The September Girls (43 page)

‘Everyone in the forces is doing their bit towards the war, including you, darling,’ Eleanor would try to convince him, but Jonathan refused to be convinced.

‘I’d sooner be in Liverpool any day, Mummy,’ he would say sulkily. ‘There’s far more going on. You even had an incendiary bomb in the garden.’

Eleanor was very proud of her incendiary bomb that had done little damage except to the Brussels sprouts Oliver had planted in readiness for Christmas. They’d both been in the Anderson shelter and Oliver had put the flames out with the stirrup pump that he had never imagined using. A bomb in your very own garden was really something to boast about, unlike Brenna having her windows smashed; that happened to loads of people.

She’d managed to coax Oliver out of the decline into which he’d fallen when Lewis Brown had joined the Navy - Lewis was now a first officer on a destroyer somewhere in the Atlantic - and they were now romantically entwined in the way she’d always dreamt about. All those nights they’d spent together in the shelter while bombs fell all around them had created a rapport that she hoped would never be broken.

Just as Oliver was the perfect lodger, he was also the perfect lover, giving her merely an affectionate kiss on the cheek at the end of a highly enjoyable evening spent at the cinema or the theatre. As this was the limit of Eleanor’s desires, she was completely satisfied. She was terribly fond of him and he of her, and although they flirted madly, the flirting ended outside the doors of their respective bedrooms. She was, she thought frequently and rather selfishly, having an extremely good war: provided Jonathan stayed in Scotland, that was.

At the time when Cara was halfway to London on the train, Eleanor put on her hat and coat, collected her gas mask and made her way to Brenna’s.

Brenna had been very down lately. Tyrone was being his usual beastly self and Fergus was still seeing that ghastly Jessie Clifford woman. Brenna had threatened to throw him out, but Fergus had, in turn, threatened to move in with Jessie, and poor Brenna was left floundering, not knowing what to do. Colm, so easy-going, wasn’t being much help, telling her not to get so agitated.

Eleanor was inclined to think that Colm was right. Fergus was twenty-six and a war hero. He had a very responsible job as head of a section in Littlewoods, the pools company, now turning out barrage balloons. Even his mother had no right to tell someone like Fergus how to lead his life. If ever Jonathan did such a thing, Eleanor thought a trifle sanctimoniously, she would reason with him, not upbraid him.

‘Yoohoo!’ She entered the back door of Shaw Street. ‘Brenna, it’s only me.’

‘I know it’s only you,’ Brenna said grumpily from the chair in the living room where she appeared to be staring into space. ‘You’re the only one who shouts “yoohoo”.’

‘Where are Maria and the boys?’

‘Round at her mam’s. Some days I hardly see them.’

Eleanor wasn’t surprised. Right now, she wouldn’t want to be stuck in the house all day with Brenna. ‘How are you today?’ she asked brightly. Her friend was letting herself go and had recently put on more weight. Her lovely hair was turning grey and was badly in need of a trim, and she wore an unflattering brown frock and not a scrap of make-up. Without being aware of what she was doing, Eleanor patted her own flat stomach and adjusted her hat over her smooth, brown hair, as if to convince herself that
she
looked fine, particularly in the camel coat that had once been long, but she’d converted to three-quarter length and made a hat to match out of the piece she’d cut off.

‘Same as usual.’ There followed the usual tirade with which Eleanor was becoming rather bored. Tyrone was being a pain, Fergus was being a pain, Colm wasn’t being the least bit sympathetic.

‘Perhaps he doesn’t think there’s anything to be sympathetic about,’ Eleanor suggested helpfully. ‘After all, Tyrone and Fergus are his sons as much as yours. If they don’t bother him, he’s probably wondering why you let them bother you.’

‘You’re a big help, I must say.’

‘Sometimes, Brenna, you get a bee in your bonnet and you won’t let it go.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ Brenna asked in a surly voice.

‘Things bother you, but you won’t give up, no matter what. You won’t be happy until Fergus has split up with Jessie Clifford, yet the more you get on to him, the more stubborn he will be. It only stands to sense, Bren.’

‘Since when have you been the expert on how to deal with kids?’ Her face turned red with anger.

Eleanor could tell she was about to lose her temper, something she’d sooner avoid. She said gently, ‘I don’t claim to be an expert, I just don’t like seeing you unhappy, that’s all.’

