The Heart of the Family (12 page)

Poor Lena, Bella thought wryly, Charlie was exactly the sort that would do exactly that. She obviously didn’t know him very well.

Vi had had enough time now to recover from her initial shock. She might put on airs and graces now and act as though she’d never lived anywhere but Wallasey, but Vi had grown up not a million miles away from Bessie Street and in a very similar, if much cleaner and more loving home to Lena’s and she knew instinctively that what the dreadful girl had said about the way she had met Charlie was the truth.

Not that she was going to let her know that. There was no way Vi was going to let anything stand in the way of Charles’s marriage to Daphne.

‘Bella, get your father, will you?’ she instructed. ‘He’s the one to sort this out.’

Edwin Firth wasn’t in the mood for dealing with one of his wife’s outbursts. He’d got more than enough on his plate as it was. One look at the girl in the kitchen, though, as he listened to Vi’s angry explanation of what she was doing there, told him that he had to do something. If he didn’t, and the ruddy Wrighton-Budes cancelled the wedding and refused to let Daphne marry Charles, then he’d have his son coming back home when he was on leave, and then Vi would be nagging him to take Charles down to the office with him, and then … Edwin glowered as he looked at Lena. A bloody fool, that was what Charles was – always had been and always would be.

‘Now you listen to me, you little tart,’ he told Lena angrily. ‘We all know what you’ve come here for and you aren’t going to get it. I don’t care how many times my son took you to bed, he isn’t going to marry you, and if you think I’m going to pay you to take yourself off then you can think again.
One word from you about my son, and I’ll have you up before the magistrates for soliciting, and that’s a promise.’

Lena couldn’t speak or move. Her heart was thudding so heavily that she could hear the sound of the beats. She felt frightened and angry too.

‘You don’t understand,’ she told Edwin. ‘I love Charlie and …’

Against her will, and against her own best interests as well, Bella discovered that she felt pity – and it had to be pity and not a sense of fellow feeling, of course – for Lena. So much so that uncharacteristically she reached out and touched Lena’s arm warning her, ‘I’m sorry but it’s true. Like my mother said, my brother is engaged to someone else and in fact they are getting married very soon. When he told you he loved you and wanted to marry you, he lied to you.’

‘No!’ Lena protested. ‘No, he wouldn’t do that. He said he loved me and he meant it.’ Her head was pounding and she felt sick. It couldn’t be true and yet when she looked at Charlie’s sister, something in her face told Lena that it
was
true and that Charlie had lied to her and that he was going to marry someone else. The pain was like no other pain she had ever known. Lena didn’t have the words to describe it but she knew that when she read in Mrs Watson’s library books that the heroine’s heart was breaking she now knew exactly what that felt like.

She was trembling, sick with shock and anguish and disbelief.

Vi was opening the kitchen door with a dramatic flourish, insisting, ‘Now I’ll thank you to leave and take yourself off to wherever it was you came from.’

‘Aye, and don’t go spreading any rumours about my son, because if you do it will be the worse for you, I promise you that,’ Edwin added brutally.

‘You’d better go,’ Bella told her quietly.

Distraught, Lena admitted, ‘I haven’t got anywhere to go to. Me auntie won’t have me back.’ She scarcely knew what she was saying, she was in such a state of shock.

‘You could try one of the rest centres,’ Bella suggested practically. ‘They’ll give you a hot drink and somewhere to sleep for the night, perhaps sort out some proper accommodation for you.’

‘For goodness’ sake, Bella, stop encouraging her,’ said Vi sharply. ‘It’s plain what she is. The cheek of it, coming here and telling her lies about Charles. Thank heavens poor Daphne wasn’t here to have to listen to them. Not that she would ever have doubted Chrles for one moment. He adores her and she knows that.’

Now Lena’s spirit was breaking along with her heart. She had been taken for a fool, just like her mother had always warned her not to be. She stumbled towards the door. Watching her, Bella reached for her handbag, and removed her purse.

Immediately Lena stiffened, her pride returning. She shook her head, her face bright red.

‘No!’ she told Bella fiercely. ‘I don’t want your money. I don’t want anything from any of you. You make out that you’re better than me but at least I’m not a liar. I feel sorry for her, I really do,’ she told Vi, nodding in the direction of the engagement photograph. ‘’Cos if he’s been sweet-talking me behind her back before they’re married then what’s he going to be like afterwards?’

‘I’ve warned you about speaking out of turn about my son,’ Edwin reminded Lena threateningly.

She paused in the doorway. Now that she looked at him properly she could see that he wasn’t very different from her uncle, and that he had the same mean nasty look in his eyes, for all his smart clothes and his posh way of speaking.

