Chrissie's Children (39 page)

For a moment she was frozen in shock, only her eyes shifting frantically, taking in that the curtains were drawn. She thought that she should have seen them from outside and remembered she had
left them open. She saw it was the burly Gallagher standing on her left, whose hand was over her mouth, and big McNally on her right whose apelike arms pinned her own to her sides. Both wore dark
suits. Stepping out from the shadows, old raincoat tight over his belly, reluctant and frightened, came Josh Fannon.

Shock gave way to panic then and Sophie fought. She twisted and wriggled, threw herself from side to side to try to break free. McNally only laughed and held her easily. She could smell the
drink on his breath. Then she kicked out, hacking with the high heels and now she brought grunts of pain and curses from the two men holding her. Gallagher snarled at Fannon, ‘Get hold of her
legs! We want her on the bed!’

Fannon obeyed, bending to catch Sophie’s legs, yelping with pain as she kicked him, but persevering as Gallagher cursed him. He held her ankles, pulled off the shoes and with the others
dragged her to the bed in the corner, threw her on to it. Gallagher knelt on top of her, his knees grinding painfully into her upper arms, his hand still clamped over her mouth after she had tried
to bite him and failed. He panted, ‘One o’ you get those bottles opened and bring the gin here.’ Then he glared down at Sophie. ‘You’ll be bloody sorry you crossed me.
You got us kicked out of our jobs and put me back on the shop floor in a strange town wi’ a lot o’ bloody Jocks. I’ll make you pay for that . . .’ He went on, mouthing
obscenities.

Meanwhile McNally held Sophie’s legs, grinning at her drunkenly. Her eyes rolling, Sophie watched Fannon fetch a canvas shopping bag from the shadows and take from it a pint-sized bottle
and a gallon can. He opened both and called shakily, ‘Do you want me to toss the paraffin around?’

‘No! Not yet!’ Gallagher twisted his head to snarl at the fat man. ‘Bring the gin over here! I
told
you! We’ll pour that down her, strip the clothes off her and
leave her in the bed. When they find her it’ll look like a coal fell out o’ the fire and she never woke up!’ He showed his teeth when he saw the horror in Sophie’s eyes. He
took the bottle from Fannon and released her mouth only to seize her nose. Sophie screamed once, emptying her lungs, then choked as the neck of the bottle was thrust between her teeth and the raw
spirit flooded into her mouth.

Peter Robinson came up the stairs and into the room at a run. He swept Fannon out of his way with a back-handed swing of his clubbed fist that took the fat man in the face and sent him
staggering into the table. It overturned and he fell with it. The gallon can of paraffin went flying and landed on its side on the fender, its contents pouring out.

McNally had released his grip on Sophie’s legs and was trying to turn to face this threat. He was too late. Peter seized him by the lapels of his jacket, swung him aside and
McNally’s legs tangled. Then Peter threw him after Fannon. They sprawled in a heap, Fannon wheezing and McNally cursing. Then both of them yelled as the paraffin, gurgling out of the can in
the fireplace, ignited with a
whoosh
!

Gallagher lashed out with the gin bottle he held but Peter caught his wrist and used Gallagher’s own momentum to pull him off the bed. He fell awkwardly, face down, with a crash that shook
the floor. The bottle broke but he still held the neck, ready to use it as a weapon. He pulled his hands under him to shove himself up but Sophie, released from his weight, rolled over, choking and
retching, then fell off the bed. Peter caught her by the shoulders, but her legs and all her weight behind them smashed down on the back of Gallagher’s neck. He was slammed face down on the
floor again and the fragment of broken bottle he held was driven into his throat.

Sophie tried to scramble away and Peter lifted her to her feet and ran her to the head of the stairs. McNally rolled wildly over the floor with flailing arms, trying to extinguish the flames
licking from his jacket. Fannon was struggling to stand and pulling off his smouldering raincoat. The room was filling with smoke and all of them were coughing. Peter shoved Sophie ahead of him
down the stairs: ‘Get out of here!’ At the bottom she yanked the door towards her and staggered out into the cool night air.

