Across the Mersey

by Annie Groves

  ‘Well, never mind,’ her mother had responded. ‘I’d have liked to thank him for his kindness to you, though.’

  ‘How many breaths do you think it will be before her hat falls off?’ Louise whispered to her twin.

  ‘Ten,’ Sasha responded.

  ‘I bet you it’s fifteen. And if I win you’ve got to kiss Tom Lucas.’

  ‘I’m not kissing him. You kiss him.’

  ‘Sally says that he sticks his tongue right down your throat.’

  ‘Why would he want to do that?’

  ‘It’s what they do in France, she says.’

  ‘Mum’s watching us …’

  The sudden realisation that the vicar had stopped speaking virtually in mid-sentence caused not only Jean but virtually the whole congregation to look first towards the pulpit and then back towards the now open door, where the verger and two of the sidesmen were in earnest conversation. The verger broke away and started to hurry down the aisle, his robes billowing with the speed of his progress. He reached the pulpit, saying something to the vicar, who had leaned down to listen.

  Several seconds passed. Mrs Knowles woke up abruptly in mid-snore and straightened her hat. The vicar stepped down from the pulpit to stand in front of the congregation.

  ‘It is my sad duty to inform you that we are now at war with Germany.’

  Immediately Grace looked towards her parents. Her mother’s face had lost its colour and her father’s mouth had gone stern. The twins were standing close together, their arms round each other.

  Luke stood apart from his family, a grim, almost bitter, expression shadowing his face as he watched some of the other young men gravitate towards one another and begin a low-voiced conversation. Why couldn’t his father understand how it made him feel, knowing that he was going to be safe here in Liverpool whilst his friends went off to fight? The service summarily finished, the congregation was moving swiftly towards the open doors. Half a dozen young men in various service uniforms, who had been attending church with their families, were very much the centre of attention, receiving approving smiles and words of encouragement as older men went up to them to clap them on the shoulder or pat them on the back.

  Luke could feel the backs of his eyes burning drily with shame and anger.

  ‘Oh, Sam, do you think it’s really true?’ Jean asked anxiously as they all left the church.

  ‘I reckon so. We’ll know more when we get home and listen to the wireless. Luke, we’d better check in with the ARP post this afternoon,’ he told his son, ‘and I’ll have a word with Andy Roberts to see if he’s heard anything.’

  Andy Roberts was the most senior of the Salvage Corps men and acted as an unofficial co-ordinator and ‘foreman’ for the group.

  ‘Does that mean now that Hitler’s going to march into Liverpool?’ Lou asked anxiously.

  ‘Don’t be daft,’ her twin responded dismissively. ‘He can’t march across the Channel, can he?’

  ‘No, but he can ruddy well bomb it,’ Arthur Edwards, one of their neighbours, told them, having overheard the twins’ conversation. Arthur was a widower, and Jean normally made up a bit of a plated dinner for him on a Sunday. ‘There’s going to be some tears shed before tonight’s over,’ he added dourly. ‘There’s hardly a house in the street that’s not sending one of its men off to fight. I’m surprised that you ain’t in uniform yet, young Luke. Alf Simpson’s two lads have both joined up this last month and the Bristows from number sixteen’s son’s in the Merchant Navy.

  ‘Luke’s going to be working in the Salvage Corps with me,’ Sam told their neighbour sharply.

  ‘Oh, Mum …’ Grace’s voice broke as she went into her mother’s arms, and they hugged each other.

  They were less than halfway home when they heard a booming noise, similar to that made by the One o’ clock Gun down on the docks, followed by another. Before the echoes of the second had died away Sam was shepherding his family towards the nearest public shelter, which happened to be in the grounds of a school. New and purpose-built with brick walls and a concrete slab roof, the shelter might be ugly, but right now it was a very welcome sight indeed.

  Joining in with the shrill wail of the air-raid sirens, small children snatched up by their parents had started crying. Jean kept the twins in front of her, telling them to hold on to one another, conscious of the press of people seeking safety, but everyone was doing their best to keep calm, even if there were some very set and frightened faces.

