All Fall Down (6 page)

‘Jimmie!' She was conventional, having been brought up by Sadie to regard marriage as a lifetime commitment.

‘I mean it. That'd teach her.'

Meggie stared down at the counter where she could see her own distorted reflection. ‘It's that bad?'

‘You should try living there,' he said quietly. For a moment, the cheeky, chirpy image slipped.

She glanced up as she saw what he was going through, caught in no man's land between a bored and dissatisfied Dorothy and a disillusioned Tommy.

‘Come on,' she said suddenly, ‘you can come up Tottenham Court Road with me.'

They walked, instead of using the Underground, over the river which slid by, black and greasy, along the Embankment to Charing Cross and the sleazy haunts of the prostitutes who signalled their trade with small flashes of torchlight on the pavements, their pale faces illuminated from an ugly angle, their customers unable to see the bargain they'd made. Jimmie put his arm around Meggie's shoulder and they hurried on.

‘Where we off to?'

‘I told you, Tottenham Court Road.'

‘What for?'

‘You won't say nothing?'

‘Cross my heart.'

‘And you won't think I'm round the twist?'

‘That depends – no, honest I won't.'

‘Well, you know Walter ain't my real pa?' Her voice faltered, her pace slowed. Cars and buses swept along the pitch-dark street, bathing it in beams of yellow light. ‘I ain't never known my real one. He left Ma and me in the lurch, and she won't never talk about him, not really. She says it ain't fair on Walter to drag up the past, but I think it's because she don't want to think about it, like my pa was a monster or something.'

‘What's this got to do with tonight?' Jimmie struggled to make the connection.

‘Hang on, I'm getting there. Sometimes, when I was little, I used to think he was dead and buried. I tried to draw a picture of him inside my head, but it was hard to know what he looked like. I heard once through Dolly that he was no good.'

‘Did she tell you?'

‘No, Bobby let it slip. We was just kids, but he let it out; he said no one in the Court would have anything to do with Richie Palmer – that's his name. Bobby's ma said it was good riddance when he scarpered, otherwise they'd all have grabbed him and strung him up from a lamppost.'

‘Charming.' He walked close to her, one arm round her waist, letting her talk. It was the first time they'd shared anything important. She was letting him into the secret of how she felt and he was having to absorb this, as well as the fact that she was letting him get within arm's length and that he could smell her perfume, feel the sway of her slim hips as they walked.

‘After that, the picture I got was more like a devil with horns sticking out of his head. I had a devil for a pa!'

‘Families,' he said again.

‘You try and put it out of your mind. You tell yourself it don't
make no difference really. Only, I did wonder what he was like. And lately, with the war starting, I thought what if he's not dead after all? What if he's alive?' She stopped outside one of the big cinemas, its foyer dim, shadowy figures at the box office staring out. ‘And then I just
knew
he was alive!'

‘How?'

‘I just knew. He ain't dead and I want to find him, Jimmie. I can't tell Ma, I can't tell no one except you. I want to find him just in case – in case we all get blown to pieces, you know.'

‘Don't talk that way. We ain't gonna get blown to pieces.'

‘No, but if we do? Or if he does? And I never knew him. And maybe, just maybe, he wants to know about me as much as I want to know about him. And we could both die, not knowing. That's a terrible thing, ain't it?'

He nodded. He couldn't break it to her that if this Richie Palmer had made no effort to stay in touch for sixteen whole years, the chances were that he didn't want to know.

‘So where we going?' he asked quietly.

‘To the tube station. You know that night, when we went to the Astoria, you, me and Bobby, and we had to go down the shelter? I had another of them feelings that he was alive, and it came over me really strong. I knew if I looked hard enough, I'd find him.'

‘You and your feelings.' He was beginning to wish it wasn't so dark in the blackout, that they weren't so far from home. ‘You're not saying you actually think you saw him?'

She waited a long time before she answered. They walked slowly on. ‘I don't know, Jimmie. I've been coming back here as often as I can ever since. If I spot him again, I can be sure, can't I? If I see him looking at me like he knows me, I'll be right, won't I?'

