Daughters of Liverpool

by Annie Groves

  Her parents were both dead now, killed in the November bombings – not that she missed them much. Why should she? Her dad had never been around and her mother had been ashamed of her on account of her having inherited her dad’s Italian looks. Bad blood, that’s what her mother had always said she’d got, and her mother’s family as well – her aunt and uncle who had taken her in after the bombing. Not that they’d wanted to take her in, not for one minute. They’d only done it because the council were paying them to house her.

  They’d certainly got the best of the bargain in Lena’s eyes, at least. She had to hand over her wages from her job, and her auntie Flo had taken her ration book off her.

  Lena’s thoughts turned from the unpleasantness of her family and her situation to the far more pleasant matter of the handsome young soldier standing on the step in front of her. The way he was looking at her made her feel just like those girls she’d read about in love stories she collected from the library for Mrs Watson, one of the women her aunt made her go cleaning for. She’d gone all sort of swoony, just like the girl in Love at First Sight, the story she’d been reading only last week. She’d been swept off her feet by a rich man with a title who’d rescued her from her cruel stepfather and married her. Lena wasn’t so silly as to think that a rich man with a title was going to come walking down her street, thank you very much, never mind marry her, but the prospect of a handsome young soldier falling for her and taking her away from Bessie Street and her mean aunt and uncle and her cousin was certainly an appealing one.

  In all the stories she’d read, the man almost always fell in love with the girl once he’d kissed her. Lena hadn’t kissed anyone yet, but she’d seen how it was done at the pictures, and it had looked very nice too. Had the soldier moved a bit closer to her? She was wearing her cousin’s borrowed heels and she wobbled on them a bit with them being too big.

  As the girl lost her balance and leaned towards him, Charlie seized his chance, grasping her firmly round the waist. And what a waist. His two hands met easily around it, but his attention was focused more on the lushness of the breasts above her narrow waist. Lust, scalding hot and insistent, poured through his body. Charlie pulled her closer, his arms fully around her now, his body pressed purposefully into hers, with its male message of desire, his mouth taking possession of her tempting red lips.

  Ooohh, it was just like in the films, only she hadn’t realised that kissing involved having a man push his tongue into your mouth, Lena acknowledged. Once you got used to it, mind, it was nice, especially when you touched his tongue with your own.

  A messenger boy cycling across the bottom of the road saw them and rang his bell cheekily, bringing Charlie back to reality. A quick glance at his service watch told him that it was time for him to leave.

  ‘Very nice,’ he smiled appreciatively. ‘Maybe next time you’ll invite me in and we can get to know one another a bit better,’ he joked, giving the girl a meaningful wink.

  ‘Maybe I will or maybe I won’t,’ she responded saucily, before slipping back inside the house and closing the door.

  * * *

  ‘What do you mean, you couldn’t get the cash?’ Dougie wasn’t smiling now, and nor were the two men standing behind him, big solid dangerous-looking men of a type spawned by the boxing clubs that proliferated in the poor areas of the city.

  ‘I’ve brought you these instead,’ Charlie continued without answering Dougie’s question, as he opened his hand to show him the rings. ‘Courtesy of my sister. There’s over a hundred quid’s worth there.’

  Charlie had kept back Bella’s own engagement ring and her pearls as a bit of an insurance policy for himself.

  Dougie looked at the rings and then at Charlie. ‘Give ’em to you, did she, or did you help yourself?’

  ‘They belonged to her late mother-in-law,’ Charlie told him, again not answering Dougie’s question.

  ‘I reckon there’s only seventy quid’s worth there, maximum,’ Dougie told him, ‘and we agreed on a hundred.’

  Charlie managed to resist the temptation to say that he hadn’t agreed to anything.

  ‘Got any more, have yer?’ Dougie asked him, his gaze going to Charlie’s pocket in a way that said he’d guessed that Charlie had.

  ‘Only this,’ Charlie told him, reluctantly showing him Bella’s own engagement ring.

