Annie Groves - The Heart of the Family

She had been proved right. With so many women going into war work and earning their own money, they could afford to treat themselves.

Simone had told Lena right from the start that the main reason she was taking her on was Lena’s own hair.

‘They’ll take one look at you, and come in here expecting to be turned out looking the same. So you just think on to make sure that you tell them wot asks that it’s this salon that does your hair.’

Lena knew that her aunt was itching to make her leave the salon and get better-paid work in one of the munitions factories, but luckily for Lena she wasn’t old enough – yet. You had to be nineteen at least before they’d take you on, or so she’d heard. She’d heard too about the danger of working in munitions. There was a girl down the road who’d lost an eye and had her hands all burned, and that was nothing compared to the injuries some of the women got. Not that her auntie would care if she was injured.

It wasn’t just her that Auntie Flo didn’t like, Lena knew; she and Lena’s mother had not got on very well either, and her auntie was fond of pointing out that for all that Lena’s mother had been so proud of the fact that she was in service with a posh family, that hadn’t stopped her from getting herself into trouble with the Italian who had charmed his way into her knickers.

Lena found it hard to imagine that her mother had once loved her father. There had been no evidence of that love during Lena’s childhood. Her mother had always been criticising her husband, and Lena’s father had spent more time with his Italian family than he did with Lena and her mother. As she had grown up Lena had become used to hearing her every small misdemeanour put down to the ‘bad blood’ she had inherited from her Italian father. That had been one issue on which her mother and her auntie had been united.

Like many of those who had been in service, Lena’s mother had been a bit of a snob in her own way, and uppity too, saying that she wasn’t having Lena growing up rag-mannered and not knowing what was what, and how to do things right. Lena’s parents had died together in the November bombings of 1940, leaving Lena with no option other than to move in with her mother’s sister, whose ideas of what was and what was not acceptable were very different from those of Lena’s mother.

Lena could still remember having the back of her hands rapped when she’d hesitated over which piece of cutlery to pick up when her mother had been teaching her what to use.

Witnessing this, her aunt had jeered at her mother and they’d had a rare old argument about it, Auntie Flo claiming that it was plain daft giving Lena airs, and her mother retaliating that she wasn’t having her daughter showing herself up by not knowing her manners.

Her mother would certainly have had something to say about the state Liverpool and its people were in now, Lena thought, blinking against the gritty smoky air.

Where the narrow streets opened off the road she was walking along, running down towards the docks she could see new gaps where last night’s bombs had hit, and people picking their way carefully through the debris as they searched for their possessions. Fires were still burning in some of the newly bombed-out buildings down by the docks, fire crews playing water hoses on them. Here, though, where the road turned upward away from the docks, the buildings were relatively unscathed, with only the odd collapsed building.

She could see the salon up ahead. Thankfully, at least that was still standing. Lena didn’t reckon much to the chances of staying out of munitions if she lost her hairdressing job.

After what had just happened with Annette Hodson she’d have been tempted to pack her things and take herself off. There was plenty of work around now, and she’d heard that the council was rehousing anyone who’d been made homeless. Imagine living somewhere where there was no aunt and cousin, and no Annette Hodson either. But she couldn’t leave now, could she, not now that she had met him? She had to be there for when he came looking for her on his next leave.

A small wriggle of pleasure seized her. Hopefully next time there wouldn’t be any bombs falling and then they could make proper plans.

He wasn’t based at Seacombe barracks, but somewhere down south. She’d found that out from his papers, which she’d found in one of the pockets of his battledress, just as she’d also found out that he was single, his full name and his address in posh Wallasey.

Not that she’d got any need to go looking for him, because she just knew that he would come looking for her when he was next on leave.

Annette Hodson and her woes forgotten, Lena almost skipped the rest of the way to work, her head full of happy plans for the future she was going to share with her Charlie.

Charlie. She hugged the name to her, saying it inside her head and then in a determined whisper, Mrs Charles Firth. Lena gave another wriggle of blissful pleasure. Oh, but she could not wait to stand in front of her aunt with Charlie on her arm and his ring on her finger. That would show Auntie Flo, with all her talk of Lena having bad blood. Her Charlie had loved her dark curls and her dark eyes, and he’d love her curves too. A pink blush warmed Lena’s cheeks as she remembered just how much Charlie had loved them and how intimately. Of course, what she had let him do would have been very wrong if he hadn’t been a soldier and been at war. She tossed her head. A girl had to do the right thing by her chap when there was a war on. What if her Charlie were to be sent to fight overseas and …? Lena shivered, the joy draining from her. What if he had already gone overseas? She must not think like that. He wouldn’t go without coming to find her first. Not her Charlie. After all, he had said that he loved her and that he would marry her, hadn’t he?

Picking her way through the rubble littering the street, Katie stopped when something caught her eye, a bunch of May blossom, the kind that children picked from the hedgerow for their mothers. Its wilting flowers now lay in debris, its stems bruised and the flower petals covered in dust. As she bent down to pick it up tears filled Katie’s eyes. What was the matter with her? She hadn’t cried when she had seen the broken buildings, had she, and yet here she was crying over a few broken flowers. Where had they come from? Someone’s home? One of the houses that had stood in this street of flattened buildings? Katie touched one of the petals. A terrible feeling of helplessness and loss filled her. How many more nights could the city go on? And then what? Would they walk out of the air-raid shelters one morning to find them surrounded by Germans who had parachuted in during the night? That was the fear in everyone’s mind, but people would only voice it in private. Even Luke’s father, Sam, had started talking about the city not being able to hold out much longer.

She must not let her imagination run away with her. She must think of Luke and be strong. But she didn’t feel very strong, Katie admitted, as she picked her way carefully through the bricks and broken glass covering both the road and the pavement. It was just as well that she could walk from the Campions’ house on Edge Hill to the Littlewoods building where she worked as a postal censorship clerk, because there were no buses or trams running.

Everywhere she looked all she could see were damaged buildings, and the people of Liverpool exhausted by six long nights of air raids, each one destroying a bit more of their city and increasing their fear that Hitler was not going to stop until there wasn’t a building left standing.

The same people who five days ago had brushed the dust off their clothes and held their heads up high now looked shabby and pitiful. Her own shoes, polished last night by Sam Campion, who polished all his family’s shoes every night and included her own, were now covered in the dust that filled the air, coating everything, leaving a gritty taste in the mouth. Her cotton dress – the same one she had worn yesterday because it was simply impossible to wash anything and get it dry without it being covered in dust – looked tired instead of crisp and fresh. As she lifted her hand to push her hair off her face, Katie acknowledged how weak and afraid she felt.