  Inside, the shelter was very similar to the one at the bottom of the road, which they had all been down to have a look at once it had been erected earlier in the year, although much larger. Bunk beds lined the walls; there were buckets filled with sand as emergency fire extinguishers, and a dedicated ARP post right by the door for those who would be in charge of getting everyone in and keeping a check on everything. Electric cables supporting solitary light bulbs dangled from the ceiling here and there, the bulbs giving off pools of light. Without any windows there was no chance of that light giving away their location to Hitler’s Luftwaffe. There was even a door marked ‘WC’, which was more than they had in their shelter, Jean thought enviously.

  As Sam guided his family to one of the bunk beds so that they could all sit down he commented admiringly on how well equipped the shelter was.

  ‘We’ll be all right in here, love. They’ve got a supply of stoves stacked up over there, and their own water supply,’ he told Jean, before going back to join the other ARP men outside, helping to make sure everything proceeded as it should. Jean watched him leave with some anxiety – for his safety, not their own.

  ‘Blimey, that Hitler don’t believe in wasting much time, does he?’ an old lady puffed as she sat down on the bed next to the Campions’. The twins were packed in tightly between Jean and Grace, and a group of men a few yards away were joking that the ARP warden hadn’t thought to stock up with a few crates of beer.

  ‘Shame on you, Harry Meadows,’ a woman, whom Jean guessed must be his wife, objected sharply. ‘Talking about drinking beer on a Sunday, and when we’ve only just come out of church. You should be praying to the Good Lord to save us, not thinking about beer.’

  Lou shivered and moved closer to Jean. Jean put her arm around her, and hugged her tightly, hoping that Lou wouldn’t be able to feel how fast her own heart was beating and guess how very afraid she was.

  You could almost feel the effort everyone was making not to be afraid, or at least not to let their fear show. But it was there, Jean could see it in the eyes of other mothers and in the way they kept their children close to them. People were talking in low voices, quickly, anxious not to miss any sounds from outside.

  Jean looked towards the shelter entrance. The door was still open; she could just about see Sam standing with the other ARP men. She wished desperately that he was with them, but he had his duty to do. Grace was holding Sasha as closely as Jean was holding Lou, and she felt a surge of pride for her eldest daughter.

  ‘It’s cold in here, Mum,’ Lou complained.

  It was cold, and damp as well, Jean suspected, but far more important than the discomfort, and the fact that the beef would be ruined, was that they were safe.

  Lou was pulling a face. ‘Pooh,’ she objected, wrinkling her nose. ‘It’s horrid in here, really smelly.’

  Jean nudged her daughter and gave her a warning look, even though she was forced to acknowledge that Lou’s criticism was well deserved.

  The beef would be ruined now. What a waste.

  Sam was coming towards them, and Jean waited anxiously as he stepped carefully over outstretched legs.

  ‘It’s all right,’ he told her. ‘False alarm. Captain Cocks, from the Fort Perch Rock Battery ordered a couple of rounds to be put across the bows of a vessel trying to enter the closed Rock Channel approach to the Mersey. I dunno about scaring them off – he’s certainly put the fear of God up all of Liverpool. Not that the powers that be will be too put out, mind. I dare say it’s given them a chanc
e to see if the civil defence measures are working as they should.’

  As they all stepped out into the sunshine, Grace was thinking that the next time she heard an air-raid siren she could well be in her nurse’s uniform and on duty waiting for the injured to be brought in for treatment. It felt funny to be both so frightened and yet at the same time so determined to rise to the challenge of what war could bring.

  ‘I think I’d better stay on here to lend a hand, if you don’t mind love,’ Sam told Jean, as she gathered her family together.

  It was only natural that he should want a chance to talk things through with the other men who had been clustered together by the exit to the shelter as they left, Jean acknowledged as they made their way home.

  She felt tired and miserable, and her head had started to ache, but most of all she was thinking about Jack, and how he must be feeling.

  ‘Poor little lad,’ she said under her breath.

  ‘What’s that, Mum?’ Grace asked.

