After the War is Over Read Free

Bridie off her knee so she could help. ‘I’ve got five months to go yet. Your father would have me permanently stuck in bed if he had his way, and your Auntie Kath brought in to look after Bridie. I told him I’d go stark raving mad, stuck in the same house as our Kath while she lectured me on women’s rights and why we should get rid of the monarchy.’
    Maggie sighed blissfully. It was the gear to be home again. She’d badly missed her family during her stint in the army, though the heavy bombing of Liverpool was over by the time she’d joined up in 1942, so at least she didn’t have that to worry about. Knowing they were safe had meant she could take advantage of the glorious freedom and at the same time put up with the tight discipline of army life.
    She looked around the warm room. Her mother had a way of making pretty things out of bits of this and that. There was a crocheted runner on the sideboard on which stood two jars covered with seashells painted in pastel colours, a vase filled with paper flowers, and an old wooden clock that had been painted white and decorated with flower transfers. The Christmas decorations were home-made too – Maggie and Ryan had made the tree fifteen years ago, out of green crêpe paper.
    This was going to be a really smashing Christmas without the clouds of war hanging over them. There was so much to celebrate. Maggie thought about the last three Christmases, spent on the base in Plymouth. There’d been a magic to them, an air of frantic merriment, a feeling of sadness too. She was wondering if she would miss those things when the back door opened and her dad came into the kitchen.
    ‘Our Maggie’s home,’ Mam said.
    ‘Is she now! Where’s my big girl?’ roared Paddy O’Neill in his strong Irish accent. He appeared in the doorway, big and handsome, full of smiles. ‘Welcome home, darlin’! Welcome home.’
    Nell remembered, a long time later, that she’d been invited to Maggie’s house in the evening. She really liked Mrs O’Neill, who always made a fuss of her. Her own mother had gone to bed, her father to the pub, Kenny to play billiards, and Theresa had gone to the pictures with Joan Roberts and two French sailors.
    She wasn’t used to quiet after the noisy life on the base. She put on her coat and walked around to Coral Street. For nearly six years a blackout had been in force, with everyone obliged to close their curtains so that not even a chink of light showed. Now, like a sign of belated defiance, curtains were being left wide open with lives exposed for all to see.
    The O’Neills were in the parlour. Maggie and her brother Ryan – Nell had had a crush on Ryan for as long as she could remember – were jiving in the middle of the room. Mr and Mrs O’Neill were seated on the settee with their arms around each other, the little girl, Bridie, squashed between them nursing Tinker, the cat. And Auntie Kath, who oozed politics from every pore, had just come into the room with a tray of tea.
    There was no place for Nell in that happy scene. No one would want to see her long face. She turned and went back to her own silent house, wondering if it was always going to be like this now that she was home.
    The men had gone to the pub more than an hour ago: Tom, Iris’s husband, his brother Frank, and their father, Cyril. Their wives were sitting in front of the first-floor window of Iris and Tom’s house overlooking Bootle docks, admiring the view. Iris was aware of her own reflection; out of uniform, she looked small, pale and insignificant. She had natural blonde hair and a quiet face – people didn’t properly notice her until they’d met her two or three times, when they suddenly realised how attractive she was.
    As it had gone ten and the pubs had closed, the husbands, all doctors, were expected home any minute.
    ‘I don’t know why alcohol tastes better when they’re standing knee deep in sawdust, rather than sitting at a table drinking from a crystal