After the War is Over (7 page)

Betty had wanted to move away for a long time, but Chris was attached to Liverpool and not at all keen on London. She didn’t like the idea of leaving him behind, but now he had met Maggie and would have a wife for company when she went.

Maggie was thrilled. ‘I’d love to live here. It’s so
bohemian
. Oh, but I’ll really miss you, Betty,’ she added fulsomely.

Later, after Betty had gone to the pub on the corner with her friend Eunice, Maggie and Chris lay together in the room where he slept, which was just about big enough for a single bed and a chest of drawers.

‘I love you,’ he whispered.

‘And I love you. I love you so much it hurts.’ She could actually feel an ache in the bothersome heart that kept switching itself on and off these days.

He stroked her neck, then her breasts through the thin material of her blouse. She didn’t protest when he pulled the blouse out of her skirt and slid his hand beneath it and her bra until he was touching her naked flesh. Everything inside seemed to explode in great spasms of pleasure, but when he reached under her skirt and his hand touched the skin at the top of her stockings, she made him stop, though it took an enormous amount of determination.

‘No,’ she said firmly, if a trifle shakily. ‘No, not yet. Not until we’re married.’ She struggled to a sitting position and pushed his hands away.

He groaned. ‘Lord knows when that’ll happen.’

‘Now we’ve got somewhere to live, all you have to do is get a better job – a proper one.’

His face lit up. ‘I met a chap today who said that a new picture house is opening in Walton Vale. Actually, it’s an old one being done up and reopening, but showing nothing but foreign pictures. It’ll be called I Continental. As soon as I find out who’s running it, I’ll apply for the job of manager, though assistant manager would do for the time being.’

‘Oh, Chris! That’d be the gear.’ She got up and went into the big room, away from the dangerously enticing bed. Having spent three years of her life in an army camp and emerged still a virgin, she wanted to stay that way until she and Chris were married.

She glanced at the glowing fire, the table full of gorgeous materials, the posters on the wall, and the gas lamp with its multicoloured glass shade that cast a rainbow of colours over everything. It was like a stage set for the most wonderful play ever written, a play that would never end. And she and Chris would be the stars.

She hadn’t imagined it was possible to be so monumentally happy.

The man wore a grey worsted overcoat with an astrakhan collar, a grey trilby hat and a navy suit, and carried a walking stick with an ivory handle. The effect was spoilt rather by his brown boots. He was tall, with a red face, a vast moustache and a straight, imperious stature, and Iris could tell he was the sort of man who didn’t suffer fools gladly.

‘Yes?’ she enquired when she opened the door. He didn’t have the apprehensive expression of a patient. If it hadn’t been for the boots, she would have thought him a salesman.

He lifted his hat. ‘Mrs Grant?’

‘That’s me, yes.’

‘I’m Alfred Desmond. I’ve come about our Nellie, me daughter.’

It took Iris a moment to realise he meant Nell. He didn’t look anything like she’d expected. She had thought Nell’s family were poor, but this man looked relatively prosperous. Nell didn’t mention him often, but when she did, it wasn’t in exactly admiring tones, which was why she’d built up a picture in her mind of him looking very different.

‘You’d better come in,’ she said tersely. It was early afternoon and surgery was due to begin soon. In fact, a woman carrying a baby was walking through the gate. Iris took Alfred Desmond into the kitchen, returning briefly to show the woman into the waiting room. She left the front door on the latch so that from then on people could let themselves in.

‘What can I do for you?’ she asked when she went back into the kitchen. He had undone his coat and was nursing his hat and stick on his knee.

‘About this job you’ve offered our Nellie, I’d like to know more about it.’ He actually sounded suspicious, as if Iris intended selling his daughter on the white slave market.

‘It’s just preparing dinner for my husband and myself. I know what a good cook Nell is from the army. As I’m hopeless at cooking, I thought I’d ask Nell to do it for us.’ Iris considered it, but decided not to offer him a cup of tea. There was something about the man that she didn’t like.

‘Do you consider ten shillings sufficient recompense for that?’

He’s after more money! She imagined how upset Nell would be if she knew. ‘Nell would only be here for at the most two hours a day for five days,’ she pointed out. ‘Ten shillings works out at a shilling an hour. That seems a fair wage to me, considerably fairer than the money she gets from you.’

He didn’t look annoyed, just paused and considered the matter. ‘I suppose you’re right. Her poor mam’ll be left by herself while Nellie’s out, and we’ll all have to wait for our own dinner, but we’ll just have to put up with it.’

