Daughters of the Mersey (13 page)

An hour or so later, with all passion spent, Ralph raised himself up on his elbow to look at her. Her lovely fair hair was spread across the pillow. ‘You’re very beautiful,’ he told her, ‘and you’re the sweetest, loveliest person I’ve ever known.’ She smiled up at him. He collapsed
back against his pillow. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘What for?’ He could hear the laugh in her voice. ‘I want you to think I’m beautiful and a lovely person.’

‘I have a lot to apologise for. I’m no saint, June.’

‘You’ve told me that before. I know I’m not the first girl you’ve had in your life.’

‘I hope you’re going to stay with me for ever. Will you marry me?’

‘Of course I will. There’s nothing I want more, but—’

‘I know.’ He took her into his arms again and pulled her close. ‘I realise now how stupid I was to earn myself the reputation I have.’

‘You like young girls, what’s wrong with that?’

‘Some would say I abused young girls.’

She gave a little laugh. ‘You’ve never abused me.’

‘I have. I lusted after you from the moment I set eyes on you. I went all out to get you. I knew it was very wrong to take you to theatres and hotels and keep what we were doing a secret.’

She kissed him and clung closer. ‘Was there any other way?’

‘I should have found one. If I’d known I was going to fall deeply in love with you, and how important you were going to be to me, I’d have gone about bringing you into my life in a very different way.

‘For a start, I should never have allowed you to keep our meetings secret from your family. It meant you had to tell lies to explain where you were going. It reduced our love to a furtive affair and both our families will see it like that.’

She was taking him seriously
at last. ‘But what can we do about it now?’

‘I’ve asked myself that a hundred times. I’ve got us into a bit of a predicament, haven’t I?’

‘It was what I wanted too.’

‘I can think of no easy way out now. The fact is, it would be very difficult to pretend to Elaine and your parents that we’ve only just met without inventing a whole new tissue of lies.’

‘We’ll have to think of some way.’

‘I’ve really tried.’

‘Then we’ll have to carry on as we are until I’m twenty-one. We’ll get married then.’

‘June! That’s still three years off,’ Ralph said, ‘and I’m afraid we’ll be at war long before then. I want to look after you forever, but I’m afraid I’ll get called up.’ He’d explained before that men were being called up in age groups. He was thirty-three now and so far his turn hadn’t come, but it would. ‘We won’t be able to go on like this. I’ll be forced to leave you.’

He took her shopping to buy an engagement ring. ‘I want you to have something to remind you while I’m away that you are engaged. I want you to trust me.’

‘I do, I don’t need anything to remind me.’

She chose a sapphire with a small diamond on each side of it, and then he had to buy her a fine gold chain so she could wear it round her neck and her family wouldn’t see it.

What a fool he’d been. He’d been taking June out and about for over two years now. If only he’d gone about this in the right way, both their families would have accepted that they were in love and wanted to spend their lives together.

A
MY WAS ON HER
long summer holiday but one morning, her mother told
her she was going to take her to school the next day.

‘I’ve been going by myself for years,’ she scoffed but the moment she saw the haversack come out of a cupboard, she knew why. She was scared and wouldn’t let go of Mum’s hand on the journey. The school was quieter than Amy had ever known it. She was handed over officially to a teacher she didn’t know and her name checked off a list.

‘I’m Miss Cosgrove.’ The teacher smiled brightly at both of them as she tied a label with Amy’s name and address to a button on her coat. ‘We’ll be setting off soon and I’ll be coming with you. We’ll have a bus ride and then a train ride. Won’t that be nice? We’ve got your luggage, yes. Have you brought your gas mask and a packed lunch?’

‘This is my gas mask.’ Amy wore it as recommended, swinging from a string round her neck so it bumped against her stomach. Mum had covered the cardboard box with red Rexene to keep it dry. She’d made hundreds of them for other people in the shop. ‘And this is my lunch.’ She held up the brown paper bag.

‘Excellent,’ said the teacher. ‘Say goodbye to your mother and then wait in the hall until the bus comes.’

With a determined
smile on her face, Mum led her by the hand to the doors of the school hall. ‘Now I want you to be a good girl,’ she said. ‘Do as you’re told and don’t forget to write to me and post it as soon as you can.’