  ‘All right,’ Dougie grunted after inspecting it for several seconds, ‘it will have to do, I suppose.’

  Well, at least he’d got to keep the pearls, Charlie comforted himself ten minutes later, only too glad to be able to put the pub and the men in it behind him. The evening hadn’t been completely wasted, though. There’d been the girl, after all, and what a corker she was. Pity he didn’t have time to go back for a bit more of what she’d had on offer.

  From her bedroom window Lena had seen Charlie go into the pub and then come out again, and was impressed. Everyone in the area knew that the pub doubled as the headquarters for the gang who ran the local black market business. Bad people to get on the wrong side of, Dougie and his men were, but he was obviously well in with them, she decided when she saw Charlie come out of the pub all in one piece and walk off down the road. He was the business, he was, and no mistake, anyone could see that. He talked proper posh and he’d smelled nice too. Just imagine having a man like that fall in love with you. Lena was imagining it. He’d buy her nice clothes and take her nice places, and they’d get married. Her cousin might be full of herself because she was walking out with a merchant seaman, but she wouldn’t give anyone tuppence for her cousin’s beau, for all the airs and graces she was giving herself since she’d taken up with him. He certainly didn’t compare with her lovely lad, Lena decided happily. And her soldier boy had been ever so gentlemanly as well, not making them cheeky suggestions like so many other men had started doing since she’d filled out a bit. That sort must be daft if they thought she didn’t know what they were after. Well, they wouldn’t get it from her, for all that her aunt and uncle kept going on about her having bad blood. She’d better get out of her borrowed finery, Lena realised. Because if her cousin came back and found her parading around in her clothes she’d be screaming the place down and ripping her clothes off Lena’s back. She’d felt ever so nice, though, all dressed up, and she’d seen how much the soldier had liked the way she looked.

  As he got on the ferry, Charlie acknowledged that he had felt far worse than he had expected when he’d handed Bella’s jewellery over to Dougie, but what choice had he had? At least he’d got Dougie off his back now. Better to think about that pleasurable little interlude with the girl than feel guilty about Bella’s rings. Charlie’s smile broadened at the memory of her.

  She’d been a knowing one and no mistake. Pity that messenger had come along just as things had been getting hot. Charlie liked sexually aware girls who understood the score and who knew that a man like him simply wanted a bit of fun with no strings attached. Of course, girls like that would be off limits for him once he and Daphne were married. And getting married would bring him plenty of compensations to set against the fun he’d be missing out on. He’d be out of uniform, for one thing, and his own boss, well more or less, but Charlie reckoned his father would be willing to give him a lot more authority and leeway than he had done before, and if the prospect of sex with Daphne wasn’t particularly exciting then so what? Marriage wasn’t about exciting sex. Charlie only had to look at his own parents to know that.

  He’d got a lot to look forward to, including the fact that since Daphne was her parents’ only child, ultimately a pretty decent inheritance from them when they died. Yes, all in all he had every right to feel pretty pleased with himself, Charlie decided happily.

  NINETEEN

  Thursday 1 May

  ‘Nearly going home time, thank goodness. I’m whacked,’ Carole complained, pushing her hair back from her face and leaning back in her chair to stretch her neck muscles, and then lifting her hair clear of the white collar of her pink and white
striped shirtwaister dress.

  It had been a warm sunny day and the late afternoon sunlight coming in through the windows showed the drowsy dance of the dust in the air.

  ‘Thank goodness it will soon be the weekend. Me and Andy thought we might go and have a look at that dancing competition that’s being held. Mind you, I reckon that two and six a ticket is a bit steep.’

  ‘What dancing competition?’ Katie asked.

  Carole shook her head. ‘You must have eyes only for your Luke if you haven’t seen the posters for it. They’re all over the place, and there’s been an advertisement for it in the paper as well. You and Luke ought to enter; I reckon the pair of you would have a good chance of winning.’

