“But, Nick,” she protested, “surely, all that matters is we love each other, and . . . ”
He interrupted harshly. “Love? You don’t know the meaning of the word, my dear. I thought the same, but it seems I was wrong. The minute Francis was back, I was dispensed with pretty damned swiftly.”
“Oh, Nick!” She half ran to the sofa and sat down, but didn’t touch him. Incredibly, she felt too scared. But this was Nick, she told herself, Nick, whose entire body she’d stroked and kissed in the past. “Didn’t Tony tell you?” she said eagerly. “They brought Francis home in an ambulance.
He’d been injured. I couldn’t just walk out and leave him, darling. It just wasn’t right.”
“But it was all right to leave me?” He laughed sarcastically.
“Leave me for a man who nearly murdered you, or so you told me once.”
“But it was my duty, my moral duty, to stay,” she cried.
He shook his head. “No, my dear. It was your moral duty to come to me. You promised me, you promised a hundred times we would always be together.”
She hated the way he kept calling her “my dear” in such a formal way. “I’m sorry,” she muttered.
“And so you should be,” he said harshly.
“We can still be together . . . ’She briefly entertained the idea of seducing him, of turning his cold tragic face towards hers and kissing him, but felt it wouldn’t work.
He’d only spurn her, and that would make things even worse.
“It’s too late, Eileen.” He turned towards her, and their glances met directly for the first time. She would have given everything she possessed to see his lovely dark eyes light up, to see his warm, quirky smile. “Can you imagine,” he said, “is it possible for you to put yourself in my shoes for a moment, and think what it was like when Tony told me you weren’t coming? These two weeks were to be a sort of honeymoon, the start of our life together. Oh, God!” he cried hoarsely, showing emotion for the first time. “I spent hours in the station waiting room trying to digest what had happened. It wasn’t just as if the bottom had dropped out of the world, the whole world had disappeared. How could I live without you? Without Tony? I felt like killing myself”
Eileen whispered, “I don’t suppose you’ll believe it, but I felt exactly the same.”
He sighed deeply. “I don’t believe it, no. But I tell you this, Eileen, no woman will ever make me feel like that again. I’ll never give my heart to anyone for as long as I live.”
“Please don’t talk like that, luv.” She clutched his arm involuntarily but he shook her off, and she felt as if her own heart would break.
“So, what caused the volte-face?” he asked.
She had no idea what he meant. “The what?” His lips twitched and he was the old Nick for a moment. He always teased her when she didn’t understand the words he sometimes used.
The old Nick vanished as quickly as it had come. “The about turn?” he snapped.
“I realised I’d acted too hastily,” she mumbled. “I was on the point of leaving the house when they brought Francis home. It would have been different if I’d had some warning. You’re not the only one to think the -world had ended. It seemed the fairest thing to do was set you free to meet someone else, a woman without all the paraphernalia that comes with me.” If she thought that would mollify him a little, she was wrong.
“Someone else?” he said incredulously. “You were setting me free for someone else? Well, thanks all the same, but the only woman I’ve ever wanted is you. It just shows how trite you considered our relationship, that you can visualise me with another woman.”
“It near tore me in two thinking about it,” she whispered.
“Once things had calmed down a bit and I’d had time to think, I realised it didn’t have to be the end. Once Francis is on his feet again, I can still leave.”
“You didn’t think of telephoning and informing me of your change of heart?” he asked lightly.
“No,” she confessed.
He uttered a sardonic, “Huh”, and she said, angry for the first time, “Jaysus, Nick! I’ve never used a telephone in me life until yours. I’m not used to them, it didn’t cross me mind.” She stood and began to wander around the room. She noticed the ornaments she’d brought on the mantelpiece, the photo of her family in pride of place on the lace runner on top of the sideboard. This “would have been her home. ‘Anyroad,’ she went on, still angry, ‘if you were as upset as you make out, why didn’t you come looking for me? I almost thought you had, for a minute, when I went out for a while to clear me head.’
He frowned. “Perhaps I should have. I thought about it, but by then it was too late. You’d shot your bolt, as they say.”
“What about the card you sent? It said, ‘We’ll meet again’.”
