Daughters of Liverpool

by Annie Groves

  At best, though, he’d probably chase the boy off and then she’d never see him again, and Emily knew that, daft though it was, she would miss him. Was that really what she was reduced to? Being afraid of missing a boy who hadn’t so much as said a word to her and only wanted her because of the food she gave him?

  So what was new? After all, she already had a husband who only stayed married to her because of her money.

  She ought to leave.

  ‘I’ll come in the morning tomorrow,’ she told the boy, ‘about ten o’clock – oh, and take this and go and buy yourself some warm socks and gloves and a scarf.’

  The two half-crowns she pushed towards him gleamed briefly before he reached for them.

  Emily never knew what it was that made her turn round once she had got to the end of the alleyway. It wasn’t any kind of sound – there hadn’t been one. Perhaps it had been some need within her to take a last look at the boy; whatever it was she was glad she had obeyed it when she saw the two heavily built youths who had crept out of the shadows behind her back.

  One of them was pinning the boy against the wall whilst the other went through his pockets.

  ‘Come on, where are they? We saw the money she give you,’ she heard the heavier of the boys demanding.

  When the boy made no response the youth holding him shook him roughly. ‘Need yer memory giving a bit of a shake, do yer? Well, Artie here don’t mind doing that, do yer, Artie?’

  There was the soft but sickening sound of a bunched fist meeting vulnerable flesh and then a burst of cruel laughter.

  ‘Aaw, look at that, he’s crying. Hurt, did it? Well, that’ll learn you then, won’t it, ’cos there’s plenty more where that come from. Now give us them half-a-crowns.’

  Emily had heard enough. She advanced on the bullies with a ferocity she’d never have used for her own protection, demanding, ‘Let go of him otherwise it will be the worse for the pair of you.’

  They turned round to stare at her, one of them bunching his fists until Emily swiped him hard with the heavy weight of her old black shopping bag with the Thermos in it.

  The bully yelped in pain, releasing the boy to lift his hands to protect himself as he dodged Emily’s second swing with her bag.

  ‘Here, Artie, let’s get out of here,’ he yelled to his friend. ‘She’s a ruddy madwoman. I ain’t having me head bashed in for no five bloody bob, that I ain’t.’

  ‘The next time it will be the police that will be waiting for you,’ Emily warned them, as they fled down the alleyway towards Roe Street.

  She was out of breath and her heart was racing in a way she knew her doctor would have warned her was dangerous but she actually felt more elated than afraid.

  She looked down at the boy. He was looking back at her.

  ‘You can’t stay here,’ she told him emphatically. ‘Not now. I’m taking you home with me.’

  Where had those words come from? Wherever it was they had made Emily feel positively giddy with power and excitement.

  ‘Be much safer for you there. And warmer too. Lost your family in one of the bombings, I expect, haven’t you?’

  At least she was giving him a chance to tell her if there was someone he should be with, Emily reassured herself. And it wasn’t as though, if there was someone, they were much good to him, was it? After all, it had been over a week now that she’d been feeding him.

  Emily reached down and took hold of his hand. It was icy cold and the bones plain to feel through his skin. She was trembling a bit, half shocked by what she was doing and half thrilled, as she tugged him to his feet.

  Once he was on them he looked even thinner and weaker than she had thought. It was a fair walk up to the top end of Wavertree Park but she didn’t want to risk taking him on a bus in case she saw someone she knew. She wanted to get him cleaned up and a bit more respectable-looking before that happened. But then there was no hurry. They could take their time. Con wouldn’t be in until gone midnight. They could stop off at one of the chippies on the way. Emily’s stomach growled eagerly at the thought.

  The neighbours would want to know where he’d come from; she’d have to think of something. Perhaps she could tell them that he was related to her in some roundabout way; after all, any number of folk were having to take in the homeless so there was no reason why she shouldn’t have him to live with her, was there?

  No reason except that Con would play holy hell about it.

  Well, let him, she didn’t care. And it was her house, when all was said and done.

