by Maureen Lee
‘Don’t do that!’ he said quickly. He couldn’t stand the idea of a child being murdered, his child; and being discussed so airily, too, as if it was no more important than wafting away a fly.
‘But, darling,’ Doria murmured, ‘I’m not a fallen woman; I’m quite respectable, as it happens. If I have a baby, what am I to do? Where am I to go? To live? Do I give it to another woman and just go back to work?’
Nick nearly said, ‘Eileen will look after it,’ but swallowed the words just in time. Why had he thought that?
‘When is it due?’ he asked.
‘If I have it,’ Doria said carefully, ‘if I have it, it should arrive something like the end of June or the beginning of July.’
‘Let me think about it.’
‘Don’t think about it too long, Nick. These things have to be done early, you know.’ She’d thrown her arms around his neck. ‘I’m sorry, so sorry. I know it’s going to worry you silly.’
‘For goodness’ sake, it’s not your fault,’ Nick said. ‘I’m the one who’s supposed to be taking precautions.’ He had no idea what had gone wrong, though someone had told him that not every French letter was a hundred per cent secure. A certain number in each thousand were faulty, otherwise the birth rate could fall dangerously low. The population had to remain at a certain level in order for the country to have the necessary number of workers in the future.
‘I’ve been taking precautions too,’ Doria assured him. ‘This must be a child determined to be born.’
‘In that case, we have no right to stop him.’
‘Him? It might be a her. And what I said earlier still applies. I’m not a fallen woman, et cetera, et cetera.’
Nick was thinking about it now, walking along ghostly Oxford Street. He didn’t want his child killed in its mother’s womb, or given away to strangers. He wanted Doria to have their baby and for them to live happily ever after.
But he already had a wife and child and was making no attempt to live happily ever after with them.
He burst through a dark doorway, fumbled with a barrier of thick, dark curtains, and found himself in a large, crowded, well-lit shop. He recognised Selfridge’s. He should really have asked an assistant on which floor the toy department was, but he headed for the restaurant instead. He sat for ages drinking coffee after coffee, trying to sort out his predicament in his head. The only satisfactory conclusion he came to was that he must rent a place for him and Doria to live. He would buy her a ring, and to all intents and purposes they would become a married couple, though not as far as Doria’s parents were concerned. But unlike Jack Doyle, Eileen’s father, John and Esther Mallory were modern, broad-minded people who would accept that morality and normal behaviour could go to hell in wartime. As long as he promised to put everything to rights when the war was over, he felt sure they would accept the situation.
Chapter 9
Christmas Morning 1943
Early on Christmas morning, Jack Doyle sat in his house in Garnet Street, just around the corner from his daughter, Sheila, drinking tea in front of a miserably small fire, wishing he were younger, much younger. The government had started calling up men in their forties, but he was closing on fifty-six and stood no chance of receiving a letter telling him to get himself along to a recruiting office forthwith.
He was anxious to do his bit – more than the fire-watching he was doing now – and felt that if he were a member of the armed forces, the war would soon come to an end. It was nigh on six months since the Allies had landed in mainland Europe and Italy had surrendered. The troops had been expected to reach Rome in a matter of weeks. In Jack’s mind the war had been virtually over, but they were still struggling to make their way up Italy and were still nowhere near Rome. The German army were putting up an unexpectedly good fight and thousands of lives on both sides were being lost.
And what the hell was happening in Malta? If Jack had had the means, he would have gone there and found out, for Malta was where his son was based. Sean Doyle was in the Royal Air Force, and Jack felt he had a right to know what was going on.
Somehow this Christmas seemed even more depressing and hopeless than the last. It was as if there was a stalemate that would last for ever.
The weather didn’t help. It was cold, icily cold, and snowing quite hard. Eileen had cancelled the invitation to the cottage for dinner in case there was no transport running. He thought about cycling there, but it would be silly to risk it. He’d already collected the sprouts and taken them round to friends and neighbours. He began to worry what Eileen would do without him and Sheila and the kids for company. Was that Kate woman spending Christmas with her? Nick had condescended to come home for New Year. What the hell was he up to in London?
