Through the Storm (32 page)

From then on, Kitty found him waiting for her at the bus stop every night. He would take her to Jack Doyle’s for a candlelit supper which he’d cooked himself – Jack was always mysteriously elsewhere. One Sunday, they caught the train to Southport where they strolled, window-shopping, through a snowstorm and Glyn tried to coax her into choosing an engagement ring from a jeweller’s window. The following weekend they went to Chester and ate lunch in such a grand hotel that Kitty was the only woman not wearing a fur coat. When she pointed this out, Glyn immediately offered to buy her one. Occasionally, they caught an early train into bomb-scarred Liverpool or wandered along the busy Dock Road. Glyn seemed to see the world as a more vivid, interesting place than most people, pointing out sights and sounds that Kitty would never have noticed on her own. Whatever they did, wherever they were, he always managed to turn it into an adventure.

‘I hardly ever see you,’ Jimmy complained to Kitty.

‘He’ll be gone soon and everything will be back to normal,’ she replied, half dreading the return to her usual humdrum life.

Three weeks later, after the most strenuous convalescence anyone could have had, Glyn returned to the hospital and was pronounced fit. He was ordered down to Chatham in two days’ time where he’d be found another ship. That night, wearing his sailor’s uniform for the first time, and looking even more devil-may-care than usual in the round hat, he took Kitty to a dark little pub just off Lime Street which they had decided was their favourite, and formally proposed marriage. ‘There’s just time for us to get a twenty-four-hour licence.’

Kitty was sorely tempted to accept. Six months ago, she might well have done, but she recalled Harriet’s advice: ‘Whatever you do, Kitty, don’t marry the first man who proposes just so you can have “Mrs” in front
of
your name.’ It was unlikely that she would ever meet anyone else like Glyn again. She hoped she wasn’t making the greatest mistake of her life by turning down this extraordinary man. ‘I’m sorry, Glyn, but I don’t love you,’ she answered sadly.

‘But I’ve enough love for both of us.’ He’d never looked more serious. His face was grave, almost tragic, as if he had already known what her answer would be.

‘But that wouldn’t be fair, either on you or on me,’ she cried. ‘We’d both be missing something.’

‘Oh, damn this bloody war,’ he cursed. ‘I’ve been waiting for a girl like you all my life. If only we’d had more time!’

Kitty felt her heart could easily break when she saw the bleak expression on his normally cheerful face.

‘Could you grow to love me, Kitty?’ he pleaded.

She couldn’t bear to hurt his feelings. She liked him more than any person she’d ever known. She might even love him, but not in the way he wanted, at least not yet. ‘Possibly,’ she whispered.

‘Does that mean we could get engaged?’ he said eagerly.

Kitty’s heart fell. She didn’t want to raise his hopes, then dash them later. ‘I’d sooner not, Glyn. Let’s be friends, good friends. We’ll write to each other – and see each other when you get leave. You can always stay with Jack.’

He sighed and made a face. ‘I suppose that’ll just have to do.’ He stroked her cheek and kissed her softly on the lips. ‘I still think you’re the only woman for me, Kitty Quigley.’

‘Perhaps I am, Glyn,’ she replied shakily. ‘You never know, the time might come when I’ll realise that for meself.’

She genuinely hoped it might one day turn out to be true.

Singapore fell, as Calum Reilly had predicted it would, in the middle of February, when the British general went out with a white flag and surrendered to the Japanese. Eighty-five thousand Allied troops were either lost or taken prisoner. Across the Pacific, Australia and New Zealand trembled.

On the BBC that night, Winston Churchill told the nation, ‘So far we have not failed. We shall not fail now. Move forward steadfastly together into the storm and through the storm.’

‘What does he mean, we haven’t failed?’ Jack Doyle demanded in the King’s Arms. ‘What’s the fall of Singapore if it isn’t a failure?’

‘I dunno, Jack,’ Paddy O’Hara said gloomily. ‘Seems to me, we’re failing all round at the moment.’

Jack wished Glyn Thomas were there because he would inevitably provoke an argument and somehow prove they were winning, which was what everybody desperately wanted to believe. Jack really missed Glyn.

So did Kitty. She felt as if a light had gone out of her life, a brilliant, dazzling light that would never be switched on again. When Stan Taylor asked her out – his transfer back to Plymouth had been delayed a further three months – she spent the entire evening trying to explain how she felt.

‘There’ll be another light, Kitty,’ he comforted.

