Daughters of Liverpool (34 page)

The air in their hut was thick with cigarette smoke and gun oil as some men sat smoking and playing cards, whilst others read, and some cleaned their guns.

Although the men looked relaxed, you could almost feel the tension of their coiled ready-for-action muscles and minds.

‘It isn’t what you think,’ Katie had told him. Luke’s mouth twisted with bitterness.

He hadn’t needed to think anything, he had seen the evidence of her betrayal with his own eyes. ‘Dearest Peter.’ He could feel his emotions slipping out of control. There was a war on, he reminded himself, and he had his men to think of. They were more important than his feelings.

‘Oh, Seb, I’m so pleased you’re here.’ Grace was out of breath from having walked – not run because nurses were not allowed to run in hospitals in case it panicked the patients – so very fast down to the foyer of Mill Road Hospital, where she was doing her nurse’s training. ‘Hannah saw you as she came on duty and told me that you were here.’

Hannah Philips had been in Grace’s set when they had first started their training and they had remained friends. Hannah worked in the operating theatre as a surgery nurse.

‘I just wanted to check that you were OK after last night’s bombs,’ Seb told her, helping her on with her cloak as they hurried outside for a few minutes in the warmth of the late morning sun.

The courtyard outside the hospital exit was busy with ambulances, and hospital staff and patients coming and going, the number of ‘walking wounded’
patients more evidence if any was needed of the Luftwaffe’s assault on the city.

Grace and Seb had been engaged for long enough now to know all the small private corners close to the hospital and the nurses’ home where they could sneak a few minutes’ privacy without breaking any of the rules. They fell into step together in that way that established couples do, each moving close to the other, Seb bending his head to smile at Grace with so much love in his eyes that she stopped walking, her breath catching as she reached up and placed her hand on his uniform-covered chest.

Seb had been working flat out for the last week as part of a team trying to break the code on certain Luftwaffe communications. The building where he worked – Derby House – was the Headquarters for the Air and Sea Western Approaches Defence control hierarchy. Churchill himself was sometimes there, and the building was impregnable, but of course that did not stop him worrying about Grace and her family when the city was being bombed.

He was very lucky to have a fiancée like Grace, someone who loved him as much as he did her and as passionately, but who at the same time understood that the nature of his job was such that at times he could not discuss his work with her.

In his heart of hearts, Seb feared that Luke, much as he liked him, would not be as understanding with Katie. Luke had been badly treated in love, and Seb suspected that that would make it very difficult for him to trust a girl, especially when he loved her.

They rounded the corner of the building and slipped into the shadows, turning to one another to exchange a hungry passionate kiss, and then another.

‘I was worried about you,’ Seb told Grace gruffly, holding her close. ‘That’s the damnable thing about war. My place should be with you, protecting you, but wearing this uniform means that I can’t be.’

‘Well, I’m very proud of you wearing your uniform,’ Grace assured him, adding practically, ‘And I’ve to do my own bit as well, up here at the hospital. I’m all right and but I’ll tell you who isn’t.’ She gave a small shake of her head. ‘Our Luke and Katie. Mum came to see me first thing, and told me about it. She said that Katie and Luke had a row last night and that Luke stormed off and Katie was too upset to tell her what had happened. It’s such a shame when they’re so perfect for one another.’

Seb knew Grace, so he told her firmly, ‘We can’t interfere, Grace.’

‘Well, no, of course not,’ Grace agreed mock innocently, putting her hand on his arm as she pleaded, ‘But I was thinking that perhaps you could have a word with Luke, Seb – you know, man to man – and find out what’s gone wrong. Mum thinks it might have something to do with Lillian and how she was with him and, like she says, that isn’t fair to poor Katie, who’s been breaking her heart, according to Mum. I feel ever so guilty, you know, seeing as it was me that was responsible for Luke meeting Lillian in the first place.’

Seb gave his fiancée a rueful look. He knew
when he was beaten and, besides, there wasn’t much he wouldn’t do to keep his Grace happy. Having come so close to losing her had made her all the more precious to him.

‘I’ll try,’ he promised. ‘But don’t be surprised if Luke tells me to mind my own business, will you?’

Grace’s grateful hug had him hugging her back, and then they were kissing again and so thoroughly that it was several minutes before Grace could bring her mind back to her brother’s falling-out with Katie.

