Maggie

by Lena Kennedy

Genres: Historical Fiction; Sagas

Synopsis

Four decades. Four generations. One World War. Raised in Stepney, the heart of London's East End, Maggie Riley is the only child of an Irish widower. When she becomes pregnant at the age of fifteen she is delighted, for it means she has captured her beloved Jim Burns. But life is a constant struggle - to bring up her four sons, to cope with a part-time husband, to 'better herself'. And that struggle is set against critical events of the era: the Depression, the Blackshirt marches, the devastation of World War II and its aftermath. Rejoice in Maggie's triumphs and feel the sorrow of her tragedies with this beautiful and moving tale of perseverance against all odds. *************** What readers are saying about MAGGIE 'A brilliant novel' - 5 STARS 'A fascinating story' - 5 STARS 'I loved the whole story' - 5 STARS 'Just wonderful!' - 5 STARS 'An amazing read' - 5 STARS

Release date: April 25, 2013

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Print pages: 384

Sample

1

Childhood

The back streets of Stepney was where it all began. Maggie could still see her own mean little street, Witton Street, with its houses along each side of the road without a space in between. ‘Up-and-downers’ they called these dwellings in Stepney, with their two rooms up and two rooms down. There was a pub on each corner at one end of the street and the overpowering spire of the Roman Catholic church at the other. The whole of Maggie’s youth had been spent in that dim street where the rough stones that made up the road cut into your bare feet and a tumble made a nasty cut or graze, often ending with a trip to the hospital when the dirt infected it. But still the kids played out there. The street teemed with them for there was no room to play in the up-and-downers, especially since there was often ten to a family. But Maggie, she was different: an only child was Maggie amid huge families.

You could always find Maggie during opening hours, sitting on the doorstep of the Barley Mow – the most popular of the two locals which adorned the street. From six in the evening until ten at night, and longer at weekends, in a little plaid dress and black stockings with holes in them, Maggie sat on the wooden doorstep waiting for her beloved father – or Dah, as she called him. In later years she often thought back to those long hours of waiting and she would remember the smell of the fish-and-chip shop round the corner and the oily taste of the ha’p’orth of cracklings – for that was all that Dah, who was Irish and a navvy on the tube, could afford in the week. But Friday and Saturday were gala days when the wages were paid. Then, Maggie had a whole pennyworth. At the fish shop she would order skate, and maybe get a pig’s trotter from the man on the barrow who came past at nine o’clock in the evening.

In the cold of winter she would wait in the corridor of the Barley Mow, standing silent and still, while the children played outside. On summer evenings she would watch the flies as they crawled up the pub door. They used to go to sleep in the cracks of the wood, drowsy with the smell of beer, and Maggie would push them along with her finger.

At ten o’clock the men would all begin to come out of the pub. As the large boots covered with white cement passed, Maggie knew it was her Dah and she would tag on behind him. He would stay outside for a while with his mates. Sometimes they talked, other times they argued and even fought. But it was all the same to sleepy Maggie; she just waited until the toil-worn hand grasped hers and she and Dah went home together.

Home was a little up-and-downer three doors from the pub. There was an old brass bed in the corner where Dah slept, with its four ugly brass knobs. If you looked in them, your face seemed alternately long and then fat, and kept changing as you moved. This was a favourite game of Maggie’s on the long days alone. She faintly remembered someone who slept with Dah in that bed; must have been her mother, but it all seemed so vague and in the distance.

Because another family lived upstairs, Maggie slept in the same room on an old horse-hair sofa which had arms that wobbled and squeaked. Whenever she turned over the horse hair came out and pricked her legs. In the summer, there was the ‘red army’, but Dah had a cure for them: he drowned everything in paraffin which smelled even worse than the bugs. This was Maggie’s bed – the only one she had ever known and she was quite content in it as long as Dah was near.

Dah rose early every morning. Even on Sunday, he would bring her a mug of weak tea and say, ‘Here ye are, gel, just a wet.’ On Sundays they never had a proper breakfast until after Mass. Punctually, at ten to ten, they would set off down the street towards the church – Maggie in her best white dress and a little straw hat with an emerald green ribbon, and Dah, with all traces of cement removed from his boots which had plenty of ‘spit and polish’, wearing his best tweed jacket and grey flannels. This was a terrible ordeal for Maggie; she was so conscious of the street, of the eyes that peered from downstairs windows and the looks of the women that hung out of the upstairs, and worse, the conversations of the shawled women who sat on the windowsills.

