Mark Dunn - We Five

“There’s an unopened bottle of port in the Osborne flat? Forgive me, Mum, but I’m feeling rather faint…from shock. ”

“You stop it! ’Tisn’t funny. And after you said you’ve changed. You haven’t changed one bit. You’re going to make the three of us miserable. Here I was finally allowing myself to start looking forward to things — to the marriage, to the move to Burnham, to things turning round for all of us, but this doesn’t matter to you in the least, does it? Because you’ve set your mind to spoiling everything, and spoiling everything is precisely what you’ll do!”

Maggie dried her hands on the tea towel hanging from the wall. Then she went to her mother and took both of her hands into her own. “Don’t cry, Mummy. I’ll be good. Burnham is quite lovely with the woods so close by, and I’m very happy you and Dr. Osborne will be moving there after the war — moving there as husband and wife. And your health will improve, and Molly and I will come to visit you as often as we can — along with our new husbands and our bouncing little poppets for you to dandle upon your palsied knees.”

“You’re being silly now, but I appreciate the sentiment… if it’s sincere.”

“Quite sincere, Mumsy.”

“Mr. Forrest predicts the war will be over by Christmas. He says Hitler will see that the air raids are having no effect on our morale and he’ll just have to be content with what he has already, and there will be the end to it.”

“Mr. Forrest is dotty, of course, just like his wife.”

“There’s so little to be hopeful about these days; I’m happy to listen to anything Mr. Forrest has to say. Did he not predict there’d be no invasion, and has there been an invasion?”

Maggie shook her head. “There’s been no invasion, Mum. Only nightly bombing raids that are turning London into smoking piles of rubble and turning all our nerves to marmalade. And so many killed, and so many lives left in shambles. You and I — we’ve been lucky, though our time — if this goes on long enough — will certainly come. So many nights, Mum, I don’t sleep at all, waiting for the sirens.”

“If that’s the way it’s supposed to be, then doesn’t it make more sense to stay at home and die in the arms of your dear old mum? Tell me why you must go to Jane’s tonight. Has she engaged you all to carry her worthless brother to the East End docks and chuck him into the Thames with all the rest of the city rubbish?”

Maggie sat down next to her mother. “There’s something We Five must discuss and we can’t very well do it at the factory. As it turns out, we’re going dancing on Saturday night. At the Hammersmith Palais.”

“Goodness.”

“I’ve never been there. None of us has. We’ve never been anywhere , for that matter, that Jane has asked us to go, and we thought it would be a good turn for all of us to be nice to her for a change.”

Clara Barton shook her head with only slightly masked sadness. “That is to your credit, but mind, you’ll arrive as wallflowers and depart as wallflowers. In the time in between, you’ll cling to one another whilst casting longing glances at the dance floor. Are you sure you wouldn’t rather go to the Hales’ flat and play cards and listen to George Formby on the wireless?”

“The last time we got together to play cards, Mum, we got caught in an air raid and had to spend the rest of the evening sitting in Jane’s wee Anderson shelter behind the shop. It was made ever the more pleasant when it began to drizzle and Jane’s brother Lyle’s fine workmanship afforded us a lovely bathe. I’d much rather go to a public shelter in the company of a hundred other people my age, each one of them gay and festive and decked out in Saturday night finery, thank you.”

“Well then, don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

Maggie frowned. “I wasn’t going to tell you, Mum, but it so happens that we will most assuredly not be clinging to one another on Saturday. We intend to be dancing. There are five lads very close to us in age who are also coming, and who just happen to be coming for the sole purpose of seeing us. ”

Clara’s eyes grew big. “I’m so glad you have told me. Are they are R.A.F. pilots?”

Maggie shook her head.

“Soldiers? Sailors? Submariners?”

“No. None of the above.”

“Then they are young men who work with you at the factory?”

“They don’t work at the factory. They deliver coal. When they aren’t on fire watch for the A.F.S.”

“What’s wrong with these boys that they aren’t serving their country in uniform?”

“They’re conscientious objectors.”

“Good God.”

“I won’t permit it!”

Molly wheeled upon her father. “What is that?”

Michael Osborne had been sitting at his worktable, polishing his dental instruments, but now he was on his feet and glaring at his daughter. “I said I will not permit my daughter to socialise with a bloody conchie, let alone five of them.”

“May I remind you that the days of your permitting or not permitting me to do anything are over? You agreed to my full emancipation quite some time ago.”

“This is different. To preserve your good reputation, I’ll not have you associating with men who won’t fight.”

“All five of these lads are serving their country in their own way. Don’t make me argue this with you. It’s a waste of breath. I probably won’t find a single one of them worth my time anyway, so this whole discussion is pointless.”

“Just promise me this: if you happen to meet a different chap there tonight — one who just happens to be wearing a uniform and who just happens to show some interest in you, you’ll give him more than passing notice. I should like someday to have a son-in-law who is willing to do his duty by his country.”

Molly smiled. “Be careful what you wish for, Daddy dearest. Tommies can’t always be trusted to do their country proud. They come to the canteens and dance halls really quite ravenous. And I’m not just talking about food. And what if I were to fall in love with one of them? And he were to ask me to marry him? What if it turned out that he was an Aussie or a Kiwi? How would you fancy traveling halfway round the world to visit your only child? Or to see your grandchildren? Wouldn’t you rather I fall for a London coalman who’ll—”

Michael Osborne did not give his daughter leave to finish. “Enough!” he roared. At the same time he flung the tempered steel excavator, which he’d been gripping tightly in his hand, down onto the table. It struck the porcelain top with a loud clack. “It’s all tommyrot, if you ask me — this whole business of fathers being forced to give over their daughters to bleeding blokes with only one thing on their minds. Would that you were more like your friend Ruth, who chooses to have nothing to do with the opposite sex.”

“It isn’t fair to compare me to Ruth.”

Osborne sat back down. He massaged his temples as if in doing so he might succeed in getting the veins protruding there to draw themselves back. He took a couple of deep breaths. “I’m curious. How did you get Ruth to agree to come along on this little escapade?”

Molly smiled. It was a sincere smile, though it had the ulterior purpose of calming and quieting her father after his outburst.

“It was really quite easy. The Hammersmith Palais tries to keep its guests well fed. And we all know how much Ruth loves to eat.”

“Take the rest of my Spam,” said Lucille Mobry. “I can’t eat another bite.”

“Only if you’re truly full,” said Ruth, whose fork was already making its way over to Lucille’s plate to spear the last few bites of the battered meat.