Now the War Is Over (26 page)

She put Michael and what had happened behind her, especially once Sandra was born last October – a good birth, a quick one and another girl at last! – and she was again overwhelmed
with a new baby. Any thought of him receded. By the spring, all those familiar queasy feelings were back – she was expecting again. She even wondered if something guilty in her body was still
making it up to Danny for her thinking about another man. Silly as it seemed, she wondered if that was why she had fallen pregnant again so quickly after Sandra.

Gazing across the park, she watched a blue-black crow stalk its way across the green. The grass was short and she caught the fruity smell of half-decayed grass cuttings. When she realized, just
a few weeks ago, that she was carrying yet another child she had felt as if it was some kind of punishment.

Lowering her head she allowed the pain to seep through her. It was a pain of longing, loss, jealousy. Michael had longed for her. Now, presumably, he longed for someone else. She had no right to
him, to feel any of these things. But feel them she did. She ached with unreasonable jealousy, with the loss of that specialness that she had felt with him.

She took a few deep breaths and raised her head. Thank God I saw him, she thought, calming gradually. Now, if it happened again, she would be prepared. She could say hello and move on. She got
to her feet. In the distance she heard the excited shrieks of children. The end of school. A feeling of great weariness came over her. Summer holidays. Kids at home, all the time. She had to try
and pull herself together.

‘Go up and get her for me, Melly, will you? She’s awake again.’

It was the first thing Mom said as Melly came in through the door.

Melly went upstairs, dragging her feet. ‘What did your last slave die of?’ she muttered to herself. She went into the front bedroom where Mom and Dad slept, where her new sister,
Sandra, now ten months old, was lying in a cot next to their bed. A cot – that was a new thing – none of the rest of them had slept in a cot!

Sandra’s face was screwed up ready to let out another yell, but at the sight of a face above her, she stopped, looking mildly surprised. Standing over her baby sister, who everyone said
looked very much as she had done at that age, Melly let out a sharp sigh.

‘All right, all right – don’t start that.’ She picked up the little bundle, warm, moist and wide-eyed from sleep. Sandra let out a squeak. ‘You’re a noisy
so-and-so, you are. Why can’t you stay asleep a bit longer? You’ve put Mom in a right bad mood again.’

Melly was not in the best of moods herself. They had moved to Harborne in February when she only had a few more months left at school. She had travelled across to Aston each day, having to get
up early and catch two buses, and half felt as if she had not really left. She popped in most days to see Gladys. Gladys had dug her heels in and refused to move.

‘They can carry me out of here in my box,’ she said. ‘I’m not being pushed out of my home.’

Sometimes she went to see Lil and Stanley. They were also hanging on in the old yard.

‘Where else’ve we got to go?’ Lil would say. ‘It’d be out of the frying pan into the fire.’

Mrs Davies was still shrieking. The Morrisons’ house was occupied by two bony-cheeked women who looked like sisters but Lil told her were a mother and daughter, and there was a young boy
with them. Lil, trying to look on the bright side, said they were nice enough, but Melly could see she was missing the old familiar faces. She seemed really glad to see Melly when she came in now.
And Melly liked to see them. Harborne was very different: quieter, greener, more genteel. But it was nice to go back and visit Auntie and the familiar old end. She was drawn back to Aston in the
same way Mo kept going back to drink in the Salutation where he knew everyone.

But today the term had ended – her last ever day at school! She knew she would miss some of her friends from that side of town, but leaving school with her references for a job had been
exciting. She was fifteen – a grown-up ready to go out in the world.

When she got home, released with all the other schoolchildren, she walked into the house almost expecting a fanfare. Melly’s left school!

Fat chance. She wished she’d gone to see Auntie today instead. At least she would have remembered.

No one was taking any notice of her at home because Tommy was away in hospital having further attention to his leg and Mom was about to set off and visit him. As usual, Tommy was all she could
think about. Kev and Ricky, who had moved to a local school, were out, most likely tearing about in the park with a bunch of other lads. When Melly walked in, Mom didn’t even look up.

‘Hurry up,’ Melly heard her mother call after her as she dragged her way upstairs. ‘I can’t stand that blarting.’

