The Silent War (3 page)

Madge beamed, and leaned across towards her daughter. ‘
You
could come along too if you want,’ she said hopefully. ‘Everyone keeps saying how much they’d love to see you at one of the meetings.’

Sunday put down her knife and fork and looked across the table at her mum. ‘Now don’t let’s go through all that again –
please
, Mum,’ she said, trying hard not to upset Madge. ‘You know I don’t like getting involved in all that kind of stuff.’

Madge’s sweet smile faded immediately, and her once cherubic face, now heavily lined, crumpled up in disappointment. ‘You used to – when you were little.’

Sunday always dreaded this type of exchange with her mum, mainly because the poor woman was so vulnerable. She knew only too well that Madge had to deal not only with her sister Louie’s endless tantrums, but also with a daughter who refused to embrace her own passion for religion. ‘It was different when I was little, Mum,’ she said, biting her lip anxiously. Then she stretched one hand across the table and placed it affectionately on to her mum’s hand. ‘Things were different when I was little, Mum,’ she said softly. ‘I’m grown up now. I have to do things for myself – my own things.’

‘But I’m only asking you to come and listen to the band. You love music. You always have.’

‘Of course I love music, Mum.’ Sunday felt herself tensing. ‘But not
your
kind of music. I like to dance to Glenn Miller, or Harry Roy, or Ivy Benson.’

Madge sat straight in her chair. As she was barely five feet tall and only slightly built, the tea table still seemed to dwarf her. ‘I’ve always told you, Sunday,’ she said, a touch imperiously, ‘dance halls are no substitute for God’s work.’

Suddenly, Sunday had no appetite for her bloaters. For the next few minutes, she sat back in her chair and listened to another of her mum’s dissertations on
how
wonderful it was to be one of God’s ‘soldiers’. To Madge, the Salvation Army was the very essence of good itself, always caring for those in need, in peace and war. Unfortunately, Sunday knew that everything her mum was saying was true. The ‘Army’ really were a magnanimous lot, and during the height of the Blitz they had provided food and comfort to everyone who had to endure the nightly aerial bombardments. But, although Sunday certainly shared their beliefs, it was not the way she wanted to live her own life. But it
was
difficult, oh so difficult. Living in a tiny two-bedroomed council flat with a loving mum who was constantly trying to get her into a bonnet and uniform, and a bullying aunt who was determined to get her way about everything, there were times when Sunday felt as though she was a prisoner in her own home. Oh if only she had known her dad. If only he hadn’t died when Sunday was a tiny child. Things would have been so different. Or would they?

Sunday’s only escape at times like this was to shut out the sound of her mum’s voice and scan the room. By now she knew the entire pattern of the wallpaper, the same badly hung wallpaper that had remained unchanged since before the war. The pink roses were gradually fading, but the brown woodwork around the windows and wainscoting was still remarkably fresh, with very few chips, and the fawn-coloured tiles around the minute fireplace with its built-in gas fire were virtually glistening in the early-evening sunshine. Although it was a small parlour room, Madge kept it immaculately clean. At home and at work, Sunday often despaired that her whole world seemed to be dominated by the pervading smell of carbolic. She’d loved the time when the whole place had had to be treated with DDT, for Aunt Louie had screamed the place down after finding a cockroach squatting comfortably in the middle of the eiderdown on her bed.

Sunday’s eyes had now scanned the entire room, from floor to ceiling, kitchen door to passage door and
lavatory
beyond, and her own bedroom door, and the neat lace curtains from the North London Drapery Stores in Seven Sisters Road, which only partly disguised the anti-bomb-blast tape protecting the glass panes of the two small windows. Finally, her eyes came to rest on the door of the bedroom which her mum shared with Aunt Louie. Until this moment, she hadn’t noticed that the door was slightly ajar. Oh yes! So the old bag’s having a good listen.

‘What about Aunt Louie?’

Sunday knew she was being mischievous, because her voice was raised. But at least it stopped her mum in her tracks.

‘Auntie?’ replied Madge, puzzled by the sudden, unexpected question. ‘What about her?’

‘Is
she
coming to hear your band playing tomorrow?’

The question immediately prompted Madge to swing a nervous glance over her shoulder towards the bedroom door. ‘I don’t know,’ she said, so obviously keeping her voice low. ‘Auntie likes to have her sleep on Sunday afternoons.’

