Angel of the North (21 page)

‘Well, we’ll do everything we can. We’re all in this together. Don’t you worry about me, I might not be able to see very well, but I can get round my own house all right,
and cooking for three people’s not much more trouble than cooking for two. You’ll be able to peel veg. You can do that sitting at the table, if you feel up to it. And rub a bit of
pastry up, or a few scones. And you’ll soon get another ration card.’

‘There’s the washing. Not that I’ve got much to wash.’

‘You won’t make much. And anyway, they’ve got mobile laundries on the go now, I’ve heard. I don’t know how they work, but you could maybe get your stuff done at one
of them. And it seems to have perked George up a bit, having you here. Gives him something else to think about.’

A warning bell rang in Marie’s brain, muted, but insistent.

‘You look done in,’ Aunt Edie said. ‘Why don’t you go upstairs and have a lie-down? Maybe have a sleep?’

‘If only I could.’

Aunt Edie gave her a thoughtful look. ‘Tell you what,’ she said. ‘My husband used to keep a bottle of rum under the bed and have a swig at that when his wound was bothering
him. They started him on it in the army, when they used to get them half soused before sending them over the top, and he drank it for the rest of his life. There’s a bottle left, never been
touched since he died, and how many years ago is that, now? Lucky it keeps. I’ll make you a cup of tea and slosh some in it, see if that does you any good.’

‘I’ll give it a try,’ said Marie. ‘I’d try anything, for an hour’s sleep.’

She must have slept, because it was late afternoon when she walked ever so carefully downstairs. George had just come through the door, home from work. His mother was there to
greet him.

‘I’ve just let Marie’s young man’s mam and dad in. You’ve got some visitors, Marie.’

Mr Elsworth jumped to his feet as she entered the front room, and taking her hands in his, began to speak.

She looked at him, straining to hear, trying to read his lips, and failing. ‘Pardon?’ she said.

Mrs Elsworth spoke up. ‘It’s the explosion, Leonard. She’s deafened because of the explosion. Come and sit down beside me, Marie.’

Marie sat down.

‘We went to spend a couple of days with my sister in Malton,’ Mrs Elsworth explained. ‘We came back today to see that the house two doors down from us had been bombed flat, so
as soon as we’d had something to eat, we came to see if you and your mother were all right. We’ve seen your house, or what’s left of it. The neighbours told us you were here, so
we’ve come to offer you a home. It’s what Charles would expect, and it’s what we want. You’re more than welcome to stay as long as you like, and your mother, as
well.’

George looked steadily into Mrs Elsworth’s face. ‘We’ve arranged for her to stay here,’ he said. ‘My mother’s known her since she was a baby. Marie and I were
just about brought up together. Our fathers went through the last war together. We’ve been friends all our lives. My mother’s only too pleased to be able to look after her.’

The Elsworths gave Marie querying looks, and she looked back, groping for the right words to contradict George without seeming ungrateful for everything he’d done for her.

‘Has Marie anything to say about it?’ Mr Elsworth asked, after a long pause.

Nothing came to mind. Everything George had said was the perfect truth, and her brain was too dulled to find words to explain. ‘I thought it would be too much for Aunt Edie, looking after
me, but she says not,’ she finally said.

Mrs Elsworth nodded. ‘Aunt Edie’s blind, isn’t she?’ Surely it would be easier for her if you came to us?’

‘My mother’s not blind,’ George said. ‘She’s partially sighted. It’s a different thing altogether.’

‘But surely, even from a financial point of view—’

George’s resentment showed on his face. ‘Well, we’re obviously not as well off as you, but we can certainly manage to help our friends.’

‘We must all do as much as we can to help our friends,’ Mrs Elsworth said carefully. ‘Clothing’s going on ration, and you must have lost most of your things in the raid,
Marie.’

‘I’ve got a pair of pyjamas of my own, and a dress and cardigan and some underwear I got from the Red Cross.’

‘I know someone who works in the Relief Office. I’ll get him to fetch me all the forms you need to apply for assistance,’ George said. ‘You don’t want to have to go
down there yourself if you can help it. They’re always packed out with people. You’d be waiting for hours, and you’re in no fit state, Marie, so I’ll bring the forms, and
I’ll help you fill them in.’

