All Fall Down (20 page)

‘Ain't it?' He fiddled with the timing knob. The radio whistled and hummed. ‘You gotta laugh, or you'd bleeding well cry.'

‘You mean, they're at it every single night?' Every night something awful. She couldn't imagine a house so full of discord. Her own parents rarely quarrelled. The boys could be rowdy at times, there would be a sharp word from Sadie, even a tap on the leg, but it was soon forgotten. That's why her disagreement with her mother over Ronnie was so hard to deal with, casting a shadow over an otherwise loving atmosphere.

‘Every chance they get,' Jimmie reported. ‘She riles him, he ignores her, so she goes at him again, nag-nag-nag. Why hasn't he done this? How come he finds time to do that? When was the last time he came home sober? On and on.'

‘Why's he put up with it?' Bobby asked the logical, unmarried man's question.

‘He keeps saying he won't for much longer.'

‘And why do
you
have to?'

Another shrug.

‘Where would he go, stupid?' Meggie was equally succinct.

‘Anywhere.'

‘Like, where for instance?' She'd thought this one through for herself. ‘Hitler's bombed out half of London, in case you hadn't noticed.' There were always queues of homeless people on the steps of the War Damage Bureau as she passed by on her way to and from work. The few lucky ones managed to get themselves rehoused by billeting officers, but the majority stayed with family, or crammed into the rest centres to sleep on floors and feed at the WVS mobile canteens.

Jimmie kept quiet during the spat between the cousins. He had the feeling that he was, in fact, the only reason why Tommy tried to hold things together with Dorothy; to give him a roof over his head. ‘Maybe I'll just flit anyhow,' he told them. ‘Whether or not I got somewhere to go.'

‘Oh don't do that!' Meggie cried. She brushed fallen ash from her navy-blue slacks.

‘Why not? Would you miss me?' He winked at Bobby.

‘Course we would.' She coloured up and angrily stubbed the fag out. ‘It ain't funny, Bobby.'

Jimmie sprang up and pulled her to her feet, to dance her round the living room. ‘We'll meet again . . .' he crooned, ‘Don't know where, don't know when . . .'

Meggie thumped him on the shoulder.

‘. . . But I know we'll meet again some sunny day.'

‘This is it then?' Dorothy watched warily as Tommy flung clothes into a battered suitcase.

‘You've gone too far.'

‘Me? What about you?'

‘I don't want to talk about it, right?' He wouldn't discuss Edie. ‘Let's just call it a day.'

She chain-smoked, following him from room to room. ‘Just like
that? Finished.' She snapped her fingers, barred his way as he made for the bathroom.

‘No, not just like that. What do you think – that I'm enjoying this?'

‘What I think is, you can't wait to jump into bed with that little trollop.'

‘Wrong!'

Her bitterness spilled over in a distorted version that left out of account her own affair with Charlie and cast her in the role of abandoned wife. ‘I reckon you can't get out of here fast enough.'

‘Right.' They stood eye to eye. Dorothy flinched as he pushed past to get his shaving gear.

‘Where will you go?'

No answer. He didn't know. First he would pack up, then he would go and find Jimmie.

‘Will you keep the shop going?'

‘I ain't about to cut off my own nose to spite my face, am I? Course I'll keep it going.'

‘I ain't moving out of here,' she warned. The picture of future events only gradually took shape. If the shop stayed open, that meant that Edie would still be working in the office. Not a nice idea to swallow.

‘I never asked you to.' He glanced round the flat full of gadgets he'd fitted, furniture he'd bought. ‘You're welcome to it.'

‘And I want an allowance.' She flicked hard at her lighter, which refused to work. She shook it, then threw it onto a low table. When he didn't commit himself to paying over any money, she panicked. ‘You owe me. You can't just leave me in the lurch!'

‘Oh, can't I?' He snapped the case shut, then veered away from another battle. ‘OK, you'll get money, don't worry. I'm sick of playing games with you, you hear? Sick of them.'

‘I never started it.'

‘Who did then?' He was looking round for the last time, picking up the case, saying goodbye to a chunk of his life.

‘We both did.'

