All Fall Down (30 page)

Since the early weeks of the year, their romance had been forced underground. Following Ronnie's New Year home leave, Meggie had made several attempts to visit Gertie at the Bell, but she met a firm rebuff on each occasion. Then she'd written to Ronnie to tell him that she would no longer try to stay friends with his mother. ‘I don't know exactly what I did wrong, but it must have been bad. She's as good as told me to stay out of her way. Even Shankley says it ain't like her to turn against someone permanently the way she's turned against me. He says there ain't a thing I can do about it. Once Gertie makes up her mind, that's that.' It had been a difficult letter to write. She'd even offered in a half-hearted way to give him up if going on would cause a rift between him and his mother. His reply, threatening to jump ship and come to sort things out if she even so much as thought of such a thing thrilled her. Now she knew he would do anything to keep her.

So, with Gertie obviously hoping that she'd shown Meggie the door for good, and with Sadie assuming from the fall-off in trips to the West End that Meggie must be over her infatuation with the Bell, its landlady and possibly even her son, Meggie kept her emotional life deliberately secret. Her reason for not confiding in her own mother was partly altruistic, for there had been another parting in the family and Meggie wanted to avoid further upset.

After the funeral in January, Annie had called a conference over
the future of Bertie and Geoff involving Jess and Maurice as well as Walter and Sadie. Walter was all for evacuating the boys again, the sooner the better. This time Jess offered them a solution. She had taken on a little house in the Lake District, where she planned to send Grace and Sadie's boys. Once again Sadie was torn; Coniston was a safe haven, but could she bear to part with them? On the other hand, she had nightmares about the fire that had killed Ernie. She knew she would never forgive herself if the boys came to harm. In the end, Bertie and Geoff spotted adventure in the move; a house in the country, a lake, boat trips – as many as they liked. They asked, would they be able to come back if they felt homesick? In Coniston, would they have to go to school?

Sadie saw that sending them with Jess was not like pushing them out into the unknown. No waving them off at the station with their name labels washed away by tears. This time they set off with smiling faces in a first-class carriage, with promises to telephone Annie regularly at the Duke. It still broke their mother's heart, but she was clear in her mind that everything had been done for the best. So she settled to life without them, enduring the Blitz, doing her factory work, looking after Walter and Meggie.

As Meggie hurried to the train station to meet Ronnie, noticing the children playing hopscotch on street corners, women gossiping in the ration queues, she felt uneasy at the idea of meeting him in secret. But what was she to do? And in any case, her spirits were soaring at the prospect of seeing him, so she raced along the pavement, her stomach full of butterflies. Before she knew it, the train drew in and Ronnie hopped off. She flew into his arms. There was nothing but joy in her heart at the sight of his tanned features, the sound of his low voice murmuring her name. He held her as if he would never let her go.

‘Meggie, am I glad to see you.' He led her through the crowded station. ‘I ain't been able to think of nothing else for days.'

She ran alongside, her arm around his waist. ‘That's bad, Ronnie. You gotta keep your mind on your job.'

‘Says you.' Hailing a taxi, he bundled her inside and told the cabbie to head for Bernhardt Court. ‘Anyhow, I ain't got no ship,
have I?' He sat back with a sigh. ‘I'm still waiting for them to draft me. That's how I got home on leave, until they find me a new ship.'

‘What happened?' Meggie had only a vague idea gleaned from newspaper reports which anyway tended to put a jingoistic gloss on things. All she knew was that Ronnie's convoy had come under U-boat attack whilst blockading the German supply route to Rommel in North Africa. According to the official version the blockade had held up, though three British ships had gone down, Ronnie's included.

‘Don't ask.' He stared for a moment out of the window. They were passing through a bombed-out area of craters and rubble. Children scavenged along the ravaged streets. ‘You don't want to know.'

She slipped her hand into his. ‘I do, if you want to tell me.'

‘Hell.' The one word said it all. He turned to look at her earnest face. ‘All I remember is the klaxon for action stations. It was a U-boat, but we spotted her too late. Torpedo in the stern. We were ordered straight to the lifeboats, but it was too late for that and all. She went down, bow-up at an angle of forty-five degrees in a sheet of flame.'