‘I do hope they make it up. We all like Katie so much that it’s as though she’s part of the family already.’

‘You can’t expect Luke to marry a girl just because his family like her,’ Seb pointed out, but he knew he was wasting his breath. Luke’s mother and sister had plainly made their minds up that Katie was the girl for Luke, and if he was honest with himself Seb didn’t blame them. It was as plain as the nose on his own face that she was a really decent sort, honest and steadfast, and loyal too.

‘I’d better go,’ Grace told him regretfully. ‘Sister wants us moving beds round to make room in case the Luftwaffe come back again tonight. Mum said that Dad told her there are still fires burning from last night that haven’t been put out.’ She looked up at the sky and shivered. ‘When will it all end, Seb?’

‘I don’t know, love,’ he told her truthfully,

There was just time for them to share another kiss, each of them reluctant to let the other go, before they had to step out of the shadows and
walk back to the hospital, Seb drawing Grace to one side so that he could tuck a stray curl neatly under her cap. The May sunshine burnished the gold of her strawberry-blonde hair and brushed the perfection of her peaches-and-cream complexion. She was everything he could ever want, his Grace, Seb acknowledged, and beautiful inside and out.

They had vowed together that for the duration of Grace’s three-year training they would do their duty and put any thoughts of marriage out of their minds, but sometimes knowing how long it would be before he could finally make her his was hard for Seb to bear.

‘Them bombers last night was just what I needed, I don’t think,’ said Carole pithily as she and Katie stood in the canteen queue waiting to get their lunch.

‘At least we got the all clear at one o’clock so I managed to get a few hours’ sleep in me own bed. Are you all right?’ she asked Katie. ‘Only you’ve hardly said a word all morning. I know you had to go and see the supervisor first thing.’

‘Yes,’ Katie agreed. In fact the supervisor had been very kind and understanding, especially when Katie’s emotions had got the better of her and she had started to cry. After the supervisor had coaxed the whole story of the previous night’s quarrel with Luke out of her, she had even praised Katie for not giving in to any temptation to tell Luke what she had really been doing.

‘You’re not in some kind of trouble, are you?’
Carole demanded protectively. ‘’Cos if you are and I can help …’

To her own consternation Katie knew that her eyes had filled with tears. After one look at her, Carole told her firmly, ‘Look, there’s an empty table over there, you go and sit down and I’ll get us dinners.’

By the time Carole was putting her tray down on the table, Katie had managed to get her emotions back under control.

‘I’ve got you shepherd’s pie,’ Carole told her, ‘but you’d better not start crying into it ’cos it’s watery enough as it is.’

Her comment forced a reluctant laugh from Katie.

‘Come on then,’ Carole demanded once she was sitting down, ‘tell Auntie Carole what’s to do. Then you’ll feel better.’

There was no point in refusing, Katie recognised, and besides, with Carole going out with Andy she was bound to find out anyway.

‘It’s me and Luke,’ she told her. ‘It’s over between us.’

‘… and the thing is,’ Katie finished miserably after she had told Carole as much about what had happened as she felt she could, ‘now I’m going to have to find somewhere else to live because I can’t stay on with Luke’s parents now.’

‘Well if it will help I dare say you can share with me at my auntie’s whilst you’re looking for somewhere,’ Carole offered generously. ‘It will mean the two of us sharing a double bed, mind.’

‘I don’t mind that,’ Katie told her gratefully, ‘but what about your aunt? You’ll have to ask her if it’s all right.’

‘I’m sure it will be, but if you can hang on until after the weekend that will give me time to sort things out with her.’

‘Thanks, Carole,’ Katie said gratefully.

Outside the sun was shining and the air was warm with the promise of the summer to come, but Katie’s heart felt as chilled as though it were the middle of winter.

‘Grace asked me to come and see you. She’s heard about you and Katie breaking things off.’

Seb removed his cigarettes from his pocket and offered Luke one, but Luke shook his head.

Seb had used some of his precious hours of leave to get the ferry over to Seacombe and the barracks in order to keep his promise to Grace to talk to Luke. They were in the camp Naafi, sitting either side of a small table, the two cups of tea Seb had bought untouched.

Fortunately the place was relatively empty, apart from a steady stream of men coming in to buy cigarettes, and a group of men from one of the Bomb Disposal Units lounging round a table on the other side of the concrete block building.

