Daughters of Liverpool (26 page)

Last night their ‘boy’ had served them dinner in their stateroom, and Marcus had fed her soft balls of spiced rice and lamb with his fingers, and they had drunk the worst champagne in the
world whilst bubbles of giddy delight had fizzed through Fran’s body.

They had made love not once but several times, and Marcus’s skill and tenderness had opened Fran’s eyes to the reality of what true sexual desire and intimacy could be. She had never been happier, and at the same time never more sharply aware of how rare and fragile true happiness actually was.

Con looked up apprehensively as the door to his ‘office’ banged open, only relaxing enough to say grimly, ‘Shut that ruddy door, will you?’ when he saw that his visitor was only his nephew, Kieran.

‘Strewth, finding you is like getting hold of the invisible man,’ Kieran complained as he dropped down into a chair, putting his feet on Con’s desk and reaching into his pockets for his cigarettes. ‘What’s going on?’

‘I’ll tell you what’s going on,’ Con answered dramatically. ‘What’s going is that I’ve had the ruddy heavies from the debt collector round, that’s what.’

‘Well, pay him off then. Your old woman’s swimming in money – everyone knows that.’

Con glowered at his nephew. Kieran was wearing what looked like a new suit, grey with a white stripe – not exactly a spiv’s suit, but pretty close to it, like the black trilby that he had perched on the back on his head instead of having removed it respectfully.

Getting a sight too big for his boots, his nephew was, Con decided, acting as though he was cock
of the walk all of a sudden. Con had seen the girls eyeing up Kieran and that hadn’t pleased him one little bit.

It was all right for Kieran. He hadn’t got all the worries hanging round his neck that Con had – nor the debts.

‘Aye, well, everyone might know it but what I know at the moment is that she’s being as tight as the proverbial duck’s arse with it,’ Con told Kieran angrily. ‘It’s ever since she took in that stupid kid. Treats him like a little prince, she does, wi’ nothing too good for him, whilst me, her husband, she treats like muck on her shoe.’

Kieran grinned and shook his head. ‘I allus thought that you’d got her under your thumb?’

‘So I had until this so-and-so kid came along. Wimmin. If you’ll take my advice you’ll do yourself a favour and keep well away from them. They’re nothing but trouble.’

‘Aye, well, you’d certainly know about trouble and wimmin,’ Kieran agreed. ‘It’s bin all over the theatre about you and that nifty little high-kicker that’s just given you the heave-ho.’

Con glowered at his nephew. He had enough to worry about without being reminded of the additional blow to his ego caused by the fact that his latest girl had gone and found herself someone else.

‘Never mind about that. I’ve managed to get the old man to call off his heavies by promising that we’ll cut him in to this dance contest thing, so instead of wasting your time hanging around here I want you out and about using them good
looks of yours to get the right kind of girls clamouring to enter the competition. We’ve got them twins lined up, of course. They’ve bin round here a few times doing that dance of theirs. It’s good too – not that I’m telling them that – and I reckon what’s more that it would be a good thing if they was to win.’

‘They won’t like it in Blackpool if you go ahead with a competition. Like I told you, they gave me a right old mouthful and as good as said that there’d be trouble if we tried butting into their market. Seemingly they don’t bother charging any dancers to enter; they just use the competitions to get them into the dance halls.’

‘Well, in that case they haven’t got a leg to stand on, have they, and the pitch is all ours. Hey, get that?’ Con joked, his good humour returning. ‘Haven’t got a leg to stand on and we’re talking about dancing? Proper lame duck partners they’d have been.’ He laughed even more heartily.

‘Get yourself over to Lewis’s, Kieran, and get sweet-talking them girls. Tell ’em that we’ll be running the first heats the first Saturday in May – no point in doing it over Easter since we’ll be busy here then. We won’t hold them here neither. We’ll ask around and find a bit of an empty warehouse we can borrow for next to nowt, we’ll charge them two and sixpence on the door to get in, and another bob to dance. Anyone wot brings in a party of ten or more gets themselves in free. We’ll use a gramophone, not a band – cheaper. I’ll sort out getting some bills done; you can get your kid to take them round all the schools. We’ll make
them look glamorous; put a photograph of that Vivien Leigh or someone on it. I reckon we can easily count on having two thousand there.’

