Put Out the Fires (47 page)

“Everywhere looked really nice, and the meal was first class, luv,” Sean assured her, but she appeared to take no notice.

“Those tomatoes were five shillings a pound,” she moaned, “though I only bought a quarter, and the man in the Co-op wasn’t a bit pleased when I only asked for an ounce of cooking cherries. I walked all the way to Paddy’s Market last Friday to buy two cups and saucers, ‘cos ours were all chipped. Y’see, I’ve never had anyone to tea before, this is the first time - and the last! Me nerves were at breaking point the whole meal through.’

Sean mentally tried to work out how many sheets and bolster cases she’d had to launder to buy everything, but” was too upset by her tears to cope with the sum.

She looked up at him, and his heart turned over at the sight of her tear-stained face. “D’you think they noticed the way I cut the butties?” she enquired plaintively. “I saw one of me ladies do it that way, in triangles ‘stead of squares, and I thought it looked dead posh.’

“I’m sure they did, luv.” Sean felt slightly guilty that he hadn’t noticed himself.

“Your Eileen brought a sponge cake with her, as if we mightn’t have enough food,” Alice sniffed, clearly offended, “and Sheila gave me a quarter of margarine. You’d think we were dead poor or something.”

“People always do that since the war,” Sean explained, “because they don’t like using other people’s rations.”

“Do they?” Alice looked at him anxiously. “Are you sure?”

“I’m positive.” Sean patted the pocket of his blue-grey battledress. “I’ve brought you something, too.”

“A letter! Is it a letter?” She wiped her cheeks with her sleeve and her grey eyes lit up. “I’ve still got all your letters. I keep them tied up with string underneath the bed.”

Sean kissed her tenderly on the lips. “And I’ve kept yours.”

“I didn’t think it was possible to write so many pages. I was never any good at writing at school, but when I asked one of me ladies how to spell a word, she gave me a thing called a dictionary, and I use it every time I do a letter.”

“Anyroad, this isn’t a letter, it’s something else.” Sean tapped his pocket again. “D’you want to see?”

“Of course I do.”

Sean took a tiny box out of his battledress and opened it. A solitaire diamond ring nestled within the velvet centre.

Alice stared at the ring, round-eyed. “What is it?”

“An engagement ring, of course,” Sean said smugly.

“How much did it cost?”

“Four pound, ten shillings. It was the smallest in the shop. I hope it fits.” “What!”

“I told you, four pound ten.”

Sean felt the atmosphere in the room turn cold and Alice seemed to shrivel beside him. To his dismay, she stood up, knocking against him, and the box containing the ring flew across the room.

“You’re nowt but an idiot, Sean Doyle,” she screamed in a fury. “Four pound ten for a bleedin” ring. What is it they say, “a fool and his money are soon parted’?”

“But Alice . . . ”

“Don’t ‘but Alice’ me. You need your head examined, you.” Her little body looked as if it might explode. She began to throw the remaining plates on top of each other, stopped, sat down and dropped her head in her arms again and began to cry even louder than before.

“Jaysus, Alice,” Sean complained. “I can’t keep up with you. I thought you’d be as pleased as Punch.”

“I am, I am,” she cried, distraught. “Where is it? Oh, where is it? If it’s gone down a crack between the floorboards, I’ll kill meself.”

Sean retrieved the box. The ring remained safely tucked in the padded slit. “Try it on.”

The ring slid easily over Alice’s knuckle and rested, twinkling, on the third finger of her tiny left hand.

“It fits perfect,” she breathed. “Oh, Sean, I’m sorry. I never thought I’d have an engagement ring, least of all one as nice as this! It was just when I thought of all the washing I’d have to do for four pound ten.”

“I know, luv.” Sean put his arms around her and she nestled close. He hadn’t felt all that perturbed by the outburst. The Alice Scully who’d just recently dominated the tea table, was nothing like his Alice, who wrote him long tender letters every week; letters in which she seemed able to put down all the things she found hard to say in person as she struggled daily to keep the family together, to ensure they were clean and fed, and, her most ardent wish, that they grew up “respectable”, as she put it. She told him how scared she was for their future, that she was terrified her mam would die, or the war would continue long enough for Tommy to be called up. And she told Sean how much she loved him, and that never, in a million years, had she thought someone like him would fall in love -with her. It might not seem so to Eileen and Sheila, but the Scully family were bound together by a bond invisible to outsiders. The younger children might well be frightened of their older sister’s sharp tongue and heavy hand, but Alice had to keep up a front and appear to be strong, and they knew, in their heart of hearts, that the blows meant nothing. They cared for Alice every bit as much as she cared for them.