‘You were on fire?'

‘That's what did for most of us. There was a roar, and up she went. I was at the bow-end, otherwise it would have done for me too. I took a running jump over the side and came up with the flotsam. By the time I got my bearings, she was gone, with all on board.'

Meggie sat silent.

‘It was pitch-black in the water once she'd gone down. I kept bumping into bits from the wreck and bodies as well, but I took my chance and grabbed onto an upturned lifeboat with a couple of others. The worst of it was, there were men in the water who couldn't swim. No kidding. Sailors. They yelled out, but there was nothing we could do. We couldn't even see them, it was so dark.

‘How many of you got picked up?'

‘Thirteen. They came to fetch us at first light. A minesweeper
dropped its scrambling nets and we climbed up. She headed for Malta with us double-quick. The RAF shipped us out from there back to Portsmouth, and I've been kicking my heels ever since.' He remembered the black, oily water, the sheet of flame, the sucking, hissing, rush of the sea as it swallowed the ship.

Meggie clung to him. ‘Will they send you back?'

‘To the Med?' He shrugged. ‘They say the Yanks are set to join us. It could be the Atlantic or the Far East.'

‘But if the Yanks come in, it'll be all over, and the sooner the better.' She could only pray for a quick end and a return to normality.

‘Not soon enough.' Too late for his friends on board, those who had screamed as the fire engulfed them, those who sank beneath the oily waves. Unable to offer Meggie the reassurance she craved, he lapsed into silence.

To her he seemed a lot older, more serious than before, and who could blame him? Sharing confidences, she told him quietly about the aftermath of their own tragedy; how the war had struck at the heart of her family. ‘Gran took it like a hero of course, chin up all the way through the funeral, proud as anything on the day. But she's felt it since. She won't admit it, but she misses Ernie more than any of us. She keeps looking over her shoulder as if he's still there waiting to be told what to do next. Once I heard her talking to him, clear as anything.'

‘How about you?'

‘I miss him too. We all do. None of us can see why he didn't head for Nelson Gardens, like Walter told him.'

Ronnie could imagine all too well the chaos of the moment. Hadn't he seen with his own eyes the way well-trained men went to pieces when the jaws of hell opened before them? But he wouldn't frighten Meggie by trying to explain. ‘I don't think you'll ever know the answer to that one.'

‘I wish . . .' she began, then dipped her head. The taxi wove in and out between buses and pedestrians, beneath the giant theatre signs and portraits of the stars.

‘What do you wish?'

‘Nothing . . . I wish you didn't have to go back, Ronnie.'

He laughed at her simplicity. ‘What you on about? I only just got here, didn't I?'

‘All right, then. I wish we could bring Ernie back. I wish the killing would stop.' They came to a halt at the end of Bernhardt Court.

‘Blimey, you don't want much, do you?' He paid the fare.

‘Only what we all want.' It seemed to her now that all they'd ever known was war. There were children growing up in the blasted streets who could hardly remember peace. She sometimes looked at their pinched, wary faces and saw suspicion, not innocence there. ‘I wouldn't like to bring kids into a world like this, would you?'

‘Is it as bad as that?' He followed her on her course from childlike wishing to deep-seated fear for the future.

‘It is when you think about it. It ain't a safe place to bring up a family, and I wouldn't want to send the kids away like Ma had to.'

‘You're too soft hearted,' he told her. ‘You need me to look after you.'

‘I do,' she admitted with a sudden smile.

‘Well, I will.' He seized her hand. ‘Ready for the lion's den?'

They marched down the Court past a news vendor and a tramp begging for coppers, past Shankley's stall. They swung through the doors of the Bell to heaven knew what greeting from Gertie.

‘Open the window, Tommy,' Edie called from the bedroom, wanting to clear the cigarette smoke from the living room. She was busy combing her hair, getting ready to go out on their planned afternoon stroll up to the Embankment and over to Hyde Park. ‘Let some fresh air in.'

