Daughters of Liverpool (28 page)

The house was empty when Bella got back. There was a note in the kitchen from Bettina explaining that Jan had arrived with a male friend, and that the four of them had gone out to visit some other friends who were billeted locally.

The sight of two RAF kitbags leaning against the wall in her spare bedroom had Bella’s heart doing an unexpected back flip of excitement. Two
kitbags, that meant that Jan could partner her, and his friend could partner either Bettina or Laura; Bella didn’t care which of them bagged him, just so long as she had Jan.

The Polanskis and Jan’s friend arrived whilst Bella was still upstairs in her bedroom getting ready.

Normally Bella would have hogged the bathroom and run off all the hot water, getting ready for the dance, but grudgingly on this occasion she decided that she perhaps ought to be generous, given the fact that Laura was fussing all over Bettina and her mother, so she had left a note on the kitchen table saying that she had left them plenty of hot water, and that since there would be a buffet at the Tennis Club she knew they wouldn’t be expecting any tea.

Bella timed her entrance perfectly. Having waited to make sure that Laura had arrived, she checked that she herself did indeed look as wonderful as she had thought the last time she had inspected her appearance in her bedroom mirror, all of two minutes earlier, her lips a perfect soft red with just a hint of gleam, thanks to an expert dab of Vaseline on top of her lipstick, her eyelashes long and dark, her hair falling elegantly to her shoulders in waves worthy of any film star, and of course her dress. She must wear black more often, Bella had decided as soon as she had recognised how glamorously the fabric contrasted with the pale pearly sheen of her skin.

Carrying her evening bag and her bolero she headed for the stairs, deliberately dropping her bag
just before she reached the last stair, exclaiming loudly as she did so.

Naturally Jan, ever the gentleman, came out of the sitting room to see what was happening, the others crowding in the doorway behind him.

‘Silly me, I dropped my evening bag,’ Bella pouted, ‘and I daren’t bend down to pick it up because I can’t fasten the hook and eye at the top of my zip. Would you be a darling and fasten it for me, please, Jan?’

Bella couldn’t quite analyse the look in Jan’s eyes as he came towards her. It could just be awed appreciation, of course. How could it be anything else? And how clever of her too to have positioned herself on exactly the right stair for his gaze to be on a level with the creamy exposure of the soft flesh that swelled discreetly before disappearing beneath the bodice of her dress.

Jan’s brief, ‘You’ll have to turn round,’ had Bella batting her eyelashes and giving a small practised giggle before she started to turn, just catching as she did so the movement of yellow and white floral cotton as Laura appeared in the doorway.

‘Is everything all right?’ Laura’s question was followed by a cool and very disconcerted, ‘Oh’, as somehow Bella lost her balance and had to cling to Jan’s shoulders for support, her soft breathy, ‘Oh, goodness, I am being silly tonight,’ answered by Jan’s calm, ‘Not at all,’ as he waited for her to regain her balance and then turn round so that he could fasten the hook and eye for her.

‘You should have called me up to do that for you,’ Laura told Bella in a voice that Bella was delighted to recognise was decidedly hostile.

‘I was so busy worrying about Charlie’s fiancée enjoying the evening and not feeling left out that I never gave it a thought until I was on my way downstairs,’ Bella lied happily, tucking her arm through Jan’s as she reached the bottom of the stairs, and telling him, ‘I think I’d better hang on to you until we get to the Tennis Club, Jan. These silly heels are a bit higher than I’m used to.’

‘Then perhaps you should change them,’ Laura suggested tartly.

‘I can’t. They’re my only pair of black dancing shoes.’ Bella’s response was sweet and triumphant.

Bettina and Maria had come out of the sitting room now, accompanied by a tall, thin, dark-haired man of a similar age to Jan, but nowhere near as good-looking.

‘Bella, please allow me to introduce Jonas to you.’ To Bella’s irritation Jan had to disengage himself from her hold to introduce his friend, who promptly shook her hand.

‘I hope you enjoyed your visit to your friends this afternoon.’ Bella’s smile swept Jan’s family and his friend. ‘You’ll be meeting my brother later at the Tennis Club and I must tell you that he and his girlfriend are newly engaged so tonight will be a very special evening for them.’

