Across the Mersey

by Annie Groves

  Now her goal was in sight. Surely the reason Alan had telephoned her at work so unexpectedly to ask her to meet him could mean only one thing? He wanted her to choose her ring before Saturday so that he could ‘surprise’ her with it at the dance. She had pretended to appear casual on the phone, suggesting that he meet her outside Lewis’s instead of letting him pick her up from her office. After all, she didn’t want him thinking that she was desperate!

  Daintily Bella sauntered out into the street. She was late, of course, but not so late that Alan would have grown irritated, and so it caught her off guard not to find Alan waiting for her as they had arranged.

  Her smile changed abruptly to a small tight frown. She looked briefly down Ranelagh Street. It was unthinkable that Alan should have stood her up or gone off in a huff. She was a girl who was worth waiting for, and she had been at pains to make sure that Alan knew that, just as she had been at pains to make sure that he realised how many other young men wished they were in his shoes.

  Alan was the kind of man who needed to know that his peers envied him, and Bella had been more than willing to assist him in this vanity.

  The sound of a car horn followed by Alan calling out her name caught her attention, her eyes widening slightly as she saw him waving to her from the driving seat of a brand-new cream MG Roadster, its hood down.

  ‘I say, Bella, hurry up, will you?’ he called out impatiently. ‘I’ve already driven past here twice.’

  The drivers of the other cars in the street were all turning to look and, by no means averse to this attention, Bella made a pretty show of looking bashful, whilst at the same time ensuring that everyone was aware of how elegant and smartly turned out she was as she hurried towards the car.

  ‘Goodness, Alan, fancy calling out to me like that in the street. Everyone was looking at me,’ she told him as she got into the car and closed the door.

  ‘What do you think of her?’ he demanded excitedly, ignoring her comment.

  What Bella thought was that she was irritated and put out to discover that his reason for wanting to meet her was because he wanted to show off his new car, and not because he wanted to take her to choose an engagement ring, but she was far too wise to say so. Men needed to be indulged at times, and this was definitely one of those. And besides, being sweet and nice now, and encouraging his obvious good mood, would pay off later when she pressed home the point that it would be both convenient and expected of them to announce their engagement on Saturday.

  ‘A real beauty, isn’t she?’ he enthused, oblivious to what Bella was thinking. ‘Dad gave me the keys this morning. Said he’d been going to keep her as a surprise for my birthday, but he’d decided I might as well enjoy her now whilst the weather’s so good. She’s got the sweetest-sounding engine you’ve ever heard.’

  ‘A new car for your birthday – your father is very generous, Alan.’

  ‘The old man can afford it,’ he told her with a careless shrug, a gesture that made him look exactly like his father. Both the Parker men were of average height and solidly built with light brown hair, pale blue eyes and ruddy complexions.

  The draught from the motion of the car was already tugging at her hat. Bella frowned and looked pointedly at Alan, waiting for him to comment on how pretty she looked before she was obliged to remove it. When he didn’t, she turned stiffly away from him to remove her hatpins and place her hat on her knee.

  ‘I’ve had a word with Grace. Just to remind her about the dance on Saturday, and that she’s partnering your cousin.’

  ‘Seb? Oh yes. He’s such a dull fellow. He actually went off to spend the afternoon in the library. Lord knows why. It’s a bit of a bore having him hanging around all the time, but the old man is pretty keen on making a bit of a fuss of him, seeing as his father has done so well for himself. Of course, he isn’t my first cousin or anything. It’s his stepmother who’s Dad’s cousin but Dad reckons the connection is worth hanging on to.’

  Bella shook her head. She wasn’t particularly interested in Seb Atkins, who looked at her sometimes in a way that she didn’t like one little bit. Men were supposed to admire and adore her, not look at her as though she bored and irritated them.

  ‘I dare say there won’t be many more Tennis Club dances if it does come to war,’ Alan told her.

