by Annie Groves
Con knew all the ways there were to make a woman fall in love with him and then break her heart. He had certainly broken hers more than once in the early days, with his protestations that it was her he loved, and his pleas for forgiveness.
But not even Con’s unfaithfulness had broken her heart quite as painfully and irreparably as the discovery that she could not have children.
Emily loved children. She had ached for babies of her own, dreamed of them, longed for them and cried the most bitter of tears for her inability to conceive.
Now, a sound in the alleyway caught her attention. It often seemed to Emily that the stage door to the theatre was symbolic of theatrical life itself. The face it showed to the world on the main street was the face it wanted to be known by. Out in the front of house, where people queued to pay and watch the show, everything was shiny and smart, but go backstage, use the entrance those who worked within the theatre used, and it was a different story: peeling paint, a narrow alleyway blocked by bins, guarded by marauding cats and sometimes, poor buggers, the odd tramp poking around hoping to find something to eat. Something like Con’s unwanted sandwiches, for instance.
Emily could see a small shadow lurking by the bins. A small shadow? She frowned. Ah, yes, she could see him now, a dirty, poor-looking boy, his bare legs blue with cold, and his face pinched. He had seen her too. He looked terrified, so he wasn’t some young thief, then, hoping to grab her handbag. He was turning away from her. He looked hunted, desperate, and as thin as a stick. Emily’s heart melted.
‘Here, boy, you look hungry. You can have these,’ she told him, holding out Con’s greaseproof-paper-wrapped sandwiches to him.
He licked his lips, darting nervous looks towards her, and then down the alleyway, stretching out his hand and then withdrawing it, the look in his eyes one of mingled hunger and fear. Emily sensed that if she moved any closer to him he would turn and run.
‘Look, I’m going to put the sandwiches down here. Tinned salmon, they are, and best quality too,’ she told him inconsequently. ‘Brought them for my husband, I did, but he’s gone out. I’m going to put them down here and then I’m going to walk away. If you’ve any sense, you won’t look a gift horse in the mouth.’
She put the sandwiches down and started to move away but then something stopped her and she turned back to him.
‘There’ll be some more this time tomorrow and some hot soup, if you want it, but don’t you go telling anyone else because I’m not feeding every young beggar in Liverpool, that I’m not.’
As she walked away from him Emily was dying to turn round but she made herself wait until she had reached the end of the alleyway. When she did turn, she wasn’t surprised to see that both the boy and the sandwiches had gone.
Poor little kid. More than half starved, he’d looked. Probably lost his home and p’haps his family as well – there’d been plenty of folk who had, thanks to Hitler’s bombs, according to the papers.
She made her way home – no point in bothering looking round the shops, seeing as they had nothing much to sell, thanks to the war. Not that she’d got anyone to go buying Christmas presents for, except her ungrateful and unfaithful husband. Spoiled him rotten, she had in those early years, and nothing but the best either – hand-made suits, a lovely camel coat with a smart fur collar, just like the big theatre owners on Broadway wore. She’d seen photographs. All Con had ever given her had been boxes of chocolates, and not fancy ones either. That poor little kid hadn’t even had a decent jacket to keep himself warm, never mind a coat with a real fur collar. She could easily buy him a pair of gloves and a scarf from that Iris Napier, her neighbour who was always going on at her to join her knitting circle. She might as well go home via St John’s Market, which was behind the theatre and off Charlotte Street, and order a turkey after all. She hadn’t been going to bother, seeing as Con would be down here at the theatre, Christmas Day or no Christmas Day, but she could invite Iris Napier in and if there was any turkey left, well, then she could make up some nice thick sandwiches for the boy, that was, of course, if he should come back, which he probably wouldn’t. But if he did, well, then she’d have a bit of something for him.
‘It was bad enough trying to shop for Christmas last year, but goodness knows how the Government expects us to manage this year, what with rationing coming in. Your father’s had something to say about the cost of a bottle of gin, I can tell you,’ Vi told Bella as they walked down Bold Street, Liverpool’s most exclusive shopping street.
