Now the War Is Over (30 page)

‘Course I won’t, Ciss,’ she said. She took Cissy’s hand and squeezed it.

Tommy bent over the lavatory, retching up a tan gush of tea.

He had got up at six, having hardly slept. He was so charged up with nerves that he knew he would need time to steady himself for the day to come. Creeping down to the kitchen he had put the
kettle on and sat sipping scalding tea, hoping it would take away the queasiness, but he had had to hurry out to the lav, downstairs at the back, and only just made it.

He flushed the lavatory and washed his mouth out over the basin. For a moment he leaned against the wall, breathing hard. A chill spread through him, but at the same time he could feel that his
new shirt was already clammy with sweat.

I can’t do it, he thought, staring at the tooth-coloured enamel of the basin. All these years he had led a protected life, surrounded by family or Carlson House. Today he was expected to
venture out into the world, to travel right across town and start work. A proper job. What if he couldn’t manage any of it? But his next thought was, I’ve got to. What else am I going
to do? I can’t stop at home all my life.

Some of the welfare workers at Carlson House had visited firms in the city to find out who would be prepared to take on disabled employees. When it turned out that Tommy had passed five O-levels
and that they were told his disabilities were not nearly as severe as those of some children, he had been one of the first to be offered a job.

He was to go to the offices of Joseph Lucas’s in Hockley. What he would do when he got there he was not sure. Whatever it was, he found the prospect terrifying.

By the time Mom came down to get the others off to school and make breakfast, he was already dressed and ready to go.

‘You’re up early,’ she said.

‘Umm.’ He was sitting at the table in the work clothes they had bought: black trousers, white shirt, jacket, all strange and crisply new on him.

Mom sounded nervous and it made him want to seem as if he wasn’t. Carlson House and the Midland Spastic Association clubs and socials had become her little world as well. It had protected
both of them.

Dad came down and ate standing up, a wedge of bread, slurping tea. Tommy felt the atmosphere of awkwardness coming from him that was always there when he had to do anything with his eldest son
– uncomfortable, trying too hard.

‘You had your breakfast?’ Danny asked in a gruff voice.

‘Yes,’ Tommy lied. ‘Ready – when – you are.’

Dad was to drive him for the moment. For a start he needed to know the way. But someone from the Midland Spastic Association had told him that there was now an organization from where you could
get motorized tricycles for invalids. He was excited and nervous about the thought of being able, at last, to get about by himself.

‘One thing at a time, love,’ Mom had said. ‘Let’s get you settled in the job first. See if it works out.’

He heard in her voice the thought that it might not.

Rachel stood outside, waving them off in the old Standard. Tommy gave her a brief wave, then faced the front, dignified, not even looking at her. She had tucked him into the
car, overdone it, she knew that. Even now that her eldest son was setting out to begin his first job, she found it hard not to baby him. A job – Tommy! – it was the miracle they never
thought would happen.

She stood with a white cardigan draped over her shoulders, watching the car slide away down the street, and gave thanks for Carlson House, for the years of kindness and attention, of speech
therapy and lessons and all the care that went into trying to help children like Tommy have the best they could manage in life. Tommy, as it turned out, had become a star pupil there, actually
passing national exams. The cleverness of her children amazed her. She had never thought herself anything special.

Yet as the car disappeared, she shivered. The road was quiet, a breeze blowing little clouds across the sky, and a cold, empty feeling came over her. She was not needed any more – not by
Tommy, to whom she thought she would be tied for life. And while there was a lightness, a relief, she found she felt bereaved.

Melly was gone – she came home once a month or so and seemed happy as anything with her new nursing life – and now her little Tommy too. The two children who had been her whole life
throughout the war years, when she was barely older than Tommy was now.

She stood for a moment, close to tears. Then she reminded herself that her job was not over yet. There were plenty more children still to look after and that Alan was inside the house getting up
to who knew what! She hurried indoors.

Tommy and Danny did not talk much in the car.

‘You’d best watch the route, son,’ Danny said as they set off. ‘You need to know where you’re going.’

