Across the Mersey

by Annie Groves

  The cup Jean had been holding slipped through her fingers onto the linoleum. She looked at the broken pieces of pottery and then at her son, afraid to move or speak in case she made what he had just said real, when she knew that it surely couldn’t be real. Luke didn’t need to join up. He was going to work in the Salvage Corps with Sam.

  Sam! She looked at her husband. He was getting to his feet, his face burning a dark angry red, his fists clenched at his sides.

  ‘You’ve done what?’

  ‘You heard me, Dad. I’ve joined up. It’s no use you looking at me like that. I had to.’

  ‘You had to do no such bloody thing. I’d got you a place in the Salvage Corps. All you had to do was wait another couple of weeks.’

  ‘It’s all right for you to say that, you don’t know what it’s like,’ Luke objected fiercely.

  ‘It’s because I do ruddy well know what it’s like. I watched more than one man cough himself to death from the gas in the trenches. You’re the one that knows nothing about what war’s like, Luke.’

  ‘Not war, no. I do know what it’s like to be called a coward. That might not bother you, Dad, but it bothers me.’

  Sam’s face changed colour from red to white. Jean had never seen him look at anyone the way he was looking at Luke now. Instinctively she moved over to him, begging, ‘Sam …’

  ‘You don’t need to protect me, Mum,’ Luke told her, his young face hardening too. ‘I’m a man now, not a kid.’

  ‘A man? You’re a fool, that’s what you are,’ Sam told him. ‘I’d thought you’d got more about you than to listen to a lot of daft lads doing a bit of name-calling. I thought you’d got a bit of sense, but you haven’t. You’re a ruddy fool, Luke.’

  ‘I might be a fool but at least I can hold my head up now.’

  Again that unfamiliar look crossed Sam’s face. He shook his head as though trying to shake it away, like a man coming up for air from deep water.

  ‘Aye, for as long as you can keep it on your shoulders.’

  ‘Sam!’ Now it was Jean’s turn to feel her face drain of colour and her heart start to thump uncomfortably fast.

  ‘What do you want me to say? That I think he’s done the right thing? Well, I don’t.’

  Beneath Sam’s bitterness Jean could sense his pain, but she could also tell that Luke couldn’t see that. His face was bleak with misery and anger.

  They’d both raised their voices and were facing one another like enemies, these two who were so alike and whom she loved so very much. It was almost more than she could bear.

  She looked at Grace. ‘Go upstairs and sit with the twins, will you, love? They’ll be wondering what’s going on.’

  As soon as the door had closed behind Grace, Jean tried to intervene.

  ‘Luke’s only done what he thinks is right, Sam.’ She put her hand on Sam’s arm but he shook it off. She had never seen him so angry, Jean admitted, her heart sinking. For all that Sam had an easygoing nature, he had a streak of stubbornness in him when it came to what he believed to be right. In Sam’s eyes, by defying him and enlisting, Luke had shown that he didn’t value or respect his father’s advice, and Jean knew that Sam would find that very hard to take.

  ‘Well, you’ve made your bed now, and you’ll just have to lie in it,’ Sam told Luke. ‘I hope you’re proud of yourself, because I’m certainly not. Like I’ve said, you’re a ruddy fool, and after all I’ve said to you, all I’ve done to try to get you into the Corps.’

  ‘The Salvage Corps. That’s all that matters to you, isn’t it? You never even asked me what I wanted to do, or even if I wanted to be apprenticed as an electrician. No, all you could think about was what you wanted. Well, now I’ve done what I want. I’m not a kid, Dad, I’m a man, and if you don’t like that then too bad.’

  This was war, Jean recognised: this horrible cruel merciless tearing apart of family ties and loyalties. This senseless destruction and pain.

  Luke was opening the back door, whilst Sam ignored him.

  Alarm filled Jean. ‘Luke, what are you doing? Where are you going?’

  ‘I’m not staying here. Not now. I’ve got a couple of mates I can stay with. We joined up together.’