The day was sunny and warm. She came through in her white sarin slip, holding up two dresses; one with yellow and white daisies, one a plain, pale blue. ‘Which one?'

‘Neither.' He waltzed across and seized her. ‘I like you better without.'

‘You'll get me arrested, you will.' She swung the dresses out of his way and held them at arm's length while he tickled her neck
with light kisses. ‘I have to put something on to make me look decent.'

‘What for?' He breathed in the smell of her skin, and went on covering her in kisses.

‘Tommy, I thought we were going out.'

‘What for?' He steered her towards the bedroom, which was flooded with warm sunshine.

‘A walk. W-A-L-K. That's what we said.' She laughed at him.

‘Did we? I don't remember.' That was earlier, while he sat reading the paper, before she walked in in her slip and reminded him how much he wanted her. He kissed her on the mouth to stop her talking, closed the door softly behind them.

‘A walk would do us good.' Edie kept up a show of resistance. ‘Careful, Tommy, you'll crease these dresses.'

He took them from her as he sat her on the bed, then went and hung them back in the wardrobe. In the sunlight her hair shone like gold, her skin took on a rosy glow. He looked at her quietly, felt her return his gaze.

‘Close the curtains,' she whispered.

‘All these orders,' he complained. ‘Open the window, close the curtains. Anyone would think we was married.' But he did as she asked. The room fell into soft shadow, muggy in the afternoon sun.

As Tommy slowly undressed, she went on watching him. The attraction was definitely a two-way thing, and this had surprised her at first, brought up as she was to be an object of desire, but not to expect her man to arouse the same feelings in her. For years, with Bill, this had been the case. For though she had always had a strong sense of his masculinity, with his muscular arms and torso, his solid physique had not given her much pleasure. It was too thick around the waist, lacking in grace, and he never thought it necessary to present himself in a nice way. He was indifferent as to whether or not he pleased her. She had resorted to a sense of duty, been passive throughout their marriage and sometimes guilty that she wanted him so little after the first few times together. She had no idea before Tommy that she might actually enjoy
love-making, but was dimly aware that there must be more to it, if only she could discover what it was. That was all she could suppose; that for some women it must be a more fulfilling thing, with admiration, desire and respect mixed into the bed experience. She had no respect for Bill, she was sad to discover. Only duty.

But with Tommy she felt entirely different. He was lean and graceful; a funny word for a man like him, brought up rough and ready in the back streets, living hand to mouth. Still, with him everything was clean and well defined, from his wide, thin-lipped mouth, straight nose and flat brow, to his long fingers and slim, smooth body. His tough upbringing combined with his Irish ancestry had given him a spare look, but not scrawny. He moved lightly, swiftly and never gave his appearance a second thought.

‘What are you looking at?' He moved onto the bed and drew her to him.

‘You.' She cupped his face between her hands and kissed his lips. ‘You're shameless.'

‘I'll put my clothes back on then, shall I?'

‘You dare!' She reached over to stop him.

He liked it when Edie made the bold move. He was half-amused, fully aroused. Soon they lay entwined, he took off her satiny slip and their bodies touched, warm, soft, curving into one another; moving, caressing, harmonizing towards a slow climax that neither was desperate to achieve, since they wanted their love-making to last. Yet when it ended, it was with a satisfaction that neither could have imagined in the days before they met.

Then there was the ritual of Tommy going into the kitchen to bring back scalding hot tea which they sipped from the same cup, propped on pillows, knees crooked under the sheets. Half an hour of luxurious talk about nothing, or about everything; them, their plans, their hopes and dreams.

‘How are you feeling?' He handed her the white cup.

‘Lovely.'

‘I never asked you, how do you look.' He kissed her again. ‘Anyhow, that'll teach you to wander around with nothing on.'

The clock on the bedside table said four o'clock. ‘There's still time for that walk if you want.'

‘What happened? Did I suddenly go deaf?' He knocked the heel of his hand against his ear. ‘What's that you just said?'

‘Tommy!'

‘Righto.' He sprang from the bed. ‘Come on, I thought you said you wanted some fresh air.'