Daughters of Liverpool

by Annie Groves

  Bella had spent the days since their dinner date basking in the pleasure it gave her to know that a sophisticated man like Ralph wanted her. No one was going to take that away from her and certainly not some stupid woman who mistakenly thought that Ralph was married.

  ‘Bella …’ There was a new note in Laura’s voice, and a look of concern in her eyes that offended Bella’s pride. ‘Look, it’s none of my business, I know—’

  ‘No, it isn’t,’ Bella agreed sharply.

  ‘But are you sure that this chap you’re seeing really isn’t married?’ Laura asked her. ‘Only I know that there are some men about who are using the war as an excuse to, well, get what they want with no strings, if you know what I mean, and that they don’t mind lying about being single to get it.’

  ‘You don’t really think I’m stupid enough to be taken in by that sort, do you?’ Bella challenged her scornfully. ‘I have been married, you know, and widowed. I dare say this woman, whoever she is, thinks that Ralph is married because she’s seen him with his sister.’

  ‘Oh, he’s got a sister?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Have you met her yet?’

  ‘No,’ Bella told Laura defensively. ‘Why should I have done? We’ve only been out for dinner, that’s all. He just happened to mention her to me.’

  It just wasn’t possible that Ralph could have lied to her. She would have known. And she had asked, hadn’t she? He had said straight off when she had referred to him having a wife that he wasn’t married. He was taking her out to dinner again on Saturday and this time he’d suggested that since the hotel he wanted to take her to was a fair distance away, they stay overnight, and she had agreed.

  Of course he would be booking two separate rooms, and she would tell him too about that stupid woman who was spreading rumours about him being married.

  He had upset Katie, Luke knew. But it was only natural for a chap to want to protect his girl from the attentions of other men. Luke certainly didn’t think there was anything wrong in him doing that. He was aware, though, that he needed to do something to put things right between them and show Katie how much she meant to him. If he had been angry then it had only been because he wanted to protect her – and their relationship, he mentally defended his own behaviour. That he might have overreacted and be guilty of an unacceptable level of jealousy was something that the stubborn streak in his nature wouldn’t allow him to consider.

  Instead he had looked around for a way of showing Katie his love, and when he felt he had found one he had been like a dog with two tails.

  Now he couldn’t wait to tell Katie about the treat he was planning for her. It hadn’t been easy wangling another weekend off so soon after Easter, but somehow he’d managed it. Today he’d managed to grab a few hours to catch the ferry from Seacombe to Liverpool; hurry up through the town, walking at top speed, covering the distance in less than half an hour, just so that he could lay his ‘gift’ before Katie and see her excited delight when she learned that he was taking her to London to see her parents. She never said anything, but he knew that she must be missing them, and besides, it was only right that he should introduce himself to them and ask her dad for his permission to court her properly.

  He whistled happily, enjoying the extra hours of daylight and the early evening sunshine, as he walked up to his parents’ back door. His dad would be down at his allotment, and Luke decided that he would go down there after he had seen Katie and have a few words with him.

  ‘Luke!’ his mother exclaimed happily when he walked into the kitchen. ‘We weren’t expecting you.’

  After he had returned her hug Luke asked, ‘Is Katie in?’

  She would be, of course – he knew that – and he hadn’t come home without saying anything to check up on her or anything like that, he reassured himself.

  ‘Yes, she’s upstairs in her room. Luke …’ Jean protested as he headed for the hallway.

  ‘It’s all right, Mum, I’m not planning to do anything I shouldn’t,’ he teased her. ‘It’s just that I’ve got something special to tell her.’

  Jean sighed as she heard him running up the stairs. She supposed she should have stopped him – her own mother would certainly never have allowed Sam to go upstairs into her bedroom – but times had changed and these young people now lived a very different kind of life to the one she and Sam had lived. Besides, it was Luke’s home and she was down here in the kitchen and Katie was not the sort to misbehave or allow a young man to do so with her.

