Across the Mersey (12 page)

‘Well, that’s a fine thing to say, and about your own son too. I’m surprised at you, Edwin, I really am,’ Vi retaliated. ‘Poor Charlie’s doing his best. It was gone eight o’clock three evenings last week before he came in for his meal.’

‘He needs to spend more time working and less time at that ruddy Tennis Club,’ Edwin told her.

‘Edwin! Language!’ Vi reproved him. ‘Jean’s going to be getting herself in a state. She was all
for telling me I’d done the wrong thing when I said that we’d had Jack evacuated, but she’ll be wishing she’d had the sense to do the same with her twins now, I shouldn’t wonder.’

Edwin gave a bored grunt.

‘Edwin, I really do think you should speak to Alan’s father, you know. Poor Bella’s terrified that that dreadful mother of Alan’s is going to try to make them live with them after they’re married. It’s like I was saying to my WVS group, it doesn’t look very good when a prominent Wallasey Village businessman and a local councillor acts as though he can’t afford to set his newly married son up in a house of his own. I’d be ashamed if that was us and our Charlie.’

Edwin gave another grunt.

‘If you were to ask me then I’d have to say that I’m a bit worried that Mrs Parker is one of those mothers who have to have her son tied to their apron strings. I’ve already told Bella that she’ll have to watch out for that. She will be Alan’s wife, after all. You know, I was thinking, if you were to mention to Mr Parker when you see him tomorrow at the council meeting that you’re prepared to give the young ones a cheque to pay for the new furniture they’ll need for that house that’s up for sale near the Parkers, then that just might make him realise—’

‘Give it a rest, will you, Vi? If the Parkers won’t buy them a house then there’s nothing I can do about it. Get me another drink, will you?’

Vi got up and took the glass he was holding
out to her. She knew when not to cross her husband, but at least she had planted the right seed in his mind. Bella had sobbed her heart out after they’d got back from church this morning after Alan had told her that he thought they should move in with his parents instead of setting up their own home.

Well, she’d see about that, Vi assured herself. She wasn’t going to have her Bella getting less than her due. If push came to shove then she’d see to it that Edwin bought them a house, and she’d make sure that everyone knew who’d had to pay for it.

She was very disappointed in the Parkers. Very disappointed.

‘Hey, Charlie, I’ve been looking for you everywhere. Where the hell have you been? You were supposed to pick me up over half an hour ago.’

Charlie grinned, ignoring the harassed and irritated expression on the face of his friend, as Brian got into the passenger seat of Charlie’s car. It was true that Charlie had promised to pick him up outside his house, prior to them both attending a regular Territorial Army meeting, and it was equally true that Charlie was very late. Not that Charlie himself cared.

‘Sorry, Brian, but I had a bit of important business to attend to,’ he told him, winking meaningfully. ‘A certain pretty girl had heard that war had been declared and she wanted to say a proper goodbye to me. I tell you, mate, this TA uniform
is worth its weight in gold for the effect it has on the girls.’

‘Oh, yes? Well, you won’t be feeling so pleased with yourself when you hear what I’ve got to tell you. We’re in deep shit.’

‘Ruddy hell, what for?’ Charlie scratched irritably at his neck where the rough fabric of his TA battledress had chafed his skin. Girl pleasing or not, he would be glad to get out of it and into his civvies. To tell the truth, the last thing he felt like doing now was going down to the local drill hall where his unit of the Territorial Army volunteers was based. For one thing, he suspected that his father would want to give him a lecture about the effects of the war on the business and the importance of him keeping his nose to the grindstone, and Charlie knew from experience that the best time to endure one of Pa’s lectures was on a Sunday evening after the old man had had a couple or three G and Ts rather than a Monday morning when his temper and his stomach were still soured by them.

‘Didn’t you hear that message they gave out on Friday over the wireless, saying that all army personnel have to report a.s.a.p. to their drill hall?’

‘No, I can’t say that I did,’ Charlie told him, shrugging dismissively. ‘We’re only in the TA, for heaven’s sake. It’s not like we’re in the real army, is it?’

‘Hasn’t Luke come back with you?’ Jean asked Sam when her husband walked into the kitchen.

They’d all been glued to the wireless since they’d got back, even the twins.

Old Mr Edwards had come round to tell them that the
Liverpool Echo
had brought out a Sunday edition and that he’d got them a copy.

