Across the Mersey (15 page)

Her heart trembled and ached for her husband. Oh, Luke! But how could she condemn her son for his father’s pain? She loved them both.

‘Our Reg was seventeen when he went off to war,’ Sam announced without preamble. ‘I can see him now, Jean. A good-looking lad, he was.’

Jean nodded. Sam and his family had lived close by when they were growing up and she could remember Sam’s elder brother.

‘He was always our mam’s favourite.’ Sam’s breath shuddered in his throat. ‘She were never the same after we got the news that he’d been killed. I allus thought that she’d rather it had been me if one of us had to go.’

‘No, Sam, don’t say that,’ Jean begged him, her eyes filling with tears.

‘It was only having that ruddy whooping cough that saved me from going, and I reckon if I had I would have been dead, an’ all.’

Jean nodded again, but didn’t say anything, sensing that now wasn’t the time. She knew the story of how contracting whooping cough and being ill for so long had meant that Sam had been declared unfit for military service, and how although he never said so in so many words, that had left him with a feeling of guilt because his brother who had gone off to war had died whilst he who had not, had lived.

That had been before they had started courting, after the war was over. She had felt only relief when she had heard the story. It always made her heart clench with fear to think how easily she might have lost him before she had even loved him.

‘War does terrible things to a man, Jean. Even them that did come back, they was never the same. You know that.’

‘Yes,’ she agreed. Both of them had seen within their own families, and amongst their neighbours, men who had returned from the trenches so changed, both physically and within themselves, by the horrors they had seen and experienced that they were condemned forever to live within the hell of their memories, isolated from those who loved them.

‘
We
know that, Sam, but Luke’s young. He doesn’t know what we do.’

It was the wrong thing to say. Immediately
he tensed. ‘Well, he should do,’ he answered grimly. ‘I’ve told him often enough what happens to men that go to war. But no, he thinks he knows better, he thinks it’s all medals and glory and wearing a ruddy uniform. He doesn’t know the half of it.’

‘He’s got your pride, Sam, you know that.’

‘Aye, well, his pride won’t do him much good when he’s lying face down in the mud and dead, will it?’ His voice was savage with pain.

Jean started to tremble. Sam’s words were conjuring up an all too vivid picture for her. ‘Don’t say things like that,’ she begged him. ‘I can’t bear the thought of it.’

‘Do you think I can? Ruddy young fool. He could have been here, safe … and still have done summat for the war effort. Doing your bit isn’t just about joining the ruddy army. There’s many a chap worked for the Salvage Corps that’s got more guts – aye, wot’s done more for this city than any ruddy soldier.’

Jean reached out to touch him and Sam pulled away, rejecting her unspoken comfort. He felt things so deeply; Jean knew that, even if no one else did. As a young bride it had upset her dreadfully when his occasional dark moods of unhappiness came down over him, causing him to retreat from her into his own pain and silence, until she had learned to understand how affected he had been both by his elder brother’s death and the fact that he had not been able to join up himself.

‘I never thought it would come to this, Jean,
that me own son would look at me like he thought I was a coward.’

‘Luke would never do that, Sam.’

‘Looked at me just like me mam did, when Nellie Jefferies from number eleven give me them white feathers,’ Sam told her, ignoring her protest. ‘Walked off, Mam did, and left me there in the street, she was that ashamed of me, and no wonder. Lost three sons and her hubby Nellie had and there was me walking down the street, when every other lad that lived there had gone off to fight.’

There it was, the real unacknowledged source of Sam’s pain, forced down and locked away and now brought back to festering life, moving Jean to an immediate defence of him.

‘Sam, you were ill. The army wouldn’t take you, and if Nellie Jefferies had had any sense she’d have known that.’

‘It wasn’t just her. Even me own mam thought …’ He stopped and shook his head, his jaw set.