Somehow or other, whilst Bella had been talking, Jan had offered his arm to his mother, and Jonas had offered his to Bettina, leaving Bella and Laura to walk together as they left the house and made their way to the Tennis Club.

‘I am praying that we don’t have an air raid tonight,’ Bella announced.

‘Well, you’d certainly have trouble running for the shelter in those shoes,’ Laura remarked unkindly.

‘Jan would help me, wouldn’t you, Jan?’ Bella cooed. ‘It’s so thrilling to be going to the dance with two heroes of the Battle of Britain. I shall feel quite jealous if you dance with anyone else, Jan.’

There! That should make her own claim more than clear to Laura, Bella decided as she tucked her hand through the other girl’s arm with false friendliness.

‘Steady, Bella. That’s your fourth tonight. I didn’t even know you drank gin,’ Charlie complained to his sister, as she emptied her glass.

‘That’s because I don’t,’ Bella told him truculently. It was the truth, after all. She didn’t drink – normally. But tonight things had gone so horribly wrong that having another drink seemed like a good idea.

It had all started just after they had arrived and she had discovered that the committee had decided to put Jan and Jonas, along with Bettina and Maria, on the top table, which had meant that she and Laura, along with Charlie and Daphne, had been relegated to a horrid little table that barely accommodated four in a dark corner where no one could see them.

Someone had seen her, though – one of Alan’s mother’s cronies, who had taken one look at her and then made a comment about shameless young women who flaunted themselves in a very vulgar way, which not just Bella herself, but everyone who was within hearing range knew had been directed at Bella.

Matters hadn’t been helped when Laura had said disapprovingly, ‘Well, I must say that I did think myself that your dress is a bit much, Bella, especially given our position and the crèche and everything.’ Laura had then promptly taken herself off to the top table where she had somehow or other managed to get a seat, which had left Bella on her own with the newly engaged couple.

‘You can’t possibly really be in love with her, Charlie,’ Bella had challenged her brother when Daphne had excused herself to visit the cloakroom. ‘She’s so dull.’

‘Of course I’m in love with her,’ Charlie had grinned, adding mockingly, ‘How could I not be? You’ve seen the way the fact that I’m marrying her has got Dad opening his wallet, haven’t you?’

When Daphne returned to their table Bella gave the ring on her future sister-in-law’s left hand an extremely sour look. It was twice the size of all three of the stones in her own engagement ring put together.

Bella had to wait until suppertime to push her way to Jan’s side and remind him in a little girl voice that he hadn’t danced with her yet.

‘You haven’t looked as though you’ve been lacking dance partners,’ he pointed out.

Bella pouted. ‘Oh, well, they’re just ordinary boys, not like you, Jan. You’re a hero, and very special.’

Bella had always known how to flirt but she hadn’t until now recognised just how dangerously close to the edge she could take that flirting now that she had a wedding ring on her finger.

One of her partners had already called her a dashing widow, so why shouldn’t she be exactly that? Fired up by four gins and her determination to best Laura, Bella was enjoying the heady elixir of power that came from knowing that she no longer had to obey the ‘rules’ that came with being an unmarried girl.

‘Mm, I’d love another gin,’ she told him.

‘I think you ought to eat something first,’ Jan told her firmly.

‘If you want me to eat, then you’ll have to be very nice to me.’

As she leaned closer to him, Bella swayed and almost lost her balance – and not deliberately this time – causing Jan to frown as he caught the scented sweetness of her breath and wondered just how much she had had to drink. He put down the plate he had been holding and took hold of Bella’s arm.

‘Come on,’ he told her. ‘I think you need some fresh air.’

‘No, what I need is you,’ Bella told him giddily as he guided her across the floor and then outside.

No light shone from the windows of the Tennis Club, thanks to the blackout, but there were stars in the sky and enough light from the moon for Jan to glance up and say grimly, ‘Looks like it’s a bomber’s moon tonight. Let’s hope the Luftwaffe don’t take advantage of it.’

‘The war! Is that all everyone can talk about?’ Bella complained.

‘It is pretty much to the forefront of most people’s minds, Bella,’ Jan pointed out drily.

