Wives at War (19 page)

‘My husband was Gordon Reeder, the surgeon.'

‘I take it your husband is – ah, deceased?'

‘He is.'

‘Didn't he have colleagues who can find you a suitable post?'

‘My husband had more enemies than friends in the profession.'

‘It's honest of you to admit it,' Bernard said. ‘I take it we're up against some sort of prejudice here?'

‘Yes.'

‘Prejudice against you because you aren't British, because you're female, or because…'

‘Because I'm a Jew?'

‘Precisely,' Bernard said.

One table, two chairs, a coat-rack and a great teetering stack of cardboard boxes filled the little room, which was so cramped that Mrs Reeder almost seemed to be sitting on his lap. He shifted his weight from one buttock to the other and sucked in his stomach to give the woman a little more room. She angled her body to one side and crossed her long legs. She reminded him just a little of Polly, though she was ten or a dozen years older than Polly and much taller. She wore black stockings under a loose black skirt, an expensive black overcoat, and a blouse in pale grey silk: proper widow's weeds, Bernard thought approvingly, and frowned.

‘Seven rooms in my house in Brookfield,' Evelyn Reeder went on. ‘Seven rooms and a separate apartment for the servants. The
kindergarten
want to board homeless children in my house and it will be taken from me by the law.'

‘Requisitioned,' said Bernard. ‘Yes, but they can't throw you out in the street. If there's a separate flat in the house they'll insist you move into it while they take over the rest of the place.'

‘Then I will have children beneath me, noisy children.'

‘Undoubtedly,' said Bernard.

‘I thought the
kindergarten
people would find me a post in a hospital but they say that is not their department. I must find my own post. I will put the furniture into store, if I am allowed to do that?'

‘Are we not gettin' a wee bit ahead of ourselves?' Bernard said. ‘I imagine I can find you somewhere to stay but—'

‘With no children?'

‘With no children,' Bernard said, ‘but I'm not sure I can find you a job.'

‘It is not your department?' the woman said, scornfully. ‘I have been hearing that from the day I placed myself on the labour market.'

She wore high-heeled shoes in black patent leather. Without straining, Bernard could see one shoe bobbing up and down on the end of a shapely foot.

She was angry and frustrated and he guessed she'd been led a merry dance by officials far and wide. She was a woman alone, at the mercy of authorities who wanted nothing to do with her. She would probably have received more sympathy, more courtesy, if she'd been totally destitute.

He watched the shoe tap up and down.

‘All right,' he said. ‘What I require from you, Mrs Reeder, are copies of your birth certificate and marriage lines and any documents relating to your qualifications as a medical practitioner. Did you ever work in a hospital, for instance?'

‘I trained in medical wards in Bruges and Amsterdam.'

‘Are you a surgeon like your husband?'

‘There are no females in surgery. I am a physician.'

‘Would you be prepared to work in a hospital again?'

‘I will not clean floors and lavatories.'

‘Good God! Is that what they've been offering you?'

The woman said nothing. She lifted her head, tilted her chin and stared at the little fanlight above Bernard's head.

Bernard had never seen so much pride in anyone before. There was no evidence of conceit, no vanity, no indication that she was posing. He had to think faster than he had been obliged to do in a very long time. With this woman there could be no backtracking, no compromises, no brush-off. He must ensure that the autocratic Jewish lady got everything she was entitled to and perhaps a little bit more to compensate for the raw deal she'd been handed so far.

But he did not dare make promises he couldn't keep.

‘Give me three days,' he said.

‘To do what?' she said. ‘To find another way to be rid of me?'

‘To find you a suitable job, Doctor Reeder,' Bernard said.

‘And a suitable place to stay?'

‘Yes,' Bernard promised her. ‘And a place of your own to stay.'

8

It would have been better for all concerned if Jackie hadn't come home on leave. It would certainly have been easier on Babs if her husband's arrival at Euston hadn't coincided with publication of the 9th December issue of
Brockway's Illustrated Weekly.

