The Mersey Daughter Read online

  Trust Nancy to jump straight to how she’d benefit herself, thought Rita. ‘Yes, that’s all very well,’ she persisted in trying to make her point, ‘but how will she find the time? Look at how much she’s doing already. She doesn’t get enough sleep as it is – not that there’s any telling her. We’re all going to have to muck in.’

  ‘You’ve got to be joking!’ Nancy cried hotly. ‘What, go grubbing round in the dirt? Lots of these gardens are just on dug-over plots where bombs have dropped, aren’t they? They’ll be filthy, not even like proper allotments. I’m not having anything to do with it. It’ll ruin my nails.’ She turned her hands to admire the latest shade of polish she’d managed to procure. It wasn’t easy to come by and she had no intention of spoiling her careful manicure by wielding a spade.

  ‘All the more for us, then.’ Rita drained her tea. Even though her sister was annoying, it was fun to wind her up and it was better than the alternative – going back to her own house and her own difficult mother-in-law. But there was no getting away from it. She rose to her aching feet, steeling herself for the short walk to the corner shop across the mouth of the alley. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow, Nancy.’

  Nancy nodded absent-mindedly as her big sister made her way out of the door. Truth be told, she had more urgent matters to worry about than whether she’d be needed to take a turn on the new vegetable beds. She was sure she could get out of it – she could usually wheedle her way into her mother’s good books and persuade her somehow. There were some things, though, on which her mother wouldn’t budge.

  One of those was how the wife of a POW should behave. Both her mother and her father had been very angry with Nancy when her other sister, young Sarah, had accidentally seen her canoodling with a man in a bus shelter back in December. Sarah had clearly been torn in her loyalties and very upset about the whole thing, but in the end had spoken up, more because if anyone else had seen them it would have been ten times worse.

  As far as Dolly and Pop were concerned, that was the end of the matter. Nancy had been warned in no uncertain terms that she’d have to watch out for her reputation. It was bad enough to be a fast woman, but to be one when her husband had been taken prisoner in the course of serving his country was not to be contemplated. They had spelled out to her just what sort of reaction she could expect if she continued down that route.

  Nancy shut her eyes and remembered. It hadn’t been just any man. It was Stan Hathaway, local boy made good. Even though his grandmother lived just around the corner from Empire Street and his family weren’t anything special, he’d managed to go to university and was now a flight lieutenant in the RAF. If anyone deserved a bit of fun on his precious home leave, it was him. Besides, he made her feel something that no other man had – not even Sid, back in the days when she’d first fallen for him, before she’d taken off the rose-tinted spectacles and realised what he was really like. But by then it had been too late and she’d been pregnant with Georgie. But Stan … he was utterly different. He was sophisticated and smart, and made her think she was those things too when she was with him. She could just imagine his arms around her, his persuasive whisper in her ear, the way her skin seemed to fizz with electricity at his touch.

  She started suddenly as a wail came from the room next door. Georgie was awake again and it didn’t sound as if his nap had eased his teething troubles. Carefully she got up, making sure not to catch her precious nylons on the chair. She’d have to wait until Stan’s next leave to get new ones – he always seemed to know a way of finding them, and was only too pleased to give them to her. He used to joke that it was his excuse for finding out if they fitted her properly …

  Guiltily she wondered if that tea had tasted right. Maybe she’d got another one of her upset stomachs. She’d had a few of those lately. That was all it was. She wouldn’t even think about the alternative.

  Rita pushed open the back door to the living quarters, which were behind and above the corner shop. She paused to listen. In days gone by there would have been the constant buzz of gossip from the shop, as her mother-in-law Winnie Kennedy extracted the juiciest morsels of scandal from anyone and everyone, before selling on her carefully hoarded luxury items that only a select few customers knew about. Sometimes it was as if rationing had never happened. Being so near the docks, there were always folk who could get hold of just about anything for a small consideration, even though this was strictly illegal.