‘Well, it isn’t to the forefront of mine, and it shouldn’t get to the forefront of yours when you’re here in the moonlight with me,’ Bella rebuked him softly.

Jan had gone very still but Bella hadn’t noticed. This was it, her moment, her chance to ensure that when they went back inside Laura knew that Jan was Bella’s. She moved closer to him, putting her head on his shoulder and her hand on his arm.

‘It’s all right to kiss me, Jan,’ she whispered. ‘I know you want to, you know.’

‘Bella …’

‘And I want you to as well.’ Bella was astonished. Where on earth had those words come from? Certainly not from her scheming brain. It would never ever have allowed her to say anything so betraying. So where, then? Bella’s thoughts had become very cloudy and confused, but not so much that she didn’t know what she wanted.

‘Jan,’ she whispered, and now there was a pleading softness in her voice as well as an invitation.

Jan didn’t move.

Bella’s gin-soaked senses were oblivious to the message contained in Jan’s still silence. Instead they were urging her to do what she wanted to do. Bella raised herself up on her tiptoes and placed her lips on Jan’s, kissing him softly and then with increasing passion.

His arms lifted, his mouth moving against her own …

‘No!’

Bella blinked drunkenly in disbelief. Jan had
just rejected her and pushed her away. But that wasn’t possible.

‘I’m sorry. This is all my fault. I should have said something earlier.’ His voice was clipped and angry. ‘I’m engaged to be married.’

‘You can’t be.’

Ignoring her denial Jan continued quietly, ‘Anna is the daughter of some old friends of my parents. We knew one another as children. We didn’t know until just before Christmas that they’d managed to escape as well. We’re getting married next month. My mother is delighted. It’s something she’d hoped for before – before the war.’

Bella had gone from being drunk to being stone-cold sober in the space of less than five minutes. It felt like being all wrapped up in a delicious blanket and then having not just that blanket but also a layer of skin ripped off you whilst you stood in a cold so bad that it physically hurt. She had no idea where such a feeling had come from or why, she only knew that she was in pain.

She turned away from Jan into the darkness.

‘Bella.’

How was it possible for the sound made by someone saying her name to cause her so much physical pain?

‘We must get back; people will wonder where we are.’

How odd that she should be able to speak so normally through such pain, a bit like when someone had a limb amputated but thought it was still there because they could feel it, perhaps.

A few minutes later, when she stepped into the warmth and light of the Tennis Club foyer, Bella recognised that she had no recollection of having made the physical movements that had enabled her to walk back to the Club. But she must have done so, of course, since she was here.

For the rest of the evening Bella danced and laughed as though her life depended on it, but not with Jan, and nor did she have anything more to drink.

Katie and Luke’s rooms at the pub where they were staying were next door to one another, and somehow, when the time came to say good night, neither of them wanted to leave the other, and besides, as Katie reassured herself, they weren’t doing anything they shouldn’t, at least not strictly speaking, even if what they were doing was rather a lot more than she suspected they should. She didn’t feel guilty at all, though. Not lying here in Luke’s arms, where she felt so safe and loved, and where for tonight at least there was no war and nothing to come between them as they touched and kissed and loved.

Heavy petting, she had heard other girls calling it, and it was certainly hard to make themselves stop when all those lovely kisses and touches were urging them on, but both of them knew that they must. There
was
a war on, after all, and neither of them was the type to feel comfortable with the idea of a rushed marriage and all the speculation that would accompany it.

‘If you do get sent into action …’ Katie whispered from the shelter of Luke’s arms.

‘You’ll be the first to know, and I won’t be going anywhere without putting my engagement ring on your finger, Katie, if you’ll wear it.’

‘Oh, Luke, of course I will. I’ll be so proud to.’

‘Nowhere near as proud as I’ll be that you’re my girl,’ Luke responded.

‘There’s someone asking to see you, Charles. He says he was at Dunkirk with you. Apparently he’s read about your engagement in the
Liverpool Post
, and he’s here to offer his congratulations. I’ve put him in the front room, although I must say that I’m surprised that he’s calling at lunchtime on Easter Day, when he must know that we’ll soon be sitting down to our lunch,’ said Vi. ‘Mind you, he struck me as a bit of an odd sort altogether, and rather down at heel and shabby-looking. I wouldn’t recommend that you go with Charles, Daphne dear. This fellow looks rather a rough sort. Probably one of the lesser desirable sort of enlisted men.’

