by Annie Groves
‘Well, you won’t find the luxury here that you’ll have got used to, love. Especially not now with this rationing.’
‘It isn’t luxury I want, Jean. That’s not what I’ve come home for at all.’
There was look on her face that made Jean’s heart sink a little.
* * *
‘Come along, Campion, don’t dawdle.’ They were doing ‘beds and backs’, a process in which each patient had to have his sacrum, heels and elbows washed with soap and water and then rubbed with methylated spirits to harden the skin, which was then dusted with talcum powder. This was to help prevent bed sores, and it was Grace’s job to apply the methylated spirits.
Once that had been done, Staff Nurse Reid asked her, ‘Have you given morphia to a patient yet?’
Grace shook her head.
‘Come with me and listen carefully. Harry is due to have his next injection.’
First, Staff Nurse went to the Dangerous Drugs cabinet and removed one quarter of a gram of morphine, which Grace then had to dissolve over a spirit lamp in 5.5 cc of water in a teaspoon, and then place the liquid into a hypodermic syringe.
After Staff Nurse Reid had relocked the Dangerous Drugs cabinet she beckoned Grace to follow her into the private room where Harry was.
The young man was in a great deal of pain, his face lacking colour and his skin sweaty. Grace felt for him as she injected the morphine into his upper arm, holding her own breath a little as she waited for the drug to take effect. She could see a telling sadness in Staff Nurse’s expression as she leaned over him and spoke to him before straightening his bedclothes.
Once they were both back outside the room Staff Nurse turned to Grace and said quietly, ‘As you know, morphine is addictive and we have to be careful about how much we give, but thank heavens Sister believes that if someone is dying then it doesn’t matter if they become addicted, and that it’s far more important that they remain free of pain.’
She didn’t say any more; she didn’t need to. Grace understood what she was being told and it both shocked and upset her. Harry was, after all, only seventeen – not much older than her own twin sisters and younger than she was herself.
Harry was very much on Grace’s mind the next day when she met Teddy.
They might be in March now but she had noticed that increasingly Teddy was having to slow down when they were walking together, complaining that the cold winter had got on his chest and left him struggling sometimes with his breathing. Grace had felt like a bit of fresh air and so they had gone to Wavertree Park or ‘the Mizzy’, as the park was fondly known by locals. Its nickname had come about because the land itself had been given to the people of Wavertree by a ‘mystery’ donor who had specified that it was to be used to create a large open playground for children, and for recreation rather than a formally landscaped park. The original lake had been filled in but there was still a pretty circular structure, which was used as a bandstand on fête days, and before the Great War the park had even hosted the Royal Agricultural Show.
It was, Grace knew, because he was sensitive about having had rheumatic fever as a child, which had prevented him from joining up, that he didn’t like talking about it, but she still couldn’t stop herself from frowning as she watched him having to stop walking, his hand on his chest.
‘You should see someone about that, you know,’ she told him gently.
‘Oh, give over, will you? I’ve already told you it’s nothing serious.’
‘You mean, like you and me are nothing serious?’ Grace replied impulsively. What on earth had possessed her to say that? She felt mortified by her own silliness.
‘And what’s that supposed to mean?’ Teddy sounded angry.
Neither of them was making any attempt to walk now. Instead they stood in the park, confronting one another, oblivious to the curious glances they were attracting.
‘You know what I mean,’ Grace told him miserably. ‘I know you do. All the girls keep on asking me if you and me are going steady, and if you’ve asked me to be your girl. They want to know if … I need to know where I stand with you, Teddy, I really do ’cos the way things are is making me feel ever such a fool. What with me not knowing … and you never so much as …’ Her face was burning with self-conscious embarrassment now, but despite that a part of her was glad that her concern about their relationship was finally out in the open.
‘I’m not staying here to listen to silly stuff like this,’ Teddy told her angrily. ‘I thought you and me was friends, Grace. I thought you were a sensible sort of girl, not the sort who’d go acting daft and listening to what others have got to say …’ He shook his head, his mouth compressing, and then to Grace’s shock he turned on his heel and walked off, leaving her standing on her own.
At first she was too shocked to do anything and then she started to hurry after him, but he was already halfway across the road, and jumping onto a bus. Tears blurred her eyes. Well, let him go then. He was right about one thing. She was a sensible sort of girl, the sort of girl who would never ever go running after a lad who didn’t want her.
Too unhappy to bear the thought of spending the rest of her day off on her own, she decided to go home.
If her mother was surprised to see her so early when she had told her that it would be teatime before she came round, she didn’t say so, simply looking searchingly at her pale face and then saying placidly, ‘Sit down, love; I was just about to put the kettle on.’
‘Jean, I still haven’t heard back from Vi. I’ve got half a mind to go round and see her … Oh, Grace, hello, love.’ Francine gave Grace a warm hug as she came into the kitchen.
Grace had been surprised and just a little bit wary when she had learned that her mother’s younger sister was back in Liverpool and sleeping in her own old room, but then when she had come home and Francine had been so warm and loving and such fun, Grace had immediately stopped feeling stiff and just that little bit jealous that someone else might be taking her place in the family.
