Angel of the North (7 page)

‘I don’t care. I want to come home. She’s horrible, and Ernie’s a dirty, nasty bugger. She gives him my sweet ration.’

Her heart sank. He might be exaggerating, but even if he wasn’t he was better off here than in Hull. ‘There’s worse things than having your sweet ration pinched,’ she
said, ‘and if you’d been in Casualty when they brought our mam in, you’d know that. And don’t swear. What’s the school like?’

‘Lousy.’

‘Pam likes her school. The people she’s with say she’s doing well there.’

‘She sucks up to everybody.’

‘It would be better all round if you did the same, Alfie,’ Marie said. ‘Why the hell can’t you behave yourself? Get on Mrs Morton’s good side; give her less to
complain about.’

‘Can’t stand her, and she hasn’t got a good side. Or Ernie, either; rotten bully. Take me with you. I want to see our mam.’

She tried to impress on him the sheer impossibility of taking him with her as they walked back to the house. When they reached the gate it was evident he’d heard nothing she had said.
‘Take me with you,’ he repeated, in a very subdued voice.

‘I can’t, Alfie,’ she said, despairing and exasperated with him. ‘You know very well I can’t. I have to work at the hospital. Our mam’s so badly wounded she
won’t be home for ages, and there’s nobody else to look after you now. We’re fighting a war, remember? We’re all in it, and you’ll have to be brave and do your bit,
like the rest of us. Anyway, the bus is full, there isn’t a seat.’

Alfie started to weep. ‘I’ll sit on your knee!’

‘Come on, buck up.’ Marie pulled a lace hankie out and wiped his tears. You’ll have to make the best of it for a bit, Alfie. I’ve got to work. There’s a lot of
wounded people need looking after. And apart from everything else, we need the money.’

‘If you’re so sure Dad’s dead, we ought to be having a funeral. I want to come to the funeral.’

‘I’m not sure what’s happening yet, Alfie.’ Marie said, not yet ready to give up all hope. ‘I’ll write to you as soon as I find out.’

She took his hands in hers, and noticed his fingernails chewed down to the quick. That was something new. He’d never been a fingernail biter before, and he’d never wet the bed,
either. She threw her arms round him for a last hug. ‘I’ll come and see you again as soon as I can, Alfie,’ she said, and fled for the bus.

She boarded it with a bad conscience. In no mood for conversation, she sat down beside a woman who was gazing out of the window, wrapped in her own thoughts. To Marie’s
relief she proved equally unsociable, and they travelled in blessed silence all the way to New Holland and the ferry. By the time they got there, the force of circumstances had helped Marie to talk
herself out of her misgivings about Alfie. Almost.

Charles was waiting for her on Corporation Pier, his hazel eyes full of sympathy. ‘Your ordeal’s over, poor girl. How was it?’

‘Bad enough.’

‘How did they take it?’

‘Not as I’d expected. Still, it’s over now.’ She held out the money he had given her. ‘Here’s your fiver. I didn’t need it.’

He tucked it into his inside pocket. ‘Are they all right?’

‘Our Pam is. She’s got a very good place,’ Marie said, taking his arm and walking with him towards the car. ‘Trust Pamela to land with her bum in the butter. I expected
her to be beside herself with grief, but you’d have thought I was talking about people she hardly knew.’

‘Maybe she hasn’t had time for it to sink in.’

‘Well, it certainly sank in with Alfie. He cried his eyes out; I couldn’t console him. And he’s with a real sour-faced widow and her horrible son.’

‘Perhaps he gives her plenty to be sour about,’ Charles said. ‘Most of Alfie’s troubles are of his own making, if you ask me. Remember the day he thought it would be a
good joke to stick a spud up the exhaust of Dad’s car? If I hadn’t caught him it would have ruined the engine. That would make anybody sour. And when he carved his initials into your
piano with that Swiss army knife some idiot gave him?’

That brought a smile to her lips. How could she forget? Her mother and father had gone to the allotment to gather in the last of the vegetables, Pam was with a friend down the street, and she
and Charles had sent Alfie out to play so they could take this golden opportunity to have an hour or two to themselves on the front-room sofa. They’d been in a Hollywood-style embrace when
Charles had suddenly frozen, staring at the window. Marie had turned to see Alfie making hideous faces at them, his features distorted and whitened by the pressure of the glass. It was then that
Charles had given Alfie the knife as a bribe to ‘hop it’.

