Through the Storm (6 page)

Go ahead, Jess
wrote back when she received his letter. She couldn’t stand people who didn’t pay their bills.
Though it’s not me who should suffer the shortfall in rent, but Miss Brazier. She’s the person ultimately responsible
. Jessica had a heart of stone when it came to business matters.

Helen Brazier saw the justice in this when it was put to her, and offered her furniture to make up the shortfall.
It’s good stuff
, she wrote.
It belonged to my mother. I’m sure
it’s
worth much more than what is owed. My hubby-to-be already has his own furniture. Anyroad, it would cost the earth to have it sent to Potters Bar
.

The agent asked what he should do?
The Grahams have moved out and left the place a proper midden. It needs cleaning and redecorating throughout before it can be re-let, though the wallpaper’s the sort that’ll take a coat of distemper. The furniture’s good quality, like she said
. He wanted to know if he should sell it, or let the house furnished.
Lots of people lost their stuff in the raids. You could get as much as half a crown a week more by letting it fully furnished
. If Jess wanted it sold, he would charge a fee of ten shillings for his trouble.

All this correspondence had been going on without Arthur’s knowledge. Jess liked to keep her own affairs private, not that he would have been interested if she’d told him – if she’d had an opportunity to tell him, that is, whilst he was so engrossed in bits and pieces several thousand years old.

It was when she got this last letter that Jess had her great idea.
She
would live in Helen Brazier’s house. She would move back to Pearl Street with Penny, which was what she’d been yearning to do ever since she’d left for the second time.

She told the agent to have the house cleaned and decorated;
pastel colours; pale pinks, blues, white
. She’d recently read in a magazine that pale colours were all the rage in Mayfair.
Leave the furniture where it is
, she – wrote.
I’ve some business to sort out in Liverpool which might take quite a while. I’ll live there myself
.

It was almost dark by the time Jessica neared Liverpool. Although Arthur had drawn a map of the route she should take, the road signs had been taken down some time ago when there’d been the threat of invasion, and she got lost several times. Penny was in the back by now, fast asleep on the cot mattress.

Jessica threw back her head and sang at full throttle: ‘In Dublin’s fair city where the girls are so pretty …’

The enclosed space seemed to enhance and give even greater depth to her already glorious soprano voice. She’d joined a choir whilst she was away, but choirs seemed dull in the extreme compared to the troop concerts she used to give, at which she’d sung all the latest hits. The audience, men perhaps on the point of going off to fight within a matter of hours, had joined in the chorus if they knew the words, cheering to the echo when the concert finished. The atmosphere had been charged with emotion. Sometimes dear old Jacob Singerman, who accompanied Jess on the piano, had been close to tears at the end.

When Jessica drove into the dusk of the great city where she was born she felt her heart lift. She found the headlights worse than useless to see by with their metal caps which left merely a narrow slit of illumination. But she didn’t need lights to witness the damage that had been wrought. Parts had been reduced to little more than brickyards and elsewhere bare skeletons of buildings remained, silhouetted black against the grey sky. She drove around, almost aimlessly, for a while, forgetting she was wasting petrol, her horror increasing with each corner she turned. Eileen Costello had told her what had happened in her letters, but nothing could have prepared her for actually seeing the terrible destruction for herself. It was as if the city had been hit by an earthquake.

Jessica sighed, thought about the petrol, and turned the van in the direction of Bootle.

Yet more destruction and broken buildings. Some streets seemed to have disappeared completely, wiped with ruthless finality off the face of the earth. She felt a strange sort of resentment that she’d missed all this, though she knew she was being ridiculous and silly. It didn’t seem right that she, a Liverpudlian, had avoided
the
suffering that everyone else in the city had endured.

She pressed her foot on the accelerator, anxious to get to Bootle, to Pearl Street, to be home.

The first thing she did when she entered the house was draw the curtains everywhere and turn the gaslights on. She was pleased to find the place looked quite respectable, and as the agent had said, the furniture was good, if rather ornate and over-large, and had thoughtfully been polished. The heavy embossed wallpaper had taken the distemper well and the rooms were bright and cheerful, and would look even brighter once she got some pretty chintz to cover the ugly blackout material. She’d just have to go without carpets until she earned money of her own, though the quaintly old-fashioned oilcloth looked the sort that was quite likely to come back in vogue.

