Across the Mersey

by Annie Groves

  ‘Speaking of Alan, he doesn’t seem to be around much,’ said Charlie.

  ‘He’s very busy at work.’

  ‘Good-looking piece, that girl that’s billeted on you. In Alan’s shoes I reckon I’d have taken to coming home for my lunch just to get an eyeful of her,’ Charlie grinned.

  ‘Well, you aren’t in Alan’s shoes,’ Bella snapped, not wanting to be reminded of the fact that Alan had already had far more than an eyeful of another woman.

  ‘Where did you say she worked?’

  ‘I didn’t,’ Bella told him, wondering suspiciously if her brother really thought she was going to lend him money that he might spend on taking out a refugee.

  No matter how much she had initially resented their presence in her home, the truth that she hardly dared to admit to herself was that she still felt safer having them there, especially with the temper Alan always seemed to be in. Not that she would ever admit as much to anyone, much less to them. Instead she had told herself that everything would be all right once she had had the baby and Alan had calmed down. He just needed a bit of time to get used to the fact that she was his wife, and that he was a husband and a father, that was all. With Trixie now out of reach with those relatives of hers up north, he would soon forget all about her and realise where his best interests lay.

  ‘You want to watch that temper of yours, Bella,’ Charlie warned her. He got up, putting his hands in his pockets and jingling his change. ‘I’m off to the Tennis Club. I won’t ask you to come with me, seeing as you’re in such a sour mood.’

  Bella went into the kitchen half-heartedly splashing cold water on her face and wrists in an attempt to cool herself down. The post had brought yet another letter for Bettina and her mother from Jan. Bella recognised his handwriting. How could she not do when he seemed to write to them virtually every other day?

  Grace knew the minute she walked into the kitchen at home on her day off and saw Luke, that whilst Lillian had obviously ‘let him down’ it had not been lightly.

  ‘Where is everyone?’ she asked him.

  ‘Mum’s gone down to the allotment to see Dad, Aunt Francine’s at a rehearsal and the twins are at school. I suppose you know about me and Lillian, do you?’

  Grace nodded. ‘Don’t look like that,’ she begged him. ‘She isn’t worth it, Luke, honestly she isn’t.’

  ‘She looked at me like I was the last person in the world she wanted to see,’ Luke told her miserably. ‘Said she was seeing someone else and that it was serious. Serious. When she’d been writing to me like she was my sweetheart! She said she wanted to tell me that but that you’d begged her not to.’

  ‘That’s not true,’ Grace gasped. ‘It was me that wanted her to tell you.’

  Now wasn’t the time to tell him that she had tried to warn him, not when he was so very upset.

  ‘So who is he, then, this someone else she’s so serious about?’

  Grace shook her head.

  ‘Come on, tell me. I suppose it’s someone in a reserved occupation, is it?’

  Grace recoiled from his bitterness even whilst she could understand it. Lillian’s rejection of him was bound to be so much worse for coming so closely on top of Dunkirk and what he’d been through.

  ‘He’s a doctor,’ she told him quietly. ‘She told us right from the start that that was why she was going into nursing; because she wanted to marry a doctor.’

  ‘A doctor. No wonder she was turning her nose up at me then.’

  ‘Luke, don’t.’

  ‘Don’t what? Make the same mistake again? You can bet your boots I won’t. From now on I’m going to make sure that no woman gets the chance to make a fool of me a second time.’

  Their parents’ return from the allotment brought an end to their conversation, Luke giving Grace a warning look that told her that he didn’t want her saying anything about what had happened.

  ‘Do you think that Hitler really will invade us like everyone’s saying he will?’ Sasha asked her parents anxiously later when they were all having tea.

  ‘I don’t know, love,’ Jean admitted, whilst Luke and Grace exchanged silent looks.

  Grace knew that Luke was pretty sure that the Germans would invade now that they had broken through to the Channel.

  ‘We’ve all got to be prepared for the worst,’ said Sam sombrely. ‘France has surrendered and the Germans have got the Channel Islands now.’

