Angel of the North (13 page)

Charles’s letter made depressing reading when she got back downstairs. It was full of dire warnings about ‘getting lumbered’ with ‘that little so-and-so of a brother of
yours’ and included the line: ‘If you want my opinion, he probably richly deserved the thrashing he got.’

She folded it and put it back on the mantelpiece, thinking of her coming court appearance. ‘If only you knew,’ she murmured.

‘You’ll have to leave school. You’re nearly fourteen so you’d be leaving for good in a month, anyway. You won’t be missing much,’ Marie
said, standing with her back to the window in the Stewarts’ beautiful drawing room at eleven o’clock on the first Sunday in May.

Not trusting Pam to come back to Hull on her own, Marie had told the Elsworths she was going to Bourne on the next available evacuation excursion to collect Pam, with all her things. Mr Elsworth
had insisted on driving her and was now sitting waiting in his car, just outside the house.

‘If Pamela were to stay, we would keep her in school,’ Mr Stewart said. ‘Perhaps send her to music college.’

Marie felt strong disapproval emanating from the Stewarts. ‘I have to work,’ she insisted. ‘They’ve been very good at the hospital, about letting me have time off to deal
with everything I’ve had to deal with since Dad was killed, but they can’t do it for ever. Mother’s due for discharge tomorrow, but it’ll be a long time before she’s
properly better. Someone will have to look after her, and the only person who’s free to do it is Pam.’

‘Is there absolutely no other way?’ Mrs Stewart asked.

‘If there were, I wouldn’t be here. Pam’s first duty is to her mother.’

That was the argument to cap all other arguments. After that, all opposition ceased.

Throughout the conversation Pam had been silently running her fingers over the French-polished piano. She looked at ‘Auntie’ Morag and ‘Uncle’ Alec, and burst into tears.
The Stewarts looked just as upset.

With her shoulders stooped, and looking a picture of dejection, she picked up her battered old suitcase, and a new one Mrs Stewart had given her, and followed Marie to the door. There Marie
waited while Pam and the Stewarts exchanged kisses, said anguished goodbyes, and made fervent promises to keep in touch. She barely answered Mr Elsworth when he greeted her. They drove for miles,
with only an occasional stifled sob to break the silence. Marie felt like a criminal.

At last, red-eyed and with a face full of resentment, Pam said: ‘I’d have loved to go to college to study music, and Auntie Morag and Uncle Alec would have sent me. I might as well
be dead now. I might as well be blown up as well as Dad.’

‘Don’t you dare say that near Mam,’ Marie warned. ‘You say anything like that, and it might be the end of her. She’d just give up and die.’

‘No, she wouldn’t. She’s as tough as old boots.’

‘Was tough,’ Marie stressed. ‘She’s not tough any more, so let me hear you’ve said anything to upset her, and you won’t need any music college because you
won’t be playing any more pianos. I’ll chop your bloody fingers off.’

‘That’s rather extreme,’ Mr Elsworth protested.

‘It’s not extreme enough,’ Marie said, wishing she’d avoided getting into a dispute with Pam in front of him.

‘Why can’t Alfie look after her?’ Pam demanded. ‘He’s there anyway.’

Marie’s jaw dropped. She was astounded at the very idea of a boy doing that. Impossible. An idea so ludicrous, it didn’t merit consideration. ‘Anybody but you, I suppose,
Pam,’ she said. ‘Fine daughter you’ve turned out to be.’

‘Oh, it’s so nice to be home,’ their mother kept repeating, when they brought her back. ‘Home, sweet home.’

She was home, but it was a different mother from the one they had known. Her pleasure at being among her own familiar things was heartbreakingly childlike. An ugly, deep purple gash scarred her
forehead and it was plain that Pam could hardly bear to look at her. Marie’s hope that her mother’s mind had stopped its wanderings was soon dashed. She had to be told three times that
Dad was dead, and then: ‘Ah, yes. I’d forgotten,’ she said, with the same look of desolation and perplexity. She suddenly seemed so old. It all made Marie very apprehensive about
going back to work.

‘Put that landing light out, Bert,’ her mother called, an hour after she and Pam had helped her to bed.

The sisters looked at each other. Pam’s resentment seemed to have burned itself out, or turned into despair. ‘This is a sad house, now,’ she said.

