Daughters of Liverpool (29 page)

‘Charles, really, you might have asked your friend to leave a bit sooner.’

Charlie looked blankly at his mother. The overrefined voice she’d taken to using whenever Daphne was around was beginning to grate on his nerves, just like the gentle wistful droop of Daphne’s mouth followed by a sad smile that meant that Daphne wanted him to know that he had hurt her feelings in some way. Charlie looked down at his dinner plate and was seized by a surge of fear-induced nausea.

‘Well, I’m not having that, I’m not. He could see that you were with me but he still smiled at you as bold as brass, and as for you saying he was just being friendly …’

‘Luke, he was.’

‘Well, you would say that, wouldn’t you, seeing the way he was making eyes at you.’

‘I don’t want to talk about it any more.’ Katie’s voice was quiet but tense.

How had it come to this, Katie wondered miserably, knowing that her attempts to placate Luke were only making things worse – and especially after last night, when they had been so happy and when she had felt so loved and so safe. If anyone had tried to tell her then that not much more than twelve hours later Luke would have quarrelled with her so badly and been so unreasonable that she actually wished she was not with him, Katie would
have laughed at them. But like yesterday’s blue skies, last night’s happiness was now marred by heavy threatening clouds.

It had all started so innocently. She and Luke had had their breakfast and got on their bikes ready to head back to Liverpool. They had stopped at a pretty country pub for some dinner, then had set off again and been cycling for over an hour when they had stopped for a rest just outside a small village. Luke had just disappeared to ‘obey a call of nature’, having already stood guard in a very gentlemanly way so that Katie could do the same, when an RAF dispatch rider had come roaring round the corner on his motorbike, slowing down as he spotted Katie. Luke had re-emerged from the bushes well before the rider had finally stopped to ask if they needed any help.

Katie hadn’t been able to believe it when instead of thanking him for his offer Luke had been curt and offhand with him, positioning himself in front of Katie and staying there until the motorcyclist had ridden off. But there had been worse to come when Luke had started to suggest that the driver had had an ulterior motive in stopping and that Katie had not been averse to his admiration.

If there was one thing that upset Katie more than anything else it was arguments. She had grown up dreading the sound of her parents’ raised voices, and the nasty churning sensation she got in her tummy whenever she heard them. As a little girl she had clapped her hands over her ears to blot out the sound that upset her so much.

When she had grown older, each time her parents
rowed, hurling insults, one threatening to leave the other, Katie had been sickeningly sure that they meant it and had never been able to understand how the furious storms could magically disappear and their threats be forgotten when they lingered in her heart, shadowing it with anxiety and pain.

Katie’s feelings were very strong and ran very deep; she was acutely sensitive to the moods of others and dreaded the private misery that rows always brought her. Where her parents, especially her mother, could shrug off the darkest of moods and angriest of shouting matches, it took Katie days to recover fully from the pain of witnessing her parents’ fall-outs. She had grown up with the fear that one day her parents would make good their threats to one another and that one of them would walk out on the other. They always seemed to manage to pull back from the edge of the chasm that led into this darkness, but what if one day they could not? What if one day Katie herself became involved in an argument that would separate her for ever from someone she loved? Surely it was better not to argue at all?

So reasoned the young girl that Katie had been, and so too reasoned the young woman she had become. Difficult subjects were best avoided in case they led to arguments. That was what Katie felt, but she was unable to explain any of this to Luke; she barely understood the reason she felt the way she did herself.

What she did know, though, was that she hated hearing Luke raise his voice and that it made her feel afraid in the same way that she had felt afraid
as a little girl. Now, just as she had done with her parents, she felt the safest thing for her to do was to pretend that it wasn’t happening, and distance herself from Luke until he had calmed down and things had blown over.

Luke frowned. It had really upset him when Katie hadn’t agreed with him that the dispatch rider had stopped because he had thought she was on her own. It had been so obvious that that was what had happened, and Katie must have known it too, but by not supporting him Luke felt as though she was acting as though she felt that he was the one in the wrong, and not the dispatch rider. If Grace’s fiancé had accused someone of flirting with her she would very quickly have reassured Seb that she wasn’t interested in anyone else, so why wasn’t Katie reassuring him? If she was really as committed to him as he was to her she would have done so, surely? He would never ever want her to feel unsure about his love for her. In fact, he’d want to do everything he could to reassure her. Was it perhaps because a part of her wasn’t fully committed to him that she wasn’t doing so? Had she secretly got reservations about ‘them’?

