Now the War Is Over (6 page)

‘What did you say?’ she demanded. She felt Gladys clamp a hand on her arm to stop her rushing round the table to black Irene’s eyes. It wouldn’t have been the first time
and by God she didn’t half ask for it.

‘
Don’t
,’ Gladys hissed down her ear. ‘Leave it. She’s just a silly bint – trying to get a rise out of you. Like a flaming kid, that one.’

Rachel looked daggers at Irene. She lowered her head, breathing hard, trying to control the impulse to go and tear Irene’s hair out.

‘In front of him,’ she whispered savagely to Gladys. ‘She cowing well said it in front of him. Just when he’s . . .’ Her eyes filled with angry tears. Tommy had
come out to the street – that was progress.

‘Just leave it,’ Gladys said. ‘Don’t do anything – not today.’ She nodded at the table of children.

Dolly, however, was not one for holding back. ‘You want to look after your own kids,’ she retorted across the table. ‘Instead of poking your nose in about other people’s.
And where’s your old man? Down the boozer as usual, I s’pose?’

Irene stuck her nose in the air and ignored them. Ray Sutton, dark-haired, full of charm when sober but frequently drunk and obnoxious, was nowhere to be seen.

Melly kept sneaking looks round at Wally Morrison. He and Reggie were quite alike and as brothers they were close. Both of them worked on milling machines for GEC, in Electric Avenue in Witton.
Dolly had worked there before she was married and Reggie followed Wally there. But now Reggie had gone off into this unknown world of the army and Wally had just come back from it. Melly kept
wanting to look at him, as if seeing Wally could somehow put her in touch with Reggie. It wasn’t as if Reggie ever took any notice of her – not before and not now. But she was
fascinated with him. He seemed to be everything a grown-up man should be – handsome, with a strong-boned face and thick blonde hair. He was tough and mysterious, not as talkative as Wally.
The sight of Reggie always made her heart beat faster, even though she knew he had no time for her. After all, he was
eighteen
! For now though, all she had to look at was his older
brother.

‘What’re you staring at?’ Rita Sutton leaned across the table, her eyes narrowed in her sly way.

Melly whipped her head back round from another peek at Wally. ‘Nothing.’

‘You was staring. I saw yer.’

Melly could see the spiteful gleam in the girl’s eyes.

‘I
wasn’t
,’ she insisted.

She turned away as if to help Tommy, fussing over him unnecessarily.

‘He’s like a babby,’ Melly heard Shirley Sutton remark. She kept her eyes fixed on Tommy’s.
Ignore them
, her eyes said.
They’re just nasty like their
mom
.

Her own mom and dad were just behind them so she felt safe. She heard Mom chatting to Dolly. Rachel broke away for a moment from the group to call out to a friend up the road.

‘All right, Netta? I thought you were going to come and watch it at Mo and Dolly’s?’

Netta made some flustered reply and Rachel called back, ‘All right then – see you tomorrow!’

Tommy was looking happy now and he beamed when they were presented with a bowl of orange jelly.

‘Here y’are,’ Melly said, reaching for a spoon to give him. Tommy could eat perfectly well with his good arm.

‘It’s disgusting, the way he eats,’ Rita said, her eyes gleaming nastily.

Melly wanted to say,
Well, at least he doesn
’t have a face like a rat like you
, but she didn’t dare. Rita was nearly fourteen and Melly was scared of her.

Seeing that Tommy was eating happily she glanced quickly round at Wally Morrison again. His blonde hair was slicked back and he stood more upright since the army, a swagger to him. He was all
right, Melly told herself. But he wasn’t Reggie. Reggie was quieter, kinder.

Around her was all chat and laughter. She could hear Mo’s voice from down the other end of the table. Someone had rolled out a keg of beer and Mo, legs braced to hold his barrel-like body,
was handing round cups, glasses, jam jars of it. Her mom leaned over to cut the cake. There was a pink seam of jam through the middle.

‘Hold your plates out,’ Mom said. ‘One at a time!’

Mo worked his way along. ‘Here yer go – a toast to Her Majesty!’

They were in the midst of drinking and cheering on the new Queen when an all-too-familiar figure came zigzagging along the road, staggering into walls and out again across the pavement.

‘Oh, look who it isn’t,’ Dolly said loudly, as Ray Sutton tripped into the gutter and almost fell. ‘The ruddy Lone Ranger.’