Tommy nodded and watched queasily out of the window as they made their way across town, to Hockley. He had been once before, for a brief interview, but as Dad braked near the imposing factory
buildings in Great King Street, he felt once more overawed and scared. Lucas’s was one of the great, famous Birmingham firms, started by ‘Old Joe’ Lucas as he was fondly known,
who had started out in the nineteenth century selling paraffin from a barrow. Once he started manufacturing oil lamps, the company grew and grew.

Tommy stared up at the buildings, wishing he could see through the walls to the lathes and presses, the engineers and workers, and all the machine parts pouring out of the factory. Now, he was
to be one of the tiny cogs in the Lucas machine.

‘Well – here we go,’ Danny said. ‘I’ve got as close as I can. That’s the door you need.’ He sat for a moment, the engine cut off, hands braced on the
wheel.

Tommy didn’t want to get out of the car, not yet. Streams of people were making their way into the works, some glancing into the car. A small covered walkway across the road divided the
offices from the manufacturing section of the works.

It felt as if Dad had something to say. The discomfort of it grew in the car.

‘Look, son,’ Danny came out with at last, staring through the windscreen. ‘You’re a good lad. You’ll do well, I’m sure. But people can be unkind. They
don’t always know how to deal with you . . .’

As if I need telling, Tommy raged inside. As if his guts weren’t in turmoil because of these very thoughts swirling in his head. He just wanted to get out of the car. To begin and get it
over with.

‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘I’d better go, Dad. Don’t want to be late.’ He saw Danny move to get out. ‘S’all right,’ he said quickly, grasping his
stick. ‘I can manage.’

On the pavement with his stick, he felt exposed and foolish, but he stood tall and waved his father away. Danny gave one of his brief gestures of parting with the flat of his hand against the
window. And, amid the sea of hurrying workers, for the first time he could remember, Tommy was out in the world, alone.

‘Here y’are, mate – you can sit here.’

The supervisor stood over him as Tommy sank, still panting from the effort and worry of getting up the stairs to the office. Already he felt exhausted. He was in a room with windows along one
side, at a seat among a row of desks which, though not a production line exactly, was how he imagined a production line would look. Only this was a production line of papers.

The man treated him in a breezy, infantile way, not sure how to talk to him.

‘Here you are – this is the invoice department.’ He spoke slowly as if he was explaining things to a small child. Now – I’ll show you what you have to
do.’

The job, Tommy learned, consisted of tearing off the invoices – in this case for L-plates – sorting the copies and stapling them together. While easy as falling off a log for someone
with two working arms and a working brain, Tommy was minus one of the working arms. He eyed up the work before him, the stapler. He could manage it, one movement at a time, and he set off. It was
laborious and slow, lining up the sheets of paper. He soon worked out a way of tucking the front inch or so of an invoice over the edge of the desk and pressing his body against it while he used
his right hand to staple the corners.

There was a young lad on one side of him and a girl on the other. The boy was ginger-headed, with very pale eyelashes and about his age. Tommy felt sure they were working far quicker than he
ever could and he felt tense and foolish. It was not as if it was a difficult job.

The girl was pale, black-haired, plump-faced and sleepy looking. She had a very big chest which Tommy found his eyes drawn to in fascination. Neither his mother nor Melly was anything like that.
Among all the females he knew, he had never seen one quite that shape before. It gave him an excited feeling. Once she caught him staring at her and made a rude face at him. He looked away, his
cheeks burning. By asking a few questions throughout the morning he ascertained that neither of his work fellows had any O-levels.

As soon as the lunch break arrived, both his neighbours fled the office to the company restaurant or the shops without asking him if he needed anything. Mom had sent him with a pack of
sandwiches and he ate them at his desk, wondering where the lavs were. He found out when the ginger-headed boy came back, tucking into a greasy and delicious-looking sausage roll.

‘Wha’s yer name?’ he asked Tommy, swallowing so that his Adam’s apple wobbled.

‘Tommy.’

‘Mine’s Micky. Tha’s Con.’ He nodded at the busty girl’s empty chair. ‘Wha’s the matter with you?’

‘Nothing,’ Tommy said, irritated by the way he said it. ‘Nothing’s the – matter – with – me.’