‘What the hell are you talking about, Meggie? See who looking at you?'

‘The tramp with the blanket,' she explained. ‘The one who spat at Bobby. I think that was Richie Palmer. In fact, I know it in my bones. And here—' She struck her chest. ‘In my heart, I know that was my pa.'

Chapter Four

‘There's a bleeding queue every way you turn.' Dolly Ogden was on the warpath. Annie had just refused her a second pint of beer due to the rationing.

‘It's the sugar. The brewers can't get it for love nor money.' Annie was glad at least that the threatened closure of the pubs hadn't happened. Their doors stayed open, even if supplies were strictly limited.

Dolly leaned confidentially across the bar. ‘Come on, Annie, you know me. I won't say nothing if you bend the rules.' She'd spent the afternoon at Amy's flat, looking after things while her daughter waited her turn in the rain outside the Co-op. Amy had come back with her twelve ounces of butter and her pitiful portion of bacon to last the three of them a full week.

‘You might not, Dolly, but every other thirsty blighter in the place would!' Annie stuck to her guns. It seemed hard, but there it was. These days, the darkest of the year, when Christmas had come and gone and January crawled to a close, you had to put up with worse things than not being able to drink yourself into a stupor at the drop of a hat.

‘I thought they reckoned Guinness was good for you.' Dolly stared miserably into her empty glass. She wore a headscarf, tied turban-style around her head, still in her overall after a session pickling beetroot for Amy. ‘How are we supposed to know if it's good for you if we can't get hold of it no more?' She didn't mind making do and mend, she didn't mind saving paper, metal, even bones, for the war effort and, when they came the other day and took the iron railings from the allotment, she'd watched without
a murmur, as was her patriotic duty. But when they cut off her supply of alcohol it dug deep. ‘I'll give them “Up, Housewives and At 'Em!” ' she grumbled.

She needed something to take her mind off her privations, and it came in the shape of Dorothy O'Hagan, dressed up to the nines as usual, but in unexpected company. Her own Charlie stood there holding the door open, large as life, acting the gent, turning on the man-of-the-world charm in his dark slacks, yellow cravat and blazer. Dorothy should see him in the mornings, Dolly thought, unshaven and bleary-eyed, not a pretty sight since he'd come back to live with his mother.

‘What'll it be?' Charlie guided Tommy's wife to the bar.

‘A pint of Guinness, please.' Dolly tapped her glass too obviously on the polished bar top.

He ignored her and asked George for two shorts, then escorted Dorothy to a quiet corner.

‘God knows what she'll do when her clothes coupons run out,' Annie observed, her differences with Dolly immediately forgotten. The two old women chewed over the morals of the younger generation.

‘Trouble is, Charlie's on the rebound,' Dolly confided. ‘He wouldn't thank me for saying this, but he'd take up with anyone now that his divorce is going through. If you ask me, he's getting his own back.'

‘Well, Dorothy ain't no oil painting,' Annie agreed. ‘Or if she is, I'd say the cracks are beginning to show.'

Charlie Ogden found himself at a low ebb. His school had been closed down for the duration, and though many evacuated children were beginning to trickle back into the streets and parks of London, the school doors were still barred to them. They took their lessons in a half-hearted way in their own homes, taught by conchies and women.

He was at a loose end and, when he looked at it from a distance, he saw that teaching was not the noble calling he'd once imagined. He'd gone into it after a false start with his job with Maurice Leigh
in the early days of the cinema, thinking that all kids would share his own love of learning given half the chance, only to find that young minds were not blank pages to be filled with interesting facts and respectful attitudes. Instead, they were wilful wayward forces that ganged up in groups of thirty or forty to outwit anyone foolish enough to imagine they could be tamed. Put another way, every day in Charlie's working life there was at least one grubby, mendacious youngster, minus homework, looking devil-may-care and glowering down at him from six feet of adolescent muscle and swagger. Disillusioned yet dogged, Charlie kept at it until the war intervened and his marriage collapsed. Now he was back at home, fortyish and nowhere.

