Now the War Is Over (11 page)

‘I don’t know why you bother coming any more if you don’t want to do anything,’ Melly had said to Cissy earlier. Cissy seemed to have no time for her these days. She just
rolled her eyes, looked superior and didn’t say anything back.

Melly was so fed up that she felt like hurting Cissy – slapping or scratching her. But it was the rejection she felt from Tommy that was the worst. He didn’t seem to want anything
from her now he was at school. Tommy had also told her that at school they had a proper frame to hold his paper, to stop it slipping. He was quite good with his right hand and his writing was
coming on. What he could not do was to hold the paper still with his left hand. But he was now on to something better than having the paper weighed down with a tin of marrowfat peas and a packet of
salt or whatever came to hand. Everything at Carlson House was marvellous and it seemed that none of the things she had done for him were good enough now.

Her throat ached with the need to cry. Earlier, she had wanted Tommy to see how near her tears were, to take pity on her. But he just kept staring at his comic.

Another outbreak of giggles came from along the yard and Melly turned her back on Cissy and Fred. The worst of it was, what Cissy felt for him wasn’t even a tiny
fraction
of what
she felt for Reggie, she thought furiously. Reggie was older and much more exciting than stupid old Fred. But Melly couldn’t tell anyone about that because she felt embarrassed and no one
would believe her. Reggie wasn’t even here – he’d been away in the army for so long. Dolly kept saying he might be home for Christmas and every time she thought of it, Melly felt
an electric thrill of excitement.

As she stood there Melly could hear the rise and fall of Dolly’s voice inside number one over the murmur of the television. Frankie Davies, the boy from number four, kept trotting up and
down hitting his own thigh and saying, ‘G’won, Trigger!’ Melly didn’t want to know about Frankie. He was pale and odd, with adenoids. Beyond him, tucked against the far
wall, was the Norton, Wally and Reggie’s pride and joy, under an old tarpaulin. Wally tinkered with it at the weekends and took it out, with threats directed at any of the children in the
yard as to what would happen to them if he caught them meddling with it.

Melly picked at the moss on the wall with her finger. The memory of her brother’s bowed head kept forcing itself into her mind. Tommy wouldn’t look up at her. Tommy, who before had
turned to her for almost everything. She had been his companion, his teacher. Now he didn’t want her. She was glad the light was bad because she didn’t want to cry in front of Frankie
Davies. She swallowed hard, feeling more lost and lonely standing there in the shadows than she had ever felt before.

No one seemed to want her. Mom only took any notice when she had a job for her to do and all she talked about now was Tommy’s new school. She went in once a week to help and it seemed to
have taken over all of her mind. Dad played with Kev and Ricky, never with her. She wanted someone to want her – need her.

A warm feeling spread through her as she thought about the nurse who had come when Ricky was born.
You could make a marvellous little nurse one day.
The idea caught hold in her mind.
That was what she’d do – she’d become a nurse! Then she could look after people and they would need her and think she was special, the way she’d thought Nurse Waller was
special. She’d work in a hospital and she’d be called Nurse Booker and she’d be the best nurse that ever was!

She was full of a burning passion, all in that moment, wanting it now, wanting it to begin. She thought about Lil Gittins. Lil always said what a good girl she was and how Stanley seemed to talk
to her when he didn’t to most people. That’s what she would do. She’d go and see Stanley. She could help him; nurse him or whatever he needed.

Straightening up, she brushed down her grey school dress. Pulling her shoulders back, she said to herself, ‘Nurse Booker went to call at number five.’ She walked in a dignified
manner across the yard, past Cissy and Freddie. She waited for Cissy to call to her, ‘Where’re you off to, Melly?’ But Cissy, propped in a provocative stance against the wall of
the wire factory, didn’t even look round. Melly reached number five and, after taking a breath, rapped on the door.

‘Yes? Who is it?’ She heard Lil’s tense voice from inside. Poor Lil. That was what everyone called her. Poor Lil with her wrecked husband, her lost youth. But Melly could not
remember Lil before the war. In her memory she had always been grey-haired and thin and nervy.

‘It’s . . .’ She wanted to say, ‘Nurse Booker.’ Nurse Booker who strode across battlefields bringing balm and healing to injured men, like Florence Nightingale, who
they had heard a story about at school. The men reached out to her, desperate, with trembling hands as she went past. They never forgot her. ‘It’s me. Melly.’