  ‘They’ll never take Liverpool, though, Dad,’ said Lou stoutly, tucking into her fish pie, her words making them all smile.

  ‘Aye, well, we’ll certainly put up a good fight, love,’ Sam agreed, nodding his head when Jean offered him a second helping of pie.

  ‘Have you had any news about where you’ll be posted to yet, Luke?’

  ‘I met up this morning with one of the other lads who came back on the same troop train. He reckons that since we’ve both been told to report for duty to Seacombe barracks, we’ll be based there on Home Duties, because Churchill won’t want to risk not having the men to defend the country if Hitler does try to invade. You know, Mum, you might want to think again about you and the twins evacuating. They reckon that Liverpool is bound to be one of the Luftwaffe’s targets, on account of the docks,’ Luke warned.

  Jean shook her head. She’d eaten her own pie and was about to get up to fetch the Eve’s pudding, which she knew was Sam and Luke’s favourite. ‘Me and the girls are staying here. My place is here with your dad, and we’re a family. If Hitler’s going to go for us then we’re better off sticking together.’

  ‘Well, I certainly don’t want to be evacuated, like poor Jack,’ Sasha told them. ‘We were talking about him when we came home from school, weren’t we, Auntie Francine, and me and Lou think it would be really nice if we could all go and see him. It’s very mean of Auntie Vi not to tell us where he is.’

  Jean put down the pudding she had been about to serve up and looked at Francine. She knew how her younger sister felt and she sympathised with her, but she didn’t want her involving the twins in matters that were far more complicated than they could realise.

  ‘I heard today that the BBC do want me to go to Bangor to try out for that show with Vera Lynn. They’ve evacuated the Variety Entertainment Department out there, and Tommy Handley and that lot are there, according to one of the girls in the show with me.’

  ‘It’s a long way to go on the off chance, when you’re already rehearsing for a show here, isn’t it?’ Jean asked her doubtfully. ‘I mean, even if they want you it’s not as though you can rely on the trains.’

  ‘They’ve said that they’ll send a car for me, and if they think I’m suitable then they’ll put me up at an hotel in Bangor whilst I’m doing the shows.’

  ‘They must think that you’ll be good, otherwise they wouldn’t ask you to go all that way,’ said Grace.

  ‘She is good, and we think she’s better than Vera Lynn and Gracie Fields, don’t we, Sasha?’ Lou demanded of her twin.

  Sasha nodded, and Jean’s heart sank. The twins were rapidly growing to hero-worship Francine, and to her dismay they were constantly talking about wanting to go on the stage themselves, something she knew that Sam would never allow and something she wouldn’t really want for them herself, not after what had happened to Francine.

  Francine laughed and shook her head. ‘I’m nowhere near as good as either of them. If I was I’d be the one who is a big star, wouldn’t I?’ said Francine.

  ‘Me and Sasha think you should be. I bet the BBC will think so as well.’

  ‘I doubt it, and even if they want me they don’t pay very much.’

  Francine was uncomfortably aware that Jean wasn’t happy about the twins’ admiration of her. She hadn’t deliberately attempted to get them on her side, but they were evermore enthusiastic about their singing and dancing, and it was only natural that they should turn to her as someone who would understand how they felt.

  They were excellent little dancers, and with them being identical twins Fra
ncine didn’t think they would have much difficulty in polishing up a nice little act for a theatre show. She didn’t want to do anything to alienate Jean, though. Not only was she genuinely fond of her elder sister, she also felt very grateful to her for letting her stay with them and for her attempts to persuade Vi to tell them where Jack was.

  ‘I’d better go and get ready. We’ve got a show tonight,’ she told them all.

  After tea Grace helped her mother to do the washing up and told her about Seb.

  ‘You say he’s a bit poorly, then?’ Jean asked her.

  ‘Yes,’ Grace confirmed. ‘I went in to see how he was this morning before I came off duty. His temperature hasn’t risen any higher, but it hasn’t gone down either.’