‘Thanks, George,’ Marie said. ‘I went down there a couple of times after Dad died, to see if I could claim anything for my mother, and I waited for hours to get the right form.
But then they wanted copies of my dad’s death certificate, and a doctor’s certificate for my mam’s injuries, and with having to make arrangements for the funeral and going to
Bourne to see Pam and Alfie, and then Alfie going missing, and what with work and everything, I had too much else to think about, so I missed the boat. We’ve been living on what I earned,
mainly, and eking it out with Dad’s savings.’

‘Don’t worry. I’ll see about getting them. And I’ll help you to fill them out, the sooner the better. These things take ages.’

‘Well, you seem to be in good hands, Marie,’ Mr Elsworth said, when they parted at the door. ‘We’ll send a telegram to Charles, to let him know what’s happened, and
we’ll ring the people in Bourne if you like – that’s if they don’t already know, of course. If there’s anything else we can do, let us know.’

‘Please, take me up to Beverley to see Mam, and call in at Uncle Alfred’s on the way back, so I can see Alfie,’ she pleaded.

‘Of course he will, as soon as we get enough petrol,’ Mrs Elsworth said. ‘But the trip to Malton’s used the ration up for this week, I’m afraid.’

‘Don’t you worry about that, Marie, love,’ George called from the passage. ‘I’ll take you up on the motorbike.’

Mr Elsworth looked at his wife and raised his eyebrows, then turned again to Marie. ‘If we can do anything to help, you just let us know.’

‘I’ve been talking to a chap in the Legal Department,’ George said, after the table had been cleared and his mother was in the kitchen, washing the tea
things. ‘He says if I can find Nancy’s address, I can get a solicitor and make a claim against her for the money she took. I don’t suppose you might have it, being as you were her
best friend?’

Marie shook her head. ‘I haven’t heard from her since before . . .’

‘The funeral? Or the mock funeral, rather.’

‘Yes. I mean no. I don’t know where she is,’ said Marie, very glad not to know.

‘Never mind. I dare say there’s ways and means of finding out,’ he said, replacing his empty cup in the saucer. ‘We’ll go up and see how your mam’s doing now,
if you like.’

‘Do you mind if we don’t, George?’ she said. ‘I wouldn’t dare. I don’t think I’m up to a spin on a motorbike just yet. It’s painful to breathe,
and I have to be careful how I walk.’

‘Oh, yes,’ he said. ‘I was forgetting – although I don’t know how I could, seeing I was the one who dug you out. Lucky I heard you, though, wasn’t
it?’

Lucky for her, Marie thought, wondering how anyone could forget saving someone’s life.

George brought the forms the following day, and Marie sat down with them after tea, completely flummoxed at some of the questions. ‘They’re asking me what my
dad’s income was during a representative working year,’ she said. ‘How do I know? He never talked about money, and now he’s dead, the house is flattened, Mam’s in
hospital, and I can’t get there to see her.’ She read on. What other earnings went into the house, what pensions had they? Well, there was her dad’s war pension, but she
wasn’t sure whether that had stopped when he died. Her mother would know, but she wasn’t fit to be worried with questions. And what scholarships? None yet, but Pam might get one before
long. Did she still count as a member of their household, seeing that the Stewarts seemed to have taken her over, and she might never come back home at all? Not that there was a home to come back
to, unless Marie could find somewhere affordable to rent, where she could look after Pam and Alfie, and her mother – if her mother pulled through. Nothing was settled. Everything was an
‘if’, and what was true today might not be true tomorrow. There were endless questions enquiring into the minutest details of their lives, demanding to know things she didn’t know
herself, and that her mother had probably forgotten. At the end of it all came the demand for a medical certificate to be attached to the form, which would mean trailing back to the hospital and
waiting hours until Dr Steele could see her.

‘I can’t fill this in, George,’ she said. ‘Apart from telling them what our names are, and what the address was, I can’t answer any of these questions.’

‘Just guess,’ he said, ‘and write a note at the end, explaining. That’s what other people do. One of the chaps at the Relief Office says he thinks some people make it up
as they go along, and claim for all sorts of stuff they never had in the first place.’

‘And then I suppose they end up in court for trying to defraud the government.’

‘I’ve yet to hear of one.’