It was the first sincere thing she'd said in ages. He let the case slide flat again. ‘How come.'

‘You never loved me, Tommy, not really. I knew that as soon as we got married.' Her voice edged towards tears as she sat heavily on the bed.

Wrongfooted, he didn't jump in to deny it. Maybe it was true. Maybe, before Edie, he never knew what love was.

‘You thought you did, but really you never. Then you thought you'd cover it up by giving me things to keep me happy. That was your way.'

He was astonished. ‘I treated you well, didn't I?' All this was a revelation. In his eyes, Dorothy had expected the presents, the trips to the cinema and the seaside. He'd always found her demanding in this direction, thought she gave him freedom to go out to the pub and the football.

‘Like a princess,' she said flatly. ‘But you'd have done as much for anyone; for your ma when she was alive, for Jimmie. It wasn't as if I was special.'

‘I asked you to marry me, didn't I?'

‘Only after I'd done all the running, in case you hadn't noticed.' She'd had to pull out all the stops; the perfume, the low-cut dresses. After all, she was years older than Tommy, a woman with an already tarnished reputation. With his thriving business, quick wit and lively personality, Tommy was seen as a good catch.

‘I never,' he admitted, feeling a fool.

‘No, you wouldn't.' She blew her nose. ‘You never noticed nothing about me, not really.'

He began to think this was all true. Sitting there, she looked defeated, yet he'd always thought of her as tough. ‘What are you saying, that all this carrying on with Charlie and the others was just to get your own back?'

‘Bingo!'

‘I don't believe you.'

‘Why else would I latch onto Charlie Ogden?'

‘Don't you like him, then?'

She shrugged and reached for another cigarette. ‘Have you got a light? Charlie's Charlie, ain't he?'

‘Does he know you don't like him?'

‘I never said that. Anyhow, he don't like me much neither, so there's two of us.'

Tommy took a deep breath. The idea of using another person as a means of retaliation struck him as shocking. He used people to make money, it was true; but they always knew what he was up to and drove a hard bargain. But to pick up an unsuspecting bloke going through a hard time of his own was, to Tommy, something you didn't do. ‘Am I the fool, or what?'

‘You said it.' She inhaled deeply, her hand trembling, her face drawn.

‘You talk about me not loving you, but what about the other way around? I reckon you was out to get all you could out of me, right from the start, like I was a soft touch or something.'

This time she didn't answer. Let him think that. She wouldn't admit now that she'd started out head over heels in love with him.

‘Right.' He snapped his mouth shut with a short laugh. ‘I learned my lesson there, then.'

‘Better late than never.'

His mind flew back through the years; all the right things done for the wrong reasons, the long disillusionment. ‘If you never loved me, why marry me?'

She hesitated. ‘It wasn't just to get what I could out of you. I thought I could get you to love me.'

‘That would have been enough?'

‘Yes. I wanted to know how it felt.'

He'd planned to leave on a roll of anger, now he felt drained by sadness. ‘We ain't talked enough, you know that?' It would take a huge effort to leave her sitting there red-eyed and subdued.

But she took another unexpected turn, rejecting his pity. ‘I ain't interested in
talking
to a man, Tommy. I thought you'd have realized that by now.'

And now it was easy to turn away; she'd made it easy by her typical coarseness. He never knew where that came from or what
she got out of it, except that it put a man in his place; all men in fact, since it turned the tables and showed that she was the one in control. As she pronounced the word, ‘talking', stressing it and raising her eyebrows, he took the implied insult on board. ‘Righto, Dot. You go and do whatever it is you're interested in doing.'

He took up the case and headed for the door, slipping his hand into his jacket pocket. ‘Here's my key. If I have to, I'll kip in the basement for a bit, until I get me and Jimmie sorted out.'

Damn; she'd tilted it and let it slide by not being able to resist a sly dig. She'd always said Tommy was no good in bed, not because it was true, but because it was the easiest, deepest way to hurt him. This was once too often. She sat marooned on the bed, submitting to his departure.

He slammed the door and his footsteps faded down the stairs. Quietly she went and picked up the telephone, dialled Charlie's new number. ‘Hello, it's me.' She waited while he went and turned down the wireless. ‘Yes, Tommy just left. I kicked him out. When can you come round?'