It had made Jean’s heart bump against her ribs to see the bold headlines announcing the commencement of war instead of the normal front-page advertisements.

‘No. I thought he left with you and the girls.’

Jean looked at the clock on the wall. It was gone six o’clock. Luke wasn’t the sort to ignore family meal times without warning her in advance. Her heart started to beat too fast and too heavily.

‘He’ll be with the other lads, talking about what’s happened, I expect,’ Sam told her.

Jean nodded, but deep down inside she felt something was wrong. Not that she’d say so to Sam. He’d just laugh at her and say she was being a fussing mother hen.

‘You’ll be hungry,’ she told him. ‘You missed your dinner, after all. I’ll make you a sandwich.’

‘Ta, love.’ Sam sat down and picked up the paper, quickly becoming engrossed in it, whilst Jean filled the kettle and set about cutting bread. The wireless was on and she could hear the sound of the twins’ voices from their bedroom upstairs.

The kitchen door opened and Grace came in, holding a piece of paper.

‘Mum, look at this list. I just hope we’re going to be able to get everything it says I have to have.’

She sat down at the table, frowning over the
list, and then got up again when she saw that the kettle was boiling.

That was typical of Grace, Jean thought gratefully. She never needed to be asked, and she was always quick to help.

Sam had eaten his sandwiches and she and Grace had done the washing up. It was gone seven now and Luke still wasn’t back, and Jean couldn’t help continually glancing at the clock.

It was nearly eight when Luke finally came in.

‘There you are. I’ll put the kettle on,’ Jean told him, not wanting to let on how worried and uneasy she had felt. He was back now, after all.

‘I’ve joined up. I’ve got to report for training tomorrow morning.’

The cup Jean had been holding slipped through her fingers onto the linoleum. She looked at the broken pieces of pottery and then at her son, afraid to move or speak in case she made what he had just said real, when she knew that it surely couldn’t be real. Luke didn’t need to join up. He was going to work in the Salvage Corps with Sam.

Sam! She looked at her husband. He was getting to his feet, his face burning a dark angry red, his fists clenched at his sides.

‘You’ve done what?’

‘You heard me, Dad. I’ve joined up. It’s no use you looking at me like that. I had to.’

‘You had to do no such bloody thing. I’d got you a place in the Salvage Corps. All you had to do was wait another couple of weeks.’

‘It’s all right for you to say that, you don’t know what it’s like,’ Luke objected fiercely.

‘It’s because I do ruddy well know what it’s like. I watched more than one man cough himself to death from the gas in the trenches. You’re the one that knows nothing about what war’s like, Luke.’

‘Not war, no. I do know what it’s like to be called a coward. That might not bother you, Dad, but it bothers me.’

Sam’s face changed colour from red to white. Jean had never seen him look at anyone the way he was looking at Luke now. Instinctively she moved over to him, begging, ‘Sam …’

‘You don’t need to protect me, Mum,’ Luke told her, his young face hardening too. ‘I’m a man now, not a kid.’

‘A man? You’re a fool, that’s what you are,’ Sam told him. ‘I’d thought you’d got more about you than to listen to a lot of daft lads doing a bit of name-calling. I thought you’d got a bit of sense, but you haven’t. You’re a ruddy fool, Luke.’

‘I might be a fool but at least I can hold my head up now.’

Again that unfamiliar look crossed Sam’s face. He shook his head as though trying to shake it away, like a man coming up for air from deep water.

‘Aye, for as long as you can keep it on your shoulders.’

‘Sam!’ Now it was Jean’s turn to feel her face drain of colour and her heart start to thump uncomfortably fast.

‘What do you want me to say? That I think he’s done the right thing? Well, I don’t.’

Beneath Sam’s bitterness Jean could sense his pain, but she could also tell that Luke couldn’t see that. His face was bleak with misery and anger.

They’d both raised their voices and were facing one another like enemies, these two who were so alike and whom she loved so very much. It was almost more than she could bear.

She looked at Grace. ‘Go upstairs and sit with the twins, will you, love? They’ll be wondering what’s going on.’

As soon as the door had closed behind Grace, Jean tried to intervene.

