Tara (25 page)

Bill's bedroom was even tinier than her own at home, yet once four boys had lived in it. No curtain hung at the window, and the sagging, lumpy bed made her itch to look at it.

Bill did his best, he prodded the stove back to life, put a kettle on to boil and washed up the pile of pots and plates. Amy sat on the edge of one
of
the chairs and listened to his explanation.

'Mum had eight kids in ten years.' He smiled ruefully. 'Two died at birth, three more before they was five. I came along ten years after the last one, the same year Dad lost his arm in an accident down at the docks, so we was on welfare from then on. They ain't never seen the country or the sea, all they know is round here. I prayed this place would be bombed so they'd get a decent home, but they weren't even lucky enough for that.'

'But your brothers. Where are they?'

'Mick, the eldest, was the one killed at Dunkirk.' Bill sighed. 'Our Frank did a runner years ago when the bluebottles were after him. He ain't never showed 'is face again. Ernest, the next one up to me, joined the Navy as a lad and he lives in Portsmouth. He writes at Christmas, that's all, and I'll get away too as soon as I can.'

The arrival of his parents was heralded by dogs barking furiously and the sound of arguing.

'Don't mind Ma, she's all right really,' Bill said quickly. 'Just a bit sharp-tongued.'

Gertie MacDonald was fat, old and slatternly, with wispy white hair and pale brown eyes that swept over Amy in astonishment.

'Who the 'ell's this?' she asked, wheezing as she sank into the other chair and spread her fat thighs wide enough to show long pink bloomers.

Norman MacDonald lurched in unsteadily; a tall, thin man with a hangdog expression, his empty sleeve flapping.

Bill explained briefly what had happened and Amy turned pink as the old couple studied her. It seemed impossible to her that such a pair could have a finelooking son like Bill. Gertie was short, with a deeply lined face that held traces of grime, made worse by having only two or three blackened teeth left. She wore a crossover pinny ingrained with grease over a shapeless mauve print dress, and stockings that only reached her knees, held up with elastic garters, above which purple, veiny flesh bulged.

Norman needed a shave. His collarless shirt was black with dirt, his brown trousers several sizes too large. He looked as if he'd lost weight dramatically, leaving folds of skin just hanging.

'Clear off, you two.' Gertie pointed to the door and nodded her head. 'I want a word with 'er.'

Norman obediently staggered off, his eyes glazed with drink. Bill followed him, looking round once at Amy as if to reassure her.

'Well, out wiv it,' Gertie said immediately they had left. 'Are you up the spout?'

'Of course not!' Amy said indignantly.

'You mean you ain't bin 'aving it off with our Bill?'

Amy was shocked by the crude question, but she shook her head, tears filling her eyes.

'Don't cry,' Gertie's tone softened. 'Our Bill's a good-looking fella, I could 'ardly blame you if you 'ad. Sounds like yer ma's a bit cuckoo!'

'She's never been right since Dad was killed.' Amy explained about the religion and her mother's coldness. 'Bill only came round to make it right courting me.'

For a moment the only sounds were Gertie sucking her gums and a murmur of conversation from Bill and his father in the next room.

'I tell you now, I want somefin' better for my lad than what me and Norm got,' she said at length. 'You're a pretty little thing and you speak nice. If Bill can get on his feet and get a bit of cash behind him you'll do nicely for 'im. But use yer 'ead, girl, not the bit you sit on. I don't want no hanky-panky 'ere, and no babbies.'

Amy had a feeling this speech was meant as approval. Still stunned by her mother's reaction to Bill, she felt a wave of affection for the woman.

'I'll find somewhere else soon,' she said quickly. 'I've got a good job, Mrs MacDonald:'

'You'll need it, luv,' Gertie snorted. 'Just you save your pennies, keep yer drawers on and you and our Bill will do fine.'

But they didn't do fine. Weeks slid into months and still Amy was at Grafton Buildings, hating it more each day.

The winter of 1947 was the worst on record. Snow came at Christmas and it lasted until the end of March. An icy wind whistled through ill-fitting windows, buses were stopped and pipes froze up.