‘Ta for the drink, Charlie.' Dorothy raised her glass between bright red fingernails. She was enjoying the fact that all eyes were on them. ‘It's more than I can get out of my old man these days.'

‘We're all in the same boat.' He realized she was on the make but he didn't care. They'd bumped into one another on the doorstep, but she was trying to make it look like a set up thing, flaunting them as a couple to raise eyebrows.

Automatically she took out a cigarette then looked helpless.

‘Light?' He leaned across. She held his hand steady as she drew in the flame.

‘Ta, Charlie. You on your way somewhere nice?'

‘Maybe.'

‘Friday night; you should be.'

‘But I hate this blackout, don't you? It don't feel like you can enjoy yourself the same.'

‘Don't you believe it.' She described the dance halls that were humming with navy and RAF types.

‘Bit on the young side for you, Dot.'

‘Ta very much,' she pouted. ‘I bet I could still show you a thing or two, though.'

He grinned in spite of himself. Dorothy wasn't his type, but she was nothing if not obvious.

‘Why not come up the West End with me?' she asked.

‘You'll show me a good time?'

‘I mean it. Ain't no use nagging Tommy to come with me. He can't stick this modern dancing.'

Charlie considered the offer; not one that he would normally have touched with a bargepole. Dorothy was dressed to kill in an expensive maroon coat with a black fur collar draped around her shoulders, over a short black dress with a low neckline. A string of artificial pearls had caught in her ample cleavage.

‘Come on, Charlie, what you worried about? Not your reputation, surely.' She kidded him along, a mixture of toughness and good humour. ‘Do you good to get out once in a while from what I hear.'

He felt manoeuvred into a position where he could hardly turn her down without making himself look soft and narrow-minded. And maybe she was right; it was time for him to break out and enjoy himself. It didn't mean anything, it wasn't as if they were underhand. Just the opposite; everyone and his bleeding aunt was watching.

‘You hear wrong, Dot. I get out plenty.'

‘Well then?'

‘Righto. Finish your drink.' He stood up ready to go.

Slowly she smiled and stubbed out her cigarette, uncrossed her legs and collected her bag from under the table. He pulled back her chair and she stood up, slotting her arm into his as they crossed the room.

Dolly looked daggers at them.

‘Ain't nothing you can do,' Annie sympathized, as the couple left the pub. ‘They're both grown-ups, even if they are acting like little kids.'

‘I could knock their heads together, I could. And him so high and mighty when he wants to be. I've a good mind to drop him in it with Tommy, even if I am his ma, worse luck.'

Annie kept her talking. She even slipped her a drink on the sly. If Dolly went and upset the applecart, things could turn messy. They all needed to pull together these days. Dorothy would have her fling with Charlie and it would all be over in a week, no harm
done. She believed in common sense; Tommy himself was no angel, if it came to that.

What's up, Meggie? You missing those two brothers of yours?' Hettie was upstairs in the living room over the pub, browsing through magazines for the latest fashion trends.

‘Not likely.' She slung her gas mask over a chair and unbuttoned her mac.

‘What do you think of this?' Hettie showed her a picture of an afternoon dress, ruched on the bodice and sleeves. The model wore a hat which framed her face Anne Boleyn-style, with a little veil.

‘Not bad.'

She looked up. ‘Cat got your tongue, has it?'

‘Sorry.' She was feeling down and she'd come to her aunt to ask for help. Now that it came to it, she was lost for words.

‘Nothing wrong at home, is there?' Hettie knew they were bothered about the company Meggie seemed to be keeping. She never brought her friends home, Sadie complained, yet she was never in. That must mean she was ashamed of something; either the plainness of her home circumstances or the friends themselves. At any rate she was leading two separate lives.

Meggie shook her head.

‘Is it the war? Is it starting to get on your nerves?' The endless false alarms weren't doing anyone any good; nights were interrupted and conditions in the shelters primitive, all for nothing. People were calling it the phoney war, yet still they waited in dread for the real thing to start.

‘A bit.' She slumped into a chair, turning words this way and that inside her head. It was no good. She would have to come out with it. ‘Auntie Ett, you knew my pa, didn't you? My real pa.'