Angel of the North Read online

  His mother frowned. ‘You’re not Chas. You weren’t christened Chas, and you never will be Chas.’

  Marie grinned up at him, showing a row of perfect white teeth. He’d been Chas when they’d been in the same class in infant school, and Chas he would remain, as far as she was concerned. But confident of her victory, she said no more.

  Charles’s father looked up from his place outside the shed, where he was screwing together the last frame for the raised beds that now disfigured their large and once beautiful lawn and deep flower borders. A slow smile spread over his face. ‘I think you’ve met your match there, Marjorie.’

  ‘Put her down, Charles,’ Mrs Elsworth snapped. ‘It’s embarrassing.’

  Charles put Marie down.

  ‘Her mum and dad are out of the way at her aunt Clara’s, that’s why he’s dying to get round to their house,’ Charles’s 15-year-old brother piped up. ‘That means we won’t be seeing him until after breakfast.’

  Mr Elsworth gave him a warning look. ‘That’s enough, Danny.’

  Marie’s eyes widened. ‘Cheeky pup! It doesn’t mean anything of the sort.’

  ‘’Course it does,’ Danny persisted. ‘Mum found one of your hairclips in his bed when she stripped it after his last leave.’

  Marie felt Mrs Elsworth’s eyes appraising her, watching her reaction, and a deep flush rose to her cheeks. ‘What? My hairclips? That’s not possible, you cheeky monkey! You’d better watch out, or I’ll have you up for slander.’

  Charles gave Danny a cuff round the ear. ‘You little liar. Mum found nothing of the sort. Now apologize.’

  ‘Ow, Charles! I’m not a liar, and I’m not apologizing.’

  ‘You are. And you will end up in court, if you carry on,’ Charles insisted.

  Danny rubbed his ear. ‘Get lost! Anyway,’ he said, turning to Marie, ‘if I do, that’ll be two of us. Dad’s got a summons for driving without due care and attention. He forgot to put the brake on when the car in front stopped.’

  Charles gave him another clout.

  ‘Ouch!’

  ‘And you’re making your mouth go without due care and attention. Time you put a brake on that.’

  ‘Leave him alone, Charles.’ His mother’s voice was very quiet, but there was an edge to it that made Charles stop. He looked about to say something, then caught his mother’s eye.

  ‘Stop squabbling and give me a hand to get this frame in place,’ Mr Elsworth said, putting an end to the dispute. ‘Then we can start filling it with topsoil. We should just manage to get the kale planted and watered before it gets dark.’

  Her hairgrips in Charles’s bed? That was just young Danny’s idea of a joke; he loved trying to embarrass her. But Mr Elsworth, driving without due care and attention? Marie couldn’t believe it. His face was giving nothing away, and although she would have loved to know how that had come about, when he’d driven for years with not so much as a scratch, she decided to change the subject to spare his feelings.

  ‘We planted some kale last year,’ she said. ‘We’re not bothering this year, though. None of us liked it.’

  ‘Don’t you want to know what happened?’ Danny insisted.

  ‘Get hold of the end of this, and make yourself useful for a change,’ his father said, ‘instead of telling tales. Let’s see if you can make up with brawn what you lack in brains.’

  They carried the frame to the end of the lawn and placed it a couple of feet beyond the last raised bed, leaving enough room to kneel in between them. Charles, his mother and Marie began filling it with topsoil while Mr Elsworth went back to the shed to get the plants.

  Danny stood watching them. ‘Don’t you want to know, then?’

  Marie could see he was dying to tell her, but she gave him no encouragement.

  None was needed. ‘We were driving up Beverley Road, and I spotted some looters pulling the board of one of the bombed shops loose, and pointed them out to Dad. They had a quick look round, then one of them got inside and started passing stuff out to the other one. They hadn’t seen the copper walking along the side street towards them, and from where he was, he couldn’t see them, either. We just knew what was coming when he got to the corner, like something out of a Charlie Chaplin film. We both started laughing, and that was when Dad smacked into the car in front.’

  ‘Don’t say “copper”, Danny, it’s vulgar. Say “policeman”. And that’s when it stopped being funny for your father,’ Mrs Elsworth said, and for Marie’s benefit added: ‘Leonard offered to repair the other man’s car, but he was very aggressive. Some people just won’t listen to reason.’