She was glad to be getting away from them, Lena told herself as she walked shakily towards the front gate and then opened it. The tears she wasn’t going to let herself cry made the scene in front of her shimmer. She was in a real mess now and no mistake. Even if her auntie let her back in the house she’d never stop going on at her, and once the likes of Mrs Hodson got to know what she’d done with Charlie it wouldn’t just be Eyetie that everyone would be calling her, Lena acknowledged as she set off on foot on her return journey to the ferry and Liverpool.

‘Well, really, Edwin, I’m surprised you didn’t call the police and have her taken in to custody,’ Vi announced sharply as soon as Lena had gone.

‘For what?’ Bella challenged her mother. ‘Being lied to by Charlie?’

‘We’ve only got her word for what happened,’ Vi insisted. ‘It was obvious that she was making the whole thing up. Disgraceful that a woman of that type would dare to come knocking on our door.’

‘She wasn’t a woman, Mummy, she was just a girl,’ Bella felt bound to point out.

‘I don’t understand you, Bella, or why you are choosing to sympathise with her, never mind trying to offer her money. A very odd sort of way for a daughter and sister to behave.’

‘I felt sorry for her, that’s all,’ Bella defended herself.

‘It’s your poor brother you should feel sorry for,’ Vi told her tartly. ‘Edwin—’

‘Oh, leave it alone, will you, Vi?’ Edwin stopped her angrily. ‘Nag nag nag, that’s all you ever do.’

‘Well, really!’ Vi objected.

‘I’ve got work to do. I’m going down to the office,’ Edwin announced.

‘On a Sunday? You never go to the office on a Sunday.’

‘Well, I am now,’ Edwin told her, ignoring Vi’s angry protest.

Lena had stopped crying by the time she had reached the ferry terminal, or rather she had no more tears left to cry. It couldn’t be true what she had been told but she knew that it was. Charlie, her Charlie, was marrying someone else. He’d never loved her at all.

The ferry had been full, and Lena let the crowd of people getting off it carry her with them. Where was there for her to go, after all? Her stomach ached but not with hunger; it was a different sort of pain that gnawed away inside her. In front of her in the crowd she could see a young couple, the lad holding his girl protectively close so that she didn’t get pushed and shoved by the crowd, warning off another lad who came too close to her, whilst she clung to her lad’s arm. To one side of Lena was a small family, a young girl with her parents, each of them holding one of her hands. Why was it that other people were loved and she was not, Lena wondered miserably.

She was different from other girls, Lena knew that. She was looked down on, despised by her mother’s family and her aunt’s neighbours because she didn’t look like their daughters, with their thin mousy hair and their pale skin. But she was also shunned by the Italian community whose daughters were always carefully chaperoned, their marriages arranged for them by their families. Lena had seen the looks she was given by Italian men and women when they saw her. The men eyed her boldly and said things to her in
Italian that she didn’t understand whilst the women glared angrily at her.

‘See, even your own sort don’t want to know you ’cos they can see that you’re a little tart, and fit for only one thing,’ Doris had taunted her during one of their quarrels. ‘Bad blood, that’s what you’ve got. You want to take yourself off down the dock road. That’s the right place for your kind, my mam says. An’ I’m telling you now, it won’t be a ring and marriage lines that you’ll be offered. Your sort never are.’

She hadn’t paid much attention then because she hadn’t really cared what Doris thought about her, but tonight in Charlie’s mother’s eyes she had seen the same contempt, and felt the same awareness that she wasn’t ‘acceptable’ or ‘right’, and she had cared.

A man pushing past her paused to look again, staring deliberately at her chest.

Lena turned quickly away from him, a sudden spurt of indignation overriding her wretchedness. She was wearing her best frock, after all. That had been a nice frock his sister had been wearing, even though the colour had been a bit dull for Lena’s taste. She hadn’t reckoned much to that twinset Charlie’s girl had had on in that photograph, though. Proper plain, it had looked, and her too. Lena had seen women dressed like that on Bold Street and in Lewis’s. Ladies, her mother had called them, before saying warningly to Lena, ‘And a lady’s something you’ll never be, not with that bad blood of yours and them Eyetie looks.’ Her mother would have said that Charlie’s girl was a ‘lady’, Lena knew that instinctively. That knowledge brought fresh pain stabbing into her.

The sun was setting. Caught up in her own
thoughts she had let the crowd of people leaving the ferry carry her along with it, but now it was thinning out, as people headed for their homes and their families. Soon she would be alone. Panic and despair swamped her with bleak misery. A tear rolled down her face, which she rubbed away. She couldn’t go back, not now, knowing that Charlie had just been making a fool of her. Her aunt would love knowing that, and it wouldn’t be long before the whole street knew as well.

