The Heart of the Family (3 page)

‘Oh, it’s nothing, Davey, just the kids having a bit of a joke on Lena on account of her being an Eyetie, isn’t that right, Lena?’ Annette challenged her.

Lena longed to deny what she was saying, but she knew that if she did Annette would only tell her aunt and then she’d have her aunt going on at her and threatening to tell her uncle to take his belt to her.

Tears of misery and self-pity blurred her eyes. You couldn’t miss what you’d never had, not really, and her parents had never been the loving protective sort, too interested in quarrelling with one another to bother much about her, but right now she wished that her dad was here and that he could put Annette Hodson in her place and the fear of God into her just as she was trying to do to Lena.

Davey Shepherd had released her now.

‘Aye, well, no throwing stones, you lot,’ he told the now silent children. ‘Otherwise Hitler will come and get you.’

‘Lena’s an Eyetie and she should be locked up,’ Larry piped up truculently. ‘Me mam says so.’

Lena could tell from the way Davey didn’t look at her that he didn’t want to get any further involved.

‘You’d better get on your way,’ he told her in a gruff voice.

‘Aye, and don’t bother coming back,’ Annette called after her as Lena made her escape whilst Davey stood watching her.

There was brick dust on her cardigan sleeve. She’d look a fine mess turning up at work all dusty and dirty. Simone would give her a right mouthful and no mistake. The hairdresser might speak to her clients in an artificial and affected posh voice, but when they weren’t around and she was in a bad mood, she yelled at the girls who worked for her, using language so ripe it would have made a fishwife blush.

Lena had been working part time for Simone ever since she had left school, fitting the hairdressing work in round the cleaning jobs her Auntie Flo forced her to do, and which really were part of her aunt’s own job, but now Simone had offered to take her on full time and Lena had said ‘yes’ immediately. Other hairdressers might have closed down thinking that the war would be bad for business but Simone had different ideas and she was shrewd. She had told Lena that, with all the rationing and everything else, she reckoned women would want their hair doing more than ever, and that the war could actually be good for business.

She had been proved right. With so many women going into war work and earning their own money, they could afford to treat themselves.

Simone had told Lena right from the start that the main reason she was taking her on was Lena’s own hair.

‘They’ll take one look at you, and come in here expecting to be turned out looking the same. So you just think on to make sure that you tell them wot asks that it’s this salon that does your hair.’

Lena knew that her aunt was itching to make her leave the salon and get better-paid work in one of the munitions factories, but luckily for Lena she
wasn’t old enough – yet. You had to be nineteen at least before they’d take you on, or so she’d heard. She’d heard too about the danger of working in munitions. There was a girl down the road who’d lost an eye and had her hands all burned, and that was nothing compared to the injuries some of the women got. Not that her auntie would care if she was injured.

It wasn’t just her that Auntie Flo didn’t like, Lena knew; she and Lena’s mother had not got on very well either, and her auntie was fond of pointing out that for all that Lena’s mother had been so proud of the fact that she was in service with a posh family, that hadn’t stopped her from getting herself into trouble with the Italian who had charmed his way into her knickers.

Lena found it hard to imagine that her mother had once loved her father. There had been no evidence of that love during Lena’s childhood. Her mother had always been criticising her husband, and Lena’s father had spent more time with his Italian family than he did with Lena and her mother. As she had grown up Lena had become used to hearing her every small misdemeanour put down to the ‘bad blood’ she had inherited from her Italian father. That had been one issue on which her mother and her auntie had been united.

Like many of those who had been in service, Lena’s mother had been a bit of a snob in her own way, and uppity too, saying that she wasn’t having Lena growing up rag-mannered and not knowing what was what, and how to do things right. Lena’s parents had died together in the November bombings of 1940, leaving Lena with no option other than to move in with her mother’s sister, whose ideas of what
was and what was not acceptable were very different from those of Lena’s mother.

Lena could still remember having the back of her hands rapped when she’d hesitated over which piece of cutlery to pick up when her mother had been teaching her what to use.

Witnessing this, her aunt had jeered at her mother and they’d had a rare old argument about it, Auntie Flo claiming that it was plain daft giving Lena airs, and her mother retaliating that she wasn’t having her daughter showing herself up by not knowing her manners.

Her mother would certainly have had something to say about the state Liverpool and its people were in now, Lena thought, blinking against the gritty smoky air.

