The Heart of the Family (7 page)

‘I suppose Dad’s telling Mum that he isn’t going to eat any more luncheon meat.’

Lou’s weak attempt at a joke barely raised the corners of Sasha’s mouth. Neither of them had stopped watching the back door, which they’d opened ostensibly to let in some fresh evening air but in reality to anticipate the return of their parents, and Katie shared their anxiety.

‘What do you suppose—’ Lou began, only to stop when Sasha gave her a nudge in the ribs with her elbow and warned her, ‘Hush, they’re just opening the gate.’

It was obvious to Katie the minute she saw Jean that she had been crying. Her own heart lurched into her ribs. Was it possible that she had been wrong and there had been bad news? About Luke? Or Grace? Guiltily Katie recognised how much she hoped if one of them had been hurt that it was not Luke.

Instinctively adopting Jean’s own normal manner Katie asked calmly, ‘Shall I put the kettle on?’ and received a grateful look from Sam.

‘Aye, lass, if you wouldn’t mind.’

He turned to the twins. ‘Your mother’s got something to tell you.’

Jean bowed her head, waiting for Sam to announce that he was going back to the allotment, but to her surprise he was obviously intending to stay. To support her or to make sure she did what he wanted?

Behind her Katie was waiting for the kettle to boil. Dear Katie, such a lovely girl and so perfect for Luke. Jean worried about her safety as much as if she were
one of her own. Hitler was dropping bombs on London, of course, but Katie had already said that it was much safer where her parents were living. If she went to them she’d be safe, and it would only be for a little while. Until the bombing stopped. Until Liverpool had been destroyed.

Jean took a deep breath to try to steady herself. It wouldn’t do to let the girls see how upset she was.

‘Me and your dad have been thinking,’ she began, ‘and we’ve decided that until all this bombing stops you two and me would be better off finding somewhere safer to live outside the city.’

‘But what about Katie?’

That was Sasha, looking quickly past Jean to where Katie was standing pouring the now boiling water onto the tea leaves.

‘There’s no need for anyone to worry about me,’ Katie told them all firmly. ‘In fact I was already thinking of taking my leave and going home to see my parents.’

She caught another approving nod from Sam and a grateful look from Jean. ‘And I think that you and your mum going somewhere safer is exactly the right thing to do,’ she told the twins calmly. ‘In fact, Luke was only saying the same thing the last time I saw him,’ she added, crossing her fingers behind her back. She was sure that Luke would have said that if he had been asked, because he was very much his father’s son and Katie knew instinctively that it was Sam who was insisting on them going rather than Jean.

What a terrible decision that must have been for Jean. She had four children, after all, two of whom would have to remain in Liverpool and face the danger from which Sam obviously wanted to protect
her and the twins. Katie could imagine how she would have felt in such circumstances.

‘But how can we leave Liverpool?’ Sasha asked uncertainly. ‘Where will we go?’

‘I know,’ said Lou, as irrepressible as ever. ‘We will have to be trekkers. You know, you go and queue up for the trucks in the evening and then they take you out into the country and you have to find a barn or something to sleep in.’

‘Don’t be silly,’ Jean told her. She looked at Sam and then back at the twins. ‘We’ll be going to Wallasey, of course, to stay with your auntie Vi.’

‘What?’

‘No!’

The twins spoke together, their words different but their horrified expressions identical.

‘Mum, you can’t mean that,’ Lou protested. ‘Auntie Vi doesn’t like us and we don’t like her. Well, we’re not going, are we, Sasha?’

‘That’s enough of that,’ Sam told them sternly. ‘You’re going and that’s an end to the matter.’

Katie could tell that the twins knew he meant what he said. They subsided, still exchanging shocked looks.

‘When will we have to go?’ That was Sasha, her voice small and wobbling slightly.

‘Not until tomorrow,’ Jean told them quietly. ‘I’ll have to go over and see Vi tomorrow and … and arrange things with her first.’ She was looking at Sam now as though seeking help, but he wasn’t looking back at her.

Katie had heard all about the relationship between the two families and she knew that it would be hard for Jean to lower her pride and ask her snobbish sister for help.

Jean looked at Sam’s stiff back. The fact that he was prepared to let her go begging Vi for help said how afraid for them he really was. There had never been any love lost between Vi and Sam, and although she had never said so to Sam, in the early days of their courtship Vi had actually tried to persuade her to drop Sam. If she told him that now … But no, she must not do that. Sam was doing this for them, and he had been right when he’d said that she would never forgive herself if they stayed in Liverpool and something happened to the twins.

Just as she would never forgive herself if anything happened to Luke or to Grace or to Sam himself, and she couldn’t get to them.

It was a situation that thousands of families all over the country were facing, especially those living in the cities that Hitler was targeting. And what about the men fighting abroad – how must their mothers and wives feel?

Jean squared her shoulders. ‘It won’t be as bad as you think,’ she told the twins.

‘No, it will be much worse,’ Lou muttered gloomily under her breath.

Wallasey and Auntie Vi’s.

Lou flung herself down on her bed with a grimace of disbelief. ‘I never thought Mum would make us go there.’

‘She’s going as well,’ Sasha reminded her. ‘And I’ll bet it’s Dad who has said we have to go. Did you see how red his ears went when Mum was telling us, and how he wouldn’t look at us?’

‘Well, what about Katie?’ Lou demanded. ‘I’ll bet
she doesn’t really want to go and see her parents. She loves our Luke.’

‘She was saying the other day that she felt she should go and see them,’ Sasha felt bound to point out, adding firmly, ‘Look, Lou, we aren’t children any more, are we, and after what happened on Saturday, well, I just think that we shouldn’t make things hard for Mum, that’s all.’

Sasha almost sounded as though she disapproved of what Lou had said. But that was impossible. Hadn’t they reassured one another that their closeness, their twinship, was more important than anything else? Once Lou would have known exactly what Sasha was feeling about anything, just as Sasha would have done her, and this feeling that she did not know what her twin was thinking was unfamiliar territory.

‘Sash?’

Sasha looked at her twin.

‘It’s all right with me and you, isn’t it? I mean, I know there was … Well, I just want you to know that I don’t mind if you do still … Well, it was you Kieran liked best really, anyway.’

Sasha jumped off her own bed and went to stand next to Lou’s, her hands on her hips, her round face flushed with angry colour.

‘How dare you say that, Louise Campion? We both said, didn’t we, that we were going to stick together from now on?’

‘Yes, but—’

‘So why are you keeping going on about a certain person who we agreed we’d never talk about again?’

‘There’s no need to get your hair off with me, Sasha. I was just meaning that if you did think about him, then I’d understand and you can say so.’

Lou didn’t know how to say that she was afraid of losing her twin, and afraid too of the way things seemed to be changing, and not just things but they themselves.

‘I’d hate it if you and me was to end up like Mum and Auntie Vi,’ was all she could manage to say.

The anger died out of Sasha’s face. Although traditionally it was always Lou, the younger of the two, who had taken the lead, just lately Sasha had started to feel older than her twin and as though it was up to her to take charge. Somehow, without knowing how, Sasha had started to recognise that for all her bravado Lou was more vulnerable than she was herself.

She sat down next to Lou and told her firmly, ‘That will never happen to us, unless of course you keep going on about Kieran.’

‘But he liked you.’

‘No he didn’t, he just pretended he did so that we’d earn money for him with our dancing.’

‘But if he did really like you …’ Lou persisted.

‘Oh, stop it, Lou. I just want to forget about the whole thing.’ Sasha gave a fierce shudder, reminding Lou of exactly what her twin had been 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.