‘There’s old Con, off to holy Joe’s,’ they would call out.

‘Needs to do a bit of praying, the old bastard,’ others would retort.

To this, Dah seemed deaf. He just marched on holding Maggie’s hand. Nothing and nobody was going to make him late for ten o’clock Mass.

Once they were safely inside the cold church and Maggie had placed her fingers in the cool holy water at the door, a grand feeling of relief came over her and her knees went weak as she knelt beside her Dah. It was a feeling that never left her all her life, even when hard living made her lose her faith – it was always there. It was probably nerves, Maggie used to console herself, but really it was the extreme tension of walking through the street that was the cause.

After Mass, home to eggs and bacon cooked by Dah – that was luxurious living in those hard days. Then off to the Barley Mow and Maggie to her seat on the doorstep.

On Sunday morning the street was teeming with kids, most with their backsides out of their trousers. They played, boys and girls together with a thick rope stretched right across the road. They did skipping and sometimes a game called Tibby Cat which they played with pieces of wood for bats as the two players tried to hit the ball into each other’s chalked-up square on the ground. The windows often got broken and there were many rows.

So there was plenty for Maggie to see as she sat out there. As the customers went in and out of the pub they said hello to her, and she was even given the occasional halfpenny.

The one person Maggie dreaded was Mrs Burns. When she saw her tall figure coming down the street Maggie would shiver in her shoes. There was no reason for this as Liza Burns was really quite a kind-hearted woman. On Sunday mornings she would be coming for her ‘livener’, as she called it, still wearing the sacking apron that was wet at the edges with traces of hearthstone decorating it. For Liza cleaned doorsteps for twopence a time; in better class districts in the main road she got fourpence. In this way she had managed to bring up five fatherless children after her husband, Jim, had gone down at sea, as she repeatedly informed the neighbours during the little outbursts of trouble that often broke out. Now in her thirties and still handsome (no widow’s cap or shawl for her), her black hair was bound tightly in a bun and never moved while her black button eyes swept the streets as she sailed along – and woe betide anyone who spoke out of turn . . .

‘Get your arse off that doorstep, gel,’ she would say to Maggie. ‘Tain’t natural sitting there like a bloody old woman. Go and play with the kids.’

But little Maggie never moved or spoke. She just twisted her long plaits nervously with both hands while tears flooded her blue eyes.

Liza would flounce into the bar and say, ‘Con, get that kid of yours off the doorstep, she’ll grow up daft.’

Then Maggie would hear the soft brogue of her Dah as he said, ‘Now Liza, leave the child be, ’tis better she sits there than runs with hooligans in the street.’

‘Calling my kids hooligans?’ Liza’s voice would become shrill and then there would be shouting. But Dah would just retire to the corner, quietly drinking his pint while Liza let off steam.

Little Maggie on the doorstep would listen but never move until Dah put his hard-working hand in hers and they went home to Sunday lunch of boiled bacon and spuds in their jackets.

In comparison to the rest of the kids in the street, Maggie had a good life, so Dah said, as he put huge lumps of fat from the bacon on her plate. A newspaper was their tablecloth in the sparse kitchen which was furnished with only the table and two chairs.

‘Tis not many sees a good Sunday dinner like this, girlie,’ Dah would say. ‘Half starved, them poor bloody kids out there. All on the bunghouse they are. Me, never had a day’s charity in me loife – not while I got a pair of hands to work with.’

So there sat little Maggie, trying to swallow the fatty food, and learning the philosophy of working-class life in Stepney from the lips of her beloved Dah.

Goodbye to Dah

As the weeks and months passed Maggie’s legs grew too long for the black stockings and the sides of the plaid dress burst out. She had turned thirteen and a half now – almost a young woman. But with her long legs stuck out over the pavement, Maggie still kept up her long vigils.

This was about the time when Jim Burns came home. He was the eldest of Liza Burns’s brood and, as they say in the East End, he had been in a ‘bit of bovver’ with the law. Jim had been lucky, for instead of being sent to an approved school, he went to a training ship as a special concession for a naughty boy whose dad had died serving his country. Now, with his hair cut very short and wearing a smart sailor’s uniform, he swaggered down the street. Jim was fifteen, big and broad-shouldered; the open-air life and good food aboard the Arethusa had matured him. He was Liza’s son all right with the same black button eyes, now combined with a crooked nose – the result of many fights on board. He was no beauty, but Jim with his big shoulders was quite unique in the street where weedy little boys worked in factories to support the home. So when Maggie saw Jim her blue eyes stared in admiration and she tried to pull her skirt down to hide the holes in her stockings.

