Across the Mersey (5 page)

‘Susan!’ Grace felt bound to protest.

‘It’s the truth. Twice as pretty as her, you are, or at least you could be. Only you can’t see it.’

Bella smiled smugly as she surveyed her own reflection in the mirror of Lewis’s powder room. She had just finished reapplying her new ‘Paris Pink’ lipstick, her skin was creamily flawless, thanks to a fluff of Yardley face powder, and she had dabbed plenty of Ma Griffe scent on her wrists and her handkerchief before leaving home.

No one seeing both her and Grace in the Gown Salon five minutes ago would ever have guessed
that they were cousins. Grace looked so drab and plain in her white blouse and black skirt, and with her hair tied back and only the merest hint of lipstick. Bella knew her cousin would be the perfect foil for her own beauty on Saturday night. There was nothing like a plain friend to make a girl look even better and so encourage her chap to recognise how lucky he was. Bella looked down at her left hand, her smile widening. She could see Alan’s ring on her finger already. In fact she had as good as picked it out from the rings on display in the window of Wallasey’s most exclusive jewellers. Not one but three bright shiny diamonds of a satisfyingly impressive size.

Mrs Alan Parker!

‘Mr and Mrs Edwin Firth request the pleasure of your company at the Marriage of their Daughter Miss Isabella Firth with Mr Alan Parker.’

Bella exhaled happily. Alan was everything she wanted in a husband. His father was an important and very well-to-do local businessman; his mother was the chairwoman of all the most important Wallasey women’s committees. They had no daughter of their own so naturally, she, their daughter-in-law, would be adored and spoiled. Alan’s parents would buy them a smart detached house not far from their own, and she would live the life of a new young wife whose husband had the time and the money to indulge her every whim.

She was so glad now that she had held back last year when the son of the most well-to-do man where they had lived before moving to Kingsway
had started dropping hints that he wanted to propose to her. David had been all very well in his way, but his family’s position could not compare with that of Alan’s.

Not that it had all been plain sailing exactly. There had been the small matter of the girl Alan had already been seeing when they had first met – an ‘accidentally on purpose’ bumping into him as she left the tennis court – but Bella had soon seen off Trixie Mayhew, who had gone all pale-faced and quiet when Bella had taken her to one side to confide in her that she felt Trixie ought to know that Alan had told her how attracted he was to her but that he felt he couldn’t ask her out because he was already seeing Trixie. Naturally Bella had known that Trixie was the kind of girl who wouldn’t want to stand in the way of the man she loved’s longing for someone else. And of course when Alan had turned to her for comfort when Trixie had told him that she didn’t want to see him any more, and had refused to say why, Bella had been more than ready to give him that comfort.

Bella knew that it would shock girls like Trixie and her cousin Grace to learn how determined she was to make sure that Alan proposed to her. But that, of course, was why girls like them ended up with the husbands they did, whilst girls like her got the pick of the crop. And now if she had judged the situation correctly, and she was sure that she had, Alan had taken the hints she had been dropping and
was
about to propose. And
not before time! She had been beginning to get a bit impatient. After all, they had spent the whole summer as a couple, and she had made it clear what she wanted and expected, losing no opportunity to make him aware of how fortunate he was to have a girl like her and what a perfect wife she would be.

Now her goal was in sight. Surely the reason Alan had telephoned her at work so unexpectedly to ask her to meet him could mean only one thing? He wanted her to choose her ring before Saturday so that he could ‘surprise’ her with it at the dance. She had pretended to appear casual on the phone, suggesting that he meet her outside Lewis’s instead of letting him pick her up from her office. After all, she didn’t want him thinking that she was desperate!

Daintily Bella sauntered out into the street. She was late, of course, but not so late that Alan would have grown irritated, and so it caught her off guard not to find Alan waiting for her as they had arranged.

Her smile changed abruptly to a small tight frown. She looked briefly down Ranelagh Street. It was unthinkable that Alan should have stood her up or gone off in a huff. She was a girl who was worth waiting for, and she had been at pains to make sure that Alan knew that, just as she had been at pains to make sure that he realised how many other young men wished they were in his shoes.

