Angel of the North (19 page)

‘Have you got any money?’

‘Well, I got my last pay packet on Friday, and there’s the bit that my dad had saved.’

‘You’d better hang on to that; you don’t know how long you’re going to be off work. The bed’s there, whether there’s anybody sleeping in it or not, and he
doesn’t cost much to feed, being as we grow a lot of our own stuff. It’s like old times, with the clockwork train set out all over the floor and marbles rolling about under every chair.
The only thing that’s different from when my lads were at home is hearing: “D’you wanna play battleships?” every two minutes. But it brings the place to life. Alfie’s
not a bad lad, and it’s as good as a tonic for us to see things through young eyes again. He’s no trouble at all, young Alfie.’

Mr Elsworth changed up a gear, and for Marie’s mother’s benefit raised his voice well above the hum of the engine. ‘What a healthy life it is! Fresh air and
the space to breathe it in, always busy, and nearly self-sufficient. It’s much better for Alfie, even aside from keeping him safe from the bombing. He’s learning a lot about country
ways, as well. And he was telling me he’s settled well in that nice little school.’

She heaved a sigh. ‘I miss him. I miss them both. I don’t think things will ever be the same now they’ve had to live away from their own home.’

‘If you miss him so much, why not go and stay with them, Mam? You’d be a lot safer in Dunswell, and I’m sure they’d make you welcome,’ Marie said. ‘I could go
back to nursing then. They’re always crying out for nurses.’

‘No.’

No apathy there. The answer was too decided to encourage any further argument. Apart from the purr of the engine, the rest of the journey back to Hull passed in almost unbroken silence.

‘No,’ her mother repeated when Marie broached the subject again back at home. ‘It would drive me crackers. I’m a bit too particular for Dot. And to
pluck and draw that bird in the kitchen – all its guts all over the floor. I’d have had that outside.’

‘It was too windy, Mam. There’d have been feathers all over the place,’ Marie said.

Her mother continued as if she hadn’t heard. ‘And did you see her kitchen floor? Alf walks straight in from the garden, never bothers to take his boots off, and she never says a word
to him. And did you see that towel by the kitchen sink he wiped his hands on? Black bright. I wouldn’t have used it for a floor cloth. And that sticky American cloth on the table, looked as
if it hadn’t been wiped for a week. It’s a wonder they haven’t all got a fever. I felt really ashamed, in front of Mr Elsworth. I don’t know what he must have
thought.’

Marie was very thankful she hadn’t pursued the discussion in the car. Mr Elsworth was such a gentleman she’d have felt really ashamed for him to hear her mother’s opinion of
the couple who had opened their hearts and their home to Alfie and were looking after him as if he were one of their own, who had brushed aside the offer of payment and evidently wanted none,
unless they could make the government cough up the billeting allowance.

‘Well, none of them has ever had a fever as far as I know,’ she said, ‘and you’d be a lot safer there, Mam. Uncle Alfred and Auntie Dot would make you welcome, and
you’d be with Alfie, so why worry about a bit of muck on the kitchen floor?’

Her mother’s face became a frozen mask. ‘I’m sorry to be a burden to you, Marie,’ she said, stiffly, ‘but I’m not going to Dunswell, and that’s flat. I
couldn’t live in any other woman’s house, and especially not with potty Dottie. We’d drive each other mad. You go back to nursing, if that’s what you want. I don’t
want to stand in your way. I’ll manage somehow.’

Marie saw it was useless. ‘You’re probably right, Mam,’ she said. ‘It was just a thought, and you’ll never be a burden to me, all right? You’re my mam, and I
love you.’

‘I sometimes wonder,’ her mother said. ‘I sometimes wonder if anybody does, now your dad’s gone.’

The postman managed to put a smile on her mother’s face the following morning, when he handed her an envelope addressed in Pam’s handwriting. ‘I knew
she’d write. I knew our Pam would never forget her mam,’ she said, ripping the envelope open in a more animated fashion than Marie had seen her do anything for days. As she devoured the
contents eagerly, the smile froze on her lips. She handed Marie the letter.

