Annie Groves - Daughters of Liverpool

ONE

‘I called in at the Salvage Depot to see Dad on my way over here, and he was telling me that you’re going to have some girl billeted on you.’

Jean Campion looked up from her annual task of anxiously working out if the Christmas turkey she had ordered that morning from St John’s Market was going to be too big for her gas oven, to look at her son, her hazel eyes warm with maternal love.

She loved all four of her children, but Luke was the eldest, tall and dark-haired, like his dad, Sam, and her only son – a man now, not a boy any longer, with the experience of Dunkirk behind him and a year in the army.

‘Yes, that’s right.’ Jean pushed her still brown hair back off her face, her cheeks flushed a soft pink from her exertions.

The kitchen was the heart of the Campion family’s home. Modestly sized but warmly furnished with all the love that Jean and Sam gave their family, it shone with the pride Jean took in her home.

Her kitchen was her pride and joy, newly refurbished the year before the war had started. A gas geyser on the wall next to the sink provided Jean with hot water for all her domestic tasks, and was ‘extra’ to the electric immersion heater upstairs in its own cupboard next to the bathroom. She and Sam had distempered the walls themselves, painting them a cheerful shade of yellow that made Jean feel as though the sun was shining even when it wasn’t.

Sam had got the well-polished linoleum cheap from a salvage job he’d been on, and had fitted it himself, in the bathroom as well as the kitchen, and Jean kept it as shiny and as spotless as her pots and pans.

Jean was a careful housewife and she’d been thrilled when she’d spotted the remnant of yellow fabric with its red strawberry pattern on it, which she’d bought for the kitchen curtains.

The big family oak table had come from a second-hand shop, and Jean and Sam had reupholstered the chairs themselves.

‘She’s supposed to be arriving this evening, but you know what the trains are like. Your dad wasn’t keen on us taking someone in but, like I said to him, it’s our duty really. We’ve got two spare rooms now, after all, with you in the army and based at Seacombe, and Grace training to be a nurse and living in at the hospital, and only me and your dad and the twins here. Mind you, your dad said straight out that it would have to be a woman, on account of Lou and Sasha.’

The mention of his fifteen-year-old twin sisters made Luke smile.

‘Well, I hope whoever she is that she likes jitterbug music,’ he told his mother.

‘I’m putting her in what was the twins’ room now that they’ve moved up into Grace’s old room in the attic,’ said Jean, ignoring his teasing comment about the twins’ devotion to their gramophone and the dance music they played on it. ‘It will be more fitting. I could have done wi’out her arriving the week before Christmas, mind, but there you are.’

‘In uniform, is she?’ Luke asked.

Jean shook her head. ‘No. She’s going to be working at the old Littlewoods Pools place off Edge Lane, where they censor the post. You know where I mean.’

Luke nodded. ‘They’ve got going on for two thousand working there now, so I’ve heard.’

‘Well, never mind about her,’ Jean said, ‘let’s have a proper look at you.’

They had the kitchen to themselves, otherwise Jean would not have risked embarrassing her tall handsome soldier son by subjecting him to the kind of maternal scrutiny that more properly belonged to his schooldays, minus a brisk demand as to whether or not he had washed behind his ears, but the truth was that she was concerned about him.

It might be over six months since Dunkirk but Jean knew that her son had still not got over the heartache he had suffered then.

It was thanks to Grace that she knew how he had been led on and then let down by the very pretty, socially ambitious nurse he had been hoping to become engaged to. According to Grace, Lillian Green had never had any intention of getting seriously involved with Luke and had simply used him. She and Grace had done their nursing training together and she had boasted right from the start that she had decided to train as a nurse only because she wanted to marry a doctor. A decent ordinary young man ready to give up his life for his country wasn’t good enough for her, and she had told Luke as much when he had gone to the hospital to see her on his return from Dunkirk.

How much the experience of the British Expeditionary Forces’ retreat to Dunkirk, and its subsequent evacuation from its beaches, was responsible for the sometimes remote and grim-looking young man who had taken the place of the laughing boy Luke had been, and how much the heartbreak inflicted on him by Lillian was responsible, Jean didn’t know. What she did know, was that it made her heart ache to see her once carefree son turned into a man who looked at the world through far more cynical eyes, and who sometimes betrayed a sharp edge of bitterness towards love and romance.

He was young yet though, Jean comforted herself. Plenty of time for him to meet someone else, a girl who would give him the real love he deserved. At least she hoped there would be plenty of time.

To distract herself from such worrying thoughts she asked, ‘Will you be getting any leave over Christmas, do you think, now that Hitler has stopped dropping bombs on us every other night?’

It was over two weeks now since they’d last been woken from their sleep by the sound of the air-raid sirens, and everyone was hoping that situation would continue.

‘We haven’t been told yet, Mum – at least not officially – but the word is that we should get a couple of days off, so with a bit of luck I should be home on Christmas Day, at least.’

‘Oh, I do hope so, love, especially with Grace and Seb going down to spend Christmas and Boxing Day with Seb’s family. Oh, did I tell you that she’s had ever such a nice letter from them, saying how pleased they are about her and Seb getting engaged and how much they’re looking forward to meeting her? I must say I was pleased. I don’t mind admitting that I was a bit worried when she first started talking about Seb, on account of him being related to Bella’s late in-laws.’

Luke agreed. He was well aware, of course, of the full story, but he knew how fiercely protective his mother was of them all. And not just of her own children and husband. She was equally protective of her twin sister, even though, in Luke’s opinion, neither his auntie Vi and her husband, Edwin, nor his cousins, Charlie and Bella, deserved his mother’s staunch loyalty.

So far as Luke was concerned, his auntie Vi was a snob, his cousin Charlie a bragging fool, and his cousin Bella a spoiled and very selfish young woman. A young widow now, he reminded himself since her husband and his parents had been killed when a bomb had fallen on their house last month.

Luke was glad that his auntie Vi’s social aspirations meant that they didn’t have to see much of her and her family, who lived across the water from the city of Liverpool in posh Wallasey Village. Of course, Luke himself was also living across the water now, seeing as he was based at Seacombe barracks, close to Wallasey and New Brighton, and, like them, accessed by the ferry boat.

‘I’d better get back to the barracks. It will take me half an hour or so to walk down to the ferry,’ Luke told his mother, returning her hug and then shrugging on his army greatcoat, with its recent addition of his corporal’s stripes. ‘Our sergeant gave me a few hours off on account of all the extra time we’ve had to put in clearing up after the bombs, seeing as it doesn’t take me long to nip home, but I don’t like taking time off and leaving the other lads to it. It’s all right for me being stationed at Seacombe barracks and so close to home, but some of them haven’t seen their families in weeks.’