After the War is Over (22 page)

‘We have a number of prospective buyers on the list waiting to view this one,’ the estate agent said smoothly. He looked as if he had been polished all over, including his dark blue suit.

‘I can’t imagine liking another house as much as I like this one,’ Maggie said.

‘In that case, we shall buy it.’

Even so, over the following week Jack took her to half a dozen other properties that were for sale, only looking at them from the outside, but Maggie still preferred the first.

‘The road has the nicest name too: Coriander Close, and seven is my lucky number.’ She was a lucky person. Everyone in the army used to say so. Of course, that was before Mam died in such a horrible way. But she was still lucky. Hadn’t Daphne told her so at the wedding only a few weeks ago?

The wedding of Margaret O’Neill, Paddy O’Neill’s eldest girl, became the talk of Bootle for a while. It took place in the middle of December, with Christmas decorations up everywhere. Early on the day, a charabanc turned up outside St James’s church hall, where the reception was to be held, full of foreigners, all jabbering away to one another in German, or so claimed Elsa Moody, who lived opposite and was worried Bootle had been invaded by the Hun.

‘Don’t talk such drivel, Ma,’ her son Edgar said derisively. ‘They’re speaking Polish, you daft ould biddy. It’s people like you that start wars.’

‘So Paddy O’Neill’s girl’s marrying a Pole, eh! What’s the matter with her, wouldn’t a decent English feller have her?’

‘Shurrup, Ma.’ Felix had had a crush on Maggie O’Neill since they’d been at school together.
He
was a decent English feller and she hadn’t looked twice at him.

Maggie’s dress was white sculpted velvet with long sleeves and a small train. She carried a bouquet of red roses and was attended by three bridesmaids in scarlet brocade: her little sister Bridie, her friend Nell, and Rosie, her sister-in-law, who was six months pregnant. The bridegroom wore a grey morning suit, as did Drugi Nowak, his best man.

The bride, with her black curls piled on top of her shapely head, made an impressive and truly beautiful sight. All in all, it was the most lavish and striking wedding to be held in Bootle in most people’s lifetime.

When the newly married couple left to catch the train from Lime Street station to Euston, and thence to Paris, the bride threw her flowers in what she perceived was the direction of her friend Nell; sensing this, Nell moved aside so that the woman called Daphne who she had discovered earlier crying her eyes out in the ladies’ toilet caught them.

‘That means you’ll be married next,’ Nell said to the red-eyed woman.

‘Oh, do you really think so!’ Daphne gasped.

As Nell watched the taxi drive away with Maggie and Jack waving out of the rear window, she worried a little about her friend. Jack was a decent chap, of that there was no doubt, but Maggie seemed besotted by him, hanging on his every word, agreeing with him, looking at him adoringly. Everything was perfect, she kept saying, in particular Jack, but also the house he’d bought, the furniture, the car to go in the perfect garage, the life they would lead, their future together.

Nell was only twenty-three, but one thing she had learned in her short life was that things never remained perfect for long. Sooner or later they would turn sour. She hoped for her friend’s sake that they wouldn’t, but she would bet a pound to a penny that at some point in time she would be proved right.

Eight-month-old William was standing up in his cot; without help from anyone, he had actually pulled himself to his feet by holding on to the bars. He was a remarkable child, very advanced according to Tom.

‘He’ll be walking soon,’ Tom predicted. ‘We have a very clever son, darling.’

He seemed to have hypnotised himself into thinking that William genuinely was their son, born out of his seed and her womb. She no longer bothered to remind him he was wrong, that William was Nell’s son, father unknown. For the umpteenth time she wondered if the unknown father was Tom himself. She would have liked to face him with it, see what his reaction was, but it was an outrageous, offensive thing to accuse him of if he was innocent.

‘You are a genius,’ she told William.

The little boy made an untranslatable noise, sat down with a thump and grinned mischievously at her through the cot’s bars. Iris threw him a kiss and looked at her watch. Maggie’s wedding would be over by now – or at least her and the bridegroom’s part in it. No doubt there’d be a dead-rowdy party going on in St James’s hall, which she would have loved to have gone to. She and Tom had been asked to the wedding, but had declined the invitation claiming a previous engagement. The truth was she didn’t want Nell to know that she was five months pregnant. She had this stupid, unreasonable, absolutely ridiculous idea that Nell would see this as an excuse to demand her own baby back once she realised that Iris could have one of her own.