‘Two thousand?’ Kieran queried.

‘Why not? The Grafton holds that many. It’s full every night and they don’t offer any prizes. Oh, and pass the word to as many of your mates as you like that there’s going to be any number of girls there and that they can come and watch them for two and sixpence – tell ’em that they’ll have to bring their own drink, mind. Here, give us a fag, will you, Kieran?’

Once his nephew had obliged Con slumped down into his own chair and reached for a grubby bit of paper and the stub of a pencil, laboriously working out the profit he could expect to make if he filled an empty warehouse with two thousand eager dance competitors, and a couple of thousand young men, just as eager to watch them.

The figures spoke for themselves.

‘Get yourself off to Lewis’s, and remember, Kieran, they’ll be a big attraction, them being spitting images of one another. The more the pair of them fall out over which of them is going to win, the more folk we’re going to get coming to watch them.’

‘That’s all very well but what if they don’t make it through the first heat?’

‘I thought you reckoned to be a bit of a knowing ’un?’ Con stopped his nephew scornfully. ‘Of course they’ll ruddy well make it through the first heat, and every ruddy heat after that an’ all, until they get to the last one. I’ll see to that. What you’ve
got to see to is that by the time the pair of them get there they’re ready to scratch one another’s eyes out.’

Sasha saw Kieran first, her whole face lighting up with excitement and delight. From the moment they had first seen him the twins had talked together about him, giggling self-consciously as they took an increasing interest in the kissing scenes on screen at the cinema, egging one another on as they whispered about what it would have been like if Kieran had been playing the leading male role. What was not said was that both of them were imagining themselves in the leading lady’s role and thus in Kieran’s arms.

Add to the mix of emerging sexual awareness the excitement and allure of the promised dance contest and the chance to appear on stage in a real production, and it was no wonder that for the twins Kieran and the dance contest had become the perfect antidote for the boredom they were beginning to feel both with the war and the restrictions it placed on them.

At fifteen they might be legally old enough to have left school and gone out to work, but in the eyes of their protective parents they were still too young to indulge in such grown-up pastimes as going out to public dances and socialising with young men.

In vain they both protested that girls they had been at school with were now going out to dances and wearing lipstick and court shoes whilst the twins were only allowed to do boring childish
things and then only in a gang, and when their parents knew exactly where they were and who they were with. Jean, normally soft-hearted with her children, was if anything even firmer than Sam when it came to reminding the twins that they were only fifteen.

When Grace had tried to plead the twins’ case, suggesting that perhaps they could be allowed the odd grown-up dance, chaperoned by herself or their brother, Jean had sighed and shaken her head, pointing out to her eldest daughter that the twins attracted trouble like jam attracted wasps and that as yet they had not learned the wisdom of trying not to attract it.

Kieran was not his uncle’s nephew for nothing, and within minutes of his arrival the twins were ignoring the department manager’s grimly warning looks to bask in his attention, their giggles accompanied by delighted squirms of pleasure as he complimented them and promised them that he would soon have some good news for them with regard to the dancing competition.

‘When’s it going to be?’ Lou asked him, mindful of the necessity of making sure that they could compete without arousing any suspicion at home. After much discussion on the subject she and Sasha had reluctantly agreed that there was too much risk of being refused attached to asking permission, and that therefore they would have to keep their intentions a secret.

‘First Saturday in May,’ Kieran answered her promptly. ‘And I’ve got a bit of a job for you as
well. My uncle wants posters putting up to make sure that we get plenty of folk going in for it.’

Kieran looked over his shoulder. Normally it would have been beneath his nearly eighteen-year-old dignity to be seen hanging about with what in effect was a pair of schoolgirls, but in this instance he had no option if he didn’t want to get himself in his uncle’s bad books.

