Angel of the North (25 page)

She arrived to find George already there – busy with her hoe. She hesitated, but there was no hiding place in that flat, treeless landscape, with only the odd greenhouse or garden shed
rising above the level of the strips of earth and the rutted pathways between them. He’d already seen her and stood facing her, awaiting her approach. As soon as she was near enough to hear,
his words came in torrents.

‘I haven’t been able to sit still since I saw Nancy the other day. I was awake at four o’clock this morning, no chance of getting back to sleep again. I’m like a cat on
hot bricks, jumping up and down all the time. My mother keeps asking me what on earth’s the matter, and I daren’t tell her. She’d throw a fit. In the end I thought I’d
better get out of the way, so I came up here to try and work it off. The other allotment holders told me which was your patch.’

Marie looked along her father’s strip: potatoes earthed up, and all the weeding done on the lazy beds that contained broad beans, runner beans, and peas. The pear tree was full of tiny
fruit, and the raspberry canes promised a good harvest, she noticed.

‘Goodness, George, you’ve done it all,’ was all she managed to say.

‘Do you know, Marie, she chased me all the way to the Guildhall, and she caught me just before I went in, and I’ve never seen so many tears. They were rolling down her face; she was
crying her eyes out, just about breaking her heart. People were looking at us so I couldn’t just walk off and leave her. Besides, she might have followed me inside, and I didn’t want
her making a spectacle of us both in there, having everybody in the place talking about my private business.’

‘I asked her not to follow you.’

‘In a way, I’m glad she did. She told me she’d made a terrible mistake. She realized it as soon as she got to London, that it had just been a mad infatuation, because of him
being an actor, and the glamour and all that. She soon realized she didn’t love him at all. But she didn’t know her way around London and she was nervous of the Underground and that,
and she didn’t know how the trains ran, or anything. And she’d left work without notice, so she was scared to come back.’

‘It must have been terrible for her,’ Marie said. She gazed into the middle distance, visualizing that star performance and thinking that the people at Pinewood Studios ought to be
kicking themselves for the first-rate actress they’d lost in Nancy.

‘Maybe I’ve been too hasty,’ he said, looking at her for confirmation. ‘Everybody deserves a second chance, I think. Do you?’

Looking at his tormented face Marie remembered Nancy’s boast that he wouldn’t be able to withstand her tears. How right she’d been, and how calculating. Nancy would hate her
for it if she ever found out, but weighing her cold-blooded manoeuvring against his genuine feeling, Marie decided she couldn’t really give a ringing endorsement to the idea of second chances
in this instance, even disregarding her indebtedness to George. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘if they really are truly sorry, and they’re fully prepared to make amends, maybe. But
you’d have to think about it very, very carefully, George.’

‘That bloody actor’s got all our money, you know. All our savings. She says she’d try to get it back from him, but she doesn’t know where he is.’

‘Surely there are ways of finding people,’ Marie said. ‘You sometimes hear of solicitors setting private detectives on, in divorce cases and suchlike. He’ll have to work
and make a living, I suppose, unless he’s giving himself a holiday on your money. Even so, he’ll have to go back to work sometime. They might be able to find him through theatrical
agencies or actors’ guilds, things like that.’

George nodded. ‘I’ll ask the lads in the Legal Department. I’ll ask them what it costs. If we can find him, she can make amends by prosecuting
Monty,
and getting all
our savings back. I can’t stomach the thought that the blighter’s got away with it. He’s a thief. He’s stolen everything I had, and not only the money.’

‘There’s Nancy’s mother’s rent, as well,’ Marie said. ‘She might be willing to share the cost of finding him, if it’ll get her rent for her.’

‘I doubt it. I don’t think she’ll want to throw good money after bad. And deep down, I don’t really think we’ve got a cat in hell’s chance of finding
him.’

‘To be honest, George, neither do I,’ Marie said, ‘but if it doesn’t cost too much, it might be worth a try.’

George’s face fell. ‘And you know, Marie, even if we do get back together, I don’t know whether I’ll ever be able to trust her again. Nothing will ever be the same.
Ever.’