‘I’m not unhappy, I’m as mad as hell.’

‘Is there a difference?’

At this, Brenna did lose her temper. ‘Oh, go away, Eleanor. I thought you’d come for a chat, not to give me a lecture. I’m not prepared to take advice from you or anyone on how to be a mother.’

‘Oh, all right.’ Eleanor sprang to her feet. ‘I’ll love you and leave you. Bye, Brenna.’

She left, not in the least disturbed by their little spat. They often had them and Brenna would soon come round. She decided to go and see Nancy and was surprised to find a big, black car parked outside the house in Parliament Terrace.

‘It’s the doctor,’ Nancy explained. ‘He’s come to see Marcus.’

‘Is he ill?’ She’d never known Marcus have more than a touch of flu.

‘He keeps getting a bad pain in his stomach. This morning, Car . . . I mean, I insisted he call the doctor.’

‘Poor old thing!’ Eleanor had never expected she’d feel sympathy for the man who’d been her husband, but he’d become far more likeable of late. ‘I’ve just been to see Brenna. She was in a foul mood and virtually threw me out.’

‘The other day, she left in a huff when I tried to offer some advice.’

They both agreed that Brenna wasn’t interested in advice and that she was inclined to let herself go if life wasn’t running as smoothly as she felt it should.

 

Brenna vaguely remembered Colm saying something similar years ago when she was on at him about Lizzie Phelan. Mind you, she’d had a right to worry, for hadn’t Colm gone and slept with the damn woman? About a year ago, she’d heard that Lizzie had turned up out of the blue wanting to be the Labour candidate when old Ignatius Herlihy and gone and died. Lizzie hadn’t won the nomination - hell would have to freeze over before Brenna would have voted for her - and had disappeared again by the time Brenna found out what had happened. She wasn’t surprised Colm hadn’t said anything about it.

Now she had a bee in her bonnet about Fergus and Jessie Clifford, finding it hard to accept that her darling son, who’d been such an amenable, well-behaved little lad, would actually defy his mam and continue seeing that slut Jessie when she’d specifically ordered him not to.

‘I’m not a child any more, Mam,’ he’d said haughtily the other day.

‘You are in my eyes, lad.’

‘Maybe you need glasses, too.’

The other night, Colm had told her not to worry. ‘He’s only after one thing, the sex. He’s being a man, luv, and that’s the way men are.’

‘Oh, so you’d do the same thing if you were in his position?’ Brenna had screamed.

‘I’m not going to answer such a daft question, Bren.’ With that, he’d gone to the pub. Tyrone was already in another pub, Fergus was with Jessie Clifford, and Maria and the lads were still at her mam’s.

I’m driving everyone away with me moods, Brenna thought now, including Eleanor, whom she’d actually told to go away, when she would far rather she’d stayed. Perhaps it was the change - her periods were getting thinner and becoming irregular. Since Rory had died in her arms, she’d never wanted another baby, but it gave her a horrible, empty feeling to think that now she couldn’t have one if she tried. At the same time, she felt slightly better knowing that her behaviour wasn’t entirely her own fault, but due to her body going haywire.

She went upstairs for a more flattering frock, combed her hair, put on a bit of lippy and went to see Eleanor, only to find she wasn’t in, so went to see Nancy instead and found Eleanor there. The two women were so pleased to see her in a good mood that Brenna felt quite gratified. They all sat round the table and had a long, detailed and very enjoyable discussion about the change. It turned out a far better day than she’d expected, but she couldn’t resist having a go at Fergus that night when he was getting done up to see his fancy woman.

 

‘Who does the flat belong to?’ Cara asked. It was obviously an actor, as the walls of the bright, cheerful, very untidy and not very clean living room were full of theatre posters. The furniture was very old, but there were lots of colourful cushions thrown about and the walls were painted pink. Pink frilly curtains hid the blackout on the window and a striped blanket was thrown over the rackety settee on which Cara sat and breastfed a hungry Kitty, who curled and uncurled her tiny hands in blissful satisfaction.

‘What makes you think it isn’t mine?’ Fielding asked churlishly. She was seated in a massive armchair that dwarfed her tiny figure, watching Cara and the baby with fascination. The left sleeve of her blouse was empty and flopped about untidily whenever she moved. Their conversation was very disjointed, hopping from one subject to another, not always waiting for answers. After her initial bout of tears, Fielding had adopted an attitude of tough cynicism mixed with extremely bad temper.

