The Silent War (43 page)

Madge was angry now. ‘Whatever that woman has been telling you is a lie!’ She tried to raise herself out of the deckchair again, but Sunday stretched one hand across and gently held her down by the shoulder.

‘No Mum,’ Sunday said. ‘You can’t keep putting off what you should have told me years ago. You know as well as I do, we have a lot of things to talk over.’

Two deckchair attendants passed nearby, but thinking
that
the two women were part of the brass band rehearsal, they ignored them.

‘Aunt Louie told me you know who my real parents are.’ Despite Sunday’s efforts to keep her voice low, it still carried right across the empty rows of deckchairs. ‘Mum. I want to know. Who are they?’

Madge’s voice was firm and decisive. ‘I have no idea.’

‘Mum, stop playing games with me! I have a right to know. I have a right to know who they are and why they dumped me in a box on the doorstep of the Salvation Army Hall.’

Madge had her walking stick resting across her lap, and every so often she would grip it hard, as though unconsciously trying to snap it in half. ‘At the time when your father and I first adopted you, we only knew that you’d been abandoned.’

‘But you found out later?’

Madge inhaled and exhaled irritably.

‘Who were they, Mum?’

This time, Madge practically spat out in anger and frustration. ‘They were monsters! Monsters to make a child in the sight of God without His blessing. Monsters to cast a newborn baby aside as if it were a piece of rubbish in a dustbin! Why do you want to know about such monsters, Sunday? Haven’t I given you everything you’ve ever asked for?’

‘No,’ answered Sunday, firmly. ‘You’ve never given me the truth.’

Stan Billings returned with three cups of tea on a small wooden tray. But as he approached the two women, he could see they were in the middle of a tense exchange, so he decided to wait a few minutes, and sat down in a deckchair some distance away from them.

‘Let me say something to you, Sunday,’ Madge said, doing her best to keep her lip movements clear and precise. ‘When the Lord decided that He didn’t want me to have children born of my own blood, I knew that He
would
compensate me in another way. I found that way on the night I saw you wrapped up in a blanket in a box outside the Mission Hall. The Lord gave me a daughter of my own, and I was truly grateful.’

Although Sunday couldn’t hear what was going on behind her, on the old bandstand in the background, some of the youthful members of an Air Training Corps brass band were tuning up for their rehearsal.

‘For months, your dad and I fought to adopt you,’ continued Madge, taking off her spectacles, and cleaning them on her handkerchief. ‘But we had to wait until the court was quite satisfied that no one was going to come forward to claim you. I thank God the woman who gave birth to you never dared show her face.’

‘But you do know who she was?’

Madge hesitated before answering. ‘Yes,’ she replied, putting on her spectacles again. ‘I know.’

‘Then why won’t you tell me?’

‘Because she was not worthy of you.’

In the background, the rehearsal began. But the first item was the ATC choir singing a rather shaky rendition of The Lost Chord. This immediately brought small groups of people wandering across to watch from behind the back row of deckchairs.

Sunday got up from her chair. ‘You’ll have to tell me, Mum,’ she said. ‘One of these days, you’ll have to tell me who and where I came from. Whatever my real mum has done, I’m still a part of her. I can feel her inside me. Every time I look in the mirror, I know she’s there. I must know who she is, Mum. Not because I’m not grateful for all you’ve ever done for me, but because I can’t go through my life in someone else’s shadow.’

With that, she turned and walked off.

When Madge got home from her walk in Finsbury Park, she found a letter from Louie waiting for her on the parlour table. Sunday wanted no part of it, so she went into her bedroom and closed the door.

Madge went into her own bedroom, took off her bonnet and uniform, and carefully hung them up inside her wardrobe. Most of her sister Louie’s clothes had already gone, and she had also cleared out her own personal possessions from the dressing-table and bedside cabinet. Madge tried hard to ignore what she considered was yet another of her sister’s impetuous moods. She’d be back, just like always. She’d made her point, and stirred up trouble, but she’d be back. There was no doubt in Madge’s mind whatsoever.

Back in the parlour, Madge ripped open Louie’s envelope. There was no note inside. Just Louie’s front-door key, and a ten-shilling note, being her final share of the rent.

