Christmas on the Mersey

by Annie Groves

  ‘You never said such a wicked thing – you’ll be tempting fate if you’re not careful!’ Dolly could not believe her own ears.

  ‘Don’t be silly and superstitious. It got me the lippy, didn’t it?’ Nancy said through stretched lips as she applied a generous coat of crimson lipstick, pouting in the mirror. Then she noticed that Dolly had dis­­appeared into the back kitchen. ‘I managed to get some Amami shampoo as well!’ Nancy called after her excitedly. ‘Shall I wash your hair later?’

  ‘And what did you have to say to get that, I wonder.’ Dolly sounded a bit put out.

  Nancy followed her into the back kitchen. ‘I wouldn’t mind, but she was on her last knockings! She must have been at least forty,’ she said with a nod of her pin-curled head.

  ‘That doesn’t say much for your ancient babysitter, Nance,’ Dolly answered, putting some thinly peeled potatoes into just enough water to cover them. On top of them, in place of a steamer, she put her colander containing diced carrots and peas and covered the whole lot with a tin lid. ‘I just hope that you know what you’re doing, that’s all.’ She would not want to see Nancy getting herself into any kind of trouble.

  ‘Did you know that the dull surface of a pan absorbs heat more rapidly than a shiny one?’ Dolly asked, changing the subject.

  Nancy did not look interested one way or the other. ‘Have you been reading those leaflets you deliver again, Mam?’ she laughed, knowing women of the Home Front, as it was now being called, were being advised on all things domesticated to eke out the rations and save waste.

  ‘Gert and Daisy mentioned it on the wireless this morning.’

  ‘I learned everything I know from you, Mam; you could teach the Ministry of Food a thing or two.’

  ‘We mustn’t waste fuel that is needed for the war industry.’

  Dolly knew when she was being soft-soaped. Nancy was always free with the charm and the compliments when she wanted her own way and Dolly knew Nancy could wind her old mother round her little finger. ‘I’m going to start a make-do-and-mend club with Mrs Ashby. Come on now, get out from under my feet. If you’re going out then get going, before I change my mind.’

  CHAPTER THREE

  A dry, strangled sound escaped Rita’s lips when Charlie’s narrowed eyes signalled her to be quiet. He stepped forward, his manner threatening. She knew that this time she had nothing to lose.

  Rita was determined she would not let him intimidate her. If he dared to come anywhere near, so help her she would not be responsible for her actions. You can whip a dog only so much before it turns, she thought.

  He edged closer.

  Her blue-green eyes blazed and her fingernails dug deep into the palm of her hands. She was no longer that meek young girl who had married him back then. So young and terrified of bringing disgrace to Mam and Pop that she had panicked. However, Rita had plenty of time to regret her decision; for over three thousand days she had woken up and regretted her choice. Why couldn’t she have been more like Nancy, who lived each day as if it were her last?

  Rita matched his cold stare now, daring him to cross her. The thought of her family gave her courage and she knew if he laid one finger on her this time, she would fight him all the way! Lifting a defiant chin, she could feel cold perspiration break out on the back of her neck as he drew closer.

  Charlie’s tread was slow, ominous, his eyes never leaving hers. They were wary of each other now, like two cats after the same mouse. In a trice, he was standing in front of her and, as if in slow motion, she watched him lift his hand. His eyes softened.

  For one fleeting moment, her guard was down and Rita thought he was going to caress her cheek. His hand shot to the nape of her thick auburn curls and he gripped them so tight her head was forced back.

  ‘You will do as you are told.’ He stressed every word. His face was so close to hers she could see white foamy saliva gather in the corner of his mouth. The smell of stale whisky and tobacco fumes on his breath made her stomach heave. ‘And you will like it.’ Awful memories flashed through her mind making her feel soiled. The last time he was like this … The last time …

  Rita prayed for the strength to extinguish the sickening gleam of control in his eyes. What did she have to lose? Charlie was taking the children. But in the eyes of the law, he had every right. The realisation hit her with such force she did not care what she did next.

