Now the War Is Over (25 page)

The next moment, doubt and terrible imaginings filled her mind. Supposing Cissy had gone off with some brute who was doing awful things to her even now? What if she never came back? Now and
again there were stories in the paper. Her stomach churned with nerves. If only she’d come over when she’d received Mom’s card. Maybe she
could
have found out from Cissy
if there was something going on.

When she walked back into the house, Peggy and Fred leapt to their feet at the sound of her feet on the stairs. When she saw them, both at the sitting-room door, frenzied with hope, her heart
really went out to them. They were desperately worried and all they could do was wait.

‘Oh!’ Peggy burst into tears. ‘We thought . . .’

‘I’m sorry,’ Rachel said, and she really felt it. I’m sorry for not being Cissy.

Somehow they got through the rest of the afternoon, each tick of the clock a loud marker of the seconds slipping away.

At getting on for six o’clock, Rachel was just on the point of going out to catch a bus home, when they heard the door open downstairs. Peggy was across the floor and down the stairs
before anyone could speak.

‘Oh!’ they heard her cry. ‘Oh, my God, my God – where in heaven have you been, you naughty,
stupid
girl!’

‘Mom!’ Cissy’s voice came up the stairs as Fred and Rachel stood at the top. ‘What’s the matter?’ She sounded both coy and impatient. ‘There’s no
need to get in such a state – I’ve just been over at Rach’s, that’s all. You know, looking after Tommy and seeing Melly.’

There was a silence in which Rachel walked halfway downstairs. Peggy turned to look up at her and she saw Cissy catch sight of Rachel and register who it was. A look of naked shock passed across
her features, which turned to shiftiness and fear.

‘Sis,’ Rachel said. She spoke in a calm, stern voice. ‘Everyone’s been worried to death. It’s no good pretending – I’ve stopped here all weekend with
Mom. The police’re looking for you. Where’ve you been?’

Cissy sat on her bed, sobbing extravagantly. ‘I’m not a silly girl and you’re all wrong – about everything!’

Fred, relieved that his little girl was home in one piece, left the women to perform the interrogation and went to telephone the police and say that Cissy had returned safe.

Cissy, already in a storm of tears, had rushed up to her room. Rachel and Peggy followed.

‘What’s been going on? Where’ve you been, you dreadful girl? Who is this man? What’s he done to you?’

Peggy’s questions rained down on Cissy who had flung herself on the bed and hidden her face in the eiderdown, quivering with sobs. Rachel sat on the side of the bed. Peggy was having none
of this. She seized Cissy’s shoulder and shook her.

‘You sit up, my girl, and tell me what’s been going on. We’ve had the police out looking for you – the shame of it! All weekend we’ve been here, beside ourselves
with worry. You
damn
well sit up and speak to me before I put you over my knee!’

The idea of manhandling Cissy’s voluptuous frame was absurd, but Peggy was beyond reason.

‘You’ve got to promise me never to go anywhere near this
dreadful
man again,’ Peggy decreed.

Cissy shot up on the bed to defend herself.

‘No! Teddy loves me and I love him and we want to get married.’

‘Oh –
married
!’ Peggy sneered. ‘What – to a man who steals you away from your family without a word or a by-your-leave and takes heaven knows what
liberties . . . We’ve never even met this person you’ve been sneaking off to see . . .’

‘I only sneaked off because I knew you’d try and stop me,’ Cissy retorted, her freckly face blotchy from crying. ‘You don’t want me to be happy – you only
want me to do what you want.’

Though Rachel could see that Cissy was overwrought and she herself was still highly suspicious of this Teddy person, she could not disagree with Cissy here. She remembered when she had felt just
the same. Being with her mother this weekend had brought it all back, Peggy’s self-absorption, her unreasonableness.

Hands on hips, Peggy continued the interrogation. ‘You’re not even sixteen yet.
Marriage
.’ She made a contemptuous gesture with her head. ‘What
nonsense!’

‘I’m nearly sixteen!’ Cissy argued, shifting to sit on the edge of the bed. ‘And Rach was sixteen when she got married.’

‘Yes, but that was only because . . .’ A cloud of suspicion crept over Peggy’s face. ‘You’re not . . .? Right, madam – you’d better tell me the truth,
right now. What’s been going on? Because if you’re in the family way, I’ll—’

‘You’ll what?’ Cissy sneered. ‘And no, I’m not, so there. But I love Teddy and he loves me and he’s going to ask you, as soon as I’m sixteen. It’s
not long to wait when you love someone,’ she added. Cissy, born the day war broke out, was fast approaching her sixteenth birthday.

