Orphans of the Storm (39 page)
Dicky laughed. ‘We’re protecting an airfield not far from Wrexham in North Wales . . . pretty convenient for Liverpool, really,’ he said. ‘And it’s grand to be so near home.’ He looked at her hopefully. ‘Deb, can you give me your working hours? What about tomorrow, for instance? There’s a flick on at the Forum I wouldn’t mind seeing, and if you’re free tomorrow evening . . .’
‘I am; I’m on earlies tomorrow,’ Debbie said eagerly. ‘And I intended to go to the Forum tonight, only Biddy was going dancing and I didn’t want to leave Chloe to the tender mercies of – of someone she didn’t know very well, so it would be a real treat to go with you tomorrow instead. I’d pay for myself,’ she added quickly. ‘I earn quite a lot of money now, what with shift work and overtime and so on.’
Dicky laughed. ‘I’ll pay for us both. When I ask a girl out on a date I don’t expect her to fork out,’ he said, getting to his feet. ‘Tell you what, though, can we meet outside the Forum to save me coming all the way to Lavender Court . . . and if we could go to the early performance then I can be sure of catching the train back to my station in good time.’
Debbie agreed to this and waved him off at the door feeling truly glad that she had given up her evening with Millie. She might be seventeen – well, she was seventeen – but this would be her very first date and she was excited and thrilled that it was Dicky who had asked her out. Oh, she had been asked out before, once or twice, but she had never felt tempted to accept such invitations, because she had never forgotten Pete, who had saved her life and that of Dusty and Chloe, and she was still convinced would find her one day. She had liked him very much and was sure he had liked her, young though she had been at the time. However, she knew that he could have been posted anywhere, to any theatre of war, and now, quite suddenly, she decided it was time to stop mooning over Pete Solomon, whom she might never see again, and to start living the sort of life which Biddy and the other girls took for granted. Debbie was rather shy with strangers and often felt uneasy when young men asked her to dance. With Dicky, though, it would be different, because he was Gwen’s cousin’s friend – would have been her boyfriend – and he and Debbie had a host of acquaintances in common. Why, they had talked for an hour this evening without Debbie’s once feeling awkward or self-conscious. Yes, a date with Dicky would be fun and it would help her to erase, at last, the memory of a tall, fair-haired young man with a tanned face and steady eyes, who had obviously never given her a second thought.
When the other girls returned, Biddy with a love bite on her neck, Debbie made everyone cocoa and they all thoroughly chewed over the evening’s events before making their way to bed. Debbie slid between the sheets and lay there thinking pleasant thoughts, and presently Dusty sneaked on to her bed and curled up against her back, as he always did. I hope I dream about Dicky, Debbie thought, as she settled down to sleep, but dreams are contrary things and do not come for the asking. Instead, she dreamed of a tall, fair-haired figure, with a teasing, affectionate smile, who came calling in Lavender Court but always turned away and left before she could run down the stairs and greet him.
Next morning, when she awoke, there were tears on her cheeks.
By the time winter arrived, Debbie and Dicky were thoroughly at ease in one another’s company. They had gone several times to the cinema together, had enjoyed picnics in the park, and had also gone dancing at the Daulby Hall, though for some reason which she could not fathom Dicky had refused, at first, to take her to the Grafton.
‘But everyone goes there,’ Debbie had wailed when she had suggested they might join up with the other girls. ‘They’re a nice crowd, Dicky, honest to God they are. And the fellers are nice, too . . . well, they must be or Biddy and Sandy and Ruth wouldn’t go out with them.’
‘Aye, that’s just my point,’ Dicky had said at once. ‘Everyone does go there, all the fellers from my unit, all the seamen from the ships in the docks, every perishin’ girl who’s got two pennies to rub together, including both my sisters and a heap o’ cousins. I want to be with
you
, Debbie. I want to dance with you, not have to do the polite with half of Liverpool.’
you
, Debbie. I want to dance with you, not have to do the polite with half of Liverpool.’
