War Babies (44 page)

‘
I’ve
changed?’ he said furiously. ‘That’s rich coming from you. You’re not the woman I married. You’re just . . .’ He struggled for
words and they burst out angrily. ‘You don’t need me – you don’t need anyone! You’re . . . You’re like someone else – and as for him –’ He
nodded at Tommy. ‘He’s all you ever think about!
Look
at him! He’s a wrong’un – what use is he ever gonna be to anyone? He’s never gonna be able to even
wipe his own arse!’

‘Danny! How can you be so . . .’ But she was choking on her words and Danny was turning away.

‘I can’t stand it.’ He spoke with his back to her. ‘For four years, every day of that, all I dreamt about was coming home to you. To my girl – the girl I married.
And when I got here – nothing’s the same. You’re not the same . . .’

‘Danny,’ she pleaded. ‘I know some things’ve changed, but I’ve not changed really . . .’ She raised her voice as her own hurt and rage poured out.
‘I’ve had to do all this on my own. And I did my dreaming too, you know! I dreamt of my husband coming home – a husband who’d help me and look after me. The man I married
who was kind and who’d be at my side . . . And where’s he gone – eh?’ Her voice rose to a shriek. ‘All you ever think about is
you
and how
you
feel!
What about me? What about your kids, Danny? You’re not the only one who went through the war, you know.’

Danny stood very still. Then he reached out for the door latch.

‘Daddy . . .’ Melly said in a small, frightened voice.

Danny pulled the door open. The sound of rain came suddenly louder. ‘I can’t.’ He stepped outside.

‘Go on, Danny –’ She was still shouting, beside herself now. ‘You be a
real
man and run away – just bugger off and desert your kids. Who cares, eh? Someone
else’ll look after them. Not your sodding problem, is it?’

But he kept walking. Rachel went to the door and, past caring who heard, screamed after him. ‘That’s it, Danny – you go! Just like your dad did. Just like your own bloody
marvellous father did!’

She flung her words like rocks at his departing back. And then he was gone, down the entry.

‘Well, I can’t say I’m all that surprised,’ Peggy said. ‘Although it’s absolutely disgusting. But if you marry from the other side of the
tracks the way you did, Rachel, that’s often what happens – you can’t say I didn’t warn you. I never liked the look of him – and as for that aunt of his . .
.’

Rachel sat opposite her mother, numbly listening to this with her head bowed. It was a fortnight since that rainy morning when Danny walked out. In that time Rachel had not seen Peggy, or told
her what had happened. Eventually Gladys said to her:

‘Look – you ought to go over to your mother. And Melly ought to see her cousin.’ Cissy was in fact Melanie’s aunt, but they always called them cousins. ‘Leave the
lad with me and take her over. You’ll have to tell them sometime.’

Of course at first they all thought he would come back the same day, when he had cooled down. When he didn’t, Rachel had gone to Summer Lane the next afternoon to wait outside Coronet
Cameras for the workers to come out at the end of the day. Her heart banged like a crazed drum as the first ones appeared. But though she waited until the factory must long have been empty, Danny
was not among them. She walked home, despair seeping through her. It took several more days, still expecting him to walk into the yard, before she really saw that he was not coming back. With every
day that passed, she knew this with more certainty. All her anger at his lack of care and understanding towards her seeped away. Every moment of every day, she ached for him to come back to her,
Danny, her darling Danny who she loved and had waited for all these years. Surely he could not really have gone forever? She was constantly in a state, every moment expecting him to appear at the
door.

Sitting here now under the barrage of her mother’s words, she had no defence to offer for herself or for him.

‘Rach?’ Cissy came up to her, her round, pink face full of a question she wanted answered. She leaned up against Rachel’s shoulder and looked winningly at her. Rachel found
this comforting, but Peggy admonished her.

‘For heaven’s sake, Cissy, don’t go throwing yourself on people like that – they don’t want you.’

Cissy froze, a hurt expression on her face, and started to withdraw, but Rachel put her arm around her little sister.

‘It’s all right, Ciss,’ she said. ‘Course I want you.’ She gave her sister’s plump body an affectionate squeeze and Cissy brightened a fraction again. Rachel
burned inside at the memory of their mother’s capacity to hurt and reject. Fred Horton still doted on his little girl but now that Cissy was past the baby stage and the novelty had worn off,
Peggy was reverting to her true colours. Rachel felt very protective of her little sister. Melly had come up as well and the two girls looked as if they were plotting something together.