  ‘Luke,’ Jean protested. ‘Sam, stop him…’

  ‘Like he just told you, he’s a man now, so let him go and be one.’

  Couldn’t Sam see the sheen of tears in Luke’s eyes? Didn’t he realise what he was doing or what was happening? Luke, their son, was about to go and fight a war. They may never see him again. How could Sam let that happen with so many cruel words still lying between them?

  For the first time in the whole of their time together Jean found that she felt not love for her husband but something that felt much more like bitterness and anger.

  She ran out after Luke, ignoring Sam’s command to ‘Let him go’, catching up with him at the gate and grabbing hold of his arm, her tears rolling down her face.

  ‘I’m sorry, Mum, but I had to do it,’ he told her gruffly.

  And then he was gone, walking away from her as straight-backed as though he was already in uniform and marching.

  She was shaking from head to foot when she walked back into the now empty kitchen. She could hear the girls coming downstairs. They came into the kitchen, Grace shepherding the twins in front of her. For once they were quiet, holding on to one another, their eyes round and stark with confusion and pain.

  ‘We heard Luke leave,’ Grace told her mother.

  Jean couldn’t trust herself to speak.

  ‘Where’s Dad?’ Grace asked.

  ‘I don’t know.’ Nor did Jean feel as though she cared, she recognised. Anger and pain welled up inside her. How could Sam have let Luke leave like that?

  ‘Dad’s gone down to the shelter,’ Lou announced.

  ‘He goes there sometimes to think about things,’ Sasha supplied. ‘That’s what he told us, wasn’t it, Lou?’

  Jean stared at the twins. Were they right? She hadn’t known that Sam did that. How had they known? Not that she really cared. Right now all her pain and all her love were for Luke, her firstborn. Who but a mother could ever know what it felt like when that new life was placed in your arms for the first time and that well of almost unbearable emotion took hold of you; that need to protect that life from all harm? That love, that feeling, never went away.

  Charlie was drunk. In fact he was very drunk indeed. It took him several minutes to climb out of his car. He staggered towards the front door, leaning against it whilst he searched for his key.

  When, before he found it, his father opened the door for him he half fell into the hall. He could see his mother standing behind his father. They were both in their nightclothes, and his mother had rag curlers in her hair.

  His father’s face was red with temper. ‘Where the hell have you been?’ he demanded.

  ‘The bloody bastards have called up the TA. Given us all Part One and Part Two orders,’ Charlie told them. ‘Bastards … bastards …’ His voice slurred over the words as he collapsed onto the floor, and then dragged himself up to lean against the wall, swaying slightly. ‘You’ve got to help me, Dad. You’ve got to get me out … I only joined because they said they’d never call up the TA Reserves …’

  ‘You’re a bloody fool, you know that, don’t you? I warned you that you were taking a risk, but you wouldn’t listen, and now look at the mess you’ve got yourself into. None of this would have happened if you’d listened to me and kept quiet.’

  ‘Yes, well, I didn’t, did I? But you can sort it out, can’t you?’

  When her husband made no reply, Vi put her hand on his arm, saying sharply, ‘Edwin, you’ve got to do something; speak to someone. The Ministry.’

  His face grew even redder as he shook her off. ‘I told you not to go getting yourself into the TA in the first place,’ he reminded Charlie again. ‘If you’d left well alone I could have wangled it that you’d be on the reserved occupation list, but it’s too bloody late for that no
w.’

  Charlie’s stomach heaved and he was violently sick on the hall floor and his father’s slippers.

  SEVEN

  Grace could hardly believe that it was finally happening and that she was about to begin her nursing training, but overlying her excitement as she walked towards the hospital’s nurses’ home where she had been told to present herself, was her anxiety for her brother, and her awareness of her mother’s anguish.

  Luke was in an army camp somewhere now, undergoing his training. There was an unfamiliar and very strained atmosphere at home, and as excited as she was at the thought of beginning her own training, Grace also felt guilty for leaving her mother when she was so very upset.