Where the narrow streets opened off the road she was walking along, running down towards the docks she could see new gaps where last night’s bombs had hit, and people picking their way carefully through the debris as they searched for their possessions. Fires were still burning in some of the newly bombed-out buildings down by the docks, fire crews playing water hoses on them. Here, though, where the road turned upward away from the docks, the buildings were relatively unscathed, with only the odd collapsed building.

She could see the salon up ahead. Thankfully, at least that was still standing. Lena didn’t reckon much to the chances of staying out of munitions if she lost her hairdressing job.

After what had just happened with Annette Hodson she’d have been tempted to pack her things and take herself off. There was plenty of work around
now, and she’d heard that the council was rehousing anyone who’d been made homeless. Imagine living somewhere where there was no aunt and cousin, and no Annette Hodson either. But she couldn’t leave now, could she, not now that she had met him? She had to be there for when he came looking for her on his next leave.

A small wriggle of pleasure seized her. Hopefully next time there wouldn’t be any bombs falling and then they could make proper plans.

He wasn’t based at Seacombe barracks, but somewhere down south. She’d found that out from his papers, which she’d found in one of the pockets of his battledress, just as she’d also found out that he was single, his full name and his address in posh Wallasey.

Not that she’d got any need to go looking for him, because she just knew that he would come looking for her when he was next on leave.

Annette Hodson and her woes forgotten, Lena almost skipped the rest of the way to work, her head full of happy plans for the future she was going to share with her Charlie.

Charlie. She hugged the name to her, saying it inside her head and then in a determined whisper, Mrs Charles Firth. Lena gave another wriggle of blissful pleasure. Oh, but she could not wait to stand in front of her aunt with Charlie on her arm and his ring on her finger. That would show Auntie Flo, with all her talk of Lena having bad blood. Her Charlie had loved her dark curls and her dark eyes, and he’d love her curves too. A pink blush warmed Lena’s cheeks as she remembered just how much Charlie had loved them and how intimately. Of course, what
she had let him do would have been very wrong if he hadn’t been a soldier and been at war. She tossed her head. A girl had to do the right thing by her chap when there was a war on. What if her Charlie were to be sent to fight overseas and …? Lena shivered, the joy draining from her. What if he had already gone overseas? She must not think like that. He wouldn’t go without coming to find her first. Not her Charlie. After all, he had said that he loved her and that he would marry her, hadn’t he?

Picking her way through the rubble littering the street, Katie stopped when something caught her eye, a bunch of May blossom, the kind that children picked from the hedgerow for their mothers. Its wilting flowers now lay in debris, its stems bruised and the flower petals covered in dust. As she bent down to pick it up tears filled Katie’s eyes. What was the matter with her? She hadn’t cried when she had seen the broken buildings, had she, and yet here she was crying over a few broken flowers. Where had they come from? Someone’s home? One of the houses that had stood in this street of flattened buildings? Katie touched one of the petals. A terrible feeling of helplessness and loss filled her. How many more nights could the city go on? And then what? Would they walk out of the air-raid shelters one morning to find them surrounded by Germans who had parachuted in during the night? That was the fear in everyone’s mind, but people would only voice it in private. Even Luke’s father, Sam, had started talking about the city not being able to hold out much longer.

She must not let her imagination run away with her. She must think of Luke and be strong. But she didn’t
feel very strong, Katie admitted, as she picked her way carefully through the bricks and broken glass covering both the road and the pavement. It was just as well that she could walk from the Campions’ house on Edge Hill to the Littlewoods building where she worked as a postal censorship clerk, because there were no buses or trams running.

Everywhere she looked all she could see were damaged buildings, and the people of Liverpool exhausted by six long nights of air raids, each one destroying a bit more of their city and increasing their fear that Hitler was not going to stop until there wasn’t a building left standing.

The same people who five days ago had brushed the dust off their clothes and held their heads up high now looked shabby and pitiful. Her own shoes, polished last night by Sam Campion, who polished all his family’s shoes every night and included her own, were now covered in the dust that filled the air, coating everything, leaving a gritty taste in the mouth. Her cotton dress – the same one she had worn yesterday because it was simply impossible to wash anything and get it dry without it being covered in dust – looked tired instead of crisp and fresh. As she lifted her hand to push her hair off her face, Katie acknowledged how weak and afraid she felt.

Here she was, going to work, and she had no idea if there would be a building still standing for her to work in, but as she turned the corner, and looked up Edge Hill Road, she saw to her relief that the Littlewoods building was still standing.

As had happened the previous day and the day before that, there were ominous gaps and empty chairs at
some of the desks where girls had not turned up for work, but it was the empty chair next to her own that caused Katie’s heart to thump with anxiety.

