Angel of the North (41 page)

Marie couldn’t sit still. The moon was three-quarter’s full, easily enough light to see by, so she left the bike and walked across to Duesbury Street. A very
dishevelled Nancy answered the door, obviously the worse for drink.

Marie followed her into the house. ‘Have you been at the home-made wine, Nance?’ she asked, although the question was unnecessary. She could smell it on her breath.

‘Well, if I have, it’s nobody’s business but mine,’ Nancy said.

‘All right, then. Keep your hair on. Is your mam in?’

‘No, she’s not. What’s up? I didn’t expect to see you on a Sunday night. I’d have thought you’d be out with Chas, or one of your other blokes – George,
or Terry.’

Marie would have loved to unburden herself, but Nancy’s antagonism put her off. ‘Well, I’m not,’ she said. ‘I’m here. I thought I’d have an hour with
you.’

Nancy flopped down onto the settee. ‘Huh! He’s let you down, then, has he, your Chas? Do you want a drink?’

Marie shook her head.

Nancy took another gulp from her glass. ‘All the more for them that do, then.’

‘You should lay off that stuff, Nance. It never makes anything any better.’

Nancy ignored the comment. ‘Yes, you’ve fallen out with Chas, so you’ve remembered I exist. Well, you’ve done right. Come and tell your old pal Nancy what a swine he is.
They’re all swine. The lot of them. I hate them all.’

She was obviously looking forward to a maudlin session of self-pity and blaming everyone else for their troubles, but Marie had no sympathy. Nancy was getting a dose of her own medicine, but she
was so blind to her own faults that she couldn’t see the justice of it. Marie listened to her with scorn, wondering that such a blind, selfish, self-pitying creature could ever have attracted
anybody. She’d never had any patience with drunks, wallowing in their misfortunes and slobbering over people, and she had none with Nancy. It disgusted her, but she bit her tongue and heard
her out.

‘. . . and now I’m going to be lumbered with his bloody kid!’ Nancy finished.

At that attitude towards the unborn baby, Marie saw red. Red danced and swam before her eyes. ‘You know what, Nance?’ she said. ‘You’ve caused a packet of trouble for
people who thought the world of you. You ditched a good lad without a second thought and gave a con man all his savings because he kidded you he was going to get you on the silver screen. You asked
for it, Nance, but George didn’t, or your mother either. Your mother’s said she’ll help you. Many a mother would have chucked you out.’ Marie looked pointedly at
Nancy’s swelling abdomen. ‘And in case you’ve forgotten, that bloody kid’s yours, as well as his, so if you don’t want to be lumbered do it a big favour, Nance. Once
it’s born, get it on the bottle as fast as you can and then nip up to the Queens Hotel and give it away to the first couple you see.’

It took Nancy a minute to absorb Marie’s unexpectedly brutal home truths, but when she did, her face turned to whey. ‘You’re a cold fish, Marie,’ she gasped.
‘You’ve never let your heart rule your head yet.’

Marie gave her a penetrating look. ‘Was it your heart that ruled you, Nance? Really? Or was it your vanity? And maybe your greed? You mistook a plausible con man for somebody who could
make you rich and famous, so you chucked George and crushed his hopes of a bright future with you in his little dream bungalow – without even a goodbye. You left him to trudge round the
mortuaries, looking for your corpse. Not much heart in that, was there?’

Nancy rallied enough to hit back. ‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry I wasn’t dead. It sounds as if you and George would be happier if I had been.’

‘There’s no heart in that lie, either. Or in the way you’re talking about your baby. That’s going to get a warm and loving welcome into the world, I don’t think.
You could do with letting your heart rule you there, but I doubt if you will. So seriously, why not do the same as I watched Hannah do, and give it away? Then you’ll be rid of your lumber,
and free to go on your merry way.’

‘You say some nasty things sometimes, Marie. Really nasty.’

‘I know,’ she said. ‘I can’t keep my mouth shut, at times. It does me no good at all, but I can’t seem to help it.’

You managed that well, Marie, she thought, on the short walk back. Margaret dead, her friendship with Nancy probably destroyed for ever, George and Terry signed off for good,
and Chas driven out of her life. She might even lose her job, if Matron heard about her expedition to the Queens Hotel. The last remaining props of her existence, bar Alfie, and she’d kicked
them all away. Deep down, none of it really mattered, except Chas.

And out of those two babies, Hannah’s might have the best chance, all told. She was out of the hellhole altogether, with somebody who had a heart and plenty of love to give. Funny, Marie
couldn’t bear to call her Chas’s baby, even in her thoughts, but although she tried to shield herself from it and in spite of all the nonsense about who she didn’t resemble that
was exactly what she was – Chas’s firstborn child. ‘So face it,’ she said out loud.

George guessed where she’d been. ‘How is she, then?’ he asked, when she got back.

‘Feeling very sorry for herself.’

Marie saw by the look on George and Aunt Edie’s faces that Charles still hadn’t been for her. Aunt Edie would certainly have sent him round to Nancy’s, if he had. Neither
commented.

She went to bed. Instead of fretting herself into her grave she would blank her mind and blot the whole world out, at least until the morning.

When morning came, she was up and dressed early, on the horns of an agonizing dilemma: whether to swallow her pride and go to Park Street to see Chas, or whether to stick it
out and wait until he came to her, and risk losing him altogether. She lit the gas ring and put the kettle on, and then turned it off again. She hadn’t the patience to wait for it to boil.
She would go.

She ran upstairs for her jacket, and as she descended she heard a familiar knock. Through the stained-glass leaded light in the door she could see a distorted but recognizable shape. Charles
Elsworth. She checked her hurry, and sauntered along the passageway to open it.