  Katie smiled obediently, but it wasn’t easy. Things had been very tense between her and Luke since the Easter weekend. Not that anything had been said by either of them, but Katie just knew that Luke somehow blamed her for the motorcyclist having stopped, whilst she still felt desperately hurt that he so obviously didn’t trust her after the way they had been together and the promises they had made one another.

  Carole yawned. ‘I’ll be ever so glad for a bit of a lie-in as well. I overslept this morning, and of course Frosty caught me coming in late. I reckon she was hanging round hoping to catch me out.’

  The supervisor probably had been, Katie acknowledged. ‘You really must be careful,’ she warned Carole worriedly.

  Carole laughed and shrugged dismissively. ‘I know she’s got it in for me, but I reckon she won’t do anything.’

  Katie certainly hoped not. She liked Carole and would miss her bright and breezy company if she were to be dismissed.

  She was looking forward to going home time herself today. She had been called into the supervisor’s office earlier and given instructions to write another letter to the spy, using the code she had been given and keeping to the dance music theme he used, and she was already feeling anxious and worrying about bearing the responsibility for something so important.

  She already had the beginnings of a headache, and felt hot and uncomfortable, despite the fact that she had caught her hair back from her face with a bandeau to match her royal-blue and white patterned skirt. Her short-sleeved white blouse, which had felt so crisp this morning, now felt tired and wilted – like her, Katie admitted, and having to wear her court shoes without stockings because of the rationing had resulted in an uncomfortable blister on her left heel. All the girls were wearing their summer clothes, filling the room with a riot of brightly patterned fabrics, which normally would have lifted Katie’s spirits.

  Was it wrong of her to wish that she hadn’t seen that coded letter and recognised what it was?

  Whatever she wrote would be checked, of course, but whilst the code could be checked she was the one who knew the most about the actual musicians and dances that formed such a vital part of it and if she got that wrong then it could alert the spy to the fact that he had been found out and was now being fed useless information.

  Katie knew that she wouldn’t be seeing Luke this weekend and she was both disappointed and relieved.

  ‘I dare say them twin sisters of your Luke’s will be entering the dance competition,’ Carole remarked.

  ‘They wouldn’t be allowed to,’ Katie told her. ‘Their dad is very strict about things like that, and they are only fifteen. Mind you, I’m surprised that they haven’t said anything about it, or tried to get permission to give it a go.’

  ‘Perhaps they have but you was too busy with their big brother to notice,’ Carole teased her.

  Katie managed a stilted laugh but her eyes were stinging with tears. It had been a week since she had last seen Luke, and then only briefly when he had dashed home to explain that he’d volunteered for extra duty so that one of the other corporals could have leave to go home to Shrewsbury to see his wife and their new baby.

  At Jean’s insistence Katie had gone to the door with him but the brief kiss they had exchanged hadn’t really done anything to ease her misery. It had even occurred to her that Luke might have deliberately tried to pick a quarrel with her because he had changed his mind about her. In the cold light of day, had her behaviour the previous night put him off her? Had he decided that she was too fast perhaps? The kind of girl he couldn’t trust because she had allowed him such intimacies?

  She would never know, Katie admitted, because Luke obviously wasn’t going to tell her and she certainly wasn’t going to ask him.

  Charlie looked at the letter. There was no need for him to read it again. He had already read it twice and his heart was still thudding in fast heavy beats with a mixture of fear and anger.

  Dougie had written to him to tell him that two of the rings he had given him were worthless, and that if Charlie knew what was good for him he would make up the difference between what Dougie had got for the remaining ring – a mere twenty pounds, he claimed – and the hundred pounds he had demanded originally as the price of his silence, and by the coming weekend. Otherwise, Dougie would be paying a visit to Charlie’s sister, to talk to her about her engagement ring, and writing a letter to Charlie’s fiancée and her father.

