Angel of the North (22 page)

On reading the letter through before sealing it, it struck Marie that Nancy had left without any thought for George at all. Malicious thoughts showed some feeling, at least.
After years of devotion and planning for their future together George had been treated as if he counted for absolutely nothing. It must have struck like a dagger through his heart. The quiet,
self-effacing lad of old, who’d never had much to say for himself, who had never attracted anybody’s notice, was certainly intent on being noticed now. For Nancy’s sake she hoped
that ‘Monty’ – or whatever his name really was – turned out to be true to his promises.

The sole topic of conversation at the Maltbys’ in the days that followed was Nancy. Hitler, Goering and the entire German armed forces couldn’t match her for
infamy, in the eyes of George and his mother. Nothing could deflect them from the subject. Marie’s mind was full of her own disaster, but let her start talking about her own worries and by
some convoluted path or other the discussion came back to Nancy. Everything came back to Nancy: Nancy’s treachery, Nancy’s lies, and Nancy’s ‘sticky fingers’, and how
Nancy was going to be made to pay back the money and suffer court proceedings if she didn’t. The constant repetition of it all made Marie feel that the message was being purposely directed at
her, as Nancy’s friend.

The post brought her a letter from Chas early on Saturday morning, and she took it upstairs to read it in her bedroom. He was full of sympathy for the ‘hellish time’ she was having,
and frustrated at being too far away to help. He’d always thought George an insipid sort of a chap, but he couldn’t blame him for his attitude to Nancy. She should go to stay with his
parents, then she wouldn’t have to be bothered with it all. He couldn’t get compassionate leave since she wasn’t in danger, but he was desperately trying to get home, to swap
leave with anyone he could. She should keep listening to the wireless, he would keep asking for songs to be played for her. ‘You’re always in my thoughts,’ he ended, and signed
off, ‘With all my love, your own, Chas’.

‘He can’t get home,’ she told them at the breakfast table, before George set off for work, disappointment written on her face and loaded in her voice. ‘He says because
I’m not at death’s door, and we’re not married, they won’t give him any leave.’

‘Well, at least he tried, and he’s written to you; you’ve got to give him credit for that,’ Aunt Edie sympathized. ‘Nancy would have done a lot better if
she’d had the decency to write to George, as well as her mother.’

‘She’d have done even better if she’d had the guts to tell me what she intended
before
she buggered off, and she’d have done better still if she’d left my
money alone,’ George added, and took a vicious bite out of his toast, cut thick as a doorstep.

‘She hadn’t the guts. She’s a coward, as well as a . . . well, there’s a word for women like her, who jilt decent young men and hop off with their mother’s
fly-by-night lodgers, but I’m not going to soil my mouth on it,’ Aunt Edie said, turning her wide, short-sighted eyes in Marie’s direction.

It was too much. Marie’s nerves were wrecked by her aching ears and painful ribs. Even taking a deep breath was agonizing. She was shattered by the bombing of her home and the loss of
everything she had – every penny, everything she owned, except the pyjamas she’d been buried alive in. That was more than enough to deal with. George and his mother had been kind in
their way, but the strain of being expected to take the opposing side in a war against Nancy, of being sucked into George’s vendetta, was too much.

‘I’ve got to go,’ she said, more to herself than to George and his mother.

Aunt Edie’s wide-open eyes were still on her. ‘Go?’ she asked. ‘Go where?’

Marie stepped carefully along Clumber Street in her too-large dress and her too-large blue sandals and her skimpy cardigan, inhaling the fresh air as deeply as she dared,
trying to avoid an agonizing grating of her ribs. Through an open door she could hear a radio, and laughter. Probably
It’s That Man Again
, or some other skit, she guessed. She
stopped for a moment beside the skeleton that had once been their home. The front wall was almost gone, and the slates were off, but the staircase was intact. Paneless windows stared down at her
like sightless eyes. She had a sudden vision of her mother, much younger, sitting on the sills to clean the outsides of those sash-windows, and the memory was so vivid she said: ‘Mam.’
The pavement sparkled with glass splinters that had had the benefit of her own smeary attempts at cleaning only a week or so ago. It hardly mattered now. All those days of hard work, washing and
ironing curtains and running around trying to do everything to her mother’s liking – it had all been labour in vain. If only she’d known.

