By the time Sis and Barbara arrived at the Town Hall on that historic Thursday morning – Sis determined, Barbara in serious attendance – the count was well under way. Three long lines of trestle tables had been set up in the body of the hall to accommodate the sorters and tellers, who were working steadily in their usual purposeful way, and the Mayor was ready on the platform, bulky in his robes of office and looking cheerfully important. As the safe Tory seat, their constituency had been given pole position just below the stage, with the safe Labour seat at the back of the hall and the marginal votes being counted in the middle. There was less excitement in the place than Barbara expected and what little there was was subdued and controlled, more like the throb of a machine than the mob roar of a revolution. Barbara watched as the piles of counted voting slips grew taller and more and more people ambled in through the double doors. If thass really going to be a revolution like Sis say, she thought, thass a far cry from the French one.
Most of the other candidates had arrived by this time too and were standing about trying to appear nonchalant, with their followers and supporters all around them. Barbara was intrigued to see that Sis was the only woman candidate and that the Tories were obvious from their classy suits and the boom and bay of their upper-class voices. She’d never seen Tories en masse before and the sight and sound of them was a revelation.
‘They’re so full of theirselves,’ she said to Sis. ‘You’d think the whole world belong to them, the way they go on.’
‘It does,’ Sis grinned at her. ‘For the moment.’
‘Steve should be here to see this,’ Barbara said. Oh how much she missed him. ‘He’d love it. You here as a candidate and everybody waiting to see what’s gonna happen, an’ the count goin’ on.’
But Sis was smiling into the crowd. ‘Here’s Mr Craxton,’ she said, and plunged towards her old colleague, holding out both hands in greeting. ‘Nice to see you, Mr C. How’re you keeping?’
‘Never mind me,’ Mr Craxton said, ‘How are you! That’s more to the point. I hear you been in the wars.’
‘Fit as a flea,’ Sis told him, coughing to prove it. ‘So what’s the news?’
‘Nothing yet,’ Mr Craxton said. ‘We got fidgety waiting, so I thought we’d come and watch the count. Pauline’s here somewhere. Have you seen her?’
She was just behind him, looking dashing and rather hot in a blue tweed suit and more nervous than Barbara had ever seen her.
‘It can’t be long now before we get a few results,’ she said to Sis. ‘I’d say we’ve given them a good run for their money, wouldn’t you? We’ve left Brian to man the wireless. Strict instructions to come down and tell us if anything exciting happens. I don’t know about you, Cecily, but this waiting is wearing me out.’
‘Not long now,’ Sis reassured her.
‘If only we knew which way it was going to go,’ Pauline complained. ‘The papers are so discouraging. They don’t think we’ve got a chance.’
‘The Mirror does,’ Mr Craxton pointed out.
‘Ah yes, the Mirror. Granted. But they’ve been on our side all along. You can’t count the Mirror. Oh dear! If we could just hear one or two marginals we might have more idea. I do wish they’d hurry up.’
‘There’s a marginal in this hall,’ Sis said. ‘Take a look at that.’ But there was no way of knowing what was happening on the central table. The piles of voting papers were changing by the second. ‘Be a turn-up for the books if there was two Labour seats in this borough.’
‘We shall just have to hold on to our hats,’ Mr Craxton told them in his dry way, ‘and have a bit of patience.’
But it was very difficult. Especially when Christine arrived, breathless and dishevelled, to bring her own anxieties into the group. Her snub nose was beaded with sweat, her bun half out of its pins and trailing loose strands of hair. ‘Has anyone heard anything? Oh they are taking a long time. We must have a new government this time, mustn’t we.’
There was movement on the platform. The Mayor was tapping his microphone – ‘Testing, testing. One, two, three.’ Had they got their first result? Yes. At last. The candidates were gathering round him, rosettes to the fore. There was a throb of impatience, a shifting of feet, a buzz of excited voices.
It was the safe Labour seat, won as they expected but with a majority that brought a gasp from everyone in the hall. It had risen from six thousand to nearly eighteen.
‘Now that is a victory,’ Pauline said clapping rapturously.
And Sis said, ‘What did I tell you?’
Mr Craxton was cautious. ‘One swallow doesn’t make a summer,’ he warned, as the new Labour MP stepped up to the microphone to make his acceptance speech.