Debbie had been forced to see his point and had stopped trying to persuade him to go out in a group, but she had insisted that he come back to Lavender Court so that she could introduce him to Biddy, to Mrs Batley, and to anyone else who was home on a Sunday evening. She thought that everyone had thoroughly approved of him, though Biddy had been a bit odd, now she came to think of it. Debbie, Dicky and Chloe had spent a pleasant afternoon in Prince’s Park and had returned to No. 4 with Chloe in her pushchair longing to tell everyone how she had fed the ducks, and Dusty bouncing at their heels and greeting everyone with flattened ears, a furiously waving tail, and white teeth displayed in an ingratiating grin. ‘Hello, girls! This is Dicky Barnes,’ Debbie had said to the assembled company. ‘We’ve just had a grand afternoon . . .’ She had looked around the room. ‘But where’s Biddy?’
At this point, Biddy had entered the kitchen, singing as she did so, but had stopped short when she saw them. ‘Hello, stranger!’ she had said, staring at Dicky with no very friendly expression on her small, lively face. ‘Just what . . .’
‘Oh, Biddy, this is my friend Dicky Barnes, the one I told you about,’ Debbie had said earnestly. ‘We’ve just got back from Prince’s Park and we’ve had a splendid tea, haven’t we, Dicky? Speaking for myself, I shan’t be wanting to eat again for a week, and I bet Chloe feels the same.’ She had turned to her companion. ‘Dicky, this is Biddy Callaghan, young Chloe’s mam.’
‘How do you do, Mrs Callaghan,’ Dicky had said at once. ‘Nice to meet you. I don’t mind admitting I’ve fallen in love with your daughter. She’s a real charmer; she’ll break some hearts one o’ these days.’
Biddy had given a rather ungracious sniff and bent over the pushchair to unfasten the straps and lift the child out. ‘How do ye do, Mr Barnes; and I’m Miss Callaghan, not Mrs,’ Biddy had said, rather crossly. She had turned to Debbie. ‘If you’re right, and she’s got a full belly, then she’d best go straight to bed. I’m goin’ out later . . . all right for you to babysit, or does Mr Barnes intend to tek you off out again?’
Debbie, puzzled by her friend’s apparent animosity, had been about to reply that Biddy could jolly well look elsewhere for a sitter when Chloe set up a wail. ‘Me belly ain’t full and I want me supper,’ she had said. ‘Where’s Auntie Batley? She says good lickle girls have warm bread and milk to gerr’em to sleep, and I want some now.’
This demand had broken the ice. Biddy had laughed and apologised for her daughter, and Mrs Batley, who did not work on Sunday evenings, had produced a bowl of bread and milk, and told the girls, briskly, to get the table laid for a supper of farmhouse scramble, followed by blackberry pie and custard. She had invited Dicky to join them but he had courteously refused, assuring Mrs Batley that the meal both smelt and looked delicious, but that he had to get back to his airfield before the witching hour of ten o’clock, and would be hard pressed to do so unless he left them at once.
But now, as she popped the last carrot into the large pan of cold water, Debbie reflected that the situation was far easier. Dicky often came to the house – sometimes she returned from a shift to find him sitting cross-legged on the hearthrug, playing with Chloe and the dog, or helping Mrs Batley to put away her shopping, or simply leaning against the sink, chatting to Biddy whilst she prepared vegetables or washed the crocks. The previous week he had actually gone along to the Grafton ballroom and had danced twice with Biddy and once with Sandra, though the rest of the time he had spent with Debbie.
By now, he was accepted by everyone at No. 4 as Debbie’s boyfriend, and she was beginning to worry a little as his attentions grew warmer. It was nice having someone who would take you to the cinema or the theatre, out for picnics, or even for long dreamy walks beside the river, but she had no desire to end up in Biddy’s situation, and always called a halt to Dicky’s love-making far sooner than he wished. She supposed she would have to tell him that she was saving herself for marriage, but this sounded both priggish and forward, particularly as she had no wish, as yet, to marry anyone.
Debbie lugged the heavy pan across the kitchen and stood it on the stove. Rationing was bad enough, but shortages were worse for there were a number of unrationed goods which were simply unobtainable, and even Mrs Batley, with her genius for making a meal out of nothing, was finding it difficult to feed her brood and herself, to say nothing of Dusty. Tonight, however, Mrs Batley had cooked one of her specialities. She had managed to get some fish and had made a glorious fish pie, so all Debbie had to do was pop it in the oven at around six o’clock and pull the vegetables over the flame. Humming to herself, Debbie made a pot of tea, poured a cup, and then remembered that it was Chloe’s day with the childminder who lived a couple of hundred yards along the road from Lavender Court. She knew that Biddy was on a late, so she had best run along there herself and try to get back before the vegetables boiled over. She grabbed her coat and draped it round her shoulders, then hurried along the passage to the door, crossed the court, and ran hard until she reached the childminder’s house on Horatio Street. She would have knocked on the door, but as she approached it shot open and the childminder stood framed in the doorway, looking harassed. ‘I’m glad you’ve come, Miss Ryan,’ she said agitatedly. ‘Miss Callaghan promised she’d fetch the littl’un early when I telled her me cousin’s eldest is going to give me a home perm, but she’s not come near nor by.’
