by Annie Groves
‘Hello, Mum, it’s only us.’
A delighted smile lit up Jean’s face. ‘In here, love,’ she called back, ‘putting up the decorations.’
Grace and her fiancé, Seb, appeared in the doorway, Seb’s arm around Grace, who was wearing a lovely coat in a soft mid-blue, with a darling little matching hat trimmed with petersham ribbon, which emphasised her lovely skin and strawberry-blonde hair.
‘You look very smart,’ Jean told her daughter, as she went to hug first Grace and then Seb.
‘It’s Seb’s Christmas present to me,’ Grace told her mother, giving her fiancé a glowing smile.
It was plain to see how much in love they were, and Katie could easily understand why Jean liked Seb so much. Tall and good-looking, he had a steadfastness about his smile and the way he looked at a person that made you feel immediately comfortable and aware that he was someone you could trust, Katie decided.
‘Katie, come down off the ladder and be properly introduced to Seb,’ Grace instructed her warmly.
‘I hear from Grace that you and I are in the same line of business,’ Seb told Katie as he shook her hand, adding in a very reassuring way, as Grace went to take off her coat and Jean went with her, as though he had realised she was feeling a bit uncertain, ‘It’s all right, I know you aren’t allowed to talk about your work in any detail. It’s the same for me. I’m in the “Y” Section. We do what could be considered to be the equivalent of your work but in an airwaves form.’
Katie smiled in relief, admitting, ‘It’s difficult when people ask me what I do. I know we can say that we work at the Censorship Office …’
‘But you worry that you might accidentally say more than you should?’ Seb supplied.
‘Yes, that’s it exactly.’ Katie was relieved that he understood.
‘I felt pretty much the same myself when I first started, but after a while one develops an instinct that becomes second nature. If it’s any help to you I find that most decent sorts understand and accept that it’s your duty not to talk about your work. I tend to use that as rule of thumb, if ever I’m in any doubt. Anyone who tries to bully you into going against your own instincts is someone to treat rather warily, in my experience.’
What a kind man he was, Katie thought, to have understood her dilemma and found such a tactful way of offering her the benefit of his advice.
Jean and Grace had come back into the room, the fitted blue dress Grace was wearing showing off her neat waist so well that Katie was not surprised to see Seb’s glance resting lovingly on his fiancée, before he gallantly offered to take Katie’s place on the ladder.
Soon he was deftly pinning up the recalcitrant end of a paper streamer, and somehow managing to make it stretch to the corner of the room, before moving the ladders to pin up the second garland.
‘Well, that looks lovely now,’ said Jean happily, five minutes later, standing back to admire the effect of the two red and green streamers going corner to corner across the room, crossing over in the centre above the light fitting.
‘I thought we were going to have a problem with the new tree lights that your dad got after the warehouse they were in was bombed, but, bless him, he managed to sort them out. Just as well, really, because the candle holders were on their last legs, and I always worried about them setting the tree on fire. We certainly had our money’s worth out of them, mind you. Your dad bought them the year the twins were born. That was the year you had that lovely smocked party dress, Grace. Ever so pretty you looked in it.’
Katie felt a small pang of envy as she listened to these reminiscences. Her own sharpest Christmas memory was of the terrible row between her parents the Christmas Eve they had promised to take her to Harrods to see the lights. Katie couldn’t remember now what the row had been about but she did remember that there had not been the trip to Harrods.
‘We can’t stay long, Mum,’ Grace warned her mother, ‘but like I said to Seb, it wouldn’t seem properly Christmas somehow if I hadn’t seen you.’
‘Go on with you, you softie,’ Jean admonished her daughter, but Katie could see that she was pleased. ‘Your dad should be back any minute if you can hang on, and the twins are upstairs.’
‘I’ll go and tell them, shall I?’ Katie volunteered, thinking that it would also give her a chance to disappear tactfully and leave the family alone together, but once she had told the twins that their sister had arrived, they were insistent that she must go back downstairs with them.
