After the Storm (2 page)

‘Hey, Annie,’ Don called. ‘Guess who this is?’

He puffed out his chest and tried to look big. She bit back a retort and flicked the hair out of her eyes with a quick nod of her head. Eeh, you’ll catch it when we get home, Don Manon, you see if you don’t she thought to herself. She held the railing behind her. It was so cold it hurt her hand as she looked from Don to the man. He was not very big, she saw, and he was thin, so thin that he looked even smaller in the heavy brown coat. He squatted before her, his tired hazel eyes the same height as hers now. He held out his hands and said.

‘It’s me, little Annie. It’s your da come home for good.’

His hands drew her towards him and held her close. Dear God, he thought, neither of my children know me and I would have passed them in the street. Annie’s body was stiff against him and the brown serge hurt her chapped lips and she hoped she would not have to leave Aunt Sophie now that this man who was her father was home.

There was no colour, not even the grey of evening to help the long walk home. The hand which held Annie’s was not warm but it did protect to some extent the painfully reddened wrist, which was grand. All the time though, she was aware of the soft slapping of the worn brown leather glove into which her da had pressed her other hand. Don had looked away as the warmth, someone else’s warmth had stuck, clammy, to her hand. She
had seen the snigger though. Just you wait, she thought, you daft beggar. Just because it doesn’t bother you. You’d go and roll in the muck heap given half the chance. Her skin crawled with distaste; it was as bad as sitting on someone else’s warm seat. She half closed her eyes, holding her hand taut within the glove.

Maybe if she held it quite still the sodden heat would pass her hand and seep out through the top without touching her. Then, so long as the sides of the glove did not touch her skin, it would be all right. In fact it wouldn’t be so bad if it was someone she knew. She sighed.

‘Are you liking school, Annie?’ her father asked quietly, at a loss to reach these children, aware that already there was a distance between him and this quick-eyed wary child whom he had last seen when she was barely 3. She had changed little; there was still the chin which tilted in something short of defiance when she was uncertain but the voice was Mary’s. He felt the pain tense and leap at the sound of her reply.

‘Yes, Da.’

Somehow in the last four years he had imagined the child but not the voice. The sound destroyed the nervous unreality of his mood, hurling the cold dark evening and the remnants of his family before him. Despair hung poised to swoop but was held at bay by the memory of his daughter’s stiff embarrassed body awkwardly allowing his earlier embrace. A glimmer of feeling emerged as they silently trod the cobbles and his corrosive grief was given reason to pause.

Annie stared steadfastly at the ground as that old cat Sadie passed by. That did it; now the whole neighbourhood would know that Annie Manon was walking with some strange man. She dreaded a new round of whispers and furtive stares like those that had made her cringe with unhappiness when she had joined the school. Somehow these people were not like her or perhaps she was not like them since she was the one who had spoken differently and had struggled to understand the words which corkscrewed out so fast it had left her gaping. She smirked with satisfaction as she recalled how geordie she had quickly become and now was even as tough as Nellie, that gormless great gertie from Lower Edmoor Street.

Bye, that was a great day, the day she tripped Nellie into the steaming pile left by Old Mooney’s rag-and-bone mare. She
giggled softly as she pictured that face smeared with it. She had laughed so hard she’d wet her knickers but it was half fright as well because she hadn’t meant to; she’d just turned at the end of the hoop run and her foot had caught Nellie’s ankle. She had half thought she’d be killed by the great lump but Nellie had run off crying and Annie had been slapped on the back and given a jelly baby by Bert, the toughie of the street, and no one, but no one was given anything by Bert. She had nipped off the head first, then the legs and saved the body till last. After that she had sounded and looked the same as them and she was glad.

Even Sophie and Eric had seemed different in their own home to the people they had appeared to be on their visits to Annie’s old house up on the hill. Without her hat and coat and in the compact terrace Sophie had been fuller and she smelt of lavender and Eric of the colliery smithy where he heaved and banged at glowing metal every day, singing in his deep voice the music of Gilbert and Sullivan. The difference was a good one, Annie thought, for the house always bubbled with talk and fun and Sophie would grasp her by the waist and lift her, tight and close and laugh into her neck so that she could hardly breathe for shrieking and Eric read her stories each evening before she slept. They made her body feel loose again like it used to before … but she wouldn’t think of that now.