She and Carole had been friends from Katie’s first day at the censorship office when Carole had taken her under her wing, and the fact that Carole was dating one of the men in Luke’s unit had brought them even closer.

Katie knew that Carole was living with her aunt, whose home was much closer to the docks than the Campions’ and, as she looked from the empty chair to her watch and then towards Anne, who was in charge of their table, a terrible thought was filling her mind.

‘Carole isn’t here yet,’ she told Anne unnecessarily, unable to conceal her anxiety.

‘I haven’t been told anything.’ Anne looked tired, dark circles under her eyes, and Katie felt a stab of guilt. Her brother was a merchant seaman, and with one of the convoys, and her fiancé was fighting overseas. ‘Try not to worry. With all the damage that’s been done and the trams and buses not running properly she might just have got delayed.’

Katie gave her a wan smile. Anne was right, of course, but it was still hard not to worry.

The disruption to the postal service caused by the blitz meant that the letters they had to check were only arriving sporadically; Katie tried not to look at the empty chair as she started work.

Theirs was important work – vital for the safety of the nation, as they were constantly being told – and it demanded their full concentration, but it was hard to concentrate on the constant flow of written words, checking them for any sign that they might
contain an encoded message, when she was so conscious of Carole’s empty chair. Katie herself was involved – as part of her work – in correspondence with someone who was thought to be a possible spy.

She wasn’t really cut out for that aspect of her work, as she was the first to admit, but as her supervisor had told her more than once, they all had a duty to do whatever had to be done to protect their country from its enemies.

The door to the corridor opened. Katie’s head jerked towards it, her breath leaking from her lungs in a sigh of relief as she saw her friend.

‘I was getting really worried about you,’ she began as Carole sat down, only to break off as she saw the tears fill Carole’s eyes and then spill down her face.

‘What is it?’ Katie asked worriedly.

Carole shook her head, searching in her handbag for an already damp handkerchief before telling her, ‘It’s our Rachel, my dad’s brother’s eldest. She bought it over the weekend. Collapsed building. She’d bin up to London to see her hubby back off to camp. He’d bin home on leave. Seven months pregnant, she was, an’ all. I were her bridesmaid when she got married the year before last.’

‘Oh, Carole …’ Katie didn’t know what to say. It was plain that Carole was very distressed, and with good reason.

Anne looked towards them and said quietly, ‘Katie, why don’t you take Carole down to the canteen so that she can have a cup of tea? Don’t be gone too long, mind. We’re short staffed and there’s a backlog building up.’

Still crying, Carole allowed Katie to guide her back into the corridor and from there to the canteen where
a sympathetic tea lady provided them both with cups of hot tea.

‘It will have to be without sugar,’ she warned them.

‘I can’t take much more of this, Katie, I swear that I can’t,’ Carole wept. ‘It’s really getting to me, them bombing raids every night, not knowing if I’m still going to be alive in the morning and not getting any sleep, and now this. Our Rachel was only twenty. Her dad, my uncle Ken, thought she was too young to get married but she said that she was going to be a wife to her George whether her dad let her say the words in church or not, just in case anything should happen to him with him being sent overseas, so her dad gave in. But now she’s the one that’s bin killed and her poor little baby with her. Oh, Katie, what’s going to happen to us and to this country? It’s all right Churchill saying we’ve got to stand firm, but it isn’t him that’s getting bombed every night, is it? I keep thinking that I might never see me mum and dad again, and I’ve a good mind to get out of Liverpool whilst I still can and go home.’

‘London’s being bombed as well,’ Katie felt obliged to point out.

‘Yes, I know, but not like this.’

Katie knew there was nothing she could say, and nothing she could do either, other than put her own hand over Carole’s in a small gesture of comfort.

‘Come on, lads, tea break’s over – back to work,’ Luke instructed his men.

They’d been working for over four hours, since six in the morning, helping to clear the debris from one of the main roads out of the city. A few yards away a group of men from the Liverpool Gas Company,
aided in their work by men from the Pioneer Corps, had also been having their tea break, the tea supplied by volunteers from the WVS and their mobile canteen.

‘You’re Sam Campion’s lad, aren’t you?’ one of the older men asked Luke, nodding his head when Luke confirmed that he was, and saying triumphantly, ‘Thought you were. You’ve got a real look of your dad. Working with him the other day, we were, when the Salvage lot were helping us to get what we could out of Duke Street, after it got bombed.’

Now it was Luke’s turn to nod. The Gas Company’s mains’ records and control equipment had been housed in their Duke Street premises and it had been vitally important that they were salvaged.