‘That idiot was you, Chas,’ she said.

‘And I’ve never regretted anything as much in my life,’ he said. ‘And I got the blame from your mother, not him, the little rotter. Still, I’ll forgive and forget,
things being what they are.’

‘You’re all heart,’ she laughed.

Charles was waiting outside the hospital when she finished her early shift the following day. He jumped out of the car and opened the passenger door for her. ‘I’d
have liked to take you dancing on my last night of freedom, but I thought you’d be too tired, so I got us two tickets for Hull New Theatre,’ he said. ‘All you have to do there is
sit and relax. They’re doing
Rebecca.
It got a rattling good write-up in the paper.’

‘That’s nice,’ said Marie, although she was not in the mood for either dancing or playgoing. ‘I wonder if I’m ever going to get to know something definite about
Dad. Alfie asked about a funeral. If he’s dead, I’ll have to organize one.’ She sniffed back sudden tears.

Charles put a comforting arm around her. ‘Does your mother realize he’s missing yet?’

‘Well, she knows he’s not with her because the nurses say she keeps asking for him, but I don’t think she realizes he’s missing in the sense of “presumed
dead”. I’ve tried to tell her but it’s hard to know whether you’re getting through, because she doesn’t hear half of what you say, and she forgets the rest. God, what
a mess. She wouldn’t be fit to go to any funeral anyway. It’s Pam and Alfie I’m worried about. Alfie would definitely want to come, and I wonder if I should send for them both.
What do you think?’

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said Charles with a frown. ‘Pretty gruelling for anybody, I should think. Maybe Pam’s old enough to stand it, but it might be too much for young
Alfie. I’d have thought so, anyway. But you know them better than I do.’

‘I ought to let them know – give them the choice.’

‘Cross that bridge when you come to it. Until you know something definite; there’s nothing you can do. I’ll run you home, we’ll get something to eat, and then you get
your glad rags on. Let’s try to take your mind off it all for our last evening together, at least.’

Marie put on the brightest face she could manage and went to the theatre with him, determined not to spoil what Charles called his last night of freedom. Driving through the centre of Hull for
the first time in weeks, she saw the wrecked streets, with half-demolished buildings, craters and broken masonry everywhere, but Hull New Theatre had been lucky enough to survive the bombing. She
took her seat, determined to forget her troubles for a while and immerse herself in the play, but her mind kept flitting to thoughts of her missing father, her injured mother, Alfie’s misery,
Pam’s apparent indifference, and the awful responsibility of having all of it dropped squarely on her shoulders. During the interval she pretended enjoyment, smiled, nodded and agreed with
the people who were raving about the performance, and when they left the theatre she couldn’t have told anybody what the play had been about.

‘Lucky you’re on a late tomorrow,’ Charles said, as they drove home.

She agreed, her thoughts elsewhere. The journey continued with Charles making conversation, and Marie replying in monosyllables until he brought the car to a halt outside her front door. They
sat for a while, idly watching a couple approaching from the far end of the street, the man with his arm round the woman’s waist.

‘Are you going to ask me in for a cup of tea?’

Marie appeared not to have heard. ‘You know, I think I’m going to have to bring Alfie home. I can’t get him out of my mind. There’s something wrong there.’

‘Are you insane? You said yourself that if they hadn’t been evacuated, they’d almost certainly be dead. And at least half of what’s wrong there is Alfie, if you ask me.
Your mother was summoned to school to hear complaints about him twice, to my knowledge, and we hadn’t been courting ten months before they went to Bourne. If you want my opinion, the happiest
day of your parents’ lives was the day they waved him off.’

‘It was not. How can you say such a thing! Alfie’s a bit impish, but he’s not a bad lad at heart.’

‘A bit impish? Always up to no good, you mean, always playing some stupid prank on somebody. And even if he were the best lad in the world, how can you manage with him at home, with no one
to look after him?’

‘He’s eleven. He should be able to look after himself.’

Charles gave a wry smile, and shook his head. ‘There might be some 11-year-olds you’d dare trust in the house on their own, but I wouldn’t take a chance on Alfie. Just
don’t do anything hasty, Marie. My mother gave in to Danny and brought him home, and now she’s got even more reason to be terrified during the bombing, and he’s got her on a
string, the crafty little twerp. Don’t let Alfie pull the wool over your eyes. Give it a bit longer, see how things go. It’ll probably do him the world of good to be somewhere where
he’s not coddled. Toughen him up a bit.’