‘Nell’s entitled to a life of her own.’

He got rather ponderously to his feet. Iris had a strong feeling that he hadn’t really come about the money, but to inspect her and have a look inside the house. ‘I’ll call round Friday dinner time for our Nell’s wages.’

‘You’ll do no such thing!’ Iris slammed her hand on the table and he jumped. ‘Nell will have earned it and I shall give it to her and no one else.’

He looked mildly surprised, but Iris reckoned he’d only said it to irritate her. ‘But I’m her da.’

‘True, but you won’t be making me and my husband’s dinner; Nell will, and she’s the one who’ll be getting paid.’

He had the nerve to smile, even if it was only a flicker, as if he admired Iris for standing her ground. ‘Is there anything you need?’ he enquired.

‘Need?’

‘I’ve got quite a collection of stuff at home,’ he said boastfully. ‘Max Factor make-up, sugar, a china dinner set decorated with rosebuds, umbrellas, a selection of size six leather court shoes in a nice tan colour – brand new, of course – a coffee table. Oh, and I managed to get me hands on a whole dozen bottles of scent the other day,
Shalimar
. I understand it’s dead expensive, but I’m only charging ten bob a bottle.’ He winked. ‘Anything you fancy – I could have it back here within the hour.’

Iris shuddered with desire. She would have given her eye teeth for a bottle of
Shalimar
and a Max Factor lipstick, any shade would do. As for the dinner set . . .! ‘No thank you,’ she said stiffly. He was a spiv, a horrible, revolting spiv selling stuff on the black market. She’d known people who were of the view that spivs should have been strung from the lamp posts when the war ended, just like Mussolini. She wondered if she would have had the willpower to turn down a pound of butter!

She showed him out. He lifted his hat and strode down the little drive. Once on the pavement, he lifted his hat again and winked. Iris shuddered for the second time. She had a horrible feeling that he rather liked her.

Iris’s mother-in-law telephoned on Tuesday morning sounding desperate. ‘Darling, can we possibly come to dinner on Saturday night?’

‘Of course, Adele. Tom and I aren’t doing anything.’ They
never
did anything. She had been out of the army for three months, and all they had done was have his parents and his brother and his wife to dinner – and gone to dinner at their houses. She wondered if she could ask Adele the reason for her desperation without sounding rude, when her mother-in-law explained.

‘It’s just that odious friend of mine from across the road, Beatrice, has invited us to dinner at their house,’ she said in an accusing voice, as if Beatrice had committed some sort of crime. ‘Apparently her brother, who we have met before, is staying, and he is the most revolting man in the world, with abominable table manners. Cyril can’t abide him. I declined, of course, said we were having dinner elsewhere, but if we stay in and Beatrice sees the light on, she will know I lied. We can’t very well sit at the back in the kitchen all night long, not on a Saturday, and you know how hard it would be to get Cyril to a restaurant.’

‘What time should I expect you both?’

‘Oh, Iris, you are an absolutely perfect daughter-in-law. I just knew I could rely on you. Half-seven say?’

‘Half-seven it is. I’ll invite Constance and Frank, shall I?’ They usually had dinner together once a month, and this could be counted as her and Tom’s turn.

Iris discussed the menu with Nell when she came on Thursday. ‘I haven’t bought this week’s meat ration yet, but whatever I get, there won’t be enough for six.’

‘Have you got a couple of tins of corned beef?’ Nell asked.

‘Only one, but my mother-in-law is bound to have another. Since the war started, she and my father-in-law have become fond of corned-beef hash.’

‘Can you get a pound of haricot beans and a cabbage?’

‘I should imagine so, yes.’

‘Would you like me to come and make dinner for you?’ Nell offered kindly.

‘Oh Nell, would you?’ Whenever they had people to dinner, Iris usually spent the entire day in the kitchen getting herself worked up into such a state that Tom was scared to approach her. Inevitably, something would burn or not be cooked enough. ‘I’d love you to come,’ she said, emotionally. ‘What are you going to make?’

‘Potato soup, followed by haricot beef casserole, and dripping cake with mock cream for afters. I used to make that at camp when we got short of rations. Oh!’ Nell said, delightedly. ‘I’m already looking forward to it. All we have at home is scouse. Me dad always manages to get a bit of meat from somewhere, but it worries me what sort of animal it came from.’

