After the War is Over by Maureen Lee

wrong. ‘Remember that friend of mine from school called Alice?’ her mother began. Without waiting for a reply, she went on. ‘She got married to this lovely young feller in the Merchant Navy at around the same time as I married your dad. His name was Felix, but they called him Faily – Faily Walters. Poor young man, he died within a few months of the wedding, washed overboard in the Barents Sea, or somewhere like that up in the Arctic. She never married again, did Alice.’
    ‘Why are you telling me this, Mam?’ Maggie was longing for a cup of tea.
    ‘Just shut up and listen,’ her mother snapped. Her skin was yellow, her expression sour. Her stomach was swollen to the extent that she could have been expecting two or three babies. Maggie had never seen her in such a state before. She wondered if her mind had slipped just a little bit because of the pregnancy. ‘Faily was already dead,’ she continued, ‘when Alice discovered she was having a baby. She had a little girl, Lily – isn’t that the prettiest name? I think I might well have called you Lily if Alice hadn’t taken it first. Anyroad, she had a hard struggle bringing up a baby on her own. When the war started, she moved to the other side of Liverpool and I haven’t seen much of her since.’
    ‘She came to our house the Christmas before I joined the army,’ Maggie said warily, worried that the words might irritate her mother, though they wouldn’t have done normally. But in this strange mood . . . ‘I remember her well.’ She was a tall, sad-faced woman with prematurely grey hair.
    ‘She remembers you well, too.’ Sheila O’Neill gave her daughter a look that could well have been described as one of dislike. ‘She came this avvy to tell me she saw you recently in the registry office in Brome Terrace with a very nice-looking young man who sounds very much like Chris Conway. It’s where she works. She thought you must have been guests at a wedding, never believing that you yourself were getting married in such a heathen place. And even if you were, that your mam and dad and all the rest of your family wouldn’t have been there as guests. It was only later she learnt that the young man was a bigamist and you hadn’t got married after all.’
    ‘He’s not a bigamist,’ Maggie said faintly, but her mother, this odd, unpleasant mother, wasn’t interested.
    ‘Are you pregnant, girl?’ she asked in a hoarse voice.
    ‘No, Mam. I just thought I was.’ She wasn’t sure if discovering she’d been thinking of getting married for that reason would make her mam less upset or more. On reflection, it probably made no difference.
    ‘You’re a bad girl, Margaret O’Neill.’
    The tone was so bitter and unforgiving that Maggie shivered. ‘Mam,’ she said tearfully. ‘Don’t talk like that. I was wrong, but I didn’t know Chris was already married, did I?’
    ‘You should’ve thought of that before you were so free with your body.’ Tinker came and jumped on to Sheila’s knee, but leapt off straight away as if sensing he wasn’t welcome. ‘I expect in the army you made yourself available to any old Tom, Dick or Harry.’
    ‘Oh, Mam,’ Maggie cried, ‘I did no such thing. Honest. Chris was the first, the only one.’ She got to her feet. ‘Let’s make us a cup of tea,’ she said brightly. ‘It’ll do you good. You know you always say the world looks better after a cuppa.’
    Her mother said nothing, so Maggie went into the kitchen and put the kettle on. She winced when she heard the hard, brittle voice again, a voice nothing like her mother’s normally soft one.
    ‘You know what’s cut me up the most,’ the voice said. ‘I never realised before how much Alice hated me. I thought we were good friends all these years, but this avvy, when she was telling me about you, I could see she was enjoying it. Her eyes were all feverish like, as if she’d always resented me and your dad being so happy and she was really glad she was