“Well, we have, haven’t we?”
“I never thought you could be so cruel!”
“Cruel? My dear, the Marquis de Sade has nothing on you when it comes to being cruel.”
She didn’t reply. The remark made no sense and she didn’t want to make herself appear even more ignorant by asking for an interpretation. Really, she thought dispassionately, they weren’t well matched at all. He was highly educated, whereas she’d left school at thirteen. He spoke differently than she did and used all sorts of fancy words. He’d be far better off with a woman of his own—she hesitated to use the word “class”, because her dad would have a fit if he thought she considered herself inferior to any man or woman on earth - a woman on the same level, she decided. A woman who’d gone to university, that’s if women did, she’d no idea, who wore elegant clothes and used expensive perfume, not someone in ugly overalls who stank of evil-smelling cooling liquid which took a good brisk scrub to get rid of at the end of the day.
“Have you had anything to eat this weekend?” she asked, suddenly aware that the table was set as she’d left it last Friday.
“No, but I’ve had plenty to drink.”
“Oh, Nick!” His back was to her. She noticed for the first time the plaster protruding out of his left shirt-cuff. She’d forgotten about his broken wrist. The white plaster contrasted sharply with his slender sunburnt hand. She shivered, remembering the sheer heaven to which those hands had sent her in the past. She no longer felt dispassionate. She wanted him! Her insides throbbed with longing. There was nothing in the world she desired more than for Nick to make love to her at that moment. If they could, if only they could, everything would be all right again. Her hand reached out to touch the little cluster of tight curls at the nape of his lean neck.
“Nick,” she whispered, just as he stood up, out of her reach,’I love you.”
His face softened as he faced her and she felt a flicker of hope in her heart. “And I love you, Eileen.” Perhaps he sensed her desire, perhaps he felt it too. He said, “Do you want us to make love?” When she nodded breathlessly, he went on, “So do I. Oh, it was great between us, wasn’t it?
Absolute magic, but,” his face changed, “it wouldn’t work.
You see, I can never trust you again, my darling. I would be forever expecting you to let me down.”
She realised it was all over. “In that case,” she said tiredly, “we’d best say goodbye, Though don’t forget, Nick, it was you who left me in the first place. You didn’t have to join up. You could have stayed in your job for the duration of the war. It’s a miracle you’re still alive and able to climb on your high horse.”
His face flushed. “That’s a different thing altogether. I had a duty to fight for my country. I couldn’t have lived with myself otherwise.”
“And I couldn’t have lived with myself if I’d walked out on Francis, but it seems you’re the only person allowed to have principles.”
“That’s not true, Eileen.”
“I think it is.” She went towards the door. “You’re not going to stay here by yourself over the next fortnight?”
Despite everything, she couldn’t help but be concerned.
“I’m catching the midnight train to London. I shall stay with friends till my leave’s up. I would have gone before, but decided to wait and see if you’d come.”
“So you could tell me where to get off?”
He had the grace to look ashamed. “I . . . It just makes me feel a little better knowing I haven’t been entirely rejected.”
“You never were rejected. I was in a right ould state when they brought Francis home and I thought I was doing what was best for you. Here’s your key.” She threw the key down on the telephone table in the hall.
“No!” He picked up the key and handed it back. “Keep it.
I’ll never return to the cottage.” He glanced upstairs. “It holds too many memories. I couldn’t bear to live here without you and Tony. But the raids are getting worse. I’d like you and your family to use it.” His lips twisted wryly.
“You can even bring Francis if you want.”
“As if I would!” she said bitterly. Nevertheless, she put the key in the pocket of her overalls and opened the door.
“Tara, Nick.”
“Goodbye, my darling girl. Give Tony my fondest love.”
From the tone of his voice she had a feeling that he’d cry when she left. He’d cried before because he was an emotional man, perhaps too much so. Someone less sensitive mightn’t have taken things so much to heart, but then that someone wouldn’t have been Nick and she wouldn’t have loved him half as much.
“I will,” she replied with a coolness anything but felt.
She was already working on her lathe when the girls came wandering in from the canteen. They looked rather subdued.
“Eh, Eileen. Have you heard the news?” asked Lil.
