After the War is Over (31 page)

Maggie was a reasonably good driver, but she baulked at the idea of driving her new red Mini all the way to Liverpool by herself. She was considering going by train, and was pleased when Grace, who had passed her driving test with flying colours a year ago, offered to take her on condition her father allowed her the day off work – she worked as a clerk in his bank. He graciously gave his permission.

‘That’s really nice of you, love,’ her mother said gratefully. ‘But I’d appreciate it if you kept to forty miles an hour.’

‘Don’t be daft, Mum,’ Grace snorted. ‘It’d take all day. I promise not to go more than sixty. Anyway, what’s the reason for going to Liverpool all of a sudden?’

‘I’ll tell you later.’ Well, she might. It all depended what the truth was. It wasn’t like Nell to exaggerate or tell lies, but the idea of William being her son was so improbable. ‘I have to speak to Nell first, then Iris Grant, William’s mother,’ she told her daughter.

‘Why not telephone?’

‘It’s something that has to be done face to face. I’ve rung Nell and told her to expect me about midday.’ Iris was expecting her later in the afternoon.

‘It sounds incredibly mysterious.’

Maggie sighed. ‘It’s more tragic than mysterious, love.’

It was a perfect day for driving; not too bright and not too hot. They didn’t talk much. For all her outward confidence, Grace was rather nervous of driving so far, and on a motorway too. Maggie was immersed in trying to work out what had happened twenty-one years ago – no, it would be nearly twenty-two since William was conceived. She recalled that Iris had been ill when she was pregnant, blood pressure or something, and had gone to live in Wales for peace and quiet – and Nell had gone with her! Well, that fitted in with what Nell claimed had happened; that it was she who’d had the baby, not Iris.

‘Holy Mary, Mother of God,’ she whispered.

‘What, Mum?’

‘Nothing, I’m just remembering things, that’s all.’ Not only was she desperate for an explanation, by the time they reached the motorway services at Keele, she was just as desperate for a cup of tea. They stopped for half an hour in the restaurant so Grace could rest her legs, which were aching badly.

‘This is the furthest I’ve ever driven a car,’ she told her mother.

‘You
are
a brick, love. That’s what your dad used to call you, his “little brick”.’ She really was a wonderful daughter: reliable, helpful, the sort of person you would trust with your life. Whereas Holly . . . She recalled her sister-in-law’s warning that Holly was being spoiled, and Maggie saying back something like ‘A child can’t be given too much love, Rosie.’

Well, that wasn’t true, Maggie realised now, too many years later. Maybe her brain was clearer today, because she wouldn’t normally have acknowledged, not even to herself, that Holly had grown up vain and empty-headed, concerned with no one but herself. That morning, she hadn’t even noticed her mother was upset and had spent half an hour in front of the mirror making up her face before going to work.

Neither woman spoke for the remainder of the journey, not until they came off the M6 on to the East Lancashire Road and Maggie studied the map and instructed Grace how to get to Waterloo.

Music was throbbing out of the open windows of Nell’s house, Irish music, the sort that Maggie loved but wasn’t in the mood for right now. Nell must have been looking out for her, because she opened the front door and Maggie and her daughter went in. Grace made a beeline for the source of the music in a room upstairs. She still got on well with Nell’s lads.

‘Let’s sit out here,’ Nell said to Maggie. They went into the kitchen, which was badly in need of decoration. She closed the door and put the kettle on.

‘Doesn’t anyone ever complain about the noise?’ Maggie asked.

‘They did at first, but they seem to have got used to it. Some people come and sit on the wall outside just to listen.’

‘Who’s that playing now?’

‘Quinn and Kev. They’re quite good. They’re off to London tomorrow to play at a club there. Red and Eamon are on their way to Ireland.’

‘Hmm.’ Maggie stared at her friend, wondering how to begin. She was acutely aware that while both women were forty-three, Nell appeared much younger than herself, despite the expensive creams that Maggie smoothed on to her face night and morning, the facials and the face packs, the stylish haircuts. Nell’s skin, bare of make-up, was beautifully clear, her brown hair casually cut and terribly smart. She wore a plain red sweater and black slacks that looked very elegant, no doubt unintentionally. In her flowered sundress and frilly bolero, Maggie felt overdressed and over-made-up.

Nell suddenly said, quite sharply, ‘Don’t look at me like that, Maggie, as if you’re sitting in judgement. I have done absolutely nothing wrong.’

Maggie spluttered, taken aback. ‘My daughter is madly in love with William Grant. Whose fault is that?’

‘Hardly mine. The last time I saw him, he was only a few hours old.’