  Jean tried not to feel worried. She knew that Grace had a tender heart, but she had suspected all along with a mother’s instinct that her daughter had been far more taken with Alan Parker’s cousin than she had wanted to let on, and now she felt that her suspicions were being confirmed.

  ‘So what’s he doing in hospital up here, then? I thought you said he was from down south somewhere.’

  ‘His parents live near London, but Seb said that he’d been posted up here after coming back from France. He didn’t realise that he’d still got some shrapnel in his shoulder until he told the MO at Derby House when he reported for duty that he was having a lot of pain in his arm, and he sent him to us.’

  ‘Have Bella and Alan been told that he’s in hospital here?’ Jean asked.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Grace admitted.

  ‘Well, dare say they will want to visit him, and Alan’s parents as well, seeing as he’s their nephew.’

  ‘I don’t think he cares very much for the Parkers,’ Grace felt obliged to reveal. ‘At least that’s what he told me. He’s only related to them by marriage really.’

  There was no sign of Teddy or his ambulance when Grace arrived back at the hospital that evening, not that she expected to see him. He had told her that he planned to go to see his family, who Grace hadn’t met but who she felt as though she knew from listening to Teddy talk about them.

  They had agreed that it would only complicate things if they were to meet one another’s families, mothers being the way they were. Her own mother had asked after Teddy as Grace was leaving, and she had told her truthfully that they were still just very good friends and that was the way they intended to stay.

  When she walked into the hospital the only thought in her head had been to go to her room to catch up on some studying and then go to bed, but somehow or other she found herself making her way to the ward.

  Staff Nurse Reid raised her eyebrows at the sight of her out of uniform and on her day off.

  ‘I just thought I’d look in and see how Seb is,’ Grace told her self-consciously, feeling obliged to explain when Staff started to frown, ‘I know him, you see. Well, that is to say, his cousin is married to mine.’

  Staff Nurse Reid studied her thoughtfully but her frown had gone.

  ‘Sister normally expects nurses to tell us of any connection they have with patients on her ward when they’re first admitted.’

  ‘Yes, I’m sorry,’ said Grace penitently, ‘only with us only being related through marriage, and me having met him only the once, I wasn’t sure.’

  ‘Well, try to remember another time, Campion.’ Staff was already turning away and Grace still hadn’t found out how Seb actually was.

  ‘Is he any better?’ she asked.

  ‘His temperature hasn’t risen any higher, but when Mr Leonard came to look at his wound this afternoon he felt that it was looking a little bit worse.’

  Her frown was back and Grace guessed that Staff Nurse Reid shared the surgeon’s concern. Grace had already noticed how the best kind of nurses seemed to develop with experience a sixth sense about their patients that went beyond the material evidence of temperature charts and the like.

  TWENTY-ONE

  Staff had been right: Seb was worse. So much worse, in fact, that Mr Leonard had ordered that he was to be moved into one of the private side wards. The same one in which the young sailor had died.

  Remembering that now, Grace felt her heart contract as she looked down at him. His morphine had been increased to give him some relief from his pain, and although he was asleep, his body twitched violently on the bed with the onset of the withdrawal symptoms that came when the drug needed readministering.

  He was talking in his drugged sleep, but not in English, Grace recognised, and not only in one language either, but the only word she could understand was the name he kept on saying.

  ‘Marie.’

  Whoever this Marie was, she was obviously on his mind, Grace acknowledged as she straightened his bed.

  Sister came in, her uniform rustling with starch. It was almost unheard of for her to do something as mundane as take a patient’s temperature but that was exactly what she did now, informing Grace, ‘I want you to check this patient’s temperature every half an hour, Nurse, and report any changes to me.’

  She then folded back the bedclothes and looked briefly at Seb’s shoulder. Grace knew that she was looking for any telltale signs that he was suffering from blood poisoning from his wound. She had just looked herself, her heart thudding with relief when she had not seen the red line that would have meant the infection had entered his bloodstream.

  ‘In addition you are to prepare and apply a fresh kaolin poultice to his wound every hour starting from now.’

