Daughters of the Mersey

by Anne Baker

  June was delighted. ‘And it’ll keep you here in England for longer, where you’ll be safe.’ Nothing could have pleased her more. Ralph would be paid more and perhaps be less likely to be killed; she hoped so anyway.

  ‘Once I’m on that course I’ll get regular time off,’ he crowed. ‘Things are looking better, aren’t they?’

  When at last Ralph hung up, June was so full of joy that she went back to the sitting room to recount all he’d said, though she was careful to describe him as her fiancé.

  When she went home for her next day off, she told the family while they were sitting round the table having supper. Milo was impressed. ‘Good for him!’

  Pa looked down his nose at her. ‘I don’t understand how they come to pick Ralph out for officer training while Miles is left in the ranks. Ralph is no gentleman.’

  ‘Perhaps they want brains these days, Pa,’ Milo said. ‘Perhaps he has more of those.’

  ‘If you aren’t rated as officer material with your private schooling, I can’t see why Ralph should be.’ Steve was adamant.

  ‘He’s older,’ June smiled diplomatically, ‘and perhaps wiser than most.’

  Steve had felt wary and resentful towards Milo since the day he’d shown how much he despised him. Since then Milo had apologised for swearing at him and treated him as though it hadn’t happened. Steve had watched him recover from his injuries and was surprised at the progress he was making.

  Steve had been out in the garden picking purple sprouting broccoli for supper tonight because Leonie had asked him to. It was dark when she came home and it was impossible to pick vegetables without showing a light. Milo was in the kitchen when Steve took the broccoli in.

  He looked much better than he had when he’d first come home, every inch a Dransfield, tall and slim but with broad shoulders. Milo had a handsome face that reminded Steve of his older brother who had been killed in the Battle of Arras, he even had his reddish-brown hair.

  To start with he’d kept telling him, ‘You shouldn’t do too much. It’ll be better for you in the long run if you take things easy at this stage.’

  ‘I’m all right, Pa,’ he’d always said. ‘I think that the more I do, the better I feel. I need to find out what I’m capable of doing.’

  Now he said, ‘Would you like a cup of tea?’

  ‘Your mother will be home soon, she’ll make us one.’

  ‘Mum will be tired. I don’t feel I can ask her to do things I can manage for myself.’

  That brought Steve up short and he left Miles to it. He brought a cup of tea to his study for his father and Steve felt that showed him up as unwilling to help himself. Miles immediately went off to do something else in the kitchen, no doubt start their evening meal.

  Leonie came home some time later and put her head breezily round his door to say hello but went straight to the kitchen. He could hear her talking to Miles and though he couldn’t catch what they were saying, their chatter sounded bright and cheerful. It made Steve feel lonely and isolated.

  He even felt a little envious that Miles could do so much. He was going out and about with other people, going out on the river in that stupid boat that had been such a mistake to buy. He’d even taken a girl to the pictures.

  Steve felt that in the long run Miles would suffer by rushing his convalescence. He thought it unlikely the army would require his services in future and that would come as an almighty shock to him.

  Working in the hospital, June felt the terror all around her as bombs exploded nearby. It took a huge effort to push fear to the back of her mind and concentrate on what needed to be done, but that was the only way she could make herself useful in the team helping those who had been hurt.

  She was short of sleep and looked forward to the two weeks’ holiday she was entitled to now that she’d completed six months’ training. Ralph was at Eaton Hall, on the Duke of Westminster’s estate, which had been taken over as a college to provide officer training for short-service commissions. He was in the middle of his course and said it would be impossible for him to have time off.

  ‘I’d like to book you into a hotel near the college,’ he said. ‘So I can see more of you. I have most evenings off and quite a lot of time at weekends though I’m afraid you’ll be alone a good deal.’

  ‘That’s what I want to do,’ June said. ‘I’ll be able to amuse myself going round the shops and I’ll get away from the air raids.’

  ‘We have had a couple of warnings since I’ve been here but they’ve come to nothing.’

