Lyle nodded. Then with a nod in Carrie’s direction, he said, “Whilst I talk to this one here.”
“Why didn’t you just say you wanted me out of the way so you could have a chin-wag with Carrie? And maybe whilst you’re wagging, you could do it in the Anderson shelter.” At that moment the All Clear sounded. Jane laughed. “Or right here in my bedroom would be lovely too.”
Jane got up from the bed.
“I’ve got two eggs. I didn’t tell you because I was saving them for a special occasion. You deserve those eggs for your decision to enlist. I’m very proud of you.” Jane delivered a kiss to her brother’s forehead before leaving the room.
Lyle sat down on the bed facing Carrie. He waited until the sound of Jane’s retreating footsteps died away. Then he said, “Do you know where he is? The bleeding bugger what did that to her?”
“You mean where he lives? No, Lyle. I don’t. What are you thinking about doing?”
“He’s a fire watcher with the A.F.S, ain’t he? At night, I mean. And then in the daytime I’ve clocked him delivering coal for Mr. Matthews.”
“What are you going to do, Lyle?”
“What do you fancy I’m going to do?”
“Be in for the high jump would be my guess. They’ll either hang you straightaway or you’ll end up spending the rest of your life in prison.”
Lyle thought about this for a moment. “What difference does it make?”
“I thought you were joining the army.”
“I am. If the police don’t nick me. And maybe they won’t, because I intend to do this smart — not leave behind any trace it was me. And I’ll be cold sober. That was Osborne’s problem. He went after that stupid little sod whilst his head was only halfway screwed on.”
“Sober or drunk, Lyle, Molly’s dad shouldn’t have done anything to Pat.”
“Says yourself. I never held with any of them buggers — not from what Jane said about ’em. And then after what that Katz did to her—”
“Miss Colthurst at the factory — her family’s been friends with the Matthewses going back years. She told me at the funeral this afternoon she was going to pay a visit to Mr. Matthews on her way back to the factory — tell him everything she knew about the three men he still had working for him. She thinks he’ll give them the sack right on the spot.”
Lyle shook his head. “That ain’t enough. There are jobs for conchies opening up everywhere. They’ll just plant themselves someplace else and go right back in business. I know all about buggers like these. You see, I used to be one myself.”
“You never were, Lyle. Don’t put yourself in their camp.”
Lyle looked away to avoid making eye contact with Carrie.
Carrie went on: “Mr. Matthews doesn’t keep things to himself, Miss Colthurst says. Word will get around about what they did. People will find out about their game. They’ll be forced to move away. And isn’t that the best thing, Lyle? That they should be gone forever?”
“I still think the bleeder should be made to pay for what he did to my sister.”
Carrie got quiet for a moment. Then she said, “You’ve changed, Lyle. You didn’t used to be this way.”
“You’re right. I didn’t used to be this way. I didn’t used to care. Well, about Jane at any rate. Seeing her like that—that way—it, it changes things. You fancy my eggs? Poached on toast. You’ll like the way Jane makes ’em.”
There was great tenderness in Carrie’s smile. “Eat your poached, Lyle. We both want you to have them.”
Earlier that day, Vivien Colthurst had stood next to the table in the factory canteen where Maggie and Ruth sat sipping from their smoking cups of tea and not speaking. “I knew I shouldn’t have brought the two of you in for the rest of the day shift. Your minds clearly aren’t on your work.”
“I’m fine, I’m fine,” Maggie answered reflexively. Then she added, “Work helps. It keeps me from thinking too much about my missing mother, who went from being amusingly barmy to certifiably mental all in one week.”
Vivien grabbed a chair and sat down in it back-forward the way men sometimes do. “First, Maggie — your mother isn’t mentally insane. She’s romantically insane, like one of those Thomas Hardy heroines — like, like Tess of the Dubers.”
Ruth rolled her eyes. “For love of heaven, Vivien! Mrs. Barton isn’t at all like a Thomas Hardy heroine. I wish for once you’d read a whole book and not just the jacket description. What was the second thing you were going to say?”
“That if Maggie can’t concentrate on her work — that goes for you too, Ruth — there’s going to be an accident. She might die. You might die. This being a munitions factory, dearies, we could all die. I wish I’d left the two of you back at the cemetery.” Ruth and Vivien rose together. “If you’d like to use my Riley to go back to the city, my three ride-alongs and I can manage with the seven-thirty bus.”
“You’re very kind, as always,” said Ruth. “Perhaps we will. You’re right. Maggie and I do have a lot on our minds right now.”
Vivien touched Ruth on the shoulder. “I know you’ll make the right decision, love. About whether to join the A.T.S. And it will be your decision.”
“Yes, I know,” said Ruth, trying to smile. Through brimming eyes she added, “We — Cain and I — we were good friends, but we were just friends.”
The colour in Maggie’s face had suddenly changed. It had nothing to do with the factory’s mercury vapour lighting, which tended to make everyone look a little like the witch in The Wizard of Oz. There was a lighter cast to it. “I think I’m going to be sick,” she announced. “I think my bloody mother has turned my entire digestive tract into a warzone.”
“I’ll fetch you a bromide, love,” said Vivien.
After Vivien Colthurst dashed off, Ruth sat down next to Maggie, who was staring with an empty gaze. “She said she hated me,” said Maggie.
“Who?”
“Molly. I remember her exact words: ‘I hate you so much right now, Maggie, I can’t even see straight.’”
“She didn’t mean it. I know she didn’t.”
“What if something happens to her in Worcester and I don’t get to tell her how sorry I am for provoking her?”
Ruth touched Maggie comfortingly. “Nothing will happen to her. She’ll come back and you two will patch this thing up in no time. Good God, Maggie, you’ve had tizzes with every one of us at one time or another. They always blow over.”
Maggie nodded and tried to smile. “I don’t enjoy being a bitch.”
“Of course you don’t, pussy. Of course you don’t.”
Mr. Matthews wasted no time in sacking all three men. He told them he had been fully informed about what they had been up to and he had no doubt that all this business had contributed to the ghastly deaths of the other two young men who’d been in his employ. “I don’t want to see the bloody lot of you ever again. I thought you was all good lads. I find out instead that you’re a bunch of sodding buggery reprobates who stick your bleeding pecker spanners in the works of everything you do. And I never held with your cack-handed way of delivering my coal neither — skimming and overcharging and keeping the difference for yourselves. Don’t look at me that way. I’ve been on to you blighters for some time. I’ve been against this war since both my boys was killed, but I’d like to say something you’ll never hear me say to another souclass="underline" Go and bloody enlist. Now get out of my sight.”
Holborne and Castle and Katz got out of Matthews’ sight. First they went to Funland, which wasn’t far from Matthews’ warehouse, where they played the noisy pin-tables and a couple of games of Radio Billiards. Hardly a word was exchanged in the hour they were there, as if each needed some private time to recover from the shock of what had just happened. Even after Holborne lost half a bob trying to scoop up a cigarette case he fancied with the electric crane, and gave up, muttering to himself that the game was rigged, not a word was said in either agreement or commiseration.