It sounded so terribly sad. ‘I’m sorry, but why didn’t you tell me you’d had a child, a son?’ She felt deeply hurt. ‘I thought we were supposed to be friends.’

‘We
are
friends, but it was none of your business. Just like what happened between you and Chris Conway was none of mine.’

Chris Conway was so far from Maggie’s mind at the moment that she couldn’t even remember who he was. ‘Does our Ryan know about William?’ she asked. ‘I’ll have a bone to pick with him next time I see him.’ She might even go to Lydiate and do it today.

‘That’s just like you, Maggie,’ Nell said scornfully, ‘to go barging in when you don’t know the truth about anything. Do you think that’d be fair on Rosie? Anyroad, your Ryan has nothing to do with it. William is your father’s son.’

‘My father!’ Maggie put her hands over her ears, as if the music had suddenly become too loud or she didn’t want to hear the truth. ‘You mean me dad?’ she whispered. ‘Are you saying me dad raped you?’

‘I’m saying no such thing. Your dad was drunk. It wasn’t all that long since your mam had died and he was still mourning her.’ Nell’s lips actually curled into a slight, sad smile. ‘He thought it was her, your mam, he was making love to, he said the most loving things in me ear.’ There were tears in her eyes. ‘Afterwards, I bet he never remembered a thing about it – or thought it’d been a dream. He never mentioned it, anyroad.’

‘You should’ve stopped him,’ Maggie cried.

‘I wanted to, honest, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t move. I’d drunk vodka, you see; someone spiked the punch. Tom told me some people have an intolerance to alcohol. They have a sort of fit – the first time it happened was in the army. Remember?’ She spoke matter-of-factly; not hesitantly or in the least bit embarrassed. ‘I know it sounds daft, but I didn’t mind what was happening. I mean, I didn’t feel as if I was being raped.’

‘I remember when you drank alcohol in the army.’ Maggie nodded. ‘Oh, but Nell, you should’ve told me dad what he’d done later.’

Nell threw back her shoulders, pulled herself together, as it were. ‘Not then, not now, not ever,’ she said firmly. ‘Imagine how he would have felt had I told him. He was out of this world, Maggie, making love to your mam for the very last time, not that he knew it.’

‘Oh Nell!’ Maggie burst into tears.

‘You must never tell him.’ She looked so kind, so earnest, so caring that Maggie almost wanted to genuflect to her friend. ‘You must promise me that, Maggie. And it’s time Iris and Tom told William the truth. He’s twenty-one and has a right to know the identity of his real mother and father. I know you’ll want to tell Jack, but no one else, please; not your girls, or Iris’s girls. I won’t breathe a word to me mam and dad. If mam knew William was her grandson, it’d be all over Bootle before the day was out. Red knows I’ve had a baby, but not the details. I’ll tell him now, though. So, only six people in the world will know: you and Jack, Tom and Iris, and me and Red. Oh, and William, of course.’

Maggie nodded. ‘I agree.’ When it came to Holly and Grace, she’d just have to think up a suitable lie.

‘It’s ages since the kettle switched itself off,’ Nell got to her feet, ‘and about time I made the tea.’

With her mother ensconced in the living room with Iris Grant, Grace attempted to eavesdrop, but the door and walls of the old house were too thick and all she could hear was a mumble. She wandered into the garden, where a young woman was swinging idly on a rope suspended from a tree.

‘Hello,’ Grace said. ‘I’m Grace Kaminski, Maggie’s daughter.’

The girl grinned and stopped swinging. She was small, neat, blonde and pretty. Grace liked her straight away. ‘I’m Louise Grant, Iris’s daughter. Why is it I’ve never seen you before, yet I’ve met your sister Holly?’

‘Because when we come to Liverpool Mum usually spends most of her time at Nell’s house, and she has these great sons, Quinn and Kev. I’ve always preferred to stay with them than come here. We’ve just been there now. Have you ever met the Finnegans?’

‘No. My mum isn’t a friend of Nell, but she talks about her sometimes.’

‘The Finnegan brothers are dead interesting,’ Grace said fervently. ‘I wish they lived in London or I lived here.’

‘I wouldn’t mind living in London either,’ Louise said wistfully. ‘It’s dead boring here. I was too young to experience the excitement when the Cavern opened and the Beatles came down to visit us on earth.’

‘Don’t you go to work? I mean, it’s Friday afternoon.’

‘I work as a receptionist for my Uncle Frank – he’s a doctor. I’ve got to back in a few hours for evening surgery. As I said, it’s dead boring.’

Grace made a horrible face. ‘I work in my father’s bank, and that’s dead boring too.’

