After the War is Over (4 page)

Nell didn’t say that the occupants of the house had gone to London to celebrate Christmas with their daughter. But that didn’t stop other things from being sad. ‘I know it is, Maggie.’

Maggie stepped back and looked at the sky, which was the deepest of blues littered with a million or more stars. ‘But that sky is truly beautiful.’ She turned to her friend, eyes shining. ‘Despite everything, Nell, it really is a wonderful world.’

Chapter 2

A few days into the new year, Maggie went for a job interview. A secretary shorthand typist was required at Briggs & Son, a roofing firm in Seaforth, only a short walk from Bootle. She presented herself in her best red coat, the tippet from Auntie Kath and a Juliet cap knitted by her mother.

The manager, Ignatius Reilly, middle-aged, overweight and suffering from a long-term hangover due to excessive celebrating over Christmas and the new year, felt rejuvenated by the sight of Maggie’s broad smile and rosy cheeks. He imagined a perfectly shaped body hidden beneath the red coat. ‘How many words a minute shorthand can you do?’ he enquired.

‘I’ve never counted,’ Maggie confessed, beaming. ‘I learned shorthand and typing in the army of me own accord, as it were. I started as a clerk, then worked me way up to shorthand typist. I suppose, in a way, I invented me own shorthand. It’s not Pitman or Gregg. Would you like to see me write something down?’

‘No, luv, it doesn’t matter. When can you start?’ To have such a pretty, happy face in his office was better any day than perfect shorthand. And he would try and keep his distance from this one. Too many girls had left giving his roving hands as the reason.

‘I could start Monday,’ Maggie told him. ‘Or tomorrow, if you’re desperate.’ She felt dead lucky to have found work so easily. What with thousands of troops home again and wanting jobs, replacing the women who’d replaced them in factories when the war had started, there were often dozens of applicants for every vacancy.

‘I’m desperate,’ Ignatius Reilly said. ‘Tomorrow will be fine.’

In January, Iris resumed her position as Tom’s receptionist. Until she’d come home, she hadn’t realised just how many patients he was treating these days, most of them for free. First thing in the morning, long queues would form outside the house well before the surgery was due to open. Not everyone waiting was on Tom’s panel of patients, but even people who didn’t have a wireless or read newspapers were aware that an era of free medicine was on the cards, and Dr Grant in Rimrose Road was at the forefront. Tom had always been a popular doctor; now he was working himself into the ground. It was rare that a night went by when he wasn’t called out to treat a patient who was sick. He had arranged that his father, who was semi-retired, would shoulder some of the load.

‘Some people come with the slightest complaints,’ he grumbled when that particular morning’s surgery had come to an end, ‘like they’ve cut their finger. All it needs is iodine and a plaster. A chap lost his temper today because I wouldn’t take his rotten teeth out. I don’t think he’d heard of dentists.’

‘Did you tell him where the nearest dentist is?’ Iris asked.

‘Of course,’ Tom said impatiently, regretting it straight away. ‘Sorry for being so ratty. I think some of them like the idea of having a doctor at their beck and call. Anyway,’ he said reflectively, ‘there’s all the good things, like prescribing penicillin for someone who has a permanent cold or a wound that just won’t heal. People are so grateful; it almost makes me want to cry. And the babies! You don’t know how good it feels to send a baby to hospital when you suspect they might be on the verge of getting something really serious, like diphtheria, or even meningitis. I’m saving lives. I don’t think I’ve ever saved lives before.’

‘I’m sure you have, Tom.’ He was a good doctor who really cared about his patients. ‘Shall I make lunch now?’ It was time he had a break after such a busy morning.

Iris went into the kitchen and began to spread margarine on six rounds of bread – four for Tom and two for herself; there was still no sign of the butter ration being increased. She opened a tin of Spam, cut the meat into wafer-thin slices, placed half on the bread and smothered Tom’s share with brown sauce. The rest she put in the larder for tomorrow. She made a pot of tea, and took that and the sandwiches into the waiting room, where a coal fire burnt. To save fuel, the fire in the upstairs living room wasn’t lit until evening.

‘Tom!’ she called. ‘Lunch is ready.’

She sat down with a tired sigh. She’d been on her feet herself for most of the morning, but today, Wednesday, the surgery only opened half a day. The afternoon she had to herself. She kept meaning to suggest to Tom that they change to another day. Wednesday the shops closed at lunchtime, and, tired or not, she would love to have gone into the city centre and done some shopping. Tom spent his free time ensconced in his surgery reading
The Lancet
, leaving her to her own devices.

