They had married in the little church at West Hilton, just a few friends, their families – rather more of his than hers, of course, but her sister Babs and her husband Dick Carter with their four children were there. And her mother, the redoubtable Edith, now physically frail. It was the prettiest wedding, the church filled with jugs of wild flowers, Laura in a simple blue dress made by her mother. ‘Well, I can hardly wear white now, can I?’ she said to Tom, laughing. When Tom turned and looked at her as she reached him, and she smiled at him and, rather irregularly it was felt although nobody particularly minded, reached up to kiss him, love seemed to fill the little church, as visible as the flowers and as audible as the strains of ‘Love Divine’ ringing down from the organ loft.
Later that night, as the guests danced to the Hiltons Village Band, a more than slightly inebriated Jack said to Mary that he’d had his doubts about Laura; she was a bit of a forward piece, and now he had met her mother he could see where it came from. He had to admit, however, that she had her good points and he had come to the opinion that she was going to make Tom very happy.
And indeed she had; and moreover, equally importantly, he made her so. Incredibly, beautifully happy.
This evening, Tom was late, having been to London, dispatched for the day by Mr Pemberton to visit the reference section at the Law Society, and making a detour – without Mr Pemberton’s permission or knowledge, but reflecting that what he didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him – to Transport House to purchase a couple of books, one for himself on the history of trades union law, and one that Laura had requested on the suffragettes. Books were very cheap at Transport House as they considered it immoral to charge any price above what they had paid the publisher or supplier. He had only been there once before and he had loved it, been surprised and impressed by its rather splendid appearance, walking literally, he felt, into the history of all he most cared about.
He was looking quite extraordinarily excited now, his green eyes shining; he was carrying several books and a newspaper – normally agreed by them both to be an extravagance – and a bottle of pale ale.
‘My goodness, Tom, whatever’s happened? You look as if you’ve seen a vision.’
‘I have,’ he said, coming over to her, dropping the books onto the table, and giving her a kiss. ‘No, much, much better than a vision. A real person. A man. Well, not just a man. Someone incredibly special.’
‘Who?’
‘You won’t believe it when I tell you. You really won’t.’
‘Tom, who, for heaven’s sake . . .?’ Laura put down her pen and screwed the top onto the ink bottle. This was clearly a serious matter.
‘Well. I went into the lift, just for the ride really, and you know it’s a great big open thing and you can see who’s in it when you decide to get in or not?’
‘Yes, I do.’
‘And I’d waited because the one before me was a bit crowded and this one came down and – well, oh, Laura he was there, in the lift.’
‘Who was?’
‘Bevan. Aneurin Bevan. He stood right next to me. Right next to me, there, in the lift. Can you believe that?’
‘Oh, my goodness,’ said Laura. Bevan was Tom’s hero, his god. He saw in him the embodiment of all his dreams and hopes for the new Britain, recovering so slowly from the ravages of war. He and Laura had rejoiced when the Labour Party under Clement Attlee won their victory at the polls in July 1945. They had worked tirelessly for the local branch, delivering leaflets; persuading people to put up posters in their windows; urging them to attend meetings, where they served endless cups of tea, set out and put away chairs, and helped to welcome people at the door. On polling day they helped old people to get to the polling stations, pushing wheelchairs, organising lifts. The party was offering an irresistible promise to a tired and disillusioned nation, of nationalisation of all the major industries, comprehensive national insurance and dearest to Tom’s heart, a national health service, health care free to everybody in the country – to be brought to fruition by his idol, Aneurin Bevan, appointed Minister of Health in Attlee’s cabinet.
There was little Tom didn’t know about Bevan, from his childhood in a mining village where a mother of extraordinary energies raised her large brood in the tiny cottage, turning at night when her other work was done to her own trade as dressmaker and tailoress; and a father of extraordinary grace, who as well as feeding his family by a lifetime underground, toiling in the mines, instilled in them all a love of music and literature and he and Aneurin would sing together for many hours and miles as they walked over the Welsh hills.
He was indeed one of Tom’s favourite topics of conversation. He would regale an audience – usually the long-suffering Laura – with the tales that Aneurin was a troublemaker at school, and that, extraordinarily, for so brilliant an orator, he had a very bad stutter which he only with huge difficulty learned to overcome; that he had a passion for comics which his father finally banned, and that he was considered too stupid to try for the eleven-plus – despite his prodigious reading and his talent for writing poetry – that he always spoke without notes, even his early and passionate work for the trades union, and at fourteen went down the pits with his father.
Indeed, Laura had been forced to ban discussion of Mr Bevan at mealtimes, for she said she was extremely weary of the subject. ‘If you tell me once more he was chairman of his lodge at nineteen, the youngest ever, I shall throw your supper in the dustbin.’
But this was truly special, Tom being in the lift with him, and even she could not get enough of it. ‘What does he really look like? Did you speak to him? What did he say?’
‘Laura, how could I speak to him? What would I say?’ Tom sounded shocked.
‘I would have done. I would have told him how wonderful I thought his plans for the National Health Service were and—’
‘Well, maybe, but I’m not you. But Laura, I did smile at him, and he smiled back, in a really friendly way. Imagine, Aneurin Bevan, smiling at me. He’s not very tall, and he has this very thick grey hair, and he was wearing what looked like quite an expensive suit, and very well-polished shoes. I did notice that.’
‘Well, I hope he polishes them himself and doesn’t expect his wife to,’ said Laura briskly. ‘I’m very happy for you, Tom, really. But I still have lots of work to do, and we have supper to eat, so however wonderful your day has been, and I can see it has, we can’t sit here talking about Aneurin Bevan all night. Much as I daresay you’d like to. And did you get the book I wanted, about the suffragettes? Because I’m going to start telling the girls about them in the next history lesson.’
Tom said he had and came slowly back to earth.
Chapter 11
1947