Across the Mersey (6 page)

Alan’s hand was on her thigh now, and edging towards the hem of her skirt. Bella trapped it where it was, preventing him from moving it, but he pulled away and then touched her again, this time catching her off guard as he pressed his hand into the V
between the top of her legs. Shock and revulsion jolted through her. His hand felt heavy and hot and unpleasantly damp, even through her clothes, and she shuddered to imagine what it would feel like if he was actually touching her flesh.

Thinking about being engaged to Alan and showing off her ring produced the most deliciously exciting tingling feeling right through her body but enduring his physical touch made her freeze.

‘Come on,’ she could hear him demanding thickly. ‘Come on, Bella … Let me.’

‘Don’t be silly. You know that I can’t until we’re properly engaged.’

To Bella’s relief he released her immediately. Even better, he shifted back to his own half of the car instead of leaning all over her.

‘Engaged?’

‘Yes. You know, Alan, I do think that we really ought to go public soon. My parents keep dropping hints and I know that my father is expecting a visit from you. After all, you’ve said how much you love me, and you know that I love you. Of course we must get engaged.’

Determinedly Bella stressed the word ‘must’, straightening her clothes at the same time to underline her meaning.

Alan’s face was still flushed, and there was an unfamiliar and very stubborn look in his eyes. Bella gave a small gasp as, without a word, Alan started to reverse the car back out on to the main road. Things weren’t going the way she had expected and planned at all. Bella quickly dismissed her
unease. What was there to feel uneasy about, after all? Alan must want to marry her. How could he not do when, as her mother was always telling her, she was so very pretty.

Even so, Alan was behaving very selfishly and she had a good mind to tell him so, but she was also aware of how often her own mother allowed her father to get away with the same kind of selfish behaviour, and then made him pay for it later. There could be no question, of course, about Alan not proposing to her and that was all that really mattered. There would be plenty of time for him to learn the error of his ways once she had his ring on her finger, Bella decided determinedly.

‘Here you are, you two,’ Grace smiled, handing the twins a bag of broken biscuits she had bought on her way home. ‘It’s them iced gems you like and some other iced fancies.’

‘Now don’t you go eating those before you’ve had your teas,’ Jean warned them.

Grace pulled a face and said, ‘Sorry, Mum, I should have waited and given them to them later.’

‘It’s all right, love,’ Jean assured her eldest daughter, as the twins opened the back door and hurried out into the garden. ‘It was a kind thought to treat them. You’re a good girl, Grace.’

At her mother’s praise Grace’s eyes stung with tears. She went over to her and hugged her tightly.

‘Everyone’s talking about what might happen if it does come to war, Mum. One of the women from Foundation Garments was crying her eyes out in the cloakroom today,’ cos she was having to get her kiddies ready to be evacuated.’

Jean looked through the kitchen window at
the twins sitting on the double swing Sam had built for them when they were younger. Lou’s arm was round Sasha’s waist, and their heads were together as they examined the contents of the biscuit bag.

‘Me and your dad have talked about what we should do for the best for the twins, and your dad reckons that we’ll be safe enough up here, seeing as we’re a fair distance from the docks and that. It’s like I told him, I couldn’t let them go off on their own, not for anything I couldn’t, even though they reckon that they as will be taking the kiddies in will look after them like they was their own. And I’m not minded to leave your dad and you and Luke neither.’

‘Bella said that Auntie Vi said that Jack was to be evacuated.’

‘Well, that’s their business, I suppose,’

Grace could tell from her mother’s expression that she didn’t approve but she also knew that her mother would not want to criticise her sister openly.

Jean glanced back through the window. The twins were engrossed in whatever it was they were saying to one another. Had she and Vi ever been that close? She supposed they must have been. She hoped when her two grew up they didn’t grow apart like she and Vi had done.

She looked round her small kitchen. Vi would turn her nose up at it, but Jean loved her neat small house and all the memories it held. Everything in her home had a special place in her
heart, and an equally precious memory attached to it.

One of the first things Sam had done when they had first moved in was put a lovely new gas geyser on the wall next to the sink so that she could have hot water whenever she needed it. There’d already been one in the bathroom over the bath, although now they’d got a nice new electric immersion heater in its own cupboard, put in for them by one of Sam’s pals in the Salvage Corps.

Only last year they’d repainted the kitchen in a pretty bright yellow, and Sam had put down new linoleum, a piece he’d got cheap when they were doing a salvage job at a warehouse – a lovely pattern it had on it too, and there’d been enough left over to do the bathroom as well.

She’d managed to get the end of a roll of fabric to make new curtains: yellow with a big red strawberry pattern on it.

She’d been desperate for a proper dining-room table and some chairs once the twins were out of their high chairs, and she’d been thrilled to bits when Sam had taken her to a second-hand shop to show her the oak table he’d seen there, especially when the shop owner had shown her the two leaves that pulled out to double its size. A set of chairs being sold off as salvage had joined the table in the back room, and then a sideboard. She and Sam had reupholstered the chairs themselves.