  And yet at the same time as she shared her mother’s anxiety, Grace could also understand how Luke felt and why he had joined up.

  In the battered leather suitcase she was carrying, and which she and Jean had bargained for in a pawnbroker’s dusty shop, were all the items on the list she had been given when she had received the letter informing her that she had been accepted for her training: three pairs of black stockings, one pair of flat black serviceable shoes, a selection of safety pins and studs, a packet of white Kirbigrips, two plain silver tiepins, one pocket watch with a second hand, one pair of regulation nurse’s scissors, money for textbooks, six exercise books, pens and pencils and two drawstring laundry bags clearly marked with her name. Although the cost of her uniform and the textbooks would exceed her first year’s earnings, her board and food, and her laundry would be provided free of charge.

  Since Sister Harris had recommended her there had been no need for her to attend an interview, and it had also been Sister Harris who had measured her for her probationary uniform and sent those measurements to the hospital.

  The letter she had received had told her the date on which she was to report to the nurses’ home for her probationary training; that she would find her uniform waiting for her in her room; that she was to change into it and then wait in the probationary nurses’ sitting room for further instructions; that she must not under any circumstances whatsoever leave the hospital wearing her uniform.

  Had she done the right thing? Did she really have what it took to become a nurse? Ought she to have stayed where she was at Lewis’s? What if the other girls didn’t like her? What if … Grace’s eager footsteps halted, but it was too late for second thoughts and doubts now. The nurses’ home was right in front of her and the nurses’ home sister, thin, grey-haired and sharp-eyed, was watching her. Behind her stood two other sisters with lists in their hands.

  Nervously Grace approached them.

  ‘Name?’ one of them barked.

  ‘Er … Grace … Grace Campion.’

  The sister was frowning for so long over her list that Grace began to wonder if it was all a mistake and she wasn’t going to be allowed to train after all, but then to her relief she nodded her head and handed Grace a key with a number on it.

  Now what was she supposed to do? Uncertainly she looked at the sister, but she didn’t look back, turning instead to the girl who was now standing behind Grace. Another girl who had had her name ticked off by the other sister was making her way into the home, so Grace followed her.

  Several girls were already inside and Grace joined them as they walked along corridors and up and down flights of stairs looking for their rooms.

  The smell of carbolic lingering on the air was somehow in keeping with the green-painted walls, and shiny clean linoleum.

  Grace found her room up two flights of stairs and halfway along a corridor. Her arm aching from the weight of her suitcase, she unlocked the door and went inside. Her room was small and very basic. The paint on the walls was peeling, especially around the small sink in the corner. A small dark brown wardrobe stood against one wall, along with a dressing table-cum-desk and a chair.

  The iron-framed bed was covered with a green bedspread that looked thin and worn. The room felt cold and Grace shivered, suddenly overwhelmed with homesickness and a longing for her own pretty attic bedroom.

  Her uniform was lying on the bed, the dresses short-sleeved, with a separate uncomfortable-looking set of collars and cuffs. The dresses were patched and darned and had obviously been passed on many times before they had come to her. Next to them was a long navy woollen cloak with a dark purple lining and purple straps that crossed at the front and fastened at the back. Grace looked for her cap, her heart sinking when she saw the two oblongs of white cloth the size of a nappy starched as stiff as a board. How on earth was she supposed to transform those into a nurse’s cap?

  Mindful of the list of rules she had been sent with her acceptance letter, Grace had already removed the pale pink nail polish she normally wore before leaving home, along with her pretty silver chain and locket. Student nurses were not allowed to wear any makeup or jewellery. No pictures or posters were to be hung on the walls, and slippers were not to be kept on the floor.

  Quickly Grace unpacked her case and put everything away, then changed into her uniform, her fingers clumsy with nervousness.

  She checked her appearance in the mirror, worrying that the hem of the dress might not be the regulation twelve inches above the floor. The fabric of her uniform dress felt uncomfortable and scratchy, and she wasn’t sure which pockets she was supposed to put everything into. Her thick black stockings looked drab and her shoes felt heavy and clumsy. Grace checked her letter again. Once she had changed into her uniform she was to make her way down to the student nurses’ sitting room for a ‘welcome tea’.

