Daughters of Liverpool

by Annie Groves

  ‘And Bella’s safe then, Auntie Vi, and her house as well?’ Grace pressed her aunt, taking pity on her mother, and showing that maturity Jean had seen in her.

  Despite the fact that everything in her aunt’s kitchen was new and modern, including the Rayburn oven Vi and Edwin had had fitted after they had moved in, Grace acknowledged to herself how much she preferred her mother’s kitchen – equally as spick and span as Auntie Vi’s but much more homely. Even the chairs in her aunt’s kitchen felt uncomfortable to sit on and unwelcoming, Grace thought ruefully. She was glad though that she’d worn the new blue coat and hat Seb had bought her for Christmas. She’d seen the sharp way her aunt had inspected them – pursing her lips slightly as she did so.

  ‘Yes, Bella and her house are both safe, thank you, Grace,’ Vi answered. ‘She and I were both at our WVS meeting when the air-raid siren went off. One has one’s duty to do, after all.

  ‘Now that you are here, Jean, I may as well tell you that Charles is on the point of becoming engaged to be married,’ Vi continued, changing the subject.

  Now it was Grace’s turn to catch her mother’s eye and to mouth behind her auntie Vi’s back, ‘Charles!’ and pull a small face.

  ‘It isn’t official as yet, but there will be a notice going in the papers over Easter. Edwin and I are both delighted. It won’t be a long engagement. I always think that June is the perfect month in which to have a wedding. Charles is being so brave, but as our doctor has said, with his back he shouldn’t really be in uniform. Charles doesn’t like to make anything of it, of course, but naturally him trying to drag poor Eustace onto the boat the way he did was bound to damage his back. Edwin says that the army are bound to give him an honourable discharge, when he goes before his Medical Board. Of course, Charles will be disappointed. He’s been keen to do his bit right from the start, but as Edwin says, there’s more than one way for him to serve his country and now that Edwin’s business has been scheduled by Mr Bevin as being engaged on essential work of national importance, he’s going to need Charles working in the business with him. Of course, as a soon-to-be-married man Charles needs to be able to support his wife. Daphne is such a delightful girl. That’s Daphne Wrighton-Bude, of course,’ Vi elaborated, for all the world as though they had never heard her name before, as Grace said wrathfully to her mother later when they were on their way home.

  ‘Charles saved her brother’s Eustace’s life at Dunkirk as you know,’ Vi continued complacently. ‘Mr Wrighton-Bude, that’s Daphne’s father, is a member of Lloyd’s. Oh, I’m sorry, Jean, you won’t know what that is, of course.’

  ‘Of course we do,’ Grace piped up quickly. ‘We were talking about it only the other week, weren’t we, Mum, when Seb was telling us about that relation of his.’

  Jean nodded. It always gave her a bit of a kick in the stomach when Vi was like this with her, even though she knew she should be used to it by now. After all, her twin had spent all of her married life looking down on Jean and her family, and making it clear that she thought she and Edwin and their children were above Jean and Sam and theirs. It wouldn’t suit Vi at all if she knew that, far from feeling envious of her, she wouldn’t have swapped places with her for double rations for the rest of the war, Jean knew, but it was the truth.

  Sam had warned her that Vi wouldn’t thank her for her concern, or for taking the trouble to travel all the way out to Wallasey to check up on her, and as usual he had been right. However, Jean knew that she would never have been able to forgive herself if she had not done so. She was, after all, the elder of the two of them, and as the elder she had always had it impressed on her by their mother that it was her responsibility to take care of her younger sister.

  ‘You’re lucky to have caught me in,’ Vi added. ‘I’ve only just popped back from the church hall. Naturally in my role as second in command on our WVS committee I’m heavily involved, dealing with those poor unfortunates who were made homeless by the bombs. I shouldn’t say so, of course, but our chairwoman simply couldn’t manage without me. Some of the women who join the WVS simply aren’t up to the work and need constant organising. One practically has to stand over them.’

  Vi looked pointedly at her kitchen clock as she told them firmly, ‘You’ll want to leave yourselves plenty of time to get back, I know. You should be able to get a cup of tea at the ferry terminal. I’ve made it a rule not to offer visitors any kind of refreshments whilst the war is on. It seems so unfair to our sailors.’

