Queen of the Mersey (14 page)

The news she heard was dreadful; British forces lost their bid to defend Norway and retired, defeated; Hitler invaded Holland, Belgium and Luxembourg, then entered France. At the beginning of June, there was a great evacuation from Dunkirk, when more than 300,000 British and French troops were transported across the English Channel, including Lieutenant Roderick Oliver and Private William Monaghan. The channel was all that separated Britain from the approaching enemy. A few days later, France fell and Britain stood alone.

It was a relief to switch the wireless off and take herself to the sun-kissed sands where the water, no longer angry, lapped lazily onto the shore, trickling over her bare feet, or retire to the den with one of her favourite books – she had joined Caerdovey library. Sometimes, she would sit in the kitchen and talk to Gwen, who was always glad of her company. The war seemed very far away and she couldn’t imagine it shattering the peace of Caerdovey.

At the end of June, they had a party. Gwen made one of her famous cakes, using the last of the glacé cherries. June was the month the girls had their birthdays; Hester and Mary were six, and Queenie turned fifteen. The party was for them all.

The most startling news of all came, not from the wireless, but when she was in the Post Office buying a stamp for her weekly letter to Laura.

‘Last night, the air raid siren went in Liverpool,’ the postmistress, another Mrs Jones, told her. ‘My nephew lives Childwall way and he rang and told me.’

‘Was anybody hurt?’ Queenie’s heart did a somersault.

‘No, lovey. No bombs fell, but it was the first time and everyone got a terrible fright.’

There were more air raids in July. Bombs were dropped, but in harmless places, like fields, except for one that hit a house, though the occupants weren’t injured. Laura wrote to say they could come home when school finished, but be prepared to return immediately if the air raids got worse, even if it meant them going back by train.

Queenie was in Glover Street when she experienced her first air raid. Hester had gone to bed, and Laura was on afternoons and not expected home for another hour.

She was listening to the wireless, to a man with the deepest voice she’d ever heard singing, ‘Ole Man River’, when the siren went. It was an eerie sound, an up and down wail that made her blood curdle. As soon as it faded, it was followed by the rumble of aircraft overhead. She crept into Laura’s room where Hester was asleep in the double bed, and sat on the edge, thinking of Roddy who was so anxious for his daughter to be safe, imagining a bomb dropping directly on to the house, killing them both, imagining Roddy’s dear face when he learnt that Hester was dead. She dithered over whether to wake up the little girl and take her to the shelter or leave her to sleep in peace, and almost collapsed in relief when the All Clear sounded.

Laura arrived home, very late, her face grim. ‘Wasn’t it awful? We were all pouring out of work when the siren went, so we all had to pour back and go down to the shelter.’

‘I was petrified,’ Queenie confessed.

Next morning, they heard that bombs had been dropped, but once again had fallen harmlessly in fields. But that wasn’t the case a few days later when a woman was killed when her house in Birkenhead received a direct hit. The next night, four people died in Wallasey and another four were seriously injured.

‘That’s it!’ Laura said when she heard the news. ‘You’re going back. I’ll find out about the trains.’

But there was no need for Laura to find out anything. A WVS lady came to the house later to say coaches were leaving from the usual place at noon the next day.

‘I don’t know how many coaches there’ll be, but I’d get the children there early, if I were you, Mrs Oliver, else you’ll find it’s standing room only.

Everyone’s desperate to get their children out of harm’s way. And make sure they get on the right coach. They’re not all going to Wales.’

It was late in the afternoon when the three girls were taken to The Old School House in Mrs Davies’s little black car. To Queenie’s dismay, Gwen didn’t appear the least bit pleased to see them. She pushed them into the kitchen, closed the door, but stayed outside. Hester and Mary ran upstairs, but Queenie was curious to know why Gwen was behaving so oddly.

The two women seemed to be engaged in a heated argument. Queenie opened the door a crack and listened.

‘I can’t put them somewhere else, Gwen,’ Mrs Davies was saying irritably, ‘not even for a few weeks. Caerdovey’s bursting at the seams. We’ve more evacuees than ever now the raids have started in earnest.’

‘But Edna,’ Gwen hissed, ‘he’s still here. He’s not going back to Manchester until September.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous, Gwen. You’ve always had too much imagination. That …

that thing was only a rumour. There was never any proof.’

‘There’s no smoke without fire, Edna,’ Gwen said stiffly.