  Katie had been struggling for the last half an hour with her letter. The sun streaming in through the window was distracting her, tempting her to go outside, but of course she couldn’t. Katie was tidy by nature, and the court shoes she had worn for work were now placed side by side next to the wardrobe with shoe trees inside them, waiting for her to clean them ready for the morning, the silk coverlet on her bed neat and straight just like the rag rugs either side of it, and the toiletries on the glass-topped dressing table.

  Her desk was under the window and she looked out of it longingly, and then made herself look back down at her letter.

  She had started off all right with her ‘Dearest Peter’, and the first sentence, writing as she had been instructed,

  I long to be in your arms as much as you sayyou long to be in mine, especially dancing to our favourite band, the Orpheans, although I have heard that they will be moving out of London early in May to play at a new venue in Yorkshire. As yet I haven’t heard who will take their place but I shall let you know as soon as I do.

  Katie had guessed that the Opheans was a code name for someone or several people very high up in the British Government, and that the move out of London she was to refer to was intended to fool the enemy into thinking that this person or persons would be leaving the capital.

  She looked up as the door to her bedroom suddenly opened.

  Luke! She looked at him in consternation. It had been stressed to her that no one other than her supervisor must know what she was doing or see a letter. Quickly she pushed it underneath her writing paper but it was too late, Luke had seen her, and now he was frowning and pushing the door closed, before coming over to the dressing table to demand, ‘Who are you writing to?’

  ‘No one. I mean my father.’

  She was lying to him, Luke knew. A sick feeling of mixed anger and despair was churning his stomach and tearing at his heart.

  ‘Let me see.’

  ‘No. No, Luke, you mustn’t,’ Katie protested, but Luke had already removed the writing pad and seen the letter.

  Katie felt sick with guilt. She had been told not to let anyone know what she was doing as a matter of national security.

  Luke picked up the letter and read out loud, ‘“Dearest Peter …” “Dearest Peter”… ?’

  Katie stared at him. Luke thought that she was writing a love letter to someone else! In her anxiety over the security aspect of what she was doing she had completely overlooked the fact that Luke might completely misinterpret the purpose of the letter.

  ‘Who is he?’

  ‘Luke, please, it isn’t what you think.’

  ‘Of course it’s what I think. It’s all there in black and white. “Dearest Peter”.’

  His face had gone bone white, his blue eyes so dark they were almost black. Katie flinched back from his furious anger almost as though it was a physical blow.

  ‘I might have known. In fact, I did know,’ Luke stormed at her, ‘but I wouldn’t listen to my own good sense. Something told me all along that I couldn’t trust you.’

  He was being so cruel and so unfair. Katie felt shocked as well as hurt and dismayed. Surely he knew she would never ever give her love to anyone else?

  ‘Luke, it isn’t what you think,’ she repeated. ‘I can’t explain but please believe me when I say that I love you and only you.’ Surely he must believe her. She would have believed him. ‘Please trust me, Luke,’ she begged him. ‘I would trust you if our positions were reversed.’
>
  ‘Trust you? You’re the last person I’d trust now,’ Luke told her bitterly. ‘Here,’ he threw a piece of paper towards her, ‘you might as well use these to take your Dearest Peter to London to see your parents. Or do they know him already? Better than me, is he? Someone posh and not in uniform? Well, he’s welcome to you, ’cos I don’t want you now.’

  He was gone before she could say another word, leaving her feeling sick with distress and hurt.

  Jean, who had heard the raised voices, looked at Luke worriedly as he came storming into the kitchen.

  ‘Luke, what’s happened?’

  ‘Not now, Ma …’ he told her, brusquely pulling open the back door, gone before she could stop him.

  Jean looked at the still open kitchen door. There was silence now from upstairs. The twins were out at the pictures and Sam was down at his allotment. She waited half an hour and then, when there was still no sign of Katie, she put on the kettle.

  ‘I’ve brought you a cup of tea.’

  Katie’s red-rimmed eyes and pale set face showed her feelings.