On Saturday, Nell arrived at five o’clock. She put a small parcel on the table. ‘Me dad’s sent half a pound of best butter,’ she said. ‘The other day I told him how much you missed it. He likes you. He keeps asking questions about you.’ She grinned. ‘It’s not often me dad likes anybody apart from Rita Hayworth.’

‘Rita Hayworth!’ Iris said faintly. She tried not to visibly recoil from the idea of being sent a present by Alfred Desmond, despite it being butter. After all, the chap was Nell’s father.

‘She’s his woman,’ Nell said in a matter-of-fact way. ‘Me mam’s his wife and Rita Hayworth is his woman. ’Course, she doesn’t look a bit like the real Rita Hayworth, but she’s got the same red hair.’

‘Doesn’t your mother mind?’ Iris asked, possibly even more faintly.

‘Mind! Of
course
she minds, but what can she do about it? Me dad’s a law unto himself. She just sits in the chair all day and pines. She’s lovesick, according to me sisters. She doesn’t like being left on her own for long, so our Kenny’s staying at home with her tonight.’

‘Poor woman.’ Iris wondered if Nell’s mother would appreciate a visit, but she would ask about that some other time.

‘Anyroad,’ Nell said, ‘did you manage to soak the beans for twenty-four hours without getting yourself into a tuck about it?’ Having made meals three times a day for up to a hundred people in the army, she found Iris’s inability to cook for two highly amusing.

‘They’re in the larder,’ Iris told her.

‘Well, now they have to be boiled for an hour in the same water.’ She giggled. ‘Can you do that yourself, or would you like me to do it for you?’

‘I can do that by myself, thank you.’

The beans boiled and suitably tender, Nell placed them in layers in a dish along with the crumbled corned beef, the cabbage and sliced carrots, covered with half a pint of thin gravy to which she had added two teaspoons of mustard powder, to ‘give it a tang’. ‘Now it needs to cook for three quarters of an hour.’ The potato soup had already been made. ‘I’ll start on the dripping cake as soon as I’ve drunk the tea you’re in the middle of making.’

While this magic was going on, Iris was able to make the table look attractive for a change with the addition of two silver candlesticks – though without candles; they’d been almost impossible to buy for years – and white napkins folded to look like swans. The wine glasses sparkled and the smells coming from the kitchen were mouth-watering.

Tom came in. ‘That smells good. What are we having?’

‘Haricot beef casserole, though it’s corned beef, not the proper sort.’

‘Really!’ He came and put his arms around Iris from behind. ‘I’m glad you’ve got Nell for a friend. Does she remind you of the army? I know how much you miss it.’ He didn’t seem to mind.

Iris nodded. ‘She misses it too. Life was so intense then.’

‘And it’s anything but intense here.’ He kissed her neck. ‘In fact, it’s dead boring. Maybe we could go on holiday somewhere interesting this summer. The only place in Europe fit to visit is Paris, which is at least still standing. Or how about Spain?’

‘Not with that awful chap Franco in charge,’ Iris reminded him.

‘No, of course not. I’d forgotten about him. I know,’ he said brightly. ‘We could go to the States – sail there, it takes five days, spend five days in New York, and sail back again. How do you fancy that?’

‘It sounds wonderful.’ It was no good explaining to him that what she wanted more than anything was another baby, for what could he do about it? They could make love till the cows came home – he would be very keen on that idea – but Iris felt in her bones that it was a waste of time.

Nell called from the kitchen and Iris looked at her watch. ‘Everyone’s likely to arrive any minute,’ she said, slipping out of Tom’s arms. ‘Will you please see to the drinks?’

In the kitchen, Nell was stirring the soup. She looked up, eyes shining. ‘I know it’s only for six people, but it’s a bit like being back in the camp.’

Nell had insisted on waiting on them. ‘I can be getting the next course ready while you eat,’ she said.

She turned out to be the perfect waitress, and Iris knew already that she was a perfect cook. She served the food with smiling politeness, wearing a plain brown dress and a little white apron that she’d made especially for the occasion out of an old pillowslip. Her hair had grown a little since leaving the army and had acquired a suggestion of a wave in front. Iris noticed Frank, her brother-in-law, regarding Nell with interest. Frank was a notorious ladies’ man, and his relationships with other women were the source of much bitterness between him and Constance. Iris was never sure if they were genuine affairs or merely flirtations, and had never liked to ask. She must make sure that Frank didn’t get his hands on Nell. The poor girl wouldn’t know how to cope.