Now the War Is Over (20 page)

‘All right, Ellen?’ Rachel said, relieved that the girl was there. It made her visit seem safe and legitimate.

‘Have a seat,’ Michael said. ‘I’ve boiled the kettle – I’ll just get the tea ready.’

Rachel obeyed, and chatted to Ellen.

‘That’s nice – your knitting, I mean. Can I have a look?’

Ellen held it out. Rachel was impressed to see that the girl was making almost no mistakes.

‘They taught us at school,’ she said. ‘Once you’ve got the hang of it, it’s something you can do by feel. I can’t use a pattern yet, though – I’m
only knitting easy things.’

‘No socks for sailors yet,’ Michael joked, carrying in a tray of cups and a plate of biscuits.

Rachel smiled up at him. ‘Socks are difficult. You need more needles – for the heels.’

He shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I’ve never knitted anything in my life!’

Michael went out again and Rachel looked approvingly round the room. How lovely to have a front room and back room – this was just the sort of house she longed to live in!

The chairs they were sitting in were of well-worn brown leather. The floor was covered by two sections of green patterned carpet. On the table were a blue-and-white striped jug containing dried
flowers, a pile of books and a camera. For a moment she thought of Coronation Cameras where Danny had worked for a short time. But her attention was drawn to the lead fireplace and the shelf above
it, on which were two framed photographs.

She heard Michael’s footsteps returning from the kitchen again as she gazed hungrily at the wedding photograph – a young, slim man who must have been Michael, arm in arm with a woman
whose features Rachel could hardly make out under a gauzy veil. Where was this woman? It already felt as if she was not here – otherwise why would he have invited her?

The other picture was of Ellen, a smiling infant propped on a white blanket, though there was already an unseeing blankness to her eyes. And then she had to stop looking because Michael appeared
with the teapot.

As he poured, she examined him. It seemed so strange to be close to another man when she was used to Danny’s broad, freckly face, his bright blue eyes like Gladys’s which had
reproduced themselves in Melly and Kev, his wiry, muscular body. Michael seemed a calmer person altogether, brown hair falling across his forehead, thinning a little on top, she noticed as he bent
to pour the tea, and eyes of a colour she could not quite pin down – greenish, hazel – she was not sure. There was a gentle grace to him, as well as the upstanding bearing of someone
who, she guessed, had been in the forces.

‘How’s Tommy getting along?’ he asked, bringing a chair over from the table and arranging it between the armchairs for himself.

‘He’s doing all right,’ Rachel said. ‘They’re ever so good. We never thought he’d walk at all when he was little but he can manage a bit with a stick when he
needs to. He finds it ever so tiring but it means he’s not always in the chair. He’s doing well at the school too. They say he’s clever.’

‘I’m sure he is,’ Michael agreed, stirring his tea. ‘And Ellen . . .’

‘Oh, she’s clever, all right,’ Rachel said. ‘Her knitting’s better than mine for a start!’

They all laughed.

‘I made so many mistakes when I started,’ Ellen said. Rachel wondered if her mother had the same pale hair. There was still no mention of her.

‘It’s marvellous what they can do in those schools,’ Michael said. ‘I can hardly bear to think where we’d be without them.’

‘I know,’ Rachel said. ‘In fact, that’s where we were before we found out about this place. A lady came and told us about the school. We were . . . Well, I couldn’t
believe it at first. Tommy had never been to school before.’

‘Good gracious!’ Michael said.

They talked for a long time about their children. She realized that it was a relief for him to have someone to talk to who knew what it was like to have a child who was different, whose life was
such a struggle.

He was fascinated when she said they worked the Rag Market and wanted to know all about it and she asked him about his work.

He smiled, topping up her teacup and offering the biscuits again. She took a Bourbon, nodding her thanks. She definitely felt better for something in her stomach.

‘I was always mad about taking pictures,’ he said. ‘My uncle had a camera, just a little box Brownie, that he let me loose on when I was only about seven. And that was that. It
was all I ever wanted to do, really. As soon as I got out of school I went and got a job with a photographer here and – well, I’ve been at it ever since. In the war the navy let me
carry on – Fleet Air arm, reconnaissance photographs.’

‘You mean out of aeroplanes?’ She was impressed.