By the time the three of them were down to the front room, Grace and Jean were busily exchanging brightly wrapped Christmas presents, and when Grace turned to Katie with a warm smile and handed her a small parcel, Katie was relieved that she had followed her own instincts and was able to say truthfully, ‘I won’t be a minute; I’ll just nip upstairs and get yours.’
Since she didn’t know Grace well, Katie had taken a guess that as a newly engaged girl she would be keen to start collecting for her bottom drawer, and when Katie had seen a pair of pretty pillowcases being sold off in a small shop that was closing down, she had taken the opportunity to buy them, and wrap them up just in case Grace included her in her own Christmas shopping.
‘No opening anything until Christmas Day,’ Jean warned everyone, firmly taking possession of the presents Grace was handing out, much to the twins’ disappointment. ‘And that goes for you too, Grace.’
‘Have you heard if Luke’s going to get leave over Christmas yet?’ Grace asked her mother.
‘No. He did say, though, that even if he hasn’t got proper leave he’d try to bob round just to say Happy Christmas.’
‘We’d better go, Mum. Everyone’s saying that the trains are running any old how on account of all the bombing, and Seb thinks that we should get to the station before it gets dark.’
‘Seb’s right, love,’ Jean agreed. ‘I just hope we don’t have another air raid tonight although, according to your dad, it was Manchester that got it worst last night. We’re safe enough up here away from the docks, of course, although you never can tell. Wallasey was bombed last night. Your dad reckons it was a mistake, and I dare say that your auntie Vi won’t be too pleased, seeing as she seems to think that Wallasey is a cut above the rest of us.’
Providentially Sam arrived just as the visitors were about to leave, and of course fresh hugs and Christmas wishes had to be exchanged.
Whilst Seb was assuring his father-in-law-to-be that he would take good care of her, Grace drew Katie towards the back door and said conspiratorially, ‘I need a word.’
Mystified, Katie followed her outside. There, standing to one side of the back door were two shabby cardboard boxes with newspaper sprouting from the top.
‘This is a special present for Mum from me,’ Grace explained. ‘Mum’s always wanted a proper china tea set. I got this one from Miss Higgins down the road. I used to run errands for her before I started nursing and I always pop in to see her when I’m home. The last time I called round she told me that she was closing up the house and moving to her cousin’s down in Shropshire to get away from the bombing. She asked me to give her a hand sorting out everything. She was wanting to sell what she could, which was lucky because me and Seb have been able to buy a fair few bits to put by for when we get married. I’ve told Mum about them but I didn’t tell her about the tea set. Miss Higgins wanted to give me it on account of me running her errands for her, but it didn’t seem right so I made sure I paid her properly for it, you can tell Mum when she asks. Anyway, what I wanted to ask was if you could hide it in your room and give it to Mum on Christmas morning for me?’
‘Of course, but surely you want to give it to her yourself?’ Katie protested. She could tell from the excitement in Grace’s voice how much giving her mother the tea set meant to her, and it seemed wrong that she wouldn’t be the one to do so.
‘Well, it’s true that I would, and that I’ve had a bit of a tussle with myself over asking you to do it for me,’ Grace admitted. ‘I’ll admit that I felt a bit
put out when Mum first kept going on about you and how she’d taken to you straight off, but then when I’d met you I could see what she meant.
‘It’s only right that Mum should have her present on Christmas morning, and besides, I’ll be able to imagine how she’ll look and everything,’ Grace laughed. ‘She’ll be that made up, I bet the first thing she does is put the kettle on and then she’ll wash every piece and put it away in the corner cupboard our dad got for her from a salvage sale, and she’ll only use it for best. It’s ever such a good one, so Miss Higgins said,’ Grace added proudly. ‘Minton or something, and she had it from her mum, who had it as a wedding present. But then I owe Mum such a lot.
‘When you give it to her, Katie, I’d like it if you were to tell her that it’s on account of the dress –she’ll know what you mean. Quick – let’s get them upstairs whilst everyone else is still in the front room. I’ve warned Seb that he’s got to keep them there until we’ve done.’