  Katie knew the minute she saw the twins’ faces that her black dress was every bit as dull and unsuitable for Liverpool’s best ballroom’s big Christmas Dance as she had thought.

  Even Jean was looking at her sympathetically. Katie’s heart sank even lower. She really wished that she had not agreed to go to this dance. As her father’s assistant it had been necessary for her to wear businesslike clothes that helped her to fade into the background, not pretty dance dresses.

  ‘Are you really going to the Grafton in that?’ Lou, always more forthright than her twin, asked.

  ‘Lou …’ Jean objected, shaking her head at her daughter.

  ‘It’s all right,’ Katie assured her. ‘I know that my dress is very dull, but I didn’t think to bring a dance frock with me.’ Her words were both the truth and a small face-saving exercise, since in reality she did not possess a ‘dance frock’, but no one need know that.

  ‘Nobody will ask you to dance if you wear that. It’s too dull, more like what me and Sasha will have to wear when we go to work in Lewis’s,’ Lou told her.

  ‘Lou, that’s enough.’ Jean sounded stern now and Katie felt obliged to defend the child.

  ‘Lou’s right, my frock isn’t suitable for a Christmas Dance, but unfortunately I’m going to have to wear it because it’s all I’ve got.’

  ‘You could have borrowed something from Grace if she’d been here,’ said Sasha, ‘couldn’t she, Mum?’

  ‘Yes, I’m sure she could. Wait a minute!’ Jean exclaimed. ‘I’ve just had a thought. There’s that trunk full of clothes our Fran left behind. I’m sure she wouldn’t mind you borrowing something from her if we can find something suitable, Katie. That is, if you don’t mind borrowing?’

  ‘Of course she doesn’t, do you, Katie?’ Lou answered for her.

  Without appearing rude Katie had no choice but to agree.

  Ten minutes later the four of them were upstairs in Katie’s neat, tidy bedroom, but which now reminded her of an expensive dress salon. Clothes were lying on the bed – expensive, beautifully made, elegant clothes that Katie’s mother would have loved.

  ‘What about this, Katie?’ Lou demanded, pirouetting round the room on her toes, holding a pale grey silk taffeta evening dress in front of her. It had a white sash waist and a matching short-sleeved bolero jacket decorated with one white and one grey silk flower that nestled stylishly together.

  It was, Katie knew without even inspecting it properly, a very expensive outfit. It was also perfect for her colouring, and some female instinct she hadn’t known she possessed until now yearned for her to wear it. Even so, she felt obliged to demur.

  ‘It is beautiful, but it looks very expensive.’

  ‘Oh, Fran won’t mind, will she, Mum?’

  ‘I’m sure that she won’t, Katie,’ Jean agreed. ‘Why don’t you try it on?’

  By the time Katie had got the dress on and discovered that it fitted her as though it had been made for her, Jean had found a pair of grey satin shoes to match it, along with a small evening bag, and once the twins had seen her in her borrowed finery, Katie recognised that there was no way she was going to be allowed out of the Campion house wearing her own dull black frock.

  ‘If you’re sure that your sister won’t mind …?’ Katie asked Jean yet again.

  ‘She won’t mind at all,’ Jean assured her. ‘But you’ll need a coat. It’s a cold night and if I know anything about the Grafton at this time of the year you
’ll be queuing outside for a while before you can get in.’

  ‘That’s all right; I’ll wear my own coat,’ Katie told her.

  Her change of clothes made her later meeting Carole than they had planned, which meant that there was indeed rather a long queue for them to join, even though it was only just gone six o’clock.

  ‘That’s because it’s the big Saturday night Christmas Dance,’ Carole told her. ‘Everyone wants to get a good table. I’m glad we’ve got tickets. They’re making those in the queue who haven’t got them wait.’ She gave Katie a warning dig in the ribs and giggled. ‘Just look over there at those army lads eyeing us up.’

  The young men in question had just climbed out of an army truck. One of them, with more cheek than was good for him, Katie thought, winked at them and called out, ‘Waiting for us, girls?’