The door opened. Lil had a pinner on over her dress, hair half hanging down. She looked tense, her hands concealed behind her back. A nasty smell drifted out through the door.

‘What is it you want, bab? I’m just doing . . .’ She trailed off as if not wanting to finish the sentence. ‘I’m just helping Stanley.’

‘I thought . . .’ Melly sounded silly now to herself. ‘I just thought, I’d come and see Mr Gittins. Sort of help you look after him, like.’

Lil stared at her. ‘You?’ she said, bewildered. She recovered her natural kindness. ‘Well, that’s nice of you, bab, but I don’t think . . . I mean, not now. You
can’t come now – I’m just sorting him out. It’s not a good time for Stanley – and I’m doing our dinner. You could come back tomorrow, but . . .’ She looked
vague. ‘I never know, you see, how he’ll be. But . . .’ She was already closing the door. ‘Come back tomorrow, bab, if yer want.’

‘Where’re you going, Melly?’ Rachel said the next afternoon. ‘Tommy’ll be home any minute. I want you to help me get the tea.’

‘I said I’d go and see Mr and Mrs Gittins,’ Melly said. She made it sound official. ‘They’re expecting me.’

Rachel looked up from the table where she was rubbing fat and flour for pastry. Irritably she pushed a lock of hair out of the way with her arm. ‘What d’you mean? What d’you
want to do that for?’

‘Because I want to be a nurse,’ Melly said. There – she’d said it – first time ever!

Rachel looked at her in amazement before bursting out laughing. ‘A nurse – you! What the hell gave you that idea?’

Melly folded her arms. She felt cold and deflated. ‘I just do. I want to help people.’

‘Well, come and flaming well help
me
then,’ Rachel said impatiently.

Before Melly could think of an answer there was a knock at the door. ‘Carlson House – got your son outside,’ the taxi driver called and Rachel quickly wiped her hands and
hurried after him.

The door of number five was ajar and she gave it a timid tap. Mrs Gittins appeared after a few moments and looked at her, dull-eyed. Mom always talked about how Lil Gittins had
been before the war – a happy soul, always singing, dressed up. You’d hardly know her now. The woman who stood there now in a washed-out frock several sizes too big for her looked
wizened and heartbroken.

‘What d’yer want, bab?’ She was speaking in a very quiet voice but Melly could still hear that she sounded irritated. ‘Stanley’s just having forty winks in his
chair.’

‘Sorry, Mrs Gittins.’ Melly held her hands politely together in front of her. ‘Only, yesterday you said to come back today. You said I could help look after Mr
Gittins.’

Lil Gittins leaned against the door frame. She tilted her head so that it rested on the wood with its chipped remains of dark green paint. ‘What d’you think you’re going to do
for him, bab? He’s past helping, my Stan. He’s asleep at the moment.’ She turned her head and listened for a second. A faint sound came from behind her. ‘Not that he ever
sleeps for long. All right, come in then. I s’pose I should be glad anyone wants to see my old man. There’s precious few of his pals take the trouble now. You can sit with us, keep us
company a bit if yer like.’

Melly stepped into the downstairs room. She imagined herself in uniform, neat and knowledgeable, bringing information and comfort. She had never been in the Gittins’ house before. It was
gloomy inside, on this winter afternoon.

‘I won’t put the light on yet,’ Lil whispered. ‘He says it blinds him. Here –’ Her essentially good temper was improving now that she had company. She reached
for a rickety wooden chair from by the table. ‘Come and sit by me, bab. It’s nice of you to call. I’ll make us a cuppa a bit later once Stanley’s come to. Oh, dear . .
.’

She went to shift a bucket that was near Stanley’s chair. A grey cloth was draped over it. ‘It’s not that he can’t walk,’ she said in a whisper. ‘But he
don’t like going outside – not even to the lav. He wants to be near me – all the time.’ This was said with a brave desperation.

Seeing the bucket, Melly suddenly noticed the strong stink of wee in the room. Their own house stank of it often enough, since no one wanted to go all the way down the yard at night and they
slopped out buckets in the mornings. But in here it smelt especially rank. She told herself nurses had to get used to that sort of thing. Lil hurried the bucket into the scullery, out of sight.