‘Will there?’ she asked plaintively. ‘Perhaps I should have agreed to marry him if I miss him so much.’

‘I don’t think so. You wouldn’t have had doubts if you really loved him. You’d have snapped up his proposal like a shot.’

‘I suppose so,’ Kitty sighed. ‘It’s dead stupid, isn’t it, getting all upset after you’ve turned someone down.’

‘You’ll get over it.’

Kitty managed a smile. ‘I tried telling you that when you split up with Daphne. You didn’t believe me.’

‘I do now,’ he said firmly.

‘Do you?’ She glanced at him in surprise. He was a tall, lean man with scarcely an ounce of spare fat on him. His hollow cheeks and deep-set eyes gave him a gaunt, hungry look which many of the nurses found attractive. His skin had a slight yellow tinge as a result of jaundice as a child, making him appear as if he had a permanent tan. This had precluded him from active service in the Navy and left him bound to a desk which he hated. ‘Don’t tell me you’ve got over Daphne already?

‘Already! It’s nearly two months since she ditched me. You can’t stay brokenhearted for ever, particularly when there’s a war on.’

‘I’m ever so glad, Stan.’ She was beginning to like him as a friend. There’d never been the slightest hint of romance between them. ‘I really hope you meet someone else you’ll love as much as you did Daphne.’

‘I already have, someone much nicer than Daphne ever was!’

Although she pleaded with him to reveal who it was, he adamantly refused. ‘I haven’t told her yet. When the time’s ripe, Kitty, you’ll be the first to know.

Jimmy Quigley married Theresa Beamish at half-past two on a cold wet Saturday when there were still dirty clumps of frozen snow on the ground and the sky was black enough for midnight.

Only a few people from Pearl Street braved the icy winds to see the newly married couple emerge from the church and the single photo taken of the wedding showed an unsmiling bride with her two sulky children, though the bridegroom looked as if he’d just scooped the pools. Kitty Quigley was obviously doing her best to appear happy for her dad, and the best man, an unwilling Jack Doyle, would clearly have preferred to be somewhere else. Only the bride’s parents beamed cheerfully at the photographer the way proper wedding guests were supposed to do.

‘Perhaps they were only too glad to get rid of her,’ Sheila Reilly suggested when Kitty showed her the photo a week later.

‘I wouldn’t be surprised,’ Kitty said miserably. ‘Honestly, Sheil, I feel ashamed. She’s cleaned the house from top to bottom since she moved in. You’d think she’d found it filthy dirty, or something. We’re not even that clean in the hospital. And the washing! She’s forever washing, I don’t know where she finds it. Thank God she has a job in the evenings, so we can have a bit of peace.’ Theresa had a part-time job in a fish and chip shop in Marsh Lane.

‘What does your dad think?’

‘Oh, he thinks it’s the gear. He keeps pointing out how much better Theresa does his shirts compared to me; they’re whiter and she irons them without a single crease.’

Sheila was doing her own ironing, despite the fact it was Sunday and supposed to be a day of rest. She paused and said thoughtfully, ‘I must say, he looks dead pleased with himself when I see him out. He’s like a new man altogether.’

Kitty thought about the nights when she lay with her head beneath the covers trying to shut out the noise of the bedsprings creaking in the front bedroom and her dad’s anguished groans. It seemed to go on for ages and ages and she felt like an eavesdropper. She was neither disgusted nor shocked, more embarrassed at this highly vocal evidence of passion on the part of her dad, whom she’d thought long past it. It was too intimate to tell Sheila, but she would have loved to know if the groans implied pleasure, not pain, and what was the meaning of the shrill little scream, the only sound from Theresa, which usually came just before the creaking of the bedsprings stopped?

‘I don’t know what I’m going to do with meself next week when I’m on afternoons,’ she said instead. ‘It
wasn’t
so bad last week. I was only in an hour or so before Theresa took herself off to work. Today, for instance, I’ve been bored out of me mind, with madam cleaning all around me and refusing to let me lend a hand, pointing out it’s
her
house now, not mine. I’m not even allowed in the kitchen.’

‘Never mind, luv,’ Sheila said sympathetically. ‘You can always come here.’

‘I know, Sheil, but I’m beginning to feel a bit like a stateless person. I’ve no real home. I don’t belong anywhere.’

Jessica Fleming was the first to see one; two, in fact, both emerging out of Rita’s flat one blowy morning early in March. They were tall fair-haired, athletic young men, as alike as brothers, with bright eyes and healthy sunburnt complexions. The well-tailored uniforms fitted their broad-shouldered frames to absolute perfection; more beige than khaki, the material had a silky, expensive sheen.