Jack was working himself up into a minor rage when Sheila let herself in. She was humming a carol.
‘You look as if you’ve lost a shilling and found a ha’penny. Dad,’ she told him with a cheerful grin as she came into the room. ‘What’s the miserable gob for?’
‘I didn’t know I had a miserable gob, luv,’ he lied.
‘Well you have. Are you coming round our house soon?’ she enquired. ‘Our Niall’s already broken that scooter you made him, and Caitlin sat on her doll’s bed and the damn thing’s snapped in two. You’d better bring a hammer and nails with you.’
Jack got to his feet with alacrity. ‘I’m coming straight away, luv.’ This was what he needed, to be wanted and loved. To be necessary.
Some hours later, at number 10, Phyllis Taylor and her mother, Winifred, were just finishing their dinner. Winifred was forty years old, with a nice face and a sensible hairstyle. Nice and sensible were adjectives that could also be applied to her personality. She made an excellent nurse and was well liked by both her patients and the other nurses.
‘Well,’ she said, ‘considering there’s a war on, I think that was an exceptionally enjoyable meal.’ She’d managed to get a little piece of gammon from the grocer’s. There was no law to say that gammon and a bit of stuffing didn’t go together, and what with a tin of peas – well, half a tin; they’d eat the rest tomorrow – and some roast potatoes and gravy, the food had tasted utterly delicious.
‘That’s because your standards are falling,’ Phyllis informed her. ‘Before the war, you wouldn’t have considered it up to much, but now we expect far less, and what was merely all right then is now considered absolutely scrumptious. I mean, I could eat Spam fried in dried egg powder until the cows come home, but four years ago I would have thought it quite disgusting.’
‘Do you have to analyse everything, dear? Now you’ve made me think the dinner wasn’t up to much.’
‘It wasn’t up to much, Mum.’
‘But I enjoyed it.’
‘I’ve just explained why.’
‘Well I wish you hadn’t.’ Winifred wiped her mouth with her napkin. ‘Let’s go and sit in the parlour in front of that lovely fire. We can do the dishes later.’ They’d gone mad with the coal on this one special day of the year; in order to save fuel, the front room was rarely used in winter.
Winifred worked extremely hard. She’d been lucky to get Christmas Day off and intended enjoying it to the full by having a little after-dinner nap, listening to the wireless and reading a library book by her favourite author, Dorothy L. Sayers, whose latest novel featured her brilliant detective Lord Peter Wimsey.
‘I think we’ll give looking for your father a miss on Christmas Day,’ she remarked on their way into the parlour. Once there, she plonked herself down in an armchair and picked up the novel, hoping Phyllis would go away and read a book of her own.
‘I took for granted that we would,’ Phyllis snorted, ignoring the chairs. ‘I think we should give it a miss every day from now on. In fact, I don’t think we should have even started looking for him.’
Winifred groaned. ‘Don’t let’s have that argument again, dear. Your poor father could be living somewhere in Bootle without any idea of who he is.’
‘He
could also be dead, or somewhere else in the country, Mum.’ Phyllis felt embarrassed hanging round outside pubs, churches and other establishments every weekend, searching the faces of the men who came out in the hope that one of them might be her father. They’d been doing it for over a year and had become a laughing stock. Some men believed they were women of ill repute – or at least pretended to – despite their respectable clothing. A couple of times Phyllis had been handed coppers by people who’d assumed that they were begging. Most folk thought they were round the bend.
Winifred sighed. She hadn’t got on terribly well with Leslie, but at the same time she had loved him to distraction. She felt honour-bound to track him down. ‘I’ll think about it,’ she muttered when Phyllis suggested that giving up the hunt should be their New Year resolution.
‘If we give it up, will we go back to Beverley?’ Phyllis persisted.
