by Maureen Lee
‘Poor Arthur,’ Jess whispered. ‘You would have been much better off with another woman.’
She sorted through the dishes and the utensils in the kitchen. Most she left behind. They might be useful to whoever took over the flat at some time in the future. If not, they could throw them away. She did the same with the ornaments which had been bought for a much bigger house. There was no place for them in Pearl Street. After hesitating over an elegant lamp with a peach-coloured ceramic base and matching pleated shade which had cost the earth in George Henry Lee’s, Jessica decided to discard it. For one thing, she had no electricity, and for another, she felt strangely reluctant to weigh herself down with bulky possessions, though she’d take the radiogram, assuming she would be able to get it down the stairs. Perhaps she could swop it with Sheila for her battery wireless. She’d really missed a wireless since moving back to Bootle, and they were impossible to buy, either new or secondhand.
Penny’s room was the last she entered. The drawers were full of baby clothes. Jessica had never thrown a single item away. Perhaps even then, twenty months ago, there’d been the germ of the idea that she’d return to Jack Doyle and the clothes might be needed again. Some of the tiniest gowns and woolly matinee jackets were unworn because Penny had been such a big baby, over ten pounds, and the clothes were already too small.
Jessica sat down on the little chintz chair which she had chosen so carefully for the nursery and wept. Perhaps if she and Arthur had had babies of their own, things might have turned out very differently. She wouldn’t have been nearly so selfish, for one thing. Penny was the only person she’d ever put before herself.
She packed the clothes carefully, along with the few toys that still remained, and began to carry the parcels and suitcases down to the van, managing to struggle, successfully, with the radiogram. Next week some time, she’d take some of the things to the WVS in Bootle. Before leaving the flat with the final load, she paused in front of the picture window in the lounge. The view was truly spectacular; the trees in full blossom, the bushes blazing, the hills a myriad shades of green. The trunks of the silver birches flashed and sparkled in the distance. There was, as usual, not a single soul to be seen.
But Jessica paused before this panoramic vista of nature in all its glory for merely a few seconds. It made her flesh creep, just as the inside of the empty museum made her flesh creep even more. She turned on her heel and ran down the stairs, along the tiled floors, hearing her footsteps echoing somewhere behind. She was trembling by the time she slammed the door and put the keys through the letterbox.
As she raced home through the peaceful countryside, urging the van to its maximum speed, she felt as if a final curtain had been drawn. Now Arthur had truly gone, and she and Penny were on their own for good.
‘What’s the world coming to?’ gasped Fintan Kelly when he crawled out of bed one morning and found his call-up papers lying on the doormat of number 18. ‘I’m forty-bloody-one!’ Except for periods in Walton jail, he’d never spent a night away from his sister May before, and he felt frightened. He tried to pretend he was deaf when he went for his medical, but the MO caught him out by asking if he’d like a ciggie when his back was turned. When Fintan said, ‘I wouldn’t mind, doc,’ and turned to take it, the MO didn’t have a ciggie, after all. Instead, he gave an evil grin and barked, ‘Passed, A-1.’
By the time Fintan was kitted out in his khaki army uniform, having reluctantly forsaken his spivvish suit with the wide kipper tie, he actually felt rather proud, though he bawled his head off when he had to say tara to May and his brother, Failey. Failey, forty-two, had become aware of his own vulnerability to call-up.
‘Never mind, lad,’ May sobbed. ‘You’re sure to win a medal, and if you don’t, I’ll try and get one for you on the black market.’
Most of the street came out to wave him off. ‘What’s the world coming to,’ they echoed, ‘when a man of forty-one’s no longer safe?’
The situation in Russia was neither one thing nor the other. One minute the Jerries were on the offensive and seemed to be winning ground; next, the Russians were driving them back. The slaughter was horrendous; millions had already died.