‘Mostly, yes.’

‘Did you take that one?’ she asked, nodding at the portrait of Ellen.

‘Oh, yes – and I’ve got a much more recent one, just done it in fact.’ He jumped up with nimble energy and went to the table where from a paper folder he produced a
close-up of Ellen, obviously very recent. She was facing the camera diagonally as if looking dreamily at the corner of the room, her hair arranged softly back over her shoulders. Her face wore a
sweet but wistful expression.

‘It’s lovely.’ The girl looked beautiful in it, a little older than in real life. It had captured the essence of her. ‘You’re so pretty, Ellen,’ Rachel said,
and then a wave of discomfort passed through her – she’s probably never seen her own face . . .

But Ellen just smiled.

‘You’d be rather photogenic, I think,’ Michael said. He stood back and appraised her, a professional at work suddenly. ‘You have very good cheekbones.’

‘Do I?’ Rachel blushed. No one had ever said that before! ‘That’s news to me I can tell you!’

‘You only have to look in the mirror,’ he said. ‘Here –’ For a second he ran a finger down her cheek, so softly that it was barely a touch, a butterfly’s
footsteps. ‘They create interesting shadows. Perhaps you’d let me photograph you one day?’

‘Oh – well!’ Rachel laughed, startled. ‘That might be nice, yes!’

Michael sat again. He told her that he had been born in Kings Heath, not far away, and lived all his life in the area. His parents were dead but he had a brother who lived in Shirley.

Rachel wondered how old he was. Ellen was about Cissy’s age, but the couple in the photograph must have been . . . Well, obviously older than she and Danny were when they set out. She
thought Michael must be well on in his thirties.

In turn she relayed a little about herself – that she lived in Aston, that she had a daughter about Ellen’s age, two more sons of six and four. Somehow she never quite mentioned
Danny or that she was carrying another child.

By the time she got up to go, they had had an amiable couple of hours of talk and laughter. It had been such a relief to talk easily, to feel a kind friendliness coming from him. There was
nothing to be ashamed of. Yet, going to the door to leave, she felt self-conscious about being seen leaving his house.

‘Rachel,’ Michael said as she stepped outside. She turned. He was speaking in a low voice and sounded suddenly tense. He joined her out on the step and drew the front door almost
closed.

‘I didn’t want to explain in front of Ellen. It’s not that she doesn’t know, obviously, but she doesn’t like to hear me say it . . .’ Rachel waited.

Michael spoke, looking down at the blue bricks of the front path. ‘Ellen’s mother left me. We were married in 1940 and the year after that I went into the navy – the Air Arm.
Ellen came along the next year. She was born blind. They don’t know why, of course . . .’ He shrugged. ‘Just one of those things, I suppose. By the time I came home, she –
Nancy – had had another child, by someone else. She . . . Well, she didn’t want Ellen in her new life. Never really could accept the fact that Ellen was never going to be able to see.
It’s not so bad in a baby, but of course as they get older and start to move about . . .’

Rachel listened, horrified. Fancy leaving your child, leaving a nice man like Michael. Then she ticked herself off, inwardly. Who was she to be judging other people, when she had just spent the
afternoon visiting a man who was not her husband?

‘She left Ellen with me when Ellen was nearly six. Of course, it all took a lot of getting used to, for both of us.’ He stared grimly along the path. ‘There’ve been
times, I can tell you . . .’

Rachel felt tenderness awake in her. This poor man – what a homecoming!

He shrugged again and gave a strained smile. ‘It’s just all rather lonely. People don’t really want to know, do they? So it’s been nice to have some company –
especially someone who has some idea . . .’

‘Yes,’ Rachel said. ‘I’ve barely met anyone – not ’til Tommy started at the school.’

They stood for a moment, not speaking.

‘Well –’ Michael became brisk and cheerful. ‘I must let you go. But if you’ve ever got time – I’m usually here.’

‘Don’t you go out to work?’ she said.

‘I rent a place where I have a darkroom and I can do studio portraits. I’m there some of the time. I have to be flexible – because of her.’

‘I suppose . . .’ Her heart beat faster. She looked up at him. ‘I could . . . Maybe, I mean, manage a morning in the week?’