‘The Punch and Judy Show’ was always a very popular event at the Deaf and Dumb School in Drayton Park. The thirty-minute show was devised by Pete Hawkins, who, because he himself was both deaf and mute, knew exactly how to use the puppets for communication. The moment Sunday arrived at the school, she could see what a wonderful rapport Pete had with the kids, for he was always clowning around with them, and making them feel that he was one of them. Pete was also highly gifted, for he not only made the puppets and model theatre himself, but also operated them. Each week, Eileen Roberts and Jacqui Marks took turns to explain the action in sign language to the children, and eventually, Sunday made her own contribution by introducing a kind of audience participation. This involved her sign-talking to Punch, Judy, and a crocodile named ‘Snapper’, and getting them to sway in time to a beat which Sunday herself initiated. The device proved a huge success with the children, and those that were lucky enough to have vocal chords roared their approval, and those who were mute clapped their hands and showed their appreciation with broad beams lighting up their young faces.

As each day passed, Sunday was enjoying her work at the school more than she had ever dared to hope. It was the kids themselves who instilled so much confidence in her. None of them ever seemed to be feeling sorry for themselves, and they had accepted their fate as though there was absolutely nothing unusual about being deaf or mute. Amongst them, of course, were a few victims of
the
air-raids, with whom it was only natural that Sunday should feel a special empathy. It was odd and poignant how, when she sometimes sat with these particular children, they would draw pictures of all those deadly weapons, such as bombs, ‘doodlebugs’, and rockets, which had been responsible for their own disability. It took her some time to realise that these kids were teaching her a lot about life, and how to live it.

But the school also offered Sunday a great deal more: the kind of companionship and independence that she could never get at home. And being at home these days was nothing short of an ordeal. Despite her mum’s assurance that Aunt Louie would ‘soon know which side her bread’s buttered’, it had been over a week since the old lady had left the flat to go and stay with her friends at Swiss Cottage, and she hadn’t been near the place since. Luckily, Madge Collins’s health had improved, and she was now walking quite normally again, without her walking stick. But, no matter how hard Sunday tried, Madge was still unwilling to discuss anything to do with Sunday’s real mother and father, either who they were or where they came from. It was becoming a crisis of identity for her, with a desperate feeling inside that she had to know the answer to so many questions, about herself, about the woman who had brought her into the world, and about why she had been so rejected even before the start of her life. She was completely disoriented, floundering in a sea of uncertainty. There was no one she could talk to about it all, no one to confide in. She needed advice, someone she could pour it all out to, someone who would understand what it was like to live in the shadow of their own self. And at the heart of it all was Gary. It had been almost three months since she had last heard from him, and it was getting her down. Why couldn’t he have been truthful with her before he went back to America? Why couldn’t he have just said that it was nice while it lasted, but that everything has to come to an end sooner or later? She felt let down, betrayed. One letter from Gary would
have
made all the difference, would have helped to make this mess bearable. Gary was a man, and a man was supposed to know about these things, to know what to do. In fact, from the time she got up in the morning to the time she went to bed, she yearned for a man’s company, yearned to be held in his arms and be told that everything was going to be all right, yearned to feel the warmth of his body against her own. It was for all those reasons that she started to see Pete Hawkins.

At the beginning it all seemed very half-hearted, and she had only really got to know him during an evening out with Helen Gallop and Jacqui Marks at Dick’s Wine Bar in the Holloway Road. Sunday had never tasted wine before, for it had always been considered a posh person’s drink, but Pete seemed to be quite an expert, and knew exactly what to order. In many ways, it had been a hilarious evening, for despite the fact that he could only use sign language, Pete had a marvellous sense of humour, and consistently made all three girls laugh. He was able, seemingly effortlessly, to project his bubbly personality, despite his handicaps. Sunday was fascinated to watch the delicate way he moved his fingers and hands, which seemed to paint pictures in the air. The more she saw of Pete, the more she was attracted to him, with his mischievous eyes, and long brown hair that was always flopping over one eye, and his thin wire-like body which was always restless, always on the move.