‘But you talk funny – and you’re a cripple, ain’t yer?’ He took another bite and added, muffled, ‘Tha’s what Con said. You’re from the home
– the cripples’ home.’

How did they know where he was from? Tommy wondered, a blush spreading across his face. He looked down at his desk.

‘I’ve – never –’ Because he was tense his speech became more contorted. It always did. ‘Been in – a – home,’ he said as firmly as he could
manage. ‘I – live in – Harborne.’

Micky stared at him, swallowing the last of the sausage roll. ‘Oh, ar,’ he said finally. ‘Well, you look like a cripple to me.’

It was going to be a very long afternoon.

When he made his way out of the building at clocking-off time, the grey Standard was waiting almost where Danny had dropped him off.

‘All right, son?’ Dad said, as he got in.

‘Yeah.’ He felt like crying.

Dad pulled away from the kerb. ‘Well, you seem to be all in one piece. How d’yer get on?’

‘All right,’ Tommy said. He just wanted to curl up somewhere and be very quiet.

‘Well,’ Dad said, seeming cheerful. ‘You’ve done your first day’s work!’

Work, the work he was apparently so lucky to be doing – was one of the most dismal experiences of his life. Was this all, from now on?

He could see his father was more at ease with him because he could work like anyone else. And there were people he knew at Carlson House, like his friend Martin, whose twisted bodies would never
let them enter that world the way Tommy had done. He ought to be feeling happier, he told himself. He
had
survived it. And he knew he must put on a brave front to go home and face Mom.

She was waiting, obviously hovering as he came through the door, in her apron, a spoon in her hand which she had carried from the kitchen on hearing the door.

‘Hello, babby – Tommy, I mean – how did you get on?’ Her breathless anxiety was all too apparent.

‘All right,’ he said. ‘Yeah.’ He forced a smile on to his face.

‘Is that the lad?’ He heard Gladys’s voice from the back room. Auntie – had she come over specially? ‘Come in here, Tommy, and tell yer auntie all about
it.’

So much happiness that he had a job, that he could lift the burden of himself from their shoulders. He limped into the back room to tell Gladys that the day had been good and people were nice
and it was all right.

Only later, in bed, in the little box room he had to himself, did he let himself cry, muffling any sound with the bedclothes. He thought of Kev, of all the football and cricket he played at the
grammar school, things he could never ever do himself. He might have been like Kev – mightn’t he? They said he was clever. Had a brain. But his body let his brain down.

And now he was faced with this, day in day out. A few of the older ladies were kind and motherly to him. But with the younger ones, like Con, they either ignored him or treated him like a
curiosity or an idiot. Without a flaming O-level between them! he reflected bitterly. The near presence of Con’s breasts would not leave him alone. At least that bit of me works all right, he
thought, as he hardened with excitement. But his arousal cast him into further gloom. No girl was ever going to look at him, was she?

At Carlson House he had seldom been frustrated because the life there was tailored to his needs and so many of the others had had bodies that were even more uncooperative than his.

But now, he thought, this same body shaking with sobs, now it was always going to be like this. Like hell. Only he’d have to keep quiet about it – and be grateful for having anything
at all.

Rachel crumpled up the last of the paper streamers which had sagged in colourful lines across the room. The kids had had a lovely time making them and she smiled at the thought
of Ricky, Sandra and Alan round the table before Christmas, for once not squabbling too much over the squeezy little bottle of glue and the cut-out strips of coloured paper and old magazines Danny
had brought home for them to use.

She hurried out to the back to put them in the dustbin, her head bowed in the drizzle. It was a horrible grey day and she felt flat and sad.

Just before Christmas she had had a visit from Cissy with the baby boy she had given birth to six weeks earlier, Andrew as she had called him. Cissy was besotted with the little lad who, like
his mother, looked plump, creamy and satisfied. She reported that Teddy was over the moon at the birth of his son. Rachel’s own children had loved meeting Andrew. And then there was all the
excitement of Christmas, the children up at crack of dawn to find their stockings and all the cooking and enjoying being together, all of them around her. Gladys had come over and it had been one
of the happiest family times she could remember.