Now the War Is Over (21 page)

Everyone was full of it and Mo and Dolly were in shock. Eight thousand pounds was a fortune. What, in reality, did you do with a fortune? After the initial euphoria – and on top of the
other shocks they had suffered – it sent them into a tailspin of uncertainty.

And in the middle of all this turmoil, of celebration and heart searching, Reggie came home from hospital.

The day Reggie Morrison came back, Melly walked home from school sick with nerves. Kev and Ricky were whirring round the yard with Frankie ‘Trigger’ Davies and
Tommy wasn’t back yet. She dashed into the house and went straight upstairs.

‘Cat got your tongue, has it?’ Rachel called up after her. ‘You get back down here, Melly – I need you to peel some spuds.’

Melly didn’t answer. Mom was even more scratchy with her these days, forever ordering her about. In the bedroom she stood to the side of the window and looked across the yard. It was full
of children, a go-kart, a little red tricycle and several lines of washing slanting in the breeze. But of Reggie there was no sign. Her nerves unrelieved, she clomped back downstairs again.

‘Why don’t you ever make Kev help?’

Rachel turned to her, looking irritated. ‘Kev? What use would he be? Anyway, he’s a lad. Here –’ She pushed a large pan across the table, full of potatoes and water.
‘Get started on these. I’m running late.’

‘Why are you running late?’ Melly asked, as if to say, is that
my
fault?

Rachel kept her eyes on the pastry she was thumping away at on a floured patch of the table. ‘I just am, that’s all.’

Melanie wondered if she imagined the blush that crept up her mother’s cheeks. Mom was being strange these days.

The question that was gnawing at her had to come out. Lifting a potato from the muddy water, she asked as casually as she could, ‘Dain’t Dolly say Reggie was coming out
today?’

Melly did not see Reggie until the next evening.

She was coming back across the yard from the lavs and he stepped out of the house, leaning on a crutch under his right shoulder. He set out in her direction, limping painfully, favouring his
left leg.

Melly’s blood raced and she was filled with panic. There was no one she wanted to see more, no one who she longed to avoid more as well. But there he was. With a jolt of shock she took in
his gaunt, drawn face, hardly like the Reggie she remembered. He was looking at the ground, concentrating on walking, and he seemed sad and far away.

An agony of feelings filled her. She pitied him, wanted to say something nice and comforting, but she had no idea what to say across the gulf of age and of all that had happened. In the seconds
during which they moved closer she almost put her head down and walked past without saying anything. But as they met she forced herself to look up.

‘All right, Reggie?’ Her voice sounded thin and young to her.

‘All right,’ he murmured, raising his head a little.

She couldn’t bear for that to be all, even though the conversation felt excruciating already.

‘Is . . . I mean, are you better?’ She could have cut her tongue off at the stupidity of the question. All she wanted to say, that she was sorry, so sorry about Wally and about his
leg and everything, was locked inside her and seemed unable to get out.

And to her horror, Reggie, in a voice so bitter that it was unbearable to hear, replied, ‘Better than what? Dead?’

‘No!’ She said, ‘No, I mean . . .’

But he was already moving away. Despair filled her. Why had she said that? Tears burned her eyes. She got everything wrong when all she wanted was to say something nice. And then, while she was
already punishing herself for these things that were not really her fault, she thought with a terrible pang of the little Christmas present she had bought for him, what seemed now like years ago. A
motorcycle! Did he still have it? And if so, did it just remind him of nothing but the accident and the death of his brother? If she had tried she could not have bought a worse present!

Hurrying back to the lavatory she bolted the door and stood in the half-dark, crying quiet, despairing tears. She had said and done everything wrong. She had her little weep and went back inside
to peel the potatoes in silence. More tears fell in the bowl of water but her mother didn’t notice.

As she lay in bed that night her thoughts went round and round. None of it meant anything – she could see that really, with her more grown-up self. Reggie gave her no thought in the first
place and he had much bigger things on his mind. Bigger things than her, certainly. Dolly had said that GEC were going to take him back and make sure he had a job where he could sit down. Thank
goodness, she thought, at least he’d be at work like any other lad. But now he was around again. She’d keep bumping into him, if she did not do her best to avoid him.

