Daughters of Liverpool (21 page)

Sam watched Bella walk past him with her nose in the air, and grimaced. He had no time at all for Jean’s sister Vi, or her family, but he’d got more important things to do than think about them.

No one had expected Wallasey to be so badly hit, and some reckoned that the Luftwaffe had missed their real target and then dropped their bombs on defenceless Wallasey out of spite or desperation or maybe both. One of the bombs had hit and broken the trunk main supplying water for fire-fighting purposes, which had meant that such water had failed completely, leaving people having to stand and watch their property burn. This was why Sam and his team had been called out to help out with the clearing-up operation, and were likely to be working on it for several more days yet.

Katie stared at the letter. She’d read it three times already, and now her heart was thumping unsteadily and she was going hot and then cold. They all knew why the mail had to be scrutinised but somehow or other the thought that they might actually come across a letter that was potentially ‘suspect’ became lost beneath the mundane normality of virtually everything they read.

The only other things she’d had to deal with had been the same commonplace things as the other girls – such as a man in uniform writing home, ‘I can’t tell you where I am, of course, but it’s really hot here and there’s a lot of sand – and camels,’ which had to be crossed through.

But this was different. She could be wrong – so very easily – and then she would look a fool, and worse, an ignorant fool if she said anything, but then if she didn’t and she was right …

‘What’s up with you?’ Carole demanded.

‘It’s this letter,’ Katie told her quietly. ‘I think there’s something in it that isn’t quite right. It isn’t one of your jokes, is it?’

‘Don’t be daft. I’d never do that to you,’ Carole assured her, before sitting bolt upright and exclaiming in a voice loud enough for the whole table to hear, ‘Guess what! Katie’s caught a spy.’

Katie couldn’t have felt more mortified. ‘No, I haven’t. I mean, I could be wrong. I only thought …’

To Katie’s relief Anne came to her rescue, getting up from her own chair and coming over to her to ask calmly, ‘What exactly is it that caught your attention, Katie?’

Anne’s calm manner soothed Katie’s nerves.

‘It’s this bit here,’ she told the head of their table, ‘where the writer talks about dancing at the Ritz to the Orpheans, and then goes on to mention two of their favourite dance numbers, and asking for them by special request.’

‘Yes?’ said Anne.

‘Well, the Orpheans play at the Savoy, not the Ritz; the music he refers to just isn’t the kind of thing the Orpheans normally play and the night he says they asked them to play their request, the Orpheans’ normal band leader wasn’t leading them, so they couldn’t have asked him for a request. I know that because my father was standing in for him and I was with him. I remember it particularly because of the date: the first of May, my mother’s birthday.’

‘So what you’re saying is that the writer of this letter and its recipient couldn’t have danced to a request as he claims they did?’

‘I don’t think so.’ Katie looked directly at Anne, admitting worriedly, ‘But maybe the writer has just made a mistake. People do sometimes.’

‘Yes, they do,’ Anne agreed with another calm smile, ‘but I think under the circumstances it’s better to be safe than sorry so I’m going to take this letter over to the supervisors’ desk. They’ll want to talk to you about it, of course, but don’t worry, I’ll be with you. We are all on the same side here, remember, Katie. If the questions you’ll be asked seem a little harsh it’s only because the supervisor will want to be sure of the facts before anyone makes any kind of decision.’

Katie gulped and nodded.

‘Fancy you uncovering a spy,’ said Carole excitedly.

‘I haven’t uncovered anyone,’ Katie reminded her friend.

They were in the cloakroom where Carole was checking her makeup. She had a date for the evening with Andy, the soldier she had met the night of the Grafton’s Christmas Dance and who she’d been seeing regularly since she’d bumped into him again several weeks earlier.

‘As good as,’ she insisted, pulling a face at herself in the mirror, then complaining, ‘Just look at my eyebrows. I’d love to have eyebrows like that Vivien Leigh.’ She opened her purse and very carefully removed a spent matchstick, which she then applied to her eyebrows, rubbing in the resultant dark stain with the tip of her finger before carefully replacing the matchstick in her purse.

‘Of course it could just be an ordinary couple and you’ve gone and got it wrong,’ Carole acknowledged, returning to their original subject,
and causing Katie’s heart to lurch uncomfortably into her ribs.

‘Don’t,’ Katie begged her. ‘I’m sure I have got it wrong and I wish that I hadn’t said anything now.’