Americans! The men touched their caps and bade her ‘Good morning, ma’am,’ with a confident, easy-going charm. They beamed at Penny, and one murmured she was definitely going to be a heartbreaker when she grew up. Penny beamed back, already well aware of her own charm.

Jessica returned their greetings politely and was conscious of the fact that both had turned to eye her up from behind as she unlocked the garage door and went inside.

She was wheeling the bikes outside to be displayed on the stand which Jack Doyle had knocked up out of an old plank of wood, when Rita appeared carrying a paper bag, eyes aglow with excitement. ‘Did you see them? Oh, aren’t they gorgeous? Look what they gave me!’ She opened the bag and Jessica peered inside. It was full of small bars of toffee and chocolate. ‘Sweets, but they
call
it candy.’ She insisted Jessica take the lot. ‘I’ve still plenty upstairs. You can give some to the kids in your street if there’s too much for Penny.’

‘Thanks, Rita.’ Jessica always felt uncomfortable taking gifts from Rita when she considered the way she’d earned them.

‘That’s not all!’ Rita’s eyes glowed even more. She took a cellophane packet out of the pocket of her dressing gown. ‘Nylons! This pair’s for you. They’re a size ten.’

‘Nylons!’ Jessica said weakly. She’d felt a bit low over the last few days because she was in the middle of another period and her forty-sixth birthday rapidly approached. Not only that, on the news that morning it had been announced that the basic petrol ration would disappear altogether at the end of July, which meant even more cars would be laid up for the duration so there’d be little use for the garage as a source of petrol and the repair side of the business would dry up completely. Even worse, she wouldn’t be able to use the van. But all this was forgotten when she took the cellophane packet and stared in awe at her first pair of nylons. They were like glass, with stark black seams. ‘They’re completely sheer!’ she gasped. ‘I bet you couldn’t tell you had stockings on from the front.’

‘They’re the gear, aren’t they?’ Rita said smugly.

‘Oh, Rita,’ Jessica cried emotionally. ‘You’re ever such a kind person, you really are. Where did you meet the Americans?’

‘The Yanks? Some pub in town. I was with this chap, Tommy, and they were with two girls. We all came back together and had a party, though the girls had to leave early for work. They’re coming again this weekend with a few of their mates. Why don’t you come, Jess?’ Rita offered generously for the umpteenth time.

Jessica once again refused, saying she couldn’t leave
Penny
, and anyway the men had looked very young. ‘I’m old enough to be their mother – well, almost.’

People began to remark, some bitterly, that you’d think there’d been an invasion. American tanks rolled triumphantly off the ships in the Dockie, along Miller’s Bridge and onwards to the main camp at Burtonwood and other sites in Liverpool, whilst a section of the population, consisting mainly of young children, lined the route and welcomed them with the soon-to-be-familiar cry of, ‘Got any gum, chum?’ Suddenly, everywhere you looked, there were brash, noisy, gum-chewing GIs in their expensive, well-cut uniforms – far superior to anything the ordinary British forces wore – acting as if they owned the place with their complacent and irritating self-confidence and automatic assumption that they were God’s gift to women and the best buddy of every man.

‘Overpaid, overfed, oversexed – and over here,’ the men grumbled.

This was undoubtedly true, and all four facts were much appreciated by the young women. Yanks appeared to be made of money, though they made up for this by being generous to a fault. Their girlfriends were sure to be taken to the best restaurants, where they’d be bought the best food and the best wine, and end up being showered with gifts of candy, nylons or expensive scent. Many a father found his opinion of the Yanks altering rapidly when presented with an entire box of Camels or Lucky Strikes or a bottle of American whisky.

No-one did more to foster Anglo-American relations than Rita Mott. Jessica would arrive for work and find a party still in progress which would carry on all day, and the same party would still be merrily in force when the time came to lock up for the night.

GIs came down to see what Jessica was up to and frequently gave a hand. She got to know a few of the
regulars
by name and when they returned they brought oranges and bananas for Penny, fruit which Jessica hadn’t seen in years. They were nice boys, good-natured and eager to please, and seemed more appreciative of the fact that Rita was providing them with a home from home, rather than anything else she might be offering. None appeared the least bit surprised to see Jessica doing a man’s job and to her delight, one actually paid thirty pounds for the Austin Seven she’d been hoarding till after the war, which meant she’d made one hundred per cent profit.