All Fall Down (19 page)

‘You know what she's like. It ain't just you; Ma's the same with everyone.'

‘Well, not with me, not any more.' He stood up and fixed his hat firmly over his forehead. ‘From now on I ain't gonna be there when you whistle, Ma. You hear me? I'll pack my bag and you won't see me no more. I'll be out of your hair for good.'

‘He's in a state,' Amy whispered as he stormed off. ‘Give him a chance to calm down.'

‘
He's
in a state?' Dolly echoed. ‘And what about me? I'm the one who should be in a state, having a son like him, and his father dead and buried and no one to look out for me.'

Stoically Amy stepped in to shoulder the burden. She sent for brandy, sat by and mopped up Dolly's loud tears. ‘Anyhow, you'll be down with us next time that siren goes off and no arguments.'

Dolly wasn't the only one to go to pieces that night. Amy watched as Edie Morell came in, wet through from the downpour that had just begun, looking, frantic. She dashed towards Hettie, who had served the glass of brandy into Dolly's shaking hand.

‘No luck?' Hettie caught Edie's arm and held her to the spot.

‘No, I've been all the way to the Gardens and back. No one saw him in the shelter tonight.'

Amy listened in. This must be Tommy they were talking about. She was all ears.

‘Well then . . .' Hettie thought this was good news. ‘That means he must have taken cover somewhere else. He's probably nice and snug down the tube station, or on his way home right this minute.'

Edie's hair dripped. She'd run from the pub without coat or hat through the rain, as soon as she heard about the direct hit at the Gardens.

‘Come on, come with me.' Hettie took her upstairs out of earshot. ‘It ain't good to rush out like that, not before the all-clear.' She found towels and went to Edie's room to fetch a dressing-gown. ‘Now you get out of them wet things before you catch your death.'

Edie trembled by the gas fire, peeling off the wet clothes. ‘I can't bear it when the siren goes off and I don't know where he is,' she confessed.

Hettie wrapped the gown round her shoulders. ‘I see you can't.'

‘I love him, Ett, and I don't know what to do!' It was the first
time she'd come out into the open over Tommy, though these past few weeks had proved an agony. With her flat in ruins and no privacy for Tommy and her to be together, their affair had turned into a series of snatched kisses in the basement office, of staged meetings in unfriendly pubs and cruel separations when the sirens sounded and he insisted that she go with Hettie and the rest while he found what cover he could.

‘And he loves you; anyone can see that.' Hettie didn't shy away from the intimate confession. She spoke kindly, from the vantage point of years.

‘Can they?' Edie sounded surprised.

Hettie smiled. ‘Yes, you don't think you managed to keep it a secret, did you? Not round here. Tommy's head over heels, it goes without saying.'

She bit her lip. ‘Does Dorothy know?'

‘I haven't asked her. Why, hasn't Tommy told her?'

‘I won't let him. It don't seem fair, not with the war on.'

‘What's fair got to do with it?' Hettie's Christian sense had struggled long enough over Edie's all too obvious love for her employer. Rules were being broken left, right and centre. No – worse – Commandments, and these were what Hettie had lived by since her Sally Army days. On the one hand, she could see the bitterness between man and wife; two people who seemed not to have recognized the bargain they made at the altar, whose disappointment in one another wrapped a straitjacket around their lives, so that Dorothy drenched herself in perfume and chased other men, while Tommy soused himself in alcohol. On the other hand, there was Tommy and Edie together, blossoming into tenderness.

‘It ain't right though, is it? There's Bill to think of . . .'

‘Yes.' Hettie knew none of the details about Edie's own marriage. ‘You don't hold with divorce, do you, Ett?' Edie knelt on the fireside rug, not able to control which way her thoughts ran.

‘Not for myself. But I try not to judge.'

‘And what would you do if you weren't happy?'

‘How, not happy?'

Edie looked down at her upturned palms. ‘If, say, your old man knocked you about a bit.'

Hettie let this sink in.

‘I don't mean to say all the time, just now and then,' Edie went on quickly. ‘If his temper was bad and, of course, he would regret it straight after, tell you he was sorry . . .'

Hettie knelt beside her. ‘I don't know that I could put up with it, Edie, even now and then. I can only say how I would feel; every time he laid a hand on me it would shock me rigid, wondering how he could do such a tiling than how much it actually hurt.'