  ‘The biggest laugh was that the policeman saw the crash, and came running straight over to us; he didn’t even see the looters.’ Danny grinned. ‘But as soon as they saw him, they beat it. And then he started chasing them, with the other driver yelling at him to come back and look at his car. Yeah, it was just like something off Charlie Chaplin. Hilarious.’

  Mr Elsworth was back with the plants. ‘I never liked Charlie Chaplin; too silly for words. Go and fill those watering cans, Danny, instead of standing yapping.’

  ‘Oh, Dad! I think I’m the only one in this house who’s got a sense of humour!’ Danny picked up the can and went, a look of disgust on his face.

  ‘Clown! He’s got more chatter than a cage full of monkeys,’ Mr Elsworth said, carefully lowering himself to the ground to begin the planting.

  Charles hunkered down on the opposite side of the bed. ‘Empty vessels make most noise. You let him get away with far too much, and you’re wasting your money, sending him to Hymers.’

  Mrs Elsworth kneeled beside her husband. ‘You went to Hymers. It got you into university, and we can’t do less for Danny. We let you both get away with far too much. And I don’t regret it, either, now. If the war lasts much longer he’ll be called up, and then who knows what might happen to him? They were sending 16-year-olds to the front line in the last one.’

  ‘He’ll never get into university; he’s too fond of playing the fool. The Forces would do him good. Make a man of him. He gets away with murder at home.’

  Marie quietly took her place beside Charles and worked quickly, pushing the plants in.

  Mr Elsworth began to cough, and pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket. ‘You should have stayed out of it, never mind trying to get Danny in. You should have taken that job in Kemp’s solicitors, and worked for your articles. I’ve never been right since the last lot. And don’t say I didn’t warn you.’

  ‘How could I stay out of it? Everybody at university was joining up. Anyway, I didn’t want to stay out of it.’

  Mr Elsworth raised his eyebrows, and gave a snort of contempt. ‘You fool! You think you’re going into some sort of adventure straight out of the Boy’s Own Paper. That’s the young, you can’t tell them anything. But you’ll know what war’s all about before you’ve finished. I only hope you’ll live long enough to profit by it.’

  He pushed his handkerchief back into his trouser pocket, and they worked on in silence. The kale was in the ground before Danny came back with the watering cans.

  When they’d finished, Marie turned to survey the garden. ‘Potatoes, onions, runner beans, beetroot, cabbage, carrots. A good bit of stuff in there. Not a bad day’s work.’

  ‘My lovely lawn and my beautiful borders,’ Mrs Elsworth lamented. ‘Ruined.’

  ‘We kept them as long as we could, but you can’t eat grass or flowers, Marjorie. This will be more use, especially at the rate we’re losing shipping. The civilian death toll’s nowhere near our shipping losses, in my opinion. If it goes on at this rate, we’ll have neither ships nor men to bring any food in.’

  ‘That’s defeatist talk, Dad,’ said Charles.

  ‘It’s facts. How many times do you hear of ships and men who’ll never come home again, and read nothing of it in the papers? So, we’ll grow our own, and rely on ourselves as much as we can, and then we’ll have a bit of a chance if some of those convoys don’t get thro
ugh. That’s not defeatist, is it? We might even get a pig.’

  ‘We might not!’ Mrs Elsworth protested. ‘I’ve let you ruin my flower garden, but I draw the line at pigs.’

  ‘You’ll get your share, as well, Marie, for all the help you’ve given us,’ Mr Elsworth said, ignoring the protest.

  ‘I didn’t do it for that. We’ve got plenty growing on Dad’s allotment. Everything – veg, apples and pears, rhubarb, soft fruits, the lot. We hardly ever have to buy vegetables, or fruit.’

  ‘It was very good of you to spare the time to help us, especially after the terrible time you’ve had at the hospital lately,’ Mrs Elsworth condescended.