  ‘All the more reason for us to make the most of this one then, with a special celebration of our own,’ Bella told him softly, putting her hand over his as he reached for the gear shift.

  ‘Thought we’d take this pretty little baby for a bit of a spin, go try out her paces,’ Alan told her, annoyingly ignoring the opportunity she had just given him to suggest that they take advantage of the dance to announce their engagement.

  ‘A spin? I’ve already told my mother that you’ll be coming home with me for tea,’ Bella protested, not liking this change to her carefully arranged plan, which had involved discussing their engagement in front of her parents as though it were already a fact.

  Bella had learned as a child that the best way to get round her father’s ever-ready veto of anything that involved him spending any money was to simply behave as though the issue had already been discussed and agreed. She had never ever asked, ‘Please may I have ballet lessons?’ but had stated instead, ‘When I start my ballet lessons …’ It was a trick she had borrowed from her mother and it worked.

  Since so far Alan had been oblivious to her hints about their getting engaged, she had changed her tactics and begun to talk about their engagement as though it were an accepted fact and the question not so much ‘if’ as ‘when’.

  As a soon-to-be-engaged couple it was natural and wise that they both spent time with one another’s family. Irritatingly, Alan’s parents had not yet extended their invitations beyond casual visits to their home to a proper formal tea party, as Bella felt they should have done, a mistake for which they would pay once she was married to Alan. However, her own parents, especially her mother, were much more up to the mark, and Mummy had been briefed that Bella was expecting Alan to ‘have something special to ask me very soon’.

  ‘Your mother won’t mind if we change our minds,’ Alan told her carelessly, adding, ‘Trixie would have jumped at the chance to come with me.’

  ‘Trixie?’ Bella questioned sharply. ‘When did you see her?’

  ‘She’d called round to see my mother. Something about her own mother and the WVS.’

  Bella thought she had successfully seen off the other girl weeks ago, so Alan’s casual comment about seeing her was not something she wanted to hear, especially not when the place where he had seen her was his own home. It was unthinkable that Alan’s parents could possibly prefer Trixie as a daughter-in-law to her. And certainly impossible that Alan should think of her as his wife!

  ‘Yes, you’re right, I’m sure that Mummy will understand,’ Bella allowed graciously, before adding in a mock-little-girl voice, ‘Of course, I shall expect to be properly rewarded for sharing you with your new car when I thought I was going to have you all to myself.’

  The words might be little-girl lisped and sugar sweet but the look she was giving him was pure Salome and she could see from his smile that he recognised that.

  ‘I’m so glad that you won’t have to go and be part of this horrid war – if it does happen,’ she told him, changing the subject.

  ‘My father’s made sure that there’s no way I’ll be called up if it does,’ Alan boasted. ‘With him being a Master Builder and me working for him, we’re both in reserved occupations, and besides, Dad has plenty of contacts, thanks to him being on the council, and plenty of work coming in as well, what with people wanting shelters put up and walls and that reinforced just in case. I can’t for the life of me understand chaps like Seb who go and volunteer when they don’t need to.’

  Bella nodded her head and tried not to look as bored as she felt. The means by which the money was earned to pay for her new dresses and everything else her family enjoyed was not something that interested her
, and once she and Alan were married she intended to make sure that he understood that.

  A couple of hours later they were deep in the Cheshire countryside, and Bella was beginning to feel increasingly bored with Alan’s monologue about the attributes of his new car.

  ‘I want to talk about us, not your car,’ she protested, pouting. ‘You haven’t told me how nice I look or said you love me, not once since you picked me up.’

  ‘Of course I love you,’ Alan told her carelessly, suddenly braking and pulling the car off the main road and on to a rutted cart track that had plainly not been used in a long time. Several yards down it, he stopped the car beneath the branches of a full-leafed oak tree.

  ‘Alan,’ Bella protested as she realised that they were enveloped in dense greenery and hidden from sight.

