Daughters of Liverpool (30 page)

Wallasey Village was relatively quiet, most people who could making the most of the Easter
weekend to enjoy what respite from the war they could.

Bella had a key for the school and, in spite of the bad temper in which she had left the house, to her own surprise, once she had started work on the lists she was compiling she actually found the busyness helped to soothe her crossness.

Charlie was on edge and irritable. He hadn’t wanted to accompany his mother and Daphne round to Bella’s. Discussions about curtains and bed linen was of no interest to him.

‘And this is the main bedroom.’

‘Oh, how pretty. And a double bed.’ Daphne blushed, looked down at the carpet, and then up again at Charlie, to give him a shyly adoring smile, which in turn was rewarded with a glowingly approving smile from Vi.

Really, Daphne was going to be the perfect daughter-in-law. Already she had proved more than willing to put herself under her future mother-in-law’s direction, unlike Bella, who sadly had become very difficult since she had been widowed. Vi had spent several happy hours with the family photograph albums basking in Daphne’s admiration of Charlie as a baby. So much so, in fact, that Vi had quite forgotten now that she had ever seen Charlie as anything less than the perfect son.

Vi and Daphne had even shed tears together over little Jack. Such a sweet little boy, Vi had told Daphne, and his loss still very hard to bear, which was why she preferred not to talk about him.

Naturally, darling Daphne had totally understood.

Daphne was really the sweetest little thing, Charlie assured himself as he basked in the adulation of her smile and the sexual
frisson
brought on by her bashful comment about the double bed. Charlie reckoned that he would put it and his married status to far better and more frequent use than his late and unlamented brother-in-law had done. It did a chap’s ego any amount of good to be admired in the way that Daphne so obviously admired him. The only trouble was that Charlie was used to rather more earthy girls than Daphne; girls who did rather more than look at a man adoringly. But they, of course, were not the sort of girls a chap married. Most especially not if one had a mother like his.

Bella’s dressing table was cluttered with bottles of nail polish and scent, and a packet of cigarettes, Charlie noticed absently, whilst his mother and wife-to-be talked enthusiastically about new bedding. His glance eventually alighted on Bella’s jewellery box. Was all her jewellery in it? Her engagement ring and those of Alan’s mother and grandmothers? The whole two hundred pounds’ worth?

Charlie could feel his heart starting to thud with a mixture of desperation and hope. He’d find a way of paying Bella back and making it up to her. She’d never made any secret of the fact that she felt that Alan should have bought her a better ring. Once he’d got himself sorted out and Dougie off
his back, he could buy her something she’d like – give it to her as a surprise and to make up for her having her own jewellery ‘stolen’. No one would ever know that a real thief hadn’t taken it, not the way things were now, with looters stealing from bombed-out houses, very often during the blackout when there was no one there to see them, and nipping into people’s kitchens whilst the door was open to nick food. No, Bella wouldn’t lose out in the long run. He’d see to that.

When his mother was heading towards the bedroom door, Daphne trailing behind her, Charlie rushed forward to open the door for them. He accompanied them to the top of the stairs, where he stopped and patted his jacket pocket, exhibiting faked disbelief as he exclaimed, ‘Dammit, I’m out of cigarettes.’

Whilst Vi was still saying disapprovingly, ‘Language, Charles, please,’ Charlie was already turning back.

‘There was a packet on Bella’s dressing table,’ he said over his shoulder. ‘I’ll just nip back and get them. She won’t mind and I’ll replace them for her later. You two go downstairs and I’ll catch up with you in a tick.’

The rings
were
there, and Bella’s pearls. Charlie scooped them all up and stashed the jewellery boxes in his inside pocket, only just remembering in time to take the cigarettes as well.

‘Ta, sis,’ he grinned jauntily to his own reflection in the mirror, his normal self-confidence returning.

Poor Bella. What a shock she was going to get
when she got home to find she’d had looters in and they’d stolen her jewellery. Of course, he would immediately own up to having forgotten to lock the back door after he’d stepped outside to take a look at the back garden.