As she helped Grace with the boxes, Katie’s eyes stung with tears when she thought how she was part of such a special Christmas surprise.
Her triumph over Con had given Emily a taste of what she could achieve with a little ingenuity. Now all those hours spent in meetings, dutifully listening whilst others took the floor and said what was what, were a treasure-trove of useful information, and it turned out to be surprisingly easy to enlist the aid of a minor council official she knew through her late father. Bert Hopwood was on one of the committees that dealt with rehoming the homeless, and through him Emily was able to obtain proper papers for the boy, now officially given the identity of Thomas Binns, grandson of the late Esme Archer Binns, a blameless second cousin of Emily’s own mother, who had lived in a remote Cheshire village the name of which Emily conveniently could not remember. However, as she explained to Bert Hopwood, there was no doubt that the boy was the son of poor Esme’s disgraced daughter.
A few subtle comments about how she knew the council were struggling to rehouse all those made homeless by the bombs, and how difficult it must be to find suitable homes for those children who had been orphaned, had been enough to ensure that Bert was only too eager to turn a blind eye to the small matter of the lack of any papers or records for ‘Esme’s grandson’.
Now, in the eyes of the council if not the Law, and until someone with good reason to do so claimed otherwise, the boy was hers.
The pair of them, Tommy dressed in his shabby second-hand clothes, and Emily in her stout shoes and dull brown coat, might not have looked a particularly appealing pair as they walked into Lewis’s on Christmas Eve, Emily clutching Tommy’s hand tightly, but so far as Emily was concerned, there was no happier woman in the whole country.
‘What we’re going to do first is go and have a look at the toys, so that you can tell Father Christmas what you’d like him to bring you, but mind, he won’t have much time on account of us leaving it so late,’ Emily informed Tommy as they waited for the lift.
She had grown used to his silence and rather liked the freedom it gave her to talk unchecked, something she had not enjoyed with Con, or indeed with her father.
As they stepped out of the lift Emily saw an acquaintance coming towards her. Boldly she stepped up to the other woman with a smile, saying, ‘I thought it was you, Mrs Fisher. I’m just doing a bit of last-minute Christmas shopping with my cousin’s son here. He’s bin orphaned and come to live with us.’
‘Well, there’s a lot of that happening,’ the other woman agreed. ‘My sister’s had to take in one of her in-laws’ kiddies and there’s worse to come, I dare say. He looks a quiet enough lad, anyway.’
‘Oh, yes. He’s ever so good. I’ll be keeping him at home with me for a while, though, and not sending him straight to school. He was in the house, see, when it was bombed, and it’s affected his hearing.’
Really she had never imagined she could be so inventive or that it could be such an exhilarating experience.
Emily liked the way the boy pressed closer to her when they reached the crowded toy department. She put her arm round him to hold him even closer, filled with pride and delight. Although he wasn’t saying anything she could see him eyeing the Hornby train that was on display.
They were sold out, the salesman told her, and no more to be had with the war on, but Emily wasn’t put off. The train was something else that would go on her list for the coal man, who, by that mysterious manner in which the black market worked, had sent her a message to say he would be round later.
The boy had stopped moving and was standing staring at a display of books. Emily had been a keen reader herself as a girl, and all her old annuals were up in the attic. She could get them down for him, but in the meantime, a Beano Annual was something she could buy, along with a tin whistle for his stocking and some ‘magic’ playing cards. A set of paints and a puzzle book, some Meccano and a game of snakes and ladders were also all discreetly purchased, with instructions as to where they were to be delivered.
Emily did have a bit of a moment when Tommy went in to see Father Christmas. What if he didn’t come back to her? A small boy could easily disappear in such a throng of people and if she lost him now she just didn’t know what she would do. He had changed her life so much already.
On Sunday, going to church, for the first time since she had realised what her husband was, she had felt that she was on a par with the other women. What did an unfaithful husband matter when she had a child?
