Across the Mersey (35 page)

Jean couldn’t believe it. She had only left the house half an hour ago, and only to go up to the shop and use the telephone to alert Vi to what had happened. That alone hadn’t been very pleasant, what with Vi getting so cross and refusing to believe at first that Jack had been as badly treated as he had said, and even threatening to send him straight back again. But now to come back home and find out that Francine and Jack had disappeared and that Francine hadn’t left so much as a note behind saying
where they had gone had been enough to have Jean sitting down at her kitchen table with her hand pressed against her heart in an attempt to still its anxious racing beat.

Now what was she going to say to Vi when she arrived to collect Jack? She had known the moment she had seen the way Francine had been holding Jack so tightly and so possessively last night that there was going to be trouble. Jean felt desperately sorry for her nephew and for Fran herself, but she was still shocked that Fran could do something so thoughtless and silly.

Francine watched with a hungry loving maternal gaze as Jack tucked into the fish paste sandwiches she had ordered for him. They were in Joe Lyons, and Jack’s eyes were constantly rounding with curiosity and excitement as he stared about and took everything in.

All she could manage herself was a cup of tea, she was that strung up inside. More than one of Joe Lyons’ famous nippy waitresses had paused long enough to give Jack a brief smile as she had hurried past, causing Francine’s heart to swell with motherly pride. Vi had taught him nice manners, she had to say that for her, even if Francine suspected they had been taught through fear rather than kindness. He spoke well too, not posh, but well, and she thought she could detect a hint of the rhythm of her own voice in his.

She hadn’t had any plans in mind when she had given into the impulse that had brought them here.
All she had known was that she was desperate to have him to herself for a while, to pretend that they were what they could have been and should have been if only things had been different.

She had taken him to Lewis’s first to buy him some new clothes, not that there had been much choice, thanks to the war, but at least now he was wearing clothes that fitted him and were new. She had felt so proud and at the same time so humbled when he put his hand in hers of his own accord and before she had reached to take it.

He had lost that reserve and hesitation with her now that he had had at first, and she had felt a dangerous thrill of delight this morning over breakfast when it had been her he had turned to to speak to first and not Jean.

When he wasn’t afraid or intimidated, his smile was mischievous and his eyes so clear of any guile and so lovingly innocent that she felt as though she could eat him up. All she wanted to do was to sweep him up into her arms and keep him safe there for ever. She couldn’t bear to think about what he had been through and she couldn’t bear to think either that he would have to be handed back to Vi.

He was quick and bright, and interested in everything: one minute a little boy, the next a heart-breakingly protective man-child, who obviously saw it as his duty to watch out for her.

Francine had soon learned that Sam and Luke were his idols and that he adored them. Edwin and Charlie he seldom mentioned, and it seemed
to Francine that it was fear, not love, that filled him whenever Vi was mentioned.

They had walked from Lewis’s to the church where her mother was buried and Francine had shown him her stone.

‘She was my grandma, wasn’t she?’ he had asked knowledgeably.

‘Yes,’ Francine had agreed with a small choke in her voice. After all, it was true.

There had been one shocking moment when they had walked past the theatre just as Con was coming out with his girl. Francine’s first instinct had been to hide Jack from him, as though there was a risk of Con recognising him and immediately demanding that she hand his son over to him. Which, of course, was ridiculous. The last thing Con would be likely to do was to acknowledge an illegitimate son. He and his wife did not have any children and the rumour had always been that she was unable to have any.

As bad as that was, it surely couldn’t get any more painful than having the child you had had wrenched from your arms and given to someone else.

Jack’s touch on her arm brought a lump to Francine’s throat.

‘What’s going to happen to me?’ he asked her, his appetite for his sandwiches suddenly vanishing. ‘I don’t want to go back to Mr and Mrs Davies. Will Mum make me, do you think?’

Hearing that word ‘Mum’ and knowing it did not refer to her hurt so very much. And Vi wasn’t
his mum at all, not really. What if she didn’t take him back to Jean’s? He was her child, after all. She could go back to America and take him with her. Her heart had started to thump far too heavily. She knew that what she was thinking was impossible. Legally, she was not his mother, and apart from anything else what would she tell Jack himself: ‘I’m really your mother but I gave you away’?

