The Runaway (43 page)

‘Oh aye,’ Ernie said, losing interest. ‘Okay if I just nip round to see me old boss, the feller who made me up to supervisor at the factory? Then I’ll be back here, fair dribblin’ at the thought of your cooking.’

When Ernie had gone Dana’s thoughts flew to the rescue work upon which he and others had been engaged. Was it really a triumph, or was it, in fact, a miserable retreat? Mr Churchill had called it ‘a miracle of deliverance’ and also ‘a colossal military disaster’. Which was it? She supposed that it was a mixture of both, but now that the troops were home they would be on hand to tackle an invasion if such a thing were to happen.

If only I could help, she thought miserably, cutting out scones and sliding them on to a baking tray. If only I wasn’t tied to the Freeway by my promise to keep it running for Jake and Ralph. How she envied Polly! The air force had taught her friend to drive, and to maintain whichever car she was given. Polly was entirely happy, whether driving the gharry to pick up troops having time off in the nearest town or at the wheel of a staff car, with a wing commander sitting behind her, either stiff and starchy or young and friendly, she did not much mind which.

I’ve driven a tractor since I was ten or twelve; I’m sure I’d learn to drive in no time at all, given the opportunity, Dana thought enviously. But though it would be nice if
things were different, I really am doing useful work. I’m giving entertainment and relief to a great many people by simply keeping the Freeway open, and I’m feeding people for a reasonable cost whenever they’re prepared to climb the long flight of stairs up to the cafeteria. Perhaps one day …

But a glance at the clock told her to rescue her scones, just as the door shot open and Ernie bounced into the room once more. ‘Told you I wouldn’t be two ticks,’ he said breezily. ‘What’s showin’ at the Freeway this evenin’? Usually our turn-round at this end is so quick we scarce have time to make a phone call once the dockers have shifted our cargo.’

‘It’s a comedy, with Walter Pidgeon and Deanna Durbin,’ Dana said at once. ‘
It’s a Date
.’

Ernie sniggered. ‘I haven’t even asked you yet,’ he said, grinning. ‘We don’t want to make Polly jealous, do we?’

‘It’s the title of the film, as if you didn’t know, and if anyone ought to be jealous it’s you,’ Dana said rather unkindly. ‘While you’re crossing the bounding main with a load of other seamen Polly’s driving handsome officers around in her staff car and probably getting asked out ten times a day.’

She expected Ernie to scoff at this and felt guilty when she saw his expression change to a look of real worry. ‘I hope to God you’re wrong,’ he muttered. ‘But she looks so cute in her uniform … oh, I dunno …’

‘Oh, Ernie, for goodness’ sake! I was only teasing, the same as you were when you asked about Ralph,’ Dana said quickly. ‘Polly’s a one-man woman; she loves you and means to marry you whether you want her to or not, so for heaven’s sake stop worrying.’

‘Right,’ Ernie said, though he did not sound particularly convinced. ‘My, that mince and onion pie smells good! Tell you what, I’ll nip down to the corner shop and buy a bottle of Corona to go with it.’

‘That’ll be grand,’ Dana said. She hesitated, then continued, ‘I’m really sorry I teased you about Polly and her officers. Please forget I said it, because playing an underhand game is the last thing Polly’d do.’

That evening, Ernie watched
It’s a Date
from a seat in the circle and Dana, who was acting as usherette, watched it for the third time in a week from the stalls. The moment the National Anthem finished she nipped up the stairs to prepare for the evening rush, and when Ernie reappeared she insisted that he should have poached eggs on the house. He told her that the
Sarah Jane
would be sailing in the early hours of the next morning and since Dana would be fire watching they said their goodbyes on the pavement outside the Freeway, both promising to write, though Dana was well aware that Ernie’s letters were more like scrappy notes. However, he shook her hand on parting, thanking her both for her company and for what he described as all the delicious grub. Then he hurried off to rejoin his ship, and Dana went home to write a letter to Polly, telling her that her young man was safe and would be writing himself as soon as he had the opportunity. It was well after midnight when she finally sought her bed, and if she dreamed at all she had no recollection of it when day dawned.

