After the War is Over (26 page)

‘You bastard!’ he roared. ‘Can’t she get away from you not even for a single day?’ He was thumping the man with both fists, while Eamon tried to separate them.

In the end it was Alfred Desmond who lifted up the intruder and dragged him outside. He came back about ten minutes later to say he’d rung the bobbies from the telephone downstairs and they’d taken the bugger away.

Mrs Desmond, still wearing her wondrous cartwheel hat, offered to put Eithne up until Red and Nell returned from their honeymoon and sorted matters out. Eithne was bawling her head off while Nell bathed a bruise on her chin.

Maggie made her goodbyes, assuming that the reception was over, but she was going downstairs when the piano started again, someone began to sing ‘It’s a Long Way to Tipperary’ and the guests joined in.

‘Everyone’s having babies,’ Maggie remarked when Iris opened the door preceded by her enormous stomach. Sometimes she felt quite willing to put up with the pain again, but Jack refused to countenance the idea of another child. ‘I couldn’t stand it, even if you could, my dear Maggie,’ he would say. ‘When exactly is yours due?’ she asked Iris.

‘A week on Wednesday.’ Iris’s face had lit up at the sight of her visitor. ‘Oh, it’s lovely to see you, Maggie. What a beautiful costume. Have you been to Nell’s wedding?’

‘Yes. It went very well.’ Out of loyalty to Nell, she didn’t mention the fight. ‘I thought you might have come at least to watch.’

‘I really didn’t feel up to it.’

Maggie could tell from her tone of voice that she was lying. ‘I find it hard to believe that you and Nell are no longer friends,’ she said irritably. She longed to know the reason for it. In the hope of receiving an explanation, she pressed on. ‘You two became such good friends that I felt quite jealous.’

‘We just didn’t seem to get along when we were in Wales,’ was all Iris said, which was more or less what Nell had said when Maggie had tried to get an explanation out of her.

It wasn’t until that moment that Maggie noticed that Iris actually didn’t look at all well, that her face was terribly pale. They’d been standing in the hallway all this time. Overcome with contrition, Maggie insisted on making the tea when it was offered. In the kitchen, she made Iris sit down while she put the kettle on and took the cups and saucers out of the cupboard where she remembered they were kept.

‘Where are William and Louise?’ she enquired. Iris already looked better just from sitting down.

‘Tom’s taken them for a walk so that I can have a rest.’

Maggie felt even more contrite. ‘I hope he manages to get back before I leave; I’m catching the six o’clock train from Lime Street,’ she explained, ‘and I have to collect me suitcase from me dad’s house on the way.’

‘If Tom does get back soon, he’ll take you in the car,’ Iris said kindly. ‘Save you having to rush.’

‘That’s awful nice of you.’ Maggie felt close to tears. ‘Sometimes I wish I’d never gone to London all those years ago,’ she said quietly. ‘I wish I still lived in Liverpool and could see you and Nell every day – well, nearly every day.’ She would have done something to make sure they were all friends again, the three of them, just as they’d been in their army days.

‘If you’d stayed in Liverpool, you wouldn’t have met Jack,’ Iris said, pointing out the obvious. ‘You might have other children by now, but not your two little girls. Life would have been very different.’

Maggie was forced to acknowledge the truth of this. Iris asked about Rosie’s baby and Maggie described her new nephew, and said that Rosie and Ryan were thinking about buying a bigger house as Rosie wanted more children.

Iris nodded and said she and Tom were thinking the same. ‘This house is huge, the second floor is hardly ever used except for storage, but we have no garden and I do think children need a garden to play in.’

‘We never had a garden to play in when we were growing up. Me and Nell – all the kids – played out in the street. We made swings on the lamp posts, played hopscotch on the pavement, and the lads drew goalposts and cricket stumps on the walls, but have you noticed the number of cars around these days?’ Maggie went on indignantly. ‘There were at least three parked in Coral Street earlier. It’s no longer safe for kids to play in the street.’

They discussed the problem of ever-increasing traffic until Tom came back with the children. He was only too pleased to take Maggie to the station, after collecting her suitcase first.