Meggie wrote to Ronnie at least twice a week, not knowing if her letters would get through. Her favourite writing time was in the shelter under the pub, where she could retreat to a quiet corner and scribble away as the others wrapped themselves in blankets and got their heads down for the night.

She would tell him how they'd grown used to the Blitz; these days everyone could get a good sleep in spite of the thud of bombs and rattle of guns. Bertie, for instance, could sleep through the end of the world. She had more complaints about the squeak of her pen nib across the paper as she wrote her long letters, she said. One night her Uncle George had brought down fish and chip suppers for everyone after his spell on duty, and it had put them in a good mood so that supper was followed by a sing-song and you would have thought they hadn't a care in the world.

She kept her letters cheerful, treasuring similar ones from Ronnie, who could give few details of his whereabouts because of security, and who concentrated instead on the tricks they got up to to better
the petty-officers. He sent her a photo of himself in uniform, shoulders back, chin up, unbelievably handsome. She carried it everywhere and slept with it under her pillow.

‘It ain't Ronnie I mind about,' Sadie told her one evening while they sat darning socks by lamplight, listening as usual for the siren, almost wishing it would start up. Then they would have Ernie knocking at the door to fetch them, and they would bundle everyone into the shelter for the night and know where they stood. ‘A lovely girl like you is bound to find herself a nice young man sooner rather than later.'

‘I'm sure you'll like him, Ma.' Meggie was glad at the friendly turn of the conversation. The boys were in bed and Walter was out on patrol. They had the warm kitchen to themselves.

‘If I ever get to meet him.' Sadie's needle went in and out, weaving across the threadbare heel.

‘Next time he comes home on leave,' she promised.

‘You said that last time.'

‘I know, but his ma needs him. She had to try and run the pub single-handed since they took her cellarman into the army. You know what it's like.'

‘I should think she could spare him for a couple of hours,' Sadie sniffed. ‘That's all I'm saying. Everyone runs after that woman, you included.' She resented the time Meggie spent away from home; first on the futile search for her father, now due to the lure of the West End and Gertie's precious company.

‘It ain't like that,' Meggie tried to explain. ‘Gertie don't expect no one to run round after her.'

‘What is it, then?' What made Meggie spend her weekends up there, even though Ronnie wasn't due any leave before Christmas?

‘I don't know. You'd have to meet her.'

‘No, ta.'

‘Ma!'

‘Well, I mean to say you can't expect me to be tripping over myself in the rush. From what I hear, she's got plenty of admirers.'

Meggie sighed and sewed on.

‘Where's her husband anyway?'

‘Dead.'

Silence, which Meggie filled.

‘Shankley says he'd get hitched to her like a shot, only she says once bitten, twice shy.'

‘Who's Shankley?'

‘The oysterman in Bernhardt Court.' For a while Meggie succeeded in diverting attention away from Gertie by regaling her mother with tales of life in theatreland, seen through the eyes of the old Irishman.

‘And he's sweet on Gertie Elliot?' Sadie swung it back round. ‘Like everyone and his aunt, apparently. And what's she like?'

‘She's good fun, Ma. She wears modern outfits and she's always got time for a joke. And she's been kind to me right from the start, even before me and Ronnie got together. You'd like her, you would.'

Sadie looked doubtful, as if this was a new and exotic food she'd prefer not to taste. It was the ‘modern outfits' that did it. It made Sadie feel dowdy and left out. ‘I expect you'll be up there tomorrow?' Saturday, a day off, building up to Christmas.

‘I said I'd help out.'

‘Lucky Gertie.' Sadie snipped the end off the grey wool and inspected the darn. ‘At any rate it keeps you out of mischief.'

‘Meaning?' Meggie ended up disgruntled as usual. There was no way she could persuade her mother that being with Gertie in the Bell brought her closer to Ronnie, even in his absence, and made her happy. Perhaps it was too much to expect.

She was only saved from an awkward conversation by the familiar wail of the siren and the action stations that followed. Not having to discuss him was the best refuge from further arguments.