while you can. I’m lucky having such good times to look back on. Would you like me to make you some coffee? I wouldn’t mind a cup meself.’

‘Yes please,’ the girls chorused. Once she’d drunk the coffee, she would go away and leave them in peace.

William had returned to London. He was in Auntie Kath’s office in the House of Commons somewhat painfully typing the report he’d written on the Labour Party conference while staying with Addy. Last week, the Conservatives had held their conference in Brighton. Next Monday, Members of Parliament would return and the house would sit again with a full programme of legislation to debate and possibly pass.

A Labour government was currently in power, the prime minister, Harold Wilson, a bluff Yorkshireman who made something of a show about being seen puffing his pipe.

Despite all William’s current problems, his worries, his concern about who exactly he was, he was looking forward to working for Kathleen Curran, who swept into the office at that very moment. She wore a scarlet cloak and a white knitted beret. She didn’t exactly resemble Little Red Riding Hood, but could easily have been taken for a character out of a children’s story or a nursery rhyme. She kissed him on the cheek.

‘Did you have a good time in Blackpool, darlin’?’ she asked. ‘These days I miss all the fringe meetings, and I particularly miss the Irish nights. Unfortunately I feel obliged to attend the events that people tell me are more important.’

‘It was great. I loved every minute,’ William assured her.

‘Where are you living nowadays?’ she asked. ‘Didn’t you give up your room for some reason?’

‘I’m staying at a cheap hotel,’ he told her.

‘You won’t manage that for long on the money I pay you,’ she said bluntly. ‘You’d better stay in the flat for now.’

The flat, it appeared, was where her agent, Paddy O’Neill, stayed when he was in London. William swallowed hard.

‘Paddy’s getting on a bit and he doesn’t come to London all that often these days, so
he
can stay at a cheap hotel in future. It’s across the bridge in Lambeth, just two rooms, kitchen and bathroom, the flat, that is.’

‘Is it very expensive?’ At Red’s funeral, after acknowledging that William would only earn peanuts working for her aunt, Maggie had suggested she ask her husband if there were any vacancies at his bank.

‘I mean, you’ve got a degree in mathematics, haven’t you? Perfect for a bank.’

‘Not really. It’s a different sort of figures altogether,’ William had said at the time. He shuddered at the notion of being a bank clerk. It really wasn’t his cup of tea. He wanted more from figures than putting them in columns and adding them up.

‘The flat’s rent-free, lad,’ Auntie Kath said now. ‘It comes with the job. After all, you’ve got to eat and treat yourself to a drink now’n again. I’ll give you the key before you leave.’

William heaved a sigh of relief. His life would never return to normal, but bit by bit it was feeling less strange.

When he saw the flat, he felt even more pleased with the way things were going. It was the top floor of a Dickensian house in a street of similar three-storey houses. Self-contained, it was exactly as Kath had described: kitchen, bedroom, living room and bathroom. Everything about it was miserable: dark, dusky wallpaper, yellowing ceilings, cracked linoleum on the floor, tattered curtains. The furniture was cheap, modern stuff.

But William couldn’t have been more pleased had he been looking around an apartment in Mayfair. Despite never having had to so much as think about decorating before, he began to look forward to painting the walls nice bright colours and replacing the linoleum and curtains. He’d been given money for his twenty-first so could afford to pay for a few improvements, though not new furniture. Hopefully the current lot would improve with a good polish. Once everything was done, he would look up some of his mates from university and invite them round for a drink. He recalled Kath saying that the flat would do ‘for now’, but as long as he worked for her, surely she wouldn’t dream of chucking him out!

Oh, and he must write to Nell, tonight, as soon as he had unpacked his bag. Write and tell her how much he missed her, but that it had been important for him to get away.

‘What’s she doing now?’ Quinn Finnegan asked his brother. They were in the hallway of the house in Waterloo.

Kev peered through the slightly open door of the living room to where his mother was sitting on the settee. ‘She’s reading me da’s old letters,’ he whispered. ‘The ones he used to send if he was away for more than a few days.’

‘I thought as much.’ Quinn’s brow darkened. ‘If we go in, she’ll stuff them under the cushion and pretend to be reading a book. She doesn’t want us to know how much she misses him.’

‘She’s a stoic,’ Kev opined. ‘That’s what Grandad said when he came round the other day. He said she’s always been a stoic. She doesn’t want to make a nuisance of herself by weeping and wailing all over the place.’

‘I’d prefer it if she did.’

‘Me too. Shall we make her a cup of tea?’

‘I think so. And something to eat. I’ve noticed she’s hardly eating.’ It was a month since their da’s tragic death. Quinn opened the door and sauntered into the room. ‘Fancy a cuppa, Ma?’

Nell pushed the papers she was holding down the side of the settee. ‘I wouldn’t say no, son.’

‘I’ll put the kettle on.’ He went into the kitchen. ‘D’you fancy a cuppa, Kev?’ he shouted.

‘Wouldn’t mind.’ Kev came into the room just as casually as his brother. ‘I’ll warm the pot, shall I?’

‘If you don’t mind, kiddo.’

Minutes later, Quinn brought in three mugs on a tray. Kev followed with a plate of bread and jam, the bread almost an inch thick and the jam piled on. They sat one each side of their mother on the settee.

