All Fall Down (5 page)

‘What you looking at?' One of the tramps opened his eyes a fraction and snarled at her.

Hurriedly she turned and caught up with the others.

‘You all right? You ain't shaking, are you?' Jimmie waited. ‘What did he say?'

Beside the heavyweight Bobby, Jimmie was something of a flyweight. His readiness to square up to the half asleep bag of bones made her smile. ‘He ain't said nothing, Jimmie. It's just me.'

They found an unoccupied corner at the far end of the platform. A train rattled by as the boys took off their jackets and spread them on the floor. ‘You scared?' Bobby, too, was surprised by Meggie's reaction. She sat down with her knees hunched to her chest, arms wrapped round her legs.

‘No, I ain't,' she flashed back.

‘That's more like it. Fancy a fag?' He handed round his packet of five.

As Jimmie and Bobby played the big men, their faces hidden behind a screen of smoke, mouths puckered, eyes narrowed, Meggie took another cautious look round. A second train flashed by, rolling
on the tracks, its lighted windows flickering, clickety-clack. For a moment she wanted to confess what had startled her; it was the tramp on the bunk, the wasted old man in the blanket, staring out of a once handsome face. Behind the stubble, beneath the grey-white skin, she glimpsed a young man, perhaps once well set-up with wife and family, now a hollow shell, a husk. There was something in his eyes as they rested momentarily on her, in acknowledgement of her tall, slender figure, her rich auburn hair; a reflection of his own eyes in her deep brown ones.

But then a train stopped at the platform, people got on and off. When she looked again for the tramp, the bunk was empty. Someone else climbed into the space. The train set off, the moment was lost.

Bertie and Geoff had ended up in a butcher's house in a small Lancashire village called Rendal. To Sadie it seemed the end of the earth. Men in white armbands had ushered them off the train, Bertie said in his first letter home. It was written in blunt pencil. He said he'd lost his pen on his first day at school.

‘The first place we went was the village hall. We had to stay there all night till a family came and chose us. Me and Geoff waited until last, but we got a house together.'

‘Thank heavens for that.' Sadie looked up at Walter with a sigh of relief.

‘We had to promise we never stole or wet the bed, stuff like that. Mrs Whittaker (“Whittaker” was crossed out and changed twice from “Witiker”) to “Wittaker” before he got it right) said she wanted a girl and a boy, but Mr Whittaker wanted two boys to help in the shop and the fields at the back. He got his way in the end. We sleep in the same room. They can't put a girl in with a boy anyhow.'

‘They'll get plenty to eat at any rate.' Walter folded his newspaper. ‘What else does he say?'

‘He says they went into the fields next day to help dig up potatoes. That's slave labour, ain't it? Making boys their age dig the fields.'

‘They gotta do their bit. Does Bertie say how they got on?'

‘He says Geoff didn't have a clue. When he saw the other boys
digging up the spuds, he turns to Mr Whittaker and asks why he hid them in the first place.' She smiled, her eyes damp. ‘Bertie says they met one nice lady. She said she belonged to the WVS and took them to see the Home Guard doing rifle drill. She said they were the LDV. She sees Bertie looking puzzled by all the letters. “Local Defence Volunteers,” she explains, “otherwise known as Look, Duck and Vanish”.'

Walter nodded. ‘He put that in his letter?'

‘Yes, it's a nice long one. Here.' She relinquished it at last, having taken in every smudge and contrary scrawl.

‘It sounds like they're both managing all right.'

‘I think so. I hope so. Oh, Walter!' Sadie pulled her apron up to her face and sobbed. Being brave when you saw them off on the train was one thing; learning to live without them, hanging on for every post, dreaming about them all night was another.

Walter held up over the boys' absence better than Sadie. He missed them, but he told himself they were safe and well housed. Expecting them to be happy in their new place on top of that was too much to hope for.

For years he'd lived his life within realistic horizons. When the taxi business he ran with Rob merely crawled through the Depression, he counted himself lucky that he could still turn an honest penny and look after his family. When the semi-detached house in the suburbs failed to materialize, he didn't spend time on envy or regret; anyway, he liked the Court, he said. The new estates were soulless by comparison.