‘I’d better scarper,’ he told the twins, ‘otherwise I’ll be getting the pair of you into trouble and we don’t want that, do we?’ He gave them a wink and a look that made them burst out into fresh giggles. Everyone knew that it was very saucy for a boy to talk to a girl about getting her into trouble.

‘And mind you wear something stylish for the competition,’ he told them. ‘Something that shows off them pins a bit. I’ll help you choose your outfits, if you like.’

Another wink and he was gone, leaving the twins to look at one another and then down at their long slim legs.

‘I don’t know how we’re supposed to put a decent meal on the table, what with meat rationing and everything, I really don’t.’

Jean shook her head sympathetically as she listened to the complaints of the woman in front of her in the queue at the butcher’s where Jean was registered for her own family’s rations.

‘Of course, it’s all right if you can afford to buy stuff on the black market,’ the other woman continued.

‘My husband doesn’t approve of buying black market,’ Jean told her firmly. ‘He says there’d be more to go round for all of us if there wasn’t one.’

The weather had started to warm up and, like everyone else, Jean had exchanged her heavy winter coat and her jumpers and woollen skirts for something a bit lighter. She looked down at her own button-through red dress with its white spots, with a small smile. It was one of Sam’s favourites, even though it was all of five years old. She was lucky,
Jean admitted, in that she had kept her figure. She might not need a jacket today, but Jean was still properly dressed with a smart little red hat and white gloves. Just because there was a war on and rationing, that was no excuse for the women of the country to let their standards slip, was the message that the Government were giving.

And they had a point, Jean admitted, even if she had had to spend an hour last night darning the thumbs of the twins’ second-best going-to-church white gloves. It fair lifted the spirits to see people dressed in bright summery clothes again.

‘Well, I dare say he’s right, but that won’t stop some folk – them wot’s got the money and wot don’t care about the rest of us.’

Jean would much rather have had someone cheerful to chat with whilst they waited in the long queue, but then, she acknowledged fair-mindedly, she herself was luckier than some. Sam worked hard on his allotment to provide them with salad stuff, veggies and fruit, then there were the hens the allotment holders had clubbed together to buy, and the occasional rabbit that appeared now and again, no questions asked. They’d been lucky where they were, with only a few bombs falling, and none in their street, or on their allotment.

There was nothing like a good roast on a Sunday, though, to get the week off to a sound start, and the meat they were getting now was nothing whatsoever like a good roast.

Normally they’d have been having a nice chicken tomorrow, seeing as it was Easter Sunday, but with both Luke and Grace now living away from home,
and neither they nor Katie going to be eating their dinner at home tomorrow, Jean had decided that she wasn’t going to waste a chicken just on herself and Sam and the twins.

Thinking about Katie and Luke being together and starting courting made Jean feel especially happy, and not just because it proved that her son was finally over the heartache he had suffered with Lillian.

Grace might tease her about having a soft spot for Katie, and Sam might caution her against matchmaking, but that didn’t stop Jean getting a real warm glow inside at the thought that Katie could become her daughter-in-law. Jean couldn’t think of a girl she’d be happier to see her Luke married to. But she was also ready to admit that when a man married it was his own happiness he should put first, not that of his mother. Not that it did any harm when a family liked the new person that was joining it. Jean could still remember how much her own mother had liked Sam. Vi, of course, always liked to say that their mother had been as proud as punch when Vi had announced that she was marrying Edwin and thus marrying ‘up’, but Jean knew that their mother had never really taken to Vi’s husband. Not that she would ever say so to her twin, although there had been times when she had been tempted, when Vi had been getting uppity. It was hard now to remember sometimes that they were actually twins, especially when Jean looked at her own pair and saw how close Lou and Sasha were.

They’d been a bit quieter than usual just lately.
Jean hoped that it was a sign that they were finally beginning to grow up and get a bit of sense. She and Sam had certainly made it plain enough to them that they wouldn’t entertain any daft ideas about them going on the stage. Dancing at home for their own entertainment was one thing; doing it on some stage was another. Jean didn’t have to remind herself of what had happened to her younger sister to recognise the dangers that lay in wait for naïve young girls with dreams of fame in their hearts.