She was pleased, though, really pleased. ‘How can it have happened?’ she’d asked Tom when she realised she was expecting. He was just as thrilled. ‘I’ve gone for years without conceiving.’

‘It often happens,’ Tom said. ‘If a couple adopt a baby because they can’t have one of their own, the woman will quite often conceive. I suppose it’s to do with the fact that she is no longer desperately anxious for a child and relaxes.’

‘It probably means that we can have more.’

Tom smiled. ‘As many as you want, darling.’

‘Four, I’d like four,’ she said eagerly. ‘I mean, four altogether, including William.’

‘Then four it shall be.’

‘You’re going to have a brother or a sister in four months’ time,’ she told William.

He pulled himself to his feet again and gave a cry of triumph.

‘You are a genius,’ she told him again.

Of course, Nell wouldn’t dream of taking him back. She wasn’t that sort of person. Dear Nell wouldn’t hurt a fly, let along another human being. If only Tom hadn’t been so downright horrible the day William had been born. Remembering the way he’d spoken to the girl could still make Iris’s stomach curl. She and Tom were getting on all right nowadays, but she would never forgive him for the way he had behaved that day. Because of it, she had lost the best friend in the world. And she would have loved to have gone to Maggie’s wedding.

Maggie and Jack were drinking champagne in the sumptuous bar of the Ritz Hotel in Piccadilly in London. Tomorrow they were going to France on the ferry, where they would be staying in Paris in another hotel called the Ritz.

Why didn’t I think of it before? Maggie hoped her inner turmoil didn’t
show on her face. She wasn’t a virgin!
Would Jack notice? Was it possible for a man
not
to notice? If only she’d thought of it earlier, she could have asked someone if it was possible for the thing – the hyphen or something – to be broken for any reason other than intercourse. Perhaps she could claim she’d had something as a child, appendicitis, say, and it had been taken out. Where on earth was her appendix? Was it approached through the womb?

For some inexplicable reason she giggled. She wouldn’t be surprised if Jack didn’t care if she was a virgin or not. After all, she didn’t care if he’d been with dozens of women. All that mattered was what happened from this moment on and in the future. The past was over.

‘What’s so funny?’ Jack asked.

‘Nothing.’ She giggled again. ‘Everything.’

‘That makes sense.’ He laughed and stared at her. ‘You suit blue,’ he said. Her going-away outfit was more turquoise than blue; a plain costume with a white jumper underneath and a little pork-pie hat with a veil.

‘You suit grey. It goes with your eyes.’ His suit was navy with a subdued dark grey stripe, made for the occasion by a Polish tailor.

He claimed never to have seen anyone with striped eyes. ‘You’re making me out to be a freak.’

Maggie giggled even more and couldn’t stop. ‘You’ve had too much champagne, my love,’ Jack said. ‘I think it’s about time we went to bed.’

She stopped giggling. ‘Bed?’

‘It’s what married people do,’ he said gravely. ‘This is merely the first of a million times.’

‘A million?’

‘Or perhaps two million. And that’s only the first year.’ He reached for her hand and pulled her to her feet. ‘Will you sleep with me tonight, Mrs Kaminski?’ he whispered in her ear.

‘Yes, Mr Kaminski, I will.’

He put his arm around her shoulder and led her towards the lift.

Two elderly ladies were sitting in armchairs next to Maggie and Jack’s now vacant table. ‘I wish I could be in that young woman’s shoes for the next few hours,’ one said longingly to her friend as she watched the couple get in the lift.

‘Why, Hettie?’ the friend asked.

‘It’s their first night together. My first night was awful, Harold hadn’t a clue what to do and he was a dead loss. I feel I should be entitled to another first night, and that young man,’ she nodded at the empty table, ‘would have done nicely. Extremely well built, couldn’t wait to get his hands on the girl.’

Her friend’s jaw dropped. ‘Hettie Weatherspoon!’ she gasped. ‘You disgraceful old woman. How did you know it was their first night?’

‘The girl had confetti in her dear little hat. And it was the look on their faces as well. I could tell they’d never done it before and they couldn’t wait to get their hands on each other.’ She glanced at her diamanté watch. ‘I wonder if they’re undressed yet.’