  ‘Come on,’ he told her, as he reached over and put his arm around her. ‘Don’t act all coy on me now, Bella, not when you’ve been throwing out such tempting hints. You’re far too pretty for a chap to be able to resist, and you know it,’ he added, bending his head to kiss her.

  ‘Say you love me first,’ Bella pouted, holding him off.

  ‘Of course I love you.’

  Satisfied, Bella allowed him to kiss her, mentally imagining how she would show off her ring at work.

  But when Alan started to fondle her breasts and then to unbutton the front of her dress, she tensed and tried to push him away. He was breathing hard, a glazed expression in his eyes, his face flushed. She had never realised before quite how much he looked like his father.

  ‘No,’ she told him, but he ignored her, pushing down her brassiere to squeeze and press her naked breast whilst he kissed her so roughly that her mouth hurt.

  This, though, was the price she must pay to be Alan’s wife; the price every woman paid to get the husband she wanted, Bella told herself. Men who were as popular as Alan was needed a bit of an inducement to help them to recognise which girl they should choose.

  Not that she intended to let Alan go ‘too far’. Her mother had warned her about the dangers of that when she had told her the story of her own two sisters and how one of them had ended up married to a man with no money and no prospects, whilst the other had not married at all.

  A well-to-do husband was the goal every woman needed to achieve if she wanted a comfortable life, and it was in part so that she could have the chance to do that that her mother had nagged her father into moving to a better part of Wallasey, Bella knew. So if getting that husband meant pretending she was enjoying Alan’s intimacies when she wasn’t, then that was exactly what she would do.

  Alan’s hand was on her thigh now, and edging towards the hem of her skirt. Bella trapped it where it was, preventing him from moving it, but he pulled away and then touched her again, this time catching her off guard as he pressed his hand into the V between the top of her legs. Shock and revulsion jolted through her. His hand felt heavy and hot and unpleasantly damp, even through her clothes, and she shuddered to imagine what it would feel like if he was actually touching her flesh.

  Thinking about being engaged to Alan and showing off her ring produced the most deliciously exciting tingling feeling right through her body but enduring his physical touch made her freeze.

  ‘Come on,’ she could hear him demanding thickly. ‘Come on, Bella … Let me.’

  ‘Don’t be silly. You know that I can’t until we’re properly engaged.’

  To Bella’s relief he released her immediately. Even better, he shifted back to his own half of the car instead of leaning all over her.

  ‘Engaged?’

  ‘Yes. You know, Alan, I do think that we really ought to go public soon. My parents keep dropping hints and I know that my father is expecting a visit from you. After all, you’ve said how much you love me, and you know that I love you. Of course we must get engaged.’

  Determinedly Bella stressed the word ‘must’, straightening her clothes at the same time to underline her meaning.

  Alan’s face was still flushed, and there was an unfamiliar and very stubborn look in his eyes. Bella gave a small gasp as, without a word, Alan started to reverse the car back out on to the main road. Things weren’t going the way she had expected and planned at all. Bella quickly dismissed her unease. What was there to feel uneasy about, after all? Alan must want to marry her. How could he not do when, as her mother was always telling her, she was so very pretty.

  Even so, Alan was behaving very selfishly and she had a good mind to tell him so, but she was also aware of how often her own mother allowed her father to get away with the same kind of selfish behaviour, and then made him pay for it later. There could be no question, of course, about Alan not proposing to her and that was all that really mattered. There would be plenty of time for him to learn the error of his ways once she had his ring on her finger, Bella decided determinedly.

  THREE

  ‘Here you are, you two,’ Grace smiled, handing the twins a bag of broken biscuits she had bought on her way home. ‘It’s them iced gems you like and some other iced fancies.’

  ‘Now don’t you go eating those before you’ve had your teas,’ Jean warned them.

  Grace pulled a face and said, ‘Sorry, Mum, I should have waited and given them to them later.’

  ‘It’s all right, love,’ Jean assured her eldest daughter, as the twins opened the back door and hurried out into the garden. ‘It was a kind thought to treat them. You’re a good girl, Grace.’

