Daughters of Liverpool (19 page)

Katie almost dropped her handle of the basket.

She looked at Luke, and he looked back at her.

‘Come on,’ he told her gruffly. ‘Let’s get you and Ma’s tea cups into the shelter.’

‘I don’t think I can,’ Katie told him. Her legs were shaking so much that she didn’t think they could support her. Luke took one look at her and then gently told her to put down the basket.

Poor kid, this was probably the first time she had seen something like this, and he hadn’t forgotten how he had felt his first time. He had thrown up his dinner and cried like a baby. After, he had felt properly ashamed of himself, but an older, much more experienced soldier than he was himself had comforted him and had told him that it affected everyone like that at first.

There was nothing he could say; no words of comfort he could offer. He knew after all that, just like him, Katie had seen the two small charred bundles laid out next to the bigger one and guessed like him that they were a mother and her two children. There were no words for things like that, but what you felt about them was there inside you, engraved on your heart for ever. Luke pulled Katie
towards him and then wrapped her tightly in his arms.

Katie wanted to close her eyes and blot out what she had seen but it seemed wrong somehow, an insult to those poor people who had been killed. She wanted to cry but she couldn’t. She wanted to say something but she couldn’t. She was, she realised distantly, shaking from head to foot, her teeth chattering together despite the warmth of Luke’s arms holding her tightly and Luke’s body against her own.

‘Well, I really don’t know why you felt it necessary to come rushing over here to Wallasey, Jean,’ Vi told her twin sister, ‘just because you’d heard that a few bombs had been dropped on us when clearly they were intended for the docks.’

They were in Vi’s immaculate but somehow cold-looking kitchen, with its cream and blue colour scheme.

Jean exchanged rueful looks with Grace, wishing now that she hadn’t wasted her daughter’s precious few hours off from the hospital by taking the ferry and then the bus to Kingsway, Wallasey Village to make sure that her sister hadn’t suffered in the severe bombing Wallasey had endured.

Jean was so very proud of her eldest daughter and the way in which she had matured since she had started her nurse’s training. Grace was so very much a young woman now, and able to hold her own as such, rather than the sometimes impulsive and slightly scatterbrained girl she had been. Of course, the fact that she was training to be a nurse had done a lot to give her a calm air of capability,
and Jean had noticed how proudly and confidently Grace held herself these days. Some of that must be due to her happiness with Seb, who always treated Grace just as he ought. It was plain to Jean just how much Seb thought of Grace and that they were very much in love. Grace felt very strongly, Jean knew, that she had a duty to finish her training and that, of course, meant that they could not get married until she had done so.

‘And Bella’s safe then, Auntie Vi, and her house as well?’ Grace pressed her aunt, taking pity on her mother, and showing that maturity Jean had seen in her.

Despite the fact that everything in her aunt’s kitchen was new and modern, including the Rayburn oven Vi and Edwin had had fitted after they had moved in, Grace acknowledged to herself how much she preferred her mother’s kitchen – equally as spick and span as Auntie Vi’s but much more homely. Even the chairs in her aunt’s kitchen felt uncomfortable to sit on and unwelcoming, Grace thought ruefully. She was glad though that she’d worn the new blue coat and hat Seb had bought her for Christmas. She’d seen the sharp way her aunt had inspected them – pursing her lips slightly as she did so.

‘Yes, Bella and her house are both safe, thank you, Grace,’ Vi answered. ‘She and I were both at our WVS meeting when the air-raid siren went off. One has one’s duty to do, after all.

‘Now that you are here, Jean, I may as well tell you that Charles is on the point of becoming engaged to be married,’ Vi continued, changing the subject.

Now it was Grace’s turn to catch her mother’s eye and to mouth behind her auntie Vi’s back, ‘Charles!’ and pull a small face.

‘It isn’t official as yet, but there will be a notice going in the papers over Easter. Edwin and I are both delighted. It won’t be a long engagement. I always think that June is the perfect month in which to have a wedding. Charles is being so brave, but as our doctor has said, with his back he shouldn’t really be in uniform. Charles doesn’t like to make anything of it, of course, but naturally him trying to drag poor Eustace onto the boat the way he did was bound to damage his back. Edwin says that the army are bound to give him an honourable discharge, when he goes before his Medical Board. Of course, Charles will be disappointed. He’s been keen to do his bit right from the start, but as Edwin says, there’s more than one way for him to serve his country and now that Edwin’s business has been scheduled by Mr Bevin as being engaged on essential work of national importance, he’s going to need Charles working in the business with him. Of course, as a soon-to-be-married man Charles needs to be able to support his wife. Daphne is such a delightful girl. That’s Daphne Wrighton-Bude, of course,’ Vi elaborated, for all the world as though they had never heard her name before, as Grace said wrathfully to her mother later when they were on their way home.