‘He’s getting worse.’ Gladys stared along the street. Melly knew that Auntie did not approve of swearing or bad manners or drinking to excess. ‘When’s he ever
sober?’

Melly only half-heard what they were saying. The other half of her was dreaming about Reggie, imagining that he was here, that he would come and sit next to her and gaze deep into her eyes . . .
She only looked up when there was a horrified outcry from around her. Ray Sutton was lurching along the road close to them, bashing into people who were shouting and telling him to get out of
there, the state he was in.

‘Wench!’ he yelled, seeming able to focus at least on the fact that the ample woman in red was his wife. His voice was so slurred they could only just gather what he was saying.
‘Get in the *****g house!’ He staggered and nearly fell.

‘Using the soldier’s word – when you’ve never been near a uniform,’ someone sneered.

Ray wasn’t listening to anyone else. ‘What’re yer doing out ’ere . . . ? Showing yerself off . . . Yer filthy trollop.’ He weaved round the end of the table towards
Irene.

‘Ray!’ Irene shrieked, as he started to manhandle her. Other voices were shouting at him to get off her.

‘Knock it off, Ray!’ Melly heard her father shout. ‘Look at yourself – what’re you doing?’

‘Oh my God, here we go,’ Rachel said contemptuously. ‘Wouldn’t you know it?’

‘It’s a party!’ Irene shrieked. ‘For the new Queen. Come on, Ray – come and have a—’

But Ray managed to grab Irene’s hair, poking a finger into her eye as he did so. She screamed with pain and continued to scream as he dragged her along by her blonde locks and up the entry
towards the house.

‘Bloody disgrace!’ Melly heard, amid other shouts after them.

Her own heart was thumping. Now she was older, she had become aware of the fights between Irene and Ray, the shouts and screams late at night. Behind closed doors was one thing, but this was
horrible to see. Rita and Shirley were hanging their heads. Melly looked at Evie. She was staring ahead of her, her pale hair hanging in sheets each side of her sweet, blank face, her eyes seeming
fixed on nothing, as if she wasn’t there at all.

‘God Almighty,’ Dolly said, appearing at their door one Saturday morning a few weeks later. ‘Did any of you lot get a wink of sleep last night? I had to stop
Mo grabbing the poker and going round to knock the pair of ’em out.’

Melly had heard them last night, the yells and crashes. Ray Sutton and Irene had had one of their worst-ever fights, starting after the pubs closed and going on for what felt like most of the
night.

‘Those two deserve each other,’ Rachel said. ‘It’s Evie that worries me.’

‘Come on – no time for canting, you lot,’ Gladys said.

The Booker family were preparing to go to market, sleep or no sleep. There were piles of clothes on chairs. Gladys was rolling them into bundles.

‘You know why, don’t you?’ Dolly said, propped importantly against the door frame, blowing smoke from her Gold Flake into the morning air.

‘Why what?’ Gladys said. ‘Spit it out if you’ve got summat to say. We’re running late as it is.’

‘Kynoch’s let him go yesterday. Take your wages –’ This had been a wage packet that you couldn’t bend – it had his cards in it. ‘On your way. He keeps
turning up at work so kalied he’s bouncing off the walls. They’ve had enough of ’im.’ She took another satisfied drag on her cigarette. Dolly always liked to be first with
the news.

‘It’s a pity that one survived the cowing war,’ Rachel muttered, cutting a piece for Tommy. She spread a film of Stork on it. ‘Someone should’ve dropped a bomb on
him and had done with it.’

‘Rach!’ Gladys said. ‘That’s no way to talk!’ She glanced round at the children who were all listening avidly.

Tommy did a soaring motion with his good arm and made a droning sound through his lips like a passing bomber aeroplane. Melly and the others laughed.

‘That’s it, son!’ Danny chuckled and Melly saw her mother’s face lighten at his approval of Tommy. Kev and Ricky both cackled loudly, even though neither of them really
got the joke.

‘Heaven help them now,’ Gladys said, putting her bags by the door. ‘They’ve been dodging the rent man for weeks, even with a wage coming in.’ She straightened up.
‘Ready, Danny?’

‘You coming with me today?’ Danny leaned over the table to Melly. ‘You and Kev?’

She looked up into her father’s eyes. Hers were so like his, everyone said. Big and blue. She swallowed her mouthful of bread. Against her will, she nodded, knowing she was pleasing him.
Dad liked nothing better than taking her and Kev to work beside him and Auntie on the Rag Market, now they each had their own stall.