Never in her life had Marie imagined that she would ever have to undergo the excruciating embarrassment of asking for time off to answer a summons to court. Matron had granted
it very disapprovingly, with the proviso that she report back on duty as soon as her case had been dealt with. So here Marie sat, down at the Guildhall, feeling like a criminal fish out of water,
clueless about what was going to happen and very anxious.

A man she often saw around her own neighbourhood came out of the courtroom just before she was due to go in. ‘You’re Bert Larsen’s lass, aren’t you?’ he croaked,
through a rattling smoker’s cough. ‘I was sorry to hear about your dad. And your mam’s in hospital, isn’t she?’

‘Not any more. She came home yesterday.’

‘How is she?’

‘You know what they always say – “as well as can be expected”. Truth is, it’s knocked the stuffing out of her. She’s got a terrible scar running right across
her forehead. You’d hardly recognize her now.’

He grimaced. ‘Bloody shame. She was a real good-looking woman, your mother. Bloody Germans. So what are you here for, a good lass like you? You’ve not turned into one of these young
looters who burgle people’s houses as soon as they’ve gone down to the shelter, are you?’

‘Don’t be daft. I’m carrying the can for our Alfie,’ Marie said. ‘He let a light show through our bathroom window, and the ARP warden copped him.’

‘Showing a light. Same as me. These bastards treat people like bloody criminals. I got fined two pounds five shillings.’

The shock must have shown on Marie’s face.

‘The five bob was for foul language, though,’ he reassured her. ‘I gave them a right bloody mouthful. They knew what their bloody mothers were before I came out of there. But
you be polite, and you’ll get off with less.’ He gave her a hint of a smile.

Marie was appalled. Using strong language to a magistrate was something that would never have occurred to her, but even without the language, Alfie’s escapade might still cost her two
pounds! She’d never be able to hand Charles his ten pounds back at this rate. Not that he’d begrudged it, but it was a question of pride. She prided herself on her independence and
would have liked to be able to say: ‘Look, here’s your money. It was nice to have it to fall back on, but I managed all right. Thanks anyway.’ The chances of that nice little
daydream becoming a reality was fast disappearing. What was worse, she might not even be able to keep her head above water. She might have to spend more of Charles’s money, and if it ran out
. . .

‘Miss Marie Larsen,’ the usher called.

She went in, with her heart in her mouth. High in their seats of judgement and reeking of authority, with an imposing coat of arms at the back of them, the three magistrates looked down on her,
their faces like granite. When the preliminaries of name and address and guilty plea were over, the one in the middle fixed her with an unfriendly stare and began: ‘There are still far too
many of these incidents and they deserve to be very severely dealt with. Since you choose to be irresponsible, and endanger the lives of all your fellow citizens . . .’ Marie listened in fear
and trepidation. When asked what she had to say for herself she could hardly separate her tongue from the roof of her mouth, it was so dry. She did not protest that she was not the culprit, in case
they started asking awkward questions about Alfie’s being in the house unsupervised. That might have resulted in proceedings against her for some other horrible crime, like child neglect, for
example. The thought scared her witless. She managed to croak out her apologies, and must have looked sufficiently contrite and terrified even for these grim judges.

‘Very well,’ the chief magistrate said, looking slightly mollified. ‘Take more care in future, young woman, and see that you do not appear before us again, or we shall have to
deal with you very severely.’

She got off with thirty shillings, and came out thinking herself quite lucky.

Marie walked home from the hospital under a brilliant bomber’s moon, humming a quickstep to keep her weary legs moving along, anxious to know how her mother was, and how
Pam had coped in her absence. She heard the piano being played in the front room as she got to the door, the first time she’d heard Pam play since she’d gone to the Stewarts. And it had
to be said, she was good.

‘This piano needs tuning,’ Pam told her, when she popped her head round the door.

The place was a shambles, with dirty cups and saucers dotted about, clothes dropped, shoes kicked off, books, magazines and sheet music strewn all over. It looked as if Pam had dragged as much
stuff as she could out of the cupboards to throw it all over the room.

‘We’ve got a lot more to worry about here than tuning the piano,’ Marie rasped. ‘I really don’t give a tinker’s cuss about the piano. What does Mam need?
That’s more to the point. Has she had anything to eat?’

‘She didn’t want much.’

‘I don’t suppose she would, if she knew she’d have to disturb your piano playing to ask you to get it for her. Where is she?’