‘She’s doing well, there, Marie,’ she said, a little too brightly.

‘Dear Mother’, it began – the familiar, working-class ‘Mam’, and the middle-class ‘Mummy’ both neatly avoided, Marie noted. She read on:

She writes, Marie thought, as if to a stranger. No warmth or intimacy in the letter, not a word about Alfie, or even real concern for her mother. No hint that she was missing
any of her own family – there was no feeling there at all, just me, me, me. And then that ‘Pamela’ again at the end, when she’d always been plain Pam at home. Marie handed
it back to her mother, thankful at least that Pam had written ‘Mr and Mrs Stewart’ rather than ‘Auntie Morag and Uncle Alec’. That might spare her mother’s feelings a
bit.

‘They’re certainly filling her head full of a lot of big ideas there, aren’t they?’ she said. ‘Are you going to let her stay on?’

A brief struggle played itself out on her mother’s face. ‘Of course’ she said in the end. ‘Of course she can stay on. She’s a clever girl, and I won’t stand
in her way. She’s got to have her chance.’

‘Do you want to talk it over with her? Shall I ask the Elsworths if you can phone her from there? You can sit down and do it in comfort from their house.’

‘No. I wouldn’t phone her from there anyway, for them to hear everything we’re saying. If I wanted to phone her, I’d go to the phone box.’

‘They wouldn’t listen to what you were saying. The phone’s in the hall. They’d leave you alone to talk.’

‘I don’t want to be any more beholden to them than I already am. Anyway, I’d rather write.’

‘I’ll get the dinner on, then.’

Marie left some yeast to ferment and then she put the boiling fowl in the stew pot with a couple of onions, and a few old carrots a long way past their best, and set it in a low oven. After that
she worked off her irritation with Pam by kneading a couple of pounds of flour into dough, which she covered with a cloth and left in the kitchen away from the fire, so it wouldn’t rise too
quickly.

Her mother was sitting listlessly in the front room, her letter still unwritten.

‘I’m just going to nip out to the allotment, Mam, see if I can rescue some of the stuff Dad planted. It’s a shame to let it spoil,’ Marie told her, and escaped with a
jumper and the key to the shed.

The soil was dry and full of weeds between the rows of potatoes and vegetables, giving her a job of hoeing and hand weeding and earthing-up and watering that seemed to last for hours, but work
in the fresh air and the banter from other allotment holders made a pleasant change. When she got back home her mother’s letter to Pam was written and sealed.

‘Take it to the post box for me, will you?’ she asked.

Marie took it to the post, then knocked the dough back and shaped it into two loaves. She left them before the fire to rise, then set the table for a very late dinner.

The old hen was just about edible. Well fed and pleasantly tired after all the exercise and fresh air, Marie relaxed as they listened to
It’s That Man Again,
telling herself to be
thankful for small mercies. The trick seemed to be to expect very little, then anything more was a bonus.

Her mother hardly seemed to hear the programme. She was quiet all evening, gazing into the void. ‘They’ve stolen my bairn,’ she said, at last. ‘That’s what
they’ve done. Stolen her.’

‘I thought you said there wouldn’t be as many raids now the Germans are moving east,’ Marie’s mother accused her later that week, as they sat face to
face again in the cramped little cupboard under the stairs listening to bombs being dropped.

‘I didn’t say it for a fact. I just didn’t think they’d have the men.’

‘I’m sick of this,’ her mother said, as if Marie herself were to blame for the raid. ‘Absolutely sick. Next time the sirens go, I’m staying in bed. They can all do
what they want.’

They sat the raid out in the cupboard and went back to bed safe and unharmed after the all clear. But the next time the sirens blared Marie’s mother refused to get out of bed in spite of
all Marie’s pleas, entreaties, and dire warnings. With her nerves tightly strung after losing her exasperating battle of wills with the stubborn woman Marie drew aside the bedroom curtain, to
gaze anxiously at the half-moon. When the all clear sounded at five minutes to midnight without a bomb having been dropped, she felt as if a death sentence had been lifted and let out her pent-up
breath in a long sigh of relief.