And even if Bella did manage to put two and two together and link his earlier request for a loan with her missing jewellery, and from that accuse him of taking it, she could make as much fuss as she liked but their parents would never believe her. Not now that he was engaged to Daphne. It would be her word against his, and Bella wasn’t their parents’ favourite any more. Mind, if she did look like accusing him he’d make sure he headed her off by pointing out the benefits of her claiming the insurance money from a genuine theft. Bella was shrewd enough to see the advantage of that.

Having made sure that the back door was indeed unlocked, Charlie waited until they were all outside to tell his mother casually, ‘Me and Daphne will need an early start tomorrow, so I thought I’d just nip out later and go down to the drill hall, where I did my training when I was in the TA to see if there’s anyone there from the old days, to catch up with. A few of the lads like poor old Dougie, who came round earlier, haven’t had things as good as me and I thought I’d stand them a drink and slip them a bit of something, to make things a bit easier for them.’

‘Oh, Charles, that’s so typical of you.’ Daphne’s eyes shone with emotion, and even his mother was looking pleased and proud.

‘Hello there.’

Bella almost dropped her list. She hadn’t heard anyone entering the room, but someone definitely had and a very self-assured someone, at that, she acknowledged as she saw the way the man was looking at her.

He wasn’t exactly young – somewhere in his thirties, she guessed – or good-looking or particularly tall, but what he didn’t have in physical attributes he more than made up for with his smooth self-confidence and the aura he carried with him. Wearing a navy blazer, a white shirt with a paisley cravat, and light-coloured trousers, his shoes – brown brogues Bella noted with approval – were well polished and his nails clean.

His dark brown hair was cut short; his bearing upright and square-shouldered – as though he was someone important. Bella was glad that she was dressed in one of her favourite frocks, pretty blue cotton, which matched her eyes, patterned with pink roses, its sweetheart neckline drawing discreet attention to her smooth creamy skin, whilst its fitted skirt emphasised the curves of her waist and hips. She’d removed her matching blue hat with its cluster of pink roses when she’d started work, which was a pity she decided, because the pink of the roses exactly matched the pink Max Factor lipstick she was wearing. Still, she could see that the man – whoever he was – was studying her very appreciatively.

‘I saw that the door was open and I thought I’d take a chance and see if I could jump the queue.’ Both his words and his smile might not be openly
suggestive but there
was
something there, Bella recognised, some sense of a message being given by someone who was supremely good at the giving of a certain kind of subtle man-to-woman communication, that was like arnica applied directly to her pride, bruised by Jan. Not that Bella intended to let him know that he had any kind of effect on her, not for one minute.

‘If you’re talking about the nursery,’ she began, ‘then your wife—’

‘My sister,’ he corrected her swiftly. ‘She’s desperate to get her two little ones enrolled here.’

‘I’m only the assistant supervisor,’ Bella told him depreciatingly. ‘I’m afraid your sister will have to apply to the supervisor.’

‘Can’t you give me any hope that you might intercede for me, and get me into my sister’s good books?’

‘It isn’t up to me, although I could write down their names and pass them on to the supervisor.’

‘You are an angel and should really be rewarded with nectar and ambrosia, but alas in these dull times all I can offer is a cup of tea at the nearest tea shop.’

Bella was already beginning to shake her head, when he added softly, ‘Or perhaps dinner somewhere a little more exciting.’

A distinctly heady feeling was taking hold of her, Bella admitted. This man, whoever he was, was making it plain that he found her attractive. His flattery proved that, and, when all was said and done, it was after all her due. She knew that. This was what her beauty deserved – a man who
appreciated it and her, and who was prepared to show that appreciation. Unlike some men, or rather one man in particular, whose rejection of her had affected her so badly that she wanted to blank the whole episode from her mind.

‘I’m afraid I don’t accept invitations to dinner from strange men.’

What a delicious game this was.

‘Perhaps you will allow me to introduce myself then?’

Bella inclined her head.

‘Well, if I am to make a note of your sister and her children’s details, I rather think that you should, Mr … ?’