  ‘I was just thinking about Jack,’ Jean told her. ‘Your Auntie Vi’s had him evacuated.’

  ‘Of course, Edwin suspected all along that this was going to happen, and that it would be war. He’s got very close contacts with the Ministry, you know – not that he’d ever breathe a word out of turn. They have absolute trust in his discretion. To be honest, that’s why we gave in when Alan begged us to allow Bella to marry him. They’re so very much in love, and with it being war, well, one never knows what might happen …’

  ‘But I thought that Alan Parker worked for his father and doesn’t have to join up,’ the neighbour Vi was talking to queried.

  It was early in the evening, and naturally everyone wanted to talk about the morning’s announcement that they were now at war.

  Vi had only come out to deadhead the last of her roses, but her trug was at her feet without anything in it, and she was determined to ignore her neighbour’s telltale glance towards her own front door when she had such an excellent opportunity to reinforce the fact that it was Edwin’s perspicacity in recognising that war was about to be declared that was responsible for Bella’s swift marriage, and nothing else.

  ‘Well, yes, of course, but one never knows what may happen …’

  Really, Vi thought, humming happily to herself ten minutes later as she returned to the house, things could hardly have fallen better. She now had the perfect explanation for anyone who chose to ask questions about the hurried nature of Bella’s marriage.

  Edwin was in the lounge, listening to the wireless and drinking a G and T – his second of the evening, not that Vi was counting, of course. Edwin with his bald head and his neat moustache had grown somewhat portly over the years, and had developed a decided air of importance. Unlike Jean’s Sam, he was not a tall man, and unlike him too, he was now wearing spectacles.

  ‘Of course, I had my suspicions that this was going to happen,’ he told Vi, puffing out his cheeks, both of them ignoring the fact that it was only a couple of weeks since he had been saying that there wouldn’t be a war at all, in private as well as in public. ‘Just as well I had the foresight to expand the business, because we’ll certainly be getting more work. Charlie will have to pull his socks up a bit, mind. I don’t want to see work we could have had going to someone else because he’s not doing his job properly.’

  ‘Well, that’s a fine thing to say, and about your own son too. I’m surprised at you, Edwin, I really am,’ Vi retaliated. ‘Poor Charlie’s doing his best. It was gone eight o’clock three evenings last week before he came in for his meal.’

  ‘He needs to spend more time working and less time at that ruddy Tennis Club,’ Edwin told her.

  ‘Edwin! Language!’ Vi reproved him. ‘Jean’s going to be getting herself in a state. She was all for telling me I’d done the wrong thing when I said that we’d had Jack evacuated, but she’ll be wishing she’d had the sense to do the same with her twins now, I shouldn’t wonder.’

  Edwin gave a bored grunt.

  ‘Edwin, I really do think you should speak to Alan’s father, you know. Poor Bella’s terrified that that dreadful mother of Alan’s is going to try to make them live with them after they’re married. It’s like I was saying to my WVS group, it doesn’t look very good when a prominent Wallasey Village businessman and a local councillor acts as though he can’t afford to set his newly married son up in a house of his own. I’d be ashamed if that was us and our Charlie.’

  Edwin gave another grunt.

  ‘If you were to ask me then I’d have to say that I’m a bit worried that Mrs Parker is one of those mothers who have to have her son tied to their apron strings. I’ve already told Bella that she’ll have to watch out for that. She will be Alan’s wife, after all. You know, I was thinking, if you were to mention to Mr Parker when you see him tomorrow at the council meeting that you’re prepared to give the young ones a cheque to pay for the new furniture they’ll need for that house that’s up for sale near the Parkers, then that just might make him realise—’

  ‘Give it a rest, will you, Vi? If the Parkers won’t buy them a house then there’s nothing I can do about it. Get me another drink, will you?’

  Vi got up and took the glass he was holding out to her. She knew when not to cross her husband, but at least she had planted the right seed in his mind. Bella had sobbed her heart out after they’d got back from church this morning after Alan had told her that he thought they should move in with his parents instead of setting up their own home.

