‘Excuse me barging in, Jane, but I’ve just got back from the hospital and Mrs McCabe said you were here, so I thought—’ She broke off, clearly seeing Alec for the first time, and Alec noted, with amusement, the swiftness with which the colour rose in her cheeks. ‘Oh, I’m awfully sorