All Fall Down (16 page)

They made faces. ‘Do I have to have a hair wash?' It was, as ever, Geoff's worst dread.

Half laughing, half crying. Sadie said he looked like a scarecrow, not fit to be seen. She told Jess that she would telephone Walter and let him know they hoped to be back late that evening.

‘You sure?' Jess would have loved them to stay overnight.

‘You're the best,' Sadie told her, brim-full of gratitude. ‘And I love you with all my heart, but I gotta get these boys back home. I won't settle till we're all together under one roof; me, the boys, Walter and Meggie.'

So they got back to Jess's house and scrubbed the pair clean, washing off the stain of their experiences as evacuees. ‘Never you mind,' Sadie told them over and over, ‘we ain't going to lose sight of you ever again.' They submitted to the scouring and the soap, gradually understanding that their nightmare was over.

‘I tried to look after Geoff,' Bertie stammered, ‘only he got sick and I didn't know what to do.'

‘You did fine. You wrote and told us like a good boy.'

‘Geoff cried at night.'

‘Never mind.' Sadie got them dry and let them dress in clean clothes.

‘He said it was the witches. They kept coming through the wall in the dark.'

Sadie shook her head. ‘I hope you told him there ain't no such things.'

‘I hate it there,' was all Geoff said.

On the train back to London, Geoff wolfed down the ham sandwiches that Grace had packed.

‘I thought you had a poorly stomach?' As the miles of track lengthened behind them, Sadie began to relax. The long day was drawing to a close, Walter would be there waiting on the platform at King's Cross and all would be well.

‘It's better now.'

‘Good.' She winked across at Bertie. ‘Magic, ain't it?' Their second-hand jackets hung loose on their shoulders, their shirt collars curled at the corners, but already they looked more like their old selves. Geoff fiddled with the wrapper of his chocolate bar and shot her a look that was meant to melt her strict heart. ‘Oh, go on,' she sighed, ‘go ahead and eat it if it'll make you happy. There'll be none left for later, mind.'

He scoffed it there and then. Bertie, on the other hand, made a manful attempt to save his. She noticed, however, when she came back from the toilet just before they pulled into the station, that his mouth, too, was rimmed with melted chocolate. ‘Lick your lips,' she told him, ‘and grab hold of this suitcase for me. Look sharp, we're here.'

The train drew in with a hiss and a mighty clank of steel. Doors flew open onto the platform, which came alive with rushing feet, flapping coats, people urgently pressing through the barrier. Walter stood waiting for them. Geoff saw him first and flew at him, was gathered up and swung round and round. Bertie looked up, fighting the tears.

‘Well done, son.' With Geoff still dangling under one arm, Walter ruffled Bertie's hair. ‘Come on, let's get you home. Your gran's waiting with a slap-up supper, and then it's straight off to bed.'

They rode through the streets in the taxi, too tired, too happy to notice where they were. Only when they came to Duke Street did Geoff peer out.

‘Nearly there,' Sadie promised.

‘Is the war over?' he wanted to know.

‘Not yet.' They stopped outside the Duke. ‘But we'll look after
you from now on.' Sadie waved at Ernie standing at the door. ‘Go and say hello to your Uncle Ern.'

They stumbled upstairs to Annie's supper table, dropping asleep over the suet pudding, faces rosy from full stomachs and too much hugging. Frances and Hettie were there, ready to spoil them to death. Sadie had to take a back seat while the others fussed.

‘Happy now?' Walter sat with his arm around her shoulders. Tomorrow was soon enough to hear the details. She'd got what she wanted, to have them all back together.

‘I am.' It felt like a proper family again. She gazed round the room. Billy had just called in to collect Frances, George had popped up from the bar, leaving Ernie in charge. ‘Where's Meggie?' she asked suddenly.

‘Here.' Meggie had been busy wrapping presents at home. Now she took the stairs two at a time and burst into the room. ‘Happy Christmas!' She landed the presents on the boys' laps; big square parcels, soft squashy ones, things she'd bought in an explosion of goodwill the moment she heard her brothers were on their way home.

‘It ain't Christmas,' Geoff tried to explain solemnly.

‘It's
better
than Christmas!' she beamed.