‘Well, it’s like Anne said, it’s better safe than sorry, and I shouldn’t lose any sleep over it, if I were you. You won’t hear anything more about it now until Monday, anyway, seeing as it’s Friday now.’

Katie nodded. She wasn’t sure how she was going to survive a whole weekend of anxiety about whether or not she had done the right thing, but she knew that somehow she would have to do so.

‘I feel ever so sorry for Katie. She’s been here over three months now and she doesn’t go out much at all, at least not like a girl her age should. She’s got a friend that she works with, but by the sounds of it she’s found herself a young man now.’

Jean paused to spoon the last of the fairy cake mixture into the bun tins lined up on her table. All the women in the street had got together as they had found that if they pooled their rations and each one of them cooked something in bulk and then shared it around, somehow the rations seemed to go further. This week it was Jean’s turn to make the fairy cakes for a children’s birthday party on Saturday afternoon.

‘No, you don’t,’ she reprimanded Luke as he looked longingly at the virtually scraped clean bowl. ‘There’s enough in there yet to make a couple more.’

It had been a wonderful surprise to have both Grace and Luke practically arriving on the doorstep at the same time and unexpectedly too, Grace looking as pretty as a picture in her lightweight cream jacket she had bought the spring before the war, and a cream blouse embroidered with bright blue flowers to match the blue of her skirt. Jean was never happier than when she had her family round her.

‘I’ve just been thinking,’ she told them both, deftly putting the first of the trays of fairy cakes into the oven, ‘seeing as you and Seb are going to the Grafton tomorrow night, and our Luke’s on leave, you could go as well, Luke, and take Katie with you. It’s such a shame that she doesn’t get out a bit more.’

Behind their mother’s back Luke and Grace exchanged mutually understanding looks.

And as though she had seen them Jean added immediately, ‘Not that I’m trying to matchmake or anything, before either of you start, but I do feel that I owe her a bit of something, seeing as how she risked her life to save me tea cups.’

Once again the siblings exchanged looks but this time they were looks that said they knew when they’d been outmanoeuvred.

‘Well, I don’t mind asking her if she wants to come along with us – that is, if Luke doesn’t mind – but she may not want to,’ Grace warned her mother.

‘Of course she will,’ Jean insisted briskly.

‘According to the twins she’s ever such a good dancer as well, so you’ll be put on your mettle, our Luke.’

Luke didn’t attempt to hide his surprise. ‘I thought she wasn’t supposed to be musical,’ he reminded his mother.

‘That’s singing and playing something,’ Jean corrected him patiently. ‘She
can
dance.’

A little to his own surprise Luke discovered that he wasn’t as anti the thought of making up a foursome for the Grafton with Katie as he’d expected. But then, of course, it was something he was doing to please his mother and not himself, he reasoned firmly.

‘Your dad’s working out at Wallasey, helping to clear up after the bombs, so I don’t know what time he’ll be in.’

‘Well, I don’t expect he’ll go and call round on Auntie Vi whilst he’s there. Did you warn him not to expect to be offered one of her Garibaldis, Mum?’

‘Huh, your dad would have something to say if he was,’ Jean retorted. ‘You know how he feels about black market stuff.’

Grace asked Luke with a grin, ‘Has Mum told you about Charlie – oh, sorry, I mean
Charles
– yet?’

Luke shook his head.

‘Vi reckons that Charlie is about to get engaged to the sister of that lad whose life he saved,’ Jean told her son.

‘It will be an Easter engagement. Auntie Vi thinks that Easter is the perfect time to get engaged and June the perfect time to get married,’ Grace informed her brother.

Turning to her mother, Grace said, straight-faced,
‘I reckon it’s going to be difficult for Auntie Vi, Mum, having a daughter-in-law who’s had to give up a double-barrelled surname to become a plain ordinary single.’

‘Maybe she’ll just add Charlie’s name onto the others, to make hers triple-barrelled?’ Luke suggested, laughing.

‘Now that’s enough of that, you two,’ Jean scolded them. ‘I know your auntie Vi can be a bit of a snob, but she can’t help it. She’s always been like that. Here’s Katie, coming up to the back door. Why don’t you ask her now about the Grafton?’

Katie had been worrying about the letter all the way back to Ash Grove, and wondering if she had done the right thing, so much so that she was inside the kitchen before she even realised that Luke and Grace were there.

‘Sit down, Katie love,’ Jean instructed her. ‘I’m just putting the kettle on.’