‘All you ever do, eat and cry,’ Melly said to Sandra.

She loved her little sister really, but Mom was expecting yet again now and Sandra didn’t sleep well. They all heard her yowling in the night. Mom was forever tired and bad-tempered and
she, Melly, bore the brunt not just of that, but of a lot of the work.

If they don’t want more babies, she thought crossly, why keep having them? Her knowledge of these matters had increased since Cissy married Teddy Meeks in May. In the way of a queen
dispensing favours to her commoners, Cissy informed Melly of the intimate facts of life, sometimes in rather more detail than Melly really required. But Cissy had no intention of having babies
yet.

‘I want to have some fun before I get into all that,’ Cissy declared. ‘I don’t want to spoil myself. I’m not like Rachel.’

Despite everyone’s misgivings, Cissy had kept on and on until Peggy and Fred relented and let her marry Teddy. Despite the difference in their ages, they both seemed like a pair of
children together. And Teddy was treating her like a queen. Cissy didn’t even have to go out to work!

Carrying Sandra downstairs, Melly handed her to Mom who held out her arms absent-mindedly, saying, ‘I’ll go straight over to the hospital after this.’ She latched Sandra on for
a feed, her cardigan draped carelessly over her for modesty’s sake.

‘Oh,’ Melly said. So she’d be cooking tea and looking after the others then. ‘Good.’

‘What’s up with you?’ Mom asked, sounding irritated.

‘Nothing.’

She stomped to the back of the house, into the little rectangle of garden, and stood against the back wall, tilting her chin to catch the sun on her face.

‘What would you care anyway?’ she whispered.

Staring morosely up at the cloud-dotted sky, Melly thought, all Mom ever does is have babies and clean the house and cook. Every time she thought about her own future and what it might hold, she
was filled with dread. Was that all there was? Leave school, have babies, stink of bleach all your life, then get old?

Cissy had the right idea, even though she didn’t see a lot of point in Cissy’s life either. All she seemed to do was prettify the enormous house Teddy’s father had bought for
them. She had met a couple of other young wives – older than her, but all looking for company – and they went out to milk bars together in Coventry. On Saturdays they went to the golf
club where Teddy played. Cissy claimed that it was all marvellous.

Staring across at the backs of the houses in the next street, Melly muttered, ‘When I’m older, I’m never going to be like any of you. I want some
life,
not just
babies.’ A sense of mission filled her. ‘I want to
do
something.’

They’d already had words about what exactly she was going to do when she left school; one wintry evening, soon after they moved across town. They were all sitting round
the tea table. The fire was lit in the back room and it felt very cosy as they had their tea, but it didn’t stop Melly leaving the table ready to explode with anger and frustration.

‘You’ll come on the market,’ Dad had said. ‘You’re a market trader through and through. If you start off with me, we could put you on a list for your own stall.
P’r’aps we’ll move into a shop.’ He was forever on the lookout for something else, for expansion, branching out. ‘You could take over Auntie’s pitch.’

‘Who says she’s ready to give up?’ Rachel said. ‘It’d be the death of her.’

They were all haunted by the sight of Gladys, that morning they had moved out of the yard, standing in the road, looking suddenly very small, watching them drive away in Dad’s new car. She
didn’t wave.

The car was parked outside now. Dad had wanted something flash and American but he’d come home with the old grey Standard vanguard in the back of which he could pile a lot of sale stuff
for the market.

‘She could take over mine,’ Danny said, getting excited. ‘I’ll start something new.’

Melly was sick of everyone talking over her head. What if I don’t want any of these things? she thought. Just as she was about to argue, to her surprise, her mother said:

‘P’r’aps Melly ought to get another job, to start. Get some other experience – in an office or a shop.’

Danny looked impatient. ‘What’s the point of that?’

‘The point of that,’ Rachel argued, ‘is to give her a chance to do something different – something a bit more, I dunno . . .’

‘You sound just like your flaming mother now,’ Danny said, slamming his teacup on to the saucer. ‘You mean summat more
respectable –
selling ladies’
make-up or perfume.’ His tone was mocking. ‘Like Peggy wanted you to do instead of marrying someone common like me.’