By the time he reached London on the overnight train from Devon and fought his way across the city in full webbing and lugging a kitbag, Jackie was not in the best of humours. It didn't matter to him that incendiary bombs had pasted London and that large sections of the city were closed off. He had only one thought in mind – to get home to Glasgow, his family and Babs as soon as possible. Euston was chaotic. Air raids had shot his travel plan to hell and he found himself with three hours to kill before anything vaguely resembling a train would be heading out for Glasgow. To while away the time he bought ten Woodbine, a
Daily Mirror
and the latest issue of
Brockway's.

Like most servicemen, Jackie enjoyed the illustrated weekly's mixed bag of commentary and news, and photographs in which refugees rubbed shoulders with pretty girls in bathing costumes. He scanned the
Mirror
first, though, for he was somewhat concerned about events in North Africa.

The RAOC mechanics had been working night and day to fit the battalion's armoured vehicles for desert warfare and they'd all had extra jabs, had been issued with tropical kit, had drowsed through boring lectures on unsavoury foreign diseases and in ten days' time would be bundled on to a troop ship, and sent out to service the hardware somewhere in the Western Desert.

Jackie had no curiosity about North Africa, no sense of excitement or fear of the great unknown. One sheep in the khaki flock, he did, more or less, what he was told. He had earned his stripe by being a good mechanic and was more concerned about the effects of excessive heat on the unreliable Nuffield Liberty engines of the new model Crusaders than he was about personal safety.

He scrounged a cup of tea and a bun from a Salvation Army stall and settled down among all the other soldiers, sailors and airmen who were in transit that morning. He was tired, dog-tired, but didn't dare fall asleep in case he missed the announcement about the Glasgow train. He found a spot on the corner of a bench and with his kitbag tucked between his knees, lit a ciggie and flicked open
Brockway's
at an article entitled ‘Women of the Clyde', which was made up of thirteen large photographs, some captions and stirring text.

It didn't look like the Clyde he remembered: women in shawls queuing outside a dairy, women in overalls and headbands huddled round a brazier on a bleak, black-and-white factory floor, a smiling young female riveter with her mask tipped back, four girls in a locker room changing their clothes and showing a lot of bare shoulder and thigh in the process.

Jackie sighed, leaned into the kitbag and turned the page.

And there was Babs, his lovely blonde wife and the mother of his children, posing like a tart in the middle of a cobbled street he didn't even recognise. Her head was tossed back like a film star's and her arms were stretched up as if she were dancing a reel and you could see her breasts pushing through her shirt –
his
shirt, come to think of it – and she was pouting in the same alluring manner she adopted when she wanted him to take her to bed.

Every randy male who bought the paper would be thinking the same thing he'd been thinking when he'd looked at the four girls in the locker room stepping out of their skirts and garter belts. Only this was no anonymous young thing: this was Barbara Conway Hallop, his bloody wife!

He tossed away the Woodbine.

He got to his feet.

He waved the illustrated rag in the air and shouted four or five words so obscene that they would have had him charged if an officer or an MP had been within earshot.

Then he sat down again.

Fingers shaking, he lit another cigarette.

And began, systematically, to read.

*   *   *

Thirteen hours and one pork pie later, Jackie arrived at the bungalow in Raines Drive and started kicking the locked front door.

‘What the heck is that?' Christy said, sitting up in the armchair by the fire. ‘Are you expecting company?'

‘Not me,' said Babs. ‘Not at this time of night.'

She put the whisky glass down on the coffee table and got to her feet. Christy was up before her, an arm out to protect her. He tugged at the blackout curtain and found himself staring into the face of a wild-eyed army corporal.

‘Bastard!' the corporal shouted. ‘You bloody bastard!'

‘Dear God! It's Jackie.'

‘Jackie?' said Christy.

‘My husband.'

‘Did you – I mean, did you know he was due home?'

‘Course not,' said Babs. ‘Would I be sittin' here like this if I had?'

‘I reckon,' Christy dropped the curtain, ‘he's cottoned on to my piece in
Brockway's.
'

‘I told you he wouldn't like it.'

‘What the hell are we gonna do now?'