It was a very long one, thanking the returning officer, the mayor, the tellers, the police, his supporters. ‘An’ Uncle Tom Cobley an’ all!’ Sis mocked happily.’ But at the end of it he was handed a paper and after a pause he told his audience that one or two other London results had come in and proceeded to read them. There was a Labour gain in Dulwich, both the Lewisham seats had been won by Labour and at Peckham, which was one of their closest marginal seats, the Labour majority had risen from ‘one hundred last time’ to seven thousand. ‘I think you’ll agree,’ he said, ‘there’s nothing marginal about that.’ The applause was deafening.
‘What price swallows now?’ Sis said to Mr Craxton. The excitement was making her cough but she was massively happy.
The young man called Brian was pushing through the crowd towards them. ‘They’ve been coming in fast for the last twenty minutes,’ he reported. ‘I brought you the latest. Look!’
They crowded round him to read the results.
‘I’ve marked the Norfolk ones for you, Barbara,’ Brian said. ‘They’re really good. We’ve taken King’s Lynn, Norfolk North and Norfolk South. That’s where you’re from, isn’t it?’
‘If Lynn’s voted Labour we shall win,’ Barbara told them, green eyes wide with surprise.
‘I’m beginning to think that too,’ Pauline said. ‘I mean, it could be possible, the way things are going. I mean …’
‘Hold on!’ Brian said. ‘They’re going to announce the marginal.’
Another group of rosettes around the microphone, more papers fluttering from hand to hand, another set of candidates wearing decorous expressions, the hall bristling with anticipation. Has this one swung too? Oh come on! Come on!
It was another Labour victory and a good one.
Even Mr Craxton was excited. ‘If this goes on,’ he said, ‘I think we shall see a Labour government.’
Results were coming in fast. Every new arrival brought news of another victory. Deptford’s Labour majority had doubled to fourteen thousand. Labour had one hundred and seventy-two seats, one hundred and eighty, two hundred and counting. The marginals were falling like flies.
But the vote in Bellington South was still being counted.
‘You don’t have to wait,’ Sis said to her supporters. They were all so thrilled by what had happened up to that moment that she was afraid her result would be a disappointment to them.
‘Of course we do,’ Pauline said. ‘I want to see how big your share of the vote turns out to be. I said we’d give them a run for their money, didn’t I? Well then. We’re all going to stay.’
So they stayed as more and more results came in and the excitement in the hall grew until they felt as though they were in the middle of an electric storm.
Eventually a teller came over to ask if Mrs Cecily Tamworth would join him at the tables.
‘This is it,’ Sis said, grinning at her friends.
So they wished her luck and watched as she and the Tory stood beside the teller, listening to what he had to say. Telling them the result, Barbara thought, and in a minute they’ll go up onto the platform and we shall hear it too. But they didn’t. Instead, the conversation went on and the Tory was beginning to get agitated. And Sis looked flabbergasted, her plump face so pale that Barbara was quite worried about her. What is he saying? Are they arguing? Surely not. Has something gone wrong? The suspense was holding her ribcage in a vice.
They were still talking when Heather and Mabel came puffing through the crowd with Joyce and Hazel trailing after them.
‘How is she?’ Heather asked, plunging straight into the concern that had kept her anxious all through her journey. ‘I heard her coughing as we came in. I said to Mabel – didn’t I Mabel? – that’s Sis an’ I don’t like the sound of her at all. She shouldn’t be here.’
The cough was approaching at that moment, hoarse and rasping, but Sis was beaming despite it, the colour back in her cheeks. ‘He’s asked for a re-count,’ she said, her voice high with disbelief. ‘Apparently Bellington South is a marginal now. What’cher think a’ that?’
They were stunned. ‘Good God!’ Pauline said.
‘D’you mean you might win?’ Joyce asked her, eyes wide.
‘You never know,’ Sis told her. ‘Keep your fingers crossed.’
Oh these brown eyes, Barbara thought, caught by their intensity. They’re so like Steve’s. And she looked round at them, Sis and Mabel and the two girls all looking at one another with his eyes, reminding her. Then she gave herself a shake and tried to be sensible. It was silly to be thinking of him, especially now, in the middle of all this. But she couldn’t help it. You don’t stop loving someone because they don’t come home. And oh, she did love him. So much. He ought to be here, if Sis is going to win. If she’s going to win.
‘How long will that be before you know?’ she asked.
‘Too long!’ Sis told her.
And she was right. It seemed an age before the second count was completed. The two girls fidgeted, Sis coughed, Heather grumbled, Christine lost all the pins from her hair, Mr Craxton told stories of previous elections, which his wife corrected, Pauline prowled and bit her lips. But at last the two candidates were called over again and this time there was no discussion, just a few words and they were on their way to the platform, the Tory bland-faced with his wife in attendance, Sis, pale and coughing, signalling to Barbara that she should come and join her.
