The September Girls (29 page)

It was almost midnight when she reached Liverpool, having given the Bedford address to half a dozen soldiers who’d promised to write to her. Only then did she discover what the blackout was really like. It was as if someone had laid a dark blanket over the city and she felt totally disorientated when she stepped outside Lime Street station. There was hardly any traffic about and the few vehicles to be seen had had their headlights reduced to a tiny slit. She was wondering if it would be best to go back into the station and stay in the waiting room until daylight, when someone bumped into her, nearly knocking her over.

‘Bloody hell, I’m sorry,’ said a male voice, and she vaguely glimpsed a hand reaching out to steady her. By then, she was able to make out the slight difference between the feathery blackness of the sky and the solid blackness of the buildings across the road. She could see stars and the hint of a moon playing hide and seek between the clouds.

‘Where are you off to?’ asked the owner of the voice.

‘Back inside the station, I think, although I was intending to go to Toxteth. Do you know if the trams are still running?’

‘No idea. I’m headed for Childwall. I’ll give you a lift on me motorbike, if you like. I came to meet me brother, but he must have missed the train.’

‘I’ve got a kit bag with me.’

‘That’s all right. I’ll tie it on the back. I left the bike parked over there.’ He took her arm and led her across the road. ‘I’ve got used to driving without hardly any lights, although I’ll have to crawl along.’

About quarter of an hour later, the bike drew up outside the house in Shaw Street and Cara climbed off, untied the bag and thanked her Good Samaritan. ‘I’m dead grateful, I really am. Thanks . . . I don’t know your name!’

‘Charlie Green. What’s yours?’

‘Cara Caffrey.’

‘Tara, Cara.’ The bike zoomed away and became lost in the night.

‘Tara, Charlie,’ Cara whispered. They would never recognize each other if they met again, yet she’d just spent a good fifteen minutes with her arms around his waist and her head pressed against his shoulder.

She pulled the door key through the letterbox and let herself in. The house was in darkness, everyone must be in bed. ‘Mam,’ she cried. ‘Dad, it’s me, Cara, and I’m home.’

Mam screamed when she saw her and said she’d lost too much weight, but Dad claimed he’d never known her look so well.

‘Have you heard from our Fergus lately?’ she asked. ‘He only wrote me a single letter the whole time I’ve been away.’

‘He’s in France with the British Expeditionary Forces having a fine old time,’ Dad replied. ‘He’ll probably write and tell you soon.’

Tyrone appeared and his face seemed to shrivel a little when he saw his little sister in uniform. ‘What’s it like, sis?’

She shrugged. ‘OK.’ It wouldn’t do to tell him Army life was the gear, although Mam was bound to have shown him her letters. ‘How’s Maria getting on in Southport?’

‘She hates it. If there’s no raids soon, she’s bringing the lads home.’

‘Least it means you’ve got your own bed to sleep in, darlin’,’ Mam said, ‘otherwise your dad would have had to doss down on the settee in the parlour and you could have slept with me.’

At this, Dad made a face behind Mam’s back and Carla smiled. She was home!

 

It was hard to fit everything into just three days - she’d lost a whole day coming and would lose another travelling to Bedford. On the first day, she went to Boots so the girls behind the counter, most of whom she’d known since she left school, could see her in her uniform, then for a stroll around the familiar shops where she had the strangest feeling that she belonged somewhere else, not Liverpool, and not just in a single place, but with the Army and the various unknown towns and villages where she would live over the next months or years, depending on how long the war lasted.

On the way home, she called on Nancy Gates, whom she loved almost as much as she did Mam and Dad.

‘Well, this is a sight I never thought I’d see,’ Nancy gasped. ‘Cara Caffrey in a uniform! By my reckoning, you can’t be more than five or six years old - it only seems that long since you were born in the next room while your poor dad roamed the streets looking for a bobby.’

‘I’ll be nineteen next week, Nancy.’

‘I know you will, pet. It’s just me. Time passes so quickly I can’t keep up with it. Sit down and I’ll make you a cuppa. Tomorrow, you must come to tea - I’ll make a cake, it can be a birthday party in advance, as it were.’ She took a while getting to her feet and her bones creaked audibly. ‘I’m going rusty,’ she snorted. ‘I need a damn good oiling.’

‘Is Sybil back? I thought we’d be on the same train, but she just disappeared.’