‘Yes, Mum.’ Amy could feel butterflies in her stomach.

‘You’ll have an exciting time, you’ll see. You’ll enjoy it.’ She gave her a hug, pecked at her cheek, then pushed her into the hall and walked briskly away.

There were other children there, some from Amy’s class. They sat on the floor in subdued groups until another teacher wheeled in a trolley loaded with picture books, slates and chalks and encouraged them to amuse themselves.

Amy picked up a slate and, like many of the others, drew matchstick figures of Hitler. Then she rubbed the slate clean and drew another of herself waving goodbye to her family. She didn’t want to say goodbye to them. It wasn’t butterflies she had in her stomach now but an aching void.

As the hall filled up, it became more like a normal playtime. Amy watched the other children inspecting their packed lunches and sampling them. She opened hers up and bit into an egg and lettuce sandwich.

They started running about squealing and screaming and some even started sliding on the polished parquet floor, a practice strictly forbidden and punished heavily when caught. Today nobody came to stop them.

They were all bored and impatient before they were herded into coaches and bussed to the railway station. To Amy, the train journey was more of a novelty, though she had her misgivings when she saw the streets she was used to give way to fields and woods and hills. The journey seemed to go on forever and they
all grew bored again. With her packed lunch long since eaten, Amy, like most of them, was hungry.

At last the train stopped in a small town, they got off and were counted again and led to a nearby school in a two-by-two crocodile. In the hall there, tables had been arranged as they were for the school Christmas party. Each place was set with a paper cup of lemonade and a paper plate with a currant bun and two biscuits. They all fell on the welcome feast.

After that they were let out into the school yard but by then they were tired and had had enough of the great adventure. Full of trepidation, Amy saw they were being picked out and sorted into groups. Miss Cosgrove took Amy and seven others, checked off their names on yet another list and marched them towards a line of waiting cars. The children were all squashed into the back of a big one. Three adults sat in front.

Moments later they were chugging up a country road along the floor of a wide valley. To Amy, it all seemed very strange. She huddled closer to the other seven girls and one boy; she was subdued now and plagued by worries. She felt she’d been pushed out of the world she knew, parted from her loved ones and could see no way forward into the new safe world Mum had promised. One of the girls started to cry and the boy told her to shut up. Amy wanted to go home, she thought they all did.

The car slowed, pulled off the road and stopped. Amy could see no building for what seemed miles around but a man and a woman were waiting. The adults got out to talk to them, one with his clipboard. Amy could hear them talking but couldn’t understand a word. She knew they were speaking Welsh because Wales was where her family went for their holidays.

She sat back to wait
as she’d done so many times today, but then she noticed her haversack was being taken from the boot and set down on the grass verge. Suddenly her heart began to pound. A brown paper carrier bag was set down beside it and the back door of the car opened. The man with the clipboard beckoned her to come out.

She cringed back, not wanting to leave the children she’d come with, but was half lifted out and handed over to the strangers. Amy was engulfed in panic as she watched the car drive away, but the woman took her hand in hers. She was small and dumpy with kindly eyes. Amy couldn’t take her eyes away from the cherries on her black straw hat that slid about as she moved her head.

‘Hello,’ she said in English. ‘You’ll be staying with us and you’re very welcome. You can call me Auntie Bessie.’ The man with her kept smiling at her and took charge of the carrier bag and her haversack. Amy relaxed a little, Mum needn’t have worried, she hadn’t had to carry her haversack at all.

‘I’m Uncle Jack,’ he said, relieving her of her gas mask. ‘There is our house.’ He pointed upwards and Amy glimpsed a white building high up on the hill, half hidden by a belt of fir trees. ‘We have to walk from here.’ She found their accent difficult to understand.

Auntie Bessie led the way through a picket gate. ‘We call this the cwm,’ she said. The path was so narrow they had to walk in single file. A stream rushed down bubbling and frothing and the path climbed steeply away from it up the side of a deep gulley filled with trees, some enormous and some shrubbery sized. After a while, they crossed a wooden bridge over the stream and went into a field.