Bella was barely listening to her mother’s monologue; instead she was watching the young woman – the young mother – on the other side of the road. Her coat was shabby, like the pram she was pushing. She looked tired and poor, no engagement ring shining about her thin gold wedding band. Bella looked down at her own hand; her wedding ring still shone richly, the diamonds in her engagement ring sparkling in the sudden ray of sunlight that broke through the greyness of the December afternoon.
She was a widow now, of course, and not a wife. She had lost her husband to one of Hitler’s bombs. Not that she missed or mourned him. Not one little bit. Why should she after the way he’d treated her, taking up with that stupid ugly Trixie Mayhew and telling people that he wanted a divorce from her so that he could marry.
Bella could just see the baby inside the shabby pram, a little girl obviously, seeing as she was dressed in a well-washed faded pink knitted jacket and bonnet. Bella could see the darkness of the baby’s hair showing through the pink bonnet. She would have had a baby if it hadn’t been for Alan trying to push her down the stairs. The too-familiar pain that she wished would go away, but which refused to do so, had started up again. Her mother didn’t like her talking about the baby. She said that it was best forgotten and that it had probably been for the best. Her mother was probably right. Just imagine if she’d ended up having a plain nasty-tempered baby like its father?
Her mother had interrupted her monologue to complain sharply, ‘Bella, you aren’t listening to me. I was just saying that I wish that Charlie would let me know what he’s planning to do for Christmas. I’ve written to him twice now.’
Bella couldn’t stop looking at the baby. She had huge brown eyes and a wide smile. If she’d been her baby she’d have had her dressed in something much better than washed-out and faded hand-me-downs. Was the mother too poor to buy her child decent clothes or did she just not care?
‘I want to go into Lewis’s, Bella.’
The road outside the main entrance to the store was busy with Christmas shoppers. There were no Christmas lights, of course, on account of the blackout, but the people of Liverpool were still trying to put a brave face on things and make the best of the festive season. The young woman with the pram stopped beside a man selling roasted chestnuts from a brazier. She looked cold and hungry. Bella huddled deeper into her good thick coat with its fur collar, and a label inside it that said that it had come from a famous store in New York. The coat had been a present from her parents and had come into the country as a ‘special order’ put in by her father to one of his many contacts in the Merchant Navy. Bella’s father had a business that fitted the pipe work into naval and merchant vessels and their household seldom went short of anything, rationing or no rationing.
‘I still don’t know why you’ve gone and ordered a turkey, Bella. After all, you’ll be coming to us for your Christmas dinner.’
‘I told you, Mummy, the turkey’s for the billetees.’
Vi’s mouth thinned with disapproval. ‘If I’d been you I wouldn’t have gone to the trouble of buying a turkey for them.’
‘I was just trying to do the right thing, Mummy. You’re always saying how important it is, with Daddy being on the council and everything.’
Vi, who had picked up a carrot from the vegetable barrow in front of them, put it back without examining it to tell Bella sharply, ‘There’s doing the right thing by people, and there’s being overgenerous. If you ask me there’s no reason why that Jan shouldn’t ha
ve got a turkey for his mother and sister himself. After all, he’s in the RAF, as he’s so fond of telling us all, so it’s not as though they’re destitute.’
‘Mummy, I’m getting cold standing here,’ Bella protested, stamping her feet in her boots and hugging her arms around herself as she changed the subject. She didn’t want to talk about her billetees. She wasn’t quite sure herself why she had gone to the trouble of ordering a Christmas turkey for them, as well as letting them practically have the run of the house, as she had done these last weeks. At least she would be at her mother’s for Christmas, and sleeping in her own childhood bedroom, so she wouldn’t have to listen to the mother and daughter going on and on like they did about Jan and how wonderful he was.
‘Come along then.’ Vi started to cross the road, having spied another vegetable barrow. Bella made to follow her and then stopped, opening her handbag to remove a ten-shilling note and then hurrying over to the girl with the pram.
