After the War is Over (37 page)

‘I still haven’t finished searching through your old newspapers for articles that might be relevant some time in the future.’ He had developed a complicated filing system so the cuttings could easily be located.

Maggie and Jack threw a party on New Year’s Eve. ‘Have I ever told you how I met your dad on this day twenty-one years ago?’ Maggie asked her daughters before the party was due to start.

Holly groaned. ‘You tell us every year, Mum, and at other times too.’

‘We’re sick of hearing about it,’ Grace complained. ‘And about the new years you spent in the army.’

‘Those memories are very dear to me.’ Maggie flounced out of the room in her red chiffon dress.

‘She looked like Scarlett O’Hara in
Gone With the Wind
just then,’ Louise commented. She was still feeling very down and Grace had spent ages persuading her to come to the party. The Soho contingent would be there, as well as Auntie Kath. Her grandad, of whom she was extremely fond, had been staying upstairs in the spare room over Christmas. Oh, and William was expected; she was looking forward to seeing him. It seemed ages since they’d last met.

Maggie’s house reflected her personality, William thought; the decoration and the furniture all slightly over the top. The walls were full of paintings that seemed to have been chosen for their bright colours rather than their content. Cezanne’s fruit mingled with Van Gogh’s fields and Gauguin’s Tahitian beauties. Wallpaper dazzled, carpets looked too pretty to walk on, photos in a variety of frames stood on every windowsill and shelf. He had never seen such a voluptuously padded three-piece before, its shapeliness emphasised by the oyster satin material that covered it. Everywhere smelled of perfume. He doubted if Jack had had a say in anything. He had a study somewhere that William would like to bet had sober walls and was full of books.

He went upstairs in search of a lavatory, and on the way back was passing a bedroom when his name was called.

‘Louise!’ he said with pleasure when he went in and saw the girl who had been his favourite sister sitting on the bed. Grace was seated in front of the dressing table doing something to her hair. She waved at him in the glass.

Louise held out her arms and they embraced. She was only eleven months younger than him, and as small children they had shared baths and even the giant pram they’d been pushed around in.

‘How are you, William?’ To his surprise, she looked quite tearful. He assured her he was fine. ‘It wasn’t until I saw you that I realised how much I missed you,’ she went on. She clung to his hand and pulled him on to the bed beside her.

‘How are
you
?’ he asked. There were shadows beneath her eyes and she looked quite drawn. ‘Are you looking after yourself, Louise?’ he asked angrily. These days his life consisted of worry after worry. ‘Are you eating properly? Perhaps it’s time you went back to Liverpool.’

Grace turned round to face them. She didn’t look all that well herself. ‘She’s all right. We worked in this really busy pub over Christmas and we’re both exhausted. We’ve left,’ she assured him hastily. ‘In a few days we’ll look for somewhere new.’

‘Perhaps you should give bar work a miss,’ he suggested. ‘It’s not a very healthy atmosphere, all that smoke.’

‘Perhaps we should.’ Grace nodded.

‘William! There you are,’ Maggie said from the door. ‘My dad’s downstairs. I thought you’d like to meet him.’

He got up, and she took his hand and squeezed it. ‘He doesn’t know,’ she whispered. ‘He’ll never know that he’s your dad too.’

Paddy O’Neill looked young and old; young from a distance, relatively unwrinkled, a full head of iron-grey hair, but close up his watery eyes and rather vague expression were indicative of a genuinely old man.

‘This is William, Dad, he works for Auntie Kath,’ Maggie said. She pushed William forward, and he and his father touched for the first and only time in their lives. The older man’s grip was limp, without any pressure.

‘How d’you do, William,’ he said warmly. Auntie Kath had said that Paddy was getting too old to be her agent, but he’d have to leave of his own volition; she had no intention of sacking him.

‘I’m very well, thank you.’

Auntie Kath approached. ‘Will is the best researcher in the House of Commons, Paddy,’ she said in a loud voice – she appeared to be incapable of talking in a quiet one.

William managed to escape from the party an hour before the clock struck midnight and 1969 was upon them. He felt very emotional, what with Addy’s death and the funeral to come the day after tomorrow, Louise looking so unhappy, and encountering his father for the first time.