  June packed her case and was relieved to get away from Birkenhead where the bomb damage was spreading in all directions. She found Ralph had booked her into a small boarding house only a few hundred yards or so from the main gate of the college. The other three guests were also relatives of military personnel.

  Ralph came and took her out to dinner on the nights he was free. He came every night and spent some of it in her double bed. She was wakened when his alarm went off early in the morning and heard him pull on his clothes before creeping out. She luxuriated in being able to go back to sleep until the gong signalled it was breakfast time. Sometimes she’d eaten so much at night that she didn’t bother to get up then.

  She found there was a frequent bus service into the main shopping area, but though Ralph gave her money to spend on herself the shops were a disappointment because there was little to buy. Cosmetics were in short supply and she had to try several shops before she could buy a lipstick. Clothes now carried the utility mark, and were all much the same in plain styles showing a military influence. Fashion had ceased to exist and her mother could make better clothes for her. Her hair was growing; she had it restyled in curls round her face which made her feel better.

  Chester was a lovely city, and there was plenty for her to see and do. She walked the walls with one of her fellow guests, but to really enjoy herself she needed Ralph with her all the time. She went back to the hospital feeling rested and refreshed.

  When Ralph’s course finished, he passed out as a second lieutenant and was given a forty-eight-hour pass. He came to spend it at Elaine’s house and June managed to get time off in order to spend one night there with him.

  He met her outside the hospital in his new uniform. She felt very proud as she took his arm and walked with him to the bus stop but she had a sinking feeling in her stomach because she knew when this leave was over, it could be a very long time before she saw him again.

  The time they shared passed in a flash. June went to see him off on the train to Aldershot. The station was crowded with other military personnel catching the same train. Woodside was the terminus and the train was standing at the platform. June had to take a firm grip on her emotions; she didn’t want him to remember her in tears. ‘I’ll be preparing a big welcome for when you come back. We’ll really have something to celebrate then.’

  ‘To think of you waiting at home for me gives me something to keep me sane,’ he told her, ‘something to look forward to.’ He turned to open the door of a carriage, tossed his newspaper on the vacant window seat, pushed his bag up on the luggage rack, and jumped down to put his arms round her and kiss her goodbye. June tried to smile and not look miserable.

  ‘I’m afraid I may be sent abroad now,’ he murmured in her ear.

  That made June cling more tightly to him, she knew that was almost a certainty. ‘I know . . .’

  ‘If I don’t come back—’

  ‘Don’t say that!’

  ‘If the worst happens—’

  She pulled her face away from his. ‘There’s no reason to suppose it will. We must both stay positive. Milo came back when we’d almost given up hope.’

  ‘Yes, I know. Darling, I don’t want you to grieve. Not like Queen Victoria did. I want you to pick yourself up and get on with your life. You’re still very young and very pretty; sooner or later, you’ll find somebody else.’

  ‘No, I couldn’t possibly do that.’ The tears were flooding down her face now, she could
n’t stop them. She heard the guard blow his whistle, saw Ralph climb back on the train through her tears and then he was gone.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  TWO WEEKS BEFORE CHRISTMAS 1940, Amy came home from school one day and Auntie Bessie said, ‘I had a letter from your mother this morning. She says she’d like to come and see you again and bring your brother Milo.’

  Amy was thrilled. ‘I haven’t seen Milo for ages.’ When she sat down to have her tea, the letter was laid out on the table beside the bowl of strawberry junket for her to read.

  She let out a scream of delight. ‘They’re bringing me a bike for Christmas. I’ll be able to go to school on it. I won’t have to get up early to catch the taxi.’

  ‘And sometimes miss it,’ Bessie added.

  ‘Even if I do,’ Amy laughed, ‘I can still get to school before nine o’clock if I run part of the way.’

  Her mother had written, ‘I’m sorry for Amy’s sake that we can’t keep it a secret until Christmas Day, but I can see no way of doing that. She’ll have time to look forward to it now.’

  ‘Isn’t that marvellous?’ Amy was excited. ‘It isn’t as if I still believed in Father Christmas. I’ve wanted a bike for ages.’