‘Thank God for that,’ she said, ‘We’ve got away with it, this time. But next time, you’re coming down into that cupboard with me, even if I have to drag you
there.’

‘You go into that cupboard on your own, there’s nothing to stop you,’ her mother shouted. ‘There was nothing to stop you tonight.’

‘There was you to stop me. Not wanting to leave you here on your own is what stopped me.’

‘Well, you can go to bed now, or go downstairs and make a cup of tea, if you want to do something useful.’

Marie went downstairs and put a scant two cups of water into the kettle. When she was halfway upstairs with two cups of tea she heard the drone of bombers, and the hair stood up on the back of
her neck. Somebody had made a terrible mistake in sounding that all clear. She’d only just made it back to her mother’s bedroom when the familiar, screeching whistle came and the house
shook as a bomb landed with an almighty crump. Smut streaked past her and ran yowling downstairs.

‘That was a near one,’ Marie gasped, her shaking hands spilling tea into the saucers. Sick with dread, she put the cups down on the dressing table, and drew aside the curtain to look
through the window. The glare of another bursting bomb lit up the room. The floor shook.

‘Come on! Come on! Get out of bed! We’re going under the stairs.’

Her mother was stiff with fear. Her teeth were chattering and she clung on to the brass bed rails with hands like claws, resisting all Marie’s attempts to pull her away and down to the
safest place in the house.

After another long and terrible screech and a mighty crash the floor heaved up beneath her feet. Marie lost her hold on her mother as she was blasted into the air, the whole of the clean and
dainty bedroom thrown up with her – walls, ceiling, bed and burr walnut bedroom suite all in the air for seconds, as if they were weightless. Then she felt herself falling, and crashed down
to earth, stunned and winded, with rubble battering her, blow after blow until she was buried alive under the weight of it all. She struggled to blow dust out of her nostrils and spit soot and dust
and grit and blood out of her mouth, to get some air. Air!

‘Mam! Mam!’ she called, in a shrill, tinny voice nothing like her own. She struggled with all her strength to get loose, and more debris fell, small stones and gravel cascading
through the spaces of bricks and plaster. She could just see the half-moon shining brightly in a sky still humming with enemy bombers. The weight on her chest pressed down so that she could barely
breathe.

The first feeble shafts of dawn light were penetrating gaps in the rubble when she came to. ‘Mam, Mam,’ she gasped again.

‘There’s somebody alive under there! Hello! Hello, can you hear me?’ a man’s voice shouted.

Marie almost wept with relief and, trying to shout, managed a feeble little croak. ‘Yes, yes. Can you see my hand?’

‘Where? Where?’

She moved her hand, then the man said something she couldn’t make out. ‘I can’t hear you,’ she said.

‘Yes, we can see. We’ve got you, lass. Your mother’s under there as well, is she?’

It was George. Now the tears began. ‘I think she’s dead.’

‘It’s all right, Marie. The rescue party’s here. We’ll soon have you out, and then we’ll see what the damage is.’

‘Get my mam out first. She’ll be worse than me.’

‘We’ll start with you, we know where you are. Then we’ll get your mam out, don’t worry.’

They were soon moving debris in earnest, working so close to her she was terrified they might stand on rubble she was lying under and dislodge bricks or lintels or shards of glass to crush her
or cut her to ribbons. She was already in agony. Her chest hurt like hell.

‘Don’t worry, Marie, not long now. We’ll soon get you out.’

‘I’m in my pyjamas,’ she said, and thought, how ridiculous to worry about that, when she might have died. All the same, thank God! If she’d worn her nightie, both
rescuers and sightseers might have had a good view, but her mother only had a nightie on. If she were alive and conscious she’d be mortified. Her mother might think death preferable.

George must have read her mind. ‘Not too many sightseers, Marie. Most of the Hull people are in bed, and not many trippers in yet. Might not be any. They might be getting bored with it by
now, this being our fiftieth raid. And don’t worry about these lads, they’ve seen it all. They’ve seen people in less than pyjamas. They’ve seen people with every stitch
blown clean off.’

‘Not me, they haven’t,’ she managed to gasp.