‘What do you think, Penny?’ Jessica asked as she carried her daughter upstairs to show her around. Penny had woken up the very second the van stopped. She seemed enchanted with everything, particularly the gas mantles which she’d never seen before, but then the most insignificant little thing could enchant Penny.

The mattress on the double bed in the front bedroom had seen better days, but Jessica supposed it would have to do. The rear room contained only a single bed. She’d brought her own bedding and a few other things – dishes, cutlery, a few cooking utensils – though when she went downstairs again, she found the back kitchen fully equipped and supposed it had all belonged to Miss Brazier.

There was a brass coal scuttle half full of coal on the hearth in the living room, and the fire was partially laid with rolled-up paper topped with kindling. The agent was obviously keen to make a good impression on his employer. Jess lit the paper and gradually began to add
the
coal, lump by lump. She was dying for a cup of tea. She thought wistfully of the house across the road, number 5, where they’d returned to live. It had been snapped up by the people next door, the Evanses, when Jess and Arthur left. She’d had it modernised throughout in the short time they’d been there; a proper fireplace instead of the ugly black range, a bath fitted in the washhouse, a stove in the back kitchen. And she’d had electricity installed throughout …

Jessica felt herself grow hot. If it hadn’t been for the electricity, she would never have had Penny!

‘Oh, God!’ She felt her stomach turn over at the memory of that night.

The fire had begun to take hold. Jessica fetched a kettle of water and put it on to boil. It was only then she realised there was no fireguard. ‘I’ll buy one tomorrow,’ she resolved. There was a second-hand shop in Marsh Lane, who’d be sure to have one in stock.

She gave Penny a bottle of concentrated orange juice and warm water and hooked her reins to the leg of the table. Then she began to unload the van. Everyone in Pearl Street would be dying to know where it came from when they saw it there tomorrow, Aggie Donovan in particular. She’d have to find a garage. That van was going to be a source of income, and she couldn’t risk it being damaged. Her father had started with a horse and cart; Jessica was starting with a van. She was determined not to sponge off Arthur.

The kettle boiled and the tea was made, when Jessica discovered she’d forgotten to bring milk.

‘Damn!’ she muttered. She couldn’t possibly wait until tomorrow for a cuppa, she’d just have to borrow some. Eileen Costello, who she would automatically have gone to, was now living in Melling, and Jacob Singerman, the dear old soul, was dead. Still, Eileen’s sister, Sheila, wouldn’t mind lending her some.

Jessica undid Penny’s reins, picked her up and tripped
along
in her high-heeled suede sandals to number 16 to borrow a cup of milk. She would have sooner died of thirst than borrow milk when she lived in Calderstones, but something seemed to have happened to her when the business went bust and she’d returned to her roots in Bootle. Things that had mattered then didn’t seem important any more. She no longer cared if she made a good impression. In fact, she didn’t give a toss what people thought. She knocked on Sheila’s door and waited.

Sheila Reilly stared in disbelief at the glamorous figure in the clinging blue dress and fluffy white mohair cardigan who was standing on her doorstep, a cherubic baby in her arms.

‘Strewth, if it isn’t Jess Fleming! What on earth are you doing here?’

‘I’m here to borrow a cup of milk. I’ve moved into number ten.’

‘Come in,’ Sheila cried, delighted. ‘The kids are in bed and I was just listening to the wireless on me own. Does our Eileen know you’re back? I bet she’s thrilled to bits if she does.’

‘No. No-one knows – except you.’

‘Is Arthur with you? Surely he hasn’t given up that nice job in the museum?’

‘Arthur might come later,’ Jessica said briefly.

Sheila turned her gaze on the baby. ‘Is this Penelope? Oh, let me hold her. Isn’t she beautiful? Come to your Auntie Sheila, there’s a good girl. Sit down, Jess. Make yourself at home.’

This is what I’ve missed, Jessica thought warmly; the feeling that people care, the togetherness, as if everyone in the street belonged to the same family. It was something she’d never been aware of when she’d lived there as a child.

‘It seems dead funny, seeing women with children
younger
than me own,’ Sheila said, chucking Penny under her fat chin. ‘I had six in seven years, which meant I always had a baby, but our Cal refuses to have any more till the war’s over. He says six kids and a wife are already enough to worry about whilst he’s away at sea.’

‘Well, you can’t blame him,’ Jess said reasonably. ‘How is Calum?’