  On the Sunday they were due, Amy was down on the road waiting for them for more than half an hour before they came. As the taxi pulled up at the bottom of the cwm, the first thing she saw was the bike strapped to the back with a scarlet ribbon fluttering from the seat. Between seeing that and Milo stepping out to swing her up into a hug in the way he always had, Amy was too intoxicated to speak.

  ‘Amy.’ He laughed with her. ‘You’re tons heavier than you used to be, I can hardly lift you.’

  She felt a pang when she took a second look at her bike. ‘It’s not a fairy cycle like Glenys’s.’

  ‘You’ve grown too big for a fairy cycle,’ Milo scoffed.

  Her mother hugged her. ‘This is just one size smaller than an adult bike,’ she told her, ‘and we’ve had a hard time getting a bike of any sort. June tried to buy one in the bike shop after our first visit, but they had no children’s bikes in stock. Pa has been looking out for one in the auction rooms, but I put a firm order in at the bike shop and eventually they got a few in.’

  Amy and Milo carried it up the cwm, walking one behind the other on the narrow path, while Leonie carried the suitcase they’d brought. Jack and Bessie met them at the gate and took them in to have a Sunday lunch of roast pork and the first of Bessie’s Christmas puddings.

  Afterwards, Amy watched her mother bring out giftwrapped packages for her as well as for Bessie and Jack. They gave her eggs and butter to fill the suitcase, as well as a boiling fowl already cleaned and plucked.

  Leonie beamed. ‘That’s a huge treat. It will make us a couple of excellent meals and I’m very grateful for all this food. You’re very kind to me as well as to Amy.’

  While her mother helped with the washing-up, Amy pulled Milo out to see the farm. They stroked Fly and went round the henhouses collecting eggs.

  ‘D’you know,’ Milo said, ‘there’s no reason why we shouldn’t keep a few hens at home. The ration is one egg a week per person and if we forgo that we can buy poultry food instead.’

  When they went back indoors he asked Jack’s advice on keeping poultry. ‘Amy does most of it for us,’ he said. ‘You’ll need to make some sort of a shelter for them in your garden, with a perch and a couple of nesting boxes. They’ll need an outside pen to provide fresh air and ground for them to scratch in. Then it’s just a matter of giving them food and water.’

  ‘They’ll eat kitchen scraps of any sort,’ Bessie added, ‘potato peelings and carrot tops.’

  ‘We could give you a couple of pullets,’ Jack said, ‘if you could take them home on the bus.’

  Amy saw her mother draw back at the thought.

  ‘Why not?’ Milo was enthusiastic. ‘Would it be possible?’

  ‘I don’t see why not. A cardboard box with air holes in, we might have one somewhere. We buy day-old chicks sometimes and they come that way. But your best bet would be to take a hen that’s gone broody with a clutch of eggs and see if you can hatch your own.’

  ‘I’d like to try,’ Milo said.

  Leonie looked alarmed. ‘You’d have to make a pen first.’

  ‘Yes,’ Jack said, ‘and right now we don’t have a young broody hen. Not one that’s worth taking all that way.’

  When Amy had seen her family off she came back feeling very low but Jack picked up her bike. ‘Come on,’ he said, and took her down to their nearest neighbouring farm. ‘We need to ask if you can keep your bike in their shed where I keep mine.’

  It was a little further for her to cycle along the road to and from school, but there was an unmade lane she could ride down even if it would be a bit steep to come up. It cut out the cwm and the very steep sideland.

  That agreed, they looked in the shed and Jack was about to roll her bike alongside his when Amy said, ‘I want to try it out before I go to school on it tomorrow.’

  ‘You’ll be all right? You’ve ridden a bike before?’

  ‘A fairy cycle, yes.’

  ‘Then you’ll have no trouble with this. Go down the lane to the road, there’s nowhere else you could try it out. I’ll see you back home when you’ve had enough. Be careful now.’