‘I hope we don’t have any more bombers coming over tonight,’ Grace sighed. ‘We’ve got so many new patients in that we’ve got beds set up in the corridors as it is. They’ve had to bring in some of the injured from Wallasey, there’s been so many injured. Mum’s been telling me about you saving her tea cups, Katie.’ Grace smiled at Katie, who had reluctantly seated herself on the chair Luke had pulled out from the table for her.

‘I still can’t believe that anyone would be daft enough to risk their lives for some tea cups,’ Luke mock growled, shaking his head, but in such a way that Katie knew that he was not really criticising her.

‘You’re a man, Luke, you wouldn’t understand, would he, Katie?’ Grace teased her brother.

That warm feeling Katie had felt before was back, but this time it was a bit different, softer and gentler, springing from being here in this kitchen and with this family, Katie recognised, rather than just from being with Luke. It enabled her to relax a little and say truthfully, ‘Luke’s right. I shouldn’t have gone back, but I’m glad I did, and I’m even more glad that he came back with me because he saved the china and he saved me as well.’

‘Did he? Then you owe him a favour,’ Grace said immediately. ‘The three of us are going to the Grafton tomorrow night, and it would be much more fun if you’d make up a foursome with us, Katie. That way Seb and I won’t feel guilty about leaving Luke alone at the table whilst we’re dancing. Oh, and don’t worry, he can dance; me and the twins have made sure of that. You will come, won’t you?’

What was it about women that enabled them to perform that special female sleight of hand that somehow made it impossible for a person to refuse an invitation, Luke wondered wryly. Whatever it was, his mother had obviously passed it on to his sister, and in spades.

Katie was caught totally off guard by Grace’s suggestion. It was, of course, impossible for her to refuse without being rude, and so she had no alternative but to nod her head and say selfconsciously, ‘Yes, yes, of course.’

‘Good, that’s decided then. We can all meet up outside the Graffie.’

Luke shook his head. ‘I’ll come up here and collect you, Katie,’ he said firmly, causing Katie to struggle to control the self-conscious colour she could feel warming her face.

‘I don’t know why you want to keep that ruddy kid. He can’t do anything. Like I’ve said before, he can’t even speak.’

‘You leave him alone, and don’t go raising your voice to him either; you’re frightening the life out of him,’ Emily told Con sharply.

Con scowled. The recent bombing had meant a drop in people coming to the theatre and only this morning he’d had the lead female singer’s understudy flounce off in a huff after having exchanged words with the lead singer.

‘You promised me that I’d be on stage,’ she had screamed at Con when she had accosted him in his office. ‘You know you did, you rotten liar, so don’t you go saying that you didn’t.’

The lead singer, who had been walking past at the time, had put her head round the door to say tauntingly, ‘He tells them all that, love, when he wants to get into their drawers, don’t you, Con? More fool you if you were daft enough to believe it.’

Con had only just managed to dodge the heavy ashtray the understudy, a blonde with a redhead’s temper, had hurled at him.

With box office receipts down, and Emily still refusing to open her purse strings, Con was beginning to get desperate. He’d convinced himself that she’d grow tired of having that idiot boy around
long before now, but if anything Emily seemed to have grown even more fiercely protective of the child she still insisted on claiming was related to her through some dead cousin or other.

In desperation Con had sent Kieran off to Blackpool to scout around and see, first, what the deal was with these dance contests, and secondly, if he could set up some kind of joint deal with one of the Blackpool theatres that would benefit them both, whilst of course benefiting Con himself more.

Emily wasn’t going to have Con, or anyone else for that matter, calling little Tommy an idiot because he wasn’t. He understood everything that was said to him perfectly. Emily
was
worried about him, though.

Lewis’s was just about to close for the day and the twins were tidying up the shelves of the haberdashery department, carefully refolding bolts of cloth, and then covering them before wiping down the tidied shelves.

‘But how are we going to get Mum to agree to us going in for a dance competition?’ Sasha asked Lou. ‘And don’t say that we won’t tell her because we’ll have to.’

‘I know that, silly. Of course we’ll have to tell her.’ Lou straightened up from dusting her shelf and looked across at her twin. ‘If we could perhaps persuade Grace to mention it to Mum, you know, saying that she’d heard there was a dance competition on and wouldn’t it be a good idea if we were to enter it?’

Sasha looked doubtful. ‘Do you think Grace would do that? She’s gone really stuffy since she started training as a nurse and got engaged to Seb.’

‘Mm … I know. Why don’t we get Katie to do it instead of Grace?’

‘Do you think she would?’