Daughters of Liverpool (24 page)

Luke could be stubborn and he had his pride – he was a man after all – and he wouldn’t want to think that his mother and his sister were standing on the sidelines and keeping their fingers crossed that he and Katie recognised just how perfect they were for one another.

‘Bettina and her mother are lovely, aren’t they? And so very brave. It must be terrible to have to leave your home and your country behind and go and live somewhere else, not knowing where you might end up.’

Bella and Laura had just left the church and were heading back to Bella’s house along Lancaster Road.

‘Obviously the Polanskis were fortunate because they were billeted with you, but anyone can see that they must have been very comfortably circumstanced in their own country, and it must be dreadfully hard to bear if one ends up billeted somewhere grim,’ Laura gushed, patently unable to stop talking about Jan and his family.

Torn between irritation over Laura’s praise for the Polanskis, and pride that Laura had recognised the superiority of her own home, Bella was forced to produce a lukewarm smile instead of giving vent to her real feelings about her billetees.

‘And wasn’t it lucky that Jan was home on leave and kind enough to go down to the school with
us and help us sort out that delivery we got yesterday?’ Laura continued happily.

Now Bella could feel her irritation growing. It hadn’t pleased her one little bit to see the new friend she had been so proud of so plainly impressed by a Polish fighter pilot yesterday when the Polanskis had arrived back at Bella’s house whilst she was entertaining Laura. In fact, she had felt obliged to point out several times during the evening that Jan was a refugee and that it was only thanks to the British Government that he was safe and able to fly anything.

Laura had ignored her, though, to say enthusiastically to Jan, ‘I’ve got a cousin in the RAF and he was full of praise for the Polish pilots for their bravery during the Battle of Britain.’

Long before the evening had ended, Bella had been regretting inviting Laura to have supper with her and then stay for the weekend. When she had given that invitation Bella had envisaged an evening discussing Bella’s own plans for building up her role as Laura’s assistant to the point where it carried a proper title that Bella could use to let her parents know how important her war work was compared with Daphne’s. However, when all three of the Polanskis had come in unexpectedly, Bettina and her mother having apparently met Jan from the station, and Laura had immediately somehow or other taken it for granted that the billetees were welcome to sit down and have dinner with them, Bella had had no option but to grit her teeth and let herself be swept along by Laura’s enthusiasm.

Before too long Laura and Jan had been laughing together as Jan claimed to be an expert chef, his self-confidence greeted by adoring smiles from his mother and amused ones from his sister, whilst Bella had found herself without any role to play and virtually relegated to the role of ignored onlooker of the fun that everyone else, but especially Laura and Jan, seemed to be having.

Of course, the fact that Jan was visiting – something she had not been consulted about or had her permission requested for – had meant that there was no proper spare bedroom for Laura, and even now Bella didn’t know just why she had felt that savage stab of anger when Jan had grinned and said that Laura was welcome to share his bed.

Of course, Laura had done no such thing. Naturally she had slept with Bella in Bella’s room. That had meant that Bella had hardly had any sleep at all, her rest disturbed because she just wasn’t used to sharing a room with anyone. Nothing to do with the fact that she had been listening to make sure that Laura didn’t take advantage of the sleeping household to take Jan up on his offer.

‘You must let me know the next time Jan’s home on leave,’ Laura told Bella enthusiastically, now.

Bella had originally planned to make sure that Laura sang her own praises in front of her mother after church, but she had been so irritated by Laura’s constant references to Jan and his family that she hadn’t bothered. And now Laura was still going on about him.

‘I bet he’s a good dancer, Bella. Have you ever danced with him?’

‘No,’ Bella answered her shortly.

‘Maybe we could get up a party for one of the Tennis Club dances? Oh, I wonder what’s going on over there.’

Relieved to have a change of subject, Bella looked across the road to where a work party of three men were working frantically and at much greater speed than was usual, to remove some of the rubble of a collapsed building.

Laura crossed the road, leaving Bella no option but to follow her.

‘What’s happening?’ Laura asked the closest of the men.

‘We think there’s a kiddie still alive under this lot. We heard it crying a while back. Thought it were a cat at first, we did, and then Harry there said, no, he thought it were a kiddie. Then someone came along and said how there’d bin a new baby born to the family wot lived here.’