He travelled to his flat in Lambeth on the Underground and reached it just in time to hear Big Ben toll in the new year, not on the wireless or television as he had done before, but from across the river, where it could be heard quite clearly. Cheers followed from all directions, fireworks burst into the sky. Unfortunately, William had no alcohol on the premises. He made a mug of tea and held it aloft.

‘Happy New Year,’ he said to the empty room.

Addy’s funeral was a sad, dignified affair with an air of inevitability about it. Unlike Red Finnegan, she hadn’t been a young person who’d had her life taken away years too soon. She’d lived happily for more than eight decades; had married a doctor and raised two doctor sons; been greatly loved as a mother and a grandmother. She died because her time had come. Iris said it would have been impossible to have had a more perfect mother-in-law.

Nell attended the funeral. She buried her head in her hands and didn’t speak to anyone. It wasn’t all that long since she’d buried her husband.

When it was over, William wasn’t sure whether to leave with Nell, or go back to Balliol Road for refreshments. In the end, he left alone and caught the train back to London.

Grace collapsed on Tottenham Court Road underground station and was taken to the nearest hospital by ambulance.

She had arranged to meet her mother for lunch in a nearby restaurant. Maggie waited for ages before going home in disgust, calling her daughter all the names under the sun on the way, at the same time feeling just slightly worried. At home, the telephone was ringing and she answered to discover that the Middlesex Hospital had been trying to get in touch for ages. Grace’s appendix had burst and she was about to have it out.

After calling Jack, Maggie rushed to the hospital. Grace’s bothersome appendix had been removed and she was lying smiling in bed, glad it was all over and apologising for letting her mother down.

‘Don’t worry about it, luv. As soon as you’re better, I’ll treat you to lunch somewhere dead posh.’ Maggie regretted having called her daughter so many names, even if they had been inside her head. She might have known that Grace would never miss an appointment if it wasn’t an emergency.

Grace came home from hospital several days later with a hideous scar on the right side of her stomach.

‘I’ll never be able to wear a bikini,’ she complained bitterly to her mother.

‘It’ll soon fade,’ Maggie said complacently.

‘It won’t fade altogether, Mum. In fact, I might not be able to get married.’

‘Oh, don’t be such a silly girl, Grace.’ Maggie had already forgotten the silent vow she’d made to treat her daughter with saintly patience from now on. ‘In future, only go out with chaps who’ve had
their
appendix out, and you’ll both have scars to match.’

A week later, the two girls started work in Selfridges’ restaurant in Oxford Street. The pay was slightly better than in the Green Man, but the tips were not nearly as good. The hours were much better, though, as they worked during the day and had the evenings free to sample clubs, see films and window-shop in the West End, dropping in somewhere beatniky or terribly avant-garde for a coffee afterwards.

This agreeable new life had only existed for four weeks, and they were staring at a mouth-watering display of glamorous evening dresses in Liberty’s window when Louise said, ‘I’ve just thought of something: I haven’t had the curse for ages.’

‘But you’re often late,’ Grace pointed out.

‘I know that, but I’m never so late that I miss a period altogether. I should have started one about mid-January; now it’s mid-February.’ She looked at Grace, the words hanging in the air between them.

‘Oh, Louise,’ Grace said weakly. ‘What on earth are we going to do now?’

Louise was positive she wouldn’t have an abortion. ‘There’s a living, breathing thing, a little baby, lying all curled up in my womb waiting to be born. I couldn’t possibly kill it.’

Grace, a Catholic, couldn’t have agreed more. ‘Would your mother look after it?’ she wondered aloud.

‘She might, but she’s just gone back to work, hasn’t she, after raising four children. Anyroad, how do I explain what happened? They’ll want to know who the father is.’

‘You know who the father is.’

‘Yes, a man I’d met a couple of hours before in a bar, a man who raped me and I haven’t seen since.’ Louise aimed a kick at Liberty’s wall. ‘Sometimes I feel really disgusted with myself. Oh, and I don’t want it adopted, either. It’s my baby and I shall keep it.’ She beamed at her friend. ‘On reflection, I shall have it and I don’t care what anyone thinks or says.’

The weeks passed. Louise was aware of her waist thickening, but otherwise felt perfectly well. ‘It’s going to be an easy pregnancy,’ she announced one day. ‘I hope it’s an easy birth.’