Marie could think of nothing to say to that, except: ‘I’ll go and fill the watering cans.’

‘No, I’ll do that. You’re not fit to carry them, with two cracked ribs. You go back, and have a rest till you’re properly fit. I shouldn’t really be pestering you
with my troubles, after what you’ve been through. You’ve got enough of your own, I reckon. Oh, before I forget, this came for you yesterday.’ He pulled a letter out of his
pocket.

She took it. ‘Thanks, George. Pull some of that rhubarb and take it for your mam, will you? There’s loads of the stuff.’

Weeding and watering done, Marie tucked her letter in her pocket and carried the hoe back, feeling quite upset about George. At Park Avenue she had the house to herself, so she put the wireless
on, then sat down and opened her letter. Charles was full of news about life in the army, which he seemed to be enjoying. He would keep trying to get leave, and was forever asking for radio
requests, so she should keep listening to the wireless. He was glad she was going to live with his parents, and on his next leave they’d get married and get somewhere to rent, so at least her
mother would have somewhere comfortable to be discharged to. As far as George went, he wrote:

She poured her heart out in a letter back to him, confiding George’s present dilemma and telling him how wise was his advice to keep out of other people’s business
– but how impossible it was to carry out at times.

Apart from occasional contact with Hannah, life at the Elsworths’ was very comfortable, but with every passing day, Marie missed her own home more. Welcome though Mr and
Mrs Elsworth made her, and comfortable though life in Park Avenue was, it lacked the deeper comfort of old, familiar possessions and old routines, and the time-honoured, taken-for-granted ways of
doing things unique to the Larsen family. The closest she could get to that was to go again to the Maltbys’, to familiar surroundings and links with her childhood, reminders of those happier
times. Everything she knew seemed to be disappearing, making her want to cling on to old haunts and familiar habits as if to life itself. For now, at least, Aunt Edie and her house were still the
same, and after seeing George at the allotment, she had dropped by a couple of times to give them the latest about her mother’s progress. Mr Elsworth had picked Aunt Edie up to take her with
them on their latest visit to the hospital, and Marie’s mother accepted Aunt Edie’s offer of a home after her discharge.

After dropping Aunt Edie off, Mr Elsworth left Marie at Park Avenue and went on to his car repair shop. She found Mrs Elsworth was standing at the kitchen table, putting a few
flowers in a vase. ‘The doctor says my mother should be ready for discharge in a week or two,’ she announced.

‘Does he, dear? That’s good,’ Mrs Elsworth said, with an abstracted air. Marie’s eyes followed her gaze towards Hannah, who was kneeling on the draining board cleaning
the kitchen windows, and stretching to get into the corners with the wash leather. Marie was suddenly struck by the broadening of her once-trim waistline. How unobservant she must have been not to
have noticed it before.

‘Thanks very much for your offer to have her here,’ Marie went on, trying to break her mother’s rejection of their invitation as tactfully as she could. ‘I told her, but
she said she wants to go and stay with Aunt Edie. They’ve been friends for years, you see. Their house is like a second home to her.’

‘Did she, dear?’

The response was not exactly appropriate, but Marie was relieved that her news seemed to have given no offence. ‘It’s just that they’ve been friends for years,’ she
stressed. A moment later she wondered if the news had penetrated at all.

Looking towards Hannah, Mrs Elsworth said, ‘I would say you’re about five months now, Hannah, at a guess.’

Hannah turned and stared at her, as if waiting for her to add something more.

‘Are you sure you can still manage the work?’ Mrs Elsworth asked, showing distinct signs of embarrassment under that unblinking stare.

‘As long as I can manage to eat, I’ll have to manage the work, Mrs Elsworth.’

Marie was surprised when, despite her own obvious discomfiture, Mrs Elsworth probed further: ‘But surely you get support from your husband?’

‘Well, whether I do or not, that’s between me and my husband.’

‘Of course. I only meant . . .’

Marie felt Mrs Elsworth’s loss of composure so excruciating that she interjected with a sudden: ‘How’s Jenny? I haven’t seen her for a while.’

Hannah’s eyebrows arched upwards, and she gave a sardonic little smile. ‘Very well, thank you, Marie. How’s Alfie?’