Alan was the kind of man who needed to know
that his peers envied him, and Bella had been more than willing to assist him in this vanity.

The sound of a car horn followed by Alan calling out her name caught her attention, her eyes widening slightly as she saw him waving to her from the driving seat of a brand-new cream MG Roadster, its hood down.

‘I say, Bella, hurry up, will you?’ he called out impatiently. ‘I’ve already driven past here twice.’

The drivers of the other cars in the street were all turning to look and, by no means averse to this attention, Bella made a pretty show of looking bashful, whilst at the same time ensuring that everyone was aware of how elegant and smartly turned out she was as she hurried towards the car.

‘Goodness, Alan, fancy calling out to me like that in the street. Everyone was looking at me,’ she told him as she got into the car and closed the door.

‘What do you think of her?’ he demanded excitedly, ignoring her comment.

What Bella thought was that she was irritated and put out to discover that his reason for wanting to meet her was because he wanted to show off his new car, and not because he wanted to take her to choose an engagement ring, but she was far too wise to say so. Men needed to be indulged at times, and this was definitely one of those. And besides, being sweet and nice now, and encouraging his obvious good mood, would pay off later when she pressed home the point that it would be
both convenient and expected of them to announce their engagement on Saturday.

‘A real beauty, isn’t she?’ he enthused, oblivious to what Bella was thinking. ‘Dad gave me the keys this morning. Said he’d been going to keep her as a surprise for my birthday, but he’d decided I might as well enjoy her now whilst the weather’s so good. She’s got the sweetest-sounding engine you’ve ever heard.’

‘A new car for your birthday – your father is very generous, Alan.’

‘The old man can afford it,’ he told her with a careless shrug, a gesture that made him look exactly like his father. Both the Parker men were of average height and solidly built with light brown hair, pale blue eyes and ruddy complexions.

The draught from the motion of the car was already tugging at her hat. Bella frowned and looked pointedly at Alan, waiting for him to comment on how pretty she looked before she was obliged to remove it. When he didn’t, she turned stiffly away from him to remove her hatpins and place her hat on her knee.

‘I’ve had a word with Grace. Just to remind her about the dance on Saturday, and that she’s partnering your cousin.’

‘Seb? Oh yes. He’s such a dull fellow. He actually went off to spend the afternoon in the library. Lord knows why. It’s a bit of a bore having him hanging around all the time, but the old man is pretty keen on making a bit of a fuss of him, seeing as his father has done so well for himself. Of course,
he isn’t my first cousin or anything. It’s his stepmother who’s Dad’s cousin but Dad reckons the connection is worth hanging on to.’

Bella shook her head. She wasn’t particularly interested in Seb Atkins, who looked at her sometimes in a way that she didn’t like one little bit. Men were supposed to admire and adore her, not look at her as though she bored and irritated them.

‘I dare say there won’t be many more Tennis Club dances if it does come to war,’ Alan told her.

‘All the more reason for us to make the most of this one then, with a special celebration of our own,’ Bella told him softly, putting her hand over his as he reached for the gear shift.

‘Thought we’d take this pretty little baby for a bit of a spin, go try out her paces,’ Alan told her, annoyingly ignoring the opportunity she had just given him to suggest that they take advantage of the dance to announce their engagement.

‘A spin? I’ve already told my mother that you’ll be coming home with me for tea,’ Bella protested, not liking this change to her carefully arranged plan, which had involved discussing their engagement in front of her parents as though it were already a fact.

Bella had learned as a child that the best way to get round her father’s ever-ready veto of anything that involved him spending any money was to simply behave as though the issue had already been discussed and agreed. She had never ever asked, ‘Please may I have ballet lessons?’ but had stated instead, ‘When I start my ballet lessons …’ It was
a trick she had borrowed from her mother and it worked.

Since so far Alan had been oblivious to her hints about their getting engaged, she had changed her tactics and begun to talk about their engagement as though it were an accepted fact and the question not so much ‘if’ as ‘when’.

