All Fall Down (39 page)

Now, as she drove the truck down wooded lanes, stopped at farmyards surrounded by buildings of mellow brick and timber, and watched the girls tramp through the rain in twos and threes for a day of egg collecting and cleaning out hen-huts, or if the weather improved of threshing, ploughing and apple picking, she looked forward to getting back to the Hall.

Her own day was mapped out with spanners, wrenches, nuts and bolts, pistons and gaskets, the smell of engine oil and the satisfying chug of a well-serviced machine. She smiled to herself as she drew up and jumped down into the courtyard. Jurgen came out of the barn, wiping his hands on a rag. He waved and called out in his stilted English, ‘Edie, there is a visitor!'

Before she could register the news, Tommy pushed his way past and came towards her. She stood in the rain, unprepared.

‘You never wrote.' He stopped short of flinging his arms around her.

‘I did. Last Friday.' She steadied herself against the bonnet of
the truck. Here was Tommy in his smart brown suit, but unshaven. He was a fish out of water in his thin-soled shoes, his fawn trilby.

‘I never got it.'

‘It must have got lost.' In the background she saw Jurgen retreat tactfully into the barn.

Tommy glanced over his shoulder. ‘Who's that?' He'd been disconcerted to find out from the POW that Edie worked alongside him, driving trucks and tractors, servicing the machinery.

‘That's Jurgen. Come and meet him.' She offered to take his hand.

He shook his head. ‘Look, I should have let you know I was coming . . .' Gone were his visions of a romantic reunion. They stood getting soaked, feeling awkward. He wasn't even sure that she was pleased to see him.

‘No, that's fine.'

Since he'd refused to come into the barn, she must stand in the rain. She looked earnestly into his face, trying to work out his motives.

‘Only, I wanted to see you.' He knew she needed space; that was what she'd claimed. She'd asked him to trust her and let her get over the horror of what had happened to Bill. But instead, he'd listened to gossip; to Dorothy's jibes and Rob's bad advice. His being here was a big mistake.

‘You're wet through. How's your hand?'

He held it up, flexed the fingers. ‘Better. How are you?'

‘Better too.'

‘You look it.' It was a conversation between strangers, not lovers. Here she was making a new life, tanned and healthy, without a scrap of make-up. And there was the German in the barn, the sort of serious, quietly spoken bloke that Edie might go for.

‘No I don't. I'm soaked through.' She tried a joke. ‘If I'd known you were coming . . .'

‘You'd have baked a cake. Look, Edie, I'm sorry.'

‘No.' She felt his doubts and suspicions. How could she not? And it was her who'd put off his first embrace when he showed
up out of nowhere. You'd think she would have been bowled over, surprised or not. ‘How's the flat?'

‘In apple-pie order.' He called in every now and then to check. ‘No more bombs lately. We've been lucky.'

‘How's everyone?'

He racked his brains. ‘Still in one piece. Likewise.' To everyone on Duke Street it seemed that the Blitz had eased. The problems these days were more with siphoners stealing petrol from your tank, or the ‘No Beer' signs that were appearing with increasing frequency outside the pubs. Annie and George had got to the stage where they only served regulars.

The trouble was, neither Tommy nor Edie could get a grip on the new situation, which slid further into banality with every exchange. Tommy had acted on impulse; if he had anything in mind, it was based on Rob's policing mentality that women given a free rein were bound to be up to no good. Now he felt ashamed, but at the same time vaguely vindicated. Who was this Jurgen? Had she been assigned to work with the mechanic, or had she chosen to do so? Tommy thought he'd picked up a warm, even intimate tone in the man's voice when they'd discussed Edie before her arrival.

Edie herself had been shocked by the sight of Tommy. He was lodged firmly in her heart all day, every day, and especially in her dreams at night. But in reality he was selling newspapers outside a Southwark market. What then was he doing here?

He took off his hat and shook water from the brim. ‘I shouldn't have come. It was stupid.'

‘Come into the canteen, out of the rain.' This time she was more insistent.

‘No, you have to get back to work. I'd better make myself scarce.' His mood swung violently. Now he felt an outright fool.

‘You only just got here!'