Marie looked again at the form, unconvinced. But she’d have to make a stab at it; living off George and his mother was something she couldn’t contemplate. She began to write down her
guesses, picturing herself sitting in a gaol cell if they turned out to be wrong.

George suddenly jumped up and went into the passage, reappearing with his jacket half on. ‘Right! I’ve decided! I’m going to go and see Nancy’s mother and get her
address,’ he said ‘I shan’t tell her I’m starting court proceedings; better let her think I want Nance back, for now, although I definitely don’t. She’s made a
complete laughing stock of me, and she’s going to pay me everything she owes me, or else. Including giving back that engagement ring. I haven’t forgotten that, either.’

‘Why not just let it go, George?’ she said. ‘It’s eating you away.’

That was not what George wanted to hear. ‘It’s obvious nobody’s ever done the dirty on you, or you wouldn’t talk like that,’ he snapped. ‘She’s a Judas,
Marie. A Judas!’

She heard the slamming of the front door as he left; she would have had to be stone deaf not to. Let him go then, the idiot! She had enough troubles of her own without listening to him, harping
on all the time. She was beginning to see why Nancy had gone. If only she’d insisted on going to Dunswell in that ambulance, instead of letting him persuade her to come here, so he could din
his complaints about Nancy into her aching ears every minute of the day.

When that reaction subsided she felt a spasm of guilt at harbouring such uncharitable thoughts about the man who’d saved her life. George had been very good to her, and she ought to
remember it. She turned her attention back to her forms, to struggle with them unaided – not that he could have helped, anyway. If she couldn’t answer the questions, what hope had he,
for all his promises? She put the form aside. She’d write to Pam, instead. That would be a pleasanter occupation than form-filling, if only by the narrowest margin.

‘You’ll be happy to know we’re still alive, if you can remember who we are, now you’ve got your new relations, who aren’t related to us,’ she began. Her mam
was at death’s door, she was injured, the house was blown to smithereens, and they hadn’t seen Smut since the bombing, she continued, and ended with: ‘Hope you’re having a
lovely time in Bourne and doing well with your piano lessons.’

Aunt Edie emerged from the kitchen with three beakers of tea as she put the finished letter aside.

‘Where’s George?’

‘Gone to see Nancy’s mother.’

‘What for?’

‘To get her address.’

‘I hope he hasn’t decided he wants her back. She’s not worth it. He won’t touch her with tongs again, if he’s got any sense . . .’

Aunt Edie drank the extra beaker of tea herself, intermittently slaking her throat throughout her excoriations of Nancy and ‘sluts like that’.

After she’d returned to the kitchen Marie read through her letter to Pam, and tore it up. Her father was dead, and her mother might not be long for this world. It looked as though
they’d lost Pam, so what good could such nastiness do? And really, was it fair to blame a girl of thirteen for wanting to be safe, and get the best from life?

George was back an hour later, very pleased at his own cleverness in getting Nancy’s address by playing the broken-hearted lover. ‘Well, that was a good
ruse,’ he laughed, ‘and Nancy’s mum fell for it, hook, line and sinker. I even got tea and sympathy! “Poor George,” she said, but you wait: it’ll be “poor
Nancy” by the time I’ve finished with her.’

Marie was appalled. ‘But you lied, George!’ she said.

‘Of course I lied! She wouldn’t have given it to me if I’d told her I was going to drag her daughter through the courts, would she? When you’re dealing with liars, you
play by their rules, or you lose! Nancy started it, and I’ll finish it – by being a better damned liar than she is.’

‘But did she ever actually tell you any lies, George?’

He gave her a look of fury. ‘Of course she did!’

‘When?’

His face flushed and twisted in anguish, and brimming tears glittered on his lower eyelids. ‘When she told me she loved me!’ he almost sobbed. ‘She
lived
a
lie!’

Marie looked away and there was a minute’s painful silence. When she glanced at him again George’s tears were gone, and in their stead she saw an icy composure.

‘Do you want her address?’ he asked. ‘I’ll copy it out for you. You can write to her yourself.’

‘I’d better not. I wouldn’t know what to say, and I’ve got too many other things on my mind just now.’

‘Say the same as me. Give her the Scarborough Warning, like a true friend. Tell her: George is out for blood, so you’d better pay him what you owe him – or else! That’s
all she needs to know.’

In the privacy of her own room late that evening Marie did write – to Charles.