Angel of the North (35 page)

‘Well, he deserves it,’ said Marie, at a loss for anything else to say.

‘Hell, aye, he deserves it, and he’s going to bloody get it. My mother wants her rent, as well. Montgomery Holmes! You know what his real name is? Bill Pratt!’

Although she’d already heard so from George, Marie nearly burst out laughing.
What did I tell you?
were the words that sprang to her lips, and it was as much as she could do to
bite them back. ‘I wish I’d never suggested you going to see him, though,’ she said.

Nancy’s cheeks flamed, and her eyes darkened with fury. ‘I don’t! I’m glad I went to see him. Yeah, I was upset yesterday – really upset – but this is today,
and today I’m out for blood, because I know him for the rat he is. It’s finally sunk in,’ she said, and tapped the side of her head three times to emphasize the point.
‘Clever, smarmy Billy Boy Pratt is going to see all his chickens coming home to roost before very much longer. He’ll be laughing on the other side of his face soon. I’d get him
hung if I could, for the way he’s treated me.’

Marie was waiting on the quay when Pam walked down the gangway of the Hull ferry. The day was hot, but Pam looked as cool as a cucumber in an up-to-the-minute short-sleeved
dress, the blue of which brought out the blue of her eyes. With the white hat, shoes, gloves and handbag she might have stepped straight off the cover of
Vogue
– except that she was
far too young. It looked as if the Stewarts had ploughed every single ten and six they’d ever received into Pam’s wardrobe, and a lot more besides. One of the ferrymen followed her,
honoured to be carrying Pam’s best suitcase, in toning grey. He put it down by Marie.

‘How is she?’ Pam asked.

‘Not very well, or I wouldn’t have phoned you.’ Marie glanced at the suitcase. ‘How long are you planning to stay?’

Pam gave her a quizzical look. ‘I don’t know, it depends how ill she is. You said she was dying.’

‘I often think so, especially at night. I never expected you to come, though.’

Pam’s face resembled chiselled marble. ‘I love my mum,’ she said coldly, ‘in spite of the way you try to make me feel. I was lucky when I was evacuated, that’s all,
and I don’t see why I should apologize for it to you. Auntie Morag – I mean Mr and Mrs Stewart – didn’t want me to come at all. They said it’s not safe. And it
isn’t safe. The Germans are bombing Hull as much as ever they did, in spite of being in Russia. They thought I should just write a nice long letter every day, that someone could read to her.
But I’m not very good at writing letters.’

‘Well, we’d better go and get the bus, then,’ Marie said, setting off in that direction.

Pam hesitated for a moment, and then picked up her suitcase, and followed.

When they boarded the bus, Marie made for a seat on the lower deck, but in spite of her suitcase, Pam started up the stairs.

‘Why are you lugging it up there?’ Marie asked.

‘You can see more from the top deck,’ Pam said. ‘I want to see everything.’

They travelled through the town centre and along Spring Bank with a good view of all the devastation, but apart from occasional murmurs of ‘it’s terrible’, and
‘it’s awful’, from Pam, little was said. Later, as they walked towards the pile of rubble that had been their childhood home, Pam’s pale face blanched further. They came to
a stop, and surveyed the wreckage.

‘I don’t know how you got out of it alive,’ Pam said.

‘We nearly didn’t. And your mam’s gone into a decline since, that’s for sure.’

Pam shivered. Marie glanced at her face, and guessed at the unspoken thought:
If I’d stopped here, I’d have been under all that.

‘Mrs Elsworth invited me to stay with them,’ Pam said, ‘but I’m not going to. It’ll be a nuisance having to travel every day, but I’m going to stay with
Auntie Dot and Uncle Alfred.’

Their mother’s eyes lit up at the sight of Pam. She smiled, and came to life.

Pam returned the smile. ‘How are you, Mam?’

‘All the better for seeing you, my bairn,’ she said, her smile broadening, as she gazed fondly at her younger daughter. ‘Doesn’t she look a picture, Marie?’

‘She does,’ Marie agreed. ‘I’ve done soused herrings for tea, Pam, just like Dad used to do them. And a bit of lettuce and stuff from the allotment.’

Marie made a tray up for her mother and Pam so that they could eat together in the front room, and spend as much time as possible together before they got the bus to Dunswell. She herself ate
with George and Auntie Edie in the kitchen.

‘Hello! Somebody at the door,’ George said, when tea was nearly over. He scraped back his chair and got up to answer the knock.