It felt exposed up there on the platform, with the Mayor fussing and the microphone waiting for the final speech. The hall was so crowded that Barbara couldn’t see to the other side of it and the heat of such a great mass of people rose towards her as though she were breathing fire. She looked down at the rows of expectant faces, hundreds of them, pale as flowers, bobbing and turning. The tension was so extreme it was like waiting for thunder to break.
The Mayor waited for calm and took a long time to get it. ‘The total number of votes cast in the Bellington South constituency is as follows …’ It had been a very close vote indeed but the result, by a mere one hundred and thirteen votes, was, as he hereby declared, that ‘the said Mrs Cecily Elizabeth Tamworth has been duly elected to serve as Member of Parliament for the said constituency.’
The thunder broke in a cheer that made Barbara’s ears ring. Joyce and Hazel were jumping up and down, Heather clapping, Mabel blowing kisses. It was an impossible, unbelievable victory. And Sis stepped forward, smoothing down her old cotton jacket, clearing her throat, ready to make her acceptance speech.
She began it stylishly, thanking the returning officer and his team, the people who’d worked for her and the people who’d shown their desire for a Labour government by voting for her, but then she paused, seemed to be catching her breath, coughed once, tried to continue and was caught up in such a paroxysm that she had to retire to the back of the stage, spluttering and choking, to be given a glass of water.
Her audience waited anxiously, murmuring and watching. ‘Bar!’ she said, handkerchief to her mouth, struggling to speak. ‘You’ll – ’ave – to do it – for me. I can’t …’
Nor can I, Barbara thought, I hain’t never spoke in public in my life. She felt such panic she wanted to run away. But she couldn’t do that. Not now, with all this going on. The Mayor was nodding and saying it would be all right, and Sis’s eyes were pleading, and the audience were shuffling their feet.
‘All right,’ she said to Sis. ‘Thass all right. I’ll do it for you.’ And she walked up to the microphone. Her heart was beating so heavily it was like a lead weight in her chest and her throat was so taut she was afraid she would start coughing too. She put her hand on the microphone, as much to steady herself as to signal that she was about to speak, moistened her lips and began.
‘My aunt, Mrs Tamworth, has asked me to finish her speech for her,’ she said, rather quaveringly. ‘She hain’t been too well these last weeks. She’s recoverin’, as you see,’ – Sis was waving and smiling – ‘but not quick enough for a long speech. What she want to say to you is this – or somethin’ like this.’ Then she paused because she wasn’t sure what she ought to say next. Her mind was too full of memories, of Betty laughing in that sheepskin coat, of Norman striding through the North End in his blue gansey, of Steve saying goodbye to her on the platform at New Cross. So many memories and all to do with war. All to do with war. And then her thoughts came together and made sense to her and she knew what she had to say.
‘We come a long way in this war,’ she began, aware of her own voice echoing back to her through the loudspeakers, but stronger now and more assured. ‘We learned a lot, how to cope with death and injury, how to look after one another, how to share. We put up with rations an’ shortages, an’ bombs an’ buzzbombs an’ rockets, an’ we never give in. We dug our casualties out the rubble. We looked after our wounded. We buried our dead. We never give in.’
She knew that her audience was listening to her with such rapt attention that there wasn’t a sound in the hall. Even the echo had changed. ‘Thass made us different people to the ones we were before,’ she said. ‘Different people with different ideas. We don’t want to go back to the old way, the way things were. We want our children to grow up in a fairer world, where people hain’t afraid to be unemployed or take sick or grow old, where we all work together to protect one another. Thass what this election has been about. A fairer world. Thass what this new government you’ve just elected will start to create. My aunt would like to thank you for choosin’ her to be a part of it.’
At which Sis waved again and their supporters cheered and waved back. And Barbara knew she’d made her first political speech and that it had been a good one.
Oh, she thought, standing on the platform, looking down at all the happy faces below her, if only Steve could have been here. He’d have loved all this, seeing his aunt elected and the Labour Party winning. And she looked across the packed heads to the back of the room and suddenly there he was, tall and auburn haired, with his tunic unbuttoned and his cap on his shoulder, standing there, looking straight ahead of him as if he didn’t see her. She was caught between shock and disbelief and overwhelming happiness. I’m seein’ things, she thought. Thass all the excitement. My eyes are playing tricks on me.