At the same time the Japs, like Hitler, didn’t seem to be able to put a foot wrong; Hong Kong, Malaya, Singapore, had all been conquered, and on the twentieth of May, they captured Burma. Flames soared sky high from the oilfields which had been set alight by the British on their one-thousand-mile retreat as the invaders seized the final gateway to China and the Pacific. British casualties were thirteen and a half thousand, three times that of the Japanese, though many troops managed to reach the safety of India. At the same time, the Japs were crawling like ants all over the Philippines. A couple of their submarines had attacked Sydney in Australia. Terrible tales had begun to circulate about the atrocities inflicted on their prisoners of war.
People yearned for a victory they could call their own. Instead, the Luftwaffe continued to bomb their towns and cities, and on the high seas British ships were being sunk with frightening regularity, several hundred every month. Of course, they’d sunk a few ships themselves, but the number seemed small in comparison to the horrendous toll achieved by the German navy with their U-boats.
In Africa, where they had once been winning, the German General Rommel continued to advance on Allied positions whilst the Eighth Army tried desperately to cling on.
Rationing was becoming even tighter at home. Staple foods like corned beef and white flour were banned, and the new National Loaf, a grey coarse slab of what purported to be bread, was unappetising to most people and virtually uneatable to a few, even though the Government claimed it was healthy and it was rumoured to be an aphrodisiac. An increase in purchase tax of sixty-six per cent had pushed up the price of a pint by twopence, and a pack of twenty ciggies had soared by a whole sixpence and was now two shillings and beyond the pockets of many.
A public opinion poll showed that people were dissatisfied with the way the war was being conducted, and in the House of Commons a vote of censure was moved against the Prime Minister. The members voted overwhelmingly to oppose the motion. There was no alternative to Churchill. He was all they had. They put their wholehearted faith in him, and in the indomitable spirit of the people of their country, to fight the war to the bitter end. Losing was not to be countenanced. Losing was for other countries, certainly not Great Britain.
Patients continued to arrive in their droves at the Royal Naval Hospital in Seaforth, where they were looked after tenderly, loved and given every care.
Outside working hours, most nurses’ lives were a constant whirl of dates, dances, parties and films. They were driven partially by a desire to blank out the suffering they witnessed day after day, at least for a few hours.
In Liverpool, a major port, troops of a vast range of nationalities were constantly embarking or disembarking. There were French sailors, Canadian airmen, Australian soldiers, all in town for a few hours or a few days and anxious to show a girl a good time. As long as a young woman made it obvious when they first met in the queue for the pictures or in a dance hall, that she wasn’t that kind of girl, the servicemen accepted the situation graciously, if reluctantly. What the men mainly wanted, were merely a few kind words, a hand to hold, a face to remember and lips to kiss, albeit briefly, before they set off into the terrifying unknown. As well as the transients, there were, of course, the Americans, who seemed to be everywhere.
The nurses swopped clothes, swopped boyfriends, swopped stories of the escapades they’d been up to the night before. Jenny Downing made a bet that she would go out with a different man every night one week, including Sunday – and she won. Inspired, Lucy tried the same thing and managed nine times in a row.
‘Oh, this is a fine ould time to be young and alive,’ Lucy crowed. Wayne, the young soldier she’d met at Jessica’s, had been given his marching orders weeks ago. Since then, Lucy had been out with lots of other Americans and the latest was insisting they get eng
aged. ‘It’s only his way of getting me keks off,’ she told Kitty blithely. ‘He claims his dad’s an oil millionaire and they’ve got this big mansion in Alabama. Do they have oil in Alabama?’
‘I’ve no idea,’ said Kitty. ‘I’ll ask Dale if you like.’
‘Don’t bother. I’m about to chuck him, anyroad. He’s too bloody persistent. Every time we go out together, it ends up with me fighting for me honour. They seem to think us English girls are dead easy.’ Lucy sniffed virtuously. ‘As far as I’m concerned, any girl who sleeps with a Yank needs her bumps feeling.’
‘I suppose so,’ Kitty replied faintly. She must look too prim and proper to have slept with Dale, but if only Lucy knew! ‘It’d be nice if you married a Yank,’ she said, ‘because we could visit each other once the war’s over and we’re both living in America.’
‘Has Dale proposed?’ Lucy’s rather odd eyes widened in pleased surprise.