Peter followed her and made sure the door swung shut behind him. He took Sophie’s arm and led her clear of the building, into the lane, and only then let her stop and rest. But he still
watched the door of the flat to see if they were being pursued.

Fannon, who had been sent by Gallagher the night before to reconnoitre, had found the ladder in the garage below. They had climbed it to reach the window they broke to get in. Fannon did not
think of the ladder now, and instead ran for the stairs. The others followed him in their panic.

Fannon was first to blunder through the smoke and flames to the head of the stairs but McNally was close on his heels. Gallagher followed, with a hand trying to staunch the flow of blood from
the awful wound that was draining his life away. McNally tried to shove Fannon aside but only succeeded in thrusting him head first down the stairs. Fannon fell, rolling. His skull crashed against
the door at the bottom and he lay still. McNally followed him, wild to get away from the room with its mounting flames and throttling smoke. He stood on Fannon’s body to get at the door but
then found he could not open it because of Fannon’s loose bulk jammed against it. He attempted to step back and haul the obstruction clear, but found Gallagher in his way. Gallagher was on
his knees, dying, sliding down to join Fannon. McNally cried for help but nothing came from his open mouth because the smoke filled it and choked him.

Peter and Sophie stood under the rain that was now a deluge, uncaring. Sophie leaned against the wall, head back, feeling the downpour sluicing blessedly clean and cold over her face. She
breathed deeply, glad to be alive.

Peter saw flames spurting through the roof of the flat and licking up the curtains at the windows. The inside was lit red like a furnace. He looked away, took Sophie into his arms and held her
against him. She mumbled, shuddering, ‘They said they were going to kill me. I thought your ship wasn’t due in till one in the morning. It’s not midnight yet.’

Peter answered absently, stroking her hair, ‘We developed engine trouble and had to put into Hull. She’ll be there for a few days so I came on by train. I’d just put my key in
the lock when I heard you scream.’ His grip on her tightened. ‘It was just luck I was here. Just luck. If it wasn’t for that . . .’ But he could not bear to think what would
have happened if he had not come to the flat when he had. He could not face the thought of losing her.

He held her, the pair of them standing in the rain as the fire burnt through the roof. It lit them and the alley with a rippling tiger’s skin of light and black shadows as the wind fanned
the flames. Then they heard above its roaring the clanging of bells and the fire engines braked at the mouth of the alley.

Peter walked Sophie away then, still holding her, and now he spoke from the heart: ‘Listen, I’ve got a decent job and a chance of a better one, but it wouldn’t matter if I was
out of work and back getting coal off the tip. I want you. I don’t care how much money you’ve got. And you can sing all you like, but I want you. Now. Not tomorrow or next year –
now.’

Sophie turned up her face, reached up to lock her fingers in his wet hair and pulled his head down to kiss him.

One morning a week later Sarah smiled at the girl on reception in the Railway Hotel and told her, ‘You get away for a break now. I’ll look after the desk.’
She stood behind it, slender in a simple ‘utility’ cotton dress, glancing through the register to confirm who was leaving that day and who was expected. Dinsdale Arkley had retired at
the end of the war in Europe and Sarah was virtually manager of the hotel now, sharing the duties with Chrissie. They shared the care of Sarah’s three-year-old daughter, Jean, too. Sarah had
been grateful for the work, to be able to immerse herself in it. She had never given up hope that Tom might have survived, but as the weeks dragged by into months and years without word, that hope
was worn thin. She told herself that she had a career and Jean, and that was enough, but she still grieved.

She did not look up when she heard the flap of the swing doors opening, her slim finger halfway down one page, but when she reached its end she raised her eyes and her heart lurched. Tom
Ballantyne stood on the other side of the desk in a well-worn Royal Air Force uniform, his cap in his hand.

Later he was to tell her, ‘We came down in Czechoslovakia. I was picked up and hidden by a Resistance group but they had no escape network, no way I could get word out that I was OK. The
Yanks liberated us the day before yesterday and flew us home.’