‘In bed,’ said Pam, idly fingering the keys. ‘She said she was tired.’

‘I know how she feels,’ Marie said, and went through to the kitchen to put the kettle on. Every surface was littered with things that should either have been put back in the
cupboard, or washed up. The floor was half mopped, and the mop bucket stood in the middle of the kitchen floor, full of dirty water.

Too tired to be angry, Marie went back into the front room and swept the hearth, then began picking things up. A wave of despair engulfed her.

Pam slammed the piano lid down with a mighty crash. ‘There’s no need to sulk. You only had to ask.’

Marie’s tired eyes widened. ‘Have I got to ask for every plate and cup to be tidied away, every surface to be dusted, to ask every time the hearth needs to be swept? I’ve been
on my feet for twelve solid hours. Can’t you see for yourself things need doing, Pam?’

‘Don’t look at me like that. I have been doing things, only every time I start, someone comes to the door, or Alfie wants something, or Mother. It’s impossible to get on with
anything without constant interruptions. Anyway, I shouldn’t have to do this! You’re the nurse, not me.’

‘Nobody’s asked you to be a nurse. Mam doesn’t need nursing now; she looks after herself. You’ve been asked to wash, and make a meal every day, and do enough to keep the
place clean, because there’s nobody else in the family to do it. Mum needs help, and you’re the only one that’s free to give it.’

‘I’m not free! I’m only thirteen. I should be at school. I’m not a washerwoman, or a cleaner, and I don’t want to be one. I can’t do it.’

‘You’re nearly fourteen, and your trouble is that you see everything through Mr and Mrs Stewart’s eyes now. You really think you’ve joined the upper classes, and you look
down on your own family. Well they’re not your uncle Alec and auntie Morag, Pam; they’re not related to you at all. They’re the people you were billeted with for the duration, and
they get ten and six a week for having you. We’re your family, this is where you belong, and this is where your loyalties should lie.’

Had the piano lid not already been slammed down, Marie was certain it would have been then. Pamela jumped off the stool, her cheeks pink and eyes blazing, and walked towards her, trembling with
anger, arms rigid by her sides and fists clenched. ‘Oh, shut up, Marie! I’m sick of you, sticking your nose into everything and taking over. Who do you think you are? You’re not
my mother! You can’t tell me what to do! I’m going to bed.’

Lowering her voice to prevent her mother from hearing, Marie said bitterly: ‘You always said you loved Mam! This is your idea of love, then. Just think about this. Your mother’s
loved you all your life, and now she needs some help from you. You shouldn’t begrudge it . . .’

But Pam was halfway up the stairs. Now equally angry and energized by fury, Marie finished tidying the living room and started a vigorous mopping of the kitchen floor. After that, she dragged
out the ironing board, and put the radio on. One of the big bands was playing a quickstep. Her mother had been almost deafened by the blast on the shelter on Ellis Street, and Alfie would be too
fast asleep to be disturbed by it, so she turned it up a fraction, and took her temper out on a pile of ironing until a week’s worth of neatly finished laundry was draped over the clothes
horse, airing by the dying embers of the fire. It’s amazing the amount of work you can get through in next to no time when you feel like strangling someone, she thought.

There was only one thing for it, Marie decided, as she put the ironing board away. She hated having to do it, but she would have to go to Matron and ask for a leave of absence, at least until
Pamela was doing things properly, and the running of the house got back onto an even keel.

The warning sounded at quarter past eleven, just as she was undressing for bed. Marie threw on her old checked dressing gown, and went in to her mother.

‘The siren’s sounding, Mam!’ she shouted.

‘What?’ her mother croaked.

‘An air raid, Mam. We should go to the shelter.’

‘I’m not going to any shelter. They’re not shelters; they’re deathtraps.’

‘We ought to go to the shelter. There’s going to be a raid.’

‘I’m not going!’ her mother screamed.

Pam came out onto the landing, her face sheet white. Alfie soon joined them.

‘You two get dressed fast as you can, and get down to the shelter,’ Marie said. ‘I’ll stay here with Mam. She’s refusing to go.’

‘It doesn’t seem to make much difference whether you’re in a shelter or not. You’ve got a good chance of being killed either way,’ Pam said, looking askance at her
mother. ‘Anyway, I’d rather be dead than scarred.’