As the boys tore into their parcels; a Meccano set for Bertie, a toy train for Geoff, Sadie came up to her daughter. ‘What got into you?' she asked.

Meggie gave a sublime smile. ‘Nothing. Why?'

‘You got something up your sleeve.' Her eyes were too bright, her sense of herself too jubilant to be put down to a simple homecoming. For a moment Sadie thought she might have tracked down Richie Palmer.

‘Honest, Ma!' It bubbled to the surface, a secret she couldn't keep. ‘I met someone at a birthday party, that's all.'

‘And he swept you off your feet?' She studied the bright face, the bubbling happiness.

Meggie nodded. ‘I'm seeing him tomorrow.'

With a pang of regret Sadie smiled. ‘Good luck to you,' she whispered.

‘You don't mind?'

‘I reckon it's something I'll have to get used to.'

Meggie squeezed her hand and looked across the room at the torn'paper, the shiny new toys. ‘It'll be all right, don't you worry. I got this feeling; everything's gonna work out just fine.'

Part Two

Taking It

September 1940

Chapter Ten

Saturday was Geoff's eighth birthday, and the weather in early September was fine enough for Sadie to give a small party that soon spilled out into Paradise Court. The children played their street games and chanted their songs while the grown-ups looked on.

‘I like these light evenings,' Annie told Dolly Ogden. ‘I like to see the kiddies making the most of them while they can.' Soon enough the evenings would close in and their lives would be dominated by the blackout once more.

The circle of children which had collapsed onto the cobbles sprang up with a laugh and a shout, then Meggie stepped in to organize an outdoor version of blind man's bluff. She gave Geoff first turn with the blindfold, tied it tight, spun him round. ‘No peeping!' she warned and launched him, arms outstretched, with faltering footsteps. These days, since she'd given up the search for her elusive father, she threw herself into playing with and appreciating her half-brothers.

‘She's a sight for sore eyes,' Dolly observed. Meggie wore her hair more elaborately these days, a hidden scaffolding of pins keeping it high off her forehead. She wore a plain dove-grey dress, tailored to show off her waist, with a sweetheart neckline picked out in purple braid. Though it was a hand-me-down from Hettie,
Meggie had picked out the seams and remodelled it to suit herself. The cut and the cloth were still good quality. ‘What I mean is, Sadie had best keep an eye on her, or else.' Dolly pressed on in the face of Annie's silence. ‘I hear Jimmie O'Hagan's sweet on her for a start.'

Geoff blundered into his big brother, Bertie, and made the right guess. It was Bertie's turn for the blindfold. More squeals, more stumbling and rumbling.

‘I can't see Meggie being interested though.' Dolly ploughed on, certain of her target. ‘She's known Jimmie since they were knee-high, when he was a snotty-nosed little blighter, always hopping the wag. Then, when he was at school, he was always getting into some scrape and getting six of the best. No, if you ask me, Jimmie don't stand a chance.'

‘But he's grown up lately and all.' Annie pictured him, sitting this very minute at the bar in his corduroy trousers and polo-neck, in a haze of cigarette smoke, planning with Bobby which venue would give them the best chance of picking up birds that evening.

‘Too fast for his own good.' Dolly considered Jimmie a bad influence on her much taller, brawnier grandson. ‘He needs a firm hand, he does.'

‘Well you wouldn't wish him on Meggie then.' Annie closed off this avenue of speculation. She knew for a fact that Meggie and Jimmie were pals, but that was as far as it went. She carried on with her plate of sandwiches down the Court to number 32.

Dolly frowned after her. Annie had shut up like a clam as usual, as if Dolly couldn't be trusted with any scrap of information. Whereas Dolly herself appreciated the candid response. Knowledge was power, she thought, and might allow a person to do some good. Dolly prided herself on her judgment; she'd brought up Amy to be a good wife and mother, hadn't she? Annie could certainly cast no aspersions in that direction. The ground was laid for more backbiting between the two old rivals. Dolly would go and have a good moan to Amy, Annie would warn Sadie that Dolly might well come poking her nose into Meggie's affairs.

‘Where you off to?' Dolly quizzed, as Charlie came down the
passage and squeezed past her onto the pavement. His hair was slicked down with Brylcreem, his chin freshly shaven. ‘As if I didn't know.'

