Annie Groves - Across the Mersey

‘Do you remember when we used to bring our four here for the beach?’ she asked Sam nostalgically.

‘How could I forget? They took that much sand back with them, you’d have thought they were building a second Liverpool bar,’ he laughed, referring to the sand bar beyond the docks.

‘Do you remember that time you put Luke up on that donkey and it ran off with him?’

‘Scared me to death, but he managed to stick on like a regular little trooper,’ Sam agreed.

‘And then when the twins buried their doll and couldn’t find it?’

‘I remember when that sister of yours turned up with her two and little Jack, and he wandered off. She didn’t half give him a pasting when she found him.’

A sudden sadness clouded Jean’s eyes, causing Sam to touch her arm and mutter awkwardly, ‘Sorry, love, I wasn’t thinking.’

Jean nodded and made herself smile. Best not to think of that other little one, baby Terry, who had come too soon and lived for such a short space of time, nor of how poorly she had been. He would have been nine now if he had lived, the same age, give or take a couple of months as Vi’s Jack.

Jean started to frown. She couldn’t help feeling guilty about Jack sometimes. Vi had claimed that she wanted another child, but Edwin certainly hadn’t, and Jean didn’t think they would have had him at all if she hadn’t been carrying her poor little Terry. Vi had always had that competitive streak in her that meant that whatever she, Jean, as the eldest, did, Vi always had to try to outdo her.

‘Come on, you lot, hop on and look smart about it,’ Sam said. He waited until they were all on the bus and sitting down before getting on himself and telling the conductor, ‘Six to Kingsway.’

‘Turn round so that I can redo that plait,’ Jean instructed Louise, ignoring the protests she made when she replaited her hair quickly and tightly, while warning the twins, ‘Now remember, you two. If your auntie Vi offers you a second piece of cake you’re to say “No, thank you”. I don’t want her thinking that they don’t know their manners,’ she told Sam, answering the unspoken question in the look he was giving her.

‘Huh, chance’d be a fine thing. Mean as they come, your Vi is. Besides, she isn’t the cook you are, love, so I doubt they’d want a second piece.’

‘Go on with you. It will probably be shop bought and fancy,’ Jean told him, but his compliment had touched her, and it was no good her pretending that she wasn’t pleased to have him praising her home cooking and not Vi’s fancy shop-bought cake, because she was.

‘More money than sense, the both of them,’ Sam told her. ‘Look at the way Edwin’s gone and bought that young idiot Charlie his own car.’

‘It’s for his job, on account of him putting Charlie in charge of the office.’

‘Aye. It makes as much sense as giving him a fancy title for doing what amounts to nowt, if I know young Charlie.’

Jean looked anxiously at her husband. She knew that it hurt Sam that he couldn’t give their own children the same luxuries their cousins enjoyed, even though he tended to disapprove of Edwin’s business practices and the way he treated those who worked for him. Edwin owned a small business that fitted pipe work in Merchant Navy vessels, and the current threat of war had brought an increase in the amount of work Edwin was being asked to do and consequently an increase in the money he was making. But no increase in the wages he was paying his men, as Sam had remarked to Jean.

The next stop would be theirs. Jean could feel the familiar fluttering in her tummy. She did so hope that Vi wasn’t going to be in one of her ‘difficult’ moods.

Vi, or Vivienne, as she now insisted on being called, stood in her bay window of her bedroom, craning her neck so that she could see as far down Kingsway as possible through her net curtains. Brand new, her nets were, and how she was expected to keep them looking like that if she was going to have to have those nasty blackout frames put up every night she didn’t know. You’d think that living here in Wallasey there’d be no need for that kind of thing, not like down in Liverpool with its docks, or Wavertree where Jean lived. Edwin had been furious when he’d had to have his beautiful lawn dug up so that they could get their air-raid shelter put in and she didn’t blame him. Luckily they’d been able to put it out of sight of the house at the bottom of the garden behind the apple trees.

Jean and her family should be here soon. She lifted her hand and patted her newly permed hair. Jean might be the elder by ten minutes but she, Vi, felt far superior. She looked down at her new dress. Silk not cotton, and a birthday present from Edwin. Edwin was doing very well for himself with his business and she’d done very well for herself in marrying him, as Edwin himself liked to remind her. Vi’s mouth thinned slightly.

Jean would never have been able to manage a husband like Edwin. Where were they? She had told Jean half-past two. Perhaps she ought to have insisted that Edwin and Charlie should drive down to the ferry terminal to pick them up, but Edwin was in one of his moods, complaining that Charlie was spending far too much time enjoying himself and not enough doing what his father paid him to do, which was to sweet-talk their customers, and she hadn’t wanted to provoke any further ill-tempered outbursts. She just hoped that Bella would remember that she had promised to help her with the tea and not linger at the tennis club. A fond maternal smile replaced Vi’s frown at the thought of her daughter, Isabelle. Privately she had always felt sorry for her twin having three daughters who were all so inferior in every way to her own Bella. Grace looked far too much like their younger sister, Francine, for Vi’s liking, and they all knew where those kind of looks had got her! Singing on a stage for her living was most certainly not what she wanted for her daughter. And as for Jean’s twins, well, they were fair enough but she doubted that they were going to grow up anything like as attractive as Bella, with her large blue eyes and her soft blonde hair, and most of all her sweetly dutiful manner. Vi’s chest swelled with maternal pride and triumph. Everyone who met Bella remarked on the sweetness of her nature and her modesty. It was no wonder that she was so popular.

She could see a familiar group of people walking down the road. Yes, it was definitely them, and her sister was wearing the same frock she had worn for their birthday tea last year. It was just as well they had only moved here to Kingsway this spring. She certainly didn’t want her new neighbours talking behind her back about the fact that her sister was coming to visit her wearing a year-old frock. You’d have thought that Jean would have had a little more thought for her new position, Vi thought crossly as she stepped back from the window and hurried downstairs.

Her husband and son were both in the front room. Edwin was reading his newspaper whilst Charlie was standing in front of the fireplace, looking bored.

‘I don’t know why you had to invite them here, Vi. You know what a busy time this is for me, with the business expanding and my duties with the ARP.’

‘I suppose you’d have preferred us to go to them, would you?’ she challenged him, continuing without waiting for him to answer, ‘I couldn’t believe it when Jean actually suggested that she should do the tea this year.’

‘Where’s Jack?’ Charlie asked, ignoring his mother’s comment.

‘I’ve just seen him outside, although he should be upstairs doing his homework.’ Vi’s mouth thinned again.

‘Here’s Bella,’ Charlie announced, as a car drew up outside.

‘Looks like Alan Parker has brought her home.’