Maggie felt the sort of sadness that was almost an ache after she had got on the train and found a seat. She
did
miss Liverpool, her friends, her relatives – she really should see more of Bridie. Sometimes she almost forgot she had a sister. Oh, and she missed Nell, always had. And she was worried about Iris, who looked so miserable yet should be excited at the thought of having her baby in a matter of days. Tom hadn’t been quite himself either, a bit quiet really, not quite as friendly as she remembered.

But as the train passed through Crewe, then Stafford, followed by Birmingham, her spirits began to rise. She imagined Jack putting the girls to bed – he would sing to them, Polish lullabies, holding both of them in his arms, rocking them to and fro. She suddenly felt as if it was days, weeks since she’d last seen her family, yet it was only early that morning. And tonight she would go to bed and lie in Jack’s arms, they would make love, and it would be wonderful.

At Euston station she saw Drugi waiting on the far side of the barrier, as Jack had promised he would, to drive her home. Home! The very thought of it made her smile.

She hurried towards the exit, Liverpool forgotten. It wasn’t until she woke up the following morning that she remembered where she’d been the day before and proceeded to tell Jack all about it.

Chapter 12

A week after Maggie’s visit, Iris gave birth to a second daughter, Dorothy.

‘I hope people don’t call her Dottie,’ grumbled Tom, who had been hoping for a boy. He showed no interest in suggesting names for girls.

‘I think Dottie sounds all right,’ Iris said. Though she’d rather they stuck to Dorothy. Despite her small build, she had little trouble having babies, hardly any pain at all. She had already decided that she would have one more child, then stop. Four children made the ideal family. She supposed it would be nice having two boys and two girls, but she really didn’t mind what sex her children were. She wondered if Maggie’s husband minded only having daughters.

When the new half-century was only a few months old, Britain found herself at war again. This time it was with North Korea, who, backed by Russia, had invaded the south. Kenny Desmond, who was too young to have fought in the war that had not long ended, was called up to fight. Yet again parents were forced to watch their young lads go off to battle, this time to a country that most had never heard of.

After Nell and Red had returned from their honeymoon in the Isle of Man, Red moved into the flat over the Labour Party offices and helped with Crown Caterers when he was home. Flynn and Finnegan performed regularly at workingmen’s clubs and ceilidhs. Their earnings varied from a few pounds one week to as much as twenty or thirty the next. Red would return from a performance laden with roses for his wife or whatever flowers happened to be in bloom at the time

Three months after the wedding, Red’s mother, Eithne, returned to live in Ireland, with instructions to call in the Garda should her brutal husband come near once he was allowed out of prison for brawling.

In November, Nell realised she was pregnant. She had always known that she was lacking in certain ways, that she didn’t experience the range of emotions of someone like Maggie who could move from a state of utter despair to one of total bliss within the space of minutes. But now, married to Red, with a baby on the way, she was as happy as she had ever been. She and Red began to look round at houses – the flat wasn’t nearly big enough for two adults and a baby. Eventually they settled on a semi-detached house on a new estate being built close to the sands in Waterloo, a mere few miles away from Bootle.

And although she hadn’t thought it possible to be happier than she already was, she felt happier still when she saw the wonderful modern kitchen with its black and white tiled floor and cream fitted units that would shortly be hers.

Quinn Finnegan kicked his merry way into the world almost a year after the wedding, by which time it was 1951 and Nell and Red were living in Waterloo. Quinn had his own room, hastily painted blue.

At about the same time, Iris Grant gave birth to another girl, Clare, and so did Rosie O’Neill, who called her daughter Laura after the picture of the same name starring Dana Andrews, who she claimed strongly resembled her Ryan. She, Ryan and their children moved into a modern house in Lydiate, on the very outskirts of Liverpool, taking Bridie with them and leaving Paddy alone in the house in Coral Street, not that he minded. As agent for the Labour Party he was always busy, and was able to hold meetings whenever he pleased now that he had the house to himself.

Maggie wrote to Nell.

All these babies! Lots of my London friends are having them too. I’d love more, but Jack always puts me off. Secretly, I’m glad. Now that Grace is out of nappies and she and Holly can both walk and talk, I’ve realised that babies aren’t nearly as much fun or as interesting as toddlers. You’ll find that out soon
.