A few days later, Rachel came along the entry into the yard in time to see Gladys walking back into the house with her stiff, rocking walk. Rachel had noticed that Gladys was
moving more slowly recently, what with her bunion and her sore hips. But today there was an extra heaviness about her, as if life was weighing her down. Rachel often felt intense irritation towards
Gladys, having to live in her house and do things her way. And her desperate feelings now that she had another baby on the way, as well as secret meetings with Michael Livingstone, were making her
both more restless and more guilty and tense because she could not seem to help herself.

But seeing Gladys’s face this afternoon, the feelings drained away. Gladys was sixty now. In that moment Rachel saw, almost as if for the first time, how much Gladys had changed. There was
a fragile, papery look to her skin. From being the most active, fearsome person Rachel knew, she looked suddenly tired and faded. As Rachel walked into the house she saw Gladys sink down at the
table with a heavy sigh.

‘You all right, Auntie?’ she asked, finding a gentleness in herself. However much she resented Gladys sometimes, she knew how much she owed her.

Gladys slumped down, leaning her head on one hand. ‘Oh – I dunno.’ For a moment she eyed the bottle of port wine again. ‘No . . . Pour us a cuppa will yer, bab?
I’ve just filled the pot. I need summat to pull me round.’

Rachel poured them both one and sat down with her. ‘It’s Mo and Dolly, isn’t it?’ she said.

Gladys straightened up again, sugared her tea and sipped it.

‘Dolly says she wishes it had never happened. The pools. In a way. And what with Reggie . . .’

They had all seen the state Reggie was in, pale and thin, only able to get about, agonizingly, with the crutch and very low in himself.

‘I know Doll would give anything in the world to have Wally and Reggie both back as they were, rather than the money,’ Gladys said. Her eyes filled. ‘Cruel. Terrible
cruel.’

They sat for a moment in silence before Gladys heaved another sigh.

‘And now they’re talking about buying a house. Course they are – with all that money they could buy a dozen houses.’ She rolled her eyes. ‘If there were any houses
to buy, any road.’

‘You mean leave here?’ Rachel said.

‘Well, of course leave here,’ Gladys said brusquely. ‘Why would anyone live in a dump like this when they’d come into a fortune?’

Rachel saw then why Gladys was upset. She had banked on her old friends always being here. If Mo and Dolly left Alma Street and this yard, nothing would ever be the same again. They would be
leaving everyone behind in more ways than one. But in her own heart Rachel felt a guilty jolt of hope. If Mo and Dolly were to move out of number one, then what was to stop them getting out of
number three as well?

‘We don’t know what to do for the best.’ Dolly came round the next afternoon, after Melly was home from school. She sat at the table smoking one cigarette off
the end of another, offering them round. Rachel took one and lit up. ‘All these letters we keep getting.’ She mashed her cigarette butt into the pale blue saucer on the table.

‘That’ll soon die down,’ Gladys said.

‘I know, but I just feel as if I want to run away and hide somewhere, I really do. If we give something to one person we’ll have to give to everyone and where will it end? But all
these people who say they’re at their wits’ end and that . . .’ She shook her head, blowing smoke from her lips. ‘Having all this money makes me feel all sort of peculiar.
And Mo keeps saying, we’ve got to be sensible, Dolly, or it’ll all be gone and then where will we be? What would you do, Glad?’

‘I really don’t know,’ Gladys said. There was more than a hint of sarcasm in her voice. ‘Can’t say I’ve ever been well enough off to find out.’

‘Mo’s had to go to the bank and open an account,’ Dolly went on. She sounded awed. They had never thought of such a thing before. ‘The bank manager was ever so pleased to
see him.’

‘I bet he was,’ Gladys laughed, but again there was a dryness in her tone.

‘Said if he wanted him to recommend an estate agent, he could help,’ Mo said.

Gladys said nothing. Melly felt a tense silence come over the room.

‘D’you think you’ll go?’ It was Rachel who asked.

‘Well,’ Dolly said. ‘It’d be daft not to, wouldn’t it? All that money – we could get out of here at last. No more bugs and rain coming through the roof! And
it might help Reggie. And Jonny can stay on at school . . .’

‘We could go as well, Auntie,’ Rachel said. Melly saw her look back and forth between Gladys and Dolly. ‘It won’t be the same here without Mo and Dolly – you keep
saying that.’