Danny Elsworth followed him back into the dining room, and sat on the empty chair, gazing around. ‘Did Pam come? I came to ask if she’d be staying at our house.’

‘Well, she’s here, but she’s decided to go to Dunswell, out of the way of the raids,’ Marie said.

‘We thought she might. Dad told me to tell you he’ll take you up there, if you like.’

‘He’d better be careful,’ George said. ‘I know a bloke who’s been prosecuted for improper use of the petrol ration. They’re getting as hot on that as
breaching the blackout, now.’

‘Tell your dad thanks, but I don’t want to get him into trouble,’ Marie said. ‘He’s been had up once already; they might come down hard on him, if taking us to
Dunswell lands him in court again. We can go on the bus.’

Pam walked through the dining room with two dirty plates. Danny watched her go into the kitchen, and stared at the door until she returned.

‘I think you know Danny, don’t you, Pam?’ Marie said.

Pam stopped and gave him the sweetest smile. ‘I think I remember you from school, although you were a bit older than me. You go to Hymers now, don’t you, Danny?’

He nodded slowly, eyes riveted on her, a wide smile spreading over his face.

‘Do you play a musical instrument? Have you got a piano?’

‘Well, we used to have a piano,’ Danny said. ‘Mother tried to get Charles and me to play, but neither of us was interested and nobody else could play, so she got rid of
it.’

The spark of interest died in Pam’s eyes. ‘Oh, well, I’ll get back to Mother, I think. I want to spend as much time with her as I can before I have to go to
Dunswell.’

She left the room, and Danny took a moment or two to come out of his trance. ‘I’d better be going – to let Mum and Dad know what the arrangements are.’

George saw him out. As soon as she heard the door close Aunt Edie gave a roguish laugh. ‘Ooh, your Pam’s made a conquest there,’ she said. ‘Did you see his face? He
couldn’t take his eyes off her. Properly smitten.’

‘You should have seen him look at the door to the front room when we went through the passage,’ George said. ‘I think he was trying to see through it.’

‘Well, she’s fit to look at,’ Marie said. ‘No denying that.’

‘Like her big sister, then. Although I think you pip her to the post in the beauty stakes.’

‘Don’t be daft,’ Marie protested.

‘I’ll carry the suitcase to the bus stop for you, if you like.’

‘You’ve been at work all day. You stay here and put your feet up. Read the paper. We’ll manage it all right between us, if we take turns.’

‘Tell you what, then,’ George said. ‘You get yourself there with her and that suitcase, and don’t worry about getting out in time for the last bus. I’ll come and
fetch you back on the motorbike just before it gets dark. That should give you a couple of hours, with double summer time. Your mam will be all right. I’ll come straight for you, if
not.’

‘What about improper use of the petrol ration?’

‘Ach!’ George exclaimed, loading that one syllable with as much derision as it could hold. ‘Improper use of the petrol ration my foot! I’ll come for you.’

‘I hope Alfie warned you we were coming,’ said Marie.

‘He did, and she’s welcome,’ Auntie Dot said.

Uncle Alf smiled a welcome and took the suitcase from Pam, his eyebrows rising slightly at its quality, and that of Pam’s outfit. ‘What did you think to your mam, then?’ he
asked.

‘I thought she’s aged terribly, and she seems very tired. And I thought that awful scar might have faded,’ Pam shuddered, ‘but it hasn’t, not at all.’

Marie was amused to see the reaction of her uncle and aunt to Pam’s BBC tones. They looked completely thrown.

The extent of their attachment to Alfie showed itself when the conversation turned to his attempt to rescue Jenny. They quickly realized that Pam knew nothing about it.

‘Why didn’t you tell her, Marie?’ Auntie Dot asked.

‘I just never got around to it, I suppose,’ Marie said, her face impassive. She knew that both Pam and Alfie would have a very good idea why she hadn’t. Pam had displayed no
interest in Alfie’s welfare when he’d lived in Bourne, and Marie had seen no point in troubling her with any further news of him.

Uncle Alf made up the deficiency. Pam got the full story, every detail of Alfie’s heroism and presence of mind, and his admission to hospital.

‘So, there you are, Pam,’ Marie said, pointedly. ‘A different version of your brother from the one you got from the Mortons.’

Alfie sat reading his
Spotter,
with nothing to say.

Pam had the grace to look abashed for a moment or two, and that was all. Then she turned to Marie with resentment in her tone: ‘How was I expected to know, if nobody told me?’

