Across the Mersey Read online

They had arrived at the exclusive modiste’s on Bold Street just over an hour ago, having had to make an appointment, as Madame Blanche only ‘received’ one bride at a time.

  Her ‘salon’ was on the first floor, its décor very pink and supposedly ‘French’. Everything that could be was swagged in pink silk, even the changing cubicles, and the chaise-longue and chairs on which mothers waited, handkerchief in hand, for that moment when their daughter appeared from behind the mirror screens, magically transformed by Madame and her staff into ‘the bride’.

  Initially Madame had been inclined to be slightly off hand. She was busy. Everyone wanted to get married because of the war. She had even – although very discreetly – added a bit extra to the prices of her gowns because of the high demand. But then she recognised what an excellent advertisement for her gowns Bella would be, especially when she had measured her waist and found it to be a mere twenty-two inches, and she had thawed slightly.

  ‘And the bridesmaids – will they be dressed by us?’ she asked Vi once Vi had got over the emotion of seeing Bella looking everything that a bride should be.

  It was Bella who answered her, saying carelessly, ‘Oh, no. I’m having only two bridesmaids, after all, and we’ve already got them something.’

  Madame incline her head. She wouldn’t have expected a bride as pretty as this to insist on her having her bridesmaids dressed to their disadvantage and her advantage, but quite plainly in Madame’s opinion that was what she intended. So far as the bride herself went, though, Madame doubted she’d seen a better one the whole year.

  Bella preened and posed in her gown, the most expensive one they had been shown, and she had known immediately that she wanted it. Plain heavy satin trimmed with thick lace, and designed to show off a small waist, it might have been made for her. The only alteration necessary, as Madame had said, was a fraction reduction of the waist because hers was so tiny. That would show Alan’s mother and stop those cold angry looks she kept on giving her. It might have suited Bella to have both sets of parents believe that Alan had ‘forgotten’ himself, in order to expedite their marriage, but it certainly did not suit her ambitions for her future to be talked about behind her back by the Tennis Club set as someone who had ‘had to get married’.

  She certainly wasn’t going to have either Grace or Trixie wearing an expensive dress either. Why should she? If Grace had had any consideration at all she’d have waited until after the wedding to go and start training to be a nurse. It was ridiculous, her doing something like that anyway, trying to show off and get herself involved in nursing because of this wretched war. And as for Trixie … well, the only reason Bella had wanted to have her as her bridesmaid was to show Trixie and Mrs Parker that she was the one who was marrying Alan. Trixie wasn’t even one of her friends, and she wasn’t going to become one either. Why should she want to make a friend of a plain dull girl like Trixie? Of course, she was another one involving herself in this wretched war fuss, as well.

  Vi tried not to look too appalled when Madame informed her of the cost of Bella’s dress. Edwin wouldn’t be pleased. She tried to suggest that Bella have a less expensive wedding gown but the truth was that her heart wasn’t really in it. From the moment she had seen her darling standing there in it, looking a true vision of beauty and modesty, her heart had swelled with so much maternal pride that she had agreed with Bella that it was impossible for her to wear anything else.

  Edwin was constantly preaching economy, with regard to the wedding, especially since she had insisted to him that they could not let poor Bella move in with her in-laws and that if the Parkers didn’t do something for the young couple to enable them to have their own house then they must. But at the same time as he was saying he wasn’t made of money he was also boasting about how much money he was going to make because of the war.

  ‘We’ve just got the flowers and the cake to sort out now, darling,’ Vi told Bella as they left Madame’s salon.

  ‘And the house,’ Bella reminded her sharply. ‘Don’t forget about that, Mummy. I can’t possibly move in with Alan’s parents.’

  ‘Of course not, Bella, and no one’s suggesting that you should. It’s just that your father thinks that maybe you should consider something a bit smaller to start off with.’

  Bella pouted. She had set her heart on a four-bedroomed detached house in the same road as Alan’s parents, but with a larger garden. The kind of house, as she had pointed out determinedly to her father, that people would expect her and Alan to have.