Not that the twins could ever be described as ‘dreamers’. No, they were far too active and noisy for that. The lads who married that pair were going to have to have the patience of saints and not mind their closeness either. Children; you didn’t realise until they came along how much they would turn your life upside down and how powerful their tug on your heart would be. There still wasn’t a day went by when she didn’t think of that little lost lad of hers and Sam’s, nor little Jack either, even though he hadn’t been her own.

That had been a terrible thing to happen: for him to have been evacuated against Fran’s wishes by their Vi, and then to have been killed. No wonder Fran had turned her back on her home.

‘Oh, Luke, it’s so pretty.’

There in front of them was the lake in the pretty Cheshire village of Ellesmere that Luke had told her about, and on the grass in front of it couples and families were already enjoying the Easter holiday.

‘Mere means a bit of a lake, like, you see,’ Luke explained earnestly. ‘That’s what they call them in Cheshire.’

Katie had been upset and disappointed at first when her father had told her not to even think of travelling back to London whilst there was still so much danger of it being bombed, even though she knew that her parents wanted to protect her, but then Luke had suggested that since he had leave, they should spend the weekend together, and he had managed to borrow from somewhere a pair of bicycles for them and book them rooms – one each – at a couple of pubs that had been recommended to him so that they could have a ‘bit of a cycling holiday’, as he had put it, and he could show her something of Cheshire.

Although she hadn’t known Luke long, Katie knew that she could trust him. As the eldest son of the family he took his responsibilities to his siblings very seriously, and he would look after her and protect her just as determinedly as he did them, Katie knew – including if necessary protecting her from his own male desires.

Almost comically it had been Jean and not her own parents who had raised an objection to them sleeping under the same roof unchaperoned by a watchful parental eye, and she had made it plain that her concern was for Katie’s reputation, not her own son’s.

Whilst Luke had looked embarrassed, Katie had told Jean gently but firmly, ‘I know that I can trust Luke to be a gentleman, and I do trust him.’

‘When we used to come here as kids we’d come
on the train and the first thing we’d do when we got off was ask for an ice cream,’ Luke was saying now.

‘Mm, don’t torment me,’ Katie laughed. The war meant that there was no ice cream today, but there were blue skies and sunshine, and the grass was warm beneath their backs as they lay down, wrapped in the old-as-time special privacy that all lovers feel, sharing that silent communication that needs no words and speaks heart to heart. The whole of the grassy bank that led down to the water might be busy with other people, the spring afternoon filled with the sound of other voices, but they were oblivious to them.

Luke reached for Katie’s hand, winding his fingers through hers.

‘I was a fool for getting it all wrong about you when I first saw you,’ he told her.

‘Well, you did hear me saying that I wasn’t interested in men in uniform,’ Katie reassured him. ‘You weren’t to know that I was just saying it because I didn’t want Carole egging me on to flirt, and then getting annoyed with me when I wouldn’t.’

‘You were in the right of it, really. It’s plain daft for a girl to go falling in love with a chap who’s in uniform when there’s a war on.’

Fear clutched at Katie’s heart.

‘I reckon that sooner or later our lot will be seeing some action.’

‘But you are seeing action. You’re on home duties, and look at all the bombs we’ve had,’ Katie protested.

Her fingers had tightened on Luke’s now, and he returned the pressure, trying to soothe her.

‘Defending the country isn’t like going into action. Stands to reason that them that are fighting will have to be stood down and brought home at some point, and that we’ll be sent out in their place.’

Katie sat up and looked down at him anxiously. Had he already heard something but wasn’t allowed to tell her? War brought so many secrets that had to be kept, as she knew all too well. Her own role in fighting the enemy was causing her plenty of sleepless nights. Following her first letter, a response had been received, and now she had been asked to write back to that. She knew that what she was doing was for the benefit of the country but somehow it didn’t feel right, keeping the fact that she was writing to another man – for they knew now that it was a man – from Luke, even though there was a good reason for what she was doing. The whole business of having to fit the messages she was being given into the code that had been broken, and then turn them into letters that read as though they were from a woman engaged in the beginning of a love affair, made Katie feel very uncomfortable, and would have done even without Luke in her life, she suspected. There was no one, though, with whom she could discuss her feelings – not Luke, as she was forbidden to talk about the letters to anyone not directly involved, and not her supervisor either, at least not without seeming unpatriotic.

