Angel of the North (36 page)

Marie’s hand became still, as she thought of their goodbye. Pam had looked distant – not quite sad, but as if she were bringing a chapter of her life firmly to a
close, with just a little regret. Alfie had seen further than she had herself, Marie reflected. Because of the war, their once close and loving family had been shattered, and scattered, and
finished. Nothing would ever be the same.

‘It’s funny,’ she wrote, her attention back on her letter, ‘we didn’t have a single air raid while she was here. But I expect we’ll have another one before
long . . .’

She spilled her feelings onto the page and felt considerable relief, then, wondering whether she was really doing the wisest thing in sending it, she finally dropped it into the post box.

She was wrong about the raids. August turned out to be comparatively uneventful – with only one air raid in the middle of the month, which demolished three shelters,
killing twenty people and badly injuring fifteen, and a rather more successful one at the month’s end, which managed to kill and injure more than twice as many people, and to damage sixteen
shelters.

With Pam gone, Marie was back in the old routine of housework, allotment gardening, and caring for her mother – which exempted her from war work. Alfie visited a couple of times a week,
Terry called nearly as often to take her dancing for an hour or two, and when he was on duty George occasionally stepped into the breach, although he had started walking out with a girl from the
Guildhall, called Eva. A trip to the pictures with Nancy, Mass at St Vincent’s and a visit to the graves on Sunday completed the weekly round.

‘When did Pam say she was taking her music exam?’ her mother asked fretfully one morning, as Marie and George lifted her out of bed. ‘I’m sure it was
before the schools go back.’

Marie knew it was before the schools went back. The exam was the eighteenth, to be precise, and today was the twenty-eighth. ‘I don’t know, Mam,’ she lied, picking up the comb
to tidy her mother’s fair hair.

The letter box rattled, George went into the passage to pick up the post and returned with a letter from Pam.

Marie opened it, and read it aloud. Mr and Mrs Stewart were taking her for a holiday to Cromer while they had the good weather, and she would come to Hull and spend the half-term holiday with
her mother, instead. She passed her music exam with distinction, and what a relief that was, after missing all that practice while she’d been in Hull.

‘Mr and Mrs Stewart are taking her to Cromer for a holiday,’ her mother repeated, her voice sounding hollow. ‘Mr and Mrs Stewart don’t bother asking for
my
permission to take my daughter on holiday to Cromer, and she doesn’t ask, either. It looks as if I’ve been cancelled altogether.’

George slid quietly out of the room, and Marie heard the front door close after him as he escaped to work.

Aunt Edie flushed with indignation. ‘Bloody shame, that’s what I call it!’

‘Oh, come on, Mam,’ Marie urged. ‘Just concentrate on getting better, and we’ll get a house. We can have them both back then.’

‘Where’s the money coming from?’ her mother demanded, tearing down Marie’s shaky castle in the air. ‘Anyway, I don’t think I’ll ever be able to manage a
house, again. I’m no use to anybody now. I’ve outlived my usefulness, and that’s the truth,’ she said, putting a final stop to that well-meant but impossible suggestion.

She ignored Marie’s protests and said very little else, but sat in silence all day, until Marie and George were lifting her back into bed that evening.

‘She must know how ill I am,’ she said. ‘She’s not a child. She must know I might not last until October.’

‘You will last until October, Mam, and a long time beyond it. If she’d thought you wouldn’t, I’m sure she’d have come.’

Her mother said no more, and Marie left Aunt Edie sitting with her, while she got on with the housework.

Much later, George and Marie shared a last cup of tea in the dining room.

‘How’s the court case going?’ Marie asked, for a change of subject.

‘Oh, it’s all going through,’ George waved a hand, airily. ‘Going through the motions, you might say. Monty’s days are numbered.’

‘Or Billy Boy Pratt, as Nancy calls him. She’s done a complete turnaround. She’s as keen on “doing” him as you are, now.’

George seemed not to relish the mention of Nancy. ‘It’s in her best interests, isn’t it?’ he said, and lapsed into silence for a while. Then: ‘If we got
married,’ he said, ‘me and you, I mean – we could live here until we got a house nearby, and then we could keep an eye on both our mothers, make sure they’re all right.
I’ve got a decent salary; I could just about manage it.’

‘What about Eva?’

‘Eva’s all right. Nothing serious, yet, though. It’s not gone far enough to break any hearts.’