‘And we’ll say no, your father and I,’ Peggy declared. ‘How old is this person, anyway?’

Cissy looked down, knowing what reaction she was going to get. ‘Teddy’s thirty-four – but he’s ever so young.’

‘
Thirty-four!
’ Peggy erupted. ‘He’s old enough to be your father.’

Rachel was shocked at this too. This Teddy person was four years older than she was!

‘No, he’s not,’ Cissy argued. ‘My father’s old as the hills.’

‘Well, he’s old enough to know better. He’s playing with you, girl – you’re too young to see it but it’s plain as the nose on your face. I bet now he’s
had his way with you you’ll never see him again.’

‘You’re wrong, Mom,’ Cissy said, sitting up straight, tear-stained but with a dignity that Rachel could only admire. ‘Teddy says he wants to come and meet you both
– and you too, Rach, if you can. He wants to do things properly.’

‘Well, if that’s what he wants he’s got off to a very bad start,’ Peggy said. ‘Taking you off without a word, scheming and—’

‘It was my idea,’ Cissy said. ‘Teddy thought . . . Well, I told him . . .’ She blushed. ‘He thought it was all right, that’s all.’

Rachel managed to get a word in then. ‘How old does Teddy think you are, Ciss?’

Cissy’s blush grew deeper. She picked at a thread on the eiderdown. ‘I might’ve told him I was seventeen . . . Sort of by accident. But only to begin with – he knows how
old I really am now.’

‘Oh,
Ciss
,’ Rachel said.

‘It’s just, he came in – when I was at work—’

‘He picked you off the counter at Woolworth’s!’ Peggy scoffed. ‘Well, that doesn’t say much for his taste, does it!’

‘He said he spotted me and I was the most terrific girl he’s ever seen. And the thing was, I liked him. He’s sweet. I thought if I said I was fifteen straight away, he’d
just give me up.’

Rachel put her head in her hands for a moment, and then looked at her sister. ‘Ciss –’

Cissy looked up into her eyes, her own pleading for Rachel to be on her side.

‘You’re so young. I know I married Danny young. But it’s not always for the best.’ She glanced up at Peggy who looked as if she was getting worked up for another
outburst. ‘Look – if this Teddy really wants you, he’ll wait a bit, won’t he? Let him come round and meet Mom and Fred . . .’

‘I want him to come round and meet them,’ Cissy flamed with emotion again. Rachel was surprised by her determination. Cissy had always seemed flighty before. ‘And you’ll
see he’s not what you think. I will tell him and it won’t make any difference. Teddy loves me. And when I’m sixteen –’ she glowered at Peggy – ‘I want
you
to say we can get married.’

‘What’s he like, then?’

Rachel found an eager audience when she returned home a week later from another visit to Hay Mills. Cissy’s goings-on had been a distraction from the sad emptiness of the yard now that the
Morrisons had left.

She had gone over for Sunday afternoon tea, to which, Cissy had announced, Teddy would be coming.

‘Well . . .’ She sat down at the table, enjoying the attention, all eyes fixed on her.

‘Cissy’s not getting married, is she?’ Melly asked. Her reaction had been one of complete bewilderment. Cissy was only a couple of years older than she was.

‘We’ll have to see,’ Rachel said.

‘Come on – spit it out,’ Gladys urged her. ‘What’s the bloke like?’

Rachel had started out feeling highly suspicious of what this Teddy bloke was after. She had expected him to be sinister, to have cast a spell in some way on her little sister. She was looking
for a villain from the pictures, with a thin moustache and an odd, cold manner. Why would a grown man choose someone who was barely more than a schoolgirl? The whole situation seemed suspicious.
But she couldn’t honestly say that he had seemed all that terrible when she met him.

‘I don’t know what I was expecting,’ she said. ‘He’s all right, I suppose. He’s called Teddy Meeks. He’s got money – or his father has.
Meeks’s is in Coventry – car components – and he’s done all right for himself. Teddy works in the business.’

He had said he worked in the offices. Something to do with the accounts. He had a reasonably intelligent look about him, Rachel thought.