‘Here, this is for the baby. Buy her something pretty,’ Bella told her.
The young mother’s face betrayed her shock, followed by anger.
‘I’m not a beggar, you know,’ she began.
‘Bella, what are you doing?’
The sound of her mother’s voice had Bella turning away from the pram.
‘Very well then, I’ll take it, but only because me husband’s been laid off from his ship on account of him not being well.’ She took the note, pushing it quickly into her pocket.
‘Bella …’
‘Coming, Mummy.’
‘What on earth were you doing?’ Vi demanded crossly when Bella caught up with her.
‘I was going to buy some chestnuts but then I decided not to bother,’ Bella fibbed. She had no idea why she had given in to that impulse to give the other woman something. She could still see the baby’s big brown eyes and sweet smile. The pain was back again. It was silly of her to feel like this. She hadn’t even wanted a baby really, had she? But she had been having one and now she wasn’t, and somehow that had left her feeling different and sad, even though she didn’t want to feel like that; as though there was an emptiness in her life and as though she really wished that she was still going to have a baby after all.
‘I just don’t know what I’m going to buy your father for Christmas, Bella. He’s not easily pleased at the best of times, and with this war on …’
‘You could always buy him something to water down his gin.’
Vi’s face took on a high colour and she gave her daughter the kind of displeased look she normally reserved for others. Vi had spoiled her daughter and boasted about her to everyone who would listen, but having a daughter who was widowed, and, even worse, whose husband had been carrying on before his death and threatening to leave her, was not easy to boast about.
‘I’m surprised at you, Bella,’ Vi told her daughter, ‘making a comment like that about your father. It’s only thanks to him that you’re living in that house; those refugees seem to have taken over without you putting your foot down and stopping them.’
‘I can hardly go against the Government and turn them out,’ Bella pointed out. ‘Everyone with a spare room empty is expected to go on the register with the billeting officer, you know that, Mummy. The only reason you haven’t had to is because Daddy’s on the council, and he’s claimed that he needs the bedrooms in case he has to put up some of the men from the Ministry of Defence who come to see him because of the work he does for the navy. Not that I’ve heard of any of them staying with you, Mummy.’
‘Now that’s enough of that,’ Vi reproved her daughter crossly. ‘Your father is only doing his duty. You know that. Your auntie Jean has had to take someone in, but she’s only got the one, not two like you – some young girl, it seems, who’s working sorting letters or some such thing …What do you think about this cravat for your father, Bella? We’ve been invited round to the Hartwells’ for drinks on Boxing Day, you know. Mr Hartwell is on the council with your father. He took Alan’s father’s place.’
‘Yes, I know, Mummy. I can’t see Daddy wanting a cravat, though.’ Bella picked up a pair of leather driving gloves, wondering if they would do for her brother, Charlie, and then suddenly remembered something she had intended to mention to her mother. Putting the gloves back, she told Vi, ‘I almost forgot. Mrs Lyons from three doors down from me called round again the other day to ask if I’d thought any more about joining the WVS.’
‘Well, I suppose you should really, especially with your father being on the council. You’d be better joining my group, though.’ Still frowning over the cravat, Vi complained, ‘I do wish Charlie would let me know what he is doing for Christmas. Of course, it’s only natural that his friends want his company, what with him being a hero and everything.’
Bella’s mouth compressed. She was so used to her brother being the ‘naughty’ one, whilst she herself had always been her mother’s favourite, that it had come as an unwelcome surprise to discover that since Dunkirk her parents had taken to singing Charlie’s praises and boasting about him instead of her. And all because Charlie had rescued a fellow soldier from drowning when they had had to evacuate the beaches. Privately Bella thought that the parents were making too much of a fuss over Charlie and his ‘bravery’ but she knew she would earn herself a black mark with her mother if she said so.
‘Did I tell you that Charlie’s kept in touch with the family of the boy he saved – such a pity that he went and drowned anyway. Daddy had a lovely letter from the father – Mr Wrighton-Bude – saying how grateful he was to Charlie.’