‘We could help you!’ Dolly said. ‘We’ve got enough to—’

‘No need for that,’ Gladys said, sitting up proudly. Melly saw her mother frown. Gladys was such a stubborn old soul. ‘We make enough to rent for ourselves, ta.’

Dolly looked rather hurt, Melly thought.

Once Dolly had gone, Rachel turned eagerly to Gladys. ‘Can we, Auntie? I know you never would’ve moved if they were staying. But it’s all going to be different now. The yard
won’t be the same with them gone, will it?’

Gladys put her teacup to her lips. She didn’t answer.

Over the next few weeks, Dolly and Mo were blown about in all directions.

‘Every time I see them they’re going somewhere different,’ Gladys complained. Rachel could tell she was hurt to the core. Even though you could hardly blame them – who
wouldn’t want a nicer house if you could get one? – none of their plans seemed to take into consideration anyone else around them. How could they?

They mainly saw Dolly who would come round and give them the latest bulletin about places the estate agent suggested they might live. One day it was, ‘He says there’s this nice house
for sale in Four Oaks and we could afford it!’ The next it might be, ‘We could go to Sutton Coldfield. Or right out into one of the villages somewhere. But then there’s a house
for sale in Bromsgrove that he says would suit us down to the ground . . .’

‘I’m sure the commission’ll suit him down to the ground an’ all,’ Gladys said.

‘Oh, Glad,’ Dolly begged. ‘Don’t be like that. We don’t know what to do.’

‘Well, don’t look at me,’ Gladys retorted. ‘I’m not the one to tell you, am I? Why don’t you just let me know when you’ve decided?’ On that
occasion she ended the conversation by picking up a pail and walking out of the house.

‘Oh, dear,’ Dolly said to Rachel, tears filling her eyes. ‘I don’t know what to do for the best, I really don’t.’

Rachel felt she was living two separate lives that hardly connected. As the spring months passed, she went through the motions of everything at home, the housework, care of
Tommy and the others, while most of her mind was completely elsewhere.

After his confrontation with Gladys, Danny had not said another word about Australia and Rachel had not raised it. He was quiet, his mood flat. She had no idea what he was thinking and she
realized they were avoiding each other. This was at least half her fault.

She saw Michael Livingstone every week. She told the family she was working each Thursday morning as a volunteer in the office at school. Tommy was in class and could not know whether she was in
there or not. Instead, she would travel over with him in his taxi, kiss him goodbye just inside Carlson House and watch as one of the assistants wheeled him away to his classroom, before slipping
out and round the corner to Michael’s house.

On Thursday mornings, Ellen was at school as well. The last time Rachel had visited, the two of them had sat talking as usual, in the front room, side by side on the chairs. As time went by,
though, Rachel became aware of a change of mood between them. Usually they chatted easily, but now there were silences and the atmosphere became intense. Michael leaned forward and put his cup
down. As he sat back, he turned to her, his eyes seeking hers, and reached for her hand which was resting in her lap. His own hand felt large and warm and she did not pull away as she knew she
should have done. They sat in a loaded, awkward silence for a couple of moments. She could feel a slight tremor coming from him and she felt shaken herself. She did not meet his eye, not then. She
looked down at the clasped hands, her heart going like mad, and she could still feel his hungry gaze on her. Full of panic she had said she had to go home and they stood up, released their hands
and tried to talk normally as if nothing had happened.

This time, as she sat beside Tommy in the car, she tried sternly to bring the two sides of her life together. She was expecting Danny’s child! She had not mentioned this to Michael.
Nothing was showing yet. Michael knew now that she was married, but it was as if their time together was separate from all other life and reality. It was a kind of dream that did not feel as if it
could have any consequences in her real life. In this dream they could kid themselves for a little while. She kept telling herself that nothing was going on, nothing had happened except Michael
grasping her hand, once, for those few moments. Was that so bad?

But she knew really. Now every time she saw him, the air would be charged between them. Even before he took her hand, she had sometimes seen it in his eyes, the way suddenly, while they were
talking like friends, about their children or their daily lives, he would go quiet and give her a brief, intense look of longing. It would make her blush and look away. But sometimes she looked
back into his eyes and felt a prickling in her skin. It could not go on. She knew where it was leading, this feeling. It was wrong. She was nearly four months gone with the baby and soon it would
begin to show. That was her life. That was what was real . . .