  Amy wheeled it into the lane. This was a bit scary but she preferred to do it on her own. The bike felt big and awkward and the lane was steep with an uneven surface of small stones and dusty earth because it hadn’t rained recently.

  She wobbled but regained balance and with the brakes firmly on rolled down to the road. She had to get off to open and close the gate at the bottom but once on the tarmacked road it felt wonderful. She rode through a hamlet and on to Glenys’s house. Glenys was delighted to see her and wanted her to stay and play, but her father said, ‘It’s getting dark. I think, Amy, you’d better go back. Bessie will be worried about you.’

  He was right about that. It was pitch dark when she wheeled her bike into the shed and she had to walk up two fields after that. Bessie was scolding Jack for letting her go when he did. ‘There isn’t a light showing anywhere, I was afraid you wouldn’t find your way back in this blackout.’

  ‘But I did,’ she said, and felt triumphant at having succeeded in managing her bike. It had been marvellous to feel the wind in her hair as she sped along. ‘I love it,’ she told Jack. ‘It’s the best Christmas present I’ve ever had.’

  ‘And it isn’t even Christmas yet,’ Bessie pointed out. ‘By rights you shouldn’t ride that bike until it is.’

  She had ordered a goose for Christmas. Many of the nearby farms kept a flock of geese to fatten, though Bessie and Jack did not. The week beforehand, she was out helping her relatives pluck feathers as the birds were made ready for the oven.

  ‘I’m glad those geese have gone,’ Amy said. She found the big flocks of geese frightening, more frightening than the big carthorse at the farm below, whose field she had to cross to reach the bike shed. The geese squawked and screeched and hissed when they heard her coming and as she crossed their farmyard, they’d put their necks straight out and come rushing at her.

  ‘Take a stick,’ Bessie advised and continued to send her on errands to her relatives. ‘Wear your wellingtons so they can’t nip your legs.’

  Amy had a lovely time over the holiday. Bessie entertained her relatives and Amy went with them when they were invited back. They had big dinners with Christmas puddings, cakes, mince pies and trifles to follow. There was no shortage of food on the farms. Once the dishes had been cleared away, they played cards round the table.

  Amy still had presents to open on Christmas morning. Mum had made her a new coat for best and she had books from June and chocolate from Milo.

  June felt terrible having said goodbye to Ralph, knowing he’d be sent to fight in some war zone. He’d told her he’d been issued with tropical kit but that was his only clue as to his destination. But soon
she had a letter from him giving his postal address as Middle East Forces. He told her he wasn’t allowed to let her know exactly where, and letters could be censored. Milo guessed immediately that it was Egypt and a good posting for him to have.

  Pa said, ‘I’m happy to say it’s the one area of this war where the allies are proving successful. Once Mussolini joined in the fight on Hitler’s side, he ordered his troops to march on Egypt. The Suez Canal is a vital route and it would have been a feather in his cap to capture that, but our troops have got the Italians on the run.’

  ‘That will please Ralph.’

  ‘It pleases all England,’ Pa said proudly.

  Ralph told her he was working in battalion headquarters so she knew he would be some distance from the front line. He said his office had once been a big hotel and when work was over for the day he would walk to another luxury hotel and swim in their pool. He wrote of palm trees and gardens and told her that troops were removed from the front line and sent to his area for rest and relaxation. Milo thought he could be in Cairo or Alexandria, and if so he was very lucky.

  June took a greater interest in the fighting in that area. It seemed that once Italy joined the war, it launched an attack on Egypt and the Italians were repulsed by British and Australian forces under General Wavell. She was greatly heartened. Ralph wrote almost daily and told her more than once that he thought she was in a more dangerous place than he was and she mustn’t worry about him. She began to believe him and was able to relax.

  She settled down at the hospital and now she wasn’t rushing out to spend time with Ralph she found her fellow nurses friendly and ready to include her in their outings. She also gave more time and attention to her lectures and became interested. Like everybody else she was frightened during air raids but she’d been drilled in what she must do if the hospital received a direct hit or was badly damaged and began to feel she could enjoy her new career. She was glad it was considered vital war work.