There’d been a time before the war when she’d had friends, loads of them. One had married an American soldier and gone to live in Minneapolis, another had been posted to London and stayed there. Others had got married and moved away. There were still a few left in Liverpool, but Iris couldn’t be bothered looking them up, in particular the ones with children.

She heard Tom cough. He was opening drawers and cupboards, putting things away, letting his tea get cold. He was incapable of allowing the surgery to look even faintly untidy. Every surface had to be clear or at least the things neatly arranged before he would leave the room.

Did she really want to continue doing this for the rest of her life? Listen to Tom tidying his office, take the patients’ names, show them in and show them out. It was why, six years ago, she’d joined the army, to get away from the tedium of her life, to fill it with other, more interesting things, and hopefully get rid of the ache she felt, the sense of loss over the death of her baby that was just as painful as any illness it was possible to have.

She didn’t feel jealous of other women’s babies. If she couldn’t have Charlie, then what she wanted was another baby of her own. She didn’t care if it was a boy or a girl, just a baby,
her
baby. It didn’t even have to be Tom’s baby. Any man’s would do.

In the army, she’d been busy, but it was a different sort of busy to how she was at home. If she wasn’t driving senior officers to their destinations, then she was going to dances, watching films, listening to lectures, gossiping with friends, drinking in the sergeants’ mess. She supposed she should add ‘sleeping around’ to the list, because she’d done enough of that during her time in Plymouth. It had been pleasant enough, but throughout the entire procedure she had been obsessed with the thought that this might be the one, the time, the man who would give her another baby.

Lunch over, Tom returned to the surgery and, since it was Wednesday and the waiting room wouldn’t be used again that day, Iris went upstairs to light the fire in the sitting room, but discovered she’d forgotten to bring a firelighter with her.

‘Damn!’ she muttered and ran downstairs to fetch one. She was on her way back again when the doorbell rang. ‘Damn!’ she said again. She hoped it wasn’t a patient insisting on seeing Tom. Some seemed to think he wasn’t entitled to any time off at all. But when she opened the door, she found Nell standing nervously outside.

‘You invited me and Maggie for afternoon tea,’ Nell explained when Iris had stared at her without comprehension for a rudely long time.

‘Oh, I’m sorry, Nell. Come inside, please. I was miles and miles away just then. I’d forgotten all about asking you – but I would have remembered any minute,’ she assured the girl. It was when she’d had them both to tea at Christmas that she’d suggested they come again in four weeks. ‘Where’s Maggie?’

‘She’s started work. She’s got this job in Seaforth with a roofing company. She doesn’t finish until half past five. Look, I’ll go away again, shall I?’ She turned on her heel and was halfway down the path before Iris could grab her.

‘Don’t you dare leave, Nell Desmond. I’m simply longing for company and you are the perfect companion. We’ll sit in the kitchen – the stove’s lit and it’s lovely and warm out there – and have an interesting natter.’

Nell blushed. ‘Are you sure? You’re not just being nice?’

‘I’m positive, Nell. Do come in, please.’

‘This is a lovely big kitchen,’ Nell remarked when they went in. ‘Our kitchen at home would fit in here about four times. We’ve got no room for a table.’

What Iris’s kitchen needed was a family, one to sit around the long wooden table for their meals. Iris imagined herself making rounds and rounds of toast and imaginary children passing jars of home-made jam and marmalade to each other. And there would be a whole brick of best butter in a special dish.

‘One of these days you’ll have a family, won’t you?’ Nell said in that comfortable, complacent tone she used when making such remarks.

‘Hopefully.’ Iris did her best to smile. In fact, she had never liked any part of the house. The rooms were too big, the ceilings too high, the decoration much too gloomy. Perhaps she could immerse herself in having the main rooms wallpapered in bright colours, buy new curtains, some attractive rugs. The idea appealed, and she hoped she wouldn’t have gone off it by tonight, when she would discuss it with Tom. It would, at least, give her something absorbing to think about for a while. Her enthusiasm quickly paled when she remembered there was a shortage of virtually everything in the shops, including wallpaper, curtains and rugs.

‘How are you getting on?’ she asked Nell, who looked terribly unhappy, as if some of the blood had been drained out of her. The girl had always been quiet, never with much to say, but had always seemed contented with her lot.