He kissed her ear. “You know what I think, Alice?”

“What, luv?”

“I think we should get married straight away.”

“But where will we live? I mean, there’s no room here.”

“We can put a mattress on the floor in this room,” Sean said carelessly. “We’ll think of something, don’t worry.”

Alice said cautiously, “Don’t you think we should wait till we’re a bit older?”

“If I’m old enough to fight for me country,” Sean said bluntly, “then I’m old enough to get married. Anyroad, the other day I discovered that married men’s wives get an allowance - twenty-five bob a week, along with another seven off my pay. That means you’d get thirty-two bob all to yourself. Fact, looked at a certain way, luv, they’d actually be paying us to get married.”

“Never!” Thirty-two bob sounded a small fortune to Alice.

“It means you can give up doing other people’s washing.”

It bothered him when he was away, thinking of her trailing up to Merton Road and back with loads of laundry, and he’d never forget the weight of the iron! To some, it might not seem a very romantic reason for getting married, but to Sean, it was the best reason on earth.

Late that same night, Jack Doyle came bursting into Number 16, where both his daughters were listening to the wireless. The children were fast asleep in bed.

“What’s Churchill done now?” Eileen grinned when she saw his angry red face.

“It’s nowt to do with Churchill. It’s our Sean. He’s just come home and told me he and Alice Scully are getting wed.”

“Oh, no!’Sheila wailed.

“My feelings exactly,” Jack snapped. “What did you think of her?” he asked Eileen.

“She seemed all right to me,” Eileen said calmly. “In fact, I don’t know what all the fuss is about. Alice is a bit short tempered—well, more than a bit,” she conceded when Sheila gave a contemptuous snort, “but who can blame her when you consider what she has to put up with? Most girls would have put those little ones in an orphanage a long time ago.”

“Mebbe, but that doesn’t make her a good wife for our Sean,’Jack argued.

“It doesn’t make her a bad one, either.”

“What did you say to Sean?” Sheila asked.

“I managed to persuade him to put if off till Christmas, when he’ll be nineteen. After all, he’s only known the girl a few months. In the meantime, I’ll look round for a better house just in case.”

“I don’t suppose there’s much harm in that,” Eileen said.

“I might pop round and see Alice tomorrer. I suppose it’s time I got to know her proper.” It wasn’t that she loved Sean any less than her dad and Sheila, but neither seemed aware of how shallow he was and entirely lacking in character, taking up with girls and dropping them without the least concern for their feelings. There’d been times when she envisaged him becoming another George Ransome: a lonely middle-aged man, the permanent bachelor, unable to sustain a relationship and making a fool of himself with a long succession of different women. She felt convinced that someone as strong as Alice Scully, together with all the responsibilities that came with her, would be the making of Sean Doyle.

Chapter 21

Matt Smith dropped down onto the grass beside Eileen.

“Isn’t it a glorious day?”

“Glorious,” Eileen agreed lazily.

She was leaning against the cottage wall. Her feet and long slim legs were bare, and the smooth skin gleamed softly in the sunshine. Her hands were clasped over her vastly extended stomach, as if protecting the child growing inside.

“It’s lovely here.” Mart’s gaze swept over the large garden.

Jack Doyle had gradually brought about a sense of order. At least half of the lawn had been turned over to vegetables, and what remained had been neatly cut with the old rusty mower Jack had discovered in the outhouse and which Matt had helped to restore to working order. The bordering shrubs and bushes were bursting with flowers. A dark shadow had appeared in the far corner, gradually extending as the late afternoon sun crept across the grass. Beyond the apple tree, already full of tiny crab-like fruit, Jack was busy turning over a patch of earth for Brussels sprouts. Now and then the spade would hit a stone with a little clanging noise and Jack would swear aloud, but apart from that, he had the look of a man entirely contented with his lot, as if he would never be happier than with his feet in the earth, his hands on a spade, and surrounded by the green shoots of the vegetables he’d already planted.