Only once in his life had he gone out on a limb; he'd made his bid for Sadie when Meggie was a baby and Richie Palmer had left them in the lurch. He stood by her and she by him when he'd had his accident. He put his feelings on the line, hoped against the odds that she would settle for him. She was young, spirited, clever and beautiful. When she said she would marry him, his life's dream came true. Lucky man, he said to himself; blessed twice over when Sadie fell pregnant and the boys came along. A tall, strong man, grey haired since his mid-thirties, but still in good shape, he was
a stalwart of the neighbourhood, an automatic choice when the time came to train wardens for the ARP. His readiness to serve paid off when what had started on a voluntary basis became paid work once the war had started.

Not that everyone liked him in his new role. Dolly Ogden, for instance, bristled whenever she saw him in his armband and tin hat. ‘Nosey parker,' was her verdict when he came checking up on the blackout arrangements down the Court. ‘Have you seen him driving that taxi of his long after we're holed up inside? What's good for the goose is good for the gander, ain't it?' The trouble was, she remembered Walter Davidson in short trousers, well before the last war, hanging about under the gas-lamp outside the Duke with the other peaky blinders; him and Rob Parsons and young Tommy O'Hagan.

‘Doing your bit, Dolly?' Walter called out to her one December afternoon when he spotted her and Ernie Parsons hard at work on her Meredith Court allotment. ‘I'd have thought it was time to hang up your spade by now.'

‘Watch it, I ain't too old to put my back into it.' She shoved the spade into the black earth to take a rest. ‘You're not saying no different, are you, Walter?'

‘I never meant that and you know it.' He peered through the iron railings to scan the rows of winter cabbage and brussel sprouts. ‘What I meant was, it's a bit late in the year for gardening.'

‘We had to wait for the frost to break up the soil, didn't we, Ern? And the sprouts taste better if you let the frost nip them.' Over the years she'd become an authority. In fact, her allotment, taken over from poor Arthur because of his bad back, had become a profitable little venture. On a good year she could feed herself, her daughter Amy's whole family and still have produce left over to sell to the market stallholders. Now she was digging for victory and offering her neighbours the vegetables free of charge. Nevertheless, they usually managed to scrape the bottom of their purses for a few coppers in payment.

‘You'll take Sadie a pound of them sprouts then?' He fished in
his pocket for a sixpence, but found only two pennies. ‘Here's a down payment.'

Dolly sent Ernie up to the railings to collect the money. ‘Whoever heard of buying sprouts on the never-never? Do you want a cabbage to keep them company?'

‘Might as well. What we need is carrots to help us see in the dark.'

‘If you believe that you'll believe anything.' Dolly rolled down her sleeves, ready to pack up for the day. Ernie, willing as ever, was busy nipping sprouts off the stalks and collecting them in his cap. She trudged along the border of her neatly dug patch, boots caked with mud, face glowing. ‘How are them two boys of yours? Fat as butchers' dogs, I hope, least they should be with a billet like that.'

‘They're getting along fine so far as we know. Sadie would like a few more letters, but you know how it is.' He began to walk with her up the row of terraced houses towards the main street.

‘She always was a worrier. Not like Amy. Amy don't let nothing bother her.' Dolly saw a certain rivalry there. Amy's Bobby and Sadie's Meggie were of an age, but the two mothers had entirely different ways of bringing up kids. Dolly felt there was an edge to Sadie, who didn't seem able to get things in the right perspective. According to her, Meggie was the prettiest, the best behaved, the healthiest baby who ever lived. Then came the boys; Bertie was a genius by the age of three and Geoff could run like the wind. She talked them up to the skies. Dolly thought this was a dangerous tendency. ‘You tell Sadie to count her blessings. Get her to talk to Amy, Amy'll soon put her straight.' They stopped on the corner of Duke Street. ‘Your Sadie should get herself a job, keep busy. She's got too much time on her hands, what with Meggie out at work all day.'

‘She already has, Dolly, you're behind the times. She started in the munitions factory last week.'

She sniffed. ‘She ain't making them Lewisite bombs, is she?'

‘I can't say. Careless talk cost lives. You know what they tell us.'

‘I know, I know, keep it under your hat.' Even Dolly had tried
to curb her love of gossip. She took the rebuff in good part. ‘Is she on shift work?'