‘I made a mistake. I thought it'd be a nice surprise.'

‘No, you never.' She turned to argue. ‘You thought you'd better come and check up on me, Tommy O'Hagan!' Suddenly it clicked,
and she was angry. ‘That's it. It's not to give me a nice surprise at all!'

‘A good job as well.' He rammed his hat back on. ‘ 'Cos it weren't, were it?'

‘Don't you get mad at me.' She'd asked him to trust her. ‘What do you think I get up to? Look around. You think I go dancing every night?' She gestured at her soggy dungarees and dripping hair, held up her oil-stained hands. ‘You don't want to believe everything you hear about Land Army girls.'

‘I'm off.' Tommy turned on his heel and set off across the courtyard.

Edie watched him go through a blur of rain, splashing through puddles, heading up the cart track towards the road. She sensed Jurgen in the barn doorway, watching developments. If she let Tommy go now, there would be a rift that would be difficult to heal. She ran after him to have it out. ‘You're acting like a little kid!'

He heard her run, felt her seize his arm, walked on. ‘That's me; a stupid kid. You got the picture.'

‘You are if you walk out on me now.'

He stopped. ‘I can't cope, Edie. It's driving me mad; you stuck out here and me in town. It don't make sense.' He hung his head.

‘Look at me, Tommy.'

Slowly he did as she asked.

‘How do I look? Do I look how I did after Bill got killed? Am I a skeleton? Am I unhappy?' She stared at him, searching his face for a glimmer of understanding.

Gently he pushed a strand of dark blonde hair from her cheek. ‘You look like a drowned rat. But one that's in good nick.' He stroked her wet face.

‘There, see.
I
've been making sense of it.'

‘You took your time,' he complained. But he drew her closer.

‘You've gotta trust me.' What she was clawing her way out of was the guilt for Bill's death, telling herself that she was responsible only to the extent that she had been unfaithful to him, but under provocation. She accepted a time apart from Tommy as part of the
price she must pay. She would punish herself as a matter of habit rather than principle, but now she was ready to bring Tommy more into account. ‘Can you wait a bit longer?'

Her face was close to his, his arms around her waist. ‘What if I can't?'

Edie knew he was serious. ‘Wait for me, Tommy, please. We've been through a lot, haven't we? We ain't gonna give up now.'

He shook his head. ‘I'm stupid again, I know, but what the hell are we waiting for?' It meant him catching the train back by himself, slogging away to get back on his feet, with no one to go home to at night. ‘Come back, Edie, for God's sake.'

She lowered her head against his shoulder, held him tight. ‘I can't. I've got a job to do here.'

‘That ain't the reason.'

‘It is, partly. I'm learning. I want to keep on.'

‘Fiddling about with engines?'

‘I'm not fiddling!' This side of him made her mad. ‘I do good work.'

‘What else?' It wasn't the only reason she dug her heels in. ‘Come on, if I'm so bleeding miserable, I gotta know why!' He began to walk her slowly up the track.

‘I need a fresh start, Tommy. When we're both ready to make a move, I want it to be the right one.'

‘Name it.'

‘I don't know yet.' She pulled away, but held onto his hand, arms swinging as they walked.

‘Let me know when you find out, will you?'

‘Sarky!'

‘Sorry. You could always marry me if you felt like it.'

Edie stopped dead in her tracks. ‘Say that again!' They were in the middle of nowhere, it was raining cats and dogs, they were wet through and arguing, and Tommy had just proposed marriage.

‘Marry me. That's a fresh start, ain't it?' There he went again, putting his mouth into action before his brain.

‘You're the limit, Tommy.'

‘What kind of answer is that?'

‘What kind of question was it?' She walked on by herself. Her head was spinning.

‘A serious one. I'll get a proper divorce, all above board. I'll get us signed up at the registry office.'

Edie went and leaned against a gate under the dripping branches of a chestnut tree. She gazed at him from a distance. ‘I love you.'

As she mouthed the words, he leapt across the ditch, trapped her against the gate and kissed her. ‘You ain't gone off me?' Now he couldn't get enough of her; her wet cheeks and neck, the thin T-shirt clinging to her, everything dripping wet.