‘Luke’s only done what he thinks is right, Sam.’ She put her hand on Sam’s arm but he shook it off. She had never seen him so angry, Jean admitted, her heart sinking. For all that Sam had an easygoing nature, he had a streak of stubbornness in him when it came to what he believed to be right. In Sam’s eyes, by defying him and enlisting, Luke had shown that he didn’t value or respect his father’s advice, and Jean knew that Sam would find that very hard to take.

‘Well, you’ve made your bed now, and you’ll just have to lie in it,’ Sam told Luke. ‘I hope you’re proud of yourself, because I’m certainly not. Like I’ve said, you’re a ruddy fool, and after all I’ve said to you, all I’ve done to try to get you into the Corps.’

‘The Salvage Corps. That’s all that matters to
you, isn’t it? You never even asked me what I wanted to do, or even if I wanted to be apprenticed as an electrician. No, all you could think about was what you wanted. Well, now I’ve done what I want. I’m not a kid, Dad, I’m a man, and if you don’t like that then too bad.’

This
was war, Jean recognised: this horrible cruel merciless tearing apart of family ties and loyalties. This senseless destruction and pain.

Luke was opening the back door, whilst Sam ignored him.

Alarm filled Jean. ‘Luke, what are you doing? Where are you going?’

‘I’m not staying here. Not now. I’ve got a couple of mates I can stay with. We joined up together.’

‘Luke,’ Jean protested. ‘Sam, stop him…’

‘Like he just told you, he’s a man now, so let him go and be one.’

Couldn’t Sam see the sheen of tears in Luke’s eyes? Didn’t he realise what he was doing or what was happening? Luke, their son, was about to go and fight a war. They may never see him again. How could Sam let that happen with so many cruel words still lying between them?

For the first time in the whole of their time together Jean found that she felt not love for her husband but something that felt much more like bitterness and anger.

She ran out after Luke, ignoring Sam’s command to ‘Let him go’, catching up with him at the gate and grabbing hold of his arm, her tears rolling down her face.

‘I’m sorry, Mum, but I had to do it,’ he told her gruffly.

And then he was gone, walking away from her as straight-backed as though he was already in uniform and marching.

She was shaking from head to foot when she walked back into the now empty kitchen. She could hear the girls coming downstairs. They came into the kitchen, Grace shepherding the twins in front of her. For once they were quiet, holding on to one another, their eyes round and stark with confusion and pain.

‘We heard Luke leave,’ Grace told her mother.

Jean couldn’t trust herself to speak.

‘Where’s Dad?’ Grace asked.

‘I don’t know.’ Nor did Jean feel as though she cared, she recognised. Anger and pain welled up inside her. How could Sam have let Luke leave like that?

‘Dad’s gone down to the shelter,’ Lou announced.

‘He goes there sometimes to think about things,’ Sasha supplied. ‘That’s what he told us, wasn’t it, Lou?’

Jean stared at the twins. Were they right? She hadn’t known that Sam did that. How had they known? Not that she really cared. Right now all her pain and all her love were for Luke, her firstborn. Who but a mother could ever know what it felt like when that new life was placed in your arms for the first time and that well of almost unbearable emotion took hold of you; that need
to protect that life from all harm? That love, that feeling, never went away.

Charlie was drunk. In fact he was very drunk indeed. It took him several minutes to climb out of his car. He staggered towards the front door, leaning against it whilst he searched for his key.

When, before he found it, his father opened the door for him he half fell into the hall. He could see his mother standing behind his father. They were both in their nightclothes, and his mother had rag curlers in her hair.

His father’s face was red with temper. ‘Where the hell have you been?’ he demanded.

‘The bloody bastards have called up the TA. Given us all Part One and Part Two orders,’ Charlie told them. ‘Bastards … bastards …’ His voice slurred over the words as he collapsed onto the floor, and then dragged himself up to lean against the wall, swaying slightly. ‘You’ve got to help me, Dad. You’ve got to get me out … I only joined because they said they’d never call up the TA Reserves …’

‘You’re a bloody fool, you know that, don’t you? I warned you that you were taking a risk, but you wouldn’t listen, and now look at the mess you’ve got yourself into. None of this would have happened if you’d listened to me and kept quiet.’

‘Yes, well, I didn’t, did I? But you can sort it out, can’t you?’

When her husband made no reply, Vi put her hand on his arm, saying sharply, ‘Edwin, you’ve
got to do something; speak to someone. The Ministry.’