‘He might not survive being toughened up by a lad twice his size; Ernie strikes me as a nasty piece of work. And his mother’s face would turn the milk sour. They haven’t a good
word for our Alfie, either of them.’

‘Well, just let’s forget about Alfie for a bit. Are you going to ask me in?’

She nudged him and nodded towards the couple who were approaching, linked arm in arm.

‘That’s Hannah, that woman who cleans for your mother, isn’t it?’ Marie said. ‘I thought her husband was on the convoys.’

‘He is.’

‘That’s not him, then. He’s in an army uniform.’

Charles eyebrows shot up, and his eyes widened. ‘So he is!’

‘Mam! Mam!’ A little girl dashed out of a gate and ran to greet her. As soon as she was within striking distance Hannah landed a slap on her face that sent her reeling off the
pavement and into the road.

Marie jumped out of the car and bounded down the street, reaching them just as Hannah was inserting the key into her front door.

‘Just hold on,’ she shouted, ‘just hold on a bit. I saw that.’

‘Saw what?’

‘I saw what you just did to that bairn. I saw the crack you gave her. You ought to be ashamed of yourself.’

Hannah looked her up and down. ‘You get away and mind your own business. It’s no concern of yours how I look after my own daughter.’

Marie exploded. ‘I’ve just watched you walk down this street, and this bairn’s been sitting on the doorstep, waiting for you. How old is she? About six? You leave her roaming
the streets on her own till this time of night and you call that “looking after”?’

Hannah flung the door open. ‘Jenny! Get in that house.’

With her nose and eyes streaming and stifling her sobs, the little girl pulled her cardigan round her skinny frame, and with a wary eye on Hannah, dodged quickly under her arm and went inside.
Three strides brought Hannah to the gate, where she tried to stare Marie down – while addressing her comments to Charles, who was just approaching them. ‘Can’t you control your
young woman, Charles?’

‘I’m sorry, Hannah, you’ll have to excuse her. She’s got a lot on her mind. Come on, Marie. Come away,’ Charles urged.

‘That’s right, you get her away, tell her to mind her own bloody business, before she gets a piece of my mind. It’s nothing to do with her if I give my own bairn a
tap.’

Marie couldn’t believe her ears. ‘I’m sorry, Hannah? That wasn’t just a tap!’ She turned to Charles, outraged. ‘She nearly knocked the bairn’s head off
her shoulders. You saw it yourself! And who’s that she’s with, while her husband’s away risking his life on the convoys? Standing there watching her knock the poor man’s
bairn about?’

Charles grabbed her shoulders, pulling her away. ‘Come on, Marie. Come away, it really is nothing to do with us.’

The soldier with Hannah shrugged and gave Charles a wink before following Jenny into the house.

Marie shook Charles off, and advanced on Hannah. ‘I saw what you did, and if I see any more of it, I’ll have the law on you. Don’t think I won’t.’

Hannah went in and slammed the door.

‘Marie, let’s go,’ Charles begged. ‘It’s really none of your business.’

She gave him a blistering look. ‘What’s wrong? Are you scared of falling out with her? She’s your mother’s charwoman – it’s her that should be scared of
falling out with you! Are you worried your mother might have to scrub her own bloody floors for a change?’

‘Marie, you’re not being rational.’

‘Rational! Is it rational to leave a bairn her age roaming the streets on her own till this time? Anything could have happened to her. What if there’d been a raid?’

‘She’d have known to go to the shelter.’

‘A 6-year-old? What if she’d been hurt?’

‘Come off it, Marie. She’d have been among neighbours. People pouring out of their houses, neighbours who knew her. Somebody would have helped her.’

‘At times like that, people might be too busy looking after themselves and their own. And it’s her own mother that should be the one helping her.’

‘Yes, of course she should, but you can’t impose your standards on other people. And how do you know she’s six?’

‘She can’t be more. I’ve seen her going to school, and she’s not been going that long.’

Marie could barely speak to Charles when they got back to the house.

‘You’re tired,’ he said, trying to placate her, ‘and overwrought. With good reason, I know.’

‘Yes, I am.’

‘Too tired to invite me in for a cup of tea?’

‘Yes, I am.’