The piano was smashed, its strings everywhere. It would take a bit of tuning now, she thought, and for some reason that struck her as funny. She chuckled, and quickly stopped, for the pain in
her ribs. No, it wasn’t likely they’d ever get another tune out of that, and they couldn’t even use it for firewood, since the chimney was gone and the fireplace was hidden by
rubble. That thought tickled her as well, almost to the point of hysteria, and stifling her laughter made her eyes water. Perhaps George could chop it up for his mother. She could tell him to
imagine it was Nancy, and he’d have it reduced to matchwood in five minutes flat. Sheet music was spilling out of the broken piano stool, the top copy a sketch of a man’s lovesick face
and the caption above: ‘It Had to Be You’
.
Her heart gave a painful little throb. Charles, she thought, why aren’t you here?

She was about to walk on when Jenny’s head appeared above the rubble, her mouth moving, saying words Marie couldn’t make out.

‘You’ll have to shout, Jenny. Shout. I can’t hear you.’

‘I said why were you laughing? My mammy laughed as well, when she saw your house was bombed. Why is it funny?’

‘It’s not funny. What are you doing there?’

‘I’m playing. It’s my house now. I found Smut. He’s dead.’

‘Oh, my poor little cat! Where is he?’

Jenny disappeared for a moment and emerged holding Smut’s body.

‘Give him to me, Jenny, and don’t touch any more dead animals. And don’t play in that house. It’s dangerous.’

Jenny clambered over the rubble and held Smut’s lifeless little body out to her. He smelled.

The day was getting hot. Marie carefully took off her yellow cardigan with its too-short sleeves and wrapped Smut in it.

‘I like playing here,’ Jenny bawled. ‘I used to like playing here before, when Alfie lived here.’

‘Well, don’t play here again. Why aren’t you at school?’

‘It’s Saturday.’

‘Oh . . . Go home then, to your mam.’

Marie got to the end of the street and walked up Princes Avenue with Smut in her arms. Everything was gone, even their kitten, so full of life a few short days ago. Nothing would ever be the
same. The Larsens were finished as a family, their quiet, comfortable, unassuming little lives destroyed. There could be no going home ever again, and with that thought the true horror of
homelessness was borne in upon Marie. If only Chas were here beside her she might be able to face it; things might not seem so bad, but he was beyond her reach, and she his, kept apart by this
awful war.

‘We’ll bury him here,’ Mrs Elsworth said, not forgetting to raise her voice.

Marie looked round the enclosed garden at the rear of the Elsworths’ house. ‘Thank you, I’d like that. I love it here. It’s so lovely, and so peaceful.’

Mrs Elsworth smiled, quietly triumphant. ‘Yes, as you can see, I couldn’t forgo my flowers altogether, and I scattered a few California poppies and marigolds between the vegetables
to cheer them up too. It doesn’t seem to be doing them much harm. We’ll have enough to feed you and your mother as well as us, and masses to spare, with a bit of luck. Autumn will be
busy this year; we’ll have a terrific glut to deal with unless the Luftwaffe drops a bomb on it all. Speaking of bombs, Leonard and Danny went round to Clumber Street as soon as we knew, with
the last bit of petrol we had in the car to see if they could salvage anything, but there was nothing.’

‘They shouldn’t even have tried. They might have got hurt. It was Hannah’s little girl that found Smut. I warned her off, but I doubt if she’ll take any notice. She says
it’s her house now.’

Mrs Elsworth’s brow creased in a frown, and her lips pursed. ‘That child. She’s like a feral kitten herself, by the sound of it. A good thing Hannah’s a charwoman. You
wouldn’t want her as a nursemaid, would you? Your poor little cat. Shall we go and find a spot to bury it?’

‘Him. He’s a boy,’ Marie said, and, looking down at his lifeless little body, she dissolved into tears, utterly distraught. ‘Isn’t it stu-stu-stupid to be so
u-u-upset about a cat,’ she gasped, when she could speak, ‘after everything that’s happened?’

‘Not stupid,’ Mrs Elsworth said, carefully taking the bundle from her. ‘Just the last straw, after all the other disasters. The straw that finally breaks the camel’s
back. Come on, let’s choose a nice bit of the garden for him.’