And then he took a cigarette packet from his tunic pocket and lit up. And the movement of his hands was so familiar that she jumped from the platform, calling his name, ‘Steve! Steve!’ and ran, plunging through the crowd, all memory and all instinct, with nothing in her mind but the need to reach him. Steve! My dear, dear, darling Steve! She was in his arms before he had time to look up, covering his face with kisses, her cheeks flushed and her green eyes bright as the sea in sunshine. Oh Steve!
The impact of her body was so powerful that it took away his power of speech. It was as if she’d knocked him over, as if he was falling through space, as if he were waking from a long, long sleep, stunned and unsteady. He put his arms round her, leaning back so that he could see her face. ‘Hello,’ he said, huskily.
And at that she burst into tears. And he found his old easy tenderness again, and put his arms round her, and kissed her forehead, and smoothed her tousled hair and brushed away her tears – such hot, passionate tears – with trembling fingers.
‘I thought I’d never see you again,’ she wept.
‘I know. I know.’ How could he have waited so long? How could he have been so foolish?
The rest of the family were crowding in on them, reaching up to kiss him and pat him, questioning and clamouring. ‘Where’ve you sprung from?’ ‘Were you here for the count?’ ‘We’re winning! We’re gonna have a Labour government. Ain’t it wonderful, our Steve?’ And he stood with one arm round Barbara’s waist and her head on his shoulder and agreed that yes, it was. But what was really wonderful was that he was home and loved and aware that there was good in the world after all. After being stuck in indecision for so long it felt like a miracle.
Presently he saw that his mother was in the crowd too, but standing apart from the others, her face wrinkled with anxiety. With Barbara still held closely to his side, he walked across to kiss her. But he didn’t pick her up in his old loving way, as she was quick and pained to notice, and once the kiss was given he stood back and looked at her in a most disconcerting way.
She took refuge in scolding. ‘Why didn’t you say you were coming?’
‘Snap decision,’ he told her. ‘I didn’t know myself till last night.’ And he went on looking at her.
His scrutiny made her feel anxious. He looked so much older, so much the soldier, tough and shrewd with all that lovely boyish innocence of his quite gone. And his look was a question that had to be answered. ‘Did you get my letter?’ she faltered.
Now I shall hear the truth of it, he thought. But did he want to hear the truth of it? ‘Which one?’ he asked her, stern-faced. ‘I haven’t had any letters from you or Dad since we crossed the Rhine. No. Tell a lie. One. You wrote me one.’ And he made a joke of it to help her, because she was looking so distressed. ‘I was beginning to think you’d left the country. Which letter are you talking about?’
She was confused and more anxious than ever. If only she’d written to him and explained. Bob was right. She should have written. ‘The letter I wrote when … I mean, my last letter … The one … No, I suppose not. I suppose some of your letters must’ve gone astray, what with one thing and another.’
‘You’d be surprised how well they got the mail through,’ he told her. ‘They knew how important it was to us.’ And he repeated his question. ‘Which letter are you talking about?’
She certainly couldn’t answer such a direct challenge. Not here, in front of Barbara and all the others. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said, ducking her head and looking away from him. ‘It’s not important. It was only a letter. I mean, there was nothing in it.’
He looked straight into her eyes, daring her. ‘Then it wasn’t worth writing, was it?’
I’ve lost him, Heather thought. He’s not my boy any more. He’s a grown man and I’ve hurt him and now he’s angry with me and I’ve only got myself to blame. ‘No. It wasn’t,’ she admitted and came as near to an apology as she could in such a public place. ‘Trouble is, you say silly things sometimes.’
‘And then regret them?’ he asked, his voice insistent but more gentle.
The gentleness made her want to weep. ‘Yes,’ she told him, miserably. ‘And then regret them.’
He smiled at her, but it was an odd, sad smile. Forgiveness? Understanding? She couldn’t tell.
‘Then we don’t need to worry about it, do we?’ he said. He was aware that Barbara had grown tense during their exchange and he turned to look at her again, caught the query on her face and answered it with a kiss, full on the lips, public and committed. ‘I love you,’ he said.
To be kissed in such a way in such a public place made her blush. Luckily Sis moved in to rescue her. She’d been talking to Mr Craxton and Pauline and had missed most of the conversation but she’d caught the gathering atmosphere and knew she had to deal with it.
‘I reckon this calls for a celebration,’ she said, beaming round at them all. ‘What say we go down to the Goat an’ Compasses? They got a garden for the kids. Be nice out in the sun.’