I used to imagine us going for walks with our babies at the same time, taking them to school and chatting over a cup of tea in each other’s kitchens, but that’s not possible, is it? Did you know Iris and Tom have bought a big posh house in Balliol Road, Bootle? I’d love to see it. Tom’s surgery will stay in their old house and they’ll rent out the upstairs
.

PS Tomorrow we are going to the Festival of Britain pleasure gardens. I understand they are truly beautiful. If only we could have gone together . . .

The Balliol Road house had been decorated from top to bottom. There were enough bedrooms for each child to eventually have his or her own. The kitchen was rather old-fashioned, but Iris had decided to leave the modernisation till later. There was a vast dining room that housed the big wooden table from their old house. The dream she had always had, of a table full of children demanding food or passing the jam and the toast to each other, would shortly come true. William and Louise were already old enough to sit there for their meals – Louise needed a cushion; that was all.

Tom was often home late for his evening meal, not that she minded. He kept all his notes and his medical library in the old house and stayed there to write prescriptions and keep the records up to date. Nowadays she found his presence rather inhibiting and preferred the place without him. He rarely smiled, and didn’t show much interest in the children apart from William. He had even started to talk about Charlie, their little boy who had died in his sleep all those years ago. She guessed it was because he wasn’t pleased to have so many daughters. For some silly reason, it must make him feel less of a man.

Iris was glad they had moved. She felt happier in this house and was sure the older children did too. Within a few weeks, their faces had acquired a far healthier colour from playing in the big garden full of mature trees with a vegetable patch in a corner at the bottom. With memories of Maggie saying she had swung from a lamp post when she was a child, Iris had bought a stout rope and hung it from an equally stout branch of a leafy elm tree. William loved it.

Another advantage was that there was a little independent school further along the road where the children could go – William was due to start school next year. Tom was determined that they be educated privately. Honestly, Iris thought impatiently, the older he got, the stuffier he became. It was almost like being married to his brother, the revolting Frank.

There had been a general election in 1950 and Labour had emerged with a majority of a mere six seats. The people were restless. Food rationing was still in force, there was a desperate shortage of houses along with building materials and thousands of people had resorted to squatting in no-longer-needed army and prisoner-of-war camps and empty properties of any sort. In central London, squatters took over a row of luxury flats that had been used as offices during the war. Sometimes it was possible to smell imminent revolution in the air.

Maggie’s Auntie Kath became a well-known supporter of squatters’ rights, attending rallies, waving banners and making speeches all over the country. Her photograph was frequently to be seen in the newspapers, and she was termed a ‘heroine’ or a ‘troublemaker’, depending on which political view the paper supported.

The country was hard up. The United States had lent money to help fight the war, but now demanded it back. Politicians on the other side of the Atlantic weren’t too pleased at the idea of supporting a left-wing government, despite it having been elected by the people.

Late in 1951, another election was called in the hope of Labour increasing its majority. Instead it lost even more seats, despite achieving almost a quarter of a million more votes than the Conservative opposition. The Member for Bootle Docklands increased her already massive majority by more than ten per cent. Kathleen Curran was loved by the left and hated by the right, which she considered was exactly as it should be.

Early in the following year, when King George VI died of cancer, Auntie Kath publicly conceded that just because a person was royal it didn’t mean they were automatically bad. The late King had been a gentle, modest man who had shared the privations of the war with his people. Although he and his family could have gone to live in Canada, he insisted they stay in London and live on ordinary rations like everyone else.

His daughter, Elizabeth was crowned Queen in June 1953. Unlike virtually the entire population of the United Kingdom, Auntie Kath declined to watch the coronation on television – many thousands of sets having been purchased beforehand for that very purpose.

Nell’s neighbours on one side were an elderly couple, Maude and Edwin Carter, who had grown-up children and several grandchildren. On the other joined-on side lived Susan and Harold Ramsey, who’d only recently been married. The older couple adored Nell’s little boys, Quinn, who was now four, and Kevin, who was three. The pair were admittedly a handful, and the Ramseys complained bitterly about the noise the boys made both inside and outside the house. They remonstrated with them for peering through the hedge into their garden or climbing trees to do the same thing. They kept any balls that happened to land anywhere on their property and even accused Nell of allowing her lads to wee on the flowers in their front garden and make them die.