A baby buried under all those tons of rubble and still alive. How could that be possible? Babies were so fragile and vulnerable. Bella placed her hand against her own body, filled with a mixture of anger and pain.

The man who had been speaking to them broke off his conversation to take a pack of Gold Flake cigarettes from the boy on the bicycle who had just cycled up to him saying, ‘Here you are, Uncle Billy. Our nan says that’s nine pence you owe her.’

‘Come on, Billy,’ the other two men working on the rubble with their picks called.

‘These houses were bombed four nights ago,’ Bella pointed out. ‘It’s impossible for anyone still to be alive under the rubble, never mind a small baby.’

The nearest of the men replied, without stopping working, ‘Aye, we thought that an’ all, until we heard it crying.’

‘Do you think Jan will still be at your house? I know Maria said that she’d have a Sunday lunch waiting for us when we got back, but she didn’t say anything about Jan being there, and I’d like to thank him for all the help he gave us.’

Bella looked at Laura impatiently, on the point of reminding her that she had already done that, and more than once, when one of the men gave a shout and delved into the rubble, pushing it aside with his bare hands.

Within seconds the other two men had joined him and nothing could have wrenched Bella away from the spot where she stood, the whole of her attention focused on what was happening in front of her, totally oblivious to everything else.

Other people had come to see what was going on, but it was Bella who was the closest and she was the first to see when one of them lifted the child – a few months old, no more, Bella guessed – from the rubble.

She – it was a girl from her clothes – was filthy and covered in dust, her mouth and nose rimed with soot and soil.

A first-aider had stepped forward to take the baby and was deftly removing the dirt from her mouth, allowing her to cry lustily.

‘Can someone hold her for a moment?’ the first-aider asked, and without thinking Bella stepped forward to take her.

She was filthy, her face and clothes covered in dust and earth, but Bella still held her close.

‘Yours, is she, love?’ an elderly woman, who had stopped to see what was going on, asked Bella sympathetically.

Bella shook her head. The baby was nuzzling her, and grizzling. A sharp pang of pain gripped Bella inside as though her womb had tightened, her breasts suddenly aching.

‘Thanks ever so. I’ll take her now.’ The first-aider was reaching out to take the baby.

Bella frowned, holding the baby tighter as she stepped back until she realised what she was doing. Angrily she thrust the baby into the first-aider’s arms and then turned on her heel, hurrying to rejoin Laura, who was standing several yards away and looking impatient. Several yards away – and yet Bella had no memory of having moved closer to the rubble or of having left Laura, and yet she realised she must have done. Why? Just because of the baby? No, of course not. What did she care about babies? Nothing! It was girls like her cousin Grace who went all soft and misty-eyed over babies, not her.

‘Goodness, I’m ever so hungry now. Poor Maria will wonder where on earth we are. Oh dear, you’ve got dirt all down the front of your lovely coat,’ Laura told Bella. ‘What a shame. We must get overalls for the nursemaids to wear at the crèche. Will you make a note of that for me, please, Bella?’ 

‘And like I said before, we wouldn’t have been late back for our lunch if Bella hadn’t gone and got involved by holding the baby.’

They were all in the morning room-cum-dining room at the back of the house next to the kitchen, and Bella’s dining table had been extended to accommodate the five of them.

Bella had been very proud of her reproduction mahogany dining-room furniture when she had first seen it in Gillow’s Furniture Emporium, the exclusive furniture shop just off Bold Street in Liverpool. The square table, which extended into a rectangle, could, when both its leaves were in place, seat eight. In addition to the six matching chairs, with their claret and cream Regency-stripe damask seats, there were two ‘carver’ chairs, and an elegant Georgian-style sideboard.

Even her own mother had been envious of the stylish elegance of her choice, Bella remembered. She had planned to hold dinner parties and show off her furniture and her Royal Doulton dinner service, but that that never happened. Bella looked down at her plate on which most of her lunch still remained. Not because there was anything wrong with her food – grudgingly Bella had to admit that Maria was a wonderful cook – but somehow the delicious smell of roasting lamb that had met them in the hall on their return had filled Bella with nausea instead of tempting her appetite.