  ‘All young couples have words now and then, Katie love,’ Jean tried to comfort her, but Katie shook her head, tears spilling from her eyes.

  ‘This wasn’t just words,’ she told Jean, and then compressed her mouth against her tears.

  ‘Oh, Katie love,’ Jean protested, her maternal feelings overwhelming her as she sat down on the bed beside her and put her arms around her. ‘Luke will come round,’ she tried to comfort Katie. ‘It’s just a lovers’ tiff, that’s all. You’ll make it up.’

  Katie shook her head. ‘I won’t come down for supper tonight, if you don’t mind, Jean,’ she said woodenly. ‘In fact I think I’ll have an early night.’

  She couldn’t explain to Jean what had happened and she feared that when Luke did tell his mother about the letter she was bound to think the same thing as Luke had done. Jean was Luke’s mother, after all, and he her only son and favourite child, so she couldn’t blame her.

  Jean nodded. Poor girl, and poor Luke too. Lovers’ quarrels were so painful in the early stages of a relationship.

  Jean reached the kitchen just as Sam came in.

  ‘Luke and Katie have had a bit of an upset,’ she told him ruefully. ‘Katie’s upstairs in her room, crying her eyes out, and our Luke’s gone back to camp.’

  Sam gave a small grunt in acknowledgement of what she had said as he washed his hands under the kitchen tap, careful not to use more than one rub of the small sliver of soap Jean had instructed everyone had to last for at least another week.

  ‘They’ll make it up, of course.’

  ‘What was it about?’ Sam asked her, drying his hands on the towel attached to the wooden roller he had made himself.

  ‘I don’t know, and I didn’t like to ask.’

  Sam grunted again and then informed her, ‘Toms are coming on well, and with any luck the early lettuce should be ready in a couple of weeks.’

  ‘I’ll be glad to have a bit of salad stuff again,’ Jean told him as she set about getting their supper ready. Sam never talked about feelings – his own or those of anyone else.

  Upstairs Katie stared at her bedroom wall, engulfed by her unhappiness.

  If Luke really loved her he would have listened to her. He would have let her say that it wasn’t what he thought but that she couldn’t say any more. He would have remembered her work then and guessed surely, as she would have done if their positions had been reversed, that the letter must be something to do with that work. He would then have said to her, as she would have done to him, ‘Is it your work?’ and she would have said, ‘Yes.’

  After all, when you loved someone it was their behaviour towards you on which you judged them and their love, and she had shown Luke nothing but love.

  After Jean had gone back downstairs Katie had gone into the bathroom to wash her face and compose herself before the twins got back and started asking questions.

  Now in her bedroom she sat on the bed. Jean had referred to what had happened as a lovers’ tiff that would be made up and forgotten, but Katie couldn’t see it like that. The truth was that Luke couldn’t see her, the person she really was, because of the feelings Lillian’s betrayal of him had caused. If Luke knew her then he wouldn’t need to suspect her because he would know that she wasn’t the sort of person who would give her love to one man whilst she was involved with another. And if Luke didn’t know her, then how could he really love her?

  Katie heard the twins come in and then the sound of voices from the kitchen. Katie could visualise Jean giving the twins and Sam their suppers, but her own stomach churned sickly at the mere thought of food, never mind having to face Luke’s family. Jean was bound to have told them what had happened.

  She really ought to get ready for bed, Katie acknowledged, but she knew already that she wouldn’t be able to sleep.

  She could hear the twins coming upstairs, but for once they didn’t pause on the landing to speak to her, continuing instead straight up to their own attic room.

  It was over between her and Luke, Katie told herself bleakly. How could it not be?

  She couldn’t stay here now at the Campions’. It would be too painful for her and too uncomfortable for Luke’s family, and for Jean most of all. Was there a procedure in place for when a person wanted to change their billet, Katie wondered drearily. Would she have to explain? Would—

  The sudden urgent wail of the air-raid alarm cut through her thoughts. Her reactions, honed now by previous air raids, had her moving automatically to collect what she would need, and then heading for the stairs just ahead of the twins, who were hurrying down from their room, as Jean called up anxiously from the kitchen.

