Through the Storm (41 page)

There was a pause. ‘Did you mean all those things you said about me?’ he asked casually.

‘What things were they?’ Jessica’s memory of the previous day’s events was decidedly fuzzy.

‘Something about me having little faith in human nature. I pre-judge people and consider myself superior.’

Jessica thought hard. ‘Yes, I think I did.’

He made a humphing sound. ‘You’re no angel yourself.’

‘The thing is, I know it and you don’t,’ she said crisply.

‘Hmm. I wonder if you’re right.’

‘You could always ask your wife.’ She felt curious to know if there was a woman on earth crazy enough to have taken him on. It was hard to imagine him with a family.

‘I would need paranormal powers to do that. My wife died eighteen years ago.’

‘I’m sorry,’ she said quickly.

‘It’s a bit late for sympathy, but thanks,’ he barked.

‘Do you have any children?’

‘One son, Peter, nineteen. He’s in the army and has just been despatched to Australia, of all places.’ For the very first time, there was a soft edge to his normally tough, terse voice. ‘Anyway,’ he continued brusquely, ‘the reason I came to see you yesterday is we’re having a concert, a big one this time, open to all ranks. It’s being held in the main hangar of the base in Burtonwood on June seventh and we’d like you to sing. The star turn is a top comedian flying over especially from the States, so you’d only be part of the supporting bill.’

‘I think I could stand that,’ said Jessica.

Rita Mott crept in and out of the workshop all day and spoke to Jessica only in a whisper.

‘For goodness’ sake, Rita,’ Jessica exploded eventually. ‘Stop acting as if I’m an invalid or something. I’ve completely recovered. I’m fine.’

‘You can’t have got over losing Arthur so quickly, surely?’

‘You’re forgetting I’d already left Arthur. Even so, I’m very upset he’s gone, but I can’t cry for ever, can I?’

‘You’re ever so brave, Jess,’ Rita whispered.

‘I’m not. My father used to say I was as hard as nails – and I am. Do please stop whispering, Rita, I can hardly hear you.’

‘Have you told Penny yet?’ Rita asked in a normal voice.

‘No, and I shan’t. I shall probably tell her when she’s older and more able to understand.’

Rita furrowed her brow. ‘I wonder how I’d feel if Den was killed?’

‘Try not to think about it,’ Jessica advised. ‘Where is Den now, by the way?’

‘I’m not sure. Last time he wrote, he was still in that funny place in India. I haven’t had a letter lately.’ She looked at Jess, still frowning. ‘Yesterday, when you were asleep, I wondered if I should give up on me parties for a while. Imagine if I got a telegram to say Den was dead! I’d feel terrible if I thought I’d been enjoying meself at the same time as he was killed.’

Nowadays, Rita’s friends consisted of black Yanks from the storage depot in Marsh Lane, along with a couple of women who’d become regulars. According to Rita, the blacks were true gentlemen and far preferable to the whites.

‘I shouldn’t bother,’ Jessica said carelessly, her mind by now on what she would wear for the concert in Burtonwood. Apart from which, Rita’s hypocrisy seemed even worse than her own. ‘You’ve had so many parties, Rita. What will a few more matter?’

Which, considering what was to happen later, was the worst possible advice Jessica could have given.

On Sunday, Jessica filled the van with the remainder of her petrol ration, and, leaving Penny with the Reillys, drove up to the Lake District to collect Arthur’s things. She took her set of keys in case the museum hadn’t appointed a new curator when Arthur left and the place was unoccupied. After ringing the bell on the side door several times, she noticed a small card attached to the main entrance which said, MUSEUM CLOSED INDEFINITELY, so let herself in.

It was rather eerie walking through the ground and first floors full of glass cases containing ancient relics which had survived civilisations several thousands of years old, as well as numerous broken, but priceless, statues which were missing several vital parts. Her footsteps sounded exceptionally loud on the mosaictiled
floor
. At one point, she froze, hearing matching footsteps from above and thinking there was someone coming down to meet her, but all was silent and she realised the sound was merely an echo.