She had felt so proud taking her place in her normal pew, the boy crushed in beside her and then afterwards, outside the sturdy parish church, with its square Norman tower and its worn tombstones bearing the names of families who had called Wavertree home for many generations, before the builders had arrived and erected the handsome villas like number eleven, for the Victorian middle classes.
Emily’s own parents were buried in what had always been referred to as the ‘new’ graveyard, to one side of the church, and which was now having to be extended – thanks to the war.
Not a single Sunday seemed to go past without at least one ashen-faced grieving family filing into the church to hear the name of one of its members added to the list for prayers for the deceased, and already there was talk of the parishioners getting together to provide funds for a memorial of some sort for the congregation’s war dead when the war finally ended.
Now all Emily had to do was make sure that coal man understood how heavily the full weight of her displeasure would fall on their financial relationship if he was not able to supply the items she was swiftly adding to her growing list.
It was wrong, of course, to encourage black marketeers by buying from them, but what choice did she have, Emily reasoned. It seemed that no sooner did something go on a government list of being in short supply than it disappeared from shop shelves immediately, having been diverted to the black market. Why should the boy go without when she had the money to make sure that he didn’t? She’d far rather spend it on him than Con and his fancy suits and unnecessary car.
Wallasey had been bombed, and this time by accident from all accounts, when the Luftwaffe had missed their intended target of the docks. Vi bristled with indignation at the thought of the Luftwaffe mistaking Liverpool’s docks for somewhere as obviously smart as Wallasey, as she picked up her telephone receiver and asked to be put through to Bella’s number. Edwin had been complaining that their daughter having a telephone for which he had to pay, was an unnecessary expense now that Bella was widowed, but Vi had to admit that at times like this it was extremely convenient. There was no way she wanted to put her hat and coat on and walk round to her daughter’s at this hour on a Christmas Eve, and yet the news she wanted to convey to her was very important.
‘I’ve put you through, Mrs Firth,’ the telephonist told Vi chirpily, ‘but don’t be surprised if your Bella doesn’t answer. I tried her number a while back and she wasn’t there. It was that young Pole whose mother and sister are billeted with her. I dare say he wanted to wish them a Happy Christm
as. He’s with 302 Squadron, isn’t he? I dare say he’ll be down at Coolham now, that being where so many of them Polish pilots are based.’
‘Thank you, Doreen.’ Vi’s just south of arctic tone cut into the telephonist’s chattiness.
‘There, I told you,’ Doreen began, patently oblivious to Vi’s irritation, only to break off as Bella picked up the receiver. ‘Oh, aren’t you the lucky one? She must be back, Mrs Firth. Happy Christmas to you both.’
‘Bella, at last. What on earth took you so long?’ Vi demanded, taking her irritation out on her daughter.
‘I was doing my nails,’ Bella told her, equally crossly, ‘and now you’ve made me go and smudge one of them. What is it you want, Mummy?’
‘Please listen because this is very important. I’ve got some good news. Your brother’s coming home for Christmas and he’s bringing someone with him.’
On the other end of the line Bella’s spirits lifted slightly at the thought of the dullness of Christmas with her parents being enlivened by the addition of an unknown young man. Mind you, if he was anything like Charlie …
‘You’ll never guess who it is?’ Vi continued, her voice becoming slightly arch.
‘Who?’ Bella demanded.
‘Daphne Wrighton-Bude. You know, Bella, the sister of that young man whose life Charlie tried to save. I told you about his parents writing to Charlie to thank him and inviting him to their house. It seems that Charlie has become a regular visitor there, not that he said a word to me or Daddy about it, the naughty boy,’ Vi told Bella archly, adding, ‘Not that I can be too cross with him really. I suppose it’s natural for a sensitive young man not to want to speak out too soon about his feelings. Not, of course, that there’s anything official yet. Charlie was very clear about that. However, we all know what’s about to happen when a young man brings a young lady home to meet his family, don’t we?’