‘Not so bad,’ she said listlessly. ‘What about you?’

‘I’m not getting on so bad either.’ Iris laughed, and for some reason, so did Nell. Perhaps it was their shared misery that made them reminisce about the army, the good times they’d had, the laughs, the tears, the joy towards the end when they’d listened to the news and Britain and her allies had just won an important battle. The kitchen disappeared; they were no longer in Bootle, but in the camp in Plymouth where they’d felt so much more alive.

‘Those were the days,’ Nell said with a sigh.

‘For goodness’ sake, Nell, you shouldn’t be talking like that, not at your age. What are you – twenty-one?’

‘Well, you’re not much older.’ The girl’s eyes grew dark and her face emptied of expression. ‘Does it ever worry you,’ she said quietly, ‘I mean, I know we’re only young, but that we’ve already lived the best years of our lives and from now on we’ll never be that happy again?’

It was going on for half past five. Maggie was typing so fast she half expected the typewriter to puff steam. She wanted to finish the rather complicated quotation for roofing work before she left work for the night.

Ignatius Reilly prowled around the office, glancing surreptitiously at his newly acquired secretary. She was alluring even from the back. Her black curls shook from the effort she was putting into the typing, her white neck twisted slightly as she glanced from the paper in the typewriter to the notebook on the desk full of overlarge scribbles that purported to be shorthand though she seemed able to read it. He visualised her full bosom shaking with the neck movements. Unable to resist, he crept up behind her and embraced the soft breasts in his big fat hands.

‘Ouch!’ he screeched seconds later, clutching his stomach, into which Maggie had shoved a very sharp elbow. ‘That really hurt.’

‘It was meant to hurt,’ Maggie said severely. ‘You’re disgusting, that’s what. If you dare do that again, next time it’ll hurt even more. If you’re not careful, you’ll end up with me paperknife stuck in your gut. And it wouldn’t be counted as murder, but self-defence.’

‘You’ve got no right to speak to
me
like that,’ Ignatius grumbled.

‘You’ve got even less right to touch me like that.’

‘I could sack you any minute.’

‘And I could leave even quicker,’ Maggie retorted. ‘This very minute, in fact.’ She looked even more desirable when she was angry. ‘The thing is, I could get another job in a jiffy, but you, you’re not likely to find a secretary in a million years who’ll willingly let you maul her. In fact, if you carry on the way you do, I’ll tell me dad, and him and me brother will come and batter you to within an inch of your miserable life.’

Little did Maggie know that Iggy was finding these threats terrifically exciting. She pulled the quotation out of the typewriter with a flourish and laid it on his desk, then collected her hat and coat.

‘Good night,’ she cried cheerily.

‘He’s an octopus,’ she told Nell on Saturday night. ‘It’s as if he’s got eight hands that come at you from different directions when you least expect it.’

‘I don’t know why you stay there, Mag.’ Nell was horrified. ‘Me, I’d’ve left like a shot.’

‘He’s all right, I suppose,’ Maggie conceded. ‘He pays good money and never moans when I’m late. What’s more, I give as good as I get. One of these days I’ll knock him out. If I did, I suppose I
would
have to leave.’ She smiled at the thought. ‘Come on, let’s have a rest before the next dance starts. It’s time for a tango, and you know I’m hopeless at tangos.’

They were in the Grafton ballroom, where they’d been every Saturday since coming home – Fridays they went to the pictures. Tonight, Phil Jones and the Jonesmen, the resident orchestra, were playing. Maggie was just as good at dancing tangos as she was at every other dance. It was just an excuse to sit upstairs with Nell, who wasn’t asked to dance all that often because she was too tall for most men and looked shy and wasn’t remotely glamorous.

‘I’m dying for a lemonade,’ Maggie said when they reached the balcony. ‘Sit down a mo, Nell, while I fetch them.’

Nell sat on a maroon velvet settee. She didn’t mind not being asked to dance, as she loved the Grafton, with its smoky atmosphere, gold lights and ever-moving bodies. She admired the ingenuity of some of the women’s outfits, so obviously made out of old curtains and decorated with tassels and odd bits of ribbon or net. One girl’s dress was clearly blackout material covered with a white lace tablecloth. Most of the clothes, though, were quite ordinary, like Nell’s own drab green frock, which was made out of the minimum amount of material and had a utility label in the back.