  ‘Aye, well, let Alan’s father put his hand in his pocket and pay for it then,’ her father had responded sharply, but Bella knew how to get round him.

  ‘I don’t think Mr Parker’s business is going to do as well out of the war as yours is, Daddy. I’ve heard him say so,’ she had told him, slipping her arm through his as she added, ‘In fact, Alan has as good as said that his father is just a little bit jealous of you because you’re so successful, and I don’t suppose they’re going to like it very much if you buy us a house.’

  She would get the house she wanted, Bella knew – one way or another.

  ‘It’s such a pity that this wretched war has come now,’ Vi sighed now, as they made their way home. They would have to cross the Mersey using the ferry, and then get the bus, but with such a satisfactory day behind them, and so much to talk about, neither of them minded. ‘I’m afraid that we shan’t be having as many guests as we would have done, because of it. Your auntie Jean’s written to say that Luke probably won’t be able to come, and it’s the same for Charlie,’ Vi added, as they found seats on the bus that would take them down to the Pier Head and the ferry, ready to make the crossing to Wallasey.

  Bella pulled a face. ‘I’m not bothered if Auntie Jean doesn’t come. It’s a pity we haven’t got some really smart relatives, Mummy. That would show the Parkers.’

  Vi could only agree with her. Her twin sister wearing her one good coat with her husband dressed in a half-price Blackler’s suit was hardly going to impress the likes of the Parkers. Mrs Parker was the type who would know immediately what everyone was wearing had cost and judge them accordingly, Vi decided, conveniently forgetting that that was exactly what she would do herself.

  ‘It’s just so selfish of Charlie to have gone and got himself called up for the TA just when I’m getting married,’ Bella complained. ‘I was relying on him and Luke to be groomsmen and now they probably won’t be there.’

  ‘Well, darling, I’m sure Charlie’s equally unhappy about what’s happened himself. He never intended to get involved in this, as you know, and Daddy is still very cross with him.’

  Of course, it was typical of her sister Jean’s family that Luke had volunteered for the army and was now undergoing his initial training and that Grace was training as a nurse, Vi reflected ungraciously. She just hoped her twin didn’t live to regret it. She’d heard that nursing had a dreadful coarsening effect on a young girl and was little better than being a skivvy.

  Vi was every bit as put out about the fact that the war had stolen some of their shared mother-and-bride glory as Bella, even though she had initially been the first to recognise what an excellent excuse it had provided for the speed with which Bella was getting married. It was bad enough that Mrs Parker was refusing to be as publicly enthusiastic and grateful for the fact that she was getting such a prize as a daughter-in-law as she ought to have been, without this talk of the war to detract from Bella’s big day.

  The Parkers had even had the gall to suggest that the wedding should be kept low key because of the war, but Vi had put her foot down on that idea.

  ‘Oh, no, Mrs Parker, I don’t think so,’ had been her saccharine response. ‘I’m sure that everyone will be grateful to have something to cheer them up a bit. Really, Edwin feels that it’s our duty to carry on as though the war hasn’t been announced.’

  ‘But with so many families having seen their young men go off into the services, and Mr Parker being on the council, eyebrows might be r
aised.’

  Vi had been delighted to be able to point out smugly, ‘Well, with our own son already in uniform, and my Edwin so involved with the Ministry, I doubt that any eyebrows will be raised in our direction, Mrs Parker.’

  Not, of course, that that she wanted to fall out with Bella’s mother-in-law-to-be, but she had seen the way Mrs Parker’s cronies had looked at her that first WVS meeting after the engagement had been announced.

  ‘I expect you’ll be seeing Alan tonight, will you, Bella? After all, you haven’t seen him all week.’

  ‘I can’t, Mummy. There’s so much to do still for the wedding. I thought you and I and Daddy might go and have another look at the house tonight. I’d really like to get that front room repapered before we move in, and you said you thought it needed a new stove for the kitchen, if Daddy does buy it for us. I do hope that he will, Mummy. I couldn’t bear to have to live with Alan’s parents.’