The lavatory was so disgusting Amy would leave home an hour early to walk to Aldgate to use the one in the workroom. They had to get water from a stand-pipe down in the street and lug it up the steep flights in buckets.

Bad weather meant Gertie and Norman couldn't even get out to the Two Brewers and they spent the evenings huddled in front of the stove, bickering. There was no opportunity to be alone with Bill unless they braved the cold outside. Just the brush of his body against hers, or the touch of his hand, was enough to inflame their senses, so they avoided close contact.

Bill came home from work frozen stiff and exhausted. His suit and best shirt hung on a nail in the bedroom as a reminder of better days. He wore old grease-smeared trousers, matted sweaters that stank of engine oil, and by the time he got home he had a dark shadow of bristles on his chin.

'We'll have to wait till spring,' he said wearily each time she asked if they could find a room somewhere. 'I ain't got the energy to do a place up now.'

There were many times when she wanted to go home. She dreamed of her clean, tidy bedroom, getting into the tin bath in front of the fire and a table laid properly with a white cloth. But to go home now would be to lose face. Even if her mother eventually accepted Bill, she would always believe he had failed to provide for her daughter.

Rats grew bolder. They lurked on the stairs, waiting for an opportunity to run into the flat to forage. Once she felt one run over her bed at night and she screamed so loudly the neighbours thought someone had hit her.

When the thaw came things were worse in many ways for at least the snow had hidden the ugliness. Rubbish, putrid and stinking, was revealed, heaving with maggots and rats. Bomb holes were full of black slime and the frozen earth turned into thick, glutinous mud. The warmer weather brought back noise, too. With windows open again and children playing outside, Amy's ears were bombarded with shouting and shrieking from first light until long after dark.

Durward Street was rarely quiet, especially on a Saturday night, but here it never let up for a minute. Babies screamed, couples fighting, women yelling down through open windows and kids running up and down the stairs. No colour or beauty ever showed in these dismal streets; even the weeds that sprouted up over the bomb sites had a grey, distorted look about them, just like the residents.

Amy learned to go to the public baths once a week, pushing an old pram with the bag wash. She black-leaded the stove, scraped at saucepans till they looked fit to use and cleaned the flat as best she could. Now she understood why so many women gave up. It was an effort to keep any standards of cleanliness when there was nowhere to put anything, no space or privacy.

And Ma was making a mint out of the pair of them. Bill worked twice as hard to try to save, but the more he worked, the more Ma wanted. For six months he was unaware that Amy was paying her, too. He was happily convinced Amy was stashing money away for a home of their own when in fact it was going into the till at the Two Brewers or down the dog track.

Amy heard from neighbours that Bill had been part of the Limehouse gang before he joined up. Although he claimed he had put that all behind him, men often called to see him and he would have muffled conversations out on the landing. Sometimes he would disappear with these men, never explaining later what it was about, but on several occasions he returned with skinned knuckles and dried blood on his clothes.

Everything was frustrating. The slow rate their savings built up, the long hours they both had to work, the lack of privacy, even the secrecy which Bill maintained about his friends, but most of all suppressing desire.

All around them was evidence of what happened when passion got out of control – girls with swollen bellies, screaming babies, and so many children. They weren't going to be trapped in Limehouse. They could wait.

On June 2nd 1947 Amy heard Bill calling to her from below. Opening the window she saw him standing by a gleaming black Austin Seven, its chrome glinting in the sunshine. It was just seven in the morning and, though he'd hinted the night before he was taking her out for her birthday, she hadn't expected anything more than a day in Victoria Park.

That morning she didn't notice the weeds sprouting up through broken concrete, the bomb holes, the rubbish or even the evil smells. All she saw was Bill.

He was wearing grey slacks and a fine white cotton shirt she'd made him during the winter. He had shaved off his moustache and he looked so boyish as he grinned up at her.

She put on her new pink sundress and sandals and ran down the stairs to join him.

'Happy birthday.' He ran to meet her as she reached the bottom stair and swung her round in his arms as if she were a child. 'The car's only borrowed, but we're gonna have a day in the country.'