Vi’s house might be full of expensive things, but
hers was full of love, Jean told herself stoutly, and she’d sooner have that any day of the week.

‘Set the table for me, will you, Grace? Your dad and our Luke will be in soon. I’ve got a nice bit of ham, the last bit on the bone so Mr Gregory let me have it a bit cheaper. There’s enough for tomorrow’s sandwiches.’

‘I’ll just run upstairs and get changed, Mum, and then I’ll come and give you a hand,’ Grace told her.

She’d been debating whether or not to say anything to her mother about what Sister Harris had said to her. She desperately wanted her parents to know how Sister Harris had complimented her but at the same time she didn’t want them thinking she was upset because she couldn’t go nursing.

Back downstairs, she started to set the table for their evening meal. The radio was on and when Gracie Fields starting singing, Jean sighed. She had been washing a lettuce but now she stopped, turning off the cold tap and turning to Grace.

‘I wonder how your Auntie Francine is getting on in America.’

‘Didn’t she say anything in the card she sent for your birthday?’ Grace asked.

‘Only that she’s working hard and that there’s a lot of sunshine. But then she’s never been one to say very much, unless it’s to make a bit of a joke of things. Oh, that’s your dad and Luke back, and they’ll be wanting their teas. Go and call the twins in for us, will you, love?’

‘Teatime, you two. And you’d better make sure you eat it otherwise you’ll get me into trouble,’ Grace warned her siblings, ‘and then I won’t bring you any more biscuits.’

‘Aww, Grace.’ Sasha pulled a face whilst Lou giggled and demanded, ‘Look at this, Grace,’ and then licked one of the iced gems and stuck it on her face. ‘If I go to school like this do you think Miss Richards will send me home sick?’

‘More like she’ll keep you behind and have you writing out lines,’ Grace warned her, grimacing when Louise removed the biscuit and sucked the icing off before eating the biscuit base.

‘Come on, and don’t forget to wash your hands.’

‘What’s this about you telling folk we’re on the breadline?’

Jean frowned at the grim note in Sam’s voice. It was rare for him to get angry with his children, especially Grace, who had always been such an eager-to-please girl, but Jean could see that he was angry now.

Grace put down her knife and fork, her stomach tensing. ‘I never said that, Dad.’

Ignoring her, Sam continued, ‘Captain Allen came to see me today. He said as how Sister Harris had told him she’d recommended that you should train as a nurse but that you’d said that your dad was too poor to pay for your training.’

Jean looked anxiously from her husband’s face to her daughter’s.

Grace flushed and bit her lip, tears welling in
her eyes. ‘I’m sorry, Dad; I didn’t mean to do anything wrong, but—’

‘Well, you can go back and tell her that I’ve said you’d no business talking to her about our private family business.’

‘I’m sure Grace didn’t mean any harm, Sam,’ Jean tried to intercede.

‘Mebbe not, but she’s caused plenty.’

Pushing back her chair, Grace stood up, demanding shakily, ‘Well, what was I supposed to say? You’ve always told us we’ve got to tell the truth and with Sister Harris saying that she was going to put me forward for training …’

Unable to finish her sentence, Grace turned and ran out of the room and up the stairs in tears.

Everyone round the table had gone silent.

Sam pushed away his plate. ‘I’m going to the allotment.’

‘All right, you two, no leaving this table until you’ve finished your teas,’ Jean told the twins, smiling gratefully at Luke as he continued to eat.

She had to wait until Luke had gone out to his ARP meeting and the twins were back outside in the garden before she could go up to Grace.

‘I’m sorry, Mum,’ Grace apologised tearfully, ‘but I was that taken by surprise when Sister Harris said about me training as a nurse.’

‘I understand, love, and so I’m sure does your dad really, but men have their pride, you know, especially your dad.’

‘I was going to tell you about it before tea … I wish that I had now,’ Grace admitted.

‘Well, then, in future you’ll know better, won’t you? Now dry your eyes and come downstairs and do the washing up for me, will you? I’ve got to go out.’

Grace tried not to look surprised. Her mother never went out in the evening unless it was to pop round to see a neighbour.

Jean stood watching Sam for a few seconds. He had his back to her, bending over his spade as he turned over the soil, his movements sure and steady.

On the raspberry canes at the far end of the neat allotment the fruit was beginning to ripen. In front of the raspberries, cloches covered a neat line of cucumbers. In the small greenhouse were the tomatoes that were Sam’s pride and joy, and alongside the greenhouse the immaculately tended beds filled with lettuce, radish and the like.

Nearly half the allotment was given over to Sam’s potatoes, and the green tufts of the carrots marked the place where the summer crop finished and the autumn veggies began.

Sam had taken on a second allotment with three other men on which they were planning to keep chickens under the small orchard of fruit trees they had planted there.

