Daughters of the Mersey (27 page)

‘Thank you. Tell him I’d be delighted if he’d come with me.’

That weekend, Mr Hemmings who still had his athletic build, brought a trailer to the garden and together they pushed the dinghy down to the beach. The tide was in and Mr Hemmings was happy to scull out to the
Vera May
. ‘She looks scruffy.’

‘Bound to,’ Milo said, ‘she’s been neglected. Nobody has been near her for ages. Let’s get on board and see if she’s still watertight.’

‘She is,’ said Mr Hemmings once he’d checked her over. ‘Dry as a drum inside. She needs cleaning up, perhaps a coat of paint, but that’s all.’

A
IR RAIDS WERE BECOMING
more frequent and Elaine said, ‘You did
the right thing by choosing to have Amy evacuated. It terrifies the twins to hear the air-raid warnings and they can’t sleep even when the raids are over.’

‘It worried me stiff at the time,’ Leonie said. ‘Amy could have ended up anywhere, but she was lucky. She has an excellent home. Couldn’t be better, the people are kind to her. She’s settled down and she’s enjoying country life.’

‘I didn’t have the courage to do that but now Olive, Tom’s unmarried sister, has offered to look after the twins so we took them to his family home last weekend. On Monday morning I entered them in the village school there.’

‘That’s Chester, isn’t it?’

‘Guilden Sutton, just outside Chester. It seems far enough away to ensure they have quiet nights. It was bliss going to bed knowing I could stay undisturbed until morning. I’d have loved to have stayed with the children but Tom has to be here to work and my little business is thriving so I decided my place was to stay here and look after it.’

‘I’m glad you aren’t deserting me,’ Leonie told her.

‘I’m not going to do that. Tom and I plan to go and see the children most weekends,
that’ll give us a few peaceful nights to catch up with our sleep.’

‘Lucky you, I wish we had relatives living in a quiet spot not very far away.’

‘It’s ideal for that but Tom’s mother and sister moved to an old cottage when his father died and they have only two bedrooms so they don’t have enough room to put us up as well as the twins. The twins think it’s fun to sleep on two camp beds in Olive’s room but she has to look after her mother who is eighty-six and not very well. It’s marvellous that she’s willing to take the twins in but we don’t feel we can put on her to do any more. But as you know, Nick lives in Chester and has said we must feel free to stay at his house at weekends. We can collect the twins and all sleep at his place, and if we can’t get enough petrol we can go by public transport.’

Leonie tried not to think of Nick. ‘Without the children, you and Tom are going to have much more freedom during the week.’

‘We are. Leonie, why don’t we take it in turns to open up the shop in the mornings? I can deal with any of your customers that come in, and it won’t be on my conscience if I have Friday afternoons off to get ready to go to Chester.’

‘That sounds a great idea and then sometimes I could sleep in after a night of heavy raids.’

In the weeks running up to Christmas, the nights were often very noisy with exploding bombs, screaming fire engines and the thunder of ack-ack guns on a nearby emplacement as they tried to shoot the enemy planes down. When she heard the warning siren, Leonie would get up and wake Milo to go down to the cellar.

‘I’m not going
down there,’ Steve said. ‘I’d catch my death of cold. Anyway, I’ll be all right in my bed.’

‘Unless we get a direct hit,’ Milo said.

‘In that case you wouldn’t survive in the cellar,’ he retorted.

The raids became so frequent that Leonie and Milo almost gave up using their bedrooms. It wasn’t pleasant to be woken up in the middle of the night to get out of a warm bed and go down those outside steps to the cellar. It was easier to go down at bedtime with a hot-water bottle and spend the whole night down there.

‘With proper beds, we’ve got a more comfortable shelter than most,’ Milo said. Leonie was glad to have his company. He slept near her in the room she’d intended to share with Steve.

Milo told everybody he was continuing to improve, though Leonie knew he was still having bouts of acute abdominal pain, but he was always cheerful and he helped her about the house. Every few weeks he returned to the hospital for a few days to have further check-ups and then he’d come back home for another month of convalescence.