‘Well, there’s nothing I can do. If you’re all that concerned, you’ll just have to keep an eye on the girls, but it’s my opinion you’re worrying over nothing.’

With that, Mrs Davies turned on her heel and left.

Queenie was innocently staring out of the window when Gwen came in, wondering what on earth the conversation had meant. It was only then she noticed the young man sitting in a deckchair beneath the apple tree, eyes closed as he soaked up the August sun.

‘Who’s that?’ she asked.

‘That’s Carl, Mrs Merton’s son,’ Gwen said tightly.

‘I didn’t know Mrs Merton had a son. Why haven’t we seen him before?’

‘Because he’s at university in Manchester and, until now, you haven’t been here when he’s home. He doesn’t usually stay long. Caerdovey’s too quiet for him.’

Gwen grabbed Queenie’s arm and clutched it so tightly that she winced with pain.

‘Keep well away from Carl Merton, lovey,’ she pleaded. There was a raw, desperate edge to her voice. ‘The girls too. You’re not to let them anywhere near him.’

Queenie glanced again at the young man, sleeping innocently beneath the apple tree. At that moment, the sun disappeared behind a cloud and the garden became full of dark shadows. The leaves on the tree shook, caught by a sudden, violent wind. She shivered as Gwen’s words hammered against her brain. She’d been only too glad to get back to Caerdovey after the scare of the raids, but had they returned to something even more terrifying?

Chapter 5

Gwen had been talking nonsense, Queenie decided after a few days. Carl Merton seemed perfectly harmless. She’d come back, tired after the long journey, worried about Laura being left to face the air raids on her own, and had let Gwen’s hysterical outburst get to her when there was no need. Even so, a little thread of fear remained at the back of her mind.

Mrs Merton was obviously glad to have her son home. She went into her factory very late or didn’t go at all, and had been heard to laugh for the first time, a high-pitched girlish giggle. She even dressed differently, in summer frocks and high-heeled shoes. Mother and son went out to dinner some evenings, to Barmouth or Harlech where they had friends. They used Carl’s car, which was long and grey and didn’t have a roof.

‘It’s called a sports car,’ Gwen said. ‘My brother-in-law said they cost the earth. As far as Mrs Merton is concerned, nothing’s too good for her Carl.’ Her face was bitter.

Carl Merton was twenty. He was a squat young man with broad shoulders and heavily muscled arms. His brown hair was very thick and his eyebrows protruded like two little shelves over eyes that never seemed properly open, so that he always looked half-asleep.

So far, he and the girls hadn’t met. When he was in, he spent a lot of time in the garden, sunbathing, or hitting a ball against the wall with a tennis racquet. Gwen refused to let them out when he was there. If they wanted to go to the sands, she made them leave by the front and use the path Queenie had discovered on her first visit.

‘I don’t want him to see you,’ she would hiss. ‘You’re to come back the same way.’

‘Why, what will he do if does see us?’ Queenie asked. She thought Gwen was being over-protective. Surely Carl Merton wasn’t likely to leap up from his deckchair and attack all three of them on the spot?

Gwen merely shrugged and said it was better to be safe than sorry. ‘He’ll be off soon. He usually goes back to Manchester before the new term starts. There’s more going on there.’

It was therefore a relief when, on the final day of August, Gwen announced that Carl was leaving Caerdovey the next day. ‘He’s gone to look for petrol, the black market stuff. He used up all his ration while he was home.’ She sniffed.

‘He couldn’t possibly go on the bus and train, not like ordinary people.’

The wireless had been on all night playing music, very loud. One of the songs Queenie would never forget was ‘Over the Rainbow’, sung by a girl with a lovely, passionate voice. Gwen had been told to prepare an extra-special dinner and get two bottles of wine out of the cupboard where it was stored. Above the music, Mrs Merton’s shrill laughter could be heard and Carl’s answering guffaw. They were clearly having a good time on his last night at home.

It was late when the wireless was finally turned off. Outside, it was pitch dark and, in the distance, the Irish Sea could be heard lapping briskly on to the shore. The passing traffic had ceased. There were footsteps on the stairs, a giggle when Mrs Merton tripped – she must have drunk too much wine. She bade her son goodnight. A door closed, followed, seconds later, by another.

Queenie was used to staying up late, waiting for her mother to come home, and rarely fell asleep before midnight. The noise downstairs hadn’t bothered her.