The first time Sunday slept with Pete she felt guilty. In some ways she felt as though she had seduced him into doing it, for, after Helen and Jacqui had got their bus home, it had been Sunday herself who had suggested that he invite her back for a drink at his top-floor flat in Aberdeen Park just off Highbury Grove. At the start, Pete seemed quite nervous about what he was doing, for despite all his clowning, he was actually quite shy and nervous. It was also very evident that Pete was not very experienced, which meant that Sunday had to take the initiative. However, this was what she had wanted, what
she
desperately needed, and although making love with Pete Hawkins only made her think of Gary all the more, for the time being it would have to do.

During the first week in August, there were very definite signs that the war with the Japanese was coming to an end. Every newspaper carried reports of Allied successes in the Far East, with mass bombing raids taking place every day on the Japanese mainland itself. But it was not until 6 August that events took a dramatic turn, with the announcement that the United States Air Force had dropped an atomic bomb, which had completely devastated the Japanese city of Hiroshima. A few days later, Russia declared war on the Japanese Empire, and after the Americans dropped another atomic bomb, this time on the city of Nagasaki, the Government of Japan surrendered.

The VJ Day celebrations in ‘the Buildings’ were a further opportunity for the residents to let their hair down. Apart from a tea party for hordes of kids, there was also another knees-up for the adults, most of whom had contributed anything between five and ten shillings to help pay for the spread. The new Prime Minister, Clement Attlee, told the nation to ‘go out and enjoy yourselves’, and everyone in ‘the Buildings’ did just that. At last the war all over the world was at an end. It was now up to the new Government to build the peace.

A few days before the celebrations, Alf Butler moved out of number 7. It had been a massive undertaking, for over the years he and Bess had acquired many personal possessions, which had to be disposed of. So, with Sunday’s help, he set about doing so, giving a lot of the stuff to St George’s Church in Tufnell Park for sale at their next bazaar, other things to some of the more friendly neighbours in the same block, but the bulk of Bess’s clothes to Sunday.

Once Alf had settled in at his new ‘home’, which was nothing more than an old people’s block attached to the
Geriatric
Ward at the Whittington Hospital in Highgate, Sunday went to visit him. She hated the place on sight, for it smelt of wintergreen ointment and incontinence, and the elderly residents seemed to spend most of their day either reading newspapers or just nodding off in their armchairs. Alf, however, was in surprisingly good spirits, probably because he now had people around him to talk to, so it seemed the right moment for Sunday to ask him something that had been on her mind since the day she had sorted through Bess’s clothes.

‘Why did she keep a pitture of you?’ replied Alf, repeating Sunday’s question. ‘’Cos she fawt the world of yer, Sun. Yer was about the only one she could talk to in those “Buildin’s”. Yer was on ’er wavelengf. She reckoned yer ’ad guts,’ he said, adding wistfully, ‘like she ’ad all ’er life.’

Sunday covered his cold hand with her own. She had to sit directly opposite to enable them both to communicate with each other. ‘What I don’t understand though, Alf, is where did she get that snapshot of me? It was taken years ago, on the beach at Southend, on a day trip with my school.’ She watched Alf’s lips carefully, to make quite sure she could understand his reply.

Alf was a bit slow on the uptake these days, so he had to think hard for a moment. Then, after shrugging his shoulders, said, ‘No idea. Yer mum must’ve given it to ’er.’

Sunday did a double-take. ‘Mum?’ she said incredulously. ‘But they never met, did they?’

‘Oh yes they did,’ answered Alf firmly. ‘Quite a few times yer mum come ter see Bess over the years. Tried ter save ’er soul wiv a bit of Bible-punchin’, I reckon. I never ’ung around, oh no, not me! I just let ’em get on wiv it.’

Sunday was so astonished that when a nurse came along with the tea trolley, she accepted a cup of tea without thanking her for it.

‘Alf,’ said Sunday, leaning forward so that she could
get
a closer look at his lips when he replied. ‘Are you saying that my mum came to visit Bess, in
your
flat?’

Despite his growing loss of cohesion, Alf was again able to answer quite firmly, ‘Lots er times.’