Tears came to Edie's eyes. ‘And would you tell someone? You don't think that would be letting him down?'

Slowly Hettie shook her head. ‘I couldn't keep it to myself, I know that.'

‘And if the first person you told promised he would look after you, would you be tempted?'

‘Anyone would.'

‘But would you?' It was as if Edie judged herself through Hettie's answers.

‘I'd want to be looked after,' she agreed.

Edie sighed. ‘And then you'd be stuck.'

‘I would?'

‘Yes, 'cos your husband might get to know, even if he ain't on the spot and, knowing his temper, you'd be afraid he would take it out on the one who wanted to take care of you.'

‘And take it out on me, too.' Hettie saw the point. ‘And then, of course, I could be stuck another way, if this person who cares is married already.' They'd come full circle.

Edie stopped mincing words. ‘That's it, bull's eye. It's a mess, ain't it?'

‘Here, dry your hair.' Hettie handed her another towel. ‘It probably looks worse from the inside, but you still shouldn't go charging out while the siren's going. If you get yourself blown up everyone's gonna end up miserable, ain't they?'

Edie managed a smile. ‘Only Tommy. He'd do anything for me. You know he's fixing up the flat with anything he can lay his hands
on. He got the windows put back in last week, the first in the block.'

‘Like I said, he loves you to death.'

‘You don't mind me going on about it?' As she calmed down, Edie turned shy.

‘Mind? Edie Morell, why should I mind? I only wish I had the answer.' She stood up and spread Edie's wet dress along the top of the fireguard.

‘That'd be too much to expect.' She took a hairbrush from the table and began to sweep her dark blonde hair back over her shoulders. ‘If I had a sister, Ett, she'd be just like you.'

‘Well, you're family now, Edie, you remember that. We love having you here, so you stay as long as you like. And go when you're ready. Just one thing . . .'

‘Yes?'

‘Take your time. Don't jump. You'll find that's the best way.'

Upstairs, Hettie's soothing voice worked its magic, while downstairs the survivors from Nelson Gardens pulled themselves together on a diet of hot soup and rumours of Jerry's imminent comeuppance.

‘Blimey, this is worse than the Blitz!' Bobby Parsons drew Jimmie O'Hagan to one side after he'd walked into the pub alongside Tommy, straight into Dorothy's line of fire.

‘What's up, can't you take it?' Her caustic voice had sailed over the soup queue to where Tommy demanded a large whisky from George Mann.

He ignored her. It had been a close shave, dragging Jimmie down the Tilbury shelter just as the raid started. As luck would have it, the all-clear had brought them up onto Liverpool Street, smack into an unexploded bomb, still ticking away nicely. It had gone up in their faces, killing two and injuring a whole lot more. He'd taken a cut on his leg, where a piece of shrapnel had torn through his trousers. It bled long and hard before an ambulance girl got round to strapping it up. If ever he heeded a drink and a rest from Dorothy's scorn, it was now.

‘Oh, my God, he's limping, a real old peg-leg.' She didn't care what people thought of her, for what did she owe anybody round here? Every time she walked into this place she got the evil eye from Annie Parsons, all because she made an effort to keep up appearances and could still bring the men flocking round. And they obviously took Tommy's side over this mockery of a marriage. But they didn't know what he was like to live with; uncommunicative, always wanting his own way. He'd driven her into Charlie Ogden's arms, literally driven her. And now she got the blame. Like everyone else today, she was thrown off-balance by events. ‘Don't tell me you copped it, Tommy? Or did you walk into a lamppost when you was the worse for wear?' The more he ignored her, the higher her voice rose.

‘You shut your nasty mouth,' he warned. His leg hurt, the drink went straight to his head.

‘Or else what?' She outstared Dolly Ogden sitting nearby, getting up to push through the queue to reach him.

‘Look, if you two want to have a barney, could you go home and have it?' George looked with disgust at them both. Annie took the soup ladle and rapped it against the metal pot.

‘No, come on Tommy, what you gonna do to shut me up?' She used the mindless taunting he hated most. She would bait him, then turn round and walk away. ‘I dare say there's a few round here who'd like a lesson from you on how to shut their old ladies' cake-holes.' She winked at a couple of men in the queue.