  She lifted her hand to strike him but he was faster and his grip was a damn sight stronger. But Rita Kennedy was brought up in the rough, tough streets of Bootle, where a girl had to be able to look after herself. She brought her knee up sharply to his groin and her action was quick and it was effective. He doubled up in pain, clutching at his injured parts.

  Shaking her fiery mane free, Rita summoned all her strength, using the full force of her slight frame to push him away. Where she got the strength from she would never know, but the element of surprise was hers now and the shocked and pained expression on Charlie’s face sustained her. She felt triumphant, but her sense of achievement was short-lived when Charlie, gathering himself with a quickness that surprised her – and apparently no longer worried if his mother heard or not – scorned her little triumph.

  ‘You can take the girl out of the dirt,’ he sneered, ‘but you can’t take the dirt out of the girl.’

  ‘At least my dirt washes off, Charlie,’ Rita was breathless now with the exertion of her achievement, ‘but yours never will!’ Not for the first time, she wished she had had the courage to walk out on him years ago. But she could never abandon her children and he would never let her take them.

  Better now they had somewhere safe to go while she regrouped and decided what to do next. No matter what she thought of Charlie, she believed that deep down he loved his children and she didn’t think he would put them in harm’s way. She had to trust in that – for now at least. She would bide her time. This place where there were people his mother knew should be easy enough to find. Charlie couldn’t hide her children for ever and she would find them, that was for sure. He would never tell her, but she had friends and she had family. They would find a way.

  ‘Charles! Charles … Look at the time!’ His mother’s screech echoed up the stairs and Rita and Charlie looked at each other, no longer husband and wife, but sworn adversaries.

  ‘You will pay for your little victory,’ Charlie said, his voice dripping menace as he turned from her with a small suitcase dangling from each hand. In a flash, she was between him and the bedroom door. She rested her back against it.

  ‘I swear, Charlie, as God is my witness that if any harm comes to those children, you’ll not only have me to reckon with but the whole of the Feeny family. I’ll find my children whether you want me to or not and I’ll make sure that every single person in Empire Street knows what a guttersnipe you are. Everyone will know, from the bakers round the corner to the Sailor’s Rest, that you are a dirty, perverted, lying, cheating bastard. They’ll whisper it as you walk past and soon neither you nor your mother will be able to show your faces in Empire Street again, Charlie. And that’s a promise.’

  Rita watched as Charlie’s smug expression turned from one of triumph to something much darker. Her words had hit home, she could see, but she was too slow to anticipate his hand as he struck out at her and she barely felt the sharp corner of the chest of drawers as it sliced into her scalp.

  Rita put her hand to her head and felt the warm damp spot where the gash had broken the skin. Blood trickled down her cheek from the wound. Charlie looked over his shoulder as he opened the bedroom door.

  ‘Dear dear, Rita, what a clumsy woman you are. You should get a plaster on that cut, it looks nasty.’ He shut the door behind him.

  Rita was damned if she was going to give Charlie the satisfaction of taking her children away from her without even a goodbye. Despite feeling slightly woozy, she rushed over to the chest of drawers and poured some water from the jug onto her hankie. Dabbing at the cut, she fished out a headscarf from the top drawe
r and hastily tied it in a turban, the way that women doing their housework often did. Then she hurried to the front bedroom from where she could see Charlie loading up the car. Charlie’s job as an insurance salesman meant that he had one of the few cars in the area – a recent acquisition of which he was tremendously proud – and today it was the only one on Empire Street. She raced out of the bedroom and down the stairs to find Mrs Kennedy bundling the children into their coats and ushering them out of the door.

  ‘I’ll do that,’ Rita snapped, stepping between her mother-in-law and her children. ‘Perhaps you should go and make yourself a cup of tea while I see to them.’

  She could see that Ma Kennedy was ready to make a challenge but Rita was having none of it and the mutinous look in her own eye quelled any response so Ma Kennedy retreated into the back room.

  ‘Where are we going, Mummy?’ asked Megan, quietly.