  ‘Yes, it was high jinks at the infirmary, the night before April Fools’ Day!’ Marie pulled up her sleeve to display her newly healed scar. ‘Glass splinters shooting into the ward like bullets, and then we were dragging beds around with only hurricane lamps and torches for light. But we were lucky, there was none of us badly hurt, not like people in the buildings round about.’ She pulled her sleeve down again. ‘It put the Victoria wing out of action, though – three wards lost. We’re about 160 beds fewer because of it, but I was more upset by the damage to the Metropole Hall on West Street than anywhere else.’ She sighed heavily. ‘It had the best dance floor in Hull. I’ll really miss that place; I learned to do the Lambeth Walk there.’

  That earned her a disapproving frown from Mrs Elsworth. ‘There are more important places to worry about than dance halls, my girl.’

  Mr Elsworth, who was in the civil defence, backed his wife up. ‘Control HQ, for example,’ he said. ‘When that land mine fell outside the Shell Mex building on Ferensway we hardly knew what had hit us. People blown in all directions, ceilings and walls caving in, furniture and filing cabinets picked up and dropped anyhow, and fires breaking out all over the place. People dead, people wounded, and a lot of those who weren’t were shocked rigid and useless for anything. A few of us were trying to put the fires out, and give the layout of the building to the rescue services, but it was a complete bloody shambles.’ He gave a hollow laugh. ‘I was glad I’d lent the Wolseley to you, Charles, or that would have gone up, too. All the official cars outside were blown sky high. And nothing left of the policeman but bits of his uniform.’

  ‘I know that poor man’s wife,’ said Mrs Elsworth. Her eyes were so reproachful Marie felt as guilty as if she’d dropped the bomb on the Shell Mex building herself.

  ‘I know, it was awful, but I wasn’t talking about what got hit the worst, just what I’ll miss the most.’

  ‘Doing the Lambeth Walk, evidently. Poor Dr Diamond killed as well, and only the day after we’d seen him when we went to give blood. Charles came home early that night, didn’t you, Charles? They had to clear the dance hall to make room for homeless families.’

  Charles looked as if he’d have liked to cuff his mother round the ear.

  Marie’s jaw dropped. ‘Dance hall? You never told me you’d been to a dance hall!’

  ‘Hang it all, you were at work, and it was my first night on leave. It won’t last for ever. I’ve got to make the most of it. Live life to the full, while I can,’ he protested.

  The heat rose to Marie’s cheeks. ‘So it seems,’ she said. ‘I’m helping to move a hundred and odd patients, imagining you out of the shelter and safely tucked up in bed, and you’re swanning off to dance halls – without a word to me!’

  Charles reddened. ‘It’s pretty obvious you go dancing without me, if you miss the Metropole Hall so much,’ he retorted. ‘We’ve hardly ever been there. I suppose you dance with a lot of foreign servicemen.’

  Unable to deny the charge, Marie was silent for a moment, now on the defensive. ‘Well, there was never any harm in it! I went with Nancy, or Margaret – when she was alive – even after she got married, if her husband was working. And we always left by ourselves.’

  ‘Well so did I!’ Charles protested, with a glance in his mother’s direction, ‘and I didn’t get the chance to tell you; I went on the spur of the moment. So while you were moving your patients about, the place was closing, and not long after that I was tucked up in bed. It hardly seemed worth mentioning.’

  So why had his mother mentioned it, Marie wondered, catching that grim expression on Mrs Elsworth’s face. Probably because she wanted to put a spanner in the works. Probably because she didn’t want any girl who’d left school at fourteen, whose parents could barely afford the rent on their house on Clumber Street, getting her hooks into her privately educated darling Charles. She frowned.

  ‘More old edge than a ragman’s saw,’ Marie’s father had once said, of Mrs Elsworth, and her father was pretty good at sizing people up, she thought.

  Marie had every intention of getting her hooks into Charles, in spite of his mother. They’d been good friends as children until the parting of the ways on the day they left St Vincent’s for secondary school – Charles to fee-paying Hymers College, Marie to St Mary’s. After that the crown prince of the Elsworth clan had associated with friends suitable to his private school, and Marie had barely seen him, until the war came. They met again at a dance at Beverley Road Baths, when he cut in on her partner during an ‘excuse me’. Before she knew what was happening she found herself gliding swiftly over the floor in his arms, leaving her former partner standing. Charles had propelled her expertly round, while reminiscing about the funnier incidents and high points of their infant days in a voice that had become thrillingly deep.