‘Are they always at each other's throats like this?' Bobby asked Jimmie, who'd turned scarlet.

‘This is nothing. Just you wait.' He shuffled into a corner, waiting for one or other to blow a fuse.

‘Ain't it typical, all mouth and no trousers. Tells me to pipe down, then does sod-all about it,' Dorothy sneered.

‘You're drunk,' he said sullenly.

‘And what if I am? I just had a narrow escape at Nelson Gardens, and a fat lot you care.' She checked her make-up in the mirror behind the bar.

‘Didn't smudge your lipstick, did it?'

George frowned harder. There'd be no merit in beating Dorothy at her own game.

‘A lot you care about my lipstick,' she sneered. ‘It ain't your colour, from what I hear.'

Tommy gritted his teeth. She'd be as well to leave Edie out of this.

‘I'm surprised you ain't taken the trouble to track down that particular colour since you limped home. Velvet Rose, ain't it? Max Factor, gift-wrapped. Along with them pairs of nylons and boxes of chocolates.'

‘Leave off,' Annie growled from behind her ladle. ‘I don't want no nastiness.'

But Dorothy was ready to take on the world. It was true, the blast at the shelter had shaken her up. She'd lost Charlie in the dark chaos and had to get herself out with no one to help. But in her case, sudden vulnerability turned straight to irrational anger; Tommy was her husband. He should have been there for her. ‘What's nasty about that? It ain't me, it's Tommy and Edie Morell you should be having a go at.'

Annie mumbled something about the pot calling the kettle black, just as Hettie came down to investigate the raised voices. Tommy slammed down his glass.

‘See, he knows I'm right. You're dying to find out if she's all right, ain't you? Your precious lady friend. Well tell him, Annie, she's right as rain, worse luck. The last I saw of her she was out looking, out of her mind because she couldn't find you. I ran slap-bang into her and told her not to worry, the booze would get to you before Jerry did.'

He rounded on her, pushing her to one side. Dorothy fell against the bar.

‘You see that?' She rubbed her arm in protest. But if she was hoping for a display of violence she was disappointed. Tommy rubbed a hand across his eyes, then ducked his head as he pushed his way through the crowd of onlookers.

‘Where's he off to now?' Bobby watched him disappear through the door.

‘God knows. He'll probably end up at the shop, sleeping on the floor. Me too, worse luck.' To Jimmie this was all too grimly familiar.

‘But it's Sunday, ain't it?' Bobby tried to make out exactly what was going on.

‘Black Sunday, never mind Black Saturday.' Jimmie lit up a fag. ‘In full view!' Dolly complained once things had quietened down sufficiently for her voice to be heard. It seemed likely tonight that they would all get a night in their own beds for a change. Black clouds hung over London like a thick blanket, too thick for the planes to get through. ‘Showing herself up and dragging that poor girl's name through the mud.' She couldn't find a good word to say about Dorothy O'Hagan.

Hettie said she thought she was probably very unhappy and scared, like everyone else.

‘Who's side are you on?' Dolly said sharply.

She refused to be drawn. ‘No one's. What's the point?'

‘No, I expect you'll just say a prayer instead.' She didn't like Hettie to go all sanctimonious on her.

‘I expect I will.' Hettie cleared glasses. ‘For them all.'

‘Include my Charlie in that, will you?' Dolly said, suddenly repentant. Hettie was so good and kind-hearted she didn't deserve to be teased. Anyway, it was no laughing matter when your son went off the rails with a married woman, and that woman happened to be Dorothy O'Hagan.

Chapter Twelve

‘Every Night Something Awful!' Jimmie shared his cigarettes with Meggie and Bobby. ‘Get it? ENSA; Every Night. . .'

‘. . . Something Awful!' Bobby's broad face broke into a grin. They were gathered round the wireless at his place, tuned into a variety show. Jimmie was busy avoiding the inevitable showdown at his house, while Meggie had fled from another tiff with her mother over the amount of time she spent at Bernhardt Court.

‘It ain't funny, Jimmie.' Meggie felt they shouldn't make light of Tommy's problems. She struggled to swallow a puff of the sharp smoke without coughing, using the cigarette as a signal that she was old enough to know her own mind. Still, she found inhaling the stuff unpleasant and difficult.