All Fall Down (40 page)

‘She's going to work?'

‘Yes, but otherwise she stays home. Bobby and Jimmie come knocking and she shuts the door in their faces.'

Sadie was roused by his account. ‘Walter, you don't think it could be Richie, do you? She ain't found him after all?'

‘She'd have told us.' He pinned down the change in his stepdaughter's behaviour to a time after she'd come back from a trip to Bernhardt Court. Since then she didn't take her writing things down the shelter during a raid, to spend hours scribbling her love letters to Ronnie. She didn't go out. She didn't talk. She just waited for the post. ‘No, it's Ronnie,' he judged. ‘She's lovelorn, poor girl.'

‘Sometimes I wonder why we don't just go in for these arranged marriages,' Sadie said. ‘All this falling in and out of love ain't worth the candle.'

‘Righto.' He turned over on his side to go to sleep.

‘Except you and me, Walter. That goes without saying.'

Meggie's limbo continued until early October. She drifted through it like a ghost. It was a nothingness, an empty nightmare. Out there in the real world a letter was taken from Charing Cross Road to the sorting office, clearly addressed by name, rank and number. It sat in Plymouth waiting for Ronnie's ship to dock. Was it sunny when Ronnie received it? Did he open it at night in his hammock? She wanted to howl out loud at how Gertie had cheated her.

His handwriting on the envelope that landed on the mat one Friday in October jumped out at her. She'd waited so long that she'd schooled herself to think that he had read her letter and passively accepted her rejection. She told herself that he wouldn't reply.

Then he did. She seized the letter and ran upstairs to her room. No. Wait. This was to call her names, get his own back for the way she'd treated him. She stared at the unopened envelope, holding it in a trembling hand.

‘Are you all right?' Sadie called through the door. ‘Did you get a letter?'

‘No.' She didn't move a muscle, waiting until her mother had gone down to make the breakfast. At last, the agony of not knowing outweighed the fear of what the letter contained. He had at least written back. She tore it open. The words swam on the page until she could focus and read the familiar sloping scrawl.

‘Meggie.' Not darling, not dearest. She read on. ‘This won't take long. I don't believe what you wrote in your last letter. Something's wrong, ain't it? I waited for another, but I can't wait no more. I got leave. We dock in Southampton on the fifth. Meet me at Victoria at eleven. Be there, Meggie. I'm looking at the stars. Ronnie.'

‘What is it?' Sadie stood in the kitchen, unable to read her face as she ran downstairs. ‘What's happened?'

The fifth was tomorrow. Her limbo world exploded like a box of fireworks. Plans sparkled and whooshed inside her head. Ronnie
had forgiven her. Gertie's mean scheme had backfired. ‘I got a letter!'

‘From Ronnie?'

She nodded. ‘I'm going to see him tomorrow.'

It was a smile lighting up at last. Sadie breathed a sigh of relief. ‘Calm down,' she pleaded. ‘Have something to settle your stomach. Go and get ready for work.' Methodically she laid the table with cups, plates, knives.

Somehow Meggie managed it. She went up and got dressed to go out. Back downstairs, she was glad of the hot, sweet tea, but pushed away the toast.

‘Meggie.'

‘I can't.' She shook her head. ‘He's got leave, Ma. I can hardly wait!'

Sadie put a hand over hers. ‘Go and see him,' she said gently. ‘But don't go and do nothing silly.' The elopement idea still preyed on her mind. ‘Sort things out with him.'

Meggie stood up. ‘Don't worry, I won't run off.'

‘That's it,' she agreed. ‘No need to rush. Take it slow. Talk to his ma.'

‘I will.' Meggie kissed her mother, took the letter and put it in her bag. ‘Don't you worry, I will!'

Chapter Twenty-Four

‘Switch that off, Shankley!' Gertie was sick of the sound of the newsreaders' voices and the sonorous reports from the battle fronts. It would be more gloom and doom, no doubt.

Shankley turned the dial on the wireless set which sat behind the bar at the Bell. He twiddled and found Sandy's Half Hour instead. ‘Will that do you?' He himself had become something of a fixture behind the bar. It was mid-morning on a drizzly October Saturday. Chords from the BBC Theatre organ rose and swelled through the empty room.

