After the War is Over by Maureen Lee Read Free Book Online Page B

the same roof, she prayed for everyone she knew, snuggled beneath the clothes and thought about Chris Conway.
    He both disturbed and fascinated her, and she didn’t know what to make of him. What was his background? She hadn’t thought to ask any of the numerous questions she wished she could ask now. She must try to memorise them so she could ask on Wednesday.
    She fell asleep with the memory of them dancing and his arm in the small of her back; their cheeks pressed together and his breath on her ear. She had a feeling that he’d actually kissed her ear.
    Am I in love? she asked herself, but didn’t get an answer.
    ‘Maggie met this dead funny chap at the Grafton on Saturday,’ Nell told Iris on Wednesday. She’d got into the habit of calling early on Wednesday afternoon, when she and Iris would have a pot of tea and a sarnie together. She told her mother, who didn’t like being left alone, that she was going to church. To save it from being a lie, she always called in at St James’s on the way and lit a candle.
    ‘What’s his name?’ Iris asked.
    ‘Chris Conway.’
    ‘And what’s funny about him?’
    ‘Well, it’s funny peculiar, not funny ha ha. He told us he’d been an officer in the RAF, then later on, after he’d brought us home, he told Maggie that was a lie and he’d been an aircraft engineer. The reason he told her the truth was because he wants to marry her.’
    ‘Good heavens!’ Iris put the teacup in the saucer with a crash. ‘And is Maggie going to marry him?’
    ‘I think she’s a bit gobsmacked, if the truth be known. She’s seeing him tonight and he’s taking her to see Buffalo Bill at the Forum in town. I’ll let you know next week what happens. Oh, and Maggie said it was all right to tell you, so I’m not spreading gossip, like.’
    ‘That’s good. I’d love to know how she gets on.’
    There was a real Red Indian actor in Buffalo Bill called Chief Thundercloud, as well as Maureen O’Hara, who Maeve McSharry from Amethyst Street swore had lived next door to her when she was a child in Ireland.
    ‘I always knew she was going to be a famous film star,’ Maeve claimed, though not a single soul believed her.
    After the film, Chris took Maggie to the Lyons in Lime Street for a cake and a cup of tea and proceeded to tell her his life story. He was every bit as handsome as she remembered, perhaps even more so this week than last. There was something terribly romantic about his green eyes and slightly-too-long hair. He could easily have been a poet. The knot on his tie was askew, only adding to his rakish charm.
    His parents had been in show business, he told her. They were dancers and called themselves Antonia and Antonio. ‘There are loads of stage pictures of them at home. They danced in theatres all over the country, from the very top ones to the very bottom. They never had a proper home, so when my father dropped dead on the stage of the Rotunda Theatre in Liverpool, my mother found a flat and stayed here.’
    ‘Whereabouts in Liverpool is the flat?’ Maggie asked, wishing she could feel more certain that she believed him.
    ‘Everton Valley. Nowadays she makes clothes for dancers. You should see some of the dresses she turns out.’
    ‘I’d really like to see them,’ Maggie said.
    ‘Then you shall,’ he said grandly. ‘I’ll ask her to invite you to tea.’
    ‘And what do you do?’ she asked.
    He sold a lotion called Kure from door to door, he told her, in such a dramatic, impressive way that it made him seem as if he was on his way to curing the entire world of every known disease, internal and external, starting with Liverpool. ‘It only costs one and ninepence a bottle.’
    He insisted on accompanying her back to Bootle on the tram. Outside the front door of her house, he kissed her on the cheek and invited her to the Grafton on Saturday.
    ‘Only if Nell can come too,’ Maggie said. ‘Saturday, we always go dancing together.’ She couldn’t possibly desert