He nodded. ‘That's another thing; it leaves Meggie at a loose end some evenings. Sadie's worried to death about that and all.'

‘What for? She's old enough to look after herself, ain't she?'

‘Sadie says she goes out too much. She never used to.' He felt disloyal confessing as much, but it was something on his mind too. Meggie had taken to ignoring the blackout to go off and see friends, she said. Not friends from the Court, but girls she'd met at work. Sometimes he and Sadie didn't have a clue where she was for hours on end.

Dolly eyed him closely. ‘I'll get Bobby to keep an eye on her for you if you like.'

‘You won't let on?'

‘Would I?' She threatened to take offence. ‘No, but Bobby will tip the wink to Jimmie O'Hagan. Meggie's very thick with him these days. Between them they ought to be able to find out what she's up to.'

‘It's probably nothing.'

‘Just in case.'

He nodded and then they parted; Walter to check in at the ARP centre set up at the primary school, Dolly to organize her spies.

‘Hang on a tick.' Jimmie was finishing a spell serving at the petrol pump outside Powells' ironmongers on Duke Street when he spied Meggie, all dressed up in a white mac with a red beret set at a jaunty angle on her shiny brown hair. He took the three bob from the customer and whisked a washleather over the windscreen of the Ford Eight. ‘I'm knocking off here. Do you fancy a game of skittles?'

‘Some other time, Jimmie.'

He went in and flicked the coins through the air at the girl behind the counter. Then he ran to catch up with Meggie. There was a dismal drizzle falling and very little Christmas cheer in the shops this year. Traffic rattled and bumped over the tram tracks, cyclists swerved to avoid the puddles.

‘I'm busy, didn't you hear?'

‘Come again. I think I've got a bit deaf.' His confidence was undented by the brush-off. It was a Friday evening, he was dressed up to the nines in a soft green polo-neck sweater and corduroy jacket. He copied his style from the American films, casual yet sophisticated.

‘I said I can't come to the skittle alley.'

‘Why not?' He skipped around a lamp-post and stepped off the kerb ahead of her. Then he turned to walk backwards, hands in pockets. ‘What did I do?'

‘Nothing.' She was busy watching the traffic, stopping to cross at the Belisha beacon.

‘It's Friday, ain't it? We always go down the alley. Bobby's gonna be there.'

‘You go then.' She strode out, heels tapping, belt tied tight around her waist, collar up.

‘You hurt my feelings, Meggie Davidson, you know that?' Still he wove in and out of the cars and pedestrians, bobbing ahead of her.

‘You ain't got no feelings, Jimmie.' She was heading for a tube station to go up to Tottenham Court Road, but she didn't want Jimmie tagging along.

‘No and it's a good job I ain't. If I had feelings you'd be mangling them good and proper.'

Grinning at last, she stopped in her tracks. ‘I can't go bowling with you, Jim, honest. I got
something
important on my plate.'

‘What?'

‘Just . . . something.' She pulled him into a shop doorway out of the rain. ‘It's family. I can't say what exactly, not yet. I ain't even told Ma.'

‘What family?' He wasn't used to Meggie keeping secrets, or looking this good, even in the rain. The drizzle had made a network of tiny, shining droplets in her hair, her skin was moist, the collar of the white mac framed her face. ‘Righto, you can't say that neither. I get you.' He took her elbow. ‘Look, let's go into the milk bar till the rain goes off. You're gonna get soaked.'

Thinking that ten minutes would make no difference, she agreed. They crossed back over the street into the bar and perched on the high, shiny stools at the chromium counter.

‘It must be my birthday,' she said, taking a creamy-pink drink from him.

‘You mean, ta for the milk shake, Jimmie. You're a real pal.'

‘That's what I mean, yeah.' She looked at him over the top of her glass.

‘Families, they're more trouble than they're worth,' he said.

Life above the Ideal Home shop was far from perfect. Dorothy was out on the town more often than not and Tommy either stayed in and got drunk, or went down the Duke and did the same. Jimmie told Meggie he thought the marriage was on the rocks.

‘What'll Tommy do?' She thought of him first, rather than Dorothy.

‘Get himself another girl if he's got any sense.'