‘Why bother asking then?' Charlie chucked the remark over his shoulder. ‘If you're so clever.' He walked away without altering his pace.

By now Dolly was thoroughly out of humour. She experienced a rare moment of self-pity, cut off from the children's game, from expressing any interest in Meggie Davidson's love life, which she knew for a fact was the talk of the whole Court, shut out even by her own son. High and dry, left on the shelf like a bit of old rubbish; that's what happened when a person outlived her usefulness. No good to anyone. Before she knew it she'd have a house full of smelly cats and not a soul to care for her. High and bleeding dry, she thought.

‘Here, Dolly, have a bite to eat.' Annie offered her a beef-paste sandwich on her return journey. ‘And cheer up for God's sake. It may never happen.' She asked how she was getting on with the sugar ration, told how she'd had to save her coupons for weeks to make Geoff a nice birthday cake, reminded Dolly to get herself up to the Duke later that evening.

‘We'll see.' Dolly stalled.

‘Come again?' Annie stared, plate in hand. ‘You never missed a Saturday night yet, so far as I know.'

As the children's voices ran through the verses of ‘Oranges and Lemons' and two of them made an arch for the others to squeeze through, Dolly stood on her doorstep and sighed. Like a barrage balloon deflating, she rocked, then leaned against the doorpost.

‘Here comes a candle . . .'

‘You ain't worried by the sirens, surely?' Annie studied her old sparring partner's lined face. ‘They ain't getting you down?' For months now they'd ignored the false alarms. Few customers at the Duke even bothered to head for Nelson Gardens, though most still brought their gas masks along. Annie knew that both Walter and George came under heavy fire from the likes of Rob, who resented the ARP wardens' strict enforcement of the blackout. Rob said
they were crying wolf and it was time the bloke in the street made a stand. Hitler wasn't going to launch his bombers on London, whatever people said. He was too busy in France, Holland and North Africa.

‘Here comes a chopper . . .'

‘No, they ain't,' Dolly said sharply.

‘Well, it ain't that carry-on between your Charlie and Madam O'Hagan, is it?' Annie didn't like to see Dolly looking so down. ‘You got the brass neck to put up with that surely?' She too could be candid when necessary.

Dolly shook her head. ‘Easier said than done.'

‘But it ain't like you to fret over what can't be helped.' The squeals of the children broke through. Annie turned to see Meggie trying to haul Geoff and a couple of other lads off Bertie, who'd vanished under a rugby scrum.

‘No, but I do wish he'd break off with her though.' Dolly hated the whispering and sly nudges, and Charlie's conduct betrayed her own sense of honour.

‘She's got him hooked.'

‘You think so?'

‘Good and proper.' Annie had often observed them.

Again Dolly sighed. ‘What's he see in her? That's what I'd like to know.'

‘What's anyone see in anyone? If we could answer that we'd be millionaires.' She glanced down the street at Sadie, who stood watching the game from her own doorstep. ‘You ain't alone,' she told Dolly, relaxing her own rules for once. ‘Sadie spends half her time wondering what drags Meggie across town for a fleeting word from his ma about Ronnie Elliot. What's he got that's so special, she wants to know.'

Dolly nodded. ‘Meggie still stuck on him then?'

‘On Ronnie? Like glue. And she's only met him three or four times, whenever he comes home on leave.'

They stood watching her extricate Bertie from the scrum, then laugh and swing him round.

‘Just like her ma,' Dolly said. The resemblance was more than just physical. ‘No half-measures.'

‘I hope not, for her sake.' Annie shook herself. ‘You get yourself up the Duke tonight, you hear?'

‘I might. What time is it now?'

‘Half four.'

‘Righto. I'll sort myself out down here, then I'll be up.'

Satisfied, they went their separate ways.

Half an hour later, all plans for the evening were interrupted by the siren sounding its long, warbling note. Take cover. The children had gone home from the party, the street was quiet.

‘Not again.' Edie closed the ledger on her desk. In the dingy basement the wail of the siren was muffled but unmistakeable. Up on Duke Street the wardens-began to usher ever-more reluctant civilians to the shelters. She went up to help empty the shop of its last customers, as Dorothy nipped down smartly from the flat above, gas mask slung across her shoulder, one of the first to respond to the siren's urgent call.