It was the steepest field
Amy had ever seen. ‘This is our land, we call it the sideland,’ she was told. There were outcroppings of granite and gorse in the short slippery grass. Her hands were taken by Auntie Bessie on one side and Uncle Jack on the other. They asked her questions about herself and her family and about where she lived. In between they spoke in Welsh together, but soon they were puffing and pausing to get their breath.

Sheep moved away as they advanced, two Hereford cows and two calves stared stolidly at them as they passed. Uncle Jack told her that he’d finished the evening milking so Amy knew she’d be staying on a farm. Now the climb was levelling off and they were in another field where there was better grass. They were high up on the side of the valley and Amy could see for miles, the views were magnificent and took her breath away.

A dog started to bark. ‘Be quiet, Fly,’ Jack shouted and at the sound of his voice the dog stopped barking.

They passed an area of closely planted fir trees and then were in the farmyard. A black and white long-haired sheepdog was leaping about on the end of a long chain and wagging his tail. Amy liked dogs and took a few steps towards him.

‘No,’ Jack said. ‘He’s a working farm dog and he’ll think he’s a pet if you make a fuss of him. I don’t want you to play with him.’

They went through another picket gate on to a tiled terrace. The farm buildings were of black weatherboarding and attached to a pretty whitewashed stone cottage. Amy sniffed at the smell of wood smoke.

‘Come in, bach,’ Bessie told her. Indoors, a fire burned red in a Victorian kitchen grate, with a
stool on either side. The polished steel fender reflected the glow and that and a large homemade peg rug were set in a cosy recess.

Jack poked at the fire until it burst into flames and lowered the large black kettle on its chain to swing over the fire. Immediately it began to sing and a pot of tea was set to brew. Amy stared round.

Ancient varnished beams ran across the ceiling, from which were suspended a whole flitch of bacon and two large hams. Half a dozen pots of geraniums were in flower on the wide windowsill. It was nothing like the home Amy had come from and she didn’t know quite what to make of it.

Auntie Bessie took her and her haversack upstairs. They crossed one bedroom to reach the other that was to be hers. It was a modern bedroom suite and had a double bed just for her. Her haversack was tossed on to the gold eiderdown and she was asked to open it up. On top were the self-addressed envelopes Mum had given her.

She was reminded of her promise. ‘Mum wants me to let her know where I am as soon as I can,’ she told Auntie Bessie.

‘It’s Saturday tomorrow,’ she replied, slipping one of the envelopes into her apron pocket, ‘so we’ll be going to town. We’ll write the letter later and you can post it then.’

She helped Amy lay out her nightdress and slippers. Amy could see the big wardrobe was already full of Bessie and Jack’s best clothes, but space was made to hang up her best frock and a drawer in a chest was emptied for her other things.

On a tiled washstand, she could see a large pottery jug standing in a washbowl, both decorated with purple flowers, and under the bed was a large matching pot. Amy felt much too grown up
to use that sort of thing, but feeling an urgent need she asked for the bathroom.

‘The bathroom? We don’t have one here, bach.’

Amy was surprised to be led back downstairs and taken outside. ‘There’s the
t
ŷ
bach
,’ Bessie said, pointing out a stone structure half hidden amongst the fruit trees of the orchard. ‘That means little house,’ she added and left her.

Amy half slid down the steep path to open the door. The stench made her take a step back. She felt she needed to close the door for privacy and though a line of Vs had been cut into the wood along the top of the door, it was dark but not so dark that she couldn’t see the spiders and the webs they’d spun across the corners. She hated it but she had to use it. She made all haste to get out.

Amy wasn’t at all sure she liked her new home, it didn’t feel safe, quite the opposite. She didn’t know these people and though they were trying to be kind, she didn’t know what to expect or what they expected of her. She wanted June and she wanted her mum, she wanted to be in her old familiar home with her real family.

But back in the house a cup of tea was put in her hand and she was told to sit by the fire on one of the stools. She found Auntie Bessie and Jack turning out the contents of the carrier bag.

Amy saw a collection of food, mostly tinned, given by the government to help feed an unexpected addition to the household during the first days of their stay. Tins of corned beef, luncheon meat and fruit were approved of, but a tin of evaporated milk caused considerable surprise and laughter. They spoke Welsh together but changed to English when they turned to her.