  Of course she would really have rather gone out to see a film with Alan, or at least she would have done if he wasn’t being so beastly and unkind to her. And, anyway, it was for his sake really that she was being a good fiancée and organising things for their new home, not that her father had actually said yet that the would buy it for them, but Bella knew that he would.

  Grace was exhausted. The first day of their training had passed in a blur of information and her own anxious fear that she wouldn’t remember any of what she had been told, or worse, that she would do something so dreadful that she would receive one of the ignominous warnings from Sister Tutor that several of the other girls in her set had had during the course of the day.

  Watching and listening whilst Sister Tutor and Home Sister had shown them the correct procedure for making up a hospital bed had told Grace just how much she had to learn. Who could have imagined that such a simple procedure could sound so complicated whilst looking so easy. The sheets must be pulled tight and not have a single wrinkle because that could cause a patient to develop bed sores. They must not be shaken vigorously because that could spread dust and infection.

  Their day had started with fifteen minutes of morning prayers led by the principal sister tutor, after which they all had to don their starched aprons and follow the pinned-up rota of cleaning chores, which included the lavatories and the floors, overseen by the stern eye of the sister tutors. Everything had, they were told very firmly indeed, to be spotlessly clean, and everything had to be done in a strictly regimented and fixed fashion, and woe betide anyone who did not adhere to that routine.

  Their first day’s true lessons had been of the chalk-and-talk variety, although at first few of them had even been able to take their eyes off the life-size male torso, bereft of limbs and, of course, private parts, positioned close to the blackboard. This torso showed the male anatomy from head to groin in what they had all agreed later was truly gruesome detail.

  And then there had been Mrs Jones, the dummy on which they would have to practise various procedures. Mrs Jones lived in the Practical Room, which also contained hospital beds, stainless-steel trolleys, rubber tubes, face-mask jars and shining instrument cupboards filled with frightening-looking equipment, sterilisers and bandaging, and shudder-inducing Skelly the skeleton, so that they could memorise each part of the body.

  ‘Phew, thank goodness there aren’t any more lessons today,’ Iris sighed in relief as the girls all made their way towards their dining room for their meal.

  ‘That’s nothing, you just wait,’ Hannah warned them, whilst Lillian pouted and complained, ‘I thought it was going to be a lot more fun than this. I didn’t come here to be a char.’

  ‘What about you, Grace?’ Hannah asked. ‘What did you think of today?’

  ‘I don’t know yet. There seems so much to learn, and knowing we’ve got to get it right because people’s lives will depend on us is such a big responsibility. I want to do it, but I’m not sure I can.’

  The day had left her feeling overwhelmed and yet at the same time inspired. She couldn’t wait to write home about it. The twins, in particular, would love hearing about Skelly.

  When Sam came in for his tea, Jean watched him carefully whilst trying to make sure that he didn’t realise she was doing so.

  Sam hadn’t said a single word about Luke since their son had left, and at first she had been so upset by what had happened that she hadn’t felt inclined to talk about it herself. But it wasn’t in Jean’s nature to blame or punish those she loved, and as the days went by she became increasingly concerned about Sam.

  Where he had been so upright and proud when he walked, now he seemed to stoop, his head bent as though he wanted to avoid looking at anyone. He looked older and diminished somehow. He also seemed to have withdrawn into himself, rarely speaking, his expression bleak. It hurt her to see him like this every bit as much as it had hurt her to see Luke walk away, but Luke was her son, her child, and like any mother she felt protective of him, whilst Sam was her husband and it was towards him that she looked for her protection.

  She knew families in which the woman had to stand between husband and son, sometimes even physically, but she had never imagined that Luke and Sam would fall out. They had always been so close, so much in harmony with one another, so ‘like father like son’, as the old saying went. Now Luke had hurt Sam twice over: once by rejecting his advice and a second time with his absence.