  Now there was only silence. Rita groaned inwardly. Winnie had changed, and it wasn’t because of the destruction of so many homes around them or the loss of life that had shattered so many families around Liverpool in general and the docks in particular. In fact most people had become more defiant, nobody wanting to give in to the terror of the bombs. The people of Merseyside had come together and refused to be cowed. But Winnie had retreated into an angry shell.

  She had always carried on as if she was a cut above everyone else, and had raised her son Charlie to feel the same. She’d never troubled to hide her resentment of Rita, who had never been good enough for her beloved son. Rita had married Charlie knowing all this only too well, but she’d had little alternative as she’d been pregnant with Michael. She and Jack Callaghan had been young sweethearts, but too young and naïve to realise what they were doing. When Jack had been sent away on his apprenticeship, Rita had panicked – making the worst decision of her life. Many a time over the past eight years she’d berated herself for the choice she’d made, but she had made her bed and now had to lie on it. The living quarters had been crowded when they’d all lived there, with Winnie’s bedroom right next to Charlie and hers, and even more so when baby Megan had arrived on the scene. Rita had treasured the dream of finding a place of their own, away from Charlie’s interfering, domineering mother, hoping that this would be the solution to the widening cracks in her marriage. She’d been foolish to think that, she now realised. Now she was wise to Charlie’s callous and vicious nature, but here she was, trapped with the poisonous Ma Kennedy, Charlie goodness knows where, and her children far away from Empire Street.

  She sighed at the thought of her children; she ached at being apart from them. However, she knew Megan and Michael were safe, away from the air raids, living on a farm in Freshfield all the way out in Lancashire. Tommy Callaghan was with them, which would liven things up, and she tried to visit them when she could, always amazed at how they thrived away from the air raids. They looked so different from the pale children of the city who remained; those whose parents couldn’t bear to part with them and who now roamed the bombsites of Merseyside, exposed to many dangers. Thank God the farming couple had welcomed them with open arms, and Rita knew the children would have the love and security they needed – not to mention all those fresh vegetables and meat, and the cream of the milk and the rich golden butter they could never have hoped for in Empire Street.

  She pushed open the inner door to the shop. Winnie was slumped behind the till, her eyes dead. ‘Oh, it’s you.’ She could barely summon the interest to speak.

  ‘Of course it’s me. I’m late because the shift didn’t finish on time.’ Rita thought it best not to say she’d stopped off for a cup of tea next door. ‘Shall I put the kettle on? It’s freezing in here.’ No wonder there were no customers, she thought.

  ‘Certainly not. Tea’s rationed, as you should know.’ There was a trace of the old Winnie, snobbish and sharp. The fact that she had a case of tea stowed away in the cellar was not to be mentioned. Rita bit back the retort.

  ‘If you’re sure? Then I’ll go and get changed.’ Rita let herself out of the shop again and made her way upstairs.

  Winnie’s situation was all of her own making. She’d kept a secret for twenty years or more and it had only come to light during a terrifying raid just before Christmas. Dolly, as fire warden, had had to make sure everyone left their houses and went to the bomb shelter at the end of the street, but Winnie had resisted, even though the roof of the shop was alight. She’d been desperate to rescue a
box of papers from the loft. Dolly, at great risk to herself, had managed to persuade her difficult neighbour to get to safety and had looked after the box. In all the confusion of the raid it had finished up in the Feeny family home. Both Dolly and Rita were now aware of its contents.

  Far from relying on the income from the shop, it transpired that Winnie had been the owner of three properties: the shop and its living quarters, a large house in Southport and a guesthouse in Crosby. All those years Rita had dreamed of moving out – and Winnie had said nothing, like a dragon sitting on a pile of gold. She’d been far more keen on keeping Charlie tied to her apron strings, where she wanted him.