Babs pulled in her stomach, thrust out her chest and tightened the belt of her dressing gown.

‘Let him in, of course,' she said.

Three copies of
Brockway's
had arrived in the morning mail and Christy, pleased with the spread, had shown Babs the photograph over breakfast. Because of the excitement, she'd been twenty minutes late for work but the moment she'd slid the paper on to his desk Archie had forgiven her. He'd peered at the picture through his thick lenses, then he'd taken off his glasses and stuck his nose down until it almost touched the page.

‘It is you, indeed,' he'd said. ‘By Gum, don't you look…'

‘What?' Babs had said. ‘Don't I look okay?'

‘Oh yes, okay isn't the word for it.'

‘What is the word for it?'

‘Scrumptious.'

‘Scrumptious?'

‘You know what I mean,' Archie had said, and blushed.

Polly and Bernard had both called to offer congratulations and at the lunch break Archie had trotted out to the newsagents on the corner and had bought four copies of the magazine and had had Babs sign them. All day long she had basked in the warm glow of celebrity, with
Brockway's
, open at her photograph, propped on the desk. But she had known in her heart of hearts that sooner or later there would be a price to pay for her fleeting moment of fame.

As she went out of the lounge to open the front door, it crossed her mind that Jackie had deserted his army post and had come all the way to Glasgow just to punish her. When she opened the door she kept her knee behind it but so great was Jackie's ire that he pitched the kitbag from his shoulder and followed it, shouting, into the hall.

Babs staggered back. He had a knife, a long knife, raised above his head. She covered her face with her forearms, shrieking,
‘No, Jackie, no, no!'

He brought the knife down and stabbed her shoulder with it. She felt the blade stiffen then crumple, then he was swatting her about the head and she realised it wasn't a knife at all but the tattered remnants of
Brockway's Illustrated Weekly
rolled up like a baton.

Jackie clouted her about the ears.

She squealed.

He clouted her again and would have gone on clouting her if Christy hadn't intervened. He caught Jackie's arm, snared the straps of Jackie's webbing, spun him into the kitchen and slammed him against the cooker.

Babs heard pans rattling and the bizarre sounds the men made as they fought, panting and grunting and odd little orgasmic gasps. She kicked the front door shut, switched on the hall and kitchen lights, stormed into the kitchen and shouted, ‘STOP IT, THE PAIR OF YOU.'

Rather to her surprise, they did.

‘What the heck's wrong with you, man?' Christy gasped.

‘Me?'
Jackie panted. ‘You're screwin' ma wife an' you're askin' what's wrong with
me
?' He sank back against the rim of the cooker, the furled copy of
Brockway's
hanging limply from his fist. ‘Who the bloody hell are you, anyway? Are you the lodger?'

‘Sure, I'm the lodger.'

‘I thought you were older. She said you were older.'

‘Well, I'm not older,' said Christy, ‘though what the hell that has to do with anything—'

‘You took these?' Jackie wagged the magazine.

‘Yeah, I did.'

‘What else did you take?'

‘Pardon?'

‘What else, what others, the ones they wouldn't print.'

‘Oh, for God's sake, man!' said Christy. ‘It's one lousy photograph.'

‘Lousy?' Babs murmured, frowning.

Her cheeks were the shade of blanched tomatoes and her left ear stung. Her hair was all over the place. Her lipstick was smeared across her chin. She looked a right unholy mess, not at all what a wife was supposed to look like when her brave solider husband returned home.

Tears welled up in her eyes. But she was too angry to cry, too angry at Jackie's assumption that she'd encouraged Christy to expose her in a national magazine, that she was so vain that she would pose nude for the man, let alone go to bed with him.

The fact that she had contemplated going to bed with Christy, that she had – and maybe still did – fancy him was irrelevant. She was angry with Jackie for being angry with her, for being jealous of a man he had never met and, most of all, for cuffing her around the ears as if she was some naughty wee schoolgirl. But rough old tenement habits died hard, she supposed, and under the circumstances this was the only way Jackie could express his feelings.