‘There’s someone renting our house, Phyllis.’ Her daughter had been a relentless questioner since the day she’d learnt to talk. ‘And I don’t think the government will allow people to give up their jobs and move around the country for no good reason when there’s a war on. I have an important job, you know, so we’re stuck in Bootle until the war is over.’
Phyllis conceded that being a nurse was vitally important. She didn’t mind being stuck in Bootle, as she’d made a few friends and acquired her voluntary job supervising classes at various schools in the area. So many teachers had been called up that there was a shortage. She’d also met a young man almost as intelligent as herself who’d invited her to a party that very afternoon.
‘A party?’ Her mother frowned when she was told.
‘At a house not far away, in Chaucer Street.’
‘And where did you meet this young man? What’s his name?’
‘Dennis. I met him in the library. He’s interested in French history, same as me.’
Winifred regarded her daughter with concern. ‘What sort of party is it? I mean, will they be playing games like Postman’s Knock or something more chaste like charades?’
‘Oh, charades, Mum. Honest.’
‘I suppose that’s why you’re wearing the new frock the woman across the road made for you?’
Phyllis looked down at the frock as if she wasn’t aware she had it on. ‘I suppose,’ she said casually.
‘All right then, off you go. Have a nice time.’ Winifred closed her eyes and was virtually asleep by the time Phyllis had discreetly applied a touch of her mother’s one and only lipstick and closed the front door behind her.
Phyllis hoped and prayed that they would play Postman’s Knock at the party. She had led an interesting life, but so far she had never been kissed by a man. She wondered what it would be like.
People had forgotten all about her. She was so unimportant, so uninteresting, so utterly useless as a human being and as a friend that no one had thought to invite her to dinner on Christmas Day.
In the flat above the dairy, Lena Newton wondered if she would die of loneliness before the day was out. She put a few more lumps of coal on the fire in the hope that it would cheer her up a bit, but it was useless. Useless, like her.
Actually, Eileen Stephens had invited her to the house in Melling for her dinner, asked her to her face. Everybody was to have gone – Sheila, Brenda, all the children, as well as Jack Doyle. But it had been cancelled because the buses and trams might not be running due to the weather. So Eileen was to stay in Melling with just little Nicky for company, her friend Kate having gone to see friends in Norfolk, and the rest were going instead to Sheila’s. But somehow Lena had been missed out of this invitation, and it seemed pathetic to ask, ‘Am I included in the Christmas dinner, please?’
She thought about Kitty spending her first Christmas with George Ransome. If she let herself, it would be easy to become insanely jealous.
Was it likely that public transport would be cancelled just because of a bit of snow? Well, it was more than a bit, she allowed when she glanced out of the window.
She recalled how Peter Wood had mentioned coming to Eileen’s by train and getting off at a station in a place called Kirkby, then walking to Melling. She looked out at the snow again and doubted if there was enough to hold up a steam train. If the trams were running and she caught one as far as Kirkdale station, she could go to Kirkby that way. There’d be someone at the station who would tell her the way to Melling. All she had to do was walk as far as Stanley Road to catch a tram. If there weren’t any, she’d simply come home again. She just had to get out of this place, at least for a while.
She looked at the clock; it was nearly one. Before the meal had been cancelled, Eileen had invited everyone for half past two. Presumably she’d still be eating dinner at around that time. If Lena left the house this very minute and the trams and trains were running, she might just about manage to get there. She put on her coat, scarf, gloves and woolly hat and left the flat.
The houses in Chaucer Street were bigger than those in Pearl Street, with bay windows at the front and wider hallways and stairs. The one where the party was being held belonged to Billy, a friend of Dennis’s – well, to his mum and dad. The dad worked at a pub somewhere – he was Billy’s stepdad, Dennis explained – and the mum was quite incredibly pretty and fashionable. She wore black flared trousers and a dramatic red satin blouse, probably the most daring outfit ever seen in Bootle. Her name was Dawn and she looked very young, a bit like an older Shirley Temple, with loads of curly hair and little Cupid lips. She’d made things for the guests that looked like sausage rolls but with a minuscule amount of corned beef in them instead. Phyllis thought them terribly ambitious and experimental and enjoyed them no end. There were also cheese straws to dip in tomato chutney that tasted a bit off, and strips of toast spread with crab paste.