  Charlie had had other ideas, and while his mother had boasted to all and sundry about his job in insurance, he’d used it to pay calls on well-heeled women on their own in the afternoons. Winnie had either turned a blind eye or refused to believe it was possible – just as she’d managed not to notice the marks on Rita when Charlie’s rage turned against his wife. Charlie had finally taken off to the house in Southport, supposedly so the children would be safer, which was managed by a very accommodating woman called Elsie. He’d even put it about that she was his wife. Rita had eventually tracked them down and taken the children away – just in time, as a stray bomb had ripped the front off the once-grand house, and the children had been left standing in the road.

  Rita’s parting shot had been to hand Charlie his call-up papers. He was a coward, all bluster and smarm; the only fighting he was capable of was to hit a woman behind closed doors. She had no idea where he was now and she didn’t care. That was Elsie’s problem.

  There had been one more document in Winnie’s box that if anything had been even more startling. It was a birth certificate for a child called Ruby, born to Winnie Kennedy, but two years after her husband had died. The father’s name was left blank. This baby would now be coming up to twenty-one years of age. And when Rita had tracked down Charlie and Elsie, the neighbours had been keen to point out that the couple were often in the pub of an evening – but the children were looked after by a young woman called Ruby.

  So things had come to an uneasy standoff. The people of Empire Street were mostly a good lot, but prone to suspicion and gossip. Charlie’s disappearance, and the fact that he’d never been seen in uniform, was a gift to the likes of Vera Delaney, who would love to wipe the smug smile off Ma Kennedy’s face and take her down a peg or two. Only a few Feenys knew the full truth. Winnie was slowly going to pieces waiting for her big secret to be blown.

  Rita, meanwhile, harboured a secret of her own. When she’d gone to rescue her children, she hadn’t done it alone. Jack had taken her: Jack Callaghan, Kitty’s big brother, her childhood sweetheart and – as she’d finally confirmed to him – Michael’s real father. She’d tried to be a good wife to Charlie, to forget everything that had passed between Jack and her; they’d been too young, and fate in its many forms had made it impossible for them to be together. Now he was back doing his duty, escorting naval convoys across the vital supply routes of the North Atlantic. How she missed him. How she wished they’d somehow found a way all those years ago to overcome all the obstacles – but that hadn’t happened. Now she had to face the fact that her feelings for him had never died, but that she could not have him. The fact that Charlie had broken every bond of duty to her as a husband was neither here nor there. Divorce wasn’t a word you’d ever hear in Empire Street; no matter what a husband had done to his wife, she’d be expected to stand by him. The best she could do was to write. Rita had promised that to Jack and she wouldn’t break her word. The letters were hurting no one, and if they kept his spirits up through those dark nights on the Atlantic, then that’s what she’d do, and to hell with the holier-than-thou attitude of the rest of the world – couldn’t they have those precious words to share, if nothing else? But now Kitty had left, she would have to find another way of receiving his letters to her. Next to the children she adored, the letters were the one chink of light in this miserable life she was stuck with.

  A noise at the top of the stairs startled her. A slight figure with huge pale-blue eyes and a frizz of pale- blonde hair emerged, smiling nervously, almost like a frightened child.

  Rita took a long look at her, and noted again how much she looked like Winnie, her mother. Not so much her hair, but her nose and her eyes were very similar, though the young woman’s had a gentleness to them which Winnie’s certainly didn’t. Something else for the gossips to get their teeth into … Rita forced herself to get a grip and spoke steadily and comfortingly. ‘Hello, Ruby, come and have a cup of tea, love.’

  As Ruby tip-toed down the stairs towards her, Rita looked around her at the shabby, care-worn kitchen – she saw the loose tea that Winnie had tipped into the sink, the chipped cups on the drainer and the cold grate that had been left for her to make up herself. She sighed deeply – if she didn’t have Jack’s letters as a lifeline, then she didn’t know how she would keep on going.

  CHAPTER THREE

  ‘Are you sure you don’t mind me taking the top bunk?’

  Kitty shook her head. ‘No, I don’t like heights at the best of times. I’m much better off down here.’ She thumped the hard pillow into something she thought might be a more comfortable shape. It was never going to be soft, but at least all the bedding was clean. She’d heard horror stories about some service accommodation, and apparently the Land Army girls often had to put up with worse.