Grace didn’t answer, mainly because she couldn’t think of anything to say. It was Sunday afternoon and she was darning tights when the front doorbell rang. She jumped slightly, piercing her finger, when someone knocked loudly on the room door and shouted that they had a visitor. ‘He’s rather gorgeous, actually,’ the someone, a girl who lived downstairs, said.

Louise got to her feet and offered to see who it was. Grace assumed it must be a stranger; friends and relatives knew to give one long ring and two short ones on the bell. She grew more and more surprised after quite a long time had elapsed and Louise hadn’t come back. Laying down the tights, she went over to the window and looked out.

Afterwards, she was never sure why she wasn’t surprised to see her friend standing by the front door in earnest conversation with the young man she’d met in the Green Man on Christmas Day, the man who had allegedly raped her, who she wasn’t beating with both fists and screaming insults at, but speaking to in a perfectly friendly manner. Or slightly more than friendly, the way she had her hand on his arm and the way they were looking at each other so passionately.

Grace picked up her handbag and sped out of the house.

‘Grace!’ Louise tried and failed to grab her friend as she rushed blindly past.

Half an hour later she was in her parents’ house, being interrogated by her mother. Hadn’t it entered her head to comb her hair before coming out? Why was she without coat or cardigan when, although it might well be April, today was extremely chilly?

‘Dad,’ Grace said desperately, ‘will you please tell Mum to shut up.’

‘Shush, darling,’ her father said mildly, ‘and leave our daughter alone.’

Maggie muttered something about Holly having a new boyfriend coming to tea and what on earth would he think of her sister, after which she obediently shut up.

It wasn’t until late that night that Grace returned to the flat. She would have waited and gone back in the morning, but it would have meant a relentless third degree from her mother once her father had gone to work.

She found Louise sitting fully dressed on the bed. ‘You weren’t raped, were you?’ Grace said angrily. ‘Why couldn’t you have told the truth? Why on earth claim to be raped when you weren’t?’

‘I’ve no idea,’ Louise said dreamily, a sickly expression on her face. ‘When it was over, I felt terrible about the whole thing, cheap and nasty. I was a virgin and I’d just lost my virginity to a stranger who I’d fallen in love with at first sight. The thing is, though, it was absolutely wonderful, gentle and romantic and passionate, truly lovely, but I imagined him thinking I was “easy virtue”, as they say. When it was over, I just panicked and insisted on leaving.’

‘I see,’ Grace said, though she didn’t. ‘Where’s he been all this time? And what’s happening now?’

‘He was on his way home to the States after doing some business in London for his father, but was held up getting a signature on a contract when he found the person had gone away for Christmas. On Boxing Day, he tracked him down, then flew home.’

‘And didn’t give you a second thought.’ Grace threw herself on to the bed, leant against the headboard, and sternly folded her arms.

‘He did, actually, lots of second thoughts. But I’d behaved like a lunatic, hadn’t I? I mean, when we went into his bedroom, I’d
wanted
him to make love to me, really wanted him to. I’m not sure, I was sozzled at the time, but I might even have initiated it. Then when it was over I had hysterics.’

‘So why did he come back?’

Louise sighed, one of those lovely, long, pleasurable sighs that so far Grace had only made when she bit into a particularly scrumptious chocolate. ‘Because he couldn’t forget me. He could tell it was my first time and understood why I panicked. His name’s Gary Dixon, by the way.’

‘So what’s happening now?’

‘We’re getting married.’

‘When?’

‘On Saturday. Gary’s getting an emergency licence or something.’ Another long, ecstatic sigh. ‘Will you be my bridesmaid, Grace?’

It wasn’t the path that Grace had imagined their lives would take. She had assumed the two of them would continue to have a good time for the next two or three years without any intention of getting married. The arrival of a baby on the scene had already put a spoke in this vision of a future, but they could have worked alternate shifts and taken turns looking after the baby. Or her mother might have been willing to look after it from time to time; after all, she was on the lookout for a worthwhile job, and it would almost be like working for a charity.

But now, not only was Louise getting married, but she was going to live in America; in Boston, Massachusetts. Her mother, Iris, was telephoning Grace’s mother several times a day wanting to know what Gary was like. Where did Louise meet him? How long had they known each other? Did he come from a good family?