The bond she was building with him was too new and too fragile for that. Reluctantly she let the impulse pass and concentrated instead on being practical.

‘Me and your auntie Jean are going to talk to … to Vi and explain to her what happened.’

‘But what if she still wants me to go back?’

This was so heartbreaking.

‘We won’t let her,’ she told him firmly.

‘Promise?’

Francine thought of the way that Vi had so stubbornly refused to tell them where he was and how she had been so determined that she did not see him, and her heart quailed at the thought of giving him a promise she knew that Vi would do her utmost to make sure she could not keep. But he was only a little boy and she could not explain any of the complex adult emotions that underlay Vi’s actions, and so instead she had to say and pray she could mean it, ‘Promise.’

She saw the Wolseley car parked outside Jean and Sam’s as soon as they got off the bus. Immediately Jack tensed and pulled back.

‘That’s Dad’s car.’

Francine had guessed that it must belong to Edwin and her own heart had sunk but she forced herself to sound cheerful and unconcerned.

‘Is it? I expect they’ve come to take you home.’

Home! His home should be with her; she was his home.

Jean let them in, her face set and anxious as she guided Jack into the front room. As soon as he saw his parents he cowered back against Jean, causing her heart to ache with sadness for him and anger against her twin. It wasn’t his fault that he had been born the way he had, and Vi had been the one to say she wanted him. He hadn’t been forced on her although to have heard what she had been saying whilst they waited for Francine to bring him back you’d have thought that she’d had no say in the matter whatsoever, and that Francine had simply left her baby with Vi and Edwin and taken off.

‘At last,’ Vi greeted Francine, giving her an acid look before turning to Jack and saying sharply, ‘Well, I hope you’re pleased with yourself, Jack, causing me and your dad all this worry and upset.’

‘Give over, Vi.’ That was Sam, who had slipped home to support Jean, knowing that Vi would try to bully her. ‘The poor kid’s had a pretty rotten time of it, by all accounts.’

‘By his account, don’t you mean?’ Vi snapped. ‘According to Mr and Mrs Davies when they telephoned us this morning from the village post office, they’ve been off their heads with worry about him.
And if he’s been that unhappy why on earth didn’t he write and tell us instead of causing all this trouble.’

‘They told me that you didn’t want me, and that was why you didn’t write to me,’ said Jack.

The adults looked at Jack with varying emotions in their hearts.

Jean could see that Vi wasn’t looking at all pleased that he had spoken up, and although she said crossly, ‘That’s nonsense. Of course I wrote to you,’ Jean suspected that she had not written as regularly as she would want them to think.

It had been ever such a relief when Francine had finally returned. Jean had really thought at one stage that she wasn’t going to.

‘Well, obviously the lad can’t go back to these people,’ said Sam firmly. ‘And if I was you, Edwin, I’d be writing to whoever is in charge of this private evacuation lot you used and reporting them. I reckon the woman who took her kids away got it right, and that Jack here deserves a pat on the back for having the good sense to do what he did. It seems to me that these Davies people were just using their evacuees as unpaid labour, aye and getting paid for it by their families and the Government as well, seeing as the Government gives them as take the kids a bit of an allowance. I dare say you and Vi paid a fair bit more to make sure that Jack was looked after properly as well, and I shouldn’t like to think that someone was cheating me out of my money like that.’

Jean listened to Sam in admiration. He had got
exactly the right way of dealing with Edwin and appealing to what mattered most to him – his bank account. She could almost see Edwin puffing out his chest and mentally preparing the letter he would send to the Davieses, demanding his money back. She gave Sam a grateful look.

Vi had started to frown.

‘And what’s that Jack’s wearing, might I ask, because those certainly aren’t his clothes?’

‘No, I bought him some new things when we were out,’ Francine told her. ‘What he was wearing were little better than rags, weren’t they, Jean?’

‘He’d certainly outgrown them,’ Jean agreed diplomatically.