‘They all got plums in their mouths, them wireless announcers.' She found something harmless to moan about while she wiped and dusted. Shankley went back to mopping the floor. ‘And they could all do with a dose of syrup of figs by the sound of them.'

He grinned. ‘Not your cup of tea, eh?' The Alvar Liddells and the Bruce Belfrages.

Gertie began to hum to the organ tunes. ‘This brings it all back,' she sighed. It was a tune from the twenties; her salad days. For a brief time, before she met her husband, Sam, she'd belonged to a dance troupe that did the rounds of the East End halls.

‘Them were the days.' Shankley propped his mop against the wall and lit up a Players.

‘You having a go at me?' she said sharply, patting her already immaculate hair into place.

He winked. ‘I bet you had the men swarming round you, Gert.' It was his way of cheering her up. She'd been low lately; grinning and bearing it was how he put it. He didn't know what was up, since Gertie wasn't the sort to share her problems. He knew, however,
that she didn't get many letters from Ronnie, and this preyed on her mind. ‘You still do, of course.'

She had the grace to smile back at him. ‘Oh, yes? Where are they, Shanks?' She flapped her duster round the room. ‘Queuing up at the door, are they?'

‘Here's one!' He volunteered himself, present and correct.

She raised her eyebrows. ‘Do me a favour! I'm on the shelf, Shanks, but not that hard up.' About to tell him to get a move on with the mop, she went instead to answer the phone.

‘Yes, speaking.' She listened hard to a girl's voice on the crackly line. ‘Is that you, Meggie?' She put a hand over the receiver to give herself time to pull herself together. Since that day at the Hungerford Club she'd tried to put Meggie Davidson firmly out of her mind.

‘I thought you ought to know . . .'

The voice was high, vindictive. Gertie's knuckles went white as she grasped the phone.

‘. . . it didn't work. Ronnie got that letter, but he never believed it.'

‘What you on about?' Gertie had walked away, not proud of what she'd done, but satisfied that it would put an end to Ronnie and Meggie's dream. No news since then had been good news as far as she was concerned.

‘He wrote to me.' Now it was triumph. Meggie couldn't resist letting Gertie know that her scheming had come to nothing. ‘He still loves me. He's coming back!'

‘When? What did he say?'

‘Right now. I'm at the station waiting for his train, and there ain't a thing you can do to stop us!'

The phone clicked and went dead. Gertie stood for a few seconds staring at it.

Shankley wandered across. ‘What's up?'

Her voice snapped into a mechanical tone. ‘Nothing's up, Shanks. Open up for me and do the honours this lunchtime, will you?' She was on her way upstairs for her hat and coat.

‘What about my stall?' he called after her.

She turned on the stair. ‘Please?'

He frowned, then nodded. ‘How long will you be?'

‘As long as it takes to get to Victoria Station and back.' Flinging her coat over her arm, she headed for the door. ‘Set one up for me when I get back,' she said grimly. ‘I've a feeling I'm gonna need it.'

To Meggie's surprise, her phone call to the Bell hadn't made her feel better. Again and again she'd rehearsed those choice phrases, ‘He still loves me. He's coming back.' She'd imagined a crushing defeat at the other end of the line to make up for the misery that Gertie had put her through. In the event, she felt shabby and cheap. Revenge wasn't sweet. It took away from the pure joy of the reunion with Ronnie. She came away from the telephone booth, glanced up at the station clock and rushed to buy a platform ticket.

‘Don't panic, you ain't missed him,' the man at the ticket office grinned. He looked over Meggie's white raincoat, black beret and Paisley scarf, her glossy dark hair, her nervous apprehension. ‘The Southampton train's twenty minutes late.' Here was another girl waiting on tenterhooks for her sweetheart to arrive. Platform 3 was already jam-packed full of them.

Meggie thanked him and hurried anyway. She wanted to be there, peering out at the curve of steel track beyond the platform, teetering on the edge, waiting for the first hiss of steam, the clank of wheels as they braked, the sight of the mighty engine approaching the buffers. The platform clock clicked and edged forward; five minutes to go. Five minutes and she would be in Ronnie's arms, pouring out the explanations, swearing that she did love him and would never let him go.

‘Meggie!' Gertie glimpsed her, got over the desire to cut and run, forced herself to go through with what she knew she must do, even though it would break her son's heart; make him ashamed of her forever. The girl was in a world of her own. She didn't hear her name being called. Gertie ran the length of the platform towards her.