‘Hello, stranger.’

‘Stranger nothing. It’s your day off, isn’t it?’

She nodded.

‘Come on, then. Time for us to go and get your wedding clothes,’ Chas said.

Tingles raced up Marie’s spine. The sky took on a more vivid blue, and the colours of the houses opposite were suddenly brighter. She took care not to smile too broadly.

‘What wedding clothes?’

‘Your
wedding clothes. You’re going to marry me before my leave ends, and get the best, most faithful and devoted husband who ever lived.’ His wide hazel eyes searched
hers. ‘What do you say?’

‘I can’t.’

‘Why not?’ he demanded. ‘Come on, Marie, have a heart. I’m a reformed character. I mended my ways completely on the day we got engaged.’

‘I mean . . .’ she said, dragging out the suspense, ‘ . . . I can’t go with you to get wedding clothes. It would be bad luck for you to see them.’

He laughed, and relaxed. ‘I won’t have to see them. Just take plenty of clothes into the changing rooms, and I won’t know which you’ve chosen. They can put them in a bag
for you. All I’ll have to do is hand the money over.’

‘All right, then,’ she said, and then heaved a heavy sigh. ‘Oh, Thornton-Varley’s! All the beautiful clothes they sold, everything of the best. Why did they have to go
and get flattened?’

His shrugged. ‘Search me, but there must be somewhere still standing. What does it matter, anyway? I’d marry you with dirty feet, in your gardening gear.’

‘I wouldn’t, though,’ she said, and might have added that she would settle for nothing less than the sheerest nylons held up by the very laciest suspenders. She’d soon
show him what stocking tops were all about, she thought, and her stomach was suddenly full of nervous flutterings.

‘You won’t have enough coupons to get a boatload of stuff. Clothes this morning, and married this afternoon,’ he said. ‘It’s all arranged. My parents and the people
at Dunswell are going to be our witnesses.’

She ran upstairs to get her coupons, and left the bedroom with the thought that she would never spend another night under Aunt Edie’s safe and kindly roof. George was just coming out of
his room, ready for work.

‘I’ll be married by the time you see me again, George,’ she told him.

‘Good heavens! That’s sudden,’ he said as she dashed down the stairs. She heard his ‘Good luck!’ as she shot through the door.

She stopped, after closing it. ‘If we go now, we’ll be over an hour too early for the shops!’

‘We could misuse half a gallon of petrol to go out for a drive, and consummate the marriage,’ he said.

‘Get lost. We’ll go and have a cup of tea in the British Restaurant,’ she said.

‘It’s not as good as my suggestion.’

‘It’s the only one on offer,’ she assured him. She’d held out this far, and she could hold out a bit longer. Their wedding night was going to be a proper wedding night,
something Charles Elsworth would remember to his dying day.

There was no music, no choir, and the flowers in the church were what were left after yesterday’s Mass. The bride carried a small bouquet and wore a simple blue costume,
which brought out the startling blue of her eyes, and which she intended to wear for years afterwards, or until she got too fat from having too many babies. The brief ceremony was performed by the
priest of St Vincent’s before Uncle Alf and Auntie Dot, Leonard, and Marjorie, who had broken her vow never to set foot in a Catholic Church just for this occasion. The pestilential younger
brothers of both bride and groom were also present, and behaving themselves pretty well, for younger brothers.

They walked the short distance back to Park Street after the wedding, and opened the door to the aroma of two roast chickens sizzling in the Rayburn, courtesy of Uncle Alf, who had wrung their
necks that morning – rather reluctantly, as they had been good layers. The substantial dinner was followed by an unusual wedding cake, hastily made from eggs from the smallholding at
Dunswell, the last of Marjorie and Dot’s sugar and cocoa hoards, and butter traded for Dot’s eggs.

While the older women were doing the washing up and the men were arguing about the progress of the war, Marie and Alfie sneaked out of the house together and walked to Northern Cemetery. Marie
pulled three flowers from her bouquet, and then laid it on her parents’ grave. ‘Don’t worry about me and Chas, Mam,’ the young Mrs Elsworth prayed. ‘I can manage him
all right. And I’ll see Alfie all right, and our Pam, if needs be.’

‘Don’t worry about me, either,’ Alfie said. ‘I’m all right with Auntie Dot and Uncle Alf.’

Alfie laid the other three flowers on Jenny’s grave and then, leaving the dead to the peaceful twilight, they walked out of the cemetery, hand in hand.

As soon as Uncle Alf and Auntie Dot had left with Alfie, and the three superfluous Elsworths had gone for the bus to Hedon to spend the night there, Marie and Chas took up
where they’d left off before that devastating air raid, with the addition, this time, of silk underwear, lacy suspenders and sheer nylon stockings. When he had manfully transformed her into
Mrs Elsworth in fact as well as in name, Marie laughed up at him, her triumph complete.

‘I never thought we’d get together again,’ she said. ‘You never came to see me for two full days. I thought you’d gone for good.’

‘Don’t think I didn’t try to be gone for good, either,’ he grinned. ‘But seeing it was hopeless I just had to bind my wounds, ready for the next battle.’

‘Does it have to be a battle?’

‘Only as long as you make it one.’

‘Truce, then?’

He wavered, and gave her a suspicious look out of the corner of his eye, his brows drawn together and lips compressed and turned up in a half-smile. ‘How long will it last?’ he
demanded.

‘For the rest of our lives, I hope. Unless you—’

He pressed his forefinger against her lips. ‘If you’re going to say what I think you’re going to say – unless nothing!’

She looked at him and laughed.

‘You bloody were, weren’t you?’

‘My lips are sealed,’ she said.