‘Charles saved her brother’s Eustace’s life at Dunkirk as you know,’ Vi continued complacently. ‘Mr Wrighton-Bude, that’s Daphne’s father, is a
member of Lloyd’s. Oh, I’m sorry, Jean, you won’t know what that is, of course.’

‘Of course we do,’ Grace piped up quickly. ‘We were talking about it only the other week, weren’t we, Mum, when Seb was telling us about that relation of his.’

Jean nodded. It always gave her a bit of a kick in the stomach when Vi was like this with her, even though she knew she should be used to it by now. After all, her twin had spent all of her married life looking down on Jean and her family, and making it clear that she thought she and Edwin and their children were above Jean and Sam and theirs. It wouldn’t suit Vi at all if she knew that, far from feeling envious of her, she wouldn’t have swapped places with her for double rations for the rest of the war, Jean knew, but it was the truth.

Sam had warned her that Vi wouldn’t thank her for her concern, or for taking the trouble to travel all the way out to Wallasey to check up on her, and as usual he had been right. However, Jean knew that she would never have been able to forgive herself if she had not done so. She was, after all, the elder of the two of them, and as the elder she had always had it impressed on her by their mother that it was her responsibility to take care of her younger sister.

‘You’re lucky to have caught me in,’ Vi added. ‘I’ve only just popped back from the church hall. Naturally in my role as second in command on our WVS committee I’m heavily involved, dealing with those poor unfortunates who were made homeless by the bombs. I shouldn’t say so, of
course, but our chairwoman simply couldn’t manage without me. Some of the women who join the WVS simply aren’t up to the work and need constant organising. One practically has to stand over them.’

Vi looked pointedly at her kitchen clock as she told them firmly, ‘You’ll want to leave yourselves plenty of time to get back, I know. You should be able to get a cup of tea at the ferry terminal. I’ve made it a rule not to offer visitors any kind of refreshments whilst the war is on. It seems so unfair to our sailors.’

‘Cooeee, Mrs Firth, are you there?’ a new voice called out from the other side of the half-open back door. ‘Only I’ve brought you some of those biscuits you said you and the other ladies from the WVS liked so much, you know, the ones that my special contact brings for me.’

Black market was what Vi’s neighbour meant, Jean knew, as Grace only just managed to subdue a splutter of laughter. Vi had heard her, though, Jean could tell that from the angry colour burning her twin’s cheeks.

Ten minutes later, as they walked to the bus stop together, Grace’s arm tucked through Jean’s, Grace squeezed her mother’s arm and told her lovingly, ‘I’m ever so glad that you are my mum, Mum, and not Auntie Vi.’

‘And I’m glad that you’re my daughter, Grace,’ Jean returned, blinking away a tear.

‘Lancaster Avenue took a direct hit and they’re saying that over eighty have been killed.’

Bella nodded as she listened to her mother. She was doing her personal ironing, and had just finished ironing a delicate silk blouse, which she hung on a padded silk coat hanger before hanging it on her ironing maiden, whilst the household laundry, which had been delivered that morning, was stacked on the kitchen table.

Vi had arrived ten minutes earlier, announcing that she wasn’t staying long because she was on her way to the local reception hall to oversee the restoration of order after the previous night’s influx of people rendered homeless by the bombing.

‘Just look at the creases in this sheet,’ she complained crossly to Vi, half unfolding the offending item to display the creases ironed into it. ‘I’ve a good mind to send it back.’

‘You’ve got your iron on – you may as well run it over the sheet. That will get rid of it,’ Vi advised her.

‘I’ve got enough to do ironing my blouses without having to start ironing sheets as well,’ Bella told her.

Bella wasn’t domestically inclined although she did rather like ironing her own pretty things, and besides, ironing them herself meant that they were done properly.

Refolding the sheet, she placed it back on top of the others, and reached for another blouse from her ironing basket, carefully dampening it and then rolling it up to spread the damp, before unrolling and starting to iron the collar.

‘I’ve had a word with your father about you going to work for him, Bella, and I’m afraid that
he says that it just won’t do, not with him being a councillor. He says that other people will think that he’s made up a job for you so that you don’t have to register for proper work, and a man in his position just can’t do that, especially not with your brother on the point of getting engaged.’

Bella looked up angrily from her ironing. ‘So Daddy can’t find a job for me, but he can find one for Charlie, is that what you’re saying, Mummy?’