She was in the centre of the city now, the empty spaces where there had been buildings making everywhere seem alien. People were leaving the cinemas, having taken advantage of the city’s decision to allow them to open despite the fact that it was Sunday. Pity she hadn’t thought to go to see a film herself; if she had she’d still be thinking that Charlie loved her.

Lena frowned, remembering what Charlie’s sister had said to her about spending the night in a rest centre. She didn’t want to but she didn’t have any choice really, did she? There was an ARP post at the end of the street. Reluctantly she walked towards it, tensing when the ARP warden standing outside it drinking a mug of tea looked her up and down and then asked, ‘And what can I do for you, my lovely?’

‘I was wondering where the nearest rest centre is,’ Lena answered him. The way he was looking at her made her want to tug up her dress neckline and pull down the hem of her skirt.

‘Well, if it’s a bed you was wanting for the night—’ he began, and then stopped as an older man emerged from the ARP post, and asked, ‘What’s going on, Reg?’ then grimaced when he saw Lena.

Lena could feel her face burning.

‘I was just asking where the nearest rest centre is,’ she repeated before the first man could say anything, deliberately lifting her chin and confronting them both.

‘Straight up here, love, then turn right and it’s on your left,’ the older man told her in a more friendly manner. ‘But you’ll be lucky if they’ve got room for you, seeing as how many they’ve had to take in.’

Thanking him, Lena set off in the direction he’d told her.

It didn’t take her long to reach the centre but her heart sank when she saw how many people were queuing up outside to get in.

Within a few seconds of her joining the queue an elderly woman arrived to stand behind her. Lena tried not to stare as the woman gave her a beaming smile but it was hard not to do so, because the woman was wearing what looked like a blanket in which she had cut a hole for her head, over what looked like a man’s shirt. On her legs she was wearing a pair of red, yellow and green striped knitted socks, one of which had fallen down to wrinkle round her ankle, whilst on her feet she had a pair of white court shoes. Although the woman’s body was heavy-looking and round, her legs looked thin and spindly, which no doubt was why her sock has fallen down, Lena guessed, as she tried not to stare at the incongruous pairing of the striped socks and the white shoes. On her head was what looked to Lena rather like a tea cosy, but which she assumed must be a knitted hat – in pink with yellow knitted flowers stitched to it.

‘On your own, are you, duck?’ she asked Lena,
puffing a bit as she put down the large wicker basket she had been carrying.

Lena nodded. Three up from her in the queue two young boys had seen the elderly woman and were nudging one another and giggling. Lena was torn between feeling sorry for the old lady and wanting to protect her from their laughter, and wanting to distance herself from her in case anyone thought they were together. The woman, though, seemed oblivious to the odd sight she made.

‘Bombed out, I dare say?’ she asked Lena sympathetically, confiding without waiting for Lena’s reply, ‘Three times it’s happened to me now. Our Gavin says I’ve more lives than a ruddy cat.’ She gave a deep belly laugh, causing her plump jowls to wobble. ‘He should talk. You want to get yourself one of these blankets,’ she advised Lena in a confidential whisper. ‘Come in ever so handy, mine has. Of course, you’re supposed to hand them in in the morning but seeing as I were blown out of me bed in me nothings, I ain’t going to be parting with mine any time soon.’

Poor woman, she was obviously having to wear whatever she had been given to replace her own clothes.

‘Luckily, though, I had me bedsocks on.’ Lena’s new companion looked down admiringly at her striped legs. ‘Knitted these meself, I did. I like a bit of colour. Cheers a person up, it does, and no mistake. Hoping to spend the night here, was you?’

Lena nodded.

‘Well, you’ll be lucky if you can get a bed here, love. Turning folk away every night, they’ve bin.’

Lena tried not to show how desperate she was beginning to feel.

‘I’ve heard that some people are sleeping in the air-raid shelters,’ she ventured.

‘Aye, but all the beds are gone there as well, and I’ve heard there’s bin some nasty fights broken out over folk trying to take over other folks’ beds. If you really haven’t got anywhere to go, you can always come with me.’ She offered with a wide smile. ‘I’m only queuing here ’cos I want a blanket, and a decent cup of tea. Give you ever such a nice cup of tea here, they do, and two biscuits, an’ all. Our Gavin laughs at me. But like I told him, he doesn’t have to come wi’ me if he doesn’t want. And it’s his loss, an’ all. I hope they get a move on, only our Gavin will go mad it if I’m late for the buses they put on for us. He’s gone up already to save us a seat. Found us ever such a nice place, our Gavin has, in a lovely warm barn. Of course, you’ve got to be a bit careful, like. Most of the other trekkers are decent sorts, but then there’s some as aren’t.’

‘Trekkers?’ Lena asked her, confused.

