Annie Groves - The Heart of the Family

One o’clock. Seb frowned. They were normally here by now. He leaned back in his chair and rubbed his eyes. What kind of cat-and-mouse game was Hitler playing with Liverpool now? He’d all but destroyed the city. Another heavy raid, certainly two, would be the fatal blow that would mean that Liverpool was done for. The port would no longer be a safe haven for the Atlantic convoys, bringing in desperately needed food and raw materials, as well as equipment under the recently signed Lend Lease agreement with America, which meant that the neutral Americans, not in the war, could provide much-needed military equipment to the financially hard-pressed Allies, with payment being deferred until a later date. The agreement was very complicated, with many of its terms still kept from the general public in the interests of national security. Its existence, though, had had to be acknowledged to account for the sudden influx to the country of American personnel and equipment to help with the war effort.

Seb stretched again and tried to suppress a yawn.

Grace would be lying in her bed in the nurses’ home waiting for the sound of the siren. Seb knew how much nursing meant to her, but increasingly he worried about her safety. The hospital had already been bombed once, and some of the medical staff killed.

He’d sensed her growing fear and desperation when he’d walked her back to the nurses’ home on Sunday. When he’d taken advantage of the privacy afforded by a shadowy doorway, she’d clung to him and kissed him, trembling so much in his arms with her passion that he had started to tremble himself.

If they’d been anywhere half decently suitable, he’d have been tempted to answer the need he had seen in her eyes and truly make her his, whilst they were still both alive to share that special loving intimacy.

It had been Grace who had insisted that she wanted to finish her training and that meant that they couldn’t marry until she had, but he had respected that decision. These last few days, though, with the knowledge that each bombing raid could take Grace from him, Seb had burned with a fierce urge to make her truly his and to know that they had shared something that could never be taken from them. And Grace had wanted that too – he had sensed it in her even before she had told him so, clinging to him, her eyes wet with her tears as she told him how afraid she was of dying without knowing his love.

Bella couldn’t sleep. They’d been promised twenty cot mattresses, and only ten had been delivered. The driver had feigned ignorance but Bella knew she was right to suspect that the other ten would end up on the black market. She moved restlessly beneath her immaculately ironed sheets. Laura had simply shrugged and looked impatient when Bella had complained to her.

‘What do you expect with all this rationing?’ she had demanded sharply. ‘After all, those doing the black market selling aren’t the only ones making money from this war, are they?’

Bella had known that Laura was referring to Bella’s own father whose business supplying and fitting pipes to merchant and naval vessels had become so profitable thanks to the war that Edwin had had to treble his work force. Her father liked a gin and tonic, and after the third glass was inclined to start bragging about the fortune he was making. Not that he shared it with his family, Bella thought sourly, or at least not with her. He was showering money on Charlie, buying him a new car, because his small sports car had been stolen, giving him a job, and her house.

She looked at her alarm clock.

Two o’clock. The bombers were normally here by now, dropping their bombs over Liverpool. Bella moved irritably, frowning as she remembered the knowing look Ralph Fleming had given her when he’d come to collect his children from the crèche earlier in the day, her face starting to burn with angry pride. Did he really think that she would be interested in him now that she knew he was married man, and that he’d lied to her?

What kind of girl did he think she was? Her heart started to thump angrily. Well, she wasn’t that sort, no matter what he might think. Why were people so horrid and mean to her? Especially men. Bella thought of her father, with his impatience and irritable manner; her husband, who had never loved her as surely she deserved to be loved; Jan Polanski, whose mother and sister were her billetees, and who was getting married in two weeks’ time, making out that she had wanted him to kiss her just because he was good-looking, when she hadn’t at all; and now Ralph Fleming, pretending he was free to ask her out and then actually having the cheek to laugh at her and look at her as though he knew something about her that meant she didn’t care that he was married. Well, she did. She cared a lot. She was tired of other people – other women – treating her the way they did. It wasn’t fair that other girls like her cousin Grace ended up with good-looking men and had lots of friends, whilst she, who surely deserved better, was treated so unkindly.

Tears of self-pity welled in Bella’s eyes.

It just wasn’t fair.

That surely couldn’t be dawn, could it, edging slowly and warily up under the darkness, hesitating as though fearing what it might reveal?

Sam rubbed his eyes in case he had got it wrong and he was imagining things. He was tired from being on fire-watch duty. Even though tonight there were no new fires, the acrid smell of smoke still hung in the air and stung the eyes, but no, that was definitely dawn lightening the sky on the horizon.

As he watched, the band of light grew wider, revealing the tired buildings that still remained standing sharply etched against the skyline, black against the dawn sky.

Something – relief, disbelief, gratitude, Sam couldn’t pin down exactly what it was – dampened his eyes and made him want to shout his discovery from the rooftops.

The German bombers hadn’t come. Incredibly, unbelievably, the final death blow had not been delivered.

On other buildings Sam could see other fire watchers now. Like him they were stretching, and looking around, shedding the burden of the night watch, straightening up and standing tall, and it seemed to Sam that the city itself was doing the same thing, that he could feel in the air its pride in its survival through a night when everyone had thought that all must be lost.

It was a miracle, that’s what it was, Harry Fitch, who had shared the watch with Sam, announced, and Sam didn’t argue.

It was a mistake – everyone was agreed on that – a breathing space, that was all. The bombers were bound to return, and yet there was a lightness of heart as people went about their business, a sense of reprieve even if it was generally acknowledged that it wouldn’t last.

But it did, and finally, by Sunday morning, after three full nights without a raid, even Sam was cautiously agreeing that maybe there had indeed been a miracle and what was left of the city was safe.

‘Mind you, I still think it’s a rum business that Hitler didn’t send the Luftwaffe in to finish us off,’ he told Jean as the family set out for church.

For once the whole family was together, Luke, like the other soldiers who lived locally, having been given compassionate leave, and Grace being off duty.

In with her other prayers this morning there would definitely be one thanking God for saving her from having to go begging Vi for a favour, Jean decided fervently, as she paused to check that her family were looking their best.

The twins must still be growing, she thought, switching her attention from the outer world to her own small family. Their frocks certainly needed letting down. At their age they really shouldn’t be showing quite so much leg, Jean decided with maternal concern, even if their legs were very well shaped. Thank goodness she had asked Mrs Nellis, who had run up their red and white gingham frocks on her machine for them, to put on good hems, disguised with white rickrack braid.