‘That looks nice,’ Nell remarked. She picked up a piece of bread and began to nibble at it. ‘Mmm!’ she said appreciatively. She could tell they were worried about her. Perhaps it was time she told them what she had planned. There was bound to be an argument, and best get it over with. ‘I’m looking for a job,’ she told them. ‘I’d quite like to be a cook – you know how much I enjoy cooking.’

‘We don’t want you going to work,’ Quinn spluttered through a mouthful of bread and jam. ‘I’ll go to the labour exchange tomorrow and get a job meself.’

Kev missed his mouth with the tea and it went down the front of his shirt. ‘And I’ll go with our Quinn, Ma. There’s no need for me to stay at school. I’ll be eighteen at Christmas.’

‘Neither of you will do any such thing,’ Nell said as loudly and as authoritatively as she could. If she spoke in her ‘won’t take no for an answer’ voice, they might be persuaded to agree. ‘Your da would have wanted you to stay at school, Kevin, you know he would.’ She turned to her other son. ‘And Quinn, you have to stay home and write loads of music and songs and rehearse ready for when you both turn professional and follow in your da’s footsteps. That’s the most important thing of all, taking over from your da.’

She hoped the time would come when they’d make more money than Red, who’d just earned enough to make life comfortable. They’d saved very little over the years, and she’d let Eamon, Red’s partner, have half the money in the bank, as he hadn’t saved a penny. Poor Eamon was gutted by the loss of his partner. After the funeral, he’d returned to Ireland and she hadn’t heard from him since.

‘Who would you cook for?’ Kev asked sternly.

Nell shrugged. ‘A restaurant, maybe. Or perhaps a big factory with a canteen – I’d quite like that, it would be just like I did in the army. Or some posh family that wants a cook of their own.’

Quinn shook his head. ‘Not a posh family, Ma. A restaurant’d be okay, or a factory. But it’s only to be for a year. In the meantime, me and Kev’ll practise like mad and do as many gigs as we can at weekends. When Kev leaves school,’ he said boastfully, ‘we’re going to take the music world by storm.’

‘It’ll do her good going to work,’ he said to Kev later. ‘She’s bound to be lonely without me da at home. There’ll be people for her to talk to and everyone’ll like her. People always do.’

‘We’ll make a fortune one day and buy her a bigger house and a new car – a Mini, she likes Minis. We’ll get a yellow one. Yellow is her favourite colour.’

Grace and Louise had discovered that working for up to six hours a night for six nights a week in a public house whose clientele was at least three quarters male meant it was hard to keep the men at bay. Although the bar itself served as a barrier, at least half their time was spent collecting glasses and wiping tables. There were a handful of customers who seemed to regard the barmaids – there were five altogether – as part of the service, available for them to grope whenever they went near.

By now, both Grace and Louise were skilled at repelling attempts to pinch their bottoms or squeeze their breasts.

‘Don’t you
dare
do that!’ they would hiss, eyes flashing angrily, whenever a customer got too fresh. If the man persisted, with Phyllis Goddard’s encouragement they would dig a sharp elbow into the most convenient place on his anatomy. By then, most chaps would have given up, might even have apologised, but should they still not be put off, then Trevor, the doorman who was built like a brick wall as wide as it was high, would be called upon to deal with the matter and the customer would be thrown out.

Possibly most men – women too – thought that two young women working in such an environment couldn’t possibly be virgins, but they were wrong.

In the liberated sixties, it had become fashionable to sleep around, but Grace and Louise had resisted. In fact, they hadn’t even felt tempted. They were old-fashioned girls from good families who between them had determined that the first man they would sleep with would have to be special. In fact, he might possibly be the
only
man, the one they would marry. They couldn’t imagine their mothers sleeping with a man other than their fathers – they would never know just how wrong this assumption was.

It was Christmas. Phyllis, expecting massive business, had offered the bar staff double pay over the holiday.

Maggie was aggrieved that Grace would only be present for Christmas dinner. She was bringing Louise with her – poor Iris wouldn’t even glimpse her daughter on Christmas Day. William was going back to Liverpool to spend the day with the Finnegans.

The Green Man was opening at six. ‘When I was young,’ Maggie grumbled when the girls were ready to leave, ‘barmaids were regarded as no better than they ought to be. No respectable girl worked behind a bar.’

‘Things have changed since then, Mum.’ Grace patted her mother’s head. ‘Anyway, you won’t be here tonight. Aren’t you going to a party in Soho?’

‘Yes, but you and Holly are invited too. And Louise could have come, of course. They’re your dad’s friends. He’d love you to be there.’

‘No I wouldn’t,’ Jack put in. ‘It’ll be as boring as hell. I’m not looking forward to it myself. The old people will talk about old times – in Polish. Grace and Louise will have a much better time in a pub with loads of young men.’

‘I love going to parties in Soho,’ Holly said unctuously.

‘That’s because you are a saint, Holly, and your sister is a little devil.’ Jack bestowed smiles on both his daughters. ‘And I love you both very much. Let me know when you’re ready to leave and I’ll give you a lift home. There won’t be much in the way of public transport on Christmas Day.’

‘Your dad is positively gorgeous,’ Louise said when they were back in Islington and getting changed ready for work. ‘He’s as handsome as a film star. I could quite easily fall madly in love with him.’