Of course, the twins adored Francine and were forever plaguing her to listen to them singing, but she was very firm with them, telling them that a career as a singer was more hard work and disappointments than glamour, whilst at the same time assuring them that they did indeed have very pretty singing voices.
‘I hope you’re eating properly at that hospital Grace, only you’re looking thin,’ Jean fussed maternally.
‘I dare say she’s run off her feet,’ Francine defended Grace.
‘We are busy,’ Grace agreed, giving her aunt a grateful look. The truth was that her growing anxiety over her feeling that something about her relationship just wasn’t right had led to her losing her normal appetite.
She could see that despite Francine’s reassurance her mother wasn’t looking convinced, and with her recent upset still very much on her mind she acknowledged that she couldn’t keep what she was feeling to herself and that she desperately wanted to unburden herself. There was something she just had to know, even though she couldn’t quite bring herself to look at her mother as she asked the question that had been burning so painfully inside her.
‘Mum, how do you know when you’re in love?’
Over her downbent head Jean and Francine exchanged helpless looks.
‘Well, love, it’s hard to explain but you just do. But why are you—’
‘What your mum’s trying to say, Grace,’ Francine intervened firmly, ‘is that if you were in love you wouldn’t need to ask, because you would know you were. It’s because you aren’t in love that you need to ask.’
‘So you can’t be in love with someone and not know?’
‘No.’
‘Not even the first time?’
‘Especially not the first time,’ Francine assured her.
Grace looked from her aunt to her mother.
‘Francine is right, love. If you were you would know,’ Jean assured her. ‘I suppose you’re thinking about this Teddy you’ve bin seeing? If he’s bin pressing you a
bout, well, anything, just you remember that you’re training to be a nurse.’
‘It isn’t that, Mum. Teddy isn’t asking me do anything I shouldn’t be doing.’ Grace got up and paced the room, her colour high, but having come this far she might as well come out with what was really bothering her. Normally she’d have felt really uncomfortable talking like this with her mother, but having Francine here, who was closer to her in age and who had travelled all over, and must know so much as well as being her mother’s sister, somehow made it all so much easier.
‘It’s just that … well, even when we go to the pictures he never puts his arm round me or … or anything else … and the other girls … well, they keep asking me …’
‘Never mind the other girls. It sounds to me as though he’s a decent well-brought-up young man who knows what’s proper,’ Jean told her with relief, deliberately choosing not to remember the passionate kisses she and Sam had shared in the dark privacy of the cinema in their own courting days.
Francine, on the other hand, was frowning slightly and Grace found that it was to her aunt she was looking for an explanation of Teddy’s unfathomable behaviour and not her mother.
However, before she could say anything the twins came bursting in in their normal noisy fashion, hugging Grace, and chattering nineteen to the dozen and making the kind of discussion Grace had wanted to have impossible.
Instead they wanted to talk about the ENSA variety show Francine was rehearsing for, which meant she would be staying in Liverpool for the duration whilst the show toured local Armed Forces bases and some of the factories where women were working long shifts making parachutes and munitions.
They were going through one of their periods of wanting to look as alike as possible and so were wearing matching plaid skirts and green jumpers, with red ribbons in their plaits.
‘Fancy singing here in Liverpool.’ Lou pulled a face. ‘If it was me I’d much rather be going overseas, wouldn’t you, Sasha?’
Before her twin could reply Francine was saying calmly, ‘After the mess that was made of getting us to our venues when we were in France, the last thing I feel like doing at the moment is being sent overseas. Billy Cotton was fit to spit feathers, I can tell you when a bridge went and collapsed when him and his band were on their way to a show. You should have seen his face when he ended up with a coachload of players on one side of the river and their instruments on the other. We might not have been crossing the blue Danube, but the air was pretty blue, I can tell you. It’s all right for Basil Dean running ruddy ENSA from Drury Lane and never putting a foot outside the Theatre Royal. Billy Cotton completely missed his Christmas Day concert with Gracie.’
‘Was that the one you were singing in as well, Francine?’ Lou asked eagerly.
‘That’s right. Three numbers, I had.’
‘And you wore that blue dress with the silver embroidery, didn’t you?’
The twins were entranced with everything about their young aunt. They had only been five when she had left for America, but they were approaching the same age Francine had been when she had first started to sing on stage.
‘Yes. I bought it in Bloomies just before we left New York. That’s Bloomingdale’s,’ Francine explained for Grace’s benefit. ‘It’s a big famous store in New York.’
‘I wish we could go to New York,’ Lou breathed enviously. ‘We’d volunteer for ENSA if we were old enough, wouldn’t we, Sasha?’
When her twin nodded, Jean told them both firmly, ‘Well, it’s just as well you aren’t because your dad would never agree to you going.’
‘Why not? Auntie Francine does it,’ was Sasha’s wide-eyed response.
‘Ah, but there’s only one of me,’ Francine told them quick-wittedly, earning a grateful look from Jean.
‘It’s not that me or their dad have anything against singing,’ Jean told Francine later when the twins were upstairs and Grace had gone back to the hospital, ‘but they haven’t got a sensible thought between them and that’s the truth. They egg each other on and, never mind double trouble, it’s more like four times the trouble of having one.’