  At her mother’s praise Grace’s eyes stung with tears. She went over to her and hugged her tightly.

  ‘Everyone’s talking about what might happen if it does come to war, Mum. One of the women from Foundation Garments was crying her eyes out in the cloakroom today,’ cos she was having to get her kiddies ready to be evacuated.’

  Jean looked through the kitchen window at the twins sitting on the double swing Sam had built for them when they were younger. Lou’s arm was round Sasha’s waist, and their heads were together as they examined the contents of the biscuit bag.

  ‘Me and your dad have talked about what we should do for the best for the twins, and your dad reckons that we’ll be safe enough up here, seeing as we’re a fair distance from the docks and that. It’s like I told him, I couldn’t let them go off on their own, not for anything I couldn’t, even though they reckon that they as will be taking the kiddies in will look after them like they was their own. And I’m not minded to leave your dad and you and Luke neither.’

  ‘Bella said that Auntie Vi said that Jack was to be evacuated.’

  ‘Well, that’s their business, I suppose,’

  Grace could tell from her mother’s expression that she didn’t approve but she also knew that her mother would not want to criticise her sister openly.

  Jean glanced back through the window. The twins were engrossed in whatever it was they were saying to one another. Had she and Vi ever been that close? She supposed they must have been. She hoped when her two grew up they didn’t grow apart like she and Vi had done.

  She looked round her small kitchen. Vi would turn her nose up at it, but Jean loved her neat small house and all the memories it held. Everything in her home had a special place in her heart, and an equally precious memory attached to it.

  One of the first things Sam had done when they had first moved in was put a lovely new gas geyser on the wall next to the sink so that she could have hot water whenever she needed it. There’d already been one in the bathroom over the bath, although now they’d got a nice new electric immersion heater in its own cupboard, put in for them by one of Sam’s pals in the Salvage Corps.

  Only last year they’d repainted the kitchen in a pretty bright yellow, and Sam had put down new linoleum, a piece he’d got cheap when they were doing a salvage job at a warehouse – a lovely pattern it had on it too, and there’d been enough left over to do the bathroom as well.

  She’d managed to get the end of a roll of fabric to make new curtains: yellow with a big red strawberry pattern on it.r />
  She’d been desperate for a proper dining-room table and some chairs once the twins were out of their high chairs, and she’d been thrilled to bits when Sam had taken her to a second-hand shop to show her the oak table he’d seen there, especially when the shop owner had shown her the two leaves that pulled out to double its size. A set of chairs being sold off as salvage had joined the table in the back room, and then a sideboard. She and Sam had reupholstered the chairs themselves.

  Vi’s house might be full of expensive things, but hers was full of love, Jean told herself stoutly, and she’d sooner have that any day of the week.

  ‘Set the table for me, will you, Grace? Your dad and our Luke will be in soon. I’ve got a nice bit of ham, the last bit on the bone so Mr Gregory let me have it a bit cheaper. There’s enough for tomorrow’s sandwiches.’

  ‘I’ll just run upstairs and get changed, Mum, and then I’ll come and give you a hand,’ Grace told her.

  She’d been debating whether or not to say anything to her mother about what Sister Harris had said to her. She desperately wanted her parents to know how Sister Harris had complimented her but at the same time she didn’t want them thinking she was upset because she couldn’t go nursing.

  Back downstairs, she started to set the table for their evening meal. The radio was on and when Gracie Fields starting singing, Jean sighed. She had been washing a lettuce but now she stopped, turning off the cold tap and turning to Grace.

  ‘I wonder how your Auntie Francine is getting on in America.’

  ‘Didn’t she say anything in the card she sent for your birthday?’ Grace asked.

  ‘Only that she’s working hard and that there’s a lot of sunshine. But then she’s never been one to say very much, unless it’s to make a bit of a joke of things. Oh, that’s your dad and Luke back, and they’ll be wanting their teas. Go and call the twins in for us, will you, love?’