After the War is Over Read Online Free Page B

returning, including your own daughter.’
    ‘I hadn’t forgotten.’
    ‘And what about the monarchy?’
    Paddy wanted to laugh. ‘What about the monarchy, Kath? Do you want them taken into the countryside and shot, like the Russians did with their royal family?’
    ‘Well, no, but they could just live in an ordinary house like this one.’
    This time, Paddy really did laugh. ‘There isn’t enough room here for the Queen to keep her furs.’
    They were standing in the kitchen and he took Kath’s arm. ‘If we don’t go in the parlour soon and join the gang in there, girl, our Sheila’ll come looking for us and we’ll be in trouble.’
    He pushed her out of the room, through the living room and into the parlour, already packed with friends and relatives dancing a polka. He took his sister-in-law in his arms and they began to dance. ‘Don’t you ever think of anything except politics, Kath?’ he asked.
    ‘What else is there?’ she said simply, spreading her hands.
    ‘There’s clothes and jewellery,’ Paddy suggested, ‘films and books, there’s listening to the wireless, going for walks.’
    ‘I go for walks sometimes on the shore,’ Kath said, ignoring most of the suggestions, ‘but then all I do is think about politics.’
    Paddy thought it was about time she found a feller, got married, had a few kids and thought about something else for a change, though it was more than his life was worth to suggest it.
    When it got to eight o’clock, Maggie slipped on her coat, went round to Amber Street and knocked on the Desmonds’ front door. Nell’s sister Ena opened it. She was smaller than Nell and nothing at all like her.
    ‘Hello, Maggie. Come in, girl, out the cold. The chaps have gone to the pub, our mam’s asleep in the living room, and us girls are in the parlour with the kids, who are nearly asleep. We’re all a bit merry if the truth be known, apart from our Nellie, who only drinks lemonade.’
    ‘You’re in the club again!’ Maggie remarked. Ena was about six months pregnant with her third baby, yet had only been married two years. The first must have been well on its way when she promised to love, honour and obey Billy Rafferty on their wedding day.
    ‘Yeah, I’m really looking forward to it.’
    The parlour looked as if a battle had just taken place, with bodies sprawled everywhere, large and small. Maggie nearly fell over a baby lying on a pillow half tucked beneath the sideboard.
    She was met by a chorus of ‘Hello, Maggie’ from Nell’s other sisters, Gladys and Theresa. From across the room, Nell met her eyes and smiled, and Maggie felt a sense of relief. Clearly Christmas Day hadn’t been so bad with her sisters there. Perhaps her loathsome spiv father had spent the day with Rita Hayworth.
    ‘Are you coming to our party?’ Maggie asked. ‘They were doing the polka when I left.’
    Nell nodded and picked her way over the bodies. ‘Will someone please put our mam to bed.’
    Gladys, who looked totally sozzled, said thickly, ‘It’s about time she started putting herself to bloody bed. There’s nothing wrong with her, you know, Maggie. She’s just pretending to be ill to get people’s attention, try and make our dad feel guilty, like, but nothing could make him feel guilty, not even if the bobbies raided our cellar and found all the stuff stored there.’
    ‘Shurrup, girl,’ Ena snapped. ‘Walls have ears, or so it says on that poster.’
    Gladys made a show of looking around the room until her neck creaked. ‘Well I can’t see any bloody ears on these walls.’
    ‘How are you getting on?’ Maggie asked as they walked round to Coral Street.
    ‘All right,’ Nell assured her. ‘I only wish me sisters could come round every day.’
    There were quite a few parties going on with sounds of merriment coming from many houses. They sang mainly war songs: ‘Run Rabbit Run’, ‘It’s a Long Way to Tipperary’, ‘We’re Going to Hang out the Washing on the Siegfried