Jean had thought that Sam had got over believing that his mother blamed him in some way for living whilst Reg had died. It was such a long time ago. It worried her to hear him talking about it again now and in that kind of voice. She felt guilty for not recognising how he felt.

‘It’s only natural that this war should bring back memories of the last one, Sam. But …’ she hesitated, groping for the words to say what she felt had to be said without making the situation even worse, and could only come up with a lame, ‘well, that’s all in the past now.’

‘Is it?’ Sam challenged her. ‘How can it be, Jean, when me own son is acting just like me mam did and accusing me of being a coward?’

‘Sam, that’s not true at all,’ Jean denied. ‘Luke never said anything of the kind. And as for your mam …’

Jean had to pause then, remembering that Sam’s mother had never really been as loving towards Sam as her own mother had been to her and her sisters. As the young girl Sam was courting she had simply accepted that Sam’s widowed mother was different from her own much more openly affectionate mum without questioning it. In those days young girls were brought up to respect their elders and she would never have dreamed of criticising Sam’s mother, or even of talking about her, to her own mother. However, she could remember now that her own mother had commented that the death of her elder son had turned Sam’s mother ‘a bit funny’.

Sam’s mother had died shortly after Luke had been born, and Jean could remember how hurt she’d been at the way her mother-in-law had turned away from her new grandson the first time she saw him. Afterwards she’d put that down to her being poorly, but maybe there had been more to it than that, and Sam’s mother
had
resented Sam for being alive whilst her elder son was dead.

‘Well, like I just said,’ she insisted to Sam, ‘our Luke never said anything about you being a coward.’

‘He may not have said it, but it’s what he was
thinking. I could see that from the way he was looking at me. And besides, if he hadn’t thought it then he’d have listened to my advice and stayed put.’

‘Sam, that’s nonsense. Luke thinks the world of you, and he always has done. It’s just that he wants to do his bit and to be part of what his friends are doing. It must have been hard for him, listening to all the other lads talking about enlisting.’

She knew immediately that she had said the wrong thing, but it was too late. She could see the tips of Sam’s ears burning dark red with anger.

‘Hard for him? Don’t you think it was hard for me when every lad in our street had gone off to war but for me, and me with me mam hating me for being there and not being our Reg? He was always her favourite.’

Jean searched her mind for something to say that would comfort him and realised that she could not think of anything, not for a pain that went so deep and which had been kept secret until now. Tears blurred her vision; not for Luke but for the young lad her Sam had been.

He’d always had a bit of a soft spot for Vi’s Jack, and had blamed Vi for favouring the other two over him and now suddenly she thought she could understand why.

‘Well, if he was then she was daft, if you ask me,’ she said resolutely. ‘There’s no one who can hold a candle to you for being a good husband and father, Sam.’

When he shifted his weight from one foot to
the other in the familiar way that told her that he was taking in what she was saying even if he appeared not to be, she continued determinedly, ‘And it’s not only me that thinks so. It gets on me nerves at times, the number of women that tell me how lucky I am to be married to a chap like you.’ She summoned up a frown and deliberately made herself look severe. ‘Aye, and I’ve a pretty fair notion that more than one of them wouldn’t mind stepping into me shoes if they thought they might get the chance, especially that Dolly Nesbitt wot works in the chippy. Always had a bit of an eye for you, she has.’

‘What, her with the brassy-looking hair that wears all that lipstick? Do me a favour, Jean.’

Jean smiled to herself. She could see that he had begun to perk up a little bit. Not for anything was she going to tell him just how, over the years, she’d looked at her good-looking, tall, broad-shouldered husband and worried that some flighty piece might try to get her hands on him. Not these days, of course. She was too sensible for that now, what with them with a grown-up family, an’ all.

‘Come on in, love,’ she urged Sam. ‘It’s beginning to feel really damp with the dew coming.’ Jean rubbed her arms to take the evening chill out of her flesh, and then smiled when Sam reached for her, putting his arm around her and drawing her into his side.