Vi pounced triumphantly. ‘Well, if he’s grown then he certainly can’t have been as badly treated as he’s told you. If you’ve been lying to your aunt Jean, Jack—’

‘I haven’t. It’s true, all of it.’

Francine could hear the panic in his voice and moved closer to him whilst Jean’s heart sank. Didn’t Vi have any tact? Couldn’t she see what she was doing? And poor little Jack – he was the one who was going to suffer the most because of all this upset.

‘Well, you’d better come home with us now until we sort out somewhere else for you to go.’

‘You’re not thinking of sending him back?’ Jean protested.

‘It’s not safe for him here. You know that. Wallasey’s already been bombed once, and four killed. There’s hardly two nights together now when we don’t have the air-raid sirens going on.’

None of them could dispute the truth of Vi’s words.

‘Come along, Jack,’ she insisted sharply. ‘Your father’s been put to enough trouble already having to leave his work and then wait around for your aunt Francine to bring you back, after she’d taken you out without a by-your-leave, or telling anyone where she was going.’

Jack was leaning back into her, and now, as Francine put her hand on his shoulder, he looked up at her.

Jean looked helplessly at Sam.

Francine’s eyes were swimming with tears, and Jack looked so helpless and afraid, whilst Vi was clearly furious. Any minute now something would be said or done that would cause the kind of family trouble that could never be put right, thought Jean worriedly.

‘Why don’t you leave him here with us for a few days, Vi, whilst you sort out what you’re going to do?’ Sam suggested.

‘No. He’s coming back with us now, and as for sorting something out, we’ve done that already. First thing tomorrow Edwin is taking him back to Wales. We’ve found another family that’s willing to take him. Very highly recommended, they are as well, by a fellow member of my WVS committee. Come along, Jack.’

Francine dropped on her haunches and wrapped her arms around him, hugging him fiercely and giving him a kiss.

She hoped he’d remember about the little card
she’d given him with the address of the theatre on it, and that he’d be able to keep it hidden from Vi. She told him he could write to her any time he wanted to, and that he must if he wasn’t happy. It wasn’t what she wanted but what else could she do?

It was Jean’s turn to hug him now, and then Sam was leading him over to Vi, who frowned and grumbled over a mark on his shirt and said that his hair was untidy and needed cutting.

‘I can’t bear it,’ said Francine to Jean after they had gone. ‘I really can’t.’

‘You must,’ Jean responded. ‘Because there’s nothing else you can do.’

Grace had just come off duty and was halfway across the yard on her way to see Teddy when it happened. Teddy was standing outside his ambulance, watching the crew of another ambulance help an elderly man to walk towards the hospital, and smoking a cigarette. He saw Grace and waved to her. Then out of nowhere a young boy came running past, whilst from the hospital entrance one of the porters was calling out, ‘Stop him. He’s just nicked my watch.’

Immediately Teddy dropped his cigarette and set off in pursuit of the thief, but he had only run a few yards when he stopped, and doubled over, clutching his chest and then collapsed onto the ground.

Grace couldn’t remember moving but somehow she was there, alongside his colleagues, who had
also seen what had happened, kneeling down beside him whilst over her head anxious voices issued curt instructions.

His face was deathly pale, his lips almost blue, and beneath her searching fingers his pulse was so frail and thready it might almost not have been there.

The other ambulance men were attempting to lift him onto a stretcher. Grace reached for his hand. His eyes opened and he looked at her. Grace’s heart did a slow sickening dive that dizzied her.

‘Don’t move him,’ someone was instructing. ‘Doc’s on his way.’

‘It’s too late for that,’ another responded in a shocked voice. ‘It looks like the poor lad’s a goner.’

‘Teddy. Teddy …’ But Grace knew it was no use. She could see it in his face, and in his eyes was a look that told her that he knew it too.

She lifted his hand to her lips and pressed them against it.
Don’t die, Teddy, please don’t die
.

As though he had heard the words beating inside her head he gave her a crooked smile. He was trying to say something and she had to lean even closer to him to hear it.

‘Don’t you go forgetting what I said to you about you having to do the living for both of us.’ His voice was like the dry rustle of dead leaves swept aside by the wind. ‘And think on what you do ’cos I’ll be watching you from up there.’