Nancy looked surprised. ‘Didn’t she tell you? She’s been sent on an officer training course. She only rang last night to tell her dad. He’s pleased, naturally, but dead disappointed she’s not coming home.’

‘An officer!’ Cara wasn’t even faintly impressed. ‘Poor thing. Me, I’d hate to be an officer. They never have any fun.’

‘They might, pet, on the quiet, like. It’s just that they can’t be
seen
having fun.’

 

‘An officer!’ Mam shrieked. ‘Sybil Allardyce, an officer! Why didn’t they pick
you
to be an officer, I’d like to know?’

‘I don’t speak like her, do I, Mam? She went to a dead posh school. Any road, like I just told Nancy, if they asked me to be an officer, I’d turn it down.’

‘Good for you, Cara,’ Dad said approvingly from his armchair. ‘You’re a working-class girl and I’d sooner you stuck with your class.’

‘Don’t worry, Dad, I will,’ Cara assured him.

 

When Marcus came home from work, he was greeted by the sound of laughter from the kitchen. He was about to go to his study, when he heard Brenna Caffrey’s distinctive voice, the Irish accent as strong as ever. ‘Tell Nancy about the day you flagged down that bus,’ she urged. ‘Go on, darlin’.’

Marcus retraced his steps and stood, listening, at the top of the kitchen stairs.

‘Well,’ began another voice, ‘we were ordered to march to Henslow, a town twenty miles away, but we could hardly walk, let alone march . . .’

It was Cara Caffrey, he realized, home on leave. He’d been expecting Sybil, had bought tickets for the Empire Theatre where he’d met Eleanor, asked Nancy to get in some extra nice food, but the night before last Sybil had rung to say she wasn’t coming home because she being transferred straight away to another camp for officer training. He wished she hadn’t sounded so exultant and had thought to say she was sorry they wouldn’t see each other. Instead, she had just rung off with a careless, ‘Bye, Daddy. I’ve no idea when I’ll be home again.’

Cara had almost finished her tale. ‘That night,’ she said, ‘we had a feast in the billet. It was the night we all got to know each other properly. Until then, everyone had been dead miserable.’

‘You never told us you were miserable,’ Brenna said accusingly. ‘You said you were having a marvellous time.’

‘I was lying, Mam.’ Cara laughed. She had the same attractive, husky laugh as her mother.

Marcus stood chewing his lip for a few seconds before venturing downstairs. It was, after all,
his
kitchen.

‘I thought I heard voices,’ he said. Four women were seated around the table: he hadn’t realized Eleanor was there. She wouldn’t be his wife for much longer, the divorce proceedings had begun and soon they would both be single again. He attempted a smile. ‘Good evening, ladies.’

‘Hello, Marcus.’ Eleanor smiled back. ‘What do you think of our daughter? According to Oliver Chandler, she’ll be made a second lieutenant, the lowest rank.’

‘It’s very good news,’ he said stiffly. ‘How are you liking Army life, Cara?’

‘I’m loving it, Mr Allardyce,’ Cara replied, and Marcus noticed a spasm of hurt pass across Brenna’s face.

‘Your dinner’s in the oven, but would you like to sit down and have a cup of tea with us?’ Nancy asked. ‘We were just about to cut Cara’s birthday cake, although I know it’s a week early.’

‘That would be very pleasant, thank you.’ It was only the second time in the almost thirty years he’d lived in the house that Marcus had sat at the kitchen table. The other time, he recalled, had been Sybil’s first birthday party when Eleanor and Daniel Vaizey had appeared so much in love. He’d always thought Eleanor such a feeble, pathetic person, yet she’d turned out to be strong, taking in lodgers to support herself and Jonathan. And now it was
him
who was feeble and pathetic, made so by the daughter who was slowly breaking his heart. He suggested to Nancy that she fetch a bottle of wine from the cellar, ‘So we can toast Cara’s health - and Sybil’s too.’

Nancy went to get the wine, but not before giving him a curious look. He had got used to Nancy’s curious looks of late, as if she were wondering what the hell had happened to the man who had ruled the household with a rod of iron, had even thrown his pregnant wife out into the rain. That man was dead, he wanted to tell her, or perhaps the man had never been real in the first place, but acting a part. Now the play had come to an end, and the man no longer had a role in anyone’s life but his own.