He felt so warm and solid, so safe and strong, no one who didn’t know him as well as she did could ever guess how vulnerable he could be, especially
not Luke, who had always looked up to his father. Sam had never been one to talk about his own youth to his children – he just wasn’t that sort. Jean leaned gratefully into his warmth.

‘Our Luke is so young, Jean. All I wanted to do was to keep him safe.’

‘I know, love.’

‘Looked at me like he hated me, he did.’

‘He’ll be missing you, Sam. Allus thought the world of you, our Luke has, right from the start. Remember how it was always you that could stop him crying when he was teething and not me?’

She could feel his chest lift as he gave a reluctant laugh.

‘Aye, I can see him now sitting there, watching for me coming in. It’s a strange thing, you know, Jean, holding a little ’un and knowing that you’ve helped make it, knowing that you’ve helped give it life. It makes you feel that you can never stop worrying, never stop looking out for it, and at the same time it fills your heart with so much happiness that it could almost burst.’ Sam shook his head.

Jean said nothing. As a mother she knew all too well the feelings Sam was struggling to explain.

She wasn’t one little bit disappointed because Seb wasn’t here at the wedding – of course she wasn’t, Grace reassured herself. It was just that she would have liked to introduce him to her mother, in view of what that happened. But then again her mother had been preoccupied and on edge, looking worriedly at Luke, who had only arrived home this morning, after they had thought he wasn’t going to get leave, and with barely enough time to change into the morning suit Bella had insisted the groomsmen were to wear.

Of course her mother was disappointed that she hadn’t had time to talk to Luke properly; she was disappointed herself, Grace admitted. She had been looking forward to exchanging stories of what it felt like to live away from home for the first time with her brother.

She was finding her new life as a probationary nurse both exciting and nerve-racking and would have welcomed the opportunity to discuss with her family her apprehension about whether or not
she was going to be good enough, but there just hadn’t been time.

‘That frock really doesn’t suit you at all, Grace,’ Lou told her as the twins came to sit down beside her.

It was true that the virulently bright pink sateen dresses with their puffed sleeves and gathered skirts were not at all flattering. Even the sweetheart necklines seem to have been cut in such a way that they gaped awkwardly.

‘At least Grace looks better in it than the other bridesmaid,’ Sasha defended their elder sister.

Poor Trixie, Grace thought sympathetically, their dresses might have been designed specifically to make the other girl look plain and gawky, and to make her hair look more gingery, in contrast with Bella’s wedding dress, which was so stunningly beautiful that it was no wonder that the whole church had seemed to be filled with a sigh of appreciation when Bella had walked down the aisle on her father’s arm.

Now the formalities of the marriage service were over, along with the wedding breakfast, and the guests were relaxing in the comfort of the Hotel Splendide’s banqueting suite, which was on the first floor of the building and reached via an ornate sweeping staircase.

The hotel had originally been the home of a wealthy ship owner, and was very grand, with portraits of ‘the family’ still adorning the hallway and the stairs. The ‘banqueting suite’ had originally been the ballroom, along with the
withdrawing room beyond it, according to the hotel’s brochure.

It had been the withdrawing room in which the wedding guests had sat down at long trestle tables to a formal wedding breakfast of roast chicken with all the trimmings, followed by trifle and then cheese and biscuits, after which the guests had moved into the ballroom to dance to the music provided by the hotel’s resident pianist. The collection of tables and chairs, which were set out around the edge of the floor, the tables covered in pale pink damask tableclothes, were dwarfed by the room’s high ceiling and the gilded mirrors hanging on the walls.

‘Look out, here comes Bella,’ Lou warned her twin, the pair of them getting up as one to disappear, leaving Grace on her own with their cousin.