Sophie was watching for them, unalarmed at their lateness since Archie had written to say that he was coming home and would be in Wassingham, today. She had not warned Annie at his request and by now the headache which had been nagging all day stretched from her shoulder to her eye.

She moved to the fire and stood with her back to the heat which eased it a little but the tension that had knotted her muscles drove her to the window once more. The tears were close again and she clenched her mind against them. There had been so many shed over the last four years and now was not the time for more. But, Mary, my dear girl, she could not prevent herself calling silently, if only it hadn’t happened, if only you were here now. What in God’s name is to become of them?

She chewed her nail. I couldn’t even manage to keep them together for you, your pigeon pair, and Don has grown away from us as I feared he would, once Albert had his way. She
wondered yet again if she could have fought harder at the funeral to prevent Albert from persuading Archie to allow him to take Don when he was 8, but he seemed so determined, almost obsessed by a need to have one of Archie’s children. Was it just that he wanted a messenger boy or did he really care for his nephew? Somehow Sophie doubted this.

She rubbed her face with her hands, trying to shake the past from her head and moved first to the fire to add more coal, and then to the window searching with strained eyes through the mist and, dimly, they came, three figures emerging so sparingly from the dark of the street that it nearly broke her heart.

The years since 1914 had made a mockery of so much shining promise, she thought savagely, and there is absolutely nothing I can do about it. Her impotence drew back her tension, her headache increased, but she drew herself straight and moved to the front door, spilling the light into the thick darkness and drawing the now recognisable figures into its beam.

Annie blinked, warmed by the promise of familiarity and the scones which she could smell even as she crossed the stone step that clicked against her father’s shoes as he followed her into the glinting hallway.

‘Go through, Annie love,’ Sophie coaxed as she kissed the hair which was cold and hung with minute droplets of evening chill. She pushed the thawing child gently from behind, only patting Don on the shoulder and smiling. He had told her last time that he was too old for kisses.

Annie, relieved that tea was as usual in the kitchen and not in the starched and strange front parlour, hurried past. She grinned and, shrugging herself free of her coat, flung it and the now lifeless leather glove onto the airer by the range and lolled kneeling against the guard. Her cheek pressed against the linen towels and the smell of boiling was still deep within them. With her face protected from the heat her knees and feet roasted themselves free of numbness until the itch of chilblains drove her further back to the chair in which she usually sat.

She glanced quickly at Don who had taken her place. His thin face was blotched with cold and his brown eyes were half closed. His light brown hair was dry now and flopped down towards his eye. She reached for the winter-green from beside the clock on the mantelpiece. Its tick was loud close to, but once back in her seat at the table it became lost in the hiss and spit of
the fire. The mirror above the fire reflected the gas lamps which spluttered on the walls and the pictures of Whitley Bay that Eric had found wrapped up in old newspaper on a train.

‘D’you think,’ she pondered, her voice muffled as she drew her leg up and pulled off her sock, ‘I should let a claggy skunk like you have any of this?’ She held up the winter-green and dared him to reach for it. She hoped it would gain a response and it did.

‘It’s that or a damn good clout,’ he murmured, scratching his throbbing toes and making a lunge.

‘Now, now, Don lad,’ she taunted him, her voice full with laughter, her mouth rounded into posh. ‘Is that any way to treat a young lady especially when her father is outside ready to save her.’

She rolled her eyes and clutched her hands to her breast and was helpless to beat off Don’s attack which came and soon they were both tingling with suppressed laughter.

Don tossed it back for her to put away, as Annie knew he would. Bye, she’d get the beggar one day she vowed, happy that he was here and that, for this moment, he was as he had been before he went to Albert’s. She leant her mouth against the knee she liked to hug. The smell of her skin was pleasing to her and she resisted the temptation to make a bum of it between her fingers. He might walk in.

In the pause they heard the lowered voices in the hallway and it drew their eyes to one another.

‘D’you remember him, Don?’ she whispered. ‘And why is he here?’

Don shook his head, his finger to his lips. ‘He says he’s come home,’ he mouthed. ‘I hope so, then I can live back home.’