  ‘Hellfire and damnation,’ Charlie swore savagely. Now he was going to have to drive up to Liverpool or risk Dougie making good his threat. Not that Charlie was convinced that Dougie was telling him the truth about the rings. More likely he was after more money, but Charlie couldn’t afford to call his bluff. He could insist, though, that he and Dougie went together to have the rings valued. But if they did turn out to be duds, what then?

  Charlie looked out through the window of the rough-and-ready corrugated iron hut where he was standing, one of many that served the camp. Across from it he could see the officers’ mess. He’d already been approached by a still-wet-behind-the-ears newly commissioned captain, who wanted to buy his car from him.

  Charlie’s scarlet MG roadster was his pride and joy, but not so much so that it meant more to him that his future. He needed the MG to drive up to Liverpool to see Dougie, but Charlie was pretty confident that the young captain would give him a deposit on the car. He could use that to pay off Dougie, get back to camp, hand the car over to the captain and collect the rest of the money, and then he’d just have to convince his father that the car had gone AWOL – ‘borrowed’ by one of the other men and smashed up.

  With him due to go before a medical board for assessment of his back injury, followed, with luck, by his dismissal from the army as medically unfit, his mother would soon see to it that his father got him another car. He’d need it for work and, of course, for seeing Daphne, and the old man could certainly afford to buy him one with the money he was raking in from his military contracts, if all the boasting he’d done to Charlie was to be believed.

  Charlie screwed up Dougie’s letter and tossed it into the small stove that served to heat the hut. Just as well he’d got some leave to use up, and who knew, he might even have time to pay a call on that willing little brunette.

  ‘You’re taking a bit of a risk, aren’t you?’

  Bella frowned at Laura’s words.

  The crèche had opened earlier in the week and already they were being begged to find extra places by desperate mothers.

  To Bella’s own astonishment, instead of being irritated by the children as she had expected to be, she had been surprised to realise just how much she enjoyed having to help out when the nursery nurses were busy. The children made her laugh, with their quaint little sayings, and she adored the fact that they told her that she was pretty. One of the senior nursery nurses had even grudgingly told her that she had a ‘way with the little ones’. It was the babies who drew her the most, though, although she resented her own unwanted feelings, and tried to keep away from them. Sometimes she found that she was standing looking down into one of the cots at a sleeping baby without knowing how or why she had got there, and, even worse, battling against a longing to pick the baby up and hold it tightly.

  Bella didn’t like having feelings she couldn�
��t understand. Far better to pretend that they simply did not exist than to dwell on them.

  ‘What do you mean?’ she asked Laura.

  ‘I mean you going out and having dinner with a married man.’

  ‘I haven’t been out with any married man,’ Bella denied.

  ‘That’s not what I’ve heard,’ Laura insisted, adding sharply, ‘In fact, Bella, I think I ought to warn you that the person who saw you – one of our mothers – made the point that she wasn’t very happy about the thought of her children being in a crèche where there was a husband-stealer around. She said that it lowered the tone and that other women would think twice about leaving their children here if they thought the crèche was employing the kind of women who thought nothing of breaking up marriages.’

  ‘The only person I’ve been out with is a personal friend, and I can tell you that he most certainly is not married,’ Bella defended herself and her relationship with Commander Fleming. She had been thrilled when he had telephoned her three days after their initial meeting to ask her out to dinner the following weekend. A man who rang midweek to secure a weekend date had to be keen.

  As he was a commander, Bella had half expected that he would take her to one of Liverpool’s exclusive officers’ clubs but instead he had taken her into the country again, this time to a small hotel. There had been other diners there, of course, but the gardens had been very private – and dark – when they had gone out into them to ‘walk off’ their meal.

  She had permitted Ralph to kiss her but nothing more, even removing his hand from her breast when he had placed it there. He hadn’t objected or said anything, but the smile he had given her when he had lit them each a cigarette had told Bella that he wasn’t going to give up and that he fully intended to seduce her into giving in. A man who wanted her … Really wanted her, not like Alan, who had just used her and then turned his back on her, or Jan, who hadn’t wanted her at all, and who had then been so very unkind and untruthful about her.