The wireless was on inside the house, and the sound of Judy Garland singing Somewhere Over the Rainbow came through the open window.

“Have you seen the picture?”

Matt blinked. “Sorry?” Eileen was looking at him. Her eyes were sad.

“The picture, The Wizard of Oz? We went to see it in London last year when it first came out. Tony, me little boy, was thrilled to bits. We marched all the way back to the hotel singing Follow the Yellow Brick Road.”

He shook his head. “I haven’t been to the cinema in ages.”

“You and Ruth should go some time. I suppose she’s told you, her dad would have lived in the pictures if they’d let him. He went nearly every week.”

“She may have mentioned it.”

“S’funny,” Eileen mused, “the way songs remind you of people and places more than anything else. If they’re still playing Somewhere Over the Rainbow in forty or fifty years” time, I shall always think of Tony.”

She lapsed into silence and Matt settled himself against the wall. The bricks felt hot against his back. It was strange, he thought, but summer Sundays felt exactly the same wherever you happened to be. The atmosphere was as he’d always remembered it: sounds more muted than usual, yet everything lit with brilliant clarity. He stared at the almost unbelievable perfection of the blossoms on a Pfingstrose bush nearby - he racked his brain for the English name, peony! - the dark red centres fading to the palest pink at their tips. A bird landed on the bush, opened its beak and began to sing its heart out.

“You wouldn’t believe such a tiny thing could make such a lovely loud noise, would you? Eileen murmured.

“Mind you, they get on our Sheila’s nerves, the birds.” “Is that why she didn’t come?” Matt asked.

“No. Dominic and Niall aren’t feeling so well. I think they’re coming down with something.

“Who does the place belong to?”

“A friend,” Eileen said vaguely.

“I’m surprised you don’t live here permanently.”

“I nearly did once, last September, but then . . . Well, all sorts of things happened.” Eileen gave a little shrug.

“Anyroad, as soon as me baby’s born and I’m on me feet again, I’m moving into the cottage for good. Our Sheila’s taking on me house in Pearl Street, we’ve already arranged it with the landlord.”

“I shall be sorry to see you go,” Matt said. He genuinely meant it. He’d miss her calling in on Ruth from time to time.

“Oh, you haven’t seen the back of me, don’t worry!” she grinned. “I shall probably go home every other day. Not only that, now you’ve started giving me dad a hand in the garden, I’ll be here to make you a nice cup of tea, won’t I?”

Matt resolved he’d come with Jack at every available opportunity once Eileen Costello was ensconced in the cottage. He bent down to hide his face, plucking at a daisy which nestled in the grass, in case he hadn’t quite hidden his feeling of pleasure at the idea of seeing more of her.

“Being here reminds me of my childhood,” he mumbled.

“The sounds and the smells. I was brought up on a farm.”

“I didn’t know that! Whereabouts?” She looked at him with her big blue eyes, clearly interested.

“Croydon,” said Matt. “Just outside Croydon.” He felt convinced that, of all the people he’d come to know since arriving in England, she would be the least shocked if he told her the truth. Perhaps, he thought, one day I will . . .

“That’s a nice watch,” she said suddenly. “Is it a new one?

Me dad said you lost your watch in the raids.”

Matt bit his lip as he looked down at the watch on his wrist. It had a mother-of-pearl face and a leather strap. “It’s second-hand. Factories have more to do than turn out new watches when there’s a war on. Ruth bought it for me.” He wasn’t sure which emotion raged uppermost, anger or pity, when she had given him the watch; there was anger that she was trying to take the place of Maria, and pity because Ruth didn’t deserve to be reduced to such a pathetic gesture.

“I suppose I’d better go back and give Jack a hand.” Matt got to his feet. “I had to stop for a while. I got cramp in the back of me leg.”

“Would you like me to rub it for you?” she offered.

He glanced down at her quickly, but the expression on her fresh open face was entirely devoid of guile. With a pang, he realised she didn’t look upon him sexually, as a man, but as another woman’s husband. “No, thanks,” he said. “It’s gone now.”

She giggled. “Do you know what you just said?

Matt frowned, mystified. “No. What did I just say?”

“You said you had cramp in the back of me leg, not my leg. You’re becoming a real scouse, Matt. No-one will recognise you when you go back to Croydon.”