The etiquette of the street demanded that the first place Jim visited was the Barley Mow, the family local, where he stood up to the counter and drank pints of ale, amidst an admiring audience of little men in checked caps and white mufflers who felt his muscles and said how much like his pa he was.

Jim had taken a good look at Maggie as he went in. ‘What’s that daft gel sitting out there for?’ he asked his ma.

‘It’s Maggie Riley,’ she said, ‘I’m always telling that boozy old man of hers to shift her. Don’t think she’s quite the ticket.’ They both laughed the same sort of loud cackle, and Maggie, with her ears very red, got up and crept round the corner to wait for Dah.

 

It was past five o’clock and Maggie had lit the fire and made the tea. Dah would be here soon. He was going to bring home pease pudding and faggots which she fancied. Soon she was getting quite hungry. Perhaps he had gone straight to the pub, though he didn’t usually go until he and Maggie had had their supper. Better go and look, she thought.

By now it was gone six o’clock and there were quite a few regulars in the Barley Mow. They seemed to be whispering together, but when Maggie looked in they all went silent. A strange feeling stirred Maggie’s stomach – perhaps it was because she was hungry.

‘Have you seen me Dah?’ she asked a man who came out. He looked dismayed, ‘No, cock,’ he said and hurried on.

Then Maggie heard them say in the pub: ‘She don’t know. Who’s going to tell her? Better ask Liza.’ Another man left the pub and crossed the road to Liza Burns’s house.

Maggie felt frightened; they were talking about her Dah, she felt sure of that.

The huge figure of Liza came on the scene. Wearing the snow-white apron she wore in the evenings, she beckoned from the small doorway of her house. ‘Come here, Maggie,’ she called. ‘I want you.’

Maggie went very reluctantly, but Liza, with a white face, said, ‘Come in and have a warm, love,’ and ushered Maggie into her back kitchen.

Maggie had never been in anyone else’s home before. She looked around the bright little room in surprise. A wooden dresser, filled with clean, shining crockery, stood against the wall; there was a white cloth on the table, and four shock-headed little boys sat playing Ludo. Big brother Jim lounged around the fire, reading the newspaper.

The homely, comfortable scene shocked Maggie; she just stared.

‘Move over, Jim, and let Maggie near the fire,’ Liza said. ‘You want a cup of tea, Maggie?’

With her hands round the mug of hot tea, Maggie gathered her wits together. What was happening? Where was her Dah?

Her blue eyes asked the silent questions of Liza, who burst out, ‘Don’t get upset, Maggie, your dad’s had an accident. He’s in the ’orspidal.’

‘Where is he? I want to see him.’

‘Tomorrow, my love. You stay with us tonight.’ Liza put a gentle arm around Maggie. ‘Now, you have a good cry if you want, love.’

But Maggie did not cry. She just sat, looking forlorn.

‘Get off to bed, you little sods,’ screamed Liza turning her attention to the boys who all scooted up the stairs. She wiped her eyes with her apron.

‘Gawd, need a wet,’ she said. ‘Jim, you look after Maggie.’ Grabbing her black shawl, she made straight for the Barley Mow.

On either side of the fireplace sat Maggie and Jim. His black, deep-set eyes looked sympathetically at Maggie who stared solemnly at the polished grate with its great iron kettle.

‘You was fond of your old man, wasn’t you Maggie?’

‘Of course I am. I love me Dah,’ she said simply.

‘You know he’s dead, don’t you?’ Jim looked directly at Maggie’s bowed head.

Maggie remembered for the rest of her days how her heart wept at that moment. She began to scream.

‘Cor blimey,’ said Jim, getting up. ‘Shut up, Maggie! You’ll wake the bloody neighbours.’ Not knowing what else to do, he sat down beside her and held her to him until she had calmed down. They sat very close together on the chair.

‘Don’t know why the old gel didn’t tell you the truth,’ he said. ‘This is how I see it, Maggie: your old man was a bloody hero. He volunteered to go down the tube with the council bloke to look at the gas bottles that was leaking. Both got blown sky high.’

Maggie began to cry again.

‘Don’t take on, gel. You can’t bring him back and you’re a big gel now.’

His hands felt her small breasts and Maggie drew closer. She liked the warm feeling from the pressure of his body.

When Liza came back, Maggie was asleep on Jim’s lap.

‘You ain’t wasted much bloody time,’ she snapped.

‘Well, I told her the truth, Ma.’

