All Fall Down by Jenny Oldfield Page A

spring took hold and eveningslengthened, the light sky opening up possibilities. They took to catching the tube, walking the length of Tottenham Court Road, on to Charing Cross and into Trafalgar Square, sometimes forgetting, if only for a moment, the tawdry task that faced them. Nelson’s lions sat huge and powerful at the base of the towering column. Red buses circled beneath a comforting array of adverts for Bovril, Capstan and Hovis.
    One Sunday morning in late April, footsore after a slog around the Sally Army hostels and along the Strand, they sat for a while in the pale sunshine beside the fountains in the square.
    â€˜I bet them pigeons don’t know there’s a war on,’ Sadie sighed, easing her feet out of her shoes. Gone were the days when she would have flung caution to the winds and dipped them, hot and aching, into the refreshing fountain. Once she would have, before she met Richie and fell pregnant with Meggie.
    The roar of a passing wagon full of soldiers peering out from under the khaki canopy made the flock of birds rise in a clatter of wings. They swept skywards and circled, settling on the column and on the nearby gallery.
    â€˜Don’t you wonder what it’s all for?’ Meggie felt her life was stalled; the false alarms, the drab, endless queues, the blackout were all stealing her youth.
    Sadie misunderstood. ‘You mean, you’re tired of looking?’ For her part, she would give up the search the moment Meggie gave the signal.
    â€˜No, I mean the fighting. Aren’t you sick of it?’
    â€˜No, I ain’t.’ Sadie went tight-lipped. ‘And you shouldn’t talk that way neither. You could get yourself locked up if you’re not careful.’
    Meggie laughed. In spite of everything she managed to look radiant in the morning sun. Her wavy dark brown hair glowed. It fell down her back in bright disarray now that she’d taken off her beret and teased it free in the breeze. ‘No, but when you think of it, if the war goes-on much longer, it’ll be Bobby and Jimmy in the thick of it. What then?’
    Sadie trailed a hand in the clear water. ‘Don’t.’ She shuddered.She didn’t want to think. Part of the reason she’d agreed to tramp the streets looking for Richie was to keep her mind off such things. If she was practical, helping Meggie or handling the cold steel of the shells on the assembly line, she could numb her mind, cut out the pictures of little Bertie and Geoff stranded in a strange county. Only at night, in her dreams, she would see their faces staring out at her from between sides of bloody beef. She heard the butcher’s cleaver and woke up wet with irrational tears and sweat.
    â€˜Ready?’ Meggie seemed to tune into her thoughts. She stood up and held out her hand. ‘Don’t take no notice of me. They say things are going our way. The Jerries haven’t managed to drop their bombs on us yet, have they?’ Sliding her mother’s arm through her own, they walked on.
    Little by little, Meggie was convinced they were getting somewhere after all the weeks of searching. It was like the needle in the haystack, but they’d picked up the trail at Hettie’s old mission in Bear Lane, where Richie Palmer had actually been seen some years earlier. By then he’d hit rock bottom and Meggie had had to face the fact that her father had gone wrong on women and booze, scrounging off the first to pay for the second. The Salvation Army had him down as homeless and awkward, never grateful for shelter and often abusing the charity on offer. By the end of the twenties he’d dropped out of sight again and, as the Depression swelled the ranks of those who fell on the Army for support, there was no further mention of a Richie Palmer on their books.
    â€˜What would happen to him then?’ Meggie had asked in trepidation. She knew of tramps who starved or froze to death, who sank too low ever to