  ‘Cooeee, Mrs Firth, are you there?’ a new voice called out from the other side of the half-open back door. ‘Only I’ve brought you some of those biscuits you said you and the other ladies from the WVS liked so much, you know, the ones that my special contact brings for me.’

  Black market was what Vi’s neighbour meant, Jean knew, as Grace only just managed to subdue a splutter of laughter. Vi had heard her, though, Jean could tell that from the angry colour burning her twin’s cheeks.

  Ten minutes later, as they walked to the bus stop together, Grace’s arm tucked through Jean’s, Grace squeezed her mother’s arm and told her lovingly, ‘I’m ever so glad that you are my mum, Mum, and not Auntie Vi.’

  ‘And I’m glad that you’re my daughter, Grace,’ Jean returned, blinking away a tear.

  ‘Lancaster Avenue took a direct hit and they’re saying that over eighty have been killed.’

  Bella nodded as she listened to her mother. She was doing her personal ironing, and had just finished ironing a delicate silk blouse, which she hung on a padded silk coat hanger before hanging it on her ironing maiden, whilst the household laundry, which had been delivered that morning, was stacked on the kitchen table.

  Vi had arrived ten minutes earlier, announcing that she wasn’t staying long because she was on her way to the local reception hall to oversee the restoration of order after the previous night’s influx of people rendered homeless by the bombing.

  ‘Just look at the creases in this sheet,’ she complained crossly to Vi, half unfolding the offending item to display the creases ironed into it. ‘I’ve a good mind to send it back.’

  ‘You’ve got your iron on – you may as well run it over the sheet. That will get rid of it,’ Vi advised her.

  ‘I’ve got enough to do ironing my blouses without having to start ironing sheets as well,’ Bella told her.

  Bella wasn’t domestically inclined although she did rather like ironing her own pretty things, and besides, ironing them herself meant that they were done properly.

  Refolding the sheet, she placed it back on top of the others, and reached for another blouse from her ironing basket, carefully dampening it and then rolling it up to spread the damp, before unrolling and starting to iron the collar.

  ‘I’ve had a word with your father about you going to work for him, Bella, and I’m afraid that he says that it just won’t do, not with him being a councillor. He says that other people will think that he’s made up a job for you so that you don’t have to register for proper work, and a man in his position just can’t do that, especially not with your brother on the point of getting engaged.’

  Bella looked up angrily from her ironing. ‘So Daddy can’t find a job for me, but he can find one for Charlie, is that what you’re saying, Mummy?’

  Vi looked pained. ‘Really, Bella, this isn’t like you. You’ve always been such a sweet-natured girl. I don’t think that your father would be very pleased if he knew what you were saying. It’s always been understood that Charles would join him in the business; Charles was working for him before—’

  ‘Before he joined up?’ Bella stopped her mother furiously, realising just in time that she was in danger of singeing her blouse, and removing the iron. ‘But he did join up, didn’t he, and now he’s trying to wriggle his way out of the army by claiming that he’s got a bad back just so that he can marry Daphne and come home and have a cushy number working for Daddy.’

  ‘Bella, that’s a dreadful thing to say. Your brother is a hero. Everyone kno
ws that. I don’t know what’s happened to the sweet-natured daughter you were, I really don’t.’

  Bella could have pointed out that what had happened to her was that she’d married a man who had knocked her senseless and been unfaithful to her, a man who tried to kill her and had succeeded in killing their unborn child. She could, of course, equally truthfully have pointed out that she had never actually been ‘sweet-natured’ in the first place, but of course she did not.

  Instead she tossed her head and said triumphantly, ‘Actually, Mummy, I’ve already got a job, so I don’t need one from Daddy.’

  ‘What kind of job? I do hope it isn’t something dreadful like factory work, Bella, not with Charles about to propose to Daphne.’

  ‘I’m going to be the Assistant Manageress at the new crèche. Laura Wright, who’s the Manager, asked me last night.’

  Bella pressed the iron down very hard on the hem of her blouse as she spoke. She was sick of having to listen to her mother going on about Daphne.