General agreement, a rush of movement towards the door, Heather and Mabel leading the way, Sis turning to ask her nephew, ‘You coming?’
He stood where he was with his arm round his wife. ‘We’ll follow you,’ he called and added quietly to Barbara, ‘slowly.’
So they walked out of the hall together, their arms about each other, and strolled along the affluent, crowd-filled streets of Sis’s new constituency, stopping to kiss whenever they felt like it, which was more and more frequently. And there, away from the eyes of their relations, alone in that euphoric crowd, it was as if they’d never been apart. They were older, wiser, sadder, but love was pulling them together with every step, binding them close, closer, breathlessly together. He looked down at her face, drinking in the sight of her, relearning her, aching with the old love for her.
‘Will I do?’ she teased, smiling into his eyes.
‘Oh, I think so,’ he teased back. And then grew serious. ‘You’ve changed though.’
‘Thass been a long time,’ she said. ‘A lot’s happened.’
‘That’s what it is,’ he agreed. ‘We’ve grown older. You have to grow up fast in a war. You don’t have any option. Anyway, it suits you. You’re very, very beautiful. And that was a terrific speech you made.’
‘You’ve changed too,’ she said. Now that they were out in the sunlight she could see how much. There was no boyishness about him at all and the open innocence of his face was gone. Grown older, she thought, and wise in the ways of a very cruel world. His hair was cropped short, there were lines on his face that hadn’t been there the last time she saw him and his eyes had a weariness about them that made her yearn with pity for what he must have seen and endured. ‘Was it very bad?’
He gave her an honest answer. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I’ll tell you about it some time. But not now.’ Now it was enough to be getting back to normal, holding her close, breathing in the familiar smell of her skin, recognising that flowered blouse and the green skirt she’d worn a lifetime ago, that day in the haystack, that week in the hopfields. ‘Oh my dear, darling girl! You do still love me?’
‘Oh, yes, yes, yes,’ she said, kissing him with every word. ‘’Course I do. More than ever.’
The crowd parted to pass them and two schoolboys gave them a wolf whistle.
‘I suppose we ought to join the others,’ he said.
So they walked on, talking of victory and victories. ‘Why didn’t you get leave before?’ she asked. ‘As soon as the war was over. You could’ve done, couldn’t you?’
He gave her another honest answer. ‘I couldn’t face it I suppose.’
They were so easy with one another now that she could ask, ‘Why not?’
‘All sorts of reasons,’ he said. ‘I was afraid of disappointment, scared of the changes I’d find. I think I needed the army routine. I was trying to work things out.’ He shrugged, growing impatient with his inability to tell her how it had been. ‘Oh I don’t know. I don’t understand it myself.’
He wasn’t making much sense to her but she was full of tenderness towards him. Whatever it was that was troubling him it needed careful handling. She stood on tiptoe to kiss him again, holding his face between her hands. She knew instinctively that this had something to do with his mother, that it was the reason why he’d treated her so sternly back in the hall, but she knew she couldn’t ask him about it yet.
He was still struggling to explain why he’d hesitated for so long, as much to himself as to her. ‘They offered me leave,’ he told her. ‘You mustn’t think they kept me there. They offered but I just sort of said no, put it off. And then it was hard to say yes.’
‘But you said yes in the end.’
‘Fortunately.’
She could be curious about that. ‘Why?’
‘It was your snapshot,’ he told her. ‘I’ve been keeping a sort of diary, since Belsen, and I took it out and your snapshot was caught between the leaves. And when I turned it over … You’d written on the back of it, do you remember?’
‘No,’ she had to admit. ‘I don’t. Thass a long time ago.’
‘You said, “Just in case you’ve forgot what I look like!”’
She smiled at that. ‘And thass what made you come home?’
‘It made me think of home,’ he said, ‘think of you. I suppose thinking made me want to be here with you. It seemed the right thing.’
‘Does it still?’ It was a serious question and he answered it equally seriously.
‘Oh yes. I might not be sure of many things these days, but I’m sure of that.’
They were nearly at the pub. ‘How much leave have you got?’ she asked.
‘Ten days,’ he said, suddenly realising how happy he felt. ‘And more to come. I tell you what, how would you like to go back to the bungalow? I’ll bet I could arrange it.’
She smiled into his eyes. ‘If there’s one thing this war’s taught me,’ she said, ‘thass you can’t go back. Only forward.’
He stopped to kiss her again. One last kiss before they went in and joined the celebration. They were both changed but he was home, they were together, love was possible. ‘Then that’s where we’ll go,’ he said.