Luke desperately wanted to ask her, but he had his pride. If Katie wouldn’t give him the reassurance he longed for then he certainly wasn’t going to ask her for it. He couldn’t. He was a man, and men did not do things like that. So reasoned Luke.

‘We’d better get a move on otherwise we won’t make the pub by teatime, and we don’t want to get there and find they’ve given our rooms to someone else.’

Katie was so relieved that Luke wasn’t continuing the argument that they had cycled several miles before she realised that he hadn’t spoken to her at all. That could, of course, just be because they were cycling, and because she had fallen a bit behind him, and not because he wasn’t speaking to her because he was still angry.

Katie endured the silence for another few minutes, but then her own emotions got the better of her and she deliberately cycled harder until she had drawn alongside him.

‘How much longer do you think it will take us to reach the pub?’ she asked him.

She had been rehearsing the question for the last couple of minutes, not wanting to risk saying anything contentious just in case he had stopped speaking to her because he was still annoyed, but to her relief he answered her straight away, saying calmly, ‘I’m not sure, but if you’re feeling tired and you’d like a bit of a rest, we can always stop.’

‘No, we may as well press on,’ Katie assured him.

On the surface nothing was wrong but Katie still had the feeling that in reality things between them were not ‘right’ and that both upset and scared her.

‘Well, I’m not the one who’s keeping you here,’ Emily pointed out truthfully to Con.

She had been surprised at first and then irritated when she and Tommy had got back from church to find Con still in the house. Normally on those nights when he did sleep at home, he’d lie in bed
until dinnertime and then get up and take himself off to the theatre or somewhere with his latest girl.

Emily had grown so used to him not being around that now when he was she was finding that she didn’t really want him there and that he got on her nerves, with his sulks and his complaints, she admitted, especially now that she had Tommy to keep her company. She’d planned to take him over the water to New Brighton this afternoon, seeing as it was Easter, but now with Con sitting at the kitchen table still in his pyjamas and his dressing gown, his face unshaven and his eyes bloodshot, it looked as though she was going to cancel those plans. She certainly didn’t want to go out and leave Con in the house on his own. As Emily had already learned the hard way, if she did he’d be going through everything to see if she’d got any cash tucked away anywhere, and of course she had. Only a little bit, of course, for emergencies, since you never knew what was going to happen these days.

A much more pleasant sight for her to look at than her husband was her adopted ‘nephew’, who’d grown a whole inch and a half since he’d been with her and had got a bit of decent flesh on his bones now as well. A handsome little lad, he was, an’ all, and Emily’s heart swelled with pleasure when she heard others saying so, and saying how nice his manners were.

Of course it worried her that he still hadn’t spoken, and she knew that sooner or later she was going to have to take him to the doctor to see what was wrong. There was no rush, though. After
all, it was obvious that he was healthy and happy. He might not say anything, but the smile he gave her when they were out and he tucked his hand in hers, said more than any amount of words. She’d much rather have Tommy’s silence and the love she could see in his eyes than all of Con’s slick lying speeches that in the end meant nothing other than that he wanted something from her.

Besides, Emily had another reason for not being over-eager to hear Tommy talk. Who knew what he might say about his past, which could mean that she could end up losing him? Just the thought of that stripped away every bit of Emily’s happiness. He was everything to her, was her lovely little lad – absolutely everything – and it would kill her to lose him now.

By rights of course he should be going to school, but from what Emily had heard half the schools were closed and those that weren’t didn’t have enough teachers, so that mothers were having to teach their children at home as best they could. Not that Tommy could have gone to school anyway, him not speaking.

Con’s head ached from the drink he had had the previous night. He had got involved in a card game in a ‘private club’ and had ended up losing close on five hundred pounds, as a result of which he was now in a filthy temper. Con didn’t like problems or trouble. All he asked from life was a full house, a wallet stuffed with money and a pretty girl on his arm. Instead he’d got debts, and a ruddy wife who thought more of some dumb
kid than she did of him. Right now Con was feeling very sorry for himself indeed. Sorry for himself and more than a little bit afraid. Con wasn’t the stuff of heroes, and the moneylender’s heavies leaning on him had scared him. Now thanks to last night’s card game he owed even more money.