The Naafi building was a brisk walk from the parade ground, and close to the command post, its walls covered with the usual posters advertising cigarettes and spirits, jostling for space with Government notices and stark warnings about the dangers of having unprotected sex.

It had a smell that was, Seb expected, familiar to British servicemen everywhere: a combination of damp khaki – no matter what the time of year or the kind of weather – crossed with tannin from the tea, cigarette smoke, stale air, male sweat and testosterone. It forced itself aggressively and pungently on the nostrils, and added to the gloom of a building with one small north-facing window. Inside here you’d never know that there was sunshine outside.

‘She’s worried about you,’ Seb told Luke, adding when Luke still didn’t say anything, ‘She thinks it’s because of Lillian and she feels guilty because she introduced you to her.’

‘Grace didn’t introduce me to Katie, and it’s her that’s gone and made a fool of me, letting me think it was me and her when all the time she’s bin writing to someone else, and not the kind of letters you write to your brother neither,’ Luke told Seb harshly.

Seb frowned. Katie hadn’t struck him as that type at all. She’d seemed a thoroughly straightforward, decent sort of girl.

‘Who told you she’s been writing to someone else?’ he asked.

‘No one,’ Luke answered him. ‘I saw the letter for myself. Oh, she tried to hide it from me and acted all upset, like it was me that was in the wrong, saying that I didn’t understand.’

Seb frowned. ‘Well, it’s not for me to say, Luke, but Katie didn’t strike me as the kind of girl who’d tell a chap she cared about him unless she meant it. And it seems to me that if she was involved
with someone else then she would have said so right from the start, before you and her started being an item.’ Seb hesitated. He didn’t know the circumstances and he didn’t want to say the wrong thing, but he had spoken the truth when he had told Luke that Katie hadn’t struck him as the deceitful type.

Now it was Luke’s turn to frown. He respected Seb, and Seb’s words carried a weight and an authority Luke couldn’t ignore.

‘It makes no sense that she would get involved with you if she was already involved with someone else,’ Seb pressed home. ‘Anyone can see that she’s not the type who’d want to play one chap off against another.’

‘You can say that, but you didn’t see the letter calling him her “Dearest Peter” and saying that she wanted to go dancing with him to some band or other. She certainly kept quiet about him. Never said so much as a word.’

‘But she must have had letters from him and if she did your mother must have seen them,’ Seb pointed out. ‘Then your mother would have known that she was involved with someone else, wouldn’t she?’

Luke looked at him. He hadn’t thought of that, but of course Seb was right, and Luke remembered now his mother making some mention of the fact that the only letters Katie ever received were from her parents.

‘When me and Grace started courting we had a bit of a talk and I told her then that because of my work there’d be things I couldn’t share with
her,’ Seb continued. ‘Katie’s working in a similar line to me, and it strikes me, Luke, that there could be a different explanation to this letter from the one you’re thinking, and that it might have something to do with Katie’s work.’

‘Well, if that’s the case then why didn’t Katie say so? Why didn’t she explain?’

‘She can’t, Luke, just like I can’t discuss my work with Grace.’

Seb could see that Luke didn’t like what he was hearing.

‘It seems a bit of a rum do to me, getting a girl to write love letters to another chap behind her own chap’s back,’ he complained.

‘She can’t discuss her work with you, Luke, but there’s nothing to stop you from asking her if the letter you saw had something to do with it and that you understand that she can’t say any more than “yes” or “no”. It wouldn’t be fair of a chap to start badgering a girl when he knows she’s doing her bit for the country.’

The last thing Seb wanted was to provoke Luke into upsetting Katie with lots of questions she wouldn’t be able to answer.

‘When a couple become an item,’ he continued carefully, ‘I reckon they have to sit down together and lay their cards on the table, tell one another what’s what and make a promise that they’ll always be honest with one another and trust one another. I reckon Katie’s the sort a chap can trust, if she’s given him that promise. And you know what, Luke, I reckon that a chap who gets jealous and starts accusing a girl who loves him of things she hasn’t
done, because of some other girl who let him down, is a fool to himself,’ Seb finished warningly. ‘If you do love her, Luke, then don’t risk losing her. Life’s too short, and Katie’s no Lillian.’

It was over an hour since Seb had left, but Luke couldn’t get his warning out of his head.