The woman laughed. ‘That’s what they’ve started calling us on account of us trekking out into the country to sleep at night. Sleeping rough, some folk call it, but it’s all right for them as can afford to turn up their noses; some of us don’t have any other choice.’

Sleep rough in the country! Lena shivered. She was a townie and from what she’d heard about the country she didn’t think it was somewhere she’d like.

‘Looks like we’re getting in at last. Stick wi’ me, love. I’ll mek sure they give you a decent blanket. Know me here now, they do. Allus give me a nice cup of tea, and let me tek the weight off me legs. I’ve got a bit of rheumatism in them and they don’t
half give me some gyp at times. Here we are,’ she announced as they reached the desks where the WVS volunteers were seated. ‘We’ll get your blanket and then you and me—’

Lena was getting desperate. The last thing she wanted to do was spend the night in the country, but neither did she want to offend the old lady who was, after all, only trying to be kind, despite her comical appearance.

‘You’re very kind,’ she managed to interrupt her. ‘Only, I’ve sort of been promised a bed here.’ It was a lie, of course.

‘Oh, well, suit yourself,’ the old lady told her good-naturedly, turning away from Lena to be swallowed up by the crowd of people inside the rest centre.

Rest centre – there would be precious little rest for anyone in here with so many people and so much noise, Lena thought tiredly. At least talking to the old lady had taken her mind off her own problems for a few minutes. Poor thing.

Lena felt dazed with a mixture of misery and tiredness. Was it really true that people were going out to the country every night simply to sleep? She just hoped that the WVS would be able to find her a bed. She’d sleep anywhere. She could feel threatening tears burning the backs of her eyes. Everything should have been so different. When she had left her auntie’s she had pictured herself being welcomed by Charlie’s family, and being fussed over by his grateful mother once she knew that Lena had saved his life. She had thought that she would be spending the night tucked up in a comfy bed in a posh house in Wallasey, knowing that Charlie’s family were going to look
after her until Charlie came home to claim her and put a ring on her finger.

Lena caught back a small hiccuped sob. Well, Charlie would be putting a ring on someone’s finger but it wouldn’t be hers, and his parents had made it plain that they would never welcome her into their home nor into Charlie’s life.

‘It’s your turn next, dearie.’

Lena gave the woman behind her who had nudged her a wan smile as she hurried over to where the WVS volunteer was seated behind a table, waiting.

The woman dealing with her looked harassed, her tired professional smile quickly replaced by a frown as she listened to Lena explaining that she had nowhere to spend the night.

‘So you’re homeless, are you?’ she queried.

‘Yes, yes, that’s right.’ Lena confirmed.

It was the truth, after all, although she knew her face was firing up with guilty colour when the woman asked, ‘Bombed out?’

Lena nodded as though that was the truth.

‘And on your own without any papers or your ration book?’

Again Lena nodded.

The WVS volunteer sighed. ‘We’ve got strict orders to give priority to mothers and young children, and we’re struggling to make room for them. I’m really sorry, dear, but we just haven’t got room for you here.’

‘I don’t mind sleeping on the floor,’ Lena told her, beginning to panic. If she couldn’t stay here then what on earth was she going to do? Even if she could bring herself to go back to her auntie’s she suspected that she wouldn’t be allowed back in.

‘I wish I could help you, dear, but really I can’t, and it’s the same with all the other city rest centres.’ The woman paused and then offered, ‘The only thing I can suggest is that you join the trekkers.’ She looked at her watch. ‘Officially it’s not allowed but with so many people homeless the corporation’s not only turning a blind eye, it’s also laying on transport to take people out of the city and into the country. You can come back here in the morning and get all your paperwork sorted out and a temporary ration book issued. In the meantime the best I can do is give you a blanket.’

‘This trekking,’ Lena stopped her anxiously, ‘is it safe? Only I’ve never been to the country.’

The WVS woman’s expression softened. ‘It’s perfectly safe,’ she assured Lena, ‘as long as you stick with everyone else. If I were you I’d look for a decent family to keep company with. Here’s your blanket,’ she added more briskly, reaching behind her and handing Lena a washed-out blanket so thin it felt more like a sheet, before warning her, ‘You’d better cut along pretty sharpish now, dear, otherwise you’ll miss the transport and end up having to walk.’

‘Well, look who it isn’t.’

Lena’s heart jerked with a mixture of guilt and dismay when she recognised her companion from earlier in the evening. With so many people milling around the area where trucks and buses had been laid on to take the homeless out of the city, it seemed unfair that she should have been spotted so swiftly by someone she would have preferred to avoid, and for a second she was tempted to turn away and pretend that she hadn’t seen or heard the other
woman, but it was already too late and she was bearing down on her, beaming from ear to ear.