“No,” she snapped, uninterested.
“An entire bomb disposal team were blown up in Liverpool this morning working on this bomb. What sort was it, girls?”
“Delayed action,” said Pauline.
“Jaysus!” Eileen gasped.
“Not only that, you know Myra from the assembly shop? She lost her mam last night in the raid on Norris Green.”
Later on the girls began to sing, but that night they sang only sad songs, The Old Lamplighter and Among My Souvenirs. How many more sad songs would they sing, thought Eileen, close to tears, before the damn war was over and the world returned to normal? Not that things would ever be normal again for her. Nick had gone, that lovely part of her life had ended. When the time came to leave Francis, she and Tony would have to strike out on their own, she thought listlessly. She did her best to push Nick to the back of her mind and concentrate on work, because it seemed selfish to be preoccupied with her own affairs when people were dying everywhere. At least Nick was alive.
It seemed only appropriate that the klaxon should blare out a warning that a raid had started just after eight o’clock. They trooped down to the shelter, but the raid wasn’t a long one. The women returned to the workshop, and for the last hour at Dunnings, no-one sang at all.
When Eileen got home, she found Francis had a visitor.
George Ransome lived across the street and was known as the “Pearl Street Playboy”. He was a dashing bachelor of about fifty with a pencil-thin moustache, who wore loud pinstripe suits and two-tone shoes, and spent most of his time in the company of various young ladies whose appearance was as flashy as his own. George’s parties were frequent and very rowdy, with music and shrill screams coming from Number 17 till well past midnight.
When people complained, he would merely wink and say jovially, “Well, next time I have a party, you’re welcome to come.” Before the war, he’d worked for Littlewoods Pools, but when the premises were taken over by the postal censorship service, George had been kept on, his sharp intelligence, not normally apparent to his friends, a useful tool in a vital job. George, conscious of his important contribution towards the war effort, had started to acquire an air of gravitas and the parties and the young ladies were becoming less and less frequent, particularly since he’d joined the ARP. Despite his bad reputation, Eileen quite liked him. Indeed, she secretly found him rather attractive in a seedy sort of way, and although George would have been outraged if he’d known, she also thought his way of life more than a little pathetic.
“Hallo, George.” She was pleased to see him, though would have been pleased to see anyone rather than be alone with Francis.
“Lo there, kid.” He jerked his head and made a clicking noise. “I’ve just been keeping the war hero company till you came home.”
“How’s your day been, princess?” Francis asked. He looked like a pantomime pirate. The bandage had been removed from his eye and there was a black patch in its place. The left side of his face was the ugly yellow of fading bruises, but for all that, he looked remarkably fit. He was wearing the trousers of his next-to-best suit and a knitted pullover over a collarless blue shirt.
“Fine,” she said, though the day had been anything but.
“What did they have to say at the hospital?”
Francis said, almost proudly, “They’re going to take me ould eye out and put a glass one in its place. According to the doctor, no-one will be able to tell it isn’t real.”
“That’s good.”
“It’s the bloody gear,” George said as he lit a cigarette! from the one he’d just finished. He was a chain-smoker and rarely seen without a fag hanging from his bottom lip.
“It’ll be dead good having you back in Pearl Street again, Francis. It hasn’t seemed the same since you left. Eileen’s missed you something rotten, haven’t you, girl? Everyone could tell.”
Eileen said quickly, “I think I’ll just pop upstairs a mo and see if our Tony’s all right.”
Tony was fast asleep, one hand under the pillow clutching the tin gun he took to bed each night. She kissed him gently on the cheek and whispered, “Hallo, son,” but he didn’t stir.
George was just about to leave when she went down.
“Tara, Eileen.” He threw a pretend punch at Francis. “See you, mate. Perhaps you’ll feel up to a bevvy at the King’s Arms by tomorrer night. Oh, by the way, I’ve arranged for a stirrup pump demonstration on Saturday afternoon. I think we should organise a Pearl Street fire-fighting squad between us.”
Eileen promised she would be there, as she had no idea what to do with the stirrup pump the government had issued should the occasion arise to use it. She saw George out and when she returned, Francis was in the back kitchen.