‘All right, thanks.’

‘Good. Well, I’ll just finish here, then I’ll do the bedrooms, and then I’ll be off, if that’s all right by you, Mrs Elsworth? So I can be in for Jenny coming home
from school, you know. Get on with it, and get off home, that’s my motto.’

Five months? Marie thought. That put conception at the middle of January. But hadn’t Hannah’s husband had been away at sea then? Maybe not. Marie couldn’t really remember a lot
of things since that awful night they’d been bombed out, although her memory of the bombing was sharp and clear. That, and being buried alive were the stuff of her recurring nightmares.

On Sunday morning, after having spent an hour convincing the Elsworths that she really was well enough, Marie borrowed their hoe and walked straight up to the allotment. George
was not there this time, but there was another crop of weeds. She began to hoe in between the broad beans.

One of her old neighbours came by on his way to his own patch, and stopped. ‘All right, lass?’

She straightened up, and leaned on the hoe. ‘Just about, thanks.’

‘Bad job about your house. You’re staying up at Mr Elsworth’s now, aren’t you? Aren’t you going out with his eldest?’

She nodded.

‘He’s not a bad bloke, Elsworth. I used to work for him, years ago. Rum do about that Hannah, though, that goes up there to do their skivvying, ain’t it?’

‘What do you mean?’ she asked, repelled by the knowing leer on his face.

‘I should think it’s obvious. I mean she’s in the family way, and it’s not her husband’s, unless he managed to shoot it across the Atlantic’

‘Oh,’ Marie said, turning to her work again. ‘Well, I can’t say I noticed. I’ve had a bit too much on my plate lately.’

‘You have that. I’ve seen the state of your house. You’re lucky to be alive, I reckon. Don’t you be struggling with watering cans. I’ll do the watering for
you.’

‘Thanks. I won’t refuse,’ she said. ‘Hasn’t it been peaceful, lately? How long must it be since we had an air raid, do you reckon?’

‘Well, since they did that bit of damage at St Andrew’s Dock and Priory Sidings at the end of last month, it must be over three weeks. And that hardly counts. There were no fires
blazing, and not much damage at all. One unexploded bomb, though, to keep the bomb disposal lads on their toes.’

Marie shuddered. ‘I don’t envy them their job. I’d rather keep a safe distance from bombs, thank you very much. Have the Nazis forgotten about us, do you think?’

‘Doubt it. They’re busy with the Russians now, by all accounts. Don’t you read the papers? Don’t you listen to the wireless?’

‘Course I do. I live for the wireless. Not the news, though; it’s usually too depressing, hearing about all the bombing in London and Coventry, although I like to hear Alvar Lidell
telling us how many German bombers have been shot down. We never get a mention, though. It wouldn’t be so bad if we ever got any credit for what we have to put up with, but we never do. I
like programmes like
Music While You Work,
and
It’s That Man Again,
something to brighten you up a bit. And we always tune into Radio Hamburg to listen to Lord Haw-Haw.
He’s hilarious. We always have a good laugh at him.’

He grinned at her, eyebrows arched and eyes twinkling. ‘Germany calling! Germany calling!’

The expression on his face was so comical, and the intonation so exact that she burst out laughing, with no sharp twinge of pain in her ribs to stop her.

‘Let’s go and sit in the rose garden,’ Marie said as she and Nancy walked across to Pearson Park later that afternoon. The sky was a brilliant blue, and the
park full of people in their Sunday best, children on swings and slides, young lads with their shirtsleeves rolled up, playing football on stretches of green, older folk sitting on the benches, all
out to make the best of a fine day.

‘I’m fed up,’ Nancy said, when they were finally seated on a bench, looking at a bed of roses. ‘Absolutely stalled.’

‘Minty hasn’t been in touch, then,’ Marie quipped. She quickly regretted it.

Nancy had dark rings around her eyes, as if she hadn’t slept for a week. Her voice was thick with tears. ‘His name’s Monty, and no, he hasn’t. George has set a private
detective on to him, though. He says it shouldn’t take long to find him, and then he wants me to take him to court.’