‘What, Ciss?’

‘Can I come and sleep at your house again?’ Cissy pleaded. She had come back with Rachel once, some time ago, to share the bed with Melanie and Tommy and thought it a great
adventure.

‘All right, maybe next time I come – in a . . . a couple of weeks?’ She looked at her mother, glad to get off the subject of Danny, about whom there seemed to be no possibility
of anything good to say. Every mention of him felt like a stab wound.

Peggy nodded. ‘I suppose,’ she said wearily. ‘I don’t know why you want to go and sleep in that slum of a place, Cissy, but I suppose, if you must . . .’ Rachel
knew that whatever Peggy said, she was glad of a break from mothering and as often as possible.

Cissy and Melanie were all smiles. ‘I’ll bring Lolly!’ she said. Lolly was her raggy doll. The two of them scuttled away to make plans.

On the way home, Melanie, who seemed happier for the visit, looked up at Rachel as they were waiting for the bus.

‘Mom?’ she said cautiously. ‘Is our dad ever coming back? Only I don’t know what to say to Cissy about it. Or to Mavis.’ Mavis was her best friend at school.

Touched on the raw again by this question, Rachel wanted to scream back at her – how the hell should
I
know? Rage and hurt welled up in her. She took a deep breath and tried to be
kinder, and more reasonable. God forbid, however bad things got, she should start acting like her own mother.

‘I don’t know, Melly. I wish I did. But it doesn’t look like it, does it? I suppose you could tell your friends that he’s had to go away for a bit – for work. If
you have to tell them anything.’

Melanie’s eyes filled with tears. ‘Is it because of Tommy?’ she asked. ‘Is it me? Did I do something bad?’

‘Oh, babby –’ Rachel squatted down beside her as the traffic rumbled past. ‘No – it’s not you.’ This was true, she knew. ‘You’re your
dad’s little girl. It’s just . . .’ What could she say? Grief swelled in her throat. ‘The war did some bad things to people. Made them different from how they were before. I
think the war did bad things to your dad.’

Melly was listening, her eyes wide and hurt.

‘It’s not your fault. I don’t think it’s mine, or Tommy’s either. It’s just something that’s happened, that’s all.’

But deep down, she did think it was her fault. She had not been understanding enough of the state Danny was in, or of how much she had changed herself. And she had been so wrapped up in Tommy
that she had not put Danny first. She had ruined everything. But she never meant to, she kept thinking as she cried herself to sleep in bed every night. She had just been trying to do her best.

Everyone in the yard had been kind, in their own fashion. Even Ma Jackman said in her acid way, ‘I’m sorry for yer, bab. You’re back where you started.’
Rachel knew that she meant as if the war was still on. The way Ma Jackman was herself, only now she knew that Edwin was never coming back. The odd thing was that although Rachel was full of pain
and the deep hurt and disappointment of it, it was all so familiar. She and Gladys and the children were back where they had been before, just trying to keep going.

Gladys was alternately full of grief, anger and shame for her nephew’s actions. Rachel had never seen her so upset.

‘I never thought I’d see flesh and blood of mine behave like this,’ she said to Rachel, soon after Danny went. She was brim full of emotion, finding it hard to settle to
anything. ‘If I could get hold of him now . . . By God, I’d give him what for. He’s his father’s son, all right – and I hoped I’d never say that. Mary’ll
be turning in her grave, that she will.’

Dolly was full of kind indignation. Netta was sweet and upset for her, while suffering her own grief as well.

‘You’ll let me know if there’s anything I can do, won’t you?’ she said sweetly. ‘Anything at all.’ Rachel knew she meant it, but what was there that
anyone could do? There was no one who could repair her lost love – all the dreams of the future that she had clung to through the war now lay at her feet like a pile of ashes.

The only person who was not kind or sympathetic was Irene.

A few days after Danny went, when it became clear he was not coming back, she waltzed up to Rachel in the yard, when she was out hanging washing.

‘What’s this about your feller taking off?’ she demanded.

Rachel turned to her, already tense with fury at her tone of voice.

‘What’s what?’ she said, angrily shaking out a frock she had just put through the mangle. She felt geared up to belt Irene one. She could feel the force of her temper rising in
her.

‘I heard he’s cleared off – days ago.’

Irene sounded smug, as if she was enjoying all this as a piece of gossip. Rachel rammed a wooden peg onto the line at each shoulder of the dress. Behind Irene, she saw Evie wandering across the
yard, looking cowed as usual.