As a soon-to-be-engaged couple it was natural and wise that they both spent time with one another’s family. Irritatingly, Alan’s parents had not yet extended their invitations beyond casual visits to their home to a proper formal tea party, as Bella felt they should have done, a mistake for which they would pay once she was married to Alan. However, her own parents, especially her mother, were much more up to the mark, and Mummy had been briefed that Bella was expecting Alan to ‘have something special to ask me very soon’.

‘Your mother won’t mind if we change our minds,’ Alan told her carelessly, adding, ‘Trixie would have jumped at the chance to come with me.’

‘Trixie?’ Bella questioned sharply. ‘When did you see her?’

‘She’d called round to see my mother. Something about her own mother and the WVS.’

Bella thought she had successfully seen off the other girl weeks ago, so Alan’s casual comment about seeing her was not something she wanted to hear, especially not when the place where he had seen her was his own home. It was unthinkable that Alan’s parents could possibly prefer Trixie as
a daughter-in-law to her. And certainly impossible that Alan should think of her as his wife!

‘Yes, you’re right, I’m sure that Mummy will understand,’ Bella allowed graciously, before adding in a mock-little-girl voice, ‘Of course, I shall expect to be properly rewarded for sharing you with your new car when I thought I was going to have you all to myself.’

The words might be little-girl lisped and sugar sweet but the look she was giving him was pure Salome and she could see from his smile that he recognised that.

‘I’m so glad that you won’t have to go and be part of this horrid war – if it does happen,’ she told him, changing the subject.

‘My father’s made sure that there’s no way I’ll be called up if it does,’ Alan boasted. ‘With him being a Master Builder and me working for him, we’re both in reserved occupations, and besides, Dad has plenty of contacts, thanks to him being on the council, and plenty of work coming in as well, what with people wanting shelters put up and walls and that reinforced just in case. I can’t for the life of me understand chaps like Seb who go and volunteer when they don’t need to.’

Bella nodded her head and tried not to look as bored as she felt. The means by which the money was earned to pay for her new dresses and everything else her family enjoyed was not something that interested her, and once she and Alan were married she intended to make sure that he understood that.

A couple of hours later they were deep in the Cheshire countryside, and Bella was beginning to feel increasingly bored with Alan’s monologue about the attributes of his new car.

‘I want to talk about us, not your car,’ she protested, pouting. ‘You haven’t told me how nice I look or said you love me, not once since you picked me up.’

‘Of course I love you,’ Alan told her carelessly, suddenly braking and pulling the car off the main road and on to a rutted cart track that had plainly not been used in a long time. Several yards down it, he stopped the car beneath the branches of a full-leafed oak tree.

‘Alan,’ Bella protested as she realised that they were enveloped in dense greenery and hidden from sight.

‘Come on,’ he told her, as he reached over and put his arm around her. ‘Don’t act all coy on me now, Bella, not when you’ve been throwing out such tempting hints. You’re far too pretty for a chap to be able to resist, and you know it,’ he added, bending his head to kiss her.

‘Say you love me first,’ Bella pouted, holding him off.

‘Of course I love you.’

Satisfied, Bella allowed him to kiss her, mentally imagining how she would show off her ring at work.

But when Alan started to fondle her breasts and then to unbutton the front of her dress, she tensed and tried to push him away. He was breathing
hard, a glazed expression in his eyes, his face flushed. She had never realised before
quite
how much he looked like his father.

‘No,’ she told him, but he ignored her, pushing down her brassiere to squeeze and press her naked breast whilst he kissed her so roughly that her mouth hurt.

This, though, was the price she must pay to be Alan’s wife; the price every woman paid to get the husband she wanted, Bella told herself. Men who were as popular as Alan was needed a bit of an inducement to help them to recognise which girl they should choose.

Not that she intended to let Alan go ‘too far’. Her mother had warned her about the dangers of that when she had told her the story of her own two sisters and how one of them had ended up married to a man with no money and no prospects, whilst the other had not married at all.

A well-to-do husband was the goal every woman needed to achieve if she wanted a comfortable life, and it was in part so that she could have the chance to do that that her mother had nagged her father into moving to a better part of Wallasey, Bella knew. So if getting that husband meant pretending she was enjoying Alan’s intimacies when she wasn’t, then that was exactly what she would do.