  Rita looked at her little girl. She was barely six years old and she still desperately needed her mother. But whatever Charlie was wrong about, he was right that the children needed to be got out of the city. Rita would have to bear the pain, the same as all the other mothers in London, Birmingham, Liverpool and be­yond were having to.

  ‘Daddy’s taking you on an adventure.’

  Michael jumped up and down excitedly. ‘Are we going back to the farm again? I miss Bessie the goat; she used to eat Uncle Seth’s hat!’

  Rita forced a laugh. ‘Not this time. Daddy’s taking you to a place called Southport. It’s safer there and there’s a beach and a pier.’

  Michael’s eyes lit up. ‘Can I have a bucket and a net, Dad? Tommy Callaghan told me that you can catch all sorts of strange creatures in rock pools …’ Michael’s excited babble continued as Rita gave him a quick kiss and his father bundled him into the car.

  Rita turned back to her younger child.

  ‘Are you coming too, Mummy?’ Megan’s eyes looked imploringly at her.

  ‘Not today, darling. But I’ll be down very soon and I’ll take you both to the beach myself. We can walk along the pier and I can buy you an ice cream.’

  Megan gave her a weak smile, but Rita could see that she was close to tears. It was better to be quick. Rita held her hand and placed her in the back seat of the car where Michael was making rat-a-tat sounds while he swooped a paper plane through the air.

  ‘Promise me, you’ll look after your little sister, Michael.’

  ‘I will, Mum, don’t worry.’ Michael took his sister’s hand and gave his mother a brave smile.

  ‘That’s my boy.’

  Rita bent down to give Megan a kiss on her cheek, but the moment was too much for the child and she threw her arms around her mother’s neck and let out an anguished sob.

  ‘Please come, Mummy.’

  Rita tried hard to mask her own emotions, but her heart was breaking and she couldn’t disguise the catch in her voice as she said, ‘I’ll be thinking of you both every moment of every day and as soon as Daddy has settled you in, I’ll be there. It won’t be long, I promise.’

  Rita removed her daughter’s arms from around her and picked up the little bear that Megan was holding.

  ‘Bobby Bear is going to give you a cuddle every night and sing you to sleep, aren’t you, Bobby?’ Rita made the bear nod his head and give a little dance. Megan giggled, Rita was pleased to see. She handed Megan the bear to hold again and as she shut the back car door, Charlie cut in.

  ‘Sorry to interrupt this touching scene, but it’s time to go.’ He barely glanced over his shoulder at her as he started the car and made to shut his door, but before he did, Rita said, ‘Remember what I said, Charlie. I meant every word.’

  Charlie gave her a cold look and started the engine. ‘Goodbye, Rita.’

  ‘Goodbye, Charlie. I’ll be seeing you, you can be sure of that.’

  As the car drove away, Rita saw the two faces of her children, smiling and waving as they retreated into the distance, followed noisily by a gang of children who still hadn’t got over the novelty of having a motor car on their doorstep. Rita watched until the car reached the end of Empire Street then turned the corner, her children disappearing with it.

  She returned slowly to the house, where Mrs Kennedy had taken up her usual place by the window, all the better to see what the rest of the street was up to.

  ‘Are you happy now?’ Rita asked her mother-in-law.

  Ma Kennedy pursed her lips. ‘You should be proud of Charlie, taking it into his own hands to make the children safe.’ She paused and stared at Rita, who put her hand to her forehead and felt a trickle of blood seep through the headscarf. Her head was now starting to throb painfully. Damn Charlie Kennedy.

  ‘What happened to you?’ For the first time, Rita thought she saw an element of doubt flicker across the older woman’s face.

  ‘That’s right, Ma. You’ve got a son to be proud of all right. Anyone can see that.’