‘Wouldn’t do her any harm to give up her precious afternoon sleep just for once,’ quipped Sunday, making quite sure her voice carried across to the bedroom door. ‘She’s got nothing else to do all day!’

Madge immediately panicked, got up from the table, hurried across to her bedroom door, and closed it.

‘You mustn’t be unkind to your auntie,’ said Madge, lowering her voice almost to a whisper. ‘You
know
she’s got a weak heart.’

‘Oh come off it, Mum!’ snapped Sunday, getting up from her place at the table, and collecting the plate containing her half-finished bloater. ‘You wait on her hand and foot. She does nothing to help you round here – absolutely nothing! That’s why I blew up at her this morning. I hate the way she just lives off you. It’s time she found a place of her own!’

Madge was getting more and more flustered. She
quickly
followed her daughter into the tiny kitchen whilst nervously checking over her shoulder to see if her bedroom door was still closed.

‘You mustn’t talk about your auntie like that, Sunday,’ Madge whispered, her carpet-slippers quietly padding on the bare lino floor. ‘I don’t expect her to do things for me. She’s my sister, Sunday, my own flesh and blood. If she left, I – I don’t know what I’d do. Don’t you understand? I love her.’

‘Well
I
don’t!’ Sunday’s response was emphatic.

Madge looked horrified. ‘Sunday! How can you say such a thing?’

Sunday remained defiant. ‘It’s true, Mum! You know it is!’ And she meant it. She turned to look out through the kitchen window. In the yard way down below, she could see some of the kids from ‘the Buildings’, shouting their heads off as they kicked their football against the bare brick wall. For as long as Sunday could remember her Aunt Louie had been a total pain in the neck, always rabbiting on at her every time she did anything that the old bag didn’t approve of. Sunday knew only too well that ever since her precious aunt had come to live in the flat all those years ago, she had used her sister as a meal ticket. She was sick to death at the way her mum always took Aunt Louie’s part, going on about how sad she was and how the poor woman had never had any love in her life. Surely it was plain as a pikestaff to see why no bloke in his right mind would want even to touch a cold fish like her. Dear Aunt Louie was nothing but a lazy, interfering old bag, whose influence over Sunday’s mum had caused more trouble in their lives than anything or anyone else.

‘You shouldn’t’ve talked to her the way you did this morning, Sunday.’

Sunday swung round to her mum, and was about to answer her, but Madge spoke first.

‘When you have a row with her like that, it’s not Auntie you hurt. It’s me.’

As much as she loved her, this was one of those
moments
when Sunday wished that she had a robust mum who was twenty years younger, instead of this meek and mild silver-haired woman who had adopted her over seventeen years before.

Madge stood with her back to the white enamel sink. Close to tears, she seemed a lot older than her seventy-two years. ‘I took Auntie in, because – because when your dad died, I needed someone to talk to – to look after. You were only a little girl. It seemed the right thing to do.’

Sunday felt awful. She had allowed her hatred of Auntie Louie to overshadow her own mum’s feelings. In the yard below, the kids were shouting louder than ever, and they were beginning to get on Sunday’s nerves. Leaning out of the window, she yelled out, ‘Shut up, will you – you lousy little buggers!’

The kids briefly stopped kicking their football, to look up at the window of the flat on the top floor. When they saw who was shouting at them, they all raised two fingers at her and yelled insults back.

Sunday did not bother to exchange banter with them. She merely slammed the window, and turned to face her mum again. With a deep sigh, she went across and put her arms around her. ‘I’m sorry, Mum,’ she said quietly. ‘I’ll try and behave myself.’

Madge quickly wiped her eyes with her pinny, and looked up at her daughter eagerly. ‘Will you, Sunday? Will you really?’

Sunday nodded, and kissed her mum on the cheek. ‘Promise.’

‘Then will you go and make it up with her?’

Sunday felt her insides collapse. ‘Mum!’

There was a begging look in Madge’s eyes.

Sunday sighed deeply. There was no use pursuing the subject, for she had been through this time and time again.

A few minutes later, she was back in the parlour, heading towards her mum’s bedroom. For a moment or so, she just stood in front of the door, trying hard
to
calm herself before going in to face the onslaught, just hoping the old bag hadn’t heard too much of the conversation she’d just had with her mum. Finally, she plucked up enough courage to tap on the door.

‘Auntie,’ she called, ‘can I come in?’

The voice that boomed out from inside sounded more like that of a hefty-voiced man than an elderly woman.