‘Well, has ’e?’ Irene crossed her arms.

‘What’s it to you?’ Rachel asked. ‘Look –’ She nodded at Evie who was squatting down, pushing something into her mouth. ‘Why don’t you look after
your daughter for once instead of keeping on at me?’

‘Evie!’ Irene yelled at her. ‘Gerroff of that – what’re yow putting in yower mouth? You put that down or I’ll lamp yer!’ She went over and gave the
little girl’s hand a vicious slap. Evie dropped whatever it was she had been about to chew and slunk away down the yard. She did not cry, Rachel noticed.

‘So,’ Irene said again. ‘Your feller’s taken off then, has ’e? I hear ’e’s been gone a few days now and no sign of him coming back. So – about
time yow stopped looking down your nose at me and Ray, I’d say.’

‘What the hell’re you on about?’ Rachel said, finally losing her temper. ‘What’s any of this got to do with you and Ray? I couldn’t give a kipper’s dick
about either of you so leave me alone. You want to stop keeping on about your cowing drunk of a husband and look after that kid of yours!’

She picked up the bucket and started to move away.

‘Well, at least I can keep my feller,’ Irene bawled after her.

‘Oh,’ Rachel mocked. ‘Really? He may be under your roof, but how many other women’s beds is he in and out of – eh?’

Dolly appeared at her door. ‘What’s going on?’ she shouted, hands on hips.

‘Nothing you need to know about, yer nosy cow!’ Irene retorted, with a furious shriek.

Before Irene could come back at her, Rachel stormed into the house and slammed the door. Sitting at the table, she allowed the sobs to rise in her.

21 April 1946

‘So you mean, you’re having a bit of a celebration, a year on, sort of thing?’

Dolly was sitting at the table and watching with a puzzled expression as Gladys poured cake mix into two tins, brown and sticky and dotted with raisins and sultanas, the fruit of saved rations
and scrimping. Their delicious aroma was already filling the room.

Gladys licked a finger. ‘Yes – sort of thing.’ She stared at the cake tins, as if her mind was on something else.

‘For Easter, you mean?’ Dolly said.

‘That too. Just a bit of a party.’

As Rachel passed behind Gladys, Dolly gave her a look as if to say,
Party? What on earth does she think there is to celebrate?
It seemed very strange. Danny had been gone now for over a
month. It didn’t seem like a time for festivities. And – the first shock of the day – Gladys had stayed home and missed church
on Easter Day
to bake cakes! This was
unheard of. Dolly had drifted in mid-morning to see Rachel and exclaimed in surprise at seeing the baking in full spate.

‘Well, I’m glad you’ve got the energy, is all,’ Dolly said, sitting back, pushing her ribs out to try and catch her breath over her very swollen belly.

‘Are we having a party?’ Rachel heard Cissy, who was staying over with them, say excitedly to Melanie. They were watching the cake preparations with great interest. Tommy was in his
chair as usual. ‘Is it someone’s birthday?’

‘It’s the end of the war, silly,’ Melly said.

‘What’re you on about?’ Rachel said. ‘The war’s been over a year!’ She thought of Danny. ‘Well, months, anyway.’

‘Is it going to be a street party?’ Cissy said, bouncing on her toes with excitement. ‘With tables and jelly and fizzy pop?’

Everyone laughed at this, but Rachel said, ‘It’s not for the whole yard, is it, Auntie?’ So far as she was concerned she didn’t want to go anywhere near flaming Irene
Sutton. She felt hurt that Gladys thought there was anything to celebrate while she spent every night crying and struggled through each day feeling leaden and hopeless.

‘No,
no
,’ Gladys said. ‘Nothing like that – just us.’ She straightened up from sliding the cake tins into the oven and looked at Dolly. ‘A little way
of saying thank you, that’s all. For all you’ve done for me over the years.’

‘Oh, Glad, don’t talk daft,’ Dolly said. ‘We’re pals. Nothing to say thank you for.’

‘The boys can come.’

‘What –
all
of them? Are you sure?’

Gladys smiled. ‘Course. If there’s cake about they’ll be here anyway, won’t they?’

‘They can sniff it out miles away,’ Dolly laughed. Then she grimaced, laying a hand on her belly. ‘Ow – it’s kicking me! Not long now, thank God – I bet the
little so-and-so’ll be late coming though.’