‘There you are,’ said Bella crossly. ‘You are supposed to be here to be my bridesmaid, Grace. And where’s Trixie? You’d think she’d be far more grateful that she’s been included. All she’s done is hide herself away in a corner. And as for Trixie’s parents; all
they’ve
done is sit with Alan’s parents. None of them has made any attempt to mingle. Daddy invited everyone from the council as well. But then, of course, Alan’s father has rather shown himself up by refusing to buy the house I wanted. I don’t know what we’d have done if Daddy hadn’t stepped in and bought it for us.’

Grace said nothing as she listened to Bella’s comments. It wasn’t the first time today that her
cousin had criticised Alan’s parents to her and Grace wondered how she would feel if she was marrying someone whose mother she disliked as much as Bella disliked Alan’s mother.

Bella opened the pretty little satin bag that matched her wedding dress and withdrew a packet of Sobranie cocktail cigarettes and a holder, her actions making Grace’s eyes round. The only time she had ever seen anyone smoking the coloured cigarettes or using a holder had been in a film.

Bella extracted one of the five pastel-coloured cigarettes and inserted the gold filter tip into her smart cigarette holder and then lit the cigarette.

Bella had changed so much in the short time she had been engaged. Grace felt that she barely knew her any more.

‘God, doesn’t Trixie look dreadful? I can’t imagine what on earth Alan ever saw in her. Poor thing, she’s so dreadfully plain. Ugly really, almost.’ There was satisfaction as well as malice in Bella’s voice.

Alan might have chosen to marry Bella, but he was still spending rather a lot of time talking to Trixie and her parents, Grace noticed, but then they were seated at a table in the ballroom with Alan’s own parents, who Bella had studiously ignored from the minute the formal wedding breakfast had finished.

The newly married couple were only having a short honeymoon, ‘because of the war’, as Bella
had put it, pouting when she had informed Grace that she had wanted to honeymoon in Paris but was having to make do with a few days in Blackpool.

‘You’ll have to change into your going-away outfit soon,’ Grace reminded Bella, mindful of her bridesmaid responsibilities and duties.

‘In a minute. I want the photographer to take another photograph of me standing on the stairs in my wedding dress first. Go and find him, will you, Grace?’

Grace couldn’t help thinking that in Bella’s shoes she might have been feeling more eager to be alone with her new husband, but then Bella’s dress was gorgeous and she did look beautiful in it, Grace acknowledged generously.

‘Bloody army,’ Charlie swore as he threw down his cigarette stub and then ground it out beneath his shoe. ‘Christ, I haven’t had a drink in two weeks.’

Charlie was certainly making up for that now, Luke recognised as he watched his cousin summoning a waiter to order yet another G and T.

‘Want another yourself?’ Charlie asked.

Luke shook his head. He had barely touched his shandy. He had been too busy studiously avoiding looking at his father.

Luke wasn’t sure what he had been hoping for when he had arrived back home this morning, later than he had hoped because of the problems he had had making his way from his camp in Northern
Ireland back to Liverpool, but it had made his heart sink with misery when the first thing his dad had done when he had seen him had been to turn his back and ignore him.

When he had told Grace she had suggested that it might have been better if he had changed into his civvies before going home, because seeing him in his uniform was bound to make their father feel that Luke was deliberately making the point that he had joined up.

Luke grimaced now, thinking of Grace’s sisterly advice. Changing into civvies had been the last thing on his mind as he had battled to leave the camp in time to catch the train for the ferry, standing up all the way and then having to stand again on the packed ferry. It had been touch and go whether or not he had made it at all, and the truth was that he had got home feeling more like going to bed and catching up on the sleep he had missed over the last forty-eight hours rather than going to a wedding.

Luke had missed his family, and especially his father, a very great deal, even if he still believed that he had had no option other than to join up and did not regret doing so for one minute. He was with a good bunch of lads, all very much from his own background and circumstances, and he was already making friends amongst his group, as they shared the rigours of their intensive training. But it hurt hearing the others joking about their proud fathers. All the more so because he and his father had always been so close. Normally, there
was no one he’d sooner turn to for advice and to confide in than his father. As the two males in a household of four females they had naturally had a very special bond, and Luke really felt the loss of that.