‘Go away!’ she called. ‘I’m in the middle of packing. I hope you’re satisfied!’

Saturday night at the Athenaeum Dance Hall was like a magnet to young people. They flocked there from not only the Parkhurst Road area, which had the dubious distinction of sharing the neighbourhood with the castellated façade of Holloway Women’s Prison on the opposite side of Camden Road, but from places as far apart as Highgate, Muswell Hill, Finsbury Park, Highbury, and the Angel Islington. Its only real rival was the Arcade at the Nag’s Head, but that was usually more busy on a Friday pay night, and was mainly a meeting place for the local Irish ‘Paddys’. The dance floor at the Athenaeum itself wasn’t a particularly large area, more the size of a small church hall, so that when a lot of dancers were crammed together it became more of a shuffle than a waltz or a foxtrot. On most nights, the music was provided by gramophone records of some of the favourite bands of the day, such as Tommy Dorsey, Kay Keyser, Harry Roy, Geraldo, and of course, Glenn Miller, but occasionally there was ‘live’ music such as piano, saxophone, and drums.

By the time Sunday and Pearl arrived, the place was ‘jumpin’. A small queue had formed at the entrance, and it was all of twenty minutes before they could get inside. Once they had powdered their noses in the cloakroom, they gradually managed to edge their way into the hall itself, where the hordes of dancers were doing their best to find enough space to quickstep to a gramophone record of Jack Hylton and his orchestra playing ‘I’ll See You In My Dreams’. As usual, there were more girls hanging around in groups on one side of the floor, for so many boys were
now
serving in the forces. But the young boys that did remain had a pretty good choice of dancing partners to choose from, and took their time before they were quite sure who they wanted to go for.

Within just a few minutes of her arrival with Pearl, two different boys asked Sunday to dance. It was easy to see why, for she looked dazzling in her new blue cotton dress which she had recently bought from Damants Ladies Shop in the Seven Sisters Road with her own ration coupons and a few more donated by her mum. The colour set off beautifully her strawberry-blonde hair, which had been pinned back behind her ears to show off her clear pale complexion and slightly rouged cheeks. Her mum, of course, had disapproved of the alterations Sunday had made to the dress, which she had cut low at the neck to reveal as much of her cleavage as she dared, and also the hemline, which was tacked up to at least an inch above her knees, to reveal her new silk stockings bought on the black market for four shillings. But, like a lot of the other girls who were dancing with each other, Sunday decided to decline the two boys’ offers, and partner Pearl in a slow waltz. However, this didn’t last very long.

‘May I have this dance, please, miss?’

Right in the middle of the crowded dance floor, Pearl turned with a start to find a young soldier boy grabbing her around the waist from behind.

‘Lennie! Where yer been? I been lookin’ all over for yer.’

‘Didn’t look ’ard enuff, did yer?’ The young soldier spun her round to face him. ‘I was over by the bar.’

‘Wot a surprise!’ Pearl had to shout to be heard above the sound of Jack Hylton’s orchestra. ‘The last place I’d ever expect ter find
you
, Lennie Jackson!’

To Sunday’s intense irritation, Pearl had her arms wrapped around Lennie’s neck while he kissed her full on the lips. The other dancers were pretty aggravated too, for they pushed and shoved the couple so that they had to move on.

‘Sorry about this, Sun!’ Pearl called, as Lennie whisked her off to join the throng of dancers trying to make some sense of the quickstep.

‘See yer later, Sun!’ called Lennie. ‘Don’t worry about ’er. I’ll make sure she don’t be’ave ’erself!’

Left stranded in the middle of the dance floor, Sunday tried to convince herself that she was happy for Pearl. But she wasn’t. She strode off the floor, practically pushing the other dancers out of the way as she went. Making her way straight to the narrow, floor-side bar, she ordered herself a glass of lemonade, the only drink she was used to. Just as well, for, with the exception of rather weak beer, there was currently a very severe shortage of alcohol.

For several minutes, Sunday stood with her back to the bar counter, surveying the dancers all crushed together and whirling around the floor in what seemed to be one huge mass of bodies. She was particularly sniffy around those girls who, unable like her to afford stockings on the black market, had chosen to cover their legs with make-up. The place was airless, for a thick pall of fag smoke had turned the atmosphere into a dense blue-grey fog. But no one seemed to mind, for even at the bar itself practically every girl and her feller was lighting up yet another cheap fag.