  As soon as she had finished ironing her blouse she put it on a hanger, unplugged her iron, and told her mother firmly, ‘Actually, Mummy, I must dash. I’ve arranged to meet up with Laura and if I don’t go and get ready I’m going to be late. We’re going to be frightfully busy with all this bombing. You will excuse me, won’t you?’

  Bella was still seething with fury over her parents’ sudden preference for her brother when she reached the small church school where the crèche was to be established.

  She found Laura in the school room that was to be the new crèche, surrounded by recently delivered second-hand cots and small beds.

  ‘I do hope you haven’t come to tell me that you’ve changed your mind and you don’t want the job after all,’ she told Bella anxiously from the middle of the jumble of furniture. ‘Only I’ve already spoken to the powers that be and they’ve given the go-ahead to you becoming my assistant.’

  ‘No, I haven’t changed my mind,’ Bella reassured her, eyeing Laura’s smart black and white tweed skirt and grey jumper, and feeling glad that she had taken the trouble to change into a smart outfit herself.

  ‘Thank goodness for that.’ Laura scrambled out of the confusion to stand next to Bella. ‘We’ll celebrate with a cup of tea and a biscuit in a minute. The biscuits are Garibaldis. Apparently someone knows someone who can get them. Oh, and I’ve got some forms for you to fill in. You’ll be paid two pounds ten shillings a week, which isn’t a huge amount, I know, not as much as they earn working in munitions.’

  Bella didn’t need to fake the shudder she gave at the thought of working in a munitions factory.

  ‘Isn’t it dreadful about the bombing last night?’ said Laura. ‘The siren went off the minute I got in from the WVS meeting. One of the bombs went off in the next road to where I’m billeted, although Lancaster Road seems to have had the worst of it. I’d been told that it was unlikely that the Germans would want to bomb Wallasey. Can you take this list and check off the bedding on it for me?’

  More bedding? Bella hesitated and then, remembering the conversation she’d had with her mother earlier, she told Laura, ‘I suppose they were aiming for the docks at Birkenhead,’ taking the list that Laura was holding out to her, and then removing the dark sage-green swagger coat she was wearing over a matching skirt and a lighter sage-green jumper with pretty pearl buttons on the shoulder and the cuffs of the sleeves.

  She had bought the outfit, along with several others, when Lewis’s had had its last order in from Paris. Alan had been furious at the time, she remembered, complaining when he received the bill, which she had had sent to him, but Bella hadn’t cared about his anger at the time and she cared even less now. She loved nice clothes and couldn’t bear the thought of not having any.

  Just over two hours later, Bella took the cup of tea Laura handed to her and sat down on a chair. Out of the chaos that had greeted her arrival she and Laura between them had achieved a very creditable scene of order and neatness.

  A feeling Bella couldn’t put a name to, other than to recognise that it was both unfamiliar and rather pleasant, had completely banished the angry resentment she’d felt earlier.

  ‘Well, last night’s bombing really did hit you for six, didn’t it?’ Carole said to Katie. ‘That’s the third time I’ve asked you if you fancy coming to the matinée at the pictures with me on Saturday.’

  Katie gave her friend an apologetic but slightly wan smile, as they sat together in the staff canteen, having their morning tea break. It wasn’t just the horror of what she had witnessed last night that was making it so difficult for her to think about more mundane everyday things, she admitted, it was also Luke Campion. There – it had happened again: that disconcerting way her heart had suddenly started bumping into her ribs every time Luke’s name popped into her head.

  It must be something to do with the shock of being caught out in the open with bombs falling all around them, Katie told herself.

  ‘Well?’ Carole demanded impatiently. ‘Do you want to?’

  Did she want to what? Oh, of course, the cinema.

  ‘Yes I’d love to,’ she told Carole.

  It had been ever such a shock when Luke had put his arms round her like that and had held her so comfortingly. She would never, ever forget how kind he had been. And she would never forget either the awful reality of those poor people and the way they had died.

  ‘And guess what?’ Carole continued giggling. ‘Old Frosty’s going to get ever such a shock ’cos I’ve made up this letter making out that it’s from a spy, like, and I’m going to give it to her. She’ll think she’s the bee’s knees until she finds out it’s just a joke.’

