Angel of the North (32 page)

‘Don’t look like that! I’d never have been able to keep up the good boy act with you otherwise. If it hadn’t been for her dispensing her favours, you might have got
ravished. Because you never let the brakes off! You’ve never let yourself go yet.’

And no wonder, Marie thought. She’d always had her father’s warnings ringing in her ears:
Don’t you dare bring any trouble home. We’ve enough to do without that,
thank you very much.
And judging by Hannah and Nancy and the mess they’d caused, her father had been right, as well. ‘What I can’t understand,’ she said, coldly,
‘is why you ever started it in the first place. She’s at least ten years older than you, and she was your mother’s cleaner, for heaven’s sake. Talk about fouling your own
nest. Not to mention the fact that she’s married.’

‘For the umpteenth time, Marie, I didn’t start it; I’d never have thought of it. I was a good little boy, till I met her.’

‘Oh, pull the other one.’

‘It’s God’s honest truth. Look, I’ll come clean. I’ll tell you absolutely everything, make a good confession like they taught us when we were in infants’
school, then you might stop going on about it. I was in bed late because I’d been a bit merry the night before. Mum was out with the WVS, Danny was at school and Dad was down at the repair
shop, and she came into my bedroom and simply got in beside me. I wasn’t even awake at the start; it was like some sort of fevered dream. You’ve seen her, how she walks, how strong she
is. She’s an Amazon. She was like some sort of wild animal. If I’d been wide awake, I’d have been terrified.’

It was the first time Marie had heard the details, and the thought of poor Chas cowering under his sheets sent a tiny smile flickering across her face. ‘Why terrified?’ she
asked.

‘Why? Because it’s not what you expect. It’s not the accepted way of going about things. It was scary at first because she made all the advances. It makes you feel like prey. I
certainly understood what women feel like after the first time or two with her.’

‘But you carried on.’

‘It was exciting. And then later on, having her, at will, whenever I wanted, made me feel ten feet tall. In the end I didn’t feel as if I could do without it. Not without
her
,’ he hastened to add, looking her full in the face, ‘without
it
.’

That was rather too much detail for Marie. ‘Don’t then,’ she flared. ‘Don’t let
me
stand in your way. If she’s so wild and exciting and animal that
she makes you feel ten feet tall, you’d better get after her while you’ve got the chance.’

‘I don’t want the chance. Because I don’t love her. And I don’t want to spend the rest of my life with a bloody wild animal.’ He tried to put his arm round her
shoulder, but she shook him off. ‘Come on, Marie,’ he coaxed. ‘Have a heart. It’s over and done with.’

‘How is it over and done with, when she’s carrying your child?’ she blazed. ‘It goes on for ever!’ She threw up her hands in a gesture of anger and frustration.
‘And how you expected to carry on like that and not get her pregnant is beyond me.’

‘The same way a lot of chaps do, by being careful. By getting off at Dunswell rather than going on to Hull. So to speak.’

‘You missed your stop, then.’

He muttered something she couldn’t hear.

‘What did you say?’ she demanded.

‘I said I’d like to miss my stop with you. Several of them. You might like it as well. It might improve your temper. Look, I’ve still got that special licence in my pocket. We
could get down to the registrar and tie the knot tomorrow before I have to pack up and go back to base. Rents are astronomical in the safer areas, but I’ve made a few enquiries and, with the
married man’s allowance, we could just afford it. Somewhere for you and your mother to live until the end of the war, I mean.’

Exhausted by everything, and especially by her efforts to get through to the morally defective, overgrown child beside her, Marie slumped wearily down onto a park bench and gazed unseeing at the
still water of the pond. ‘Oh, Chas,’ she sighed, ‘what a shambles. I couldn’t move my mother anywhere, she’s far too ill. Aunt Edie helps me with her, and keeps her
fairly cheerful. I wouldn’t like to have to manage without her now. My mother’s better off where she is. And George is good to her as well. He even offered to pay for the
doctor.’

Charles flung himself down beside her, scowling. ‘I don’t want George paying for the doctor; I don’t want George paying for anything to do with you. I’ll pay for
it.’

‘You know, Chas, this might be hard for you to grasp, but what you want is not the only consideration. You sometimes come up against what other people want.’

‘Well, what do you want? Just tell me.’

‘I knew exactly what I wanted once, and now I’m not so sure. Everything seemed so simple and straightforward before, and now it’s complicated and, well . . . dirtied,
somehow.’