Laura had insisted on telling the Polanski family all about the baby that had been rescued from the rubble, the minute they had all sat down for their lunch, and Bella had flinched angrily from the pity
she had seen in Jan’s gaze as he looked at her whilst Laura was relating the story.

He would remember, of course, what had happened to her own baby and to her; they all would. Well, Bella didn’t want his pity. She did not want anyone’s pity.

‘What a shame to waste such lovely food. You aren’t dieting, are you, Bella?’ Laura asked. ‘Only I know that some girls have said that they’re worried about putting weight on with this war diet. I’m lucky, I never put on so much as an ounce.’

Normally Bella would have been so astounded at the suggestion that she, with her twenty-two-inch waist, might need to diet that she would have made a very sharp retort, but today her struggle not to think about the rescued baby and how holding it had made her feel was taking precedence over putting Laura in her place. That and the angry churning in her stomach at the thought of anyone, but most of all Jan Polanski, pitying her.

Bettina and Maria were getting up and removing the plates, swiftly helped by Laura, who went immediately to take Jan’s plate, Bella noticed cynically.

There was rhubarb crumble and custard for pudding, but Bella shook her head and refused a helping.

‘Bella and I were just saying whilst we were out, Jan,’ Laura began eagerly, ‘that if you’ve got leave over Easter it would be lovely if we could make up a party to go to the Tennis Club dance. I’m
sure that Bettina would like to go, wouldn’t you, Bettina?’

‘There aren’t any tickets left,’ Bella interrupted her curtly. ‘My mother asked me to get a pair for my brother and his fiancée-to-be and I couldn’t.’

‘Oh, I’m sure the committee will be able to find tickets for a party that includes a Battle of Britain hero,’ Laura insisted warmly.

‘Charlie is a Dunkirk hero,’ Bella told her angrily. ‘He saved Daphne’s brother’s life,’ she pointed out, ignoring the fact that it was less than a week since she had been telling her mother that she was sick of hearing about her brother’s heroism.

‘But that was just one heroic act, Bella, and after all, everyone knows that the Polish Air Force accounted for over 600 enemy combat kills during the Battle of Britain. There was a huge amount in the papers about it, and everyone was saying how marvellous they were. Any tennis club would be proud to have a Polish Air Force pilot attending their dance, and any girl would be very proud to be his partner.’ Laura’s voice had softened as she had added these last few words.

Bella frowned. Laura making such a fuss of Jan, and going on about him being such a hero, made Bella feel as though she was out of step over something important that she ought to have known about. She didn’t like being made to feel as though she had missed out on something – or indeed someone – that other girls had taken up, and which had made it – or him – and themselves extremely popular.

Bella had been so caught up in her own resentment about the Polanskis being billeted on her that
she hadn’t been aware that Jan being in the Polish Air Force made him the social asset that Laura was now implying. All this time, when Jan had been coming to visit his family and she had been shunning him,
she
could have been the one fussing round him and basking in what Bella was now beginning to suspect would be the reflected glory of partnering a Polish Air Force hero, she acknowledged crossly.

‘I suppose I
could
get some tickets,’ she told them, quickly changing tack. ‘After all, me and Alan were the most popular couple at the Tennis Club. I’ll have a word with the Treasurer.’

She certainly didn’t want the Polanskis thinking that it was because of Jan that tickets were forthcoming. No, she intended to make it clear that they had only been granted as a favour to her. That was the way to keep a man on his toes.

Laura might think that she could attract Jan by flattering him and making a fuss of him but she, Bella, the most beautiful girl in Wallasey, if not in Liverpool, knew that the best way to get a man interested was to pretend that you weren’t interested in him. That always brought them running.

‘But I thought you just said that you couldn’t get any for your brother?’ Laura pointed out.

‘Well, I couldn’t, not officially, but of course I have got them a pair.’ That at least was true since her mother had insisted that Bella ought to hand over her own to Charlie and Daphne. No way was she going to do that now. If there were only two tickets going, then they were for her and her partner of choice – Jan – but she needn’t say anything about that now.