‘Would you like to go upstairs and watch through the keyhole?’

‘If I were capable of kneeling down, I might well have done. I say, Belle, have they only drunk half the champagne out of that bottle?’

‘They have indeed.’ Belle rose unsteadily to her feet. ‘I’ll fetch it, shall I, before the chappie comes to clear the table?’

‘Clever girl,’ Hettie said when Belle returned. ‘Fill my glass up, there’s an angel. In a minute I shall go to bed myself. If I can’t actually
do
it, then I shall dream about it instead.’

Maggie had been married a month. She had left Thomas Cook’s to become a housewife instead of a shorthand typist. It had been her own decision to leave; Jack hadn’t minded whether she stayed at work or not. She was really looking forward to being at home during the day.

‘Dusting and washing and ironing and shopping and making our dinner.’ She sighed happily, entirely forgetting how hopeless she’d been at housework after her mother had died. She’d bought a
Good Housekeeping
recipe book and studied it carefully. She also wrote to Nell to enquire about simple recipes. She made pastry and it stuck to the bread board, made omelettes, using up two weeks’ egg ration, and they didn’t rise at all, and neither did the bread she attempted, though she didn’t give up. She didn’t want to become a master chef; adequate would do.

At half past ten each morning, she stopped to make tea or coffee, listened to the wireless, and read ten pages of a novel. She vacuumed the carpets every day until Jack said she’d wear the pattern off, and there was no need to clean the windows quite so often either, nor wash the bedding.

Occasionally, in the afternoon, she went to Selfridges and John Lewis in the West End to look at the curtains they would buy once they had enough coupons. Neither she nor Jack liked the curtains and carpets kindly left behind by the previous owners of their house, but every single one of Maggie’s coupons, some of Jack’s and some of her father’s had been used up on her wedding dress and the bridesmaids’ outfits.

She visualised the big square bay hung with cream chintz curtains dotted with pink rosebuds. Oh, but I’m being really selfish, she thought. Mam would have loved the rust and gold curtains that are there now. I’m too lucky for me own good.

She returned to her lovely house feeling ashamed. Life was so wonderful, what did the colour of the curtains matter?

She loved Jack so much that it hurt, literally made her throat ache each morning when they kissed goodbye and she watched through the window as he walked away towards East Finchley Underground station. Even if there’d been enough petrol, it was far more convenient to travel by tube than car in London. It would be
hours
until they saw each other again, and she wasn’t sure if she could bear it. At six o’clock she would be at the window once more, waiting for him to appear, her heart leaping as he came closer and closer. Then they would shut the door and stand in the hall and kiss for ages. Sometimes they were tempted to make love there and then, downstairs on the settee, but as Maggie would point out, somewhat breathlessly and very reluctantly, the potatoes might burn or the casserole get too dry or the sponge cake collapse, if it hadn’t done so already.

She had never had a telephone at her disposal before, and she spent hours sitting on the stairs talking to her friends, some of whom were pregnant: Rosie, her sister-in-law, whose baby was due to arrive shortly, Alicia, who’d only just discovered she was in the club, Iris, expecting her second baby around Easter. And of course Nell, now living in the flat over the Labour Party office on the Dock Road. Nell wasn’t even married, let alone pregnant, and Maggie couldn’t understand how she could be so happy.

‘Don’t you want a family of your own one day?’ she said crossly. It irritated her that her friend didn’t want what she herself had – a husband, a lovely home and the prospect of having children.

‘One day, maybe,’ Nell said casually. Maggie imagined her shrugging her thin shoulders. ‘I love where I live and Crown Caterers is becoming more and more successful. I’m actually doing well enough to take on staff if I wanted to expand.’

‘But it’s not the
same
, Nell.’ Maggie was exasperated. Mind you, although she wanted Nell to have what she had, there weren’t enough men like Jack Kaminski to go around. In fact, she had the only one. Every other woman could only have second best.

It was on Good Friday that she noticed her period was late; only a day or two, but she was usually as regular as clockwork. She didn’t tell Jack until she was a whole week late, and he took her for dinner at the Meredith hotel to celebrate. His first order was for a bottle of champagne.

‘To you, to me, and to our baby,’ he said by way of a toast.