Sarah only knew that, incredibly, he was alive and come back to her. She took no note of the ill-fitting uniform lent to him by a brother officer but she saw there was a lean hardness about him
now. He had been living in the open and on the run for the past three years and it showed. He was weathered by sun, wind and cold so that his teeth showed white against the tan. He came around the
desk and she fell into his open arms.

At the end of that week Helen stood on the station platform in a raincoat sodden from drizzling rain as low-clouded, early dusk turned into dark night. A bomb had blown the
roof from the station in 1940 and it had not been replaced, so the rain came in. The trains were running late and one by one they pulled in, discharged their passengers and clanked on. The
temporary shelters built on the platforms kept off the worst of the rain but the wind drove it in, slanting, and Helen could feel her feet squelching cold in her shoes as darkness and her spirits
fell.

Another train ground past her, slowing, and stopped with a hiss of steam and a clatter of couplings. She peered into the crowd that poured from its doors and swept around the slight figure of
the solemn-faced girl. Then suddenly Matt towered above her. He was Lieutenant Ballantyne now, commissioned in the field, and his decorations made a block of colour on the left breast of his khaki
tunic. The breath was crushed out of Helen and the khaki serge was rough against her skin. She protested and laughed and cried and held on to him.

September 1945

‘Tea?’ Jack put his head around the door to peer into the kitchen of the Ballantyne house, brows raised as he asked the question of the women in there.

‘Just coming.’ Chrissie, wearing a flowered apron over a pre-war silk dress, looked up from spreading the carefully hoarded butter thinly on the bread. Then voicing the thought she
had cherished all afternoon, ‘Do you realise this is the first time for more than six years that we’ve all been together?’

Jack nodded slowly. ‘I thought about it this morning. It’s been a long time.’ Chrissie thought he looked older, that the war had aged him, and she knew it had put more than six
years on her.

That Sunday was a clear, hot, Indian summer day, with no bitter north-east wind coming in off the sea. A few minutes later Chrissie came out of the kitchen door into the back garden, the apron
discarded, her eyes slanted against the sunlight. She carried a tray loaded with plates, cups and saucers and put it down on the table set out for the purpose. Her favourite chair was there with
the others grouped around the table and she sank into its creaking comfort of cushioned wickerwork.

The men were talking of ships, inevitably, and playing cricket. Robert, Matt’s six-year-old, was at the crease, and Billy Hackett, Peter’s grinning half-brother, kept wicket. There
were no uniforms now, except that all were in their shirtsleeves and grey worsted trousers, though Tom was still in the RAF, Matt in the Army and Peter a ship’s officer. Tom was eager to join
his father in the yard and Matt had been accepted for medical school as soon as he was demobilised.

Now the girls in their cotton dresses came out of the kitchen carrying the cakes and bread and butter, pots of tea, milk and sugar, all scraped together from their rations. Sophie, married for
three months now and expecting her first child, was looking for Peter as she chatted with Helen, a qualified doctor and due to return to her duties at the hospital in an hour or so. Sarah followed
them, slowly because of her daughter, Jean, dawdling by her side. Ursula Whittle, now a head teacher, came with her.

Chrissie called, ‘Tea!’ and the cricketers wandered over, still talking, to gather around her and the table, sink into chairs. Little Robert bumped himself down cross-legged at her
feet while Billy sat on the grass by her side and leaned against her legs and Jean clambered up into her lap. Jack watched her from across the table, content.

Chrissie looked around at them, all of them her children or her grandchildren, though she had only borne two. All the others – Tom, whom she and Jack had adopted, Peter, Sarah, Helen,
Ursula and Billy – were as much her children as Sophie or Matt. She recalled how she had sworn over twenty years ago that she would hold this family of hers together for the sake of the
children. There had turned out to be more children than she had bargained for but she had done it, and now she swore anew that she would go on doing it. She smiled at Jack and into the
sunlight.