‘If it
is
yours, all you have to do is say “me”.’

‘Well, it’s not me, but this chap called Aubrey who’s sitting out the war in California: Los Angeles to be precise. He got a part in a film and decided to stay when the war started.’

‘I don’t blame him.’

‘No one in their right mind would. The lease is up at the end of July and I’ll have to find somewhere else. I couldn’t possibly afford to renew it.’

‘But I thought you got a pension!’

‘I do.’ She laughed bitterly. ‘It’s
nearly
enough to buy the groceries.’

‘But that’s not fair!’ Cara said angrily. ‘Our Fergus gets a pension, but all he has is a bit of a limp. Someone in your condition should get far more.’

‘I’ll have you know, Caffrey, that I’m in perfect condition apart from being minus an arm.’

‘You look a wreck if the truth be known.’ Her small face was pasty and wizened, her eyes bloodshot. Her lovely blonde hair had lost most of its curl and hung in lank clumps on her shoulders. Kit had taken most of the force of the bomb; Fielding, sitting behind him on the panier of the bike, had been left alive, if badly injured. She’d been flown to England and spent four months in a coma in a hospital in Birmingham where she could have died at any minute. Six weeks later, having recovered consciousness, she’d been transferred to a convalescent home in Bournemouth, but had walked out after another month. No one had known where she was until she applied for her pension. Sybil had sent her address to Cara with one of Mam’s letters.

‘Where does the money come from to buy all the gin and stuff I saw in the kitchen?’ she asked. There’d been at least a dozen empty bottles on the floor.

‘I busk,’ Fielding said simply.

‘What’s that?’

‘I sing outside Piccadilly Underground Station. I could make a mint if I did it all day.’ Her face twisted in a sour smile. ‘Everyone feels sorry for me, you see; poor wretched girl with only one arm. Trouble is, I get tired very quickly.’

‘Oh, Fielding!’

‘Oh, Caffrey!’ She made a face. ‘Would you like to see my arm? I’ve got about three inches left and the end has turned into a shrimp. Perhaps I could join the circus. “The Girl with a Shrimp for an Arm.” I’d make a great attraction. I could learn to juggle and play the piano, although not both together.’

‘Stop it!’ Cara said, so sharply that Kitty paused briefly, hands still, then started to suck noisily again. ‘Sorry, sweetheart,’ she whispered.

‘She’s awfully like Kit,’ Fielding commented.

‘Is she? I think so too, but thought I might be biased. Fortunately, she hasn’t got his nose. You know,’ she said softly, ‘for a whole twenty-four hours after the accident, I thought you were dead. Kit and Mac obviously were and I assumed you were too.’

‘You
saw
us?’ Her jaw dropped in astonishment.

‘When the bomb went off, I stopped the car and waited for the three of you to come riding through the smoke. When you didn’t, I ran back and found . . . well, you know what I found.’ Cara closed her eyes and visualized the horror of the scene for the umpteenth time. ‘What’s that?’ she asked, alarmed, when she heard piercing screams from directly below the window. By now, it was pitch dark and the blackout was upon them.

‘Just the girls having a fight,’ Fielding said serenely. ‘It’s nothing to worry about.’

‘What girls?’

‘The working girls, the pros -
prostitutes
,’ she said impatiently when Cara continued to look bemused. ‘The street’s full of them. If it’s not them fighting with each other, then it’s their pimps beating them up. Don’t tell me you don’t know what a pimp is, Caffrey?’ she groaned when Cara looked at her vacantly. ‘What sort of world have you been living in?’

‘A different sort of world from you, obviously.’

Fielding explained what a pimp was and Cara said, ‘No wonder that nice taxi driver gave me a funny look when I told him your address.’

‘You didn’t
have
to come,’ Fielding said huffily. ‘Perhaps you wouldn’t have if you’d known what the area was like.’

‘I
did
have to come,’ Cara said simply. ‘I’d have come if you’d been living on the moon. I wanted to see you. I had to know how you were.’ She hoisted Kitty on to her shoulder and began to rub her back.

‘Why are you doing that?’

‘To bring up her wind. Is there anywhere I can put her down to sleep after I’ve changed her nappy?’