‘Ralph,’ he corrected her silkily. ‘Ralph Fleming.’

‘You aren’t in uniform, Mr Fleming?’ Bella asked coolly. ‘Only we give preference to the children of our fighting men.’

The look he gave her was both mocking and challenging.

‘Commander Fleming,’ he corrected her. ‘And no, on this occasion I am not in uniform.’

Bella had had the most wonderful afternoon. The commander, Ralph, had insisted on driving her out into the country to a pub he knew, where they had had a drink and he insisted on Bella talking to him about herself whilst he had listened.

At one point when he had stopped her, Bella had waited suspiciously, remembering how both her father and Alan claimed that her chatter irritated them, but she had been totally disarmed when Ralph had said softly to her, ‘You know,
I have to tell you that you really are the most beautiful girl I have ever seen.’

After that she had needed a second drink to cool her down, but she had refused a third. She wasn’t going to repeat the mistake she had made with Jan. Not ever.

Not that Ralph had attempted to do anything he shouldn’t. No, not for one minute. He had been most gentlemanly but yet at the same time managing to imply that he found her so attractive that he would like to be anything but gentlemanly. And he had done so without having to resort to any of the crude vulgarity that Alan would have shown. Poor Alan, he would have put up such a poor show against a man like Ralph, who was obviously very sophisticated and used to only the best of things.

When she had asked him about himself he had said simply that he couldn’t really talk about the purpose of his presence in the area, as much as he’d like to be more forthcoming.

‘National security, you understand,’ he had told Bella with a small rueful smile.

Well, of course she did.

Mindful of her neighbours and her mother, Bella refused to let him drive her all the way home. She had been thrilled, though, when he had leaned out of his car window to ask her, ‘May I telephone you?’

So thrilled, in fact, that she had almost walked off without giving him her number.

Bella had reached the gate to her front garden before she remembered that he hadn’t given her
the name of his sister or her children. Not that it mattered. It wasn’t them she was interested in.

After the heady excitement of her afternoon, it wasn’t at all in accord with her mood to walk into her kitchen and find Jan there. It reminded her of what she wanted to forget.

Coincidentally he was dressed in almost exactly the same way as Ralph had been, only the dark grey in the paisley pattern of Jan’s cravat almost exactly matched the colour of his eyes. Bella had always recognised that Jan was an extremely handsome man, probably the best-looking man she had ever seen. Tall, dark-haired, his hair thick with a slight wave that kept it close to his well-shaped head, the high cheekbones, olive skin and strong facial bone structure he shared with his mother and his sister, on him translated into film-star good looks. And yet oddly Jan did not behave like a good-looking man. There was never any small knowing smile, no oblique look, no sense in any way of him knowing that he was extremely handsome in the way that Bella knew she was stunningly pretty and that she was aware of the value of that asset. That confused Bella. They should have been two of a kind, two people who knew that their good looks set them apart from and above less attractive members of the human race; that they belonged to an exclusive group, and that their looks gave them the power to influence the decisions of others in their own favour. It both piqued and irked her that Jan seemed perfectly happy to behave and be treated as though he was merely
an ordinary Joe. His behaviour made her feel as though he was mocking and scorning her in some way that she couldn’t understand; as though he thought her beauty was something amusing and unimportant. He had already proved to her that he was immune to it. She needed desperately to get her own back and make sure that he understood the status her beauty gave her instead of laughing at it, and her.

Now, seeing him unexpectedly just when she was congratulating herself that Ralph found her attractive, brought back everything she had felt when he had rejected her, causing her to want to hit out at him.

‘What are you doing here?’ she demanded nastily. ‘I should have thought you’d have been with your fiancée.’

Ignoring her rudeness, Jan said calmly, ‘My mother and sister have been invited to stay with our friends tonight. My mother was concerned that you might worry and wonder why they hadn’t returned so I said that I’d call round and let you know before I set off back for camp.’

Oh, how typical of him to try to wrong-foot her, with his pretend courtesy and good manners. As though he or his mother and sister really cared anything about her.