Almost a year after the BEF had been brought home, Dana went back to Temperance Court after a sixth night of horrendous raids upon the city.

The Luftwaffe had indeed got their measure and attacked with a vengeance. Dana had been fire watching on the roof of a large warehouse and remembered how the previous May they had blessed the weather gods for sending a flat calm and almost no breeze to aid the BEF’s evacuation. Now, the clear skies and good visibility were on the enemy’s side. Of course the ack-ack batteries and the Spitfires had done their best, but the sheer volume of heavy bombers droning over the city had continued their attack until the people on the streets, the home guard and ARP wardens, had not known which way to turn. Dana thought that the wonderful weather they were enjoying was the reason for the heavy raids which the Luftwaffe had flown to such terrible effect. After wearily crossing the court and fumbling her key into the lock, her first action when she entered the kitchen was to put the kettle on, and her second to glance at the clock on the mantel. Good! She would have a cup of tea and then go to bed for a couple of hours, for it was generally understood that shops, cinemas and theatres would open a little later than usual after such heavy and relentless bombing. She drank her tea and crawled into bed but found she could not sleep. A thousand worries chased themselves round and round inside her head. Friends in other parts of the city might be dead or badly injured and she would know nothing about it until the lists were posted. There were friends in other towns and cities too, for she supposed that Liverpool was unlikely to be the only place targeted by the Nazis. The south coast ports were regularly attacked, for France had fallen the previous year and the bombers no longer had so far to fly to reach their destination.

Dana tried turning her pillow, counting sheep, even counting racehorses, but nothing worked, so she slid out of bed, dressed herself, grabbed some bread and jam from the cupboard and set off for the Freeway. There was always work needing doing at the cinema so she might as well get on with it. Once outside in the gentle sunshine, however, she wavered for a moment. It would be lovely to catch a bus and go out to the allotment, which was now hers and hers alone since Mr Levitt had moved in with his granddaughter, who lived quite near the Freeway. The young woman had a small cottage with a big garden, and this kept her grandfather quite busy enough without the additional work of the allotment. Dana had taken it over and enjoyed her time spent there, finding even the hardest work relaxing when compared with managing the cinema as well as the cafeteria.

Emerging from the court, she was heading for the tram stop when she suddenly remembered it was very unlikely that any trams would be running. The metal rails were splintered and broken, rearing out of the roadway like angry snakes. Bomb craters were everywhere, buildings vanished completely or reduced to a mere heap of rubble, and people looking dazed and grey as they wandered about, unable to recognise what had once been their homes.

After she had walked a fair distance, however, a bus overtook her and in response to her frantically waving hand drew up alongside. She asked the conductor where he was bound and heard with relief that the vehicle would take her to within a few hundred yards of the cinema. Thanking her lucky stars that the Freeway was closer to the suburbs than the city centre, she collapsed
into her seat, voicing the thought as she paid the conductor that surely the bombers would bypass them tonight, since there could be very little left to destroy. The docks had been heavily hit, the Mersey was full of sunken shipping and the warehouses which had contained the food the country so badly needed were still blazing. Dana and the conductor agreed that they would all be the better for a night’s rest – they were fellow fire watchers – and then the conductor dinged his bell, the bus swerved to the side of the road and stopped, and Dana climbed down.

She nearly walked passed the Freeway Cinema. It was just a mound of cream-coloured bricks with a great crater in the middle; it had clearly taken a direct hit. For one moment Dana simply stood there staring, swamped with pity and guilt. She had longed to be free of her promise to Jake, but not this way. This was financial disaster for Jake as well as emotional disaster, for he had put all his affection, all his plans for the future into the Freeway Cinema, and now it was nothing, might never have existed.

Dana felt a great sob rising in her throat, but she forced it down though she could not stop the tears from coming to her eyes and welling over. I’d like to kill the blighters who did this, she found herself thinking as she turned away from the ruin that had been both her work and her charge. But at least I’m free now to do whatever is most useful, whatever will hurt the enemy most. I’ll go home right away and see if I can find someone who will take me into one of the forces. They will probably find out that I have worked in catering and put me in the cookhouse, but if that helps the war effort I won’t moan, I’ll
just get on with it. And as soon as I’ve been accepted I’ll go round and see our landlord. I suppose he won’t let me keep the rooms on once I’m in the forces because of the folk bombed out, but old Mrs Butterworth who cleans – or rather used to clean – the Freeway has said more than once that she’s got a spare room with a bed in it which I’m welcome to use if I can’t get back to the city centre after my shift. I’ll take her up on it when I get leave and can come back to the city.