The city had been lucky in that, despite a large number of electricity substations being damaged, with temporary repairs, the power company was still able to supply everyone with electricity.

‘Jerry can’t come back much more,’ the other man told Luke, handing his cup over to the waiting WVS volunteer. ‘There ain’t much left to bomb.’

Not much left to bomb and a hell of a lot of clearing up to do, Luke thought grimly, as he turned back to his own men.

They had been detailed to work alongside the men from the city’s Debris Clearance and Road Repair Service, shifting the rubble of bombed and collapsed buildings out of the way so that the damage to the roads underneath could be repaired and the roads made passable.

Unlike the previous Sunday when they had been working in the city centre, today they were working closer to Bootle, where the majority of the bombs had been dropped during the night.

Whilst one work party cleared the debris into a large mass, another transported the rubble by requisitioned lorries to temporary tips on Netherfield Road and Byrom and Pitt Streets, and a third was responsible for shifting this debris into the lorries.

It was backbreaking work – unless of course you were detailed to drive one of the lorries.

They’d been working for another half an hour when there was noisy commotion in the street behind them. Luke turned and watched grimly as a huge piece of machinery was driven down the road towards them.

He’d already heard all about the fun and games caused by the overenthusiastic help of the newly arrived detachment of American engineers and their heavy excavating and earth-moving equipment, sent to England under the new Lend Lease Act, along with the engineers who were to show the British how to use these monster machines.

In order to speed up clearing the rubble from the bombed buildings, the City Fathers had asked the Americans if they could help. Liverpool’s streets, though, were not designed for wide American machinery, and it had turned out that the instructors sent over with them had not actually driven the machines before themselves. There had been one or two unfortunate incidents, including one in which a machine had become stuck down a narrow street. The sight of such a thing lumbering towards them now had Luke’s men exchanging knowing looks.

‘I guess you guys could use some help,’ the gum-chewing sergeant, who had clambered down from the cab of the vehicle along with four GIs told Luke laconically.

One of the tall, broad-shouldered black GIs grinned and commented, ‘Hey, Sarge, look at that. They’re using shovels. Ain’t that something?’

His tone was affable enough but Luke could see that his men were bristling slightly, and he could understand why. He wasn’t too keen on the big American’s manner himself, although he suspected that rather than being deliberately patronising, the GI simply wasn’t aware of the effect his words were likely to have on men who had had little sleep during five continuous nights of heavy bombing, and who had just spent the last four hours trying to deal with some of the aftereffects of those bombs.

‘Hey, buddy, we’ll have that truck filled for you in ten minutes flat,’ the sergeant told Luke.

‘Ten minutes. Hey, Sarge, I reckon we could do it in five. In fact I’m ready to bet on it. Ten dollars says we fill the truck in five.’

Luke frowned. He had no ideas of the rules governing the US Army but in the British Army gambling was forbidden. Some of the men might run illegal card schools but they would never have challenged a sergeant to a bet – especially not in public. The Americans were slouching against the cab of their vehicle, laughing and smoking even though they hadn’t been given permission to stand easy, and talking to their sergeant as though they were all equals and they had no respect for his rank at all. Luke’s frown deepened. He might only be a corporal but he knew how to make sure his men were a credit to their regiment and he would certainly never have tolerated such sloppy, unsoldierly behaviour.

The sergeant, though, far from castigating the soldier,
was unbuttoning the flap on his pocket and removing a wad of notes, peeling some off and slapping them down against the shiny metal of the machinery.

‘Ten says you can’t and another twenty says you can’t do it in four minutes.’

‘Hey, boys, come and see the sarge lose his money,’ the private called out.

Laughing and whooping, the men crowded round, all of them peeling off notes.

‘You’d better have big pockets to match that big mouth of yours, Clancy,’ the sergeant derided the GI, ‘’cos you sure as hell are going to have to dig deep into them.’

The Americans were behaving more as though they were on a bank holiday outing than involved in the serious business of dealing with war-damaged buildings, but then of course this wasn’t their home country or their war, Luke thought bitterly, remembering that the American were still neutral and staying out of the war. Given the choice, his pride would have inclined him to turn his back on them and simply pretend that they did not exist. But of course he knew that he couldn’t.

‘OK, you guys, let’s get to work,’ the sergeant announced, stepping away from the machine so that the soldier he’d addressed as Clancy could climb up into the cab and set the thing moving.

The sound of it alone, rumbling down the road, was enough to bring down any unstable buildings, Luke thought sourly as he walked alongside it.