We Passengers

Chapter 6

Remembering Mum sitting in the kitchen that day makes me think of the tea trolley again and I crane my neck around the empty seat in front of me but there's nothing to see other than more seats and the grimy door to our carriage. Mum always said it was the best bit about being on a train; having a nice cup of tea while you look at something other than your own living room or the yellowing pictures on the walls of the Co-op cafe.

As a kid, I could never really get my head around the idea of other places; not just towns further away from Bethnal Green but whole countries where people talked in different languages and ate strange things. Trevor once told me that, in France, they eat snails and I told him not to be so daft even though he swears that it's true. Until a few years back, there was a man lived in the next road to us - Mr Singh his name was - who said that he'd come all the way to London from India back in the twenties. On a boat, he came he said, weeks and weeks of being packed in with who knows how many others, hoping for a better life than the one they were leaving behind.

Mr Singh moved away some time back and I don't know whether it was down the road to Tower Hamlets or all the way back to India but I sometimes wonder what he makes of London today and whether he thinks it was all worth it. Trevor says I think too much about things like that but I can't help it; I devour books about people travelling to exotic places and try to imagine myself doing the same. Moira at the library jokes that once the babies come, my desire to see the world will be replaced by the desire for just five minutes of peace with a nice cup of tea but I doubt it. I read in the news last year that actress Lana Turner spent her honeymoon in Palm Springs and I hunted out every picture in every magazine that I could, trying to imagine myself sipping champagne on yachts and playing tennis in those tiny little skirts. Trevor and me went to Brighton and stayed at a little B&B by the station as the ones on the beach were too dear.

We were married in St Matthews in Bethnal Green on a Friday. We've never been much for churches in my family except for weddings, christenings and funerals but Trevor's Mum was an every Sunday kind of woman and insisted that we wouldn't be properly married if we didn't do it in church so, off we went to St Matthews with her to meet with the vicar who welcomed us with open arms. I didn't take in much of what he said to us that day but I remember Trevor's Mum nodding so constantly and enthusiastically that the flowers on her hat were in danger of coming loose and spinning down the aisle to land at Jesus feet at any moment. It rained on the day as I always knew it would, still, Trevor's Uncle had volunteered his car and his son as chauffeur so it wasn't too bad; a few drops got us as we dashed from the car to the church but otherwise I managed to stay dry. Mum and I had spent weeks making my dress from a bit of crinoline and some bits from her own frock which had been stashed away in the attic for years and I felt like royalty as I made my way down the aisle in my ivory gown, even though it itched like buggery whenever I moved.

'You've got to suffer to be beautiful, Mum used to say when we were kids - usually when she was dragging the brush through our hair, trying to pry loose the knots that would take hold during the day. Still, uncomfortable or not, I was still sad to take the dress off at the end of the night after a buffet and too much stout at the cafe with our family and friends. The next morning, me and Trevor got the train to Brighton with Trev feeling queasy all the way after more beer than was good for him at our reception the night before. The journey seemed to take forever but, suddenly, we were there and, after dumping our bags at the B&B, we headed off for our first stroll along the promenade and high tea on the pier. Of course it rained for more or less the whole trip but we didn't let that bother us, particularly as, wherever we went, people clucked over us, happy to celebrate with the two newlyweds amidst the dark days that had befallen the country. All too soon though it was time to go and so back on the train we went, back to Bethnal Green with its rapidly diminishing male population and the little house on Wilmot Street.

'You never really know a man until you live with him,’Mum always says and I suppose that's true but, chance would have been a fine thing - after all, it was only two weeks after we got back from our honeymoon that Trevor got his papers. I'm not sure how much you can get to know somebody in two weeks but we did our best, cramming as much of each other as we possibly could into those fourteen days and hoping against hope that Trevor would leave a little part of himself with me when he went. Of course that didn't happen, despite our best efforts and Mum's knowing looks over the breakfast table every morning and, before we knew it, it was time or Trevor to turn up for his duty and for me to go through the motions every day of work, eating and sleeping while I waited for news that he was coming home. When I was working I'd hear the other girls talking about their men overseas and speculating on what they may or may not be doing, and with who. I heard a rumour that Janet Ashton's fiance had caught something dreadful from some woman of ill repute in France and wouldn't now be able to make babies. When I heard these things, I used to smile to myself; not my Trevor,  I'd think secretly, not my husband who, I was sure, was counting the days just the same as I was and, I hoped, I prayed, doing whatever he could to make sure that he stayed safe and well until he could come back to me and our lives could start properly. By the time I received the letter, I'd been a wife for three months and, it sometimes seemed, alone for a lifetime.