‘He was fine when I last saw him in July. He’s on the Atlantic convoys. I never know when to expect him home.’ She looked at Jessica with scared eyes. ‘It’s terrible dangerous, Jess. Most nights I can’t sleep for thinking about Cal, stuck on a little boat somewhere in the middle of the ocean and all those U-boats about. I’ve lost track of the number of his mates who’ve been killed.’

Jessica was unsure how to reply. What on earth were you supposed to say to someone in Sheila’s position? The loss of life at sea, the tonnage of ships sunk, was horrendous, and had been so since the very first day war started and the
Athenia
had been torpedoed on its way to Canada.

‘Never mind,’ Sheila sighed. ‘If I say enough prayers, God won’t dare let anything happen to Cal.’ She stared at Penny curiously. ‘Y’know, it’s awful funny, Jess, but she’s got a definite look of our Siobhan – y’know, me oldest girl. Isn’t that peculiar?’

‘Very peculiar,’ Jess agreed.

‘Anyroad, now’s you’re here, you may as well have a cup of tea with us. I was just about to make one, me dad’ll be along in a minute on his way home from the pub, though you can put the kettle on yourself.’ She hugged Penny, who looked quite content in a strange woman’s arms. ‘There’s no way I’m going to give up this lovely little bundle.’

‘I’ve already made tea,’ Jessica said. ‘I’ll go and fetch it. It would be a shame to waste a whole pot.’

She fetched a dozen eggs at the same time – she’d
brought
a whole tray with her which she’d intended keeping for herself, but Sheila’s open-hearted welcome had touched her. She remembered the way people usually shared things, particularly good fortune if it came their way.

Sheila was overwhelmed when Jess returned. ‘Eggs! A whole dozen! I’ll give some of them to Brenda.’

‘You can buy eggs from the farms,’ Jess explained. She went into the back kitchen and poured the tea.

‘Our Eileen’s started keeping hens out in Melling, though none of them have laid yet, they’re only little.’

‘I must go and see her.’

‘Perhaps we could all go together one weekend?’

‘That’d be nice.’ Jess could hear laughter in the street, men’s voices. The King’s Arms was letting out. She held her breath, feeling on edge as she waited for the key to be drawn through the letterbox, for the door to open. She wondered if she’d purposely forgotten the milk, so she would have an excuse to call on Sheila Reilly the minute she arrived.

A few minutes later came the sound which she’d been so anxiously expecting. The front door was opened. ‘It’s only me, luv,’ a man’s voice called.

‘Come on in, Dad,’ Sheila called back.

And the giant figure of Jack Doyle appeared, almost entirely filling the doorway of the living room.

Jack Doyle stood immobile in the doorway, his face totally expressionless. He was better dressed than usual, in a cheap navy-blue suit and a collar and tie.

‘Jess’s home,’ sang Sheila. ‘She’s moved into number ten, Miss Brazier’s old house. And this is Penelope. Isn’t she lovely? And it’s ever so strange, Dad, but from certain angles, she’s the image of our Siobhan.’

Jack blinked and came shuffling awkwardly into the room. ‘Where’s Arthur?’ he growled, directing his question at Sheila, as if the red-headed figure in the blue dress were invisible.

‘Arthur might come later,’ Sheila explained.

‘What happened to the Grahams?’

‘Dai Evans said the rent collector told him they were bad payers – they both had the same landlord. They were chucked out. I already told you that, Dad.’

‘That’s not fair,’ Jack exploded. ‘There were five kids in that family and Alfie Graham hasn’t worked in years.’

‘Only because he didn’t want to,’ Sheila argued. ‘There’s plenty of work for everyone since the war began.’ She regarded him with a certain amount of disapproval. ‘You’re dead rude, Dad. You haven’t said hello to Jess.’

‘Hello,’ he said grudgingly.

‘Hello, Jack,’ said Jessica. Her face was as expressionless as his, disguising entirely the thrill of excitement that coursed through her.

She’d loved Jack Doyle since she was twelve, when he
had
come to the yard to complain bitterly because her father had given only coppers to some old lady for a family treasure which was worth far more. He was eight years older than she was, already courting, and barely aware of Jessie Hennessy’s existence. Anyroad, he wouldn’t be interested in someone like her, the daughter of a capitalist, a man who made his living like a leech on the backs of the poor – or so she’d heard him yell at her father on more than one occasion.