Kitty laughed. ‘There’s no need for him to propose. We just take it for granted we’re going to spend the rest of our lives together.’
Dale had permanently reserved the hotel room with the black wallpaper. One weekend, when he had an extended pass, they’d actually lived there, as if the little dark room on the fourth floor was their home. They made love, wandered out for a meal or to the pictures, then returned to make love again. In spirit, Kitty was rarely away from the place where she and Dale reached such heights of pleasure and delight. But it wasn’t just going to bed, it was merely being with the person you loved, who loved you, whose very presence could set your head spinning with a smile, a gesture of his hand, a turn of his head.
A few times, when she was on afternoons and Dale was unable to leave the base, Kitty had actually gone alone to the hotel, where she lay on the bed and thought how lucky she was that, out of all the millions and millions of men in the world, she had managed to find Dale. With her eyes closed, she visualised his face above hers, imagined his fingers roaming her body, creeping into the most secret of places. Within her mind, her hands caressed his hard, firm body. He entered her. It no longer hurt, the final act of love, but had become an exquisite, almost agonising joy, a tumultuous climax that left her panting and breathless.
‘Dale, I love you,’ she whispered, and wondered how on earth she could possibly last until the hour came when they would see each other again.
It was Kitty who heard the banging first, a frantic rat-a-tat-tat with the knocker on the front door. She glanced at the alarm clock. It was twenty past two. Groaning, because she had to be up at half past five for work, she staggered out of bed and went downstairs.
Because the light on the landing was left permanently on, she opened the door the merest crack. It was too dark to make out the identity of the person who had knocked. ‘Hallo,’ she called when nobody spoke. ‘Who’s there?’
‘Who is it, Kitty?’ Jessica was peering down from the top of the stairs.
‘I don’t know. They won’t answer. Who’s there?’ Kitty called again. She listened hard and thought she could hear a sound. ‘I’m sure someone’s crying.’
‘Is that you, Jess?’ a voice quavered.
‘Rita!’ cried Jessica, astonished. ‘What on earth are you doing here?’
A small figure fell against the door, pushing it open, onto the hallway floor. ‘Can I come in, Jess? I’ve nowhere else to go.’
Kitty was shocked to the core when she saw the state of the woman once she’d been helped inside. ‘Oh, my God!’ she gasped. Rita’s face was covered in bruises and her eyes were so swollen she could scarcely see. Her lip was split, she’d lost several teeth and there were bloody gaps on her scalp where her hair had been pulled out in tufts.
Jessica was almost in tears. ‘Oh, Rita, love, what happened?’
‘Den arrived home in the middle of a party.’ Rita’s voice came out in a hiss and was scarcely audible. ‘We were having ever such a good time. He told us he’d been in the fighting in Burma, but escaped across the border into India. He was in a terrible state, all gaunt and thin, and he could scarcely walk because his feet are still covered with sores. He lost his boots in Burma, you see. Poor Den!’ Rita’s bruised lips quivered and tears streamed down her swollen cheeks. ‘The army sent him back on a month’s leave to recuperate. He didn’t let me know, because he wanted to surprise me. When he first came in, he just sat there, ever so polite, telling us all about it in this funny flat voice. Me friends were dead embarrassed. They listened and didn’t say a word. Then, after a while, Den said, “Would you mind leaving? I’d like to have a word with me wife.” As soon as they’d gone, he really laid into me. I thought I was a goner, Jess, I really did.’
Whilst Rita was speaking, Kitty was gently bathing her injuries with warm water and cotton wool, though she did it out of a sense of duty, not because she felt all that sorry for the woman. She’d never met Rita before, but from the odd things Jess had said, was aware of what went on in the flat over the garage. ‘Are you sure there are no bones broken?’ she asked in her best nurse’s voice. ‘You really should go to the hospital for a check up.’
But Rita insisted she was all right. ‘I probably look worse than I feel.’
‘Where’s Den now?’ demanded a distraught Jessica. ‘How did you manage to get away?’