  Feeling awkward and uncertain, Grace hesitated just inside the open door to the student nurses’ sitting room, which was already busy with other girls dressed in their uniforms. The tables were each set for six, with individual plates containing two sandwiches and a slice of Victoria sandwich.

  A cheerful-looking girl with ginger hair and freckles came up to her and smiled. ‘If you’re looking for a table there’s a spare seat on ours,’ she offered.

  Gratefully Grace followed her over to one of the tables where four other girls were already seated.

  ‘Now we’ve got a full table I suppose we’d better introduce ourselves,’ the ginger-haired girl suggested. ‘I’m Hannah Philips.’

  ‘Grace Campion,’ Grace followed her, listening carefully as the other girls gave their names: Iris Robinson, small and pretty with dark hair and huge dark eyes. Jennifer Halliwell, who spoke with what she explained to them was a Yorkshire accent, adding that her family were originally from Leeds. Doreen Sefton, who said that if the war went on for long enough she wanted to join the army as a nurse, once she had done her training, and finally the prettiest of them all, in Grace’s opinion, Lillian Green, who had blonde curls and huge blue eyes, and who was so slim and delicate she looked as though she might blow away in the lightest wind, and who giggled and explained that she had decided to train as a nurse after she had met a gorgeous-looking doctor at a friend’s party.

  After they had eaten their sandwiches and cake, and drunk as much tea as they wanted, Home Sister stood up and gave them a talk about what was expected of them and the high standards set and demanded by the teaching hospitals. She emphasised how fortunate they were to be given the opportunity to train at such a prestigious hospital.

  Their lessons, they learned, started at eight o’clock in the morning and did not finish until six o’clock at night. At the end of their three-month training they would sit an exam and if they passed it then and only then would they be allowed on to the wards, as that lowest of nursing ranks, the probationer.

  Once they’d been dismissed, everyone made their way back to their rooms.

  ‘You’ll find that the six of us will tend to stick together now,’ Hannah told Grace knowledgeably, when they were the only two of the original six who had still not reached their rooms. ‘So it’s a pity we’ve got Green as one of our number. That sort always causes trouble. You mark my words.’

  Grace didn’t know what to say. Hannah had already told
them over tea that her elder sister and her cousin were both qualified nurses, and she certainly seemed to know the ropes better than anyone else.

  ‘I don’t mind a bit of a lark around but when it comes to chasing after doctors, saying that you’ve only taken up nursing so that you can do that …’ she gave a disapproving shake of her head.

  Alone in her own small room, Grace undressed, hanging up her uniform carefully, and then once she was washed and in her night things she sat down to write to her family.

  Her head was buzzing with all that had happened. There was so much she wanted to write that she hardly knew where to start. She felt both uncertain and excited, half of her wishing that right now she was at home in her mother’s kitchen, with its familiar sights and smells, and most of all her mother in one of her floral pinafores bustling about looking after them all, and the other half of her sharply aware that she had taken the first step from being a girl at home to being an independent young woman. She stifled an exhausted yawn. She didn’t want to write anything that would alarm her mother, like how hard the work was going to be, or how nervous she had felt listening to Home Sister’s stern warnings about the penalties for not making the grade or breaking one of the very many rules. It had been such an extraordinary day – a day that would live in her memory for ever. There were things like meeting the other girls in her set that she would always share with them; things that were apart from the life she had known at home. And yet these were also things she wanted to share with her family.

  It would take her ages to write down everything she wanted to say, Grace admitted, stifling another yawn, and some of it would have to wait until she had her first time off.

  In the end she simply wrote that the day had gone reasonably well and that she was well and happy, but that she missed them all.

  ‘Oh, darling!’

  Vi dabbed at her eyes with the lace-edged handkerchief she had removed from her handbag, whilst Bella ignored her mother’s emotions, pursing her lips and studying her reflection in the mirror.