The whole family, including Bella, had attended the Easter service at the parish church, and of course they had been delayed leaving, with so many people wanting to congratulate Charles and offer the young couple their good wishes. Vi was disappointed that Bella had not made more of an
effort to behave in a sisterly way towards Daphne, but then Vi was forced to admit that Bella had disappointed her on several occasions recently, and it was her opinion that her daughter was not the sweet-natured girl she had been. Everyone knew that she had been widowed, but there was really no reason for her to go around being so quarrelsome and difficult. Vi was sure that Daphne’s mother would expect a girl in Bella’s position to put a braver face on things, especially when there was a war on and one had to do one’s bit.

It was not, after all, as though Bella had any reason to behave as she was doing. Another young woman in her position would, Vi thought, have been making sure that her parents and everyone else knew just how much she owed them and how much she had to be grateful to them for.

Vi was beginning to think that Edwin was right when he said that Vi had spoiled Bella too much. Any other girl, Vi told herself, would have been only too glad to step aside to allow her brother and his wife to move into a house that they needed and she did not. Vi had been dreadfully embarrassed by the way Bella had behaved in front of Daphne. What on earth would Daphne’s parents think? Vi dreaded to think what Daphne’s mother might say to her bridge partner about Bella’s ungracious behaviour. She really must do something about learning to play bridge herself, Vi decided. Really, she owed it to Edwin to do so, given his position.

As she went to check on the vegetables, simmering on top of the Rayburn, which, like everything else
in the house, Edwin had bought her new when they had moved into the house just before the war, Vi drifted off into a pleasant daydream in which she was graciously accepting Daphne’s mother’s praise for her skill at the bridge table.

Charlie was quite glad of an excuse to escape from his dutiful attendance on his fiancée, and was already mentally trying out a few possible plausible reasons as to why he might need to meet up with his unexpected visitor later on in the day, and thus escape the boredom of being cooped up on his best behaviour with Daphne and his parents, as he pushed open the door to his mother’s precious ‘lounge’ and walked in.

The man who had come to see him was sitting down in what the family knew to be the chair that Edwin had claimed as his own and on which no one else was allowed to sit. Broad-shouldered, with his thinning dark hair slicked back with so much brilliantine that it looked like patent leather, his high flat cheekbones, thick, bull-like neck and a nose that at some stage must have been broken, he had a hard-edged aggressive look that said he wasn’t the kind of man to get on the wrong side of.

He was wearing a good-quality navy-blue suit and a shirt and tie, although the collar of his shirt looked too tight and was digging into his neck. He had a look about him that said he had probably hung around the city’s boxing clubs as a youth. Despite the quality of the suit, his nails were ragged and dirty. He was smoking, and when he inhaled he lifted the cigarette to his lips between his thumb and his forefinger in a cupping
movement, rather than between his index and forefinger.

He was reading a copy of
Picture Post
, a magazine that Charlie’s mother refused to have in the house, and he grinned widely at Charlie over the top of it, telling him cheerfully, ‘Well, well, here he is, the big hero and newly engaged man. Congrats, mate.’

Dougie Richards! Charlie eyed him warily. They had been in the same unit, and right from the start there had been the kind of guarded hostility between them that came from recognising that they shared a similar disposition and a set of values that meant that they put themselves first and others second.

There had been no actual falling-out between them, though, just an unspoken understanding of what they were and the need not to tread on one another’s toes. The very fact that Dougie was now here in his parents’ front room was enough to make Charlie feel very wary indeed, but those feelings didn’t show when he held out his hand to shake the other man’s and exclaimed cheerfully, ‘Dougie, it’s good to see you. How have you been?’

‘Not so good, Charlie. Not like you,’ Dougie Richards answered, shaking Charlie’s hand and then relaxing back into Edwin’s chair, explaining as he did so, ‘Hope you don’t mind if I don’t stand up, only I got me leg buggered on the way back from Dunkirk, so in reward for being damn-near killed by the Germans and then nearly having me leg cut off, the Government’s gone and had me chucked me out of the army as unfit.’