Jean was right, though, in saying that Sam and Luke were alike and Luke had inherited his father’s pride and his stubbornness. He was ready to forget their quarrel and his father’s harsh words to him, but he was certainly not ready to abandon his belief that his decision to join up had been the right one.

‘Mind you, I reckon the old man will bend a few ears and get me out,’ Charlie was saying confidently, his tongue loosened by the amount he had had to drink. ‘He’s taking his time about it, though. He was in the devil of a temper with me when he found out I’d been called up. Not my fault, though, ishh it?’ Charlie was slurring his words now as he knocked back another drink. ‘Bloody stupid, thinking that. If I’d really wanted to volunteer I’d have gone for the RAF, not signed on in the ruddy TA.’

Charlie looked balefully at his father, who was standing with a group of his fellow councillors in front of the ballroom’s imposing marble fireplace, his chest puffed out and his face red with heat and self-importance.

Edwin wasn’t enjoying the wedding. For a start it had cost him an arm and a leg, and that was before he had been daft enough to let Vi persuade him
into buying the newly married couple a house. Edwin still wasn’t sure just how or why he had come to agree to part with so much money, but at least, as he had just told his fellow councillors in a voice deliberately loud enough to reach the ears of George Parker, Alan’s father, he had had the sense to put the house in his own name.

Ruddy weddings. Edwin tugged at his collar, which felt too tight, constricting his neck. If he had cherished hopes of being envied and revered by his fellow councillors because of the extra business the war was going to put his way, and his daughter’s marriage to Alan Parker, he had quickly come to realise that just the opposite seemed to have happened and that it was being made clear to him that he was still very much an outsider as far as Wallasey’s long-time residents were concerned, even though they were more than happy to fill their glasses at his expense. And then there was that young idiot Charlie, who didn’t have a brass farthing’s worth of sense and who should have been here at home, working in the business, not playing at ruddy soldiers. Of course he’d have to find a way of getting him out of the TA and back where he belonged, but not yet. It would serve him right to have to wait, and teach him a well-needed lesson.

Jean looked across at the twins. They looked ever so nice in the matching dresses she had bought them at Lewis’s, white cotton with an all-over pattern of blue and pink flowers, and nipped in a
bit at the waist, making them suddenly look rather more grown up than Jean really liked. Even though Grace wasn’t working there any more, she had had a word with the manageress of the Gown Salon and Jean had been given a bit of discount off the price because the dresses were really summer stock and would be going in the next sale.

Her own suit was new as well. Sam had insisted, and Jean had to admit that she felt proper smart in it. The tweed jacket had slightly padded shoulders and a bit of a military cut to it – a fashion that was now coming in because of the war, Grace had told her when they had gone to Lewis’s together to choose it. It had given Jean a real thrill of pleasure to discover that her waist was still neat enough for her to wear something so tailored, even if she had worried that the suit’s skirt was a little bit on the short side for a married woman with a grown-up family. Its brown heathery flecked tweed went perfectly with her best handbag and shoes, and she had trimmed up her brown hat with some new petersham ribbon and some feathers.

It had certainly been a posh do, but as she had said to Sam earlier, Bella and her new husband hadn’t looked anywhere near as happy as she had remembered feeling when she and Sam had got wed. Vi was full of herself, though, over Bella’s marriage, but then of course it was typical of Vi that she should be. She hadn’t let Jean say so much as a word in praise of Grace and her nursing training.
‘Come on, everyone, the bride and groom are about to leave.’

Dutifully everyone gathered in the hallway to watch Bella and Alan walk down the stairs together.

Her hand tucked through Alan’s arm, Bella gave Trixie a triumphant look as the newly married couple ran the gauntlet of the confetti being thrown at them as they hurried from the hotel to Alan’s waiting car.

She had done it, Bella congratulated herself smugly. She had got what she wanted, just as she always did.