‘I’m sorry, folks,’ said Dawn while they ate the food – not at a table, but standing up in the parlour like grown-up people at a cocktail party – ‘but that’s all I could manage, what with the rationing.’
Everyone was enamoured, chuffed at being called ‘folks’, and they assured her that the food was absolutely fine. ‘Very sophisticated,’ someone murmured, and someone else added, ‘Hear, hear.’
They had played charades for a while, then Truth or Dare, and were now playing Postman’s Knock. The boys were disappointed that Billy’s mum wasn’t joining in; she had retired to the kitchen to clear up.
Phyllis was also disappointed when it looked as if her first kiss was to be delivered by a pimply youth of about fourteen. She glanced at Dennis, and he shrugged disappointedly.
As she waited in the hallway for the kiss, the front door opened and a man entered the house. He was tall and green-eyed and looked rather like Cary Grant with a short beard. He was definitely handsome enough to be the lovely Dawn’s husband.
Phyllis forgot about the kiss, her attention having transferred itself to the man, who was divesting himself of a familiar brown and cream checked overcoat.
‘Hello, Dad,’ she said.
Lena was going to be late. There’d been plenty of trams running, all of them packed to the gills, but she’d had to wait ages for a train. By the time it arrived, puffing furiously, the snow had become heavier, and as the train slowed down ready to stop at Kirkby station, it was so thick it was hard to see through.
She was the only person to alight at Kirkby. An elderly railway official, an oilskin cape over his uniform, braved the snow to take her ticket and wave the train off to the next station. Lena climbed the brew to a wooden building that housed the ticket office and waited for the man. She wanted directions to Melling. He arrived puffing slightly, like the train.
‘It’s a bit of a walk,’ he warned, ‘I certainly wouldn’t risk it in this weather. Why don’t you wait here a wee while; see if it goes off a bit?’ He entered the ticket office and closed the door.
Lena supposed she better had. She stood in the entrance to the building – there was no door – and watched the snow get thicker and thicker until
it was like a fluffy white blanket blowing in front of her eyes.
There must be a public house across the road; it couldn’t be seen for the snow, but she could hear singing that every now and then became louder when, she assumed, someone opened the door to go in or come out. None of the voices were female, otherwise she might have gone there to shelter. She felt ten times more miserable now than she’d done at home, where at least she’d been warm.
The railway official emerged from his office. ‘I reckon you’d best come inside and sit with me, luvvie,’ he said. ‘That snow’s showing no sign of letting up. There’s a nice fire in here and a window where you can keep an eye on the weather. I’ll make you a cup of summat if you like. What d’you fancy, tea, cocoa or coffee?’
‘Tea, please,’ Lena said gratefully.
She entered the tiny office, one wall of which was lined with shelves holding dusty ledgers and metal filing baskets full of yellowing forms. The tickets were on a special shelf of their own beside the little window through which they were sold. It seemed odd being inside a place that all her life she’d only observed from the outside when she bought a ticket. An extravagant fire burnt invitingly in the fireplace with a boiling kettle on top, and placed in front were two carver chairs crammed with tatty cushions. The oilskin cape was dripping on a hook behind the door.
‘It looks very snug,’ Lena said.
‘Sit down, luvvie, make yourself at home.’ The old man fussed around spooning tea into two badly stained tin mugs. He had removed his cap and his gentle, rosy-cheeked face was surrounded by a halo of pure silver hair. ‘I’m Godfrey, by the way. I retired from the London and North Western Railway more than twenty years ago, but was brought back because of the war. This sort of weather don’t suit an old chap of eighty-two.’
‘You don’t look that old,’ Lena remarked. ‘I’m Mrs Newton – I mean Lena.’
‘D’you take sugar in your tea, Lena?’ He had a Lancashire accent rather than a Liverpool one.