Michael smiled. The flesh round his eyes crinkled and the clown-like curve of his lips made her smile back.

‘That’d be nice.’

A turmoil of feelings swirled in her on the bus back into town. There’s nothing going on, she told herself. Danny could have sat in that room with them all afternoon. But the feelings of
ease with this man, of understanding, tenderness – Danny could not have seen that, still could not see it.

In town, with her bags of fruit and veg, she walked into the bustle of the Rag Market. The stallholders were all shutting up now, folding away the clothes, packing up bags and prams and basket
carriages. Rachel smiled as she looked around. The place brought back so many memories, both good and bad, but above all of her early days with Danny, of the Danny she had adored . . .

As she moved towards their two stalls, both along the back wall of the market, Danny was busy piling up pairs of men’s trousers and jackets and talking to the man on the stall next door.
She drew closer and then he looked up and caught sight of her. He stopped what he was doing. For a second he looked startled, then faintly hostile, and then she saw a hunger in his eyes which
seemed to say,
My wife – here she is . . .
As if all their quarrels were behind them.

He thinks I’ve come to make up, she thought, with a longing in her. But nothing’s going to be made up unless he gives up this stupid idea of going to Australia . . .

She breezed up to his stall. ‘Thought I’d come and help,’ she said. She held up her bags to Gladys. ‘Got some fruit and veg.’

‘Stick it under here,’ Gladys said, indicating her stall. ‘You can help me fold up this lot.’

By the time they got home, their argument had gone off the boil for the moment and when they reached Alma Street and found Mo dancing about the yard – for the time being, all else was
forgotten.

‘
How
much?’

Gladys seemed hardly able to take in the news when Dolly told her a few days later. She had come straight round to see them as soon as they’d heard.

‘You’d best sit down as well, Dolly,’ Rachel said. Dolly’s face was very pale and she looked as if her legs were about to give way. ‘I’ll make some
tea.’

‘Got anything stronger?’ Dolly said, lighting a cigarette with trembling fingers.

Gladys nodded at the half-empty bottle of port wine next to the wireless on the sideboard. It might have been only ten o’clock on a Monday morning but this was medicinal.

‘It’s . . .’ She gulped, accepting the glass of port. ‘God, I can hardly say it, Glad. It’s . . .’ She lowered her voice to a whisper, ‘
Thirty-two
grand
.’

Rachel heard herself gasp at the same time as Gladys.
Thirty-two thousand pounds!
It was an unimaginable amount of money. It was beyond thinking of, beyond envying. If Dolly had said
five hundred, she might well have burned with desire for it to be hers.

‘So that means . . .’ Gladys struggled to get her mind round it. She took a fortifying mouthful of port. ‘There’s four of them, did you say?’

‘There’s Mo and Alf and Fatty Jenkins and – oh, I can’t remember but yes, four. It’s going to be in the papers, Glad. Only we’ve asked them not to print our
names.’

‘That’s eight thousand each,’ Rachel said. Even that was beyond seeming real.

Dolly looked from one to the other of them, wide-eyed like a little girl. ‘I feel all knocked for six. I mean, you think you might win a tenner – or even a hundred quid if you get a
really good day. But this . . . I don’t know if I’m coming or going at the moment.’

‘The lucky bastards,’ was Danny’s comment. ‘Lucky, lucky bastards.’

He said it with such feeling that Rachel felt even further from him than she had before. Of course Mo and Dolly
were
lucky and she tried to be glad for them, especially after losing
Wally and all the sadness they had endured. It was time they had some good fortune. But there was a feeling that this changed things, and no one knew quite how yet.

She couldn’t help thinking about all that money, though. Imagine what we could do with some of that, she thought. A nice house, away from here; a decent car. She didn’t ask what
Danny would do. It would probably have involved taking off across the world and she didn’t want to hear it. The two of them had come to an uneasy truce for the moment, but there was still a
quarrel between them and neither of them would back down.

The money brought its complications. The yard was full of talk about it, jokes about buying a mansion, a yacht. Everyone bought copies of the
Evening Mail
to relish the news. But even
though the names of the four families were not published, somehow people found out.

‘We’re getting these letters,’ Dolly told Gladys, with a bewildered look on her face. ‘From people we’ve never even heard of. They’ve all got a sob
story.’