More composed after tea and half an hour of Mrs Elsworth’s practical kindness, Marie sat down in one of the garden chairs, facing Smut’s last resting place, a
little mound drenched in sunlight. The sun felt warm on her face and arms, and every now and then a gentle breeze lifted her hair. Fat bees flew idly and silently to and fro around a clump of tall
purple flowers that had also escaped the victory digging. She sat watching them until her eyelids began to feel heavy. Peace, perfect peace. Nobody would know such a thing as war existed here, in
this garden. That sun was so warm her eyes began to close. What charmed lives the Elsworths seemed to live, she thought. Oh, to be married to Charles, and safe, and at peace with herself and the
world.

The sun went in. She began to feel cold, and then she felt a shadow over her, and thought she heard a voice, very indistinct, and then another, a voice she recognized, though she could barely
make out the words. Marie opened her eyes, and saw Mrs Elsworth, with Nancy. With a shock she sat bolt upright, straining to hear what Nancy was saying, watching her lips. She barely caught a
word.

‘We’ve been bombed out, Nance. Two of my ribs are broken, I’m as deaf as a post, and my mam’s in hospital again.’

‘Jesus, Marie, you look terrible,’ Nancy shouted. ‘I’ve seen your house; it’s a miracle you’re still alive. And what have you got on? You look like the
Ragman’s Revenge.’

Nancy dropped into a chair beside her, still talking. Mrs Elsworth excused herself and went into the house, leaving them to talk freely. Nancy would raise her voice for a while, and then it
would drop again, forcing Marie to ask: ‘Pardon? What? Eh? What did you say?’ until embarrassed by having to keep on asking for things to be repeated, Marie gave up in despair and let
Nancy talk on, without interruption. There had been no apology in any of the talk Marie
had
managed to hear and, judging from her expressions and gestures, the idea that an apology was due
had never even entered Nancy’s mind. She seemed to be completely oblivious to anyone’s claims but her own, and watching her performance had the same effect on Marie as the sight of the
broken piano. The sheer incongruity of it made her want to laugh.

‘What do you think, then?’ Nancy eventually asked, just loud enough to be heard.

‘What about?’

‘Monty and George, of course!’

‘I don’t think anything,’ Marie said. ‘I’ve hardly heard a word you’ve said.’

Nancy couldn’t conceal her exasperation. ‘Well, why didn’t you tell me?’

‘I did.’

‘Look, I don’t want to have to ring a bell and shout like the bloody town crier,’ Nancy shouted. ‘Come round to my mam’s tomorrow. Come for your tea. We’ll
talk about it then.’

‘I can’t promise. Mr Elsworth’s taking me to Beverley to see my mother, and then to see Alfie at Dunswell. I’ll come if we get back in time. Does George know you’re
back in Hull?’

‘How do I know? I haven’t been hiding. He might have seen me. Or somebody else might have seen me and told him.’

‘Do you want me to tell him, or not?’

‘Please yourself,’ Nancy shrugged. ‘He’ll know soon enough, anyway.’

After tea Danny was dispatched to the Maltbys to tell them that Marie wouldn’t be back until late the following day. Marie’s ears ached, her head ached and her ribs and shoulder
hurt. Mrs Elsworth ran her an illegally full hot bath, and after that packed her off to bed in a pair of Charles’s pyjamas, with a beaker of thick Horlicks and four aspirins. At the end of
her emotional tether, too exhausted to resist even had she wanted to, Marie complied with all Mrs Elsworth’s directions, and finally sank into Charles’s comfortable bed and enjoyed the
best few hours’ sleep that she’d had since the bombing.

‘She keeps telling us she’s dying, the Germans have finished her, but she is better than she was. We have got concerns about her heart, though,’ the houseman
told Marie when she went to see her mother in the hospital. ‘The shock has certainly had a bad effect on it. Not surprising, after two hair’s-breadth escapes like she’s had. She
must have as many lives as a cat.’

Marie looked at her mother, lying pale, still and silent, her eyes closed. ‘She’s taken Smut’s nine, all at once,’ she said.

The houseman looked puzzled.

‘Our little cat. He died in the raid that put my mother in here. How serious is it, the heart problem?’

‘It’s hard to say. It might get better, or she might go on for years with a weak heart, or . . .’ he grimaced.

She heaved a sigh. ‘Hope for the best and prepare for the worst, then. I thought I might have seen Dr Steele. I’ve got some forms I wanted to ask him about.’

‘Dr Steele had a stroke.’

Marie was stunned. ‘Where is he?’

‘He’s in the hospital mortuary. Worked himself to a standstill, I think.

‘Oh,’ she said, more acutely sorry for the loss of the crusty old medic than she could have imagined. ‘I’m very, very sorry.’