The black minute hand jerked, the track remained empty. Meggie clutched her bag under her arm, imagined that she could hear a
train screech. Then someone was calling her, her arm was being pulled. She turned.

‘Meggie, for God's sake!' Gertie was distraught. She'd feared she would be too late, all the way on the tube, queuing for her platform ticket, until by a stroke of luck she learned that Ronnie's train was late.

Meggie wrenched her arm free. ‘Go away. You can't stop us.' She half overbalanced. A nearby army corporal saved her from falling towards the track.

‘Listen to me.'

She walked away, further down the platform, past the impatient sweethearts and wives.

Again Gertie took hold of her arm. ‘You'll listen, like it or not.'

‘Now then, girls, don't squabble.' The corporal still had an eye on them.

‘Keep her off me,' Meggie pleaded.

But Gertie gave a look that warned him away. He shrugged and left them to battle things out.

‘There's something you gotta know.' Keeping tight hold of Meggie, she steered her under the platform roof, against a trolley piled high with canvas mail-bags. There was no time to lose. She plunged on. ‘I know what you think, but it don't matter no more. Go ahead, hate me, but at least do it for the right reason this time.'

Meggie tried to twist free. ‘Ronnie loves me. You can't stop that.'

‘No I can't.' She let go but fixed Meggie with her stare. ‘I wish to God I could. listen to me! I'm gonna tell you something I ain't told no one for over twenty years.' With a shaking hand she delved into her pocket and drew out a paper.

‘What's that?'

‘Wait, I'll tell you.' Gertie prepared to unlock the secret for which she knew she would never be forgiven. ‘This goes back to when Ronnie was born. Neither he nor my poor Sam ever knew. Sam went to his grave without finding out the truth.' She unfolded the paper; a simple, official document.

Meggie took the birth certificate from her.

‘Sam and me was engaged. I was working the halls; that's where
I met him. There was others too. Other men. But no one meant a thing to me except Sam Elliot.'

The certificate recorded the birth of a boy, Ronald Edward, and the mother's name and occupation, Gertrude Starr, dancer.

‘I was young. I wasn't careful. You never think you'll get caught, but I did. I went to Sam and said he was the father. He wasn't, but I knew which side my bread was buttered. Sam would marry me and look after us, the baby and me. Not his real pa; he was already long gone.'

Meggie looked at the space for the name of the father. It was officially blank, but someone had pencilled in a name in a faint hand; Richard Palmer, motor mechanic.

Gertie watched her face, spilling out the words regardless. ‘Maybe Sam knew something was up, but he gave me the benefit of the doubt. He never bothered about the certificate after Ronnie was born. He weren't one for signing things. Anyhow, he married me in the end, and we were a proper family. He weren't perfect, but he was good to us. He loved little Ronnie and Ronnie worshipped him. Why rock the boat?'

‘Who wrote this in?' Meggie's hand trembled as she pointed to the pencilled name.

Gertie grimaced. ‘Not Richie, believe you me. He didn't want to know. I wrote it, in case something happened to me. After I was dead and buried, I reckoned Ronnie was entitled to know the truth.' She shook her head.

‘It's a trick!' For Meggie this was the only possible way out. She thrust the birth certificate back at Gertie.

‘I wish it was. Richie is Ronnie's father, I swear.'

Above their heads, the hand on the dock jerked forward. Shared knowledge bound them together; mother and sweetheart, waiting for the train to come.

‘Ask him,' Gertie whispered. ‘Go to the Hungerford Club. He won't deny it.'

It was the end to a dream so sudden and painful that Meggie could only stand stunned. She clutched at the wire cage that held
the mail-bags, wishing now that Ronnie's train would never come, wishing she was dead.

‘Don't worry, I'll stay here and tell him. You get along home.' Gertie thought Meggie might faint. The girl had lost all urge to fight, seemed to accept the truth at last.

‘Oh God!' A moan escaped, wrenched from deep inside her. She put a hand over her mouth.

‘Meggie . . .' Gertie reached out to steady her.

‘Don't touch me. Leave me alone.'

‘I can't leave you here. You see why I had to break it to you? I didn't want to do it.' Justification ran into apology and heartfelt pity. ‘Don't cry, for God's sake.'