He was silent. She turned to look at him, and saw that his hazel eyes were clouded, and his face drawn with anxiety. ‘That’s why you don’t want to get married. It’s
nothing to do with your mother.’

‘Maybe. There’s a lot to think about.’

‘They tell you that confession’s good for the soul,’ he said. ‘Well, it ought to be, because it’s no bloody good for anything else.’

She softened a little. ‘I wouldn’t say that. I’m glad you’ve been honest.’

He looked a bit more hopeful. ‘I’ve been a reckless, irresponsible fool,’ he said, ‘and I’m sorry.’

‘Just try to get it through your skull that a baby is no trivial matter, will you? It’s serious, and you’ve got to face it.’

‘I will,’ he said, ‘I will, if it’s mine – but it might not be. Have you thought about that?’

She gave up.

Quite a quantity of Mrs Elsworth’s flowers seemed to have survived the digging for victory campaign. Glorious yellow rambling roses covered the pergola, honeysuckle
climbed the garden walls alongside beans and purple clematis. The red rose bushes had also escaped. California poppies, marigolds and nasturtiums blazed among the vegetables, and fat bees burrowed
deep into the snapdragons, mining for nectar. It was all a feast for the eyes, and balm to Marie’s spirit. But for the sturdy Anderson shelter, she could almost have forgotten there was a war
on. The family were sitting round the cast-iron garden table, and Mrs Elsworth had the bone-china teapot poised to pour the tea. She looked up and smiled, but seemed very subdued, as did Mr
Elsworth and Danny.

‘How’s Alfie?’ she asked, when Charles had disappeared into the house for two extra cups and saucers.

‘He’s getting well enough to be a nuisance. They’ll probably discharge him when the doctor’s had a look at him. Tomorrow morning, at the latest. We couldn’t find
anything out about Jenny, though,’ Marie said.

Danny suddenly got up and walked off down the garden.

‘What’s the matter with him?’ she asked.

Mr Elsworth put a finger to his lips, and nobody spoke until Charles came back with the cups, then Mrs Elsworth broke the silence.

‘Jenny’s died,’ she said, in hushed tones. ‘We just had it from the people in Newland Park. Hannah told them. Danny’s taken it rather badly, I’m afraid. He
says he should have been first down that hole, and if he had been, he’d have been able to lift her, and she’d still be alive.’

It was strange, but for all the times she’d warned Jenny away from dangerous places, Marie had never really expected her to come to any serious harm. She’d thought of the little
street Arab as having as many lives as a cat. The shock hit her hard. ‘Knowing Alfie, he’d have been like greased lightning,’ she said. ‘Danny wouldn’t have had the
chance to be first.’

Charles looked upset, and surprised. ‘He can’t blame himself,’ he protested. ‘He did everything he could for her. It was just one of those freaky accidents. It was
nobody’s fault, especially not Danny’s.’

‘Well, that’s not what he thinks.’

‘Silly boy,’ Charles said. He put down his cup and went down the garden in search of Danny.

Marie knew whose fault the whole episode was, but she kept her own counsel. Openly blaming a grieving mother for her child’s death would be bad form, and what good could it do anyway?
Nothing could bring Jenny back to life. Her thoughts flew to Alfie, and Trudie. Neither of them was likely to take the news of Jenny’s death very well, either.

‘They’re burying her on Monday. There’ll be a service at that church at the end of the street, and then the cortège will go to Northern
Cemetery,’ the neighbour from the house opposite Hannah’s said, when Marie opened the door to her at Aunt Edie’s house. ‘Trudie told me to let you know. How’s your
Alfie?’

‘It’s knocked him for six. He still feels washed out. I’m just getting a meal for us all, and then I’m taking him back to Dunswell where he’ll be safe.’

‘Your fiancé turned out to be quite a hero, didn’t he? How is he?’

A slight stress on the words ‘your fiancé’, and the all-too-innocent expression on the woman’s face, made Marie suspect that her curiosity was not entirely confined to
Charles’s heroism. ‘He’s made a full recovery. He went back to the army this morning,’ she said, giving nothing else away. If this woman was expecting some verdict on their
courtship she was going to be disappointed. Marie hardly knew herself what she would do.

Alfie came to the door. ‘What time is it? What time is the funeral?’

‘Oh, I forgot to say. Two o’clock. He does look peaky, doesn’t he?’

Alfie disappeared back into the house, while the neighbour extolled his bravery and presence of mind, and lamented the fact that his efforts had not been better rewarded, or
her
fiancés
either, for that matter.