‘Well, never mind, I dare say they’ll have given
you a bit of a pension, and then you’ve got those family contacts of yours down on the docks, haven’t you?’ Charlie pointed out unsympathetically.

Dougie had been fond of boasting to the other men about his family and the influence they had. One of his uncles was in charge of one of the dock ‘pens’, as the areas were called where the dockers queued to get work, and two others ran a nice little business organising supplies off the ships for the black marketeers.

‘Yep, bin good to me, my family have. That’s wot families are for, ain’t it, Charlie? I reckon that your dad’s good to you, an’ all, isn’t he, and doesn’t mind putting his hand in his pocket to help you out? Especially now that you’re marrying into money and going to have a posh wife.’

Charlie had had enough, and besides, if he didn’t get rid of Dougie soon he’d probably have his mother coming in, going on about her Sunday roast. Dougie certainly wasn’t someone he wanted to arrange to meet up with to talk about old times.

‘Well, it’s very good of you to come round to offer us your best wishes. But I expect you’ll want to get on your way now, Dougie.’ Charlie’s voice was over-hearty as he turned towards the door.

‘Give me a real surprise, it did, when I read in the
Liverpool Post
about you getting wed,’ Dougie told him, ignoring Charlie’s hint. ‘Especially when I come to that bit about you being a hero and saving some poor bloke from drowning off Dunkirk.’

‘Well, you know what newspapers are like,’
Charlie told him. He could feel the uncomfortable beginnings of alarm gripping his stomach.

‘And this girl you’re marrying – she’s the sister of this chap you was supposed to have saved, is she?’

‘Look, Dougie, we’re just about to sit down for our Sunday lunch and—’

‘Come off it, Charlie boy, you’d never save no one’s life if you lived to be a hundred. You ain’t the type. Finish ’em off by walking over them to save yourself, is more like it.’ He laughed at his own joke, but then stopped laughing to tell Charlie pointedly, ‘And I ain’t the only one that thinks that neither.’

Charlie turned back towards his visitor, all thoughts of his lunch forgotten. His unease had now turned to a definite sense of queasy alarm.

‘Now see here, Dougie. I don’t know what this is all about, or what you’re trying to imply,’ he began to bluster.

But Dougie quickly stopped him, saying cheerfully, ‘Course you do. You ain’t a fool when it comes to picking up on what’s what, Charlie, we both know that. Got plenty of money, has he, your fiancée’s old man? Sounds like it from the
Post
. You done pretty well there, mate. And all on account of you lying about saving her brother. I was on that boat with you, don’t forget.’

‘You were down the other end; you couldn’t possibly have seen anything.’

‘You reckon? From what I’ve bin told, you was trying to stop him from hanging on to you in case
he drowned and took you with him, rather than saving him.’

‘You can’t prove that,’ Charlie defended himself furiously, his face burning a dark red when he saw the triumphant grin Dougie was giving him.

‘Pretty nifty, him going over the side like he did, eh, Charlie? That way he couldn’t say whether or not you was trying to save him or push him off of you, could he? It says in the
Post
that he went whilst you had your back to him.’ Dougie shook his head. ‘You see, the thing is, Charlie, you and me, well, we remember things differently, ’cos I definitely remember seeing you giving him an almighty shove. And you know what I reckon? I reckon you give him that shove because you was feared he’d spill the beans about how you’d tried to push him off you, so you thought you’d make sure that he couldn’t.’

Charlie went pale. What Dougie was suggesting was a complete untruth, or at least the bit about him pushing Daphne’s brother off the boat was. It wasn’t his fault, after all, that Eustace had gone and banged his head on the side of the boat when Charlie had been trying to kick himself free of him. That had been a genuine accident, just like when he had gone overboard and drowned once they were on board.

‘I wonder how that posh fiancée of yours and her mum and dad will feel when they know that you killed her brother? Do you reckon she’ll still want to marry you then, Charlie? No one going to think you much of a hero then, are they? More like you’ll be banged up inside for murder.’