‘Do you think it’ll be just as boring being married?’

‘Probably,’ Grace said gloomily. ‘Mind you, our mums and Nell weren’t bored when they were young and in the army.’

‘Could we start a war, do you think?’ the other girl suggested hopefully.

‘Oh don’t say that. Think of all the people who died – and the ones dying now in Vietnam. What we need is permanent peace. Why don’t we join the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, they’re always having marches and some of them get arrested, or there’s Amnesty International?’

‘I’d do it if I had someone to join with. Oh, wouldn’t it be the gear to be arrested?’

‘We could join together. Be sent to prison and insist we share a cell.’

Louise raised her pale eyebrows. ‘That would be great, except I live in Liverpool and you live in London.’

‘One of us could always move.’

‘That would have to be me. My brother William lives in London in a really big house and there might be enough room there.’

‘And hopefully enough for me! I know I live in London already, but it’s about time I left home and took control of my own life,’ Grace said a trifle pompously. Raised voices were coming from the other room and she thought it wise not to discuss the subject with her mother today. It was obvious she had other things on her mind. ‘What a pity,’ she said, ‘that you have to work later. Otherwise you could have come back to London with me and Mum. The Finnegan lads have got a gig there tomorrow and I promised to go. They gave me two tickets, one for a friend.’ She grinned. ‘It would be nice if the friend was you.’

‘I could always ring and ask my auntie to take over my shift for once.’ Louise got to her feet, her face full of hope. She looked as if she’d just won a million pounds on the pools, Grace thought.

Maggie emerged not long afterwards, slamming the door behind her. ‘Come on,’ she said shortly to Grace. ‘We’re going home.’

‘Can Louise come with us, Mum? She can sleep in our spare room. It’s only for tonight – and maybe tomorrow night too,’ she added as an afterthought.

‘She’d better ask her mother first,’ Maggie snapped. She walked down the path and got into the Mini, which was parked in the road. ‘Come on,’ she shouted to Grace.

‘We’re waiting for Louise,’ Grace pointed out. Her mother had forgotten about Louise straight away. Gosh, something really big must have happened today.

Louise emerged, slamming the front door triumphantly, a paper carrier bag stuffed with clothes in her hand. Maggie climbed out of the car and suggested she get in the front with Grace.

‘I’ll sit in the back where I can think me own thoughts without interruption,’ she muttered, more to herself than anyone else.

So it was true! William Grant was Nell’s son. Not that she’d doubted it by then, but Iris confirming it had put a sort of stamp on it, like a bank acknowledging that a payment had been received or a legal document had been made official.

There were bits Maggie hadn’t known, that she hadn’t thought to ask Nell. It had happened, Nell becoming pregnant, at the big party, Tom’s parents’ wedding anniversary.

‘She wouldn’t tell us who the father was,’ Iris said. ‘Though she swore she hadn’t been raped. I’d often wondered if it was Frank, Tom’s brother, who was responsible. He was always keen on Nell.’

‘And I took for granted it was our Ryan when Nell told me last night,’ Maggie said. ‘But it turned out to be me dad.’

‘Your father!’ Iris’s jaw had fallen. ‘Paddy O’Neill?’

‘Exactly,’ Maggie had cried.

What was more, poor William didn’t know that Iris and Tom weren’t his real parents. ‘But that’s terrible,’ Maggie raged. ‘These days people are strongly advised to tell children if they are adopted.’

‘These days, yes, but not then. And William wasn’t adopted in a normal way,’ Iris pointed out. She was angry at the way the truth had come out. ‘My name and Tom’s are on his birth certificate. We are officially his parents and it never crossed our minds that anyone would find out that we weren’t. We trusted Nell completely. If William hadn’t formed a relationship with your daughter, then nobody would ever have known.’

‘It’s still not right,’ Maggie said tightly. ‘He should have been told. Imagine the shock it will be when he finds out now.’

Iris had blanched. She looked sick and awfully old, Maggie thought. A little overweight, very ordinary, yet she’d been quite beautiful in the army. ‘Why will he have to be told?’ she asked in a raw voice.

‘Because he and Holly are madly in love,’ Maggie said, exaggerating more than a little. ‘The relationship must stop here and now and they’ll want to know the reason why. They’ve arranged to go out again tomorrow.’ She recalled that Nell wanted as few people as possible to know. ‘I’ll tell Holly a lie,’ she said. ‘I’ll say William telephoned and doesn’t want to see her again. And Nell doesn’t want your girls to know.’ She hadn’t thought it possible for Iris to look even sicker, but she did now.