‘Well, that’s over anyway,’ said Liza. ‘Poor little cow. He never let her out of his sight. She ain’t ’alf gonna miss ’im. Come on, Maggie, off to bed,’ said Liza, nudging the girl awake.

As she lay in bed beside Liza in the front room, Maggie could see the aspidistra and the lace curtains by the window. Fancy her being here; she could not believe it. Liza’s heavy body moved in her sleep and she snored lustily. I’m never going to see Dah any more – she could not believe that either. Then she thought of Jim and the warmth of his legs as she sat on his lap, and suddenly a luscious, comfortable feeling possessed her and she dozed off to sleep.

 

The funeral was a grand affair. The many Irish men who had worked with Dah on the tube came in force. These big, brawny and hard-working navvies carried the coffin in turn and knelt shoulder to shoulder in the church in respect of their comrade who had given his life to progress while building London’s underground railway system.

Maggie was an orphan in all respects; not one relation came forward to claim her. Dah had lost contact with his relatives in Ireland.

‘Poor little bugger,’ said Liza, ‘she’s got a home with me. I had respect for old Con. Hard-working man he was.’

So Maggie went to live in Liza’s house.

The novelty of living in Liza’s spick-and-span home pleased Maggie. She loved to dust the ornaments and rearrange the many vases on the mantlepiece. ‘That’s right, Maggie, make yourself useful, gel,’ Liza would say. So when Liza went off cleaning doorsteps, Maggie tidied the house and called the boys up for school and handed them their breakfast of one huge ‘doorstep’ of bread and margarine.

Then Jim would chase them out of the house and he and Maggie had the place to themselves. When Jim held her close in the dark passageway, she forgot the hurt in her heart, and loved Jim with all the unquestioning loyalty she had given to her Dah.

‘Don’t tell Ma, will you Maggie?’ Jim would say.

‘No,’ said Maggie. The devil himself would never have got out of Maggie the things Jim did to her.

The news went around the street that Maggie Riley and Jim Burns were courting.

‘Better get that boy back in the navy,’ said Liza. ‘Seems like he can’t leave that girl alone. And she’s as dossie as they make ’em. Can’t wonder at that, the way she was brought up.’

But Jim had no intention of returning to the navy and the navy was not so keen to have Jim either. In spite of his good physique, Jim had been quite unable to learn; anything to do with books Jim could not take in. So in the peacetime navy where studying was important, he was not much use.

He became a working lad and got a casual job in the market. On Saturday nights, he and Maggie went to the pictures, but every other night of the week, while Liza was over at the pub, they made love in the back kitchen.

When Jim was sixteen and a half and Maggie just fifteen, she became pregnant. What a scene there was when Liza found out! She clouted Jim good and proper, but to Maggie she was kind.

‘Can’t put all the blame on you, Maggie, gel. Got in the family way meself when I was your age. He’s like his old man, he is – never got his boots off, when he came on leave, before he had me across the bed.’

But Maggie couldn’t care two hoots. She gloated because she had landed her Jim. No one else could have him now. He was hers.

‘She won’t be so bloody pleased with herself when he’s married to her,’ said Liza to her cronies. And to Maggie, ‘Wait a while for the wedding. Give Jim a chance to save a few bob so we can have a party.’

‘But I’ll be six months by then,’ protested Maggie.

‘Don’t make no odds,’ said Liza, ‘as long as you get married before it’s born.’

So little Maggie waddled around the house with her belly getting fatter. She wondered what her Dah would say if he were there.

As time went on, Jim seemed to change. He stayed out late at night and made a lot of flash friends from down the market. These wayward lads who had lived through a depression never held down a regular job. That they would eventually lead Jim into trouble was quite obvious.

Maggie’s Wedding

Maggie Riley was only fifteen years and six months when she married her Jim at the local registry office in the town hall. ‘Better say you’re sixteen,’ said Liza.

So with a long grey dress that Liza had borrowed from a shopkeeper whose doorstep she cleaned, and a white, floppy hat which set off her dark hair, Maggie looked very sweet. The dress was tight across her stomach. Jim was very smart in light-blue Oxford bags and a fancy waistcoat.

After the wedding, there was a big party in the Burns’s house and the Barley Mow. All Jim’s mates from the market came, and the little back yard was stacked high with crates of beer.

Jim’s four impish little brothers – Mick, Ginger and the twins, Lennie and Boy Boy – helped themselves to bottles of beer and scrounged fags from all the company. Then they got so excited that they started to fight between themselves until Liza waded in and beat them all up so they went crying to bed.