Charlie was sweating heavily now. ‘It wasn’t like that.’

‘Come off it, Charlie. I saw you kick him in the head meself, even if you did turn it around smartly and reckon that you was trying to save him when the two of you was pulled onto the boat.’

‘I didn’t kick him,’ Charlie protested frantically, but Dougie wasn’t listening.

Instead he shook his head admiringly and said, ‘That was proper smart of you, Charlie, and quick thinking as well. I admire that in a man, Charlie, a bit of smartness. Now let’s hope you’ll be smart enough to know where your best interests lie, because if I was to speak up about what I saw—’

‘No one will believe you; they’d want to know why you hadn’t spoken up before, if you really had seen something. They’ll know that you’re lying.’

‘Nah they won’t. ’S easy to explain, innit? I had me loyalty to a mate, didn’t I? And then with it being Dunkirk I couldn’t bring meself to talk about it, with seeing what had happened to so many good men. It was only when I read in the papers about you passing yourself off as a hero and deceiving that poor girl that it come to me that I had to say something.’

Charlie was sweating now, an ice-cold sweat that had begun with a sensation of crawling sickness in his belly, and which was now bathing his skin in icy fear.

Folding up his magazine, Dougie put it in his inside pocket and then stood up and put his arm around
Charlie’s shoulders, telling him with a smile, ‘Aaw, sick as a parrot, you look, Charlie mate, and no mistake, but don’t worry. You see, the thing is that mates like you and me, we want to do the right thing by one another, don’t we? We aren’t the sort that wants to see a mate done down when we can help them, and I reckon you and me can help one another, Charlie. It’s like this, see? You want your fiancée to go on thinking that you’re a hero, and I want a bit of a helping hand with a hundred nicker. Problem’s easy solved, innit, Charlie? You give me a hundred quid and I forget what I seen on that boat.’

‘That’s blackmail,’ Charlie told him, shrugging Dougie off.

‘Blackmail? Nah,’ Dougie laughed. ‘It’s what you might call a bit of an insurance policy. You ask that posh chap what’s going to be your dad-in-law. I reckon he’ll know all about insurance policies, him being with Lloyd’s. Meet me down at the Ship’s Anchor off the East Dock Road tomorrow teatime, Charlie. Just go round the back door, knock and ask for me. It’s a cousin of mine runs it. It’s close to the landing stage, so you’ll be back on your side of the water quick as you like, before anyone knows you’ve gone. And think on, if you don’t show up your fiancée and her dad will be getting a letter telling them what really happened at Dunkirk.’

‘I didn’t kill him,’ Charlie began furiously, only to stop as the front-room door opened.

Charlie stiffened but it was only Bella.

‘Mummy says to tell you that lunch is ready, Charlie,’ Bella informed him.

‘It’s my fault on account of me keeping him talking about old times,’ Dougie chipped in, leering at Bella, who glowered at them both and then gave Dougie a haughty look of distaste.

‘I’ll see you then, Charlie,’ Dougie warned meaningfully, giving Bella a wink and telling her cheerfully, as he limped out, ‘Pity you ain’t my type, otherwise I reckon you and me could have a fair bit of fun together.’

Dougie might have gone but his going hadn’t brought Charlie any relief, quite the opposite. Charlie might know that he had not killed Eustace but there was still enough truth in the rest of the story to thoroughly discredit him. He could imagine all too easily how Daphne and her family were likely to react to the discovery that, far from rescuing her precious brother, Charlie had actually tried to break free of his clinging hold in his desperation to save his own life and secure a place on the boat.

He really had no option other than to give in and pay Dougie off. But where the hell was he going to get a hundred pounds from at such short notice? Even with notice he’d have the devil’s own job getting it. His father had already loaned him money to buy Daphne’s engagement ring, and wasn’t likely to be willing to lend him any more. Charlie enjoyed playing cards and the men he played with liked putting on good-sized side bets, illegal for serving troops, not that anyone paid any attention to that law. The fact was that Charlie lost more often than he won and was not therefore in the kind of financial position that meant
that his bank manager was likely to look favourably on any request for a loan – even if he had time to make such a request.