The glasses were filled and Marcus raised his. ‘Happy birthday, Cara.’

Cara blushed slightly. ‘Thank you, Mr Allardyce.’

He’d seen the girl on countless occasions, but had never really
looked
at her before. She was as beautiful as her mother had once been - no, more so. Brenna had never had such a slender neck or such gentle blue eyes. Her voice was softer and there was a freshness about her, an air of innocence, that her mother, raised in the school of hard knocks, had never had. And now, just as he had once wished the mother was his wife, he wished Cara was his daughter because he knew, as surely as he would ever know anything, that she would never treat him the way Sybil did.

 

On Cara’s third and final day in Liverpool, she was invited to dinner at Eleanor’s along with Mam and Dad.

‘She only wants to show off her lodgers,’ Mam laughed. ‘She claims it’s like living with Clark Gable and Robert Taylor and she’s not sure which one she loves the most: Clark or Robert.’

Oliver Chandler and Lewis Brown were undoubtedly dead gorgeous and Cara could quite understand Eleanor’s predicament. They had prepared the meal and waited on table, reminding her of Laurel and Hardy the way they worked together.

‘Is the gravy ready, Oliver?’

‘It is indeed, Lewis. Are the potatoes nice and floury?’

‘They’re perfect, Oliver.’

‘Shall I slice the beef or will you?’

‘You do it. You’re much better at it than I.’

‘Who do you think is the handsomest, Cara?’ Eleanor whispered.

‘I’m not sure, but I think Clark Gable looks more like Leslie Howard.’

Jonathan was there. Cara remembered what a lovely, chubby baby he’d been, but he’d grown up awfully stout. Eleanor was doing her best to stop him from going in the forces by persuading him to go to university, but Jonathan was against the idea.

‘I’d never get in, Mummy,’ he said patiently, as if he’d had the same argument before. ‘I’m not terribly clever.’

‘Don’t be so modest, darling,’ Eleanor cried. ‘You’re top in everything at school.’

‘No, I’m not, Mummy. I’m top in English, that’s all, and hopeless in anything to do with science.’

‘Then you can take English at university, darling.’

‘Except I don’t want to, I want to go in the forces, preferably the Royal Air Force.’ He beamed at Cara. ‘I want to learn to fly a plane.’

‘It’ll do him good, El,’ Mam said encouragingly. ‘You can’t stop your children going their own way, I should know, I’ve tried hard enough in the past, but it never got me anywhere.’

When the meal was over, Lewis took Cara for a ride in his white sports car, showed her how to use the gear lever and explained what the pedals were for. ‘I have just two words of advice,’ he said. ‘Stay calm. Whatever you do, don’t get flustered, even if it means you’re slower off the mark than the next chap. Just take it easy and you’ll be all right.’ He smiled wistfully. ‘You know I’m envious of you, Cara - or dead envious, as they say in Liverpool. I wish I were off to war tomorrow. I almost feel tempted to volunteer, I’m not too old at thirty-seven.’

‘Eleanor would miss you,’ Cara remarked.

‘Not nearly as much as she’ll miss Jonathan: he seems quite determined to join up the minute he turns eighteen, if not before.’

 

She felt sad leaving Mam and Dad behind, but it was almost with a feeling of relief that she boarded the train for Crewe where she would change and take another train to Birmingham, then change again for one to Bedford. At least that was the plan. She might have to change another half-dozen times with the railways in such a state of chaos.

This time she was armed with a flask of tea, enough sandwiches to feed the five hundred, a large piece of her own birthday cake and a box of sugared fruit from Oliver and Lewis.

‘Aren’t they the most charming men you could ever meet?’ Eleanor had breathed that morning when she’d brought the fruit, along with a pretty quilted bag full of toiletries, her own parting gift.

As the thought of Lewis Brown had been the first to pop into Cara’s head when she’d woken up that morning, she heartily agreed.

She arrived in Bedford after a surprisingly comfortable journey: the trains had been on time and only moderately crowded, she’d only had to change twice and had actually found a seat on the final stage. All the food had gone, most given away to civilian passengers who weren’t allowed to buy refreshments from the kiosks that only served military personnel. She gave her address to an elderly woman who’d been so grateful for a cup of tea and a sandwich that she wanted to send Cara something in return.

‘The Army is lucky to have you, dear, and I’m lucky to have met you. I’ll never forget your kindness today.’