‘Do you think my mam’ll be here long enough for that?’ Marie asked.

‘Well, you were telling her so. I was just going on what you said. And if she does get better, they’ll both need a bit of help.’

She didn’t ask: what about Charles? And neither did George. But he didn’t push his offer. He went to bed, and left her with the thought.

From the day she got Pam’s letter, Marie’s mother seemed to lose all interest in everything. She hardly ate a thing, drank enough to swallow her pills, and not much
more, and sat gazing into space for hours at a stretch. Aunt Edie persisted in trying to cheer her with pleasant reminiscences, with no success. Terry took Marie dancing for an hour on the Sunday,
but when he came again a week later she shook her head.

‘Sorry, Terry, she’s too ill to be left.’

‘Surely she’ll be all right for an hour,’ he coaxed.

‘No, I’m not leaving her.’ Marie was adamant. With the loss of her home and her two younger children, her mother had lost the will to live, but she wasn’t going to die
without at least her eldest with her.

Terry hesitated, the caressing glances in his blue eyes telling her what his own ‘strictly as pals’ had forbidden him to say. ‘All right, then. I’ll call again, in a
week, just to see. Hope she’ll be a lot better by then.’

Then gradually, day after day, her mother slackened her hold on life. George took on the little there was to do at the allotment, now that most of the produce had been harvested. Other than for
trips to the post office and local shops, Marie was completely housebound, seeing nothing of anybody except Alfie, who came down at the weekend and a couple of times during the week.

When her mother’s breathing became difficult, Marie sent for Dr Thackeray. ‘How long can it go on?’ she asked, when he’d completed his examination.

‘Not much longer, I think. She might be better in hospital, in a cardiac bed. It might make her breathing easier.’

‘She wants to stay here, and what difference will it make, really? Will it save her life?’

‘No.’

‘She stays here, then,’ Edie said.

Her mother, sweating and struggling for breath, managed a smile for her friend.

Marie spent the night in the armchair.

‘It’s a pity . . . you can’t like George,’ her mother gasped, at about three o’clock in the morning.

‘I do like George,’ Marie said, taking a cloth to wipe away the sweat that stood on her mother’s face and neck.

‘Marry him, then . . . and look after Alfie, and Edie.’

It was the last time she spoke. She died at five o’clock.

Dressed in slacks and a blouse, Marie was ready to go to Dunswell before George came downstairs at seven. ‘My mam’s gone. Tell your mother, will you? I’ll
phone the doctor on my way. Can I borrow your pushbike? I want to get there well before Alfie goes to school.’

Alfie was just at the gate, school cap in hand, when he saw her approaching on the bike. ‘She’s dead, isn’t she?’ he said, when she was within earshot.

Marie nodded, and drew to a halt beside him.

‘I blame our Pam,’ he said. ‘If she’d come when she said she was coming, Mam wouldn’t have gone downhill so quick.’

‘You don’t, really. You told me she didn’t want to get better before ever Pam came – and you were right.’

‘I do, though. She started to pick up while Pam was here, and if she’d stayed, she might have got better, instead of just giving up.’

‘Come on,’ Marie said, wheeling the bike through the gate. ‘Let’s go in and ask Auntie Dot to put the kettle on. I don’t think there’s much point in you going
to school today.’

When Marie got back from Dunswell she found Aunt Edie smoothing her mother’s fair hair back from her face with one hand, and holding one lifeless hand with the other.
‘Oh, dear me,’ she kept sighing, ‘oh, dear me, I’ve lost my last good friend. Poor Lillian. She always had so much life in her, she used to run rings round me. I can hardly
believe she’s dead, but she must be – she feels so cold. She had a rough time of it at the end, poor lass, but I really believed she’d get better.’

‘I can never thank you enough for everything you’ve done for her,’ Marie said. ‘You were the best friend she could have had. And George – I think he’s done
more than any other man on this earth would have done.’

‘We used to have some grand times together, when my husband was alive,’ Aunt Edie said, a faint smile lifting the corners of her mouth at the remembrance. ‘Those parties your
mam and dad used to have, every New Year’s Eve; the pranks your dad got up to, he’d have us laughing till our sides were sore. And now there’s only me left.’ Aunt
Edie’s face lost its animation, and her eyes their light. She turned and gave Marie’s hand a squeeze. ‘You did right by her, anyhow. She couldn’t have had a better daughter,
and don’t feel as if you’ve got to move, because your mam’s gone. You’re welcome to stay here as long as you like. For ever, if you want.’