June hated being parted from Ralph and dreaded taking the keys of his flat back to the landlord at the end of the month. It was somewhere to go when she was off duty, she could think about him there, and feel his presence all round her and be soothed. It helped to settle her and made her realise she’d she have to knuckle down and give more of her attention to nursing. She’d been to lectures and scribbled a few notes and never opened the book again until she was in the next lecture. She’d bought textbooks from the list she’d been given but had not opened them either.

She was growing a little stubble along her
scar and had taken to wearing a beret when she wanted to go out and was not in uniform.

She’d found it time-consuming to put her long hair up into a bun before she had breakfast. She was more used to the French pleat but that didn’t fit well under her cap. So after much heart-searching because she thought her hair was her best feature, she decided to have her long hair cut really short and found it much easier to run a comb through that in the mornings.

She wrote and received long daily letters from Ralph and if he rang her at the nurses’ home it made her day. Her working hours were long and she had to attend lectures and study as well; she felt she was lucky to have plenty of new friends to provide companionship in what spare time she had. When she had a day off she went home and spent it with Milo and Mum.

It was several weeks before Ralph was given leave, but eventually he phoned to say he had a forty-eight-hour pass and would be staying with Elaine and could she join him there. Ralph had the weekend off, and hadn’t given June enough notice to ask for her day off to coincide. Also a day off on a Saturday was popular with the nurses, but the girl who had been given that agreed to swap so June might be off.

When June put it to the ward sister she pulled a face. ‘Nurse Halligan is a second-year nurse,’ she said severely, ‘and you are very much her junior and lack her experience. I have to balance the skills of the staff on duty at all times.’

June was afraid she wasn’t going to get it and wished she could say Ralph was her husband and not her fiancé, but in the end the sister capitulated, and as the new week started on Sunday, she gave her
a half-day then as well. It was the most she could ever get and she was pleased and excited at the thought of seeing Ralph again.

He had two nights away from his barracks, but June could only spend one with him. Elaine and Tom put off going to Chester to see the twins until Saturday morning, so they could see something of Ralph. They were sociable and made her feel welcome. Elaine was a good hostess and took pleasure in providing meals for guests but with rationing, it was no longer easy. Also, her house was modern and her guest room next to her own. Not wanting to be overheard, they both felt inhibited. They spent the night in whispered conversation and neither felt they’d had much sleep but the next morning Elaine and Tom were away early and they had the house to themselves.

They didn’t want to go out and preferred to sit around all day until the evening. ‘We’ll have to go to a restaurant,’ Ralph said, ‘there’s hardly anything to eat in the house.’

He drove her back to the hospital by ten o’clock and promised to be outside waiting for her when she came off duty at lunchtime the next day.

On Sunday afternoon, they went for a long cold walk along the beach as far as Bromborough. That evening, she saw Ralph off on the train, caught the bus back to the hospital and was in bed by eight o’clock.

After that Ralph was given regular days off twice a month and June was then able to ask for her days off before the sister drew up the off-duty list. They were getting used to staying at Elaine’s house, and Ralph took her out to restaurants and theatres, though when they had the house to themselves they preferred stay in on their own. It seemed that they had given up
almost everything that mattered to them to help the war effort.

A few days after she’d last seen Ralph, she’d come off duty at eight o’clock with the rest of the day staff, had a hot bath and got ready for bed. They all did that and then congregated in the sitting room in their dressing gowns, drinking tea, gossiping and listening to the war news on the wireless. June hoped Ralph would ring her for a chat and answered the pay phone when it rang in the hall. The second time she did that it was Ralph’s voice she heard.

‘How are you, love? I’ve got some news.’ She could hear the excitement in his voice and knew it was good news. ‘Guess what? I’ve been selected for officer training. It will be a short-service commission.’

‘Marvellous,’ June sang out. ‘Then I shall be an officer’s wife!’ She looked round guiltily hoping that no one had heard her say that, because she’d told nobody that she was married.

‘I’ve got a pass out for ninety-six hours next week.’

‘But I’ll only be able to have one day off,’ she mourned.

‘We’ll manage something. After that I’m to report to the college which is just outside Chester, so we won’t be so far apart and I won’t have to waste so much of my leave on the train.’