Dana went over and was about to give the nearest pile of bricks a little pat for old times’ sake when she heard a shout. Two wardens were coming up the street armed with lengths of the white tape with which they cordoned off dangerous bombed buildings. They gestured to her to stand back and began their work, and Dana, who had opened her mouth to explain that this building had once been her workplace, closed it again. Then she turned and headed for the nearest bus stop.

It took time; everything, it seemed, took time during the war, but eventually Dana was accepted by the Land Army. Her uniform and rail pass arrived, and a letter telling her to report for duty at Tullimore’s Farm the following Wednesday. Dana, reading the letter, smiled to herself. The very fact that they wanted her to start on a Wednesday instead of demanding that she arrived earlier in the week meant that the authorities were at last coming to terms with the facts of life. All travel was both difficult and tedious, but cross-country travel was the worst of all. If she wanted to be certain of arriving at this farm the following Wednesday then she had best set out on Tuesday.

This gave her three days, if you counted Saturday and Sunday, in which to plan her move. Remembering old Mrs Butterworth’s frequent offers of a bed should she find herself unable to reach home during the heavy raids, she applied to the old lady for a more permanent arrangement. She explained that though she would be away most of the time she was bound to get leave occasionally and would want to return to Liverpool. She had heard from various sources that the ferries between Holyhead and Dublin were still sailing, so though she might spend at least some of every leave in Liverpool she fully intended to get on a train for Holyhead just as soon as she got sufficient time off for a visit to Castletara to be practical. She did not tell Mrs Butterworth any of this, however, since she had no idea whether she would be allowed to leave the country. But she told herself that Ireland was neutral and set off on her journey to Tullimore’s Farm around lunchtime on the Tuesday.

Chapter Sixteen

August 1941

THE TRAIN SEEMED
to stop frequently – she had no fewer than seven changes – and on Tuesday night she slept in a chilly waiting room on a tiny station whose name had been blacked out on all destination boards. She was not alone; two seamen heading for Great Yarmouth and a pretty little WAAF, already late and worrying herself sick, also curled up on the hard benches, waking every time a train shrieked its way through the station and cursing the drivers who hooted merrily as they passed through. She reached Norwich Thorpe station, which was as far as her train would carry her, quite early on Wednesday morning, waved her rail pass at station staff and was just in time to leap aboard a local train bound for the nearest station to Tullimore’s Farm. She was accompanied on this last leg of her journey by another girl, a very pretty girl, for though her uniform was as bizarre and ill fitting as that which graced Dana’s lanky form she wore it with such an air that it looked quite acceptable. She told Dana that her name was Vera Potter and that she too was bound for Tullimore’s.

‘Someone’s supposed to pick me up,’ she said, when they arrived at the station whose name was on the rail passes. She stared around her at the empty platform and
the empty road outside. ‘Mind you, they told me I’d not get here until the five ten, but the perishin’ train was early for once. Who’s meeting you?’

‘Dunno; no one, I don’t think,’ Dana said doubtfully. ‘There was a porter here a minute ago bawling out the name of the station. If we ask him how we get to Tullimore’s Farm, no doubt he’ll point us in the right direction. There’s no taxi, but surely there will be a bus?’

There was. The porter, rousted out of his snug little ticket office, said that the twice daily bus would be along in a moment and they must ask to get off at Tullimore’s Corner. ‘Simple!’ Vera said as she and Dana lugged their kitbags out of the station and into the dusty country road. ‘Weren’t we lucky though, Dana? If the bus only comes twice a day, we might have had to wait hours and hours. Cor blimey, what a terrible thought, ’cos there isn’t a pub or a bakery for miles, from what I can see, and I’ve not had a bite since yesterday evening.’