  ‘I think I’ve been in love with you since we were five years old, when I used to dream about the fairy princess with the piercing blue eyes and the flaxen plaits. I see you’ve chopped them off,’ he joked, his eyes full of laughter as he appraised her now much shorter hair.

  ‘I’d look a bit silly with plaits, at twenty-three,’ she said.

  ‘Perhaps, and now I shall pick up that outsized torch I used to carry for you, and love you just as much with a flaxen bob.’

  ‘Idiot,’ she laughed, but she was inclined to believe him. At school, he’d always sat as near to her as he could get in class and at dinner, and he’d fought her battles in the school playground. At the womanly age of five, she had known that Charles Elsworth was seriously smitten with her, and that she could wind him round her little finger.

  ‘You’ve managed all right without me for long enough,’ she said. ‘We’ve hardly exchanged half a dozen words since you went to Hymers.’

  His expression became serious. ‘Till now, I’ve loved you from afar – rather like Dante loved Beatrice. He didn’t have to see her all the time to make her his ideal, and write reams of poetry about her.’

  Marie raised her eyebrows. ‘I wasn’t afar,’ she said. ‘I was only half a dozen streets away. So how many poems have you written about me?’

  ‘Well, to tell the truth –’ he hesitated and broke into a grin – ‘poetry’s not really my strong point.’

  She laughed at that. Charles’s hazel eyes still danced as they looked into hers, and his sense of humour was the same, regardless of the polish he’d gained. She warmed to him. Her own partner saw it, and abandoned the field.

  Now, every time they crossed the road on the walk from his parents’ grand house, with its vast rear gardens on wide, tree-lined Park Avenue, to her parents very modest home in narrower, close-packed and treeless Clumber Street, he moved smoothly to the kerbside, and offered her his arm. She pretended to despise all the old-fashioned courtesies and attentions he showed her, but deep down she loved them. Charles made her feel as if she counted for something.

  The gardening finished, Marie and Charles walked to her parents’ house. The milkman was standing on the doorstep, hands in his fingerless gloves, licking his indelible pencil.

  ‘She’s never in, your mam. She owes two weeks.’

  ‘I haven’t got it,’ Marie told him, cheerfully. ‘You’ll have to come again, when she is in.’

  Charles followed her through the wrought-iron gate, and handed him a ten-shilling note. ‘H
ere you are, take what they owe you.’

  The milkman counted the change into his hand. ‘Yer ration’s goin’ to be cut, startin’ next week.’ The news seemed to give him some satisfaction.

  ‘How much?’

  ‘A seventh. Pint a week, for you,’ he said, and was out of the paved front garden in two strides, slamming the gate behind him.

  ‘Seems to have made your day, anyway,’ Marie called after him.

  ‘Less work, in’t it?’ he said, climbing back into his cart and taking up the reins. ‘There’s summat to do your roses good, though. Gee up!’ The horse moved forward, and the cart rumbled away, leaving a heap of droppings steaming in the road.

  Marie opened the door, and the strains of ‘How High the Moon’ drifted towards them. Her parents had left the radio on.

  Charles followed her in, closed the door, then pinned her to the wall in the tiny passageway. ‘This is the first time we’ve had a house to ourselves. What games shall we mice play, while the cats are away?’ he asked, brushing his lips against hers. Her spine tingled. Charles was a beautiful kisser. Not that horrible tongue-down-your-gullet style of kissing that made her want to go and gargle with carbolic, but real, lingering, sensuous kisses, that made her melt. Made her want to . . .

  Not surrender! No, no no! Best put a stop to that, before it went any further. Her eyes snapped wide open. She ducked under his arm and picked up the black kitten her mother had taken in, and began to stroke it. ‘Sorry to disappoint you, but the cat’s back. Say hello to Smut.’

  He let her go. ‘Hello, Smut!’

  She laughed and put the kitten down. ‘Off you go, Smut.’

  ‘It’s nice to be on our own, anyhow, without any younger brothers about, giving a lot of lip to their elders and betters,’ he said, helping her off with her coat and hanging it on the newel post. ‘Horrible when they’re younger, like yours, with their frogs, and their pet rats, and their marbles and cigarette cards, everlastingly pestering people to play battleships, and hanging around where they know they’re not wanted. I bet you were glad when he was evacuated.’