The Heart of the Family. Annie Groves

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СКАЧАТЬ through when she had become trapped and they had both thought that she might die before help arrived.

      ‘I’m sorry.’

      ‘It’s all right,’ Sasha accepted her apology, before telling her, ‘I don’t want to go to Auntie Vi’s either, you know, but we have to think of Mum, Lou. Just think how awful it must be for her.’

      ‘What, you mean because she and Vi don’t get on?’

      ‘No, silly, because Luke and Grace and our dad will still be here.’

      Nearly midnight. The rhythmic tick of the kitchen clock made Jean’s heart thud with anxiety. When would they come tonight? Sam hadn’t been pleased when she had refused to leave for Wallasey this evening. But like she had told him, she and the twins could hardly descend on Vi without any warning.

      ‘Why not?’ he had wanted to know. ‘I’m sure she’d rather be a bit put out and see you safe than find out summat’s happened.’

      Not our Vi, Jean had thought. Vi didn’t like unplanned visitors, and she certainly wouldn’t put the welcome mat out for them. And besides, although she hadn’t said so to Sam, Jean wasn’t leaving Liverpool without first seeing Grace, even if she might not be able to see Luke. She could give Grace a message for him. And then there was Katie to think of. It was all very well Sam frightening her half to death by warning her about what might happen but arrangements still had to be made.

      It was no good, she couldn’t sit still any longer.

      ‘Katie, love, I think I’ll put the kettle on.’

      Jean got up. They were all ready in their shelter clothes, the twins and Katie in siren suits that Jean had made from some material that she and Katie had bought from a shop that sold off-cuts.

      Jean was making do with an old pair of Sam’s pyjamas that she had cut down.

      Kate wondered if she would manage to see Luke before she left. They’d sort of made plans to see one another on Saturday if Luke could snatch a couple of hours of compassionate leave. The CO at the barracks at Seacombe was good like that. Katie felt sorry for those men who did not live close enough for them to get home quickly to check that their families were safe, but Luke had told her that the commander was giving those men with the longest distances to travel twenty-four- and even sometimes forty-eight-hour passes in lieu of the unofficial couple of hours here and there those with families living closer were getting.

      ‘He’s a decent chap – all the lads say so – but he knows how to make everyone toe the line as well,’ Luke had told her, and Katie had known from his tone of voice that he respected his commanding officer. Luke was someone who saw things in black and white, good and bad, with no shades of grey. Sometime that worried her, especially when he was getting on his high horse about something – or someone he thought had done something wrong. He wasn’t always ready to see that there might be extenuating circumstances or to make allowances for other people’s vulnerabilities and the fact that they might not be as morally strong as he was himself.

      She did love him though – so very much. Katie’s expression softened.

      Jean looked at the clock. Ten past midnight. It had been gone half-past when they had come last night. They did it deliberately, she was sure, letting people think that they were safe and then coming. Sam was on fire-watch duty, of course. He’d volunteered to stand in for someone else down near the docks. Jean’s hands trembled. The docks were the worst place of all to be.

      Quarter-past midnight. Luke shifted his weight against the thin hard mattress of his bed. It wasn’t comfortable at the best of times, but tonight when, like everyone else, he was straining to catch the first sound of incoming aircraft, and with his muscles aching still from earlier in the day – but no, he mustn’t think about that and the horror of removing the debris from the lorry driver’s body to find – but he wasn’t going to think about that, was he? Those ruddy Americans. Showing off like they had and then three of them puking their guts up when they had seen what was left of poor old Ronnie. Some soldiers they were, for all their fancy uniforms and boastful words.

      ‘I ain’t seen no one dead before,’ one of them had whimpered.

      Luke swallowed the bile gathering in his throat.

      He tried to think about Katie. She’d be waiting like they all were for the air-raid warning, ready to go into the shelter with his mother and the twins. Katie didn’t always understand how he felt or why he felt the way he did. She didn’t understand what being a man meant and how it was up to him to take care of her. That was a responsibility he took very seriously, just as his father did. Luke’s first thoughts as he listened to the all clear were the same as they had been every morning since the blitz had begun, and were for the safety of those he loved, his family, and Katie, his girl.

      Just thinking about Katie brought him a confusing mix of emotions: fear for her safety, coupled with a fierce male urge to protect her, delight because she loved him, pride in her because of the important war work she was doing, and yet at that same time that pride was shadowed by a certain fear and hostility to that work in case it somehow took her from him.

      Did Katie wish he was more like Seb, Grace’s fiancé? Seb was an easy-going sort, protective of Grace, of course, but Grace wasn’t the kind who would give a chap any cause to worry about her. Did that mean that Katie was? Luke frowned. He trusted Katie – of course he did, and he knew he could – but she didn’t always realise how she might come across to other men; how they might see her smiling at them and think that her smile meant more than it did. He’d tried to tell her about that, but he couldn’t seem to make her understand. Luke didn’t like it when things weren’t straightforward and clear cut. Life had rules and Luke preferred it when people stuck to those rules. Katie was his girl and that meant that he didn’t want to lose her to another man. He wasn’t keen on that job of hers either. Not really, although he’d tried to pretend that he didn’t mind because he’d been able to see that that was what she wanted. And he did want to please her, of course he did, but it made him feel so frustrated when she wouldn’t understand the danger she was putting herself in.

      If they were to get engaged then maybe he’d be able to have more say in what she did. He’d certainly not have her working doing what she did once they were married.

      Come on if you’re coming, Lena thought irritably, as she scratched absently at a flea bite on her ankle and waited for the sound of the air-raid siren to start up. She didn’t own a watch and there was no clock in the room she shared with Doris. Doris wasn’t here tonight, though. She’d gone out to her boyfriend’s for tea, and his mother had apparently invited her to stay over in case there was an attack.

      Lena laughed to herself. What a lie that was. Lena knew for a fact that Doris’s fella’s mother would be spending the evening in the pub where she worked and that she’d use the pub shelter if the siren went off, and Lena knew that because she’d been in the salon in the morning getting her hair done and she’d said so.

      No, Lena reckoned, Doris knew perfectly well that she and Brian would have the house to themselves and Lena thought too that Doris wanted to make the most of the opportunity to tie Brian to her. Well, good luck to the pair of them.

      When was that siren going to go off? She heard a sound from the room next door – her uncle breaking wind. He didn’t half make a noise when he farted and he was a stinker with it, an’ all.

      Bodily functions and the earthy humour surrounding them were part and parcel of life in the city’s slums. How could they not be with several families sharing the same СКАЧАТЬ