‘Oh, Jess, you’ve no idea how mad he was! He said he was going to kill us both and he set fire to the garage. I got away when the fire engine arrived, and as I was running down the road, the petrol exploded. God! I hope poor Den’s not dead.’
A few passers-by had stopped to stare at the still-smouldering wreckage of the building. Amidst the debris, Jessica could see the black twisted frames of her last remaining bikes. A shred of charred purple net fluttered from the telephone lines above.
‘Oh, well,’ she sighed. ‘At least the problem of the garage is sorted out. I don’t have to think about it any more.’
Rita had left very early that morning, having revealed she had a sister in Peterborough and would stay with her for the time being. ‘We don’t get on, but she won’t mind putting me up for a while.’
Jessica had tried to persuade her to stay, at least for a few days, ‘Until your face goes down a bit,’ but Rita was adamant she didn’t want Penny to see her the way she was. ‘It’d only frighten her. I’d like Penny to think of her Auntie Rita as having always been pretty and glamorous, and please Jess, don’t let her see the garage, either. Me and Penny used to have such good times there.’
So, wearing the black veiled hat which Jessica had reserved for funerals, Rita departed to catch the first train to Lime Street. She left her sister’s address and asked Jessica to do her one final favour. ‘Find out what happened to Den and let me know. I’d like to write to him if he’s okay and tell him I deserved all I got.’ Jessica promised she’d find out that very day.
With a final glance at the remains of the garage, Jessica made her way round to the police station to see if they knew what had gone on the night before. After convincing a haughty sergeant she was not just being nosy and it was very much her concern because she’d run a business on the premises until the day before, the man informed her that Dennis Mott had been found running amok down the road in search of his wife when the police arrived at the scene. ‘We called in the military and they took him away. To be perfectly frank, madam, although I’m sorry about your business, I don’t regret seeing the back of that place. It’s not the first time we’ve been called to a rumpus there.’
He wanted to know if she knew the whereabouts of the missing wife. ‘We’d like a few words with her,’ he said in a threatening voice.
Jessica professed total ignorance of where Rita Mott might be. ‘Yet I used to be so law-abiding!’ she thought on the way home.
A jeep without a driver was parked outside the King’s Arms when she turned into Pearl Street, and she hadn’t been in the house more than a few minutes when there was a knock on the door. She opened it to find Major Henningsen outside. There was an odd look on his stern face t
hat she couldn’t quite define.
‘I called you this morning,’ he said in his usual curt tones, ‘but the operator said the line was down. I wanted to make final arrangements for the concert on Saturday.’
‘Come in,’ Jessica said politely. She realised with amazement that he’d actually been worried she’d come to some harm – or, more likely, he was worried about his concert.
‘Thanks.’
‘I’m afraid there was an accident last night at the garage,’ she said when he was sitting down. He looked entirely out of place in the little old-fashioned room.
‘I know, I’ve been there. I was slightly concerned you’d been hurt, which is why I came round. I knew the street, but not your number, so I asked at the bar on the corner.’ His eyes crinkled into a reluctant smile. ‘I must say they’re a friendly crowd of guys in there.’
He asked Jessica what had happened the night before, and after she’d told him, he said scathingly, ‘It sounds as if the woman only got what she deserved.’
Jessica made a face. ‘Strangely enough, that’s what Rita said herself.’
He glared at her. ‘You sound as if you don’t agree.’
‘I don’t agree with violence, particularly when it’s the strong against the weak. As to Rita getting what she deserved, I’m not sure. She merely took advantage of the situation she was put in. In a way, I always regarded Rita as an exaggerated version of myself. We even had the same red hair – though hers was dyed,’ she added quickly. ‘Not like mine.’
Major Henningsen regarded her curiously. ‘And would you take advantage of a situation like she did?’
‘I did once,’ said Jessica calmly, ‘and it completely altered my life.’ It was very odd, perhaps it was because she disliked him so intensely and didn’t give a damn what he thought, but she could say things to him that ordinarily she wouldn’t have said to another soul, particularly a man. ‘Have you ever done something, not that you’re later ashamed of, but you would never dream of doing if the circumstances hadn’t arisen?’