She snuggled under the bedclothes, looking forward to tomorrow when Carl Merton would be gone and everything would be back to normal. Gwen had been talking through her hat, her fears had been groundless.

She didn’t hear the door open or the man enter the room. The thing that woke her was the hand pressing against her mouth, so hard that she could hardly breathe.

She gagged and a voice rasped in her ear. ‘Don’t make a sound, or I’ll kill you and then I’ll kill your little friends.’

She gagged again. The hand eased a bit and she drew in a hoarse, sharp breath.

The smell of alcohol was strong and sickly, and she could feel little flecks of spittle on her face.

‘I’ve been watching you, Queenie,’ Carl Merton whispered. ‘I watched you on the beach, paddling in the water, your skirt pulled up around your thighs. You knew I was watching, didn’t you? That’s why you did it,’ he gave a long, deep sigh, ‘for me. I saw you that first day, looking at me through the window when you thought I was asleep. This is what you’ve been waiting for, isn’t it?’ His other hand slid under the covers of the bed and began to caress her.

Queenie struggled, but he was much too strong for her. She thought about biting the hand over her mouth, drawing blood, screaming at the top of her voice, but Gwen slept downstairs and was unlikely to hear and Mrs Merton was probably in a drunken stupor – Mam had slept like a log and couldn’t be roused when she’d had too much to drink. The only people who would wake would be the girls in the nearby beds and the man, Carl Merton, had threatened to kill them. In the cold light of day, she might have seen the threat as an empty one, but it was dark and she was petrified, her body melting away to liquid with fear.

What happened next, she was never sure, whether she fainted, or merely switched herself off to avoid the horror that was happening. When she returned to consciousness, or reality, Carl Merton had gone, but she knew he’d done something to her. Her tummy was hurting badly and her legs throbbed.

She didn’t even try to sleep, too scared to close her eyes in case he came back.

Yet despite this, she must have dropped off, because when she looked, a pale rim of light shone under the curtains. It was morning and she wondered if it had all been a dream.

‘You look pale, lovey. Didn’t you sleep well?’

Queenie shook her head and Gwen said she hadn’t either. ‘The wireless kept me awake and the noise that pair were making. Mind you, I’m not surprised. I’ve just collected these from the sitting room.’ She pointed to the empty bottles on the draining board. ‘They finished off a whole bottle of whisky between them, as well as the wine. Still, it didn’t stop them from getting up early. They’ll be well on their way to Manchester by now.’

‘Carl’s gone?’ She was surprised she hadn’t heard him leave.

‘They both have. They left at the crack of dawn. Mrs Merton always goes back with him and stays a few days. She can’t bear to say goodbye. She thinks far too much of that boy. It isn’t natural.’ Her lips curled. ‘He can’t do anything wrong. I’d like to bet she won’t let him go in the Forces next year when he’s twenty-one. She’ll send him abroad, to somewhere like America, out of harm’s way.’

Queenie found it an effort to leave the house on Monday when school started again. She had to force herself to take the girls. She’d felt the same over the weekend; reluctant to go to the shore, to Mass, to visit Jimmy’s old lady who’d invited them to tea. She was actually glad it had rained and they’d been able to spend most of the time in the den, where Hester and Mary played house with their dolls, some cracked dishes and an old kettle they’d found in one of the chests.

On Saturday, they argued over everything, getting on her nerves to such a degree that she lost patience and shouted at them for the very first time, then burst into tears at the sight of their shocked faces.

‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ she wept. ‘I didn’t mean to shout.’

They were beside her within seconds, stroking her hair, patting her face, both trying to climb on her knee. They would never quarrel again, they promised.

Never, ever.

‘We didn’t mean to upset you.’ Hester was close to tears herself.

‘I’m not upset. I don’t know what I am,’ Queenie wailed. It would have been nice to talk to someone about Carl Merton, what he’d done – not the girls, of course, someone older. But she felt Gwen wasn’t the right person, which meant there was only Laura and she’d have to put it in a letter and she could never write it down. And then it might never have happened at all. It might really have been just a dream, a terrible nightmare, something which she’d much prefer to believe, even though her tummy still hurt and there’d been spots of blood on her nightie, which she had to scrub off before putting it with the washing for Gwen to do. She had no idea where the blood had come from because she wasn’t due a period.