  ‘Ooohh, cheek,’ Carole breathed, but it was plain to Katie that she was not at all averse to the attention.

  The young men looked decent enough, although the tall one with thick dark hair and the kind of stern, almost brooding, expression that made him look a bit like a film star, didn’t seem too pleased about his friend’s flirting.

  ‘We could be all right tonight with that lot in,’ Carole told Katie, giggling again as she added, ‘Mine’s the one with the fair hair and the nice teeth.’

  The dark-haired one had turned his head to look right at them, and Katie suspected that he didn’t approve of what he saw. He was wearing a corporal’s stripes on his jacket so perhaps he thought himself a cut above the other men and above the kind of girls who flirted with them. The dismissive look he was giving them irked Katie. He might look like a film star but looks weren’t everything.

  ‘You can have them all. I’m not interested,’ she told Carole in a cool voice, adding a smart toss of her head for good measure. She wasn’t having any chap thinking that she was the sort that would go chasing after him.

  ‘Just like I said before,’ Carole laughed, good-naturedly, ‘you’re after someone rich who isn’t in uniform.’

  Katie didn’t say anything. She liked Carole but she suspected that the other girl wanted to egg her on so that she would join her in flirting with the army boys, and Katie didn’t want to do that. It wasn’t that flirting was beneath her, exactly – Katie hoped she wasn’t the sort that thought herself ‘above’ other girls in any kind of way – but at the same time she didn’t feel comfortable with the kind of giggly eyelash-fluttering behaviour to attract male interest that Carole plainly enjoyed.

  The queue was moving forward and the army boys were slotting into it almost directly behind the girls. Katie could see that the tall good-looking corporal was giving her a contemptuous look. Well, let him. She didn’t care.

  Luke’s mouth compressed as Katie turned away from him. So she was after a rich man, was she? Well, he might have guessed that just from the way she looked. She was outstandingly pretty, and she had that air about her when she stuck her nose up that somehow said she thought she was a cut above chaps like him. Not that Luke cared for one minute. Certainly not. If he was interested in getting himself a girl, which he wasn’t, it would be one who was more like her friend, with her ready smile and her bubbly personality.

  Luke hadn’t wanted to come to the Grafton tonight; he’d much rather have gone down to Hatton Gardens and had a chat with his father, to find out just how much damage had been done last night by the Luftwaffe’s bombs. However, his men had begged him to come with them and seeing as some of them were still pretty wet behind the ears, in a strange city, and desperate for a bit of female company, Luke had decided that it was his duty to keep an eye on them. The Grafton was a respectable dance hall, Liverpool’s best – his own sister came here – but still he didn’t want to see his men getting themselves into any kind of trouble by drinking too much and flirting with the wrong girls. There had already been reports of fights breaking out between local men and lads in uniform when there’d been a bit of a misunderstanding over a girl.

  Girls! Luke was glad that he’d decided not to get involved with one. Falling in love with Lillian and then discovering that she’d just been making a fool of him had done him a favour. He wasn’t the green fool now that he’d been when he had first met her. Take now, for instance; he’d seen straight off what that uppity-looking girl was like, and he wasn’t wrong either. She was another Lillian; the sort for whom a decent ordinary chap wasn’t good enough. The sort that wanted a chap with money and prospects, not one who was proud to put on a uniform and fight for his country.

  ‘The quiet one’s a smart piece,’ Andy Lawrence, the fair-haired private who had so cheekily called out to the girls, told Luke admiringly in a low voice, as they stood in the queue behind Katie and Carole.

  ‘Stuck-up piece, more like,’ Luke answered him. ‘You heard what she said: she’s after a chap with money.’

  Unlike Andy, Luke had not made any attempt to keep his voice down, and Katie, overhearing Luke’s comment, could feel her ears burning.

  Well, let him think what he liked, she decided defensively. She didn’t care, and she didn’t have to explain herself to him either.