‘Thanks.’ Marie returned the squeeze, then stood looking at her mother with her arms hugging her own waist, holding the void that had taken the place of her stomach. ‘And now
I’ve nothing to do but wait for the doctor to come and sign the death certificate, so I can set about arranging another funeral,’ she said. ‘Oh, I’m so weary of it all, Aunt
Edie. I sometimes think there’ll be no end to it.’

They heard someone in the passage, and then George popped his head round the door, grinning from ear to ear. ‘Can’t stop,’ he said. ‘We’re on our way up to North
Hull. I just wanted to tell you that that bugger’s in court next week! He tried to get the hearing moved to Brighton, but the police checked the address he gave. His wife and her parents live
there all right, but he doesn’t! And he’s not likely to be living there again, by the sound of it. So he’s been bailed to appear at the Guildhall!’ He burst into guffaws of
laughter and left, whistling a snatch of ‘The Spaniard that Blighted My Life’, his face alive with unholy glee at the thought of getting square with Bill Pratt and Nancy.

‘Well, fancy!’ Aunt Edie exclaimed, in tones of outrage. ‘Whistling and carrying on, and your poor mother just gone.’

‘He did the best he could for her while she was alive, Aunt Edie,’ Marie said. ‘That’s all that matters.’ And in spite of the circumstances, Marie felt the corners
of her mouth lift. It was good to see George so cheerful, for a change.

‘How is she?’ Terry asked, when he stood at the door that evening.

Marie shook her head. ‘I was at the undertaker’s this afternoon. That’ll tell you how she is.’

‘You won’t be feeling much like dancing, then.’

‘No. I wouldn’t mind a walk, though. I should be dead on my feet after being awake all night, and racing about all day, up to Dunswell, and then to the registrar’s and the
undertaker’s, but I can’t keep still. I feel like a cat on hot bricks.’

He offered her his arm. ‘Come on then, let’s be off.’

She called a goodbye to Aunt Edie and George, and took it. She felt drawn to Terry. He’d had his young wife torn away from him; he had suffered that massive blow and survived it, and she
looked to him for some hidden knowledge, some deep wisdom to help her through her own grief. They walked rapidly up to the park and along its pathways, saying little, and then Marie flung herself
down on the same bench she’d last shared with Chas, and wept.

Terry sat beside her, saying nothing at first. When the tears abated, he said, ‘Your mother’s troubles are over, Marie. Nothing can touch her now.’

‘I’m not crying for my mother. I’m crying for myself.’

He gave a short laugh. ‘Well, isn’t that the truth! We all cry for ourselves; first time I’ve ever heard anybody come straight out with it, though.’

She pulled a handkerchief from her cardigan sleeve, and blew her nose. ‘Isn’t it stupid to think of yourself as an orphan at the age of twenty-three? But that’s just how I
feel.’

He put his arm round her and she rested her head on his broad shoulder.

‘It’s not stupid,’ he said. ‘Get your crying over, and then – don’t look back. It’ll break your heart.’

Was that the best he could do? That wasn’t what she’d hoped for from him. She wanted to look back. The future seemed to hold nothing but pain, and fear, and uncertainty. Back was
where happiness and comfort and love and laughter were, and she wanted to hold on to it. She wanted to keep what was past, to regain all the wonder and hope and beauty of her young years, to
retrieve all the loving and all the caring and the security of those times, and the people who’d provided it all. But the mother and father who had nurtured and protected her from her birth,
the custodians of her life and her history, were gone. She wanted not only to look back, but to go back, to everything that had slipped away from her, and stay there, safe for ever in her cosy
little home, in her beloved and unspoiled city.

Pam’s face looked white and pinched, and apprehensive. She looked into the coffin, saw her mother’s scarred face and burst into angry floods of tears. ‘I hate
them. I hate Auntie Morag and Uncle Alec for doing this. Oh, my poor mam! I’ll never forgive them. I never asked to go to Cromer. It was all their idea. I’d have come back to see my mam
if it hadn’t been for them, interfering and arranging it all behind my back. I’m never going back there.’ The anguished face that looked towards Marie was the face of a child,
admittedly a spoiled child, but a child, for all that.