The wireless was on in the background, with Forces radio playing. Marie pricked up her ears at the name Lieutenant Elsworth, as another message from Chas came drifting over the airways. Auntie
Dot heard too, but kept silent.

‘Isn’t that Charles, Marie?’ Pam asked. ‘Turn it up, Auntie Dot.’

Uncle Alf obliged, and the strains of ‘It Had to Be You’ filled the room.

‘Huh! Never be cross or try to be boss?’ Pam repeated, when the song had finished. ‘So you’re cross and bossy with him as well as me. I don’t know why he puts up
with you.’

Uncle Alf turned the wireless off, and Pam’s remark was left hanging in the air like a bad smell, until Auntie Dot muttered: ‘I don’t know why
she
puts up with
him.’
Nothing else was said, although Marie knew she’d have had to stand a lot of leg-pulling had they not known about Charles’s affair with Hannah. She was just glad she
hadn’t been at the Maltbys’ when the song was played, considering some of the remarks that would have greeted it there. Aunt Edie had already accused Chas of keeping a harem.

Pam’s pale complexion slowly turned pink. ‘I don’t know why you’re all looking at me like that,’ she said, with a toss of her head. ‘She
is
bossy.
But if Charles Elsworth enjoys being bossed about, well, that’s his lookout.’

Pam came down to see her mother with Alfie every day that week, on Auntie Dot’s old bike. Their visits were a tonic to their mother. She began eating better and took more
interest in things, and had started talking a bit more hopefully about keeping the family together after the war.

‘You could probably come back now, love,’ she told Pam a couple of days later, when Pam returned from a walk round the town centre, where she’d been taking snaps with her
Brownie box camera, like a regular bomb-site tourist, with Danny Elsworth as her guide.

Pam’s reaction to the devastation was the same as Marie’s had been. ‘All the beautiful buildings I grew up with have been destroyed,’ she said. ‘Nearly everything I
remember from my childhood, gone. Some terrible things have happened here.’

Again Marie read her thoughts by the expression on her face.
They might have happened to me.

‘We haven’t had a raid all the time you’ve been here,’ their mother went on. ‘You’d be all right at Dunswell. You could live with Uncle Alf and Auntie Dot,
like Alfie. It would be nice for you to be together again.’

‘I can’t, Mum. I’ll have to go back to Bourne on Monday,’ Pam said. ‘I’ve got a music exam, and there’s no piano here for me to practise on. I really
ought to practise for at least two hours every day. I’ll have to go back.’

Her mother’s disappointment showed on her face.

‘I thought there might be a piano at Uncle Alf and Auntie Dot’s, but there isn’t,’ Pam said, giving the impression that a piano might have kept her in Dunswell.

Their mother’s scarred brow creased in perplexity. ‘Oh,’ she repeated. ‘I don’t know where we could get one from.’

‘Come and give me a hand with the washing-up, Pam,’ Marie said. When they were out of her mother’s hearing, she asked: ‘Can’t you stay a bit longer? It’s
bucked her up no end, having you here every day. Another week, and she might have turned the corner.’

‘Well, I might if there was anywhere I could practise, but there isn’t. And it’s not only that,’ Pam said, with a certain disdain in her eyes. ‘They’re very
rough, aren’t they, Uncle Alf and Auntie Dot? We might have been poor, but Mother was always so particular. And there’s nothing to do there.’

‘No, they’re not rough. They have to work hard on the smallholding, that’s all. And there’s a million and one things to do. You could help them.’

‘I don’t know anything about working on a smallholding, and I don’t want to. I’ve got my music exam coming up, and I don’t want to fail. I have to practise, and
there’s no piano here. I only came because you made it sound as if Mother was on her deathbed, and she’s not.’ Pam’s expression seemed to indicate that she thought
she’d been dragged to Hull on false pretences.

‘People can’t die to order, you know,’ Marie said. ‘I genuinely did think she wouldn’t be here long. In fact, she probably wouldn’t be, if you hadn’t
come. What’s bucked her up so much is having you here.’

‘I’m going back to Bourne on Monday,’ Pam said.

On the bus journey back from Corporation Pier, Marie unburdened herself of her irritation with Pam by scribbling her first unrestrained letter to Charles since her shock at his
continued involvement with Hannah. She was still uncertain how much she wanted to speak to him, but she so desperately wanted to have someone to confide in about her sister’s behaviour.