The large flat was dusty, but as neat as a pin. Arthur had always been a tidy person and had put everything away before he left. Jessica quickly sorted through his papers, most of which were concerned with the museum’s affairs. One of these days, she must write to the trustees and tell them Arthur was dead. They might be expecting him to take up the job of curator again once the war was over. She packed his clothes: the smart suits and silk shirts which he used to wear when he was a businessman in Calderstones, the old trousers and rough tweed jacket he’d gladly turned to when they’d moved to Bootle and he’d got a job, much to her disgust, as a lorry driver. He’d always loved driving.

‘Poor Arthur,’ Jess whispered. ‘You would have been much better off with another woman.’

She sorted through the dishes and the utensils in the kitchen. Most she left behind. They might be useful to whoever took over the flat at some time in the future. If not, they could throw them away. She did the same with the ornaments which had been bought for a much bigger house. There was no place for them in Pearl Street. After hesitating over an elegant lamp with a peach-coloured ceramic base and matching pleated shade which had cost the earth in George Henry Lee’s, Jessica decided to discard it. For one thing, she had no electricity, and for another, she felt strangely reluctant to weigh herself down with bulky possessions, though she’d take the radiogram, assuming she would be able to get it down the stairs. Perhaps she could swop it with Sheila for her battery wireless. She’d really missed a wireless since moving back to Bootle, and they were impossible to buy, either new or secondhand.

Penny’s room was the last she entered. The drawers
were
full of baby clothes. Jessica had never thrown a single item away. Perhaps even then, twenty months ago, there’d been the germ of the idea that she’d return to Jack Doyle and the clothes might be needed again. Some of the tiniest gowns and woolly matinee jackets were unworn because Penny had been such a big baby, over ten pounds, and the clothes were already too small.

Jessica sat down on the little chintz chair which she had chosen so carefully for the nursery and wept. Perhaps if she and Arthur had had babies of their own, things might have turned out very differently. She wouldn’t have been nearly so selfish, for one thing. Penny was the only person she’d ever put before herself.

She packed the clothes carefully, along with the few toys that still remained, and began to carry the parcels and suitcases down to the van, managing to struggle, successfully, with the radiogram. Next week some time, she’d take some of the things to the WVS in Bootle. Before leaving the flat with the final load, she paused in front of the picture window in the lounge. The view was truly spectacular; the trees in full blossom, the bushes blazing, the hills a myriad shades of green. The trunks of the silver birches flashed and sparkled in the distance. There was, as usual, not a single soul to be seen.

But Jessica paused before this panoramic vista of nature in all its glory for merely a few seconds. It made her flesh creep, just as the inside of the empty museum made her flesh creep even more. She turned on her heel and ran down the stairs, along the tiled floors, hearing her footsteps echoing somewhere behind. She was trembling by the time she slammed the door and put the keys through the letterbox.

As she raced home through the peaceful countryside, urging the van to its maximum speed, she felt as if a final curtain had been drawn. Now Arthur had truly gone, and she and Penny were on their own for good.

‘What’s the world coming to?’ gasped Fintan Kelly when he crawled out of bed one morning and found his call-up papers lying on the doormat of number 18. ‘I’m forty-bloody-one!’ Except for periods in Walton jail, he’d never spent a night away from his sister May before, and he felt frightened. He tried to pretend he was deaf when he went for his medical, but the MO caught him out by asking if he’d like a ciggie when his back was turned. When Fintan said, ‘I wouldn’t mind, doc,’ and turned to take it, the MO didn’t have a ciggie, after all. Instead, he gave an evil grin and barked, ‘Passed, A-1.’

By the time Fintan was kitted out in his khaki army uniform, having reluctantly forsaken his spivvish suit with the wide kipper tie, he actually felt rather proud, though he bawled his head off when he had to say tara to May and his brother, Failey. Failey, forty-two, had become aware of his own vulnerability to call-up.

‘Never mind, lad,’ May sobbed. ‘You’re sure to win a medal, and if you don’t, I’ll try and get one for you on the black market.’

Most of the street came out to wave him off. ‘What’s the world coming to,’ they echoed, ‘when a man of forty-one’s no longer safe?’

The situation in Russia was neither one thing nor the other. One minute the Jerries were on the offensive and seemed to be winning ground; next, the Russians were driving them back. The slaughter was horrendous; millions had already died.