Annie nodded. So perhaps he didn’t like it at Albert’s after all. She was pleased. The winter-green was interfering with her sniffing and making her eyes water. Reluctantly she pulled her sock back on and allowed the leg to drop. She settled back into the chair, sitting on her hands and feeling warm all over, with no gaps at all. He seemed old, she mulled. It wasn’t that he was different to the man she had imagined for she had never thought about him. She watched Don put more coal on the fire and didn’t want this moment to pass. There was something so certain about the heat, the smell of winter-green. Something so certain about scones and Don rubbing his hands free of coal
marks. It wasn’t exciting but it was the same as last Friday and the Friday before. The dresser was up against the wall, the rag mat was by their feet. The walls were still cream, the scullery was through the brown door.

She looked at Don. ‘But where is his home?’

Don shrugged, pulled his socks back on and searched in his pocket.

‘Give over Annie, they’ll tell us when they want us to know.’ He held out the smooth Jack stones. ‘Come on, I’ll give you a game. Best of three and if I lose, I’ll get a pennyworth of chips tomorrow and you can have a few.’

‘You’re a tight one,’ she accused and smoothed the table cloth which she had rucked as she had turned her chair. Her back was now to the fire and it felt good. ‘Don’t you like it at Albert’s then?’

‘It’ll do,’ he said as he tossed the ball, ‘but he’s the one who’s as tight as a mouse’s whatnot. Won’t let me have any sweets unless I pay for them.’

He was feeling the table cloth now.

‘The stones will lie steady but it gives the ball a low bounce,’ he remarked.

‘Well, I think it’s lovely.’ She looked at him. ‘Is that why you want to leave, because he’s a skinflint?’ Hoping that he would say that he missed her.

‘It’s like this see, if we’ve got a da, why not live with him. It’s right isn’t it, then I won’t have to work for me pocket money.’ His voice was impatient.

Annie sat back in her chair watching as he threw up and grabbed three pebbles. She couldn’t see at all why it was right to live with a man she didn’t know.

‘But …’ she began.

‘This is the one they used for the vicar,’ Don interrupted. ‘The tablecloth, you daft nellie.’

He threw again and Annie said nothing, knowing that he did not want to talk about it. It was finished as far as he was concerned and Annie wondered whether he really had feelings or just bounced like his jack ball was doing.

She heard the click of the front-room door and thought how wonderful it would be to be able to melt into invisibility, slide under the door and sit close to Auntie Sophie, rubbing her face against the softness of her jumper. She wondered if someone
would feel an invisible stroke or would it be as light as gossamer. She frowned.

‘What’s gossamer, Don?’

‘Don’t talk daft, Annie.’ His small blunt fingers were steady as he readied to catch the last stone. His nails were dirty from the coal and she hoped that he would wash his hands before they had tea. She traced the pattern of the satin stitch which edged the table cloth and it was smooth and raised and cool. She eyed the bare corners of the table; the cloth had never been put round that way before. So, an extra place must have been laid and there it was, at the end. It would be Uncle Eric at one end, and him, her father, at the other. She fidgeted and folded her arms across her stomach holding her breath knowing it was coming but unable to prevent it. The rumble escaped.

‘For Pete’s sake, Don, hurry up,’ she snapped, a blind anger sweeping over her but he just laughed and dug her with his elbow.

‘Still as noisy as an empty barrel,’ he sniggered, handing her the stones. ‘Your turn and let’s have some hush while you’re at it. Eeh, I’m right hungry, what are they doing in that room anyway?’

Sophie had closed the front-room door behind them. The fire was still well built up and Archie stood before it, rubbing his hands in its warmth. He turned and stood quietly looking round the room as though familiarising himself with a place he had once known but had now forgotten.

It was lit by a small table lamp which left the corners in darkness. The antimacassars showed up clearly against the dark maroon of the settee and chairs. There were just two occasional tables, one which held the lamp and a photograph of Annie and Don; the other, set to the left of the settee, held several; one of Eric in uniform before his injury, one of Sophie and Eric on their wedding day. The other was of his own wedding with his cousin, Sarah Beeston in attendance. He looked away quickly, away from his Mary, back to Sophie.