  Grace nodded. She knew that the kaolin clay, which had to be heated in a container placed in a pan of boiling water and then smeared on a sterile bandage before being placed as hot as possible against the infected wound, should draw any infected matter to the surface of the wound.

  Mr Leonard had prescribed regular doses of M and B 693 for his patient, sulphanilamide being the only drug that had any effect against septicaemia.

  Of course, Grace still had her normal ward duties to perform as well as the extra work Sister had given her, but she still made sure that she followed Sister’s instructions to the letter, even foregoing her morning break rather than hurry the application of the kaolin poultices.

  The edges of his wound, which had had to be reopened to remove the second piece of shrapnel, were very badly swollen and inflamed.

  Mr Leonard did his round escorted by Sister and Staff, and stopped for a long time in the small side ward, but of course Grace, as a lowly first-year nurse, wasn’t able to hang around in the hope of learning how Seb was.

  Instead she had to do a locker round, and then go for her lunch, where she was dismayed to have to listen to Lillian going on about how wonderful her doctor boyfriend thought she was.

  Poor Luke was better off without her, even though he himself couldn’t recognise that as yet, Grace thought as she ignored both Lillian and her own sisterly desire to remind her of how much she had hurt her brother.

  It was late in the afternoon before Grace was finally and almost disbelievingly able to look at the thermometer and see that Seb’s temperature was finally dropping. She was so worried that she might be wrong that she took it again, ignoring Seb’s irritated protests.

  Her hand shook slightly as she wrote down the new temperature and then went to inform Sister.

  They had given their first show at one of the munitions factories in Liverpool, and Francine was suffering from the normal tiredness that always hit her after a first public appearance in a new show as she opened the gate to the small front garden to Jean and Sam’s house, and then stopped when she saw that the back gate was open.

  Only the family used the back gate so she assumed that someone must already be in, and headed automatically for the back door instead, coming to a halt as she rounded the corner of the house and saw a small shabbily dressed boy curled up asleep on the back step.

  She recognised him instantly and her heart turned over.

  Going to him, she kneeled down beside him and put her arm around him, saying gently, ‘Jack?’

>   He was awake immediately, fear tensing his body. His face was grubby and he had obviously been crying.

  ‘It’s all right,’ Francine reassured him. ‘You’re Jack, aren’t you? I’m your … I’m your Auntie Francine …’

  He still looked apprehensive.

  ‘Have you been here long?’ Francine asked him. ‘Only I expect you’re feeling a bit hungry, aren’t you? I know I am. Why don’t we go inside and have something to eat whilst we wait for your Auntie Jean to come home.’

  The sound of Jean’s name had an immediate and relaxing effect on him, and although he didn’t say anything he stood up readily enough whilst Francine unlocked the back door, keeping one arm around him whilst she did so. He was so thin, it tore at her heart. She could feel his bones through his shabby blazer and shirt – too thin, surely, for a boy his age.

  * * *

  Half an hour later, she’d made him a ham sandwich, which he’d eaten as though he was starving.

  He’d run away, he’d admitted after she had patiently coaxed him into telling her what had happened. He’d run away because the couple he was living with had told him that the Government had stopped sending them money to pay for his keep and that his parents didn’t want him any more.

  The couple, who ran a smallholding of some sort, from what Francine could gather, had had three boys living with them, and all of them had been expected to work on the smallholding after school and at the weekends, but two of them had been taken home by their mother, and Jack had been forced to do their work as well as his own. He’d been kept short of food and threatened with beatings if he complained to anyone. The final straw had been when he had accidentally broken a plate and the woman had locked him in the cellar all night as punishment and then sent him off to school without any breakfast.

  Instead of going back to the smallholding after school he had decided to run away and come home. He had walked to the local station and managed to get on to a train to Liverpool without anyone seeing him.

  His quiet, ‘I thought I’d come and see Auntie Jean instead of going home, and ask her to speak to Mum,’ had torn at Francine’s heart and she had only just managed to hold back her tears.