  And with that, she left her mother-in-law to her own thoughts and headed out to Empire Street, where the children were now playing a game of coins up against the corner shop wall.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The light drizzle was turning heavier as Kitty turned into Empire Street. It had been a long day at the NAAFI canteen where she worked and she would be glad to get home this evening. She hoped that her brothers, Danny and Tommy, weren’t in before her. Danny, who was twenty, had got a new job on the docks and Kitty hoped that working alongside older men with families and responsibilities would knock some of the rough edges off him. Danny had a habit of sailing a bit close to the wind in the law-abiding department and Kitty worried that he would get his collar felt one of these days. Tommy, meanwhile, was still a little weak after contracting a nasty bout of diphtheria while an evacuee, and his health was a constant nagging anxiety for her. Despite the bombing Kitty was loath to send him away again and in the face of all of the warning voices around her, she wouldn’t ever trust anyone outside of the family with his wellbeing again.

  Kitty had looked after her brother and her father, Sonny, since her mother died when she was just a young girl. Her father had hardly done his best by his children and they had often had to go without while he drank away his meagre earnings at the Sailor’s Rest. They’d frequently had to rely solely on their older brother, Jack’s, wages from the foundry, but they had all been floored when Sonny had died just before last Christmas, even Jack, who’d had a difficult relationship with their father. Kitty found comfort in believing that her mother and father were united again, and never questioned the burden of running a family from such a young age.

  She sidestepped the puddles in the gutter as she made her way across the street. There was a big hole in her shoe but money was tight and she hadn’t scraped enough together to get a new pair. She’d been trying to put a bit aside each week, but her savings weren’t growing very fast. She hoped she’d have a new pair before the bad weather set in. There were now shortages and rationing for most of the essentials. Kitty had heard a rumour that clothes rationing was going to be introduced and she half thought that she was more likely to get a new pair of shoes with rationing than without.

  She was keen to get the dinner on. She’d managed to pick up a few sausages extra to the ration from the butcher and Pop had given her some potatoes from his allotment, so she was looking forward to making some hearty sausage and mash for the three of them. When Pop had brought the potatoes round this morning before she left for work he had also told her that their Frank was coming home. Kitty’s heart was almost in her mouth at this news. The last she’d seen of Frank was before he’d gone off for rehabilitation after losing his leg. Things had been awkward between them and Kitty had been forced to remind herself that there was no reason that Frank should give her any special treatment. He’d been through a lot and any idea she’d had that there was something between them was just a lot of silly girlish nonsense. Frank just saw her as one of the family; the girl across the road. That was that.

  Still, Kitty couldn’t help
a pang of emotion when she thought about the dance and the kiss that they had shared the night before he’d returned to his ship. She didn’t think she’d ever forget it. She sighed now as she pushed open the door to their little terrace – it was never locked. She still hoped she’d see Frank, though. Perhaps she’d pop round with something later on or tomorrow … perhaps an apple pie? The butter ration didn’t go far but she’d managed to eke it out. Frank would like that. He had a sweet tooth.

  Frank watched from the shadows as Kitty closed the street door behind her. Even though he couldn’t see her closely, his heart had ached as he took in her dark hair and fine features. Kitty was beautiful and she didn’t even know it. Frank cursed himself for being a romantic twit. He’d walked past Kitty’s house at least a dozen times earlier on his stiff false leg. However, he couldn’t bring himself to ‘just call in’ like he always had in the past. Too much had happened since this bloody war had started. What could she possibly see in a man like him – one who was damaged beyond repair? Nothing, he imagined. He and Kitty had grown up together, and since her mother had died he’d been like a brother to her, but now what he felt for her was more than brotherly love. Something had changed between them but since he’d lost his leg he knew that he would never be good enough for her.

  Dressed in his uniform of a petty officer of the Royal Navy, Frank acknowledged cheery greetings from passers-by he had known all his life. He smiled to hide his shame, but that was all that he could feel now: shame for being half the man he had been. He hated the two sticks that enabled him to manoeuvre on his new tin leg. He’d had it only a couple of months and it still didn’t feel comfortable. It rubbed like hell, and each day he had to massage the tender stump before re-dressing it ready for the false leg. Kitty would be sickened, he was sure.