He smelled of lavender hair oil and soap, and he kissed her there in the yard with no concern for the nosy neighbours peering out of their windows. His brown eyes sparkled the way she remembered from their first meeting and his lips were as warm and soft as the sunshine.

Amy hadn't been out of London since she was evacuated at the start of the War and the air was so clean and fresh she wanted to sing with delight. Green fields, woods and hills, then every now and then a little village basking in the warm sun.

'Are we going to the sea?' she asked, seeing a signpost to Folkestone.

'Maybe. After you've seen my special place,' he said mysteriously.

'Is this it?' Amy stared in surprise at the little garage Bill pulled up by.

'No, that comes later.' He took her hand and squeezed it. 'But this is the kind of place I want to own.'

The garage was nothing more than a shed with a petrol pump, next to a row of cottages, a pub and a post office running along the main road into Folkestone, fifteen miles away. The garage was a messy place, straddling one corner of a crossroads, the ground covered in oil and bits of engines left to rust. But at the side of it was a small cottage and a young woman was pegging out a line of nappies in the garden.

Bill's face was a picture as he stared longingly at the place, lost in a silent dream of a sparkling forecourt, gleaming cars parked ready to be collected by their owners and his name above the garage door.

'It's in a good spot.' His smile was infectious. 'People on their way down to Folkestone, and the local folk wanting repairs done. I'd clean it up, paint the workshop, maybe even make a little shop. And look at that house, Amy! Wouldn't you like to live there?'

Amy's heart lurched at his question. Would she like to live there? She would almost kill to! No rats or smells, no fighting and screaming. She could make that place into a little palace.

'Oh, Bill.' She sighed, leaning her head against his shoulder. 'It would be heaven.'

'I want you so badly, Amy,' he whispered, holding her face in his hands with such tenderness she could scarcely bear it. 'This is how I want it to be forever, just you and me.'

They left the car there and hand in hand they walked up a country lane, as Bill told her of his vision of their future.

'Everyone will have a car soon,' he said, eyes shining with confidence. 'We get a little place like that to start, then another. We live right by the garage, so it's no trouble to keep it open all hours. You could build up the shop, look after the house and maybe even do some dressmaking. I'll grow vegetables in the garden.'

It was hard not to touch him in London, but here, with no-one to cast disapproving glances, it was impossible. So many times they stopped to kiss, so wrapped up in one another they barely noticed the odd passing tractor or a child on a bicycle.

Amy had visions of washing drying from the sun, a baby kicking its fat brown legs in a pram beneath an apple tree, and a kitchen with hot water and a gas stove.

Bill had mentioned a spot with a magnificent view on their journey down, and it was here they ate their lunch of pork pie, apples and two lumps of bread pudding, bought in the village shop.

The softly rolling fields ended sharply at an escarpment where they sat with pine trees behind them. Below them was marsh, stretching for perhaps fifteen miles to the distant sea. A few cottages and stunted trees were scattered here and there, and the whole area was criss-crossed by streams and small rivers. Amy preferred more picturesque scenes; old churches, half-timbered houses, rivers and ponds. Yet she understood why Bill liked it here so much. It was wild and natural, land snatched back from the sea as it had retreated over centuries, the home of birds and flowers.

'I get scared in London,' Bill admitted suddenly. 'Afraid I'll get drawn into something. Know what I mean?'

Amy knew all right. In Grafton Buildings few people were blameless. Stealing wasn't a crime in their book, just a way of life. She guessed his old childhood friends were trying to draw him back into the fold and that every day they lingered in Limehouse, so the pressure to conform grew greater.

She sensed he felt she was the bridge between his world and the one he'd glimpsed from afar. She loved this sensitive, gentle Bill far more than the strutting, aggressive man his mother was so attached to.

'Can't we find a place today?' she urged him. 'Chuck everything and move here?'

'What would we do for money?' He squeezed her tightly. 'Finding a job down here ain't going to be easy.'

'Couldn't you work on a farm?'

'I don't know nothing about that.' He grinned. 'Only motors and driving. What we need is a little nest-egg first.'

Later on, he led her through a broken fence, into a private estate.

'Don't worry.' He laughed at her anxious face. 'No-one lives here and we aren't doing any harm.'