June was delighted. ‘And it’ll keep you here in England for longer, where you’ll be safe.’ Nothing could have pleased her more. Ralph would be paid more and perhaps be less likely to be killed; she hoped so anyway.

‘Once I’m on that course I’ll get regular time off,’ he crowed. ‘Things are looking better, aren’t they?’

When at last Ralph hung up, June was so full of joy that she went back to the sitting room to recount
all he’d said, though she was careful to describe him as her fiancé.

When she went home for her next day off, she told the family while they were sitting round the table having supper. Milo was impressed. ‘Good for him!’

Pa looked down his nose at her. ‘I don’t understand how they come to pick Ralph out for officer training while Miles is left in the ranks. Ralph is no gentleman.’

‘Perhaps they want brains these days, Pa,’ Milo said. ‘Perhaps he has more of those.’

‘If you aren’t rated as officer material with your private schooling, I can’t see why Ralph should be.’ Steve was adamant.

‘He’s older,’ June smiled diplomatically, ‘and perhaps wiser than most.’

Steve had felt wary and resentful towards Milo since the day he’d shown how much he despised him. Since then Milo had apologised for swearing at him and treated him as though it hadn’t happened. Steve had watched him recover from his injuries and was surprised at the progress he was making.

Steve had been out in the garden picking purple sprouting broccoli for supper tonight because Leonie had asked him to. It was dark when she came home and it was impossible to pick vegetables without showing a light. Milo was in the kitchen when Steve took the broccoli in.

He looked much better than he had when he’d first come home, every inch a Dransfield, tall and slim but with broad shoulders. Milo had a handsome face that reminded Steve of his older brother who had been killed in the Battle of Arras, he even had his reddish-brown hair.

To start with he’d kept telling him, ‘You shouldn’t do too much. It’ll be better for
you in the long run if you take things easy at this stage.’

‘I’m all right, Pa,’ he’d always said. ‘I think that the more I do, the better I feel. I need to find out what I’m capable of doing.’

Now he said, ‘Would you like a cup of tea?’

‘Your mother will be home soon, she’ll make us one.’

‘Mum will be tired. I don’t feel I can ask her to do things I can manage for myself.’

That brought Steve up short and he left Miles to it. He brought a cup of tea to his study for his father and Steve felt that showed him up as unwilling to help himself. Miles immediately went off to do something else in the kitchen, no doubt start their evening meal.

Leonie came home some time later and put her head breezily round his door to say hello but went straight to the kitchen. He could hear her talking to Miles and though he couldn’t catch what they were saying, their chatter sounded bright and cheerful. It made Steve feel lonely and isolated.

He even felt a little envious that Miles could do so much. He was going out and about with other people, going out on the river in that stupid boat that had been such a mistake to buy. He’d even taken a girl to the pictures.

Steve felt that in the long run Miles would suffer by rushing his convalescence. He thought it unlikely the army would require his services in future and that would come as an almighty shock to him.

Working in the hospital, June felt the terror all around her as bombs exploded nearby. It took a huge effort to push fear to the back of her mind
and concentrate on what needed to be done, but that was the only way she could make herself useful in the team helping those who had been hurt.

She was short of sleep and looked forward to the two weeks’ holiday she was entitled to now that she’d completed six months’ training. Ralph was at Eaton Hall, on the Duke of Westminster’s estate, which had been taken over as a college to provide officer training for short-service commissions. He was in the middle of his course and said it would be impossible for him to have time off.

‘I’d like to book you into a hotel near the college,’ he said. ‘So I can see more of you. I have most evenings off and quite a lot of time at weekends though I’m afraid you’ll be alone a good deal.’

‘That’s what I want to do,’ June said. ‘I’ll be able to amuse myself going round the shops and I’ll get away from the air raids.’

‘We have had a couple of warnings since I’ve been here but they’ve come to nothing.’

June packed her case and was relieved to get away from Birkenhead where the bomb damage was spreading in all directions. She found Ralph had booked her into a small boarding house only a few hundred yards or so from the main gate of the college. The other three guests were also relatives of military personnel.