At the same time the Japs, like Hitler, didn’t seem to be able to put a foot wrong; Hong Kong, Malaya, Singapore, had all been conquered, and on the twentieth of May, they captured Burma. Flames soared sky high from the oilfields which had been set alight by the British on their one-thousand-mile retreat as the invaders seized the final gateway to China and the Pacific. British casualties were thirteen and a half thousand, three times that of the Japanese, though many
troops
managed to reach the safety of India. At the same time, the Japs were crawling like ants all over the Philippines. A couple of their submarines had attacked Sydney in Australia. Terrible tales had begun to circulate about the atrocities inflicted on their prisoners of war.

People yearned for a victory they could call their own. Instead, the Luftwaffe continued to bomb their towns and cities, and on the high seas British ships were being sunk with frightening regularity, several hundred every month. Of course, they’d sunk a few ships themselves, but the number seemed small in comparison to the horrendous toll achieved by the German navy with their U-boats.

In Africa, where they had once been winning, the German General Rommel continued to advance on Allied positions whilst the Eighth Army tried desperately to cling on.

Rationing was becoming even tighter at home. Staple foods like corned beef and white flour were banned, and the new National Loaf, a grey coarse slab of what purported to be bread, was unappetising to most people and virtually uneatable to a few, even though the Government claimed it was healthy and it was rumoured to be an aphrodisiac. An increase in purchase tax of sixty-six per cent had pushed up the price of a pint by twopence, and a pack of twenty ciggies had soared by a whole sixpence and was now two shillings and beyond the pockets of many.

A public opinion poll showed that people were dissatisfied with the way the war was being conducted, and in the House of Commons a vote of censure was moved against the Prime Minister. The members voted overwhelmingly to oppose the motion. There was no alternative to Churchill. He was all they had. They put their wholehearted faith in him, and in the indomitable spirit of the people of their country, to fight the war to
the
bitter end. Losing was not to be countenanced. Losing was for other countries, certainly not Great Britain.

Patients continued to arrive in their droves at the Royal Naval Hospital in Seaforth, where they were looked after tenderly, loved and given every care.

Outside working hours, most nurses’ lives were a constant whirl of dates, dances, parties and films. They were driven partially by a desire to blank out the suffering they witnessed day after day, at least for a few hours.

In Liverpool, a major port, troops of a vast range of nationalities were constantly embarking or disembarking. There were French sailors, Canadian airmen, Australian soldiers, all in town for a few hours or a few days and anxious to show a girl a good time. As long as a young woman made it obvious when they first met in the queue for the pictures or in a dance hall, that she wasn’t
that
kind of girl, the servicemen accepted the situation graciously, if reluctantly. What the men mainly wanted, were merely a few kind words, a hand to hold, a face to remember and lips to kiss, albeit briefly, before they set off into the terrifying unknown. As well as the transients, there were, of course, the Americans, who seemed to be everywhere.

The nurses swopped clothes, swopped boyfriends, swopped stories of the escapades they’d been up to the night before. Jenny Downing made a bet that she would go out with a different man every night one week, including Sunday – and she won. Inspired, Lucy tried the same thing and managed nine times in a row.

‘Oh, this is a fine ould time to be young and alive,’ Lucy crowed. Wayne, the young soldier she’d met at Jessica’s, had been given his marching orders weeks ago. Since then, Lucy had been out with lots of other Americans and the latest was insisting they get engaged.
‘It’s
only his way of getting me keks off,’ she told Kitty blithely. ‘He claims his dad’s an oil millionaire and they’ve got this big mansion in Alabama. Do they have oil in Alabama?’

‘I’ve no idea,’ said Kitty. ‘I’ll ask Dale if you like.’

‘Don’t bother. I’m about to chuck him, anyroad. He’s too bloody persistent. Every time we go out together, it ends up with me fighting for me honour. They seem to think us English girls are dead easy.’ Lucy sniffed virtuously. ‘As far as I’m concerned, any girl who sleeps with a Yank needs her bumps feeling.’

‘I suppose so,’ Kitty replied faintly. She must look too prim and proper to have slept with Dale, but if only Lucy knew! ‘It’d be nice if you married a Yank,’ she said, ‘because we could visit each other once the war’s over and we’re both living in America.’

‘Has Dale proposed?’ Lucy’s rather odd eyes widened in pleased surprise.