If the kid hadn’t been there Con was pretty sure he’d have been able to talk Emily into opening her purse. Con was the kind of man who always looked for someone else to blame for his problems and right now he blamed the boy, and so it was Tommy that he took his temper out on.

Glaring at him, Con told Emily bluntly, ‘I’m sick of having that kid around. He gets on my nerves. I reckon he’s not right in his head, with him not speaking, the way he does.’

‘If there’s anyone around here not right in his head, it’s you, not Tommy,’ Emily retaliated sharply.

‘You want to get him to a doctor and see what he has to say. It ain’t normal him not speaking. There’s special places for kids like him and he should be in one, and if it was up to me he would be, instead of living here getting on my nerves.’

‘Well, it isn’t up to you, is it?’ Emily told Con, but Con’s comments had made her feel very uneasy. She was still Con’s wife and a husband had certain rights. The last thing she wanted was Con starting getting difficult about Tommy, making a lot of fuss and trying to get the authorities involved.

So far she’d got away with claiming that Tommy was related to her but if anyone in authority was to start checking up on her story, they’d soon
discover that she’d lied, and then Tommy would be taken from her. Emily could feel herself going cold all over and starting to feel sick and shaky inside.

Fran had to grit her teeth to stop herself from betraying her feelings. She hadn’t wanted to come up on deck for their send-off, as the ship taking them on the first leg of their journey back to England cast off from the dock at Alexandria, but the two chorus girls with whom she was sharing a cabin had insisted and so now here she was, stuck right up against the deck rail with the cast’s pianist and the biggest busybody that ever drew breath at her side, all eager to get as much information as she could about the break-up between Fran and the major.

The white silk dress she was wearing, with its polka dot pattern and semicircular skirt, was clinging uncomfortably to her. She had had to make a new hole in the belt that cinched the shirt-style top in at her waist, because of the weight she had
lost. Her hair curled damply over the collar of the dress. She longed to remove the small, head-hugging, polished straw hat sitting neatly on the back of her head, to let whatever breeze there was cool her, but it was part of the ENSA women’s role to look as glamorous as they could for the benefit of the men. The truth was that Fran had absolutely no idea why Marcus had changed towards her, and so dramatically, between the most intimate, passionate and loving hours they had spent together and their next meeting only a few hours later, when he had been so icily cold towards her. Because that second meeting had taken place in public at a party that had been given to thank the cast for their visit to Cairo and to wish them ‘Godspeed and safety’ for their journey home, there had not been any opportunity for Fran to talk privately with him. She had tried, discreetly at first, and then with increasing despair, to persuade him to meet her privately but he had as good as flatly refused.

Even worse, her humiliating attempts to beg him to tell her what was wrong had been witnessed by Lily, who had come up to her later and mocked, ‘You’d never catch me running round after a chap who’s made it clear he isn’t interested, but then some folk are so desperate they can’t take a hint.’

Within hours of the party Fran had learned – second-hand – that Marcus wouldn’t be accompanying them on their journey home but had instead requested a transfer to ‘other duties’.

It was over a week since the party now, since when Lily had been going round with a smug look on her face, like a cat that has had the cream,
whilst Fran had been applying increasing amounts of her precious Max Factor pancake makeup to her face in an effort to conceal the effects of her misery. Just as well that Cairo had turned out to be a treasure-trove of all those female things that were so important and so very unavailable at home. Fran had bought makeup, lipstick and mascara, as well as silk stockings, not just for herself but for her family back home in Liverpool. She had even bought a wedding dress – not for herself, but for her niece Grace – just in case the war wasn’t over by the time Grace finished her nurse’s training and could marry Seb.

Fran had been such a fool, and really taken in by Marcus, believing everything he had told her, believing that they shared something special. She had even begun to think in terms of them having a future together once the war was over.

The pianist, bored now with Fran’s lack of response to her questions, had wriggled her way back from the railing, leaving a space that was quickly filled by one of the dancers anxious to wave her goodbyes to the young admirer down on the dock waving up to her.

On the dock side the final preparations were being made for them to cast off. Marcus was down there with the officer to whom he was handing over the responsibility of accompanying this ENSA troupe back home. Was it really only eight nights since she had lain in his arms and then later had lain watching him sleep, Fran thought emotionally, her heart so full of love that it spilled through her, colouring her every thought.