It’s funny, thought Maggie, but she was not enjoying herself at her own wedding. She supposed you should. The Knees-Up-Mother-Brown which the guests were dancing shook the wooden floorboards and the vibration was just like someone hitting her in the stomach. She felt uneasy. She couldn’t find Jim anywhere; he seemed to keep disappearing. She felt lonely and longed to see her Dah again.

Maggie wandered out into the road. Apart from the noise of the party and the crowds in the Barley Mow, the street was unusually quiet. The two street lamps were lit and somehow everything seemed unreal. The yellow light from the gas lamps shone in through the window of Maggie’s old home and the two brass knobs were outlined inside. (The young couple that had moved in had taken the bed – bugs and all. It was easy to get a place to live; the hard part was finding the money for the furniture.)

As Maggie stared in through the window, a baby started crying and a man’s voice called out, ‘Shut that flaming kid up! What with that bloody party and that flaming kid, I ain’t getting no sleep.’

Feeling embarrassed, Maggie walked away and went further down the street towards the church. The tall spire and the white, stone walls shone out eerily in the yellow of the gas lamp. Over the door was a little statue of the Virgin. Maggie held on to the iron railings and looked at the locked door. If only she could get inside, she would feel safe. She remembered how she used to be as a child, but now there was no warm hand to hold or a soft Irish brogue that said: ‘Come along, Maggie gel, or we’ll be late for Mass.’

‘Oh Dah! Dearest Dah!’ cried Maggie out aloud. Suddenly, a shadow crossed over the moon casting a strange, silver light which shone on the church steps – and there was her Dah! He was going up the steps, his hat in his hand, wearing his best Sunday suit. Maggie sank down by the railings sobbing.

That was where Jim found her when he came looking. He pulled her up. ‘Come on, Maggie,’ he said. ‘What are yer doing here? There’s a party on.’ Jim was well boozed. His collar was undone and there was lipstick on his face.

A very subdued bride went back to the wedding party. A strange thing had happened to Maggie. It was many years before she could enter a church alone again. The parish priest tried hard, but nothing would induce her to go up the steps. In the end, knowing she had married into a rough family, he gave up. It was a mystery; all Maggie would say about it was, ‘I shouldn’t have got married in the town hall.’

10

Time to Go Home

Back in the village of Edgeley, young Jim was reading a letter out loud to his two brothers as they sat around the laden breakfast table. Dolly listened, her eyes red with weeping. She had just been reading her letter from Fred, from the Japanese prisoner-of-war camp.

‘We got another brother,’ declared Al. ‘It’s a shame, I thought we were going to have a sister.’

‘Who wants a rotten sister,’ shouted Tom.

‘Shut up while I read this letter,’ said Jim.

‘Behave boys,’ said Dolly mildly. ‘Let Jim read your mother’s letter.’

Jim continued in a very exaggerated voice, carefully sounding his aitches and assuming a slow drawl, the way that Morris did.

‘Pouf,’ snarled Tom giving him a kick under the table, but Jim loftily ignored it and carried on reading Maggie’s letter.

‘Won’t be long before your dad comes home now,’ Dolly told them.

There was a jealous feeling inside her. That Mrs Burns, she now had another little one in her nest and soon would be robbing her of these three fine boys that Dolly had begun to regard as her own. Life did not seem fair. She had prayed so long for a child of her own and now that those Japs had her Fred his health was destroyed. Perhaps it would never happen now. With a sigh she put these morbid thoughts from her mind. Oh! please God, as long as he comes home I don’t care about anything else. But she did care. Before her stretched the endless years when the evacuee children would be gone.

Al did not like to see Aunt Dolly sad. He was her favourite and Al loved her.

‘Come for a walk with us?’ he said. ‘We are going to find some conkers.’

‘No, darling.’ She rumpled his fair hair and kissed him. ‘I’ll be busy this morning, you run off and I’ll make you a nice cake.’

So they went running down the drive, Tom and Al, with Jim strolling tall and surly after them. Autumn had spread a mantle of gold around the countryside, and the tall horsechestnut trees on the other side of the park had begun to shed their prickly fruit. The trees were too tall for them to climb, so Tom and Al threw sticks up to knock the conkers down.

Jim sat on the trunk of a fallen tree, much too grown up to join in. He produced some fancy cigarettes and an elegant lighter, with an air of great superiority.

This always got Tom in a temper. ‘Give us a fag,’ he yelled at Jim.

‘Unfortunately, that was the last one,’ said Lord Jim, slipping the packet quickly back into his pocket.