  ‘I expect we’ll be hearing from Grace soon,’ Jean told Sam as she poured his tea. She waited until she put the teapot down before adding as casually as she could, ‘And Luke, of course. I was speaking with Mrs Gilchrist from five down today and she said that when they’re doing their training the lads normally get to write home once a week on a Sunday.’

  The wireless was on, and she and Sam normally enjoyed a good chat over their tea, listening to the news, exchanging news of their different days, talking about the children, as parents did, and it hurt her that Sam was shutting her out, even though they had been married long enough for her to understand that that was just his way.

  Young Bella would soon learn that there was more to getting married than having a fancy wedding.

  The house felt so empty without Luke and Grace, although hardly quiet. Not with the twins and that gramophone of theirs, she reflected as she waited for Sam to reply, trying not to show how anxious she was.

  She had warned the twins about not playing their records too loudly when they had come home saying that they had bought a second-hand gramophone with the money they had earned from running errands, but to judge from the music she could hear from their bedroom they hadn’t paid much attention.

  Abruptly Sam pushed his chair back and then stood up, frowning as he looked towards the ceiling.

  ‘I’m sick of that damned row.’ His mouth compressed and he strode past her, opening the kitchen door and going up the stairs.

  Jean could feel her heart suddenly contracting as though someone was squeezing it, filling her with a mixture of pain and concern.

  The girls’ bedroom door opened and then suddenly there was silence. Then Sam came back downstairs carrying a record in his hands.

  ‘Sam, what are you doing?’ Jean asked.

  ‘What does it look like? If you’ve told them once about the noise, you’ve told them a dozen times. Well, you won’t have to tell them again. I’m throwing this out.’

  ‘Oh, Sam, no,’ Jean protested. ‘They don’t mean to play their records so loudly.’ She gave a small sigh. ‘Remember how we used to love music ourselves when we were young.’

  Sam slammed the record down on the table and opened the back door, striding down the garden. Jean could see him leaning over the fence at the bottom of the garden. Poor Sam.

  The twins came downstairs, looking uncertainly round the door.

  ‘Where’s Dad?’ Lou asked

  ‘He’s in the garden.’

  ‘He took our record.’

  ‘Well, you’ve both been told often enough not to play them so loudly. It’s bin driving me and your dad
mad, and half the street as well, I expect,’ Jean scolded them.

  ‘Mum, me and Lou have been thinking that we’d like to be singers and make records,’ Sasha informed her.

  ‘Yes. Like Auntie Francine. Well, like she’d be if she’d made any records. Is that why she’s gone to America?’ Lou asked.

  ‘Your auntie Francine has gone to America because she’s singing with Gracie Fields, and as to the two of you making records, well, I dare say your dad will have something to say about that,’ Jean warned them firmly.

  Sam was still leaning over the fence. Things couldn’t go on like this. Jean wiped her hands on her apron and headed for the back door.

  ‘Where are you going?’ Lou asked her.

  ‘Never you mind. You two stay here and no playing any loud music.’

  ‘I bet she’s gone to talk to Dad,’ Lou told Sasha as soon as Jean had gone.

  ‘I wish that Luke and Grace were here. It’s horrid without them,’ Sasha sighed.

  Sam hadn’t heard her coming, or he was ignoring her, Jean didn’t know which but she did know that the sight of his unmoving back view wrenched at her heart.

  The Michaelmas daisies they had planted the year after they had moved in were in full bloom, along with Sam’s prized chrysanthemums, their cheerfulness at odds with the prevailing atmosphere at the Campions’.

  As much as she missed Luke and feared for him, which she did, Jean could understand why he had done what he had, and yes, she was even proud of him, though at the same time so very, very frightened for him. But she wasn’t Sam. Luke had not gone against her wishes and her advice; he had not turned his back on her as she knew Sam felt Luke had on him.

  She took a deep breath and closed the distance between them. They weren’t a couple who were physically affectionate with one another in public, but instinctively Jean put her arm round Sam and stood close to him. To her relief he didn’t, as she had been half-afraid he might, pull away from her, and when he turned to look at her she saw that there were tears in his eyes.