  Sam shepherded them all out of the house and onto the street to join everyone else hurrying towards the shelter. The night sky was crisscrossed with the powerful arcs of searchlights from the city’s defences, the low thrumming noise of the incoming planes growing louder by the second.

  A volley of anti-aircraft fire from the gun batteries, followed by an explosion, thankfully not close at hand, had them all running faster for the shelter.

  ‘Be careful, won’t you, Sam?’ Jean implored before she followed the twins and Katie into the shelter, knowing that her husband couldn’t join them in the shelter as he had to attend to his duties as an ARP warden, which meant, amongst other things, checking that everyone was safely in the shelter, and then checking the houses themselves for anyone who for any reason had not headed for the shelter.

  ‘I was hoping that we’d seen the last of this, now that we’ve got double summer time,’ one woman complained grumpily as she settled herself on the side of one of the bunk beds. The air-raid siren had obviously woken her from her sleep, because she was wearing her dressing gown and her hair was in rag curlers.

  The door to the shelter had been closed now but they could still hear the sound of the anti-aircraft guns and the bombs exploding.

  ‘Sounds like they’re after the docks again,’ one of the men commented, and automatically they all tensed and listened in silence whilst outside incendiary bombs rained down from the sky and the anti-aircraft battery waged war against those who were dropping them.

  The air-raid shelter was barely big enough to house everyone, which meant that families had to sit cheek by cheek with one another, so to speak, the younger children put to bed in the upper tier of bunks whilst the adults crouched on the bunk beds below. Seated next to Jean and her family were the Whites from number eighteen, an elderly childless couple.

  Just as she sat down Nancy White complained to her husband, ‘Bert, I’ve gorn and left me false teeth behind.’

  ‘Never mind, love,’ he comforted her. ‘It’s bombs they’re dropping, not ham sandwiches.’

  Jean laughed dutifully at the now well-worn joke, but she noticed that neither Katie nor the twins joined her.

  ‘There’d better not be any bombs on Saturday night,’ Lou whispered fiercely to Sasha.

&nbs
p; ‘Well, even if there are, it won’t matter because we’ll have to be back home before it gets dark. You know what Mum’s like. Kieran says he’s going to put us on halfway through to make sure that there’s plenty of people there to clap for us, and so that we can leave before it gets too late.’

  ‘When did he tell you that?’ Lou demanded jealously.

  ‘On Monday when he came into Lewis’s. You were serving someone, remember?’

  ‘I remember that you were so keen to talk to him that you went off and left me to serve your customer,’ Lou agreed bitterly.

  ‘No, I didn’t. I didn’t think she wanted anything, that’s all. We’ve got to win this competition, Lou. Just imagine us being on stage in a real production. Kieran says that his uncle is going to be one of the judges, and the leading lady of the Royal Court’s current production another, and they’ve got a pair of real professional dancers coming over especially from the Tower Ballroom at Blackpool to make up the judges.’

  ‘Well, Kieran might have told you when we were going on, but it was me he told about our costumes,’ Lou told Sasha triumphantly. She was the younger of the two of them, and she didn’t like the way that Sasha, who was becoming very bossy, always claimed that she was the one whom Kieran preferred.

  The pounding the anti-aircraft guns were giving the German bombers reflected the fury in his own heart, Luke acknowledged. How could he have let himself be made a fool of a second time? But then hadn’t a part of him suspected all along that something like this would happen, he thought bitterly.

  Orange glows from the fires started by the falling bombs had lit up the night sky, when Luke had been on patrol on the perimeters of the camp, the scream of fire engine sirens mingling with the explosions and the anti-aircraft guns. It was the job of him and his men to be ready for action if they were needed in the defence of the city, and the whole camp was on the alert following several rumours that the Germans weren’t just dropping bombs but that they were dropping parachutists as well, with instructions to work from behind the English enemy lines.