  ‘Bit of a coincidence that we ended up being billeted together, isn’t it?’ asked the elegant young woman from the train, whose name was Laura Fawcett. They’d introduced themselves on the journey, Kitty explaining she’d come from Liverpool, and learning in turn that Laura, although from Yorkshire, had spent lots of time in London and knew it well. ‘I’m glad we got the chance to get acquainted before the others turn up. Looks as if they’re expecting a lot of new recruits.’

  Kitty had been taken aback on arrival in the capital and had been glad to have the much more confident Laura to guide her to their new home in North London. Although she was well used to the bustle of Liverpool city centre, this place was on a different scale. The sheer number of people was overwhelming, many of them in uniform of one sort or another, all weaving around each other at baffling speed. Kitty had gripped her new friend’s arm, totally disoriented. Laura had taken it in her stride, mildly annoyed to find that holes in the road meant she couldn’t take the route she’d originally planned, but swiftly deciding upon a new one. She’d plunged into the Underground and Kitty had followed immediately behind, terrified at the thought of getting separated. That had been her introduction to the Northern Line.

  Now Kitty glanced uneasily around the large room they were in, full of bunk beds in readiness for the arrival of trainee Wrens. She was used to sharing a house with her brothers, and not having a minute to herself, but her bedroom, basic though it was, had always been her sanctuary. She’d done her best to soften it with her eiderdown and the few bits and pieces that remained of her mother’s possessions. Here there would be room only for the most functional items. She wondered what sort of bedroom Laura had had and what her home was like – nothing like Empire Street, she was sure of that.

  Laura appeared to have no such doubts and finished packing away the small amount of clothing they were recommended to bring in no time, somehow managing to cram in some very elegant-looking frocks as well. ‘This place must have been a school, just look at it. Certainly wasn’t made to sleep in.’ She glanced around at the huge windows and high ceilings. ‘Bet it’ll be freezing. Oh well, maybe they’ll work us so hard we won’t care. Can’t be as cold as up north, that’s for sure. I’m used to the wind howling over the moors so I probably shan’t even notice. How about you?’

  Kitty smiled, remembering the force of the westerly gales that came in over the Atlantic with such regularity. ‘Oh, that won’t worry me,’ she said lightly. ‘We have to put up with that all the time in Liverpool. At least they’ll give us uniforms to keep out t
he worst of it. I’ve been wearing dungarees for work in the NAAFI and this uniform is much nicer – warmer too.’

  Laura held up the bluette overall she’d been issued with. ‘It’s a bit stiff, isn’t it? It’ll be itchy as anything.’

  Kitty grinned, thinking that her pretty new friend probably wasn’t used to anything but the finest material, and would not have had to wear anything practical, certainly not like the often-patched clothes she’d had to put on for scrubbing down the NAAFI canteen after it closed every day. She smoothed down the blue-and- white bedspread on her narrow bunk, running her hands over the anchor motif. She couldn’t help wondering what her brother Jack would be doing, out there on his aircraft carrier, facing God knows what.

  ‘Let’s go and see where that canteen is that they told us about,’ Laura suggested, hanging up the overall once more. ‘I shan’t wear that until I have to. If this is going to be my last day in my own clothes for a while, then I’m going to make the most of it. Two weeks of basic training and then heaven knows what we’ll be in for or what we’ll have to wear.’ She shrugged into her pale-yellow cardigan, which Kitty was fairly sure was cashmere. It perfectly set off Laura’s mop of beautifully cut blonde curls.

  They made their way to the lower floor and uncertainly down an echoing corridor, trying to remember what the officer who’d welcomed them had said. There were so many doors – but then the unmistakable smell of cocoa hit them and they followed their noses to what might once have been the school refectory. A woman in her forties was standing by a large urn. She wore a bright turban on her head and Kitty reflected that up until a short while ago this would have been her, greeting the servicemen and sometimes -women who’d come through the doors of her own canteen.