The September Girls (64 page)

‘Bugger me job. It’ll be coming to an end soon, any road. No one’s going to want barrage balloons in peacetime.’

Their eyes met and Juliette said huskily, ‘I do love you, Fergus Caffrey. I wonder where Nancy is? She’s been gone an awful long while.’

‘Enjoying herself somewhere, I bet. Perhaps she’s gone to the party in Shaw Street and she’s having a dead good time.’

‘I hope so.’ Juliette looked around her uneasily. ‘The house doesn’t feel the same without Nancy in it. And where’s that dog, Rover? I thought he’d come to live here.’

‘Perhaps he wasn’t a stray, after all, and he’s gone back home.’

 

Nancy hadn’t set foot out of the house all day. She’d gone to bed mid-afternoon without saying a word to a soul. People would only worry if she told them how tired she felt, so tired that her bones had difficulty supporting her heavy body. All she wanted to do was collapse. She’d been looking forward to VE Day for so long and was disappointed that she’d taken no part in it, but there was always another day even if it wouldn’t be quite like this one.

Rover slept at her feet. Perhaps he was tired too, as he’d hardly moved for ages. She liked having the dog for company, keeping her feet nice and warm, reminding her he was there with a little snore now’n again.

She wondered how the children were getting on. Nancy looked upon them all as her children: Eleanor and Brenna, Cara and Sybil, Kitty and Sean, and all the other people she’d taken under her wing since she’d come to live in Parliament Terrace when she was little more than a child herself, including the lovely young Americans who’d made themselves so much at home.

One thing was for sure, they’d be living in a better world as from now, a world where there’d be no more hunger, no more poverty, where people would come together in friendship, and humanity would flower. The war that had just ended must surely have taught politicians a lesson, whatever country they came from, that women didn’t bear sons just to be used as cannon fodder and it was time they gave peace a chance.

By God, she was tired! Even though she’d been sleeping for hours, she still felt bone weary and doubted if she could pick herself up off the bed if the house was on fire. Yet at the same time, there was another body, an inner one, that felt as light as a feather, and this other body was floating along a long, dark tunnel in the direction of a bright golden light. A hand beckoned, a voice said, very gently, ‘Come,’ and she knew when she reached the light that she would never be tired again and all she would feel was joy.

Seconds later, at the foot of the bed, Rover raised his head and began to howl.

 

Far away, on another continent, Sybil Allardyce couldn’t sleep. She tossed and turned in the bed, the sheets becoming knots as she kicked them around, pulled them this way and that, threw them off when it got too hot, pulled them back on when she felt cold. She had been in India, in Bombay, had slept in this very bed for three long years and now she couldn’t wait to get home to Liverpool. It was impatience, a longing to be gone, that was making her so restless.

In a few weeks she would be demobbed - she hoped and prayed it wouldn’t be months - and she would marry Tyrone Caffrey and live in Mummy’s old house in Tigh Street. Mummy had actually married the loathsome thug and was now Mrs Hector Ingram. Sybil supposed she should start thinking of him in more respectful terms, as they would soon be seeing a lot of each other. Mummy had even suggested he give her away at the wedding. ‘After all, darling, he’s now your stepfather,’ she’d written.

‘That’s fine with me,’ Sybil had replied. So long as the thug gave her away to Tyrone, she really didn’t care.

 

‘I’d better get going, luv,’ Colm said. ‘I’m on the early shift this week and I’ll have to be up before the sun rises in the morning.’

Brenna gave him a warm smile. ‘Stay the night, darlin’. There’s plenty of room.’

‘No, there isn’t, Bren. Our Tyrone’s home.’

‘He won’t mind sleeping in the parlour for once.’ Sleep with me, she wanted to say, wanted to scream. Make love to me in our old bed and let me lie in your arms all night long. But Colm just shook his head.

‘That wouldn’t be fair on Tyrone, Bren. He’s got to find his way back to Harwich tomorrow. And you’ve got Kitty and Sean an’ all: it’d be daft to wake them up and take them back to Parliament Terrace. No, I’ll catch the train to Kirkby. I’ll see you again sometime, luv. I’m not sure when it’ll be.’

Brenna watched him trudge away, wanting to run and throw her arms around him, fetch him back, tell how much she loved him, always had, always would. ‘We were made for each other,’ she would remind him. ‘You used to say that all the time, Colm, darlin’. Why are we living separately when we could live together, happily, for the rest of our lives? You’ll come back one day,’ she informed the retreating figure. ‘Katie MacBride told me you would and everything else she said that day came true.’

 

Fergus went downstairs to find out why Rover was howling. Sybil fell asleep. Brenna knelt beside the bed and prayed for everyone she knew, particularly Colm. Eleanor and Hector strolled home from the party, arm in arm, thinking about their dead children, marvelling at the fact they’d found each other and that such good could come out of such bad.

Colm sat on the train and wondered if it was all that wise to go to London, a place he’d never been before, where he didn’t know a soul and had nowhere to live, just so he could take part in an election, even if it would be the election of the century, breaking all records. Were politics all
that
important, when he could live in the house his brother had won in a card game with his son and the woman he’d used to think he would love for ever? He recalled Brenna’s excited face the day they’d seen the house for the first time a quarter of a century ago. ‘It’s like a palace,’ she’d said. He wondered what Lizzie would have thought about the rundown house - and living in that ghastly cellar with a baby for months on end. He’d like to bet she wouldn’t have stuck it out with the same fortitude as Brenna.

He stared out of the window, too preoccupied to notice that the street lights and house lights were back on after nigh-on six years, that he passed two bonfires, that the stations the train stopped at were visible again. By the time the train arrived at Kirkby, he still felt confused.

And Cara, she danced with Charlie Green, danced until her feet hurt, until he had to take off his jacket, even though it was nearly midnight and the air had turned cold. They danced under the stars that dazzled in the sky, along with half a dozen other couples unwilling to let the day end, determined to dance the night away. The harmonium player was still there, strolling up and down the pavement, lulling to sleep the people tucked inside their houses.

‘What will happen tomorrow, Cara?’ whispered Charlie Green.

‘Who knows?’ Cara threw back her head and laughed. Tonight, she felt as if her old life had ended and a new one had begun, that she’d shed a heavy cloak that had been weighing her down for years, and now she felt lighter, younger, happier than she’d been in a long while. She vaguely remembered that she had two children, but had no idea where they were, although she knew they were safe. ‘Any road, I just heard a clock strike midnight: it’s no longer tomorrow, but today.’

‘So, Cara, what will happen today?’

‘We’ll just have to see, Charlie.’ She laughed again. ‘We’ll just have to see.’