Only the previous week Grace had commented
on the secret nature of Seb’s work, saying that she knew it was difficult for him not being able to talk to her about what he was doing.

‘He feels guilty about it, I know, but like I’ve said to him, it’s his duty and he’s saving people’s lives with what he’s doing just as much as we are at the hospital with what we are doing.’

Seb, though, was intercepting messages, not writing letters to another girl. Or maybe it was just that it was easier for a woman to accept a man’s duty to his country than it was for a man to accept a woman’s, Katie reflected, because something told her that Luke would not be as understanding. He had already shown signs of jealousy, and didn’t like it at all when they were at the Grafton and another chap looked at her or, even worse, asked her to dance, not realising that she was with someone. Of course, it was flattering that he cared enough to feel possessive about her, but Katie had grown up aware of the damage her parents’ jealousy of one another, and the quarrels and discord that had led to, had done to their marriage, and she didn’t want that in her own marriage.

Marriage. Who had said anything about that? Certainly not Luke.

Katie pulled up a blade of grass and leaned over, tickling Luke’s face with it until he reached for her, pulling her down towards him.

Katie’s laughter died as she looked into his eyes and saw the passion there. Her heart began an unsteady excited flutter of small thuds. This was the time when she should pull away and suggest
that they get back on their bikes. If she stayed here now then she would be inviting all those things, and all that temptation that Jean had been so anxious for them to avoid.

So why, instead of pulling back, was she leaning closer until her curls brushed Luke’s cheek and his hand reached up to hold the nape of her neck so that he could bring her down within reach of his kiss?

It was the sensation of a child’s ball bumping against her legs that brought Katie back to reality. The big grin the child’s parents – only a young couple themselves – gave them both as the father retrieved the ball made Katie blush and Luke look very male and protective.

‘Come on,’ Luke told her. ‘Let’s walk for a while.’

The village was very pretty in that traditional English way that catches at the heart, with narrow streets filled with a jumble of Georgian, Queen Anne and Tudor buildings in soft red brick. There was even some bunting up across the street for an annual rowing regatta, for all the world as though there was no war at all, and indeed, here today it was almost possible to imagine that there wasn’t, Katie conceded as she and Luke walked hand in hand.

‘Do you still love her, Luke, the girl who was so mean to you?’

Katie’s face burned a fiery red. She had no idea where the words had come from because she had certainly not intended to spoil the day by asking them, even though they had been niggling at her heart for quite some time now.

For a minute Katie thought that Luke was angry with her, and so she said contritely, ‘I’m sorry, I had no right to ask you that. It’s none of my business.’

Immediately Luke squeezed her hand and told her firmly, ‘Well, I should hope that it is, seeing as I happen to think that any lad you might have had a soft spot for before you met me is very much my business.’

‘But I haven’t been out with any other boys.’

‘But was there any you wanted to go out with, a special one perhaps?’

Again Katie could hear that sharp note of jealousy in his voice. It was easy to reassure him, though, by telling him that she hadn’t, since it was the truth.

‘Well, I’m glad about that because, you see, Katie, feeling the way I do about you I don’t want to think that you’ve got a soft spot for anyone else. And as for Lillian, I did fancy myself in love with her, it’s true, but I reckon I was more in love with the idea of being in love than with Lillian herself. Once I found out what she was really like I was glad she’d got herself someone else. I was just a boy then; I’m a man now, and it’s as a man that I’m telling you that I reckon I’ve fallen in love with you, Katie.’

Katie’s chin tilted. ‘Well, if you only reckon …’ she told him pertly.

‘All right then, I know,’ Luke corrected himself softly, making the words a deliberate challenge that Katie herself had to meet.

‘I – I feel the same way about you,’ she admitted,
objecting breathlessly when Luke seized her in his arms, ‘Luke, you can’t kiss me here …’