‘She’s on a late,’ Debbie said, rather puzzled. She picked Chloe up and sat her on her hip. ‘Still, I’m here now. Thanks very much for taking care of her.’
Once again, she set off at a brisk trot, the child bumping on her hip, and was about to turn into Lavender Court when Chloe squeaked: ‘Mammy! There’s my mammy, Deb, and she’s wit’ me friend Dicky.’
Startled, Debbie stared in the direction of the child’s pointing finger, then laughed and shook her head. ‘No, darling, that’s not your mammy and it’s not Dicky either. It’s a lady wearing a coat and headscarf just like your mammy’s. Wait till they turn the corner, and then you’ll see.’
The child stared, then sagged against Debbie’s shoulder. ‘No, it ain’t my mammy,’ she agreed mournfully, then brightened. ‘But I doesn’t care, Debbie, ’cos I love you best of anyone in the whole world . . . well, next to Dusty, that is.’
Debbie was touched by this remark but assured her small friend, as they turned into Lavender Court, that she could not possibly mean what she had said. ‘Children love their mammies best, then their aunties, and then their friends,’ she told her. ‘And I’m very sure your mammy loves you best.’
‘No she don’t,’ the small realist said obstinately. ‘She loves Uncle Freddy, Uncle Padraig and Uncle Roddy best. She’d far rather be wit’ one of them than wit’ me.’
Debbie was horrified. She had not realised that Chloe watched her mother’s antics so closely, for she had to admit that Biddy did indeed play the field. However, it would not do to let the child suspect that she had hit the nail on the head, so she laughed, kissed Chloe’s round, pink cheek, and told her that she was much mistaken. ‘Mammy loves you best of all, but she does like to go dancing and to see a flick occasionally,’ she said. ‘You can’t take her to the cinema, can you, or to a dance? So the fellers you mention are like workmates, really; pals to go about with when you’re tucked up in bed.’
Chloe seemed about to argue, but at this point they entered the kitchen and Debbie had to put her down and rush over to lower the gas, for the vegetables were beginning to boil briskly. Behind her, Chloe pattered over to the pantry and stood on tiptoe to examine the food on the lower shelf. ‘Can I have a butty, Auntie Deb?’ she asked hopefully. ‘I can see a big bowl of dripping; I loves bread and drippin’, so I does.’
And Debbie, spreading dripping on a thick slice of bread and handing it to her small companion, could only be thankful that the subject of ‘uncles’ seemed to have been forgotten.
Chapter TwelveMay 1945
Debbie and Millie stood side by side at their bench, doing the work which they had done almost every day now for five long years. Debbie reflected that she truly believed she could assemble a wireless set in her sleep and thought that Millie could probably do the same. But now, suddenly, it no longer seemed important, because the war was officially over and tomorrow was VE Day – Victory in Europe – though the troops in the Far East still fought on, for it was only the Germans who had surrendered, and not the Japanese.
‘What’ll you do tomorrow, Deb?’ Millie said presently, pausing for a moment in the constant repetitive work. ‘There’s to be a street party down our way but it’s mainly for the kids. I reckon me and Mam will go up to St George’s Plateau ’cos there’ll be fireworks there and all sorts; want to come along?’
‘We’re having a street party . . . or rather a Lavender Court party, with everyone providing as much food as they can spare,’ Debbie told her. ‘The school kids have made masses of paper hats and one of the neighbours got a roll of newsprint to cover the tables with. Me and some of the other girls have made crackers with bits of stuff inside, only we couldn’t get anything to make them pop when they’re pulled, which was a bit disappointing. Still, I reckon the kids aren’t going to complain. Most of us have hoarded tins of fruit, and some have had parcels from folk in the States with tinned ham, tinned salmon and that, so there’ll be quite a spread.’
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