She laughed at his clumsy attempts to get near. ‘You be good, Tommy.'

‘Not possible.' He was kissing her again, ignoring the sound of a car going past on the road, the dripping leaves, the muddy ditch.

‘Yes.' She managed to catch hold of him, cupping his face between her hands. ‘That's my answer. You can make an honest woman of me . . .'

‘But?' he asked later that evening, after Edie had done her day's work, got changed and come to meet him in Westbury's one and only hotel. He'd signed her in as Mrs O'Hagan, the desk clerk had given her wedding ring a cursory glance, and they'd gone up to the room he'd booked for the night.

Now they lay in bed, swamped by the chinzy cosiness of flowered curtains, carpet and eiderdown. Even out here in the wild, the blackout was in force; they were reminded by the heavy blinds and the absence of lights in the street below. But it was months since the sirens had sounded within miles of this little country backwater. If Hitler came and disturbed their one and only night together, Tommy would personally volunteer to go over to Germany and do him in, he said.

‘But what?' After weeks apart, the shape of his body as it lay entwined with hers, the feel and smell of his skin were achingly familiar. She turned to him in the dark.

‘You'll marry me, but . . .?' He knew Edie. He knew the sound of a condition in her soft, low voice.

‘Clever you,' she whispered.

‘Go on, then. Give me the bad news.'

She ran her fingers across his chest, laid her hand on his shoulder. He was so close she hardly needed to open her mouth to make him hear. ‘But not in Duke Street.'

Too many bad memories, people with claims on them both, the pull of the past. ‘I've learned how to be happy here, Tommy. I don't want to go back.'

Sadie grieved for Jess's Mo almost as she would have done for Bertie or Geoff. She was there in Manchester for the funeral and, afterwards, went with her sister to recuperate at the rented house in Coniston. There was the calmness of the lake in September, the golden countryside, but still the sense that all was, out of joint. Sons shouldn't die before parents, young life ought not to be cut short while its begetters turned grey, their powers diminished.

Sadie would watch Jess sitting at the window looking out over the water. She felt guilty that her own sons survived. The boys were almost countrified after their months up here; they could tell her the names of trees, flowers and birds, they could row a boat, waited for the horse chestnuts to ripen and fall.

Once Jess turned at the sound of Sadie's footsteps. ‘You know what I just thought?'

Sadie came in and sat beside her.

‘I thought Mo could hear me. I said to him, “Righto, that's long enough. You've had your little joke, you can come home now.” '

‘She never breaks down,' Sadie told Walter when she got back home. ‘I don't know how she does it. But Grace, poor girl, she's in tears a lot of the time. I said I'd bring the boys back with me, but Jess says no, it helps to have them around. And it still ain't safe to bring them here, I know that really.' She was weary after her journey, wrapped up in Jess's grief, far removed from the worries of Duke Street and Paradise Court.

Walter and Meggie had cleaned the house from top to bottom when they heard she was on her way. Meggie knew how she liked the cushions and antimacassars on the front room sofa, and put
them just so. Walter went to meet her off the train. She acknowledged their efforts with a gentle hug, but failed to notice her daughter's pale, faded face until Walter mentioned it when they were in bed.

‘No bad news, I hope?' Sadie lay back against the pillow, clasping Walter's hand. If Meggie were subdued, it could only mean a letter from Ronnie.

‘What do you mean, you hope?' He knew about Sadie's visit to Gertie Elliot, ever since which Sadie had held onto the hope that the romance between the young lovers would soon fade and die. She'd come back with the conviction that something was badly amiss, but that Ronnie's mother had thought of a way of putting the dampener on things. ‘I thought bad news for Meggie would be good news as far as everyone else is concerned?' Walter didn't criticize, but he disliked this female sense of duty which made mothers stand in the way of young ones. He thought Meggie and Ronnie deserved a fair chance to sort out their own problems.

Sadie sighed. ‘I'm not so sure.' Jess's bereavement had given her a new perspective, closer to Walter's own.

‘Well, it's no news either way,' he reported. ‘Meggie goes down to wait for the post every morning. It's about the only interest she takes in anything, as a matter of fact.'