‘I saw the car – very swish. And he’s all-right looking. Brown hair, nice enough face. Quite ordinary really. Good manners. Seems quite a gentle sort, nothing, you know, nasty.
His teeth stick out a bit. He looks a bit like a squirrel – big cardigan. Looked as if his mom had knitted it. Only he hasn’t got a mom – I remember he said she died when he was
quite young.’

‘A squirrel in a cardigan,’ Danny said with a grin. ‘Doesn’t sound too much of a bounder.’

The kids all laughed, especially Kev. ‘Has he got a tail?’ he chortled.

‘Sounds like love’s young dream.’ Gladys couldn’t help her lips turning up as well. ‘Good job his name’s not Cyril.’

‘No,’ Rachel laughed. It was good to let off steam. ‘He’s really all right, I think. I could see Mom and Fred trying to ask him leading questions and find out something
they could get rid of him for. But he was quite relaxed and nice with them. They didn’t even take him to task too much about the previous weekend – which they spent in Buxton, by the
way – because he came along so serious about marrying Cissy. And he’s mad about her, you can see.’

‘Well, she is a looker,’ Gladys said. ‘But she’s only fifteen.’

‘I know.’ Rachel shook her head. ‘And he knows. He kept saying, “I know there’s a bit of an age gap, but we don’t seem to find that it matters.” That
was the thing – the only reason you could say that any of it was wrong was that he’s twenty years older, nearly.’

‘Doesn’t seem natural,’ Danny said.

They all agreed that it didn’t seem natural, but even Peggy and Fred had not been able to find reasons just to turn Teddy Meeks away there and then.

‘So’ve they asked him to wait?’ Gladys said.

‘Well, Cissy’s mad to get married and he seems pretty keen as well. Mom and Fred didn’t exactly say they could, but . . .’

They all looked at each other. No one wanted to say it in front of the children but Rachel was thinking, if Cissy was in fact expecting a baby . . .

‘Time’ll tell,’ Gladys said. ‘She might’ve changed her mind by Christmas.’

Rachel walked along Harborne Park Road with Sandra asleep for once, in the pram. At the baby’s feet, tucked into the pram, were Rachel’s bits of shopping: a loaf,
potatoes, bacon and salad.

She pushed the pram along slowly, gripping the handle hard to still the tremor in her hands.

I can’t go home, she thought. Not yet.

Usually she still felt a tingle of excitement each time she went back to their new home in Harborne. The novelty of it all – seeing that miraculous ‘For Rent’ sign, Danny
giving in at last, the move across town – would take a long time to wear off. At last she had got what she wanted! It all took getting used to. She felt on her best behaviour in Harborne. But
still – it was a new start and she was excited by all of it, the extra space, the television in the front room, the kitchen with taps and a bathroom with a lavatory indoors!

But today was different.

She steered the pram into the park on Grove Lane, found a place away from anyone else and sank on to the grass, trying to still her breathing. Her heart was banging like mad, an ache spreading
across her chest. She stared, unseeing, across the green swathe in front of her.

For the first time – amazing that it was the first time now that she thought about it – since they had moved to Harborne, she had just seen Michael Livingstone. She came out of the
bakery and there he was, across the street. He did not see her, she was certain. The reason he did not notice her was because he was not alone: he was walking arm in arm with a woman. The sight
sent a jolt through her: the woman was dark-haired, pretty. Rachel had turned away immediately and hurried in the other direction.

Each school day now, either she or Danny pushed Tommy along the road in his wheelchair. The taxis were no longer needed. Rachel was not working at the school for the moment because of just
having had Sandra. She missed it and now she was stuck in the house all the more. They took the same route to Carlson House each day, straight down to Victoria Road. She knew that other than that
first time she met Michael, when he had taken a detour for a change, he had no reason to walk down there.

From the day she left his house, she had never seen Michael again. She had known she must cut off from him completely, otherwise she would go back and back, drawn in by his need and her own, and
by the excitement of knowing that someone wanted her so badly.

For a time afterwards she grieved, feeling as if she had a heavy stone in her chest. Many times she thought of running back there to him, into his arms, his life, even though she knew that Danny
was really her man and always would be. Lovely, gentle Michael had given her something warm and new and satisfying. During the rare times she could be alone, she would sit and weep and dream of
him. But then she and Danny made it up and he put away the idea of taking off to Australia. And everything seemed to go back to normal again.