‘Yes, Mummy, you did tell me.’ And more than once, Bella thought crossly. She’d never be able to stop her mother now that she was in full flood about Charlie’s bravery, and the last thing she wanted was her mother concentrating on Charlie just when she, Bella, wanted to gain her sympathy and persuade her to ask Bella’s father if he would increase the allowance he made her.
The discovery after Alan’s death that his father’s business had been on the point of bankruptcy, and that both Alan and his father owed money to their business associates, had come as a very unpleasant shock to Bella. She had thought that Alan’s family were very comfortably off. They had certainly behaved as though they were, especially Alan’s mother, acting like she was something special, and Bella nothing at all. Bella had thought the fact that the mother-in-law never spent any money was down to meanness, not to the fact that there wasn’t any money to spend.
Heaven knows what would have happened if Bella and Alan’s house hadn’t been bought for them by Bella’s father, who had kept the deeds in his own name.
Now Bella was dependent on her father and she really could do with a larger allowance.
Her mother, having finally exhausted the subject of Charlie’s bravery, much to Bella’s relief, changed the subject.
‘I want you to come back with me and help me decorate the Christmas tree, Bella. I’m so glad your father managed to get that new set of lights last year. You just can’t buy them now.’
‘I’ve got the tickets for us for the big Christmas Dance at the Grafton. I decided I might as well get them sooner rather than later, seeing as you’d given me your money,’ Carole told Katie.
They were in the cloakroom at Littlewoods, getting ready to go home, having finished work for the day. Katie pulled on her beret but didn’t speak. She might have been working with her new friend for only a few days but it had been long enough for her to learn that Carole was a chatterbox who steamrollered over anyone’s attempt to get a word in edgeways once she was in full flood.
‘You’ll need to get a bit dressed up. Proper smart, the Grafton is. And everyone will be wanting to look their best, seeing as it’s Christmas. I’m going to wear me pink. Had it for me cousin’s wedding the summer before last. It’s got a net petticoat and there’s little silver stars embroidered on the skirt when I was her bridesmaid. It’s my favourite colour, is pink. What will you be wearing?’
‘I don’t know,’ Kati
e told her truthfully.
‘Well, you must have summat a bit fancy, seeing as you was always going out to them posh places with your dad.’
Katie had been obliged by Carole’s persistent questions to tell the other girl at least something about her family, but now, just like the Campion twins, Carole seemed to think that Katie had lived a far more glamorous life than she had, despite all Katie’s attempts to explain to her that her life had not been glamorous at all.
Mentally Katie reviewed the contents of her wardrobe. When accompanying her father she had worn either a plain black dress or a black skirt with a white blouse – very dull indeed. Her mother had kept all the stage costumes she had ever worn, and had a wardrobe full of the kind of clothes that Katie suspected Carole would expect her to wear, but Katie wasn’t the sort who had ever wanted to wear sparkly sequined things, or in fact any kind of clothes that made her stand out in a crowd. She had grown up dreading standing out because it normally was as a result of some kind of embarrassing behaviour on the part of her parents. Being a little stoic with two artistic parents hadn’t always been easy. Katie could laugh at herself, of course. She had grown up to feel fiercely protective of her parents and yet at the same time she was rather relieved finally to be able to ‘be herself’ and be judged accordingly. She couldn’t, for instance, imagine anyone as down-to-earth as Jean Campion having a cosy chat with her dramatic mother.
Katie liked Jean. There was a warmth about her that made Katie feel happy to be going ‘home’ to the Campions after work.
She missed her parents, though, and she was looking forward to returning home for Christmas, even if she would have only a couple of days with them. Not that she wasn’t enjoying her work or happy in Liverpool. The girls were a good crowd who had made her welcome, and Anne’s calm manner brought a steadying presence to their ‘table’. So far there had been nothing remotely suspicious in any of the letters Katie had read, and Anne had informed her that this was the case with most of the letters.