‘All right . . .’

‘There’s no need to say it like that,’ Danny cajoled, mock hurt. ‘What’s happened to my girl – you’ve always been at me to take you to the
market!’

Melly didn’t want to tell Dad how much she wanted to stay at home today. There were coils of excitement in her belly as if she’d swallowed a snake. Reggie Morrison was home!
She’d just caught a glimpse of him crossing the yard in his khaki, his hair cropped shorter than she’d ever seen it. It made his face look thinner. If she stayed home she might have a
chance of seeing him.

Gladys was already waiting, a bag in each hand. Dad was hustling Kevin along. ‘Come on, mate – and we’ll get us a comic, after, eh? What d’yer fancy – the
Beano
– or
Eagle
?’

‘
Beano
!’ Kevin cried. He knew it was Dad’s favourite as well. Danny drew copies of the characters as well as making up his own. And Kevin liked going to the market. He
hurried after his dad on his skinny legs. Almost as an afterthought Danny turned and patted Tommy’s head.

‘Ricky – c’mere. You can’t go!’ Rachel said, grabbing him as he started to crawl towards his father. Ricky started wailing loudly. He was quite a placid boy
normally but he adored Danny and wanted to be with him wherever he went. ‘You can go when you’re bigger,’ Melly heard her say as they all trooped out.

‘Ta-ra, son.’ Danny threw the comment to Tommy as an afterthought. ‘We’ll bring you a comic an’ all, won’t we, Kev?’

Melly saw her brother try to smile and pretend he was happy always being the one to stay behind.

The house fell quiet, once Rachel had managed to pacify Ricky and sit him on the floor with some of Kev’s cars. Tommy watched her as he sat by the table in his chair,
still eating long after everyone else had finished.

He was acutely sensitive to his mother’s moods. As she straightened up from settling Ricky, a pinner over her old cotton dress, he could see the tiredness in her face, her thin arms and
pasty skin. If only he could take Mom somewhere warm and nice like in one or two of those plays he had heard on the wireless, where she could eat everything she wanted and not have to work all the
time. And where she could be free to come and go.

Because Tommy felt, all too painfully, that he was the reason for the dull, defeated look in his mother’s eyes. The reason she was always stuck here, could never go anywhere much, and that
neither of them could see an end to it. She was his world, his mom was, with her kind eyes and dark brown hair which was pretty when she got the time to curl the ends and dress it up a bit. She was
fiercely protective of him. Although he was only coming up to ten years old, he could read her sadness and sense of defeat, as if her life was just passing her by in a round of weary toil. It made
him ache inside that he could do so little to help or to free her. Though he could not quite have put all this into words, it was a burden he carried along with all his physical difficulties, with
feeling left out of life.

He dipped his crusts in his tea one by one, to soften them. There was a niggling ache in his left hip and shoulder but he said nothing because the pain was a part of his life. Managing to cheat
his thrusting tongue he took a mouthful. As he had grown older his control over eating had improved, his muscles strengthening, but today the food clogged his mouth as a lump rose in his throat. He
coughed and spat it out.

‘You all right, babby?’ Mom rushed over from where she was washing up. ‘You choking?’

He looked down at the soggy ball of bread on his plate.

‘Just – coughed,’ he said, with difficulty. Each word was a challenge for him, a contortion. He looked up at her and tried to smile. He did not want Mom to see in his eyes the
swelling frustration and helplessness inside him. He knew his mom would do anything in her power for him – but what more could she do?

Day after day, all his life, he had watched the other children running about, moving easily in a way never possible for him. That terrifying morning when the boys attacked him, jeering and
trying to tip his chair over, had given him a shock that burned into his soul. He knew he was different, he had always known that. He had heard comments from the grown-ups when they went out,
though then he had been too young to understand most of them. But in the yard people had been kind. The Morrison boys always played with him and made him one of them and he had always had Melly to
look to – and Cissy when she was about.

But Dad . . . He had been five when Kevin arrived. Old enough to understand that Kevin was the son their father had always wanted, one who could run and jump, not a cripple stuck in a chair. And
then came Ricky, who was now walking as well.

‘Mom?’ He kept his eyes down on his plate, searching for the right words. With all those hours Mom and Melly had spent encouraging him to talk, he knew he could get them out when he
wanted, with someone patient enough to listen.