Marie cut her short. ‘Did Hannah tell Trudie about the funeral?’

‘Aye. I don’t know whether she would have, but Trudie went to the hospital late last night. She was with Jenny when she died, and if Hannah had tried to get rid of her I think
she’d have swung for her. Hannah’s crying poverty now because Larry’s pay stopped the minute his ship went down, so Trudie’s paying for the funeral.’

‘Well, she loved her granddaughter,’ Marie said, ‘and it was obvious that Jenny loved her.’

‘She did. I could hardly look her in the face when she told me, I feel that bad about it all. I used to have Jenny in my house for hours on end while Hannah was gadding off here and there
–and then my husband got fed up with it, and put a stop to her coming.’

‘Are we going then?’ Alfie demanded, when she got back to the dining room, which doubled as a sitting room when her mother was asleep, or needing peace and quiet.
‘To Jenny’s funeral? I wouldn’t be welcome, Alfie.’

‘You’d be welcomed by her grandmother, or she wouldn’t have sent to tell you when it was. And I want to go.’

Aunt Edie backed Marie up. ‘Funerals are no place for bairns. Besides, you’ll be back in Dunswell.’

‘What’s the point?’ Alfie demanded. ‘There’s only one day of school left, and then we break up for the summer. And if Danny can stay in Hull, I can’t see why
I shouldn’t. I could live at his house. Mrs Elsworth would let me.’

‘You’re going to Uncle Alf and Auntie Dot, and that’s all there is to it,’ Marie insisted. ‘But I’ll tell you what. I can’t take you to the funeral, but
if Uncle Alfred will bring you down on Monday, we’ll make two nice bunches of flowers. We’ll go and lay one on Dad’s grave at about three o’clock. Then when the funeral
party’s gone, we’ll put the other one on Jenny’s, and say a prayer for her.’

Not trusting Alfie’s state of health enough to send him back to Dunswell on his bike, Marie took him on the bus, and spent an hour with her aunt and uncle before the long walk back to Aunt
Edie’s – with the customary and always welcome gift of half a dozen eggs.

She went to bed that night and slept the sleep of the just – until twenty past one. Then the sirens went.

Mass had just started at St Vincent’s when she sneaked in at the back of the church that Sunday. The unchanging ritual, the lilt of Gregorian chant, the familiar
responses, were reassuringly the same in a world that had changed. The incense intensified the effect. For Marie, it seemed the very smell of sanctity. It calmed and soothed her. The church was
packed, and she spotted Mr Elsworth in the congregation. When Mass was over and people were filing out she stayed behind and lit a candle, thanking Heaven for Alfie’s deliverance. Mr Elsworth
came and stood beside her, dropped his money in the box, and put his candle beside hers.

‘It’s quite a conundrum, isn’t it?’

‘Devastating, I’d say, except for Alfie. With him, I feel as if I was waiting for the drop with the noose around my neck, and got the reprieve just before the trap door opened. Now I
can breathe again.’

They went out of the church together.

‘We haven’t seen you since the day before Charles left. How is Alfie?’

‘Much better. I took him back to Dunswell the day he was discharged.’

He looked a mite wounded. ‘I thought you might have asked me for a lift. I wouldn’t have minded a visit there; there’s always something to learn from your uncle and aunt. But
maybe you think I’d have been
persona non grata.’

She smiled. ‘Not at all. I was thinking of your petrol ration.’

‘And your mother?’

‘Her breathing’s a bit better. George helps me get her out of bed before he goes to work, and we put her back as soon as he gets home. She’s weary by that time, so if
he’s late, Aunt Edie helps. Careful nursing, that’s what the doctor ordered. And thanks for ringing him, and paying his bill. I’ll pay you back.’

‘It’s not necessary.’

They walked in silence for a while, then Charles’s father said: ‘He does love you, you know.’

Marie gave a little laugh, and shook her head. ‘Oh, I don’t know.’

‘He’s been a complete idiot, and he regrets it. Bitterly.’ “A man can hardly help himself,” he told me. Well then, there’s not much hope, is there?’

Mr Elsworth hesitated for a moment, then he said, ‘You sometimes hear people say: the spirit’s willing but the flesh is weak. But with most men of his age, the flesh is strong, very
strong. If it weren’t there’d be a lot less trouble in the world. But he has given her up, Marie, and honourable marriage to the woman he loves will keep him on the straight and narrow.
I’m sure of it.’