  Well, she’d see about that, Vi assured herself. She wasn’t going to have her Bella getting less than her due. If push came to shove then she’d see to it that Edwin bought them a house, and she’d make sure that everyone knew who’d had to pay for it.

  She was very disappointed in the Parkers. Very disappointed.

  ‘Hey, Charlie, I’ve been looking for you everywhere. Where the hell have you been? You were supposed to pick me up over half an hour ago.’

  Charlie grinned, ignoring the harassed and irritated expression on the face of his friend, as Brian got into the passenger seat of Charlie’s car. It was true that Charlie had promised to pick him up outside his house, prior to them both attending a regular Territorial Army meeting, and it was equally true that Charlie was very late. Not that Charlie himself cared.

  ‘Sorry, Brian, but I had a bit of important business to attend to,’ he told him, winking meaningfully. ‘A certain pretty girl had heard that war had been declared and she wanted to say a proper goodbye to me. I tell you, mate, this TA uniform is worth its weight in gold for the effect it has on the girls.’

  ‘Oh, yes? Well, you won’t be feeling so pleased with yourself when you hear what I’ve got to tell you. We’re in deep shit.’

  ‘Ruddy hell, what for?’ Charlie scratched irritably at his neck where the rough fabric of his TA battledress had chafed his skin. Girl pleasing or not, he would be glad to get out of it and into his civvies. To tell the truth, the last thing he felt like doing now was going down to the local drill hall where his unit of the Territorial Army volunteers was based. For one thing, he suspected that his father would want to give him a lecture about the effects of the war on the business and the importance of him keeping his nose to the grindstone, and Charlie knew from experience that the best time to endure one of Pa’s lectures was on a Sunday evening after the old man had had a couple or three G and Ts rather than a Monday morning when his temper and his stomach were still soured by them.

  ‘Didn’t you hear that message they gave out on Friday over the wireless, saying that all army personnel have to report a.s.a.p. to their drill hall?’

  ‘No, I can’t say that I did,’ Charlie told him, shrugging dismissively. ‘We’re only in the TA, for heaven’s sake. It’s not like we’re in the real army, is it?’

  ‘Hasn’t Luke come back with you?’ Jean asked Sam when her husband walked into the kitchen.

  They’d all been glued to the wireless since they’d got back, even the twins.

  Old
Mr Edwards had come round to tell them that the Liverpool Echo had brought out a Sunday edition and that he’d got them a copy.

  It had made Jean’s heart bump against her ribs to see the bold headlines announcing the commencement of war instead of the normal front-page advertisements.

  ‘No. I thought he left with you and the girls.’

  Jean looked at the clock on the wall. It was gone six o’clock. Luke wasn’t the sort to ignore family meal times without warning her in advance. Her heart started to beat too fast and too heavily.

  ‘He’ll be with the other lads, talking about what’s happened, I expect,’ Sam told her.

  Jean nodded, but deep down inside she felt something was wrong. Not that she’d say so to Sam. He’d just laugh at her and say she was being a fussing mother hen.

  ‘You’ll be hungry,’ she told him. ‘You missed your dinner, after all. I’ll make you a sandwich.’

  ‘Ta, love.’ Sam sat down and picked up the paper, quickly becoming engrossed in it, whilst Jean filled the kettle and set about cutting bread. The wireless was on and she could hear the sound of the twins’ voices from their bedroom upstairs.

  The kitchen door opened and Grace came in, holding a piece of paper.

  ‘Mum, look at this list. I just hope we’re going to be able to get everything it says I have to have.’

  She sat down at the table, frowning over the list, and then got up again when she saw that the kettle was boiling.

  That was typical of Grace, Jean thought gratefully. She never needed to be asked, and she was always quick to help.

  Sam had eaten his sandwiches and she and Grace had done the washing up. It was gone seven now and Luke still wasn’t back, and Jean couldn’t help continually glancing at the clock.

  It was nearly eight when Luke finally came in.

  ‘There you are. I’ll put the kettle on,’ Jean told him, not wanting to let on how worried and uneasy she had felt. He was back now, after all.

  ‘I’ve joined up. I’ve got to report for training tomorrow morning.’