Vi looked pained. ‘Really, Bella, this isn’t like you. You’ve always been such a sweet-natured girl. I don’t think that your father would be very pleased if he knew what you were saying. It’s always been understood that Charles would join him in the business; Charles was working for him before—’

‘Before he joined up?’ Bella stopped her mother furiously, realising just in time that she was in danger of singeing her blouse, and removing the iron. ‘But he did join up, didn’t he, and now he’s trying to wriggle his way out of the army by claiming that he’s got a bad back just so that he can marry Daphne and come home and have a cushy number working for Daddy.’

‘Bella, that’s a dreadful thing to say. Your brother is a hero. Everyone knows that. I don’t know what’s happened to the sweet-natured daughter you were, I really don’t.’

Bella could have pointed out that what had happened to her was that she’d married a man who had knocked her senseless and been unfaithful to her, a man who tried to kill her and had succeeded in killing their unborn child. She could,
of course, equally truthfully have pointed out that she had never actually been ‘sweet-natured’ in the first place, but of course she did not.

Instead she tossed her head and said triumphantly, ‘Actually, Mummy, I’ve already got a job, so I don’t need one from Daddy.’

‘What kind of job? I do hope it isn’t something dreadful like factory work, Bella, not with Charles about to propose to Daphne.’

‘I’m going to be the Assistant Manageress at the new crèche. Laura Wright, who’s the Manager, asked me last night.’

Bella pressed the iron down very hard on the hem of her blouse as she spoke. She was sick of having to listen to her mother going on about Daphne.

As soon as she had finished ironing her blouse she put it on a hanger, unplugged her iron, and told her mother firmly, ‘Actually, Mummy, I must dash. I’ve arranged to meet up with Laura and if I don’t go and get ready I’m going to be late. We’re going to be frightfully busy with all this bombing. You will excuse me, won’t you?’

Bella was still seething with fury over her parents’ sudden preference for her brother when she reached the small church school where the crèche was to be established.

She found Laura in the school room that was to be the new crèche, surrounded by recently delivered second-hand cots and small beds.

‘I do hope you haven’t come to tell me that you’ve changed your mind and you don’t want the
job after all,’ she told Bella anxiously from the middle of the jumble of furniture. ‘Only I’ve already spoken to the powers that be and they’ve given the go-ahead to you becoming my assistant.’

‘No, I haven’t changed my mind,’ Bella reassured her, eyeing Laura’s smart black and white tweed skirt and grey jumper, and feeling glad that she had taken the trouble to change into a smart outfit herself.

‘Thank goodness for that.’ Laura scrambled out of the confusion to stand next to Bella. ‘We’ll celebrate with a cup of tea and a biscuit in a minute. The biscuits are Garibaldis. Apparently someone knows someone who can get them. Oh, and I’ve got some forms for you to fill in. You’ll be paid two pounds ten shillings a week, which isn’t a huge amount, I know, not as much as they earn working in munitions.’

Bella didn’t need to fake the shudder she gave at the thought of working in a munitions factory.

‘Isn’t it dreadful about the bombing last night?’ said Laura. ‘The siren went off the minute I got in from the WVS meeting. One of the bombs went off in the next road to where I’m billeted, although Lancaster Road seems to have had the worst of it. I’d been told that it was unlikely that the Germans would want to bomb Wallasey. Can you take this list and check off the bedding on it for me?’

More bedding? Bella hesitated and then, remembering the conversation she’d had with her mother earlier, she told Laura, ‘I suppose they were aiming for the docks at Birkenhead,’ taking the list that
Laura was holding out to her, and then removing the dark sage-green swagger coat she was wearing over a matching skirt and a lighter sage-green jumper with pretty pearl buttons on the shoulder and the cuffs of the sleeves.

She had bought the outfit, along with several others, when Lewis’s had had its last order in from Paris. Alan had been furious at the time, she remembered, complaining when he received the bill, which she had had sent to him, but Bella hadn’t cared about his anger at the time and she cared even less now. She loved nice clothes and couldn’t bear the thought of not having any.

Just over two hours later, Bella took the cup of tea Laura handed to her and sat down on a chair. Out of the chaos that had greeted her arrival she and Laura between them had achieved a very creditable scene of order and neatness.

A feeling Bella couldn’t put a name to, other than to recognise that it was both unfamiliar and rather pleasant, had completely banished the angry resentment she’d felt earlier.

‘Well, last night’s bombing really did hit you for six, didn’t it?’ Carole said to Katie. ‘That’s the third time I’ve asked you if you fancy coming to the matinée at the pictures with me on Saturday.’

Katie gave her friend an apologetic but slightly wan smile, as they sat together in the staff canteen, having their morning tea break. It wasn’t just the horror of what she had witnessed last night that was making it so difficult for her to think about more mundane everyday things, she admitted, it
was also Luke Campion. There – it had happened again: that disconcerting way her heart had suddenly started bumping into her ribs every time Luke’s name popped into her head.