Francine laughed dutifully. ‘I don’t blame you and Sam for not wanting them to follow in my footsteps, Jean.’
‘Oh, it isn’t that,’ Jean assured her quickly – too quickly, she realised, when she saw Francine’s expression.
‘I thought I might go over and see Vi this week, seeing as she hasn’t written back to me,’ Francine announced, changing the subject.
Now it was Jean’s turn to look wary. She could feel the heavy anxious thud of her heart, and that same feeling of foreboding she had already experienced returned.
So much had happened since Francine had left; she and Sam had moved so that they could put the past and their loss behind them, and have a fresh start; Edwin and Vi had left Liverpool for Wallasey. As much as she loved her younger sister she was afraid of the problems her return could bring – for all of them, but most of all for Francine herself.
There were some things – some sadnesses, some secrets – that were surely best left undisturbed.
‘Why don’t you give it a few more days?’ she urged Francine. ‘Vi might not have had your letter yet, and you know what she’s like, she’s never been one you can get round easily, unless you’re her Bella, of course. Spoils her rotten, she does, and talk about not being able to see the wood for the trees and not seeing how she’s winding her round her little finger …’
‘She should never have had Jack.’
Francine’s statement was so abrupt that it left Jean floundering for a response.
‘Well, he’s so much younger than the other two.’
‘She doesn’t love him, I’m sure of that.’
‘Of course she does,’ Jean automatically defended her twin. ‘But she’s had a lot on her mind this last year, what with Edwin’s business and them moving house again, and then Bella getting married.’
‘She’d never have sent him away like she has if she did,’ Francine continued, completely ignoring Jean’s attempt to defend Vi.
‘She’s only done what she thought was best for him, Fran. Me and Sam were in two minds about evacuating the twins,’ said Jean. ‘We only decided against it because I couldn’t have gone with them, not knowing that Sam would then be fending for himself.’
‘You see,’ Francine pounced triumphantly, ‘you would have gone with them. You’ve just said so yourself. You wouldn’t have sent them off on their own. Can you imagine what Mum would have said, Jean? She’d never have done anything like that to one of us.’ Tears had filled her eyes and Jean’s heart ached with a pity that overwhelmed her anxiety.
She couldn’t deny Francine’s claim, but encouraging her wasn’t going to do any good and wouldn’t help anyone, least of all poor little Jack.
Francine and Vi had never really got on. They had always been complete opposites, and Francine’s decision to become a singer, and Vi’s marriage to Edwin, had not just widened the gap between them, it had also armed it with hostility.
Jean knew there was some truth in Francine’s accusations but she also knew that getting Vi’s back up with hostile remarks about her role as a mother wasn’t going to improve things and could end up making them even worse. On top of that she had her own burden of guilt to carry.
‘Me and Sam would have had Jack …’ she began, ‘but …’
Immediately Francine hugged her contritely. ‘I wasn’t getting at you, Jean.’
‘Vi’s got Edwin to deal with, remember? I don’t like speaking ill of folk behind their backs, but well, he wouldn’t be my choice of a husband.’
‘He never wanted her to have Jack, not really.’
Jean said nothing. She knew after all that it was the truth. Much as she loved her younger sister and had been delighted to have her back home and living with them, there was no getting away from the fact that there were old sores in their shared past that it wouldn’t be wise to go disturbing.
‘I’d better look
sharp otherwise you’re going to be late for your rehearsal,’ Jean told her, deliberately changing the subject.
‘Yes,’ Francine agreed. ‘We’ve got our first show coming up soon at Seacombe barracks. I reckon they’re testing out the shows here to see which work best, ready to send the cast overseas, so with a bit of luck you won’t have me hanging around making a nuisance of meself for too long, Jean.’
‘There’s no need to go saying that. You aren’t a nuisance. Me and Sam are glad to have you here, Fran,’ Jean told her stoutly.
She was glad to have Francine here, Jean insisted to herself after her sister had left, of course she was, but at the same time a part of her couldn’t help worrying, about what was going to happen when Vi and Francine met.
‘And where do you think you’re going, with my kitchen floor not washed and the rations not collected yet?’ Bella accosted Bettina angrily, folding her arms and standing in front of the back door.
‘I have to go to my work,’ Bettina answered her equally furiously, her dark eyes flashing with pride and temper.
Bella’s expression hardened. It was bad enough having the two of them here, what with the mother spending nearly all her time in bed claiming not to be very well, without having to put up with the daughter somehow having managed to persuade the Government into giving her some trumped-up job working as a translator, when she could have been earning her keep here doing Bella’s cleaning.
‘Well, you’d better be back in time to feed that mother of yours,’ Bella told her spitefully, ‘because I’m certainly not going to do it. Making out she’s too poorly to get out of bed.’
Once again fury flashed in Bettina’s eyes. ‘Mama is very poorly with her chest. The doctor has said so.’
‘A bit of a cough, that’s all she’s got. If she was that poorly she’d be in hospital instead of here, keeping me awake all night with her coughing.’
That much was true, and Alan was already complaining about it.
