Kitabı oku: «The Mersey Daughter: A heartwarming Saga full of tears and triumph»

CHAPTER TWO

‘So why aren’t you out helping Mam down the WVS?’ Rita Kennedy, née Feeny, demanded of her younger sister Nancy. They were in the kitchen of the family home, even though neither of them lived there any more since their marriages. Then again, both marriages had turned out very differently to how they’d expected, and they both preferred the comfort of their mother’s warm and welcoming kitchen to just about anywhere else on earth.

Nancy planted her elbows firmly on the old chenille tablecloth and sipped from her cup of tea. ‘Because I’m minding Georgie. He’s still having a rotten time with his teething. The last thing they’ll want is a howling baby shouting the place down.’

Rita raised her eyebrows, knowing full well that Nancy would do anything to get out of hard graft. While their mother was a mainstay of the Women’s Voluntary Service, as well as organising salvage collections, cookery classes, make-do-and-mend classes and being the auxiliary fire warden for Empire Street, Nancy rarely lifted a finger if she could help it. She was perfectly happy to let somebody else mind her young son – usually their sister-in-law Violet, who, having no children of her own yet, liked nothing better than entertaining young George, who was not quite a year old. That suited Nancy down to the ground. Now she pouted at her big sister – a look she’d practised for many a year.

‘You needn’t be like that about it.’

‘I didn’t say a thing,’ Rita pointed out, pulling out a wooden chair and sinking gratefully on to it. She’d been on her feet all day.

‘You didn’t have to,’ Nancy complained. ‘Your sour look gave it away. Someone’s got to look after Georgie, and now Violet’s thrown herself into the WVS as well, it’ll have to be me.’

‘What about Sid’s mam?’ Rita asked innocently, waiting for the firestorm that would follow. She wasn’t disappointed.

‘That old witch! I wouldn’t trust her with a baby.’ Nancy was incensed. ‘It’s bad enough having to live under her roof – we don’t want to spend any more time with her than we have to. I don’t know how she does it, but she manages to be a proper busybody and a big streak of misery at the same time. I mean, Sid’s been a POW since Dunkirk, but every day she goes on and on about it like it’s only just happened. It’s as if nobody else has lost anyone in this blessed war. It’s all about her, what a martyr she is, how it’s destroying her health. It’s enough to get your goat.’

Rita couldn’t argue with that; Mrs Kerrigan always had been one of their nosiest neighbours, and she’d taken to the role of grieving mother as if she’d been born for it. Rita smiled to herself. Whatever disapproval anybody had for Nancy’s ways was like water off a duck’s back; she didn’t seem to give a hoot about other people’s opinions. Still, her sister could be remarkably callous about her missing husband, and Rita knew she was sailing a bit close to the wind these days. ‘You’re going to have to keep on the right side of her, though, for when Sid gets back,’ she said. ‘He’ll have been through enough without coming home to find his wife and mother at daggers drawn.’

‘Oh, I don’t want to dwell on it.’ Nancy tossed her head, making her red hair swing about her shoulders. ‘We none of us know when he’ll be back. It’s too depressing to think about.’

More like Nancy didn’t want Sid back to cramp her style, Rita thought, but decided to keep her thoughts to herself. It couldn’t be easy for Nancy, rattling round in that gloomy big house with a mother-in-law who made no secret of disliking her. As for Mr Kerrigan, nobody ever saw him. He worked nights on the Liverpool Post and kept totally different hours to the rest of his family, which Nancy figured was to stay out of the way of his disagreeable wife. Nancy spent as much of her time as she could in her mother’s house, and had even come back to live there for a while, before Violet had arrived and it had simply become too crowded to contain them all. Reluctantly she’d taken little George back to his other granny.

Rita sighed. She was hardly so squeaky clean herself. She pushed thoughts of the circumstances of her marriage to her husband Charlie out of her mind, feeling too exhausted to think about it now. She loved her work as a nurse, but ever since the local infirmary had been bomb-damaged, she had been working at the hospital on Linacre Lane, a much longer walk away. She didn’t mind the walk itself – especially now that the buses were so unreliable – but the journey there and back combined with long shifts and the weight of responsibility of being a nursing sister wore her out. She reached for the teapot before Nancy could help herself to a refill. Guiltily she realised she was drinking her mother’s tea ration, though Dolly Feeny wouldn’t have begrudged her eldest girl a cup. The whole family were proud of Rita, who’d kept at her post while the docks were bearing the brunt of the Luftwaffe’s devastating raids.

Warming her hands on the cup, Rita leant back. ‘That’s better.’ It was amazing what a drop of tea could do to restore your spirits. ‘Have you heard Mam’s latest?’

Nancy glanced up. ‘No, what?’

‘She’s gone and put her name down for a victory garden. She was talking about it at Christmas and I thought she’d given up the idea, but no. Now the days are getting longer it’ll soon be time to start planting seeds and I don’t know how she’ll manage.’

‘Well, I suppose we could all do with more fresh fruit and veg,’ said Nancy eagerly. Her mouth watered at the thought of strawberries in the summer. Even if there was no cream or sugar to go on them, they could always use evaporated milk.

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.