‘Liar,’ yelled Tom. ‘Come on, Al, let’s do him.’

Jim was off like a greyhound, and half way across the field Tom brought him down with a rugby tackle, and then the disgruntled Jim was sat upon, while his brothers divided the spoils.

This fighting went on most of the time outside the house, while indoors, Jim being Morris’s blue-eyed boy usually got his own way. But Morris had left for South Africa the week before. He was back in high finance again now that the war had taken a turn for the better. In the hope of being on the winning side, all the big business men were starting to plan for the future.

Morris’s wife Jante had paid them a flying visit, all spick-and-span in her war services uniform. She looked at the boys with hostile eyes; she had never liked them and squinted crossly at them as they came in hot, tired and dirty from play. ‘It’s time your mother took you home,’ she said.

They all stood in a row silent and downcast with nothing to say to her. The dislike was mutual. Aunt Dolly and Uncle Morris were all that mattered in their small world.

‘Write to her,’ Jante said to Dolly, ‘and tell her to come and get them. It’s quite safe in London now.’

Dolly silently nodded her head and was very glad when Jante flew out again on her war work. Dolly had no intention of writing to Maggie. Why, she would sooner cut off her right hand than send those lovely boys away. She would wait to see what Morris said, he was too fond of them to shove them off like that.

‘Come, darlings,’ said Aunt Dolly. ‘Have a wash. We’ve got rabbit pie for dinner.’

 

In the evening when the still of the night descends upon the countryside, creating a deep silence, just the occasional hoot of an owl breaks the stillness. It was then, with the flowered curtains drawn, that they sat before a blazing fire – three young boys, freshly bathed in striped pyjamas and blue dressing gowns. It was a cosy scene far away from the war and the heavily blitzed cities. Jim was studying as usual; and Tom and Al played cards.

Dolly held her head bent over her knitting. The firelight glowed showing up her pale, ash-blonde hair and her fresh country complexion. Her face was sad; she was thinking of Fred far away in the prison camp. Was he cold or hungry? How did she know if he was still living? In his last letter he had said he had been very ill. She let her knitting fall into her lap and her gaze wandered over her cosy sitting room. The oak beams in the ceiling and the tiny leaded windows. It was very old, this lodge. Fred had been so proud of this home when they came here after they were married. Those horse brasses around the fireplace – she remembered when he brought them home from the market for her. A tear escaped down her cheek.

‘What’s the matter, Aunt Dolly?’ asked Tom. ‘You’re crying.’

‘No, darling,’ said Dolly. He was a rough diamond, Tom, but always there when you needed him. ‘I am all right, love,’ said Dolly. ‘But I can’t help thinking of Uncle Fred tonight.’

With one accord they rose, and came towards her crowding round as if to protect her. ‘Let’s play I-Spy,’ they said. ‘That makes you laugh.’

‘All right.’ She put her arms around them. ‘I spy with my little eye . . .’ she called out, but her heart was heavy. What was she going to do when their mother came and took her darling boys away?

Later, they climbed the narrow stairway to bed, to that little room with a sloping ceiling, containing three clean white beds each with a stone hot water bottle awaiting them.

‘I don’t want to go home,’ said Al.

‘Who says yer going home?’ said Tom.

But Jim, who knew it all, said, ‘We will have to go home, when the war is over and that will be quite soon.’

‘I am going to stay with Aunt Dolly,’ yelled Al defiantly.

‘Don’t be daft,’ insisted Jim. ‘You have to go to your own parents when there is no war.’

‘I am not going,’ shouted Al and dived under the bedclothes as though the blankets would protect him.

‘Of course,’ said Jim with a very superior air, ‘I will probably be away at school, so I won’t have to go home and I will just come back here for my holidays.’

‘’Ark at him, don’t he swank,’ cried Tom.

‘I beg your pardon,’ said Jim. ‘Morris has already informed me that if I pass my exams he will see about a good school for me, and I expect I will get an allowance as well,’ he added.

‘Belt up, big head,’ said Tom. ‘I am going home. Mum will need me and I ain’t going to no bloody school. I am going to get a job and buy meself a smart suit. Fed up with these short pants old Dolly sticks me in.’

Dolly, lying in bed next door listened to them and smiled. They made her life bright and cheery. Whatever would she do when they went home? Morris would be home for Christmas, she would talk to him about it, and if Maggie did not want little Al, perhaps she would let Dolly adopt him. She closed her eyes and slept, little knowing that fate had already decided.

 

Morris Bloom