The evening air was full of the scent of the nightstock that had seeded itself in the small bed next to his rose-covered tool shed where Sam germinated the flowers that Jean loved.

Jean opened the gate to the allotments and walked down the neat path that divided Sam’s. He must have heard her coming because he stopped work and turned round, shading his eyes from the evening sun.

‘I’ve brought you a ham sandwich,’ she told him. ‘You can’t go working like that without something to give you a bit of energy.’

She sat down on the wooden bench he had built years ago when he had first got the allotment and she had been carrying Grace. She’d come down here many a sunny afternoon and evening then, bringing Luke in his pushchair so that she could sit and talk to Sam as he worked.

His brusque, ‘How’s Grace?’ eased relief into Jean’s anxiety. She knew him so well and she could guess how he was feeling right now. Sam loved his children and she knew that Grace’s tears would have upset him, no matter how angry he was feeling.

‘She’s upset, just like you are. She got caught on the hop when Sister Harris said she wanted to put her up for proper nursing training. You know how she’s always wanted to be a nurse.’ She bent down to pull out a piece of chickweed that must have escape Sam’s normally keen eye for weeds, before admitting, ‘I blame meself really, Sam. I’m the one that’s always told her that money doesn’t grow on trees, and with the four of them to feed you can’t be expected to pay for expensive treats. She’s been a good girl, you know that, always bringing home little treats,
as well as giving me a fair bit of her wages. Mind you, like I’ve told her, it was wrong of her going saying what she did without talking it over with us first.’

‘Wrong? Aye, it were that all right. I do me best, Jean. It’s bad enough having ruddy Edwin and that sister of yours looking down their noses at us, without me own daughter …’

Sam turned back to his digging.

So that was it! Jean had known that something more than Grace’s admission that she didn’t think her family could afford to pay for her training had got him all wrought-up.

It was hard for a proud decent man like her Sam, who had grafted all his life, to see men like Edwin smirking and sneering, just because they’d done better for themselves.

‘Well, as to that, I wouldn’t swap my life for our Vi’s – not for anything, I wouldn’t. I reckon you’re in the right of it, love, when you say that Edwin hasn’t come by his money as honestly as he might have done.’

Sam stopped digging and turned to look at her. ‘It gets my goat, it really does, having to listen to him boasting about what he’s done and what they’ve got,’ he admitted reluctantly. ‘It makes me feel like I’ve let you and our kids down, Jean. I saw the look on our Luke’s face when young Charlie was talking about that car of his.’ He gave a bitter laugh. ‘All our Luke’s got is a bike.’

‘Sam Campion, I’m ashamed of you,’ Jean scolded
him. ‘Luke’s never given that car of Charlie’s a second thought, I know that for a fact. It’s that Charlie’s joined the TA he minds. We’ve brought our four up to know better than that. Come and sit down here with me, love,’ she told him, patting the seat next to her and then reaching for his hand.

‘I’ll tell you straight that I couldn’t live like our Vi does – not for a minute, I couldn’t. I was only telling meself when we came back after visiting them how glad I was to get home. And I’ll tell you something else. I’m the one who’s got the better husband, and it isn’t just me that thinks so. Our Francine’s always said that. You’re a good man, Sam Campion, and I’ve never for a minute regretted saying yes when you asked me to marry you. A decent honest hard-working husband who loves his family.’

Sam squeezed her hand and then wiped his free hand across his eyes.

Jean gave him a minute to get himself back under control before continuing calmly, ‘I’ve bin thinking. I’ve got a bit put by out of the housekeeping you give me; especially with you giving me a bit more since you had that rise just after Christmas. I reckon we can afford for our Grace to do her training. She was only doing her best love, not wanting this Sister Harris to go making plans and then her having to say she couldn’t do it. She’s thoughtful like that, is Grace. She’s always wanted to be a nurse – you know that – but she’s settled herself down at Lewis’s and made the best of it. I’ve been ever so proud of the way she’s set
to to do her bit for the war effort and I know you are too. It’s a real compliment to her and to us that she’s been recommended for proper training, but bless her, she’s never so much as said or boasted about it.’

A couple of sparrows were fighting over a worm Sam’s digging had unearthed.

‘Well, you’re right about that, love,’ Sam admitted, ‘but I felt that ashamed when Captain Allen came in and said in front of everyone how it were a crying shame that she couldn’t do her training on account of me not being able to afford to pay for it.’

Jean’s heart swelled with wifely indignation.

‘If you ask me it’s that captain who should be feeling ashamed, speaking out in public like that without him knowing the full story, about how our Grace had got it wrong and had not wanted to put her dad to any extra expense, not knowing that he’d already got something put aside just in case. Of course, not all parents are like us and try to bring up their children to respect money and to understand that it doesn’t grow on trees, and I shall say as much too when I see Elsie Norris tomorrow up at the shops.’