  It was a cold night, and those girls lucky enough to be queuing with a partner were snuggling up close, whilst several groups of girls were shivering and complaining that their feet would be so numb they wouldn’t be able to dance. Sensibly Katie was wearing her stout work shoes and carrying her borrowed dance shoes in a drawstring canvas bag. She was still conscious of feeling cold, though, and hoped that her nose had not gone too obviously pink.

  ‘I’m freezing,’ Carole complained.

  ‘You can have a borrow of my coat, love,’ the cheeky soldier behind them announced, overhearing Carole’s complaint, ‘but you’ll have to share it with me.’

  ‘Ooohhh.’ Carole pretended to complain, but Katie could see that her eyes were shining and she was smiling.

  The army boys were, of course, trying to look as though the cold wasn’t affecting them and that they were far too tough and manly to be affected by a bit of winter weather. Actually, their corporal looked as though he wasn’t affected by it, Katie admitted, watching him hunch one shoulder and turn out of the wind as he lit himself a cigarette.

  It had just gone twenty past six when Katie and Carole finally got inside, and handed over their coats to the cloakroom attendant.

  ‘Here, can you keep my ticket with yours?’ Carole asked her. ‘Only your bag is bigger than mine.’ Her eyes widened as she gazed at Katie’s frock. ‘Oh, you look ever so nice, Katie. Proper smart and stylish.’

  ‘It isn’t mine,’ Katie felt obliged to admit, sensing that Carole was just a little bit put out by the elegance of Katie’s outfit. ‘All I had was the black frock I wear when I go out with my dad, so my landlady very kindly let me borrow this. It belongs to her sister, but she’s with ENSA – you know, the Entertainments National Service Association, whereby entertainers join up and go out to entertain the troops – and she’s touring somewhere at the moment.’

  To Katie’s relief her explanation had obviously mollified Carole because she told her generously, ‘Well, it looks ever so glamorous, it really does. It makes you look proper posh and no mistake.’

  People were just starting to make their way into the ballroom, and out of habit Katie looked towards the band in their alcove next to the dance floor. She had already seen from the programme pinned up in the foyer that the band leader was a Mrs Wilf Hamer. Katie didn’t think she’d met her; for one thing she suspected that her father, who was inclined to be old-fashioned about such matters, would not have approved of a female band leader. She had forgotten all about the army boys in the queue now and the hostility of the tall dark handsome one, as she focused on the band, or so she told herself.

  * * *

  It was a pity the boy was so weak. Emily would have liked him to walk a bit faster so that they could get away from the theatre, just in case they were seen.

  They’d almost reached the end of the alley
when the boy stopped walking and went rigid.

  Now what was wrong with him? Emily wondered what on earth she could do to get him to move and then looked back over her shoulder, keen to get away before anyone came out of the theatre and saw them.

  Had those bullies hurt him worse than she had thought? Was he in some kind of pain?

  ‘What is it, what’s wrong?’ she began, only to stop when he suddenly looked up at the sky in terror.

  Then Emily heard it: the low droning sound of approaching bombers, quickly followed by the shrill anxious scream of the air-raid warning.

  A thrill of fear went through her, rooting her to the spot, followed by a sense of urgency as she cast a frantic look around herself for an air-raid shelter. The only one she could remember was two streets away on the far side of Roe Street.

  ‘Come on, we need to get ourselves into a shelter,’ she told the boy, her head down as she broke into a lumbering run towards Roe Street, dragging the boy with her.

  Already the night sky was alight with the first crop of incendiary bombs, exploding into the darkness and, as they did so, illuminating the destruction they were causing. Emily froze in horror as one landed on the roof of a building in the next street, and then exploded, sending up a shower of bricks. Woven into the hellish noise of the devastation were the sounds of running feet, cries of warning, and screams of fear and pain as people fled the building and tried to escape the bombs.

  Breaking free of the horror transfixing her, Emily started to run for the safety of the air-raid shelter, somehow managing to dodge the shards of flying glass from blown-out windows.