There was very little room to move. Two armchairs took up a lot of space near the old range. A mirror hung over the mantelpiece, along which were strewn a few dusty trinkets and a pair of brass
candlesticks with stubs of candles in them. There was a table near the gas stove, and a chipped, white cupboard, curtained off at the front with a piece of brown-and-white flowery material. Another
curtain, more like an old grey blanket, hung behind the door and the walls were covered in a drab, pale brown patterned paper which looked as if it had been there forever. In one corner, near the
front of the house, the ceiling bulged downward as if afflicted with a cancerous growth.

Melly remembered the inside of the Suttons’ house when Evie and the others were still there, the horrible squalor of it. These two houses, built against the wall, seemed to be worse than
the other three. This one was not as bad as number four, but there was still that creeping, mouldy smell and everything felt old and damp and worn out. Gladys always made sure that her house was
painted every once in a while and she liked to make new, colourful curtains and spread a cheerful cloth over the table. And the Morrisons’ house was done up as well as you could do up these
‘jerry-built rat traps’ as Mo called them, because they now had several wages coming in. Not like Lil and Stanley.

Melly sank on to the chair which she placed quite close to that of her patient. In her head she was still playacting. The nurse had come to call, to see how the patient was faring. Her eyes were
drawn to his face. She couldn’t help staring.

Stanley was asleep in his chair, his tilted head back. In the gloom she could see the dark hole of his open mouth and that with no hat on, he was almost bald. One side of the scalp was papery
and distorted right up to his left eye, though the eye itself was intact. He was very thin, his nose pointed, cheeks gaunt, a thin layer of salt-and-pepper stubble covering the lower part of his
face. For a second, in between breaths, Melly thought he looked as if he was dead. It was an unsettling feeling, like watching a statue breathe.

‘My poor old boy –’ Lil whispered, leaning closer to her. A powerful smell of body odour filled Melly’s nostrils from Lil’s dress. Lil nodded towards her husband.
‘You’d never know he’s the age he is – looks like an old man, don’t ’e?’ She spoke in a flat way, as if all feeling had long been drained out of her.
‘Sounds cruel to say, but I lost him the way a lot of other wives did – in the war. The war took my man from me, chewed him up, spat him out. Only – my husband came back, like a
ghost. They don’t say anything about the ones like Stanley when they talk about heroes, do they?’

Melly was not sure what to say, so she shook her head.

‘When I first met Stan, he was cock of the walk,’ Lil said, a fond smile playing round her lips. ‘Full of it, he was – handsome, lively, strong. Carted all sorts of stuff
for the railways, up and down across Birmingham.’ The light which had come into her eyes died abruptly. ‘Our Marie can’t bear to see him. Hardly ever comes near.’ She
touched Melly’s hand for a moment. ‘But you’ve come, haven’t you? Tell you what, I’ll put the kettle on now and then there’ll be some water for tea when we want
some. You’ll have some tea, won’t you, bab?’

‘Yes, please, Mrs Gittins,’ Melly replied. That made her feel more welcome.

Lil Gittins got to her feet and picked her way round the furniture. Melly watched her thin shoulders as she filled the kettle from a pail by the stove. As Lil lifted the kettle on to the gas the
lid fell off and hit the floor with a tinny clatter.

‘Oops-a-daisy!’ Lil said softly, turning to look at Stanley. The noise made him jump and stir with a low, startled groan. Both of them watched him. He did not open his eyes, but
moved restlessly in the chair.

‘It’s all right,’ Lil whispered. ‘The slightest thing makes him jump, see.’

Melly sat watching him, stern and floppy as a rag doll in the chair. He twitched and muttered. He didn’t look happy, she thought. She wondered what she could do, what a nurse would do.

Glancing at Lil, who was laying out cups, she stood up and leaned over Mr Gittins. With the words, ‘There, there, it’s all right,’ she laid her hand on his clammy forehead, the
way a nurse would—

She was almost flung backwards. Stanley Gittins shot up in the chair with a yell. He did not get to his feet but threw her off and sat panting, staring wildly about him.

‘Who? Wha’ the . . . ? What was . . . ?’ He caught sight of Melly. ‘Who the hell’re you? Oh – Lil – where are yer, Lil?’ he shouted, flailing back
and forth in the chair, arms folded across him, groaning and beginning to weep.

Lil wove through the room at urgent speed. ‘It’s all right, love – Stanley . . . Stanley . . .’ She knelt at his feet and took the distressed man in her arms, rocking him
as he cried and murmuring to him. ‘It’s all right, babby – there’s nothing wrong, your Lilly’s here . . .’