  Carole’s words brought Katie out of her sad reverie. She looked at her friend in considerable alarm.

  ‘Carole, you mustn’t do that,’ she protested.

  ‘Why not? It’s just a bit of fun.’

  ‘A bit of fun that could lose you your job and get you into a lot of trouble,’ Kate prophesied. ‘You can’t make jokes about spying. Someone might think that you really are.’

  ‘I just thought it would be a bit of fun, that’s all. After all we’re always being told to look out for oddities, but none of us ever finds anything, and I reckon it would liven things up a bit if I pretended that I had.’

  ‘Well it will certainly liven things up if you were to get shot as a spy,’ Katie agreed bluntly.

  She could see from Carole’s expression how much she had shocked the other girl and she was pleased. She knew that Carole didn’t mean any harm. She was just high-spirited and a bit bored, because their work wasn’t as exciting as she had thought it was going to be. But Katie knew that Carole would be in terrible trouble if she didn’t frighten her off her ‘joke’.

  ‘Very well then, I won’t do it,’ Carole agreed.

  ‘And you should have seen our Vi’s face when this neighbour of hers arrived and handed over the Garibaldis after Vi had just been sticking her nose up in the air and telling me and Grace how she felt it was her duty not to offer visitors anything,’ Jean laughed later that evening, as she related to Sam the events of her visit. They were in the back room, sharing a pot of tea whilst Jean told Sam about her day, and darned Sam’s spare pair of heavy-duty socks. ‘Our Grace could hardly keep her face straight, and no wonder when Vi had already had us trying not to laugh when she kept on calling their Charlie “Charles”. Of course, she had to make the point that Charles and Daphne wouldn’t have to wait to get married, like our Grace and her Seb … What’s wrong?’ Jean asked when she saw that Sam was frowning.

  ‘I was just thinking about them biscuits,’ he said grimly. ‘Black market, like as not, and you know how I feel about that, Jean.’

  Jean did, of course, and she shared his feelings. Black market goods meant that racketeers were making money from other people’s misfortune.

  ‘One of the lads was saying whilst his mother was in the air-raid shelter just before Christmas a couple of so-and-sos went into the house and took eve
rything they could get their hands on – all the food and the kids’ presents,’ Sam continued. ‘And she wasn’t the only one they’d done it to. It’s common knowledge that the sound of an air-raid siren going off brings out every thief in Liverpool.’

  Jean sighed. ‘That’s such a nasty thing to do, Sam, especially when there’s a war on.’

  ‘Aye, well, there being a war on doesn’t stop some folk being rotten. In fact, it gives some of them a chance to be even more rotten than they already were, if you ask me.’

  ‘There’s some, though, that are worth their weight in gold,’ Jean told him softly. ‘Like Katie, for instance. I couldn’t believe it when Luke told us how she’d run back to get the tea cups.’

  ‘Aye. She’s a good lass,’ Sam agreed. Luke had taken Sam to one side after the all clear had gone and he’d delivered Katie safely back to Ash Grove, to tell his father about the machine-gunning of the buses and their passengers.

  ‘She didn’t say much but it wasn’t the kind of thing you’d want anyone to see, if you know what I mean, Dad. You might want to keep a bit of an eye on her for a couple of days, to make sure she’s all right,’ Luke had told him gruffly.

  The siren went off just as Katie had managed to close her eyes, jerking her right back into immediate wakefulness, her heart pounding and her stomach tensing.

  Up above her in their own room she could hear the twins, and then Jean’s voice calling out urgently, ‘Come on, girls!’

  There wouldn’t be any Luke tonight to tell her off for going back for his mother’s tea cups and then holding her so protectively, shielding her from that ghastly sight of those poor people.

  Quickly Katie pushed him out of her thoughts, and pulled on her ‘siren suit’, as the warm all-in-one dungaree suits were called. For those fortunate enough to have them they were ideal for keeping you warm when you had to spend the night in a chilly and often damp air-raid shelter. It was said that Winston Churchill himself wore one given to him by his wife.