‘There’s the major,’ the dancer told Fran unnecessarily. ‘I thought it was ever so mean of you and Lily, what you did, making a fool of him like that, and having a bet on as to who could get him to fall for them first,’ she added disapprovingly.

Fran stared at her. ‘What … what are you talking about?’ she demanded.

The girl gave her a look that was a mixture of uncertainty and a determination to stand her ground, even if Fran was the second lead singer and she was only in the chorus.

‘I dare say it was supposed to be a secret between the two of you but everyone’s bin talking about it, and most of them have bin saying how they thought you was out of order doing what you did. I’ve heard Lily saying that she wanted to call off the bet but that you wouldn’t.’

Fran felt sick. She ought to have realised that Lily would try to get back at both Marcus for rejecting her and Fran herself for being the one he had chosen. Fran had had enough experience of the kind of malicious, manipulative behaviour that could go on in a tight-knit group of entertainers to work out immediately what had happened. Lily had never liked her and was certainly spiteful enough to have deliberately planned to spoil things between her and Marcus just for the fun of it, never mind for the added pleasure of getting her own back.

But surely Marcus must have known she wouldn’t do anything like that? She loved him and had as good as said so, even if she had held back the words, afraid of saying them too quickly, waiting for him to say them first to her.

And that last night he had almost done so when he had spoken of the future in a way that had made it clear he wanted them to spend that future together.

But he was a man, Fran reminded herself, and men had their pride. Marcus had said more than once that he was surprised that she had chosen him out of all her admirers.

Fran looked down at the dock. It wasn’t too late. If she could only talk to him … explain. He was too far away to hear her if she called out, and would probably ignore her anyway. She turned round and started to force her way through the crowd on deck.

‘All ashore that’s going ashore,’ someone was calling.

The companionways were filled with serving men and sailors coming on board, and those who had come to wish them
bon voyage
getting off. Fran got held up between a large woman – Egyptian and high born by the looks of her – and her retinue, who were obviously all travelling with the ship.

She wasted several valuable minutes struggling to get past them all, reaching the companionway to the dock just as the officer standing by it was nodding to the men below to remove it.

‘I have to go ashore,’ Fran told him frantically.

‘Sorry, miss, but we’re just about to cast off.’ The officer was firm but unmoving.

‘No!’ Fran looked down onto the dock and felt the ship begin to move.

She could see Marcus standing less than ten yards away. Desperately she called out his name,
not once but twice, her voice thickening with tears when he didn’t respond.

All around her on the decks people were singing and ticker tape was being thrown. The ship’s horn was sounded loudly.

‘Marcus …’ Fran wept as she cried his name, and watched as he walked away and out of her life.

Her final view of him was obscured by both her tears and the excitement of her fellow passengers, so that she did not see as he stopped walking and turned round to look at the ship. And, of course, even if she had done so she would not have been able to see the anguish in the gaze with which he searched for a final glimpse of her. So much loved by him and so very treacherous in her behaviour towards him.

‘Charlie, don’t be ridiculous, of course I can’t lend you a hundred pounds,’ Bella told her brother, looking at him in disbelief that he should think she would be able to do so.

‘Well, I don’t see why not, seeing as Dad bought this house for you, and gives you an allowance.’

‘A very small allowance, Charlie. I can barely manage on it as it is, and now that Daddy’s giving you a job he’s flatly refusing to increase it for me.’

‘But Alan must have left you something.’ Charlie was growing desperate, but Bella was too intent on airing her own grievances to hear the despair in his voice.

‘Oh, yes, Alan left me something, all right – his father’s debts and the shame of being married to
a man who was about to divorce me so that he could marry someone else. No, the only thing I got from Alan that’s of any value is my engagement ring. Not that I bother wearing it much any more.’ Bella looked down at her left hand. ‘After all, it isn’t anything like as nice as the one you’ve given Daphne. I dare say that all my jewellery put together, including Alan’s mother’s and grandmothers’ engagement rings is only worth about two hundred. Mummy said you paid nearly a hundred for Daphne’s engagement ring.’ Her resentment of her future sister-in-law’s superior position within the family showed in Bella’s voice.