Melly watched Mom and Dad square up for a ding-dong. She saw the word ‘Yes’ forming on her mother’s lips and before she could come out with it, Melly interrupted.

‘I don’t want to work in a shop and I don’t want the market. I want to be a nurse.’

There was a shocked silence. Only seven-year-old Kev muttered, ‘Nursie-nursie,’ with a grin on his face, to break the awkwardness of it.

‘Shut up, Kev,’ Melly said. ‘You don’t even know what a nurse is.’

‘I
do
!’ he shouted.

‘A
nurse
?’ Rachel said, her brow wrinkling. ‘You’re not still on about that?’

As she said it, Melly realized that being a nurse was what she had always wanted – not that anyone had ever asked. Kev was so clever that his new school were already talking about him
taking the eleven plus for the grammar school. No one ever mentioned her. Bitterly, she felt like the house dogsbody.

She looked down into her lap, blushing. It was a tender admission, in front of all these incredulous faces. She wanted someone to be on her side and say, ‘Oh, Melly, you’d make a
wonderful nurse!’

‘A nurse?’ her father said, in a scoffing tone. ‘What the hell’d you want to do that for? It ain’t for people like us. And any road, it’s all wiping arses and
being ordered around by old harridans.’

‘Danny,’ Rachel said crossly.

Melly looked up, amazed to hear that Mom seemed to be taking her side.

‘Melly – would be – a good . . .’ Tommy started saying but no one let him finish.

Mom said, ‘You don’t want to be a nurse, Melly. You don’t know anything about it.’

‘I
do
. . .’ This was not very true. She had barely any notion of what was needed or how to apply or anything, but the more they went on at her the more certain she became
that this was exactly what she wanted.

‘But I don’t want you just going on the market as if that’s the only thing.’ Rachel looked round the table. ‘You go and get another job for a bit and see if you
want the market after that.’

‘Well, you’d better want it.’ Danny sounded resentful. ‘It’s our livelihood – it’s what keeps you in shoe leather, wench.’

Melly wanted to open her mouth and shout,
Why don
’t you listen to me? Why don’t you ask me what I want instead of bossing me around all the time?
But she knew it
wouldn’t get her anywhere and Kev and Ricky would just laugh and tease her about it. She didn’t say another word and in bed that night she wept, quietly, not wanting anyone to hear her.
Why didn’t they
listen
? All Dad could ever see was the market and Mom wasn’t really on her side.

The worst of it was, although she did like the idea of being a nurse, she had no idea what to do about it or who she could ask. Even as she lay there she was half resigned to giving up the idea.
Maybe Dad was right. People like them didn’t do things like that. She’d have to go and work in Woollie’s like Cissy used to.

With no encouragement from anyone at home she began to lose heart in the idea that she might be a nurse, putting it down as a silly childhood dream. She thought about talking
to Auntie about it, or to Lil, but she was afraid that they might be just as bad as Mom and Dad.

It was only a few days after the end of term when she finally left school, that she met someone, as if sent from heaven, who changed everything.

She was strolling back from the shops, along Harborne Park Road. It was a warm, hazy day and her mind had wandered off into a dream world. She found herself thinking about Reggie Morrison, even
though she tried not to. Since the Morrisons had moved to Moseley they had been over numerous times to see their huge house with a long garden, four floors, an enormous, cosy kitchen and windows
that seemed to hold half the sky. Dolly was very excited to see them every time they came. Gladys said Dolly was lonely over there. It was not easy to make friends.

‘It feels like old times with all of you here,’ she said, every time they went. And she laid out an enormous feast of scones and cakes and pints of tea.

Only once was Reggie there. Since moving across town he had had a bit of luck. Instead of working in a factory he had been taken on to train as a gardener in Kings Heath Park. He seemed calmer,
happier; he had filled out again and looked solid and strong. Even though he still walked with a pronounced limp, he appeared to be well able to do the job. Melly only exchanged a few words with
him. He seemed removed from them all, as if he had grown into another life.

Wistfully now, she thought of Cissy and Teddy. The age gap between herself and Reggie was nothing compared with theirs, but she didn’t have whatever it was that Cissy had, that made men
mad for her. For a moment she imagined living the sort of life Cissy had, only with Reggie. It didn’t feel real at all.