‘I don’t know why you’re asking me for a loan, Charlie,’ she told her brother petulantly. ‘After all, the way Mummy and Daddy are carrying on about you marrying Daphne I would have thought Daddy would be only too pleased to help you out. Or are you worried that he’s going to ask what you want the money for?’ Bella guessed. ‘I suppose you’ve lost at cards again, have you? Hardly the right kind of behaviour for a man who is marrying the daughter of a member of Lloyd’s, is it?’ Bella taunted unkindly.

‘Leave it out, will you, Bella?’ Charlie demanded sourly. ‘Look, you must be able to lend me something? Fifty?’

‘Fifty shillings, yes; fifty pounds, no,’ Bella told him truthfully.

Charlie glowered at his sister. He had been banking on her help, but Bella could be awkward when she wanted to be and it was plain to him that she wasn’t going to budge from her refusal.
It was selfish of her as well when she had just been boasting about how much her wretched jewellery was worth. Charlie toyed with the idea of telling her how desperate his situation actually was and why, and then acknowledged that it wouldn’t be a good idea to do so. You never knew with Bella, and he had learned when they had been growing up not to trust her. As a child she had always been ready to go running to their parents to spill the beans on him if she thought it would be to her own advantage.

He had to find that money. Charlie was under no illusions about Dougie’s ability to make good his threat. Daphne’s parents idolised the memory of their dead son, just as Daphne herself idolised her brother.

What had started as a bit of a joke when a comment about Charlie’s ‘heroism’ from one of the other men on the boat had led to Charlie being publicly hailed as a hero, had now turned into a total nightmare. Charlie hadn’t minded basking in all the reflected glory of his supposed heroism, even though, as Dougie had said, he’d been trying to push Eustace out of the way to get into the boat ahead of him, not save his life, and when Charlie had seen Eustace bang his head against the boat, in his own desperation to get on board he’d have quite happily let him drown if it hadn’t been for the fact that he had felt the weight of the now unconscious man might drag him down with him.

It wasn’t true, though, that Charlie had deliberately pushed Eustace overboard. But if Dougie
started to make public accusations against him, who knew what might come out? Charlie hadn’t exactly acquitted himself with gallantry on the beach at Dunkirk, and if the wrong people started asking the right questions, it wouldn’t just be his fiancée Charlie stood to lose; there was also his reputation and his ‘heroic’ status, and the fact that his father wouldn’t be so keen to get him out of the army and into a cushy job working for him if he found out that the son he was so proud of wasn’t the hero he believed him to be.

Trust Dougie to have spotted that notice his mother had insisted on putting in the papers. But for that he wouldn’t be in this ruddy mess. The trouble was that you didn’t mess around with families like Dougie’s. A hundred quid, though, and by tomorrow night. Charlie could feel himself starting to sweat.

‘You know, Charlie,’ Bella warned her brother too sweetly, ‘you really shouldn’t play cards for money, especially now that you’re going to be a married man. Poor Daphne. I do feel a bit guilty about keeping something so important from her.’

‘Cut it out, Bella. You’re as jealous as hell of Daphne.’

‘No I am not. Why should I be jealous of Daphne?’

‘Because Ma’s making such a fuss of her, for one thing, and because Dad’s giving us this house, for another.’

Charlie was losing patience with his sister. He was pretty sure she could have helped him if she’d wanted to, and he was equally sure that she was in one of her sulks for the reasons he had just
given. Well, he wasn’t going to give up. He’d still got time to talk her round. He
had
to talk her round, Charlie admitted, because there was no one else he could ask. His father was already complaining about the amount of money he’d had to lend him to cover the cost of his engagement to Daphne.

‘So we’ll be round in half an hour, Bella. Daphne is so excited about seeing the house. I’ve told her how nice you’ve made it. It’s a pity you have to go out, but I’ve got my own key.’

Bella was seething. She had never really thought that her mother would allow her father to take the house from her and give it to Daphne and Charlie, but now here was her mother, insisting on bringing Daphne and Charlie round to ‘have a look’ before Charlie drove Daphne home and then returned to his barracks.

Well, she most certainly wasn’t going to be there. She’d decided to go down to the school instead, on the pretext of checking through some of her supplies lists.

Things were still a bit cool between her and Laura at the moment, but that was Laura’s fault, not hers, Bella assured herself. At least she wasn’t having to endure the presence of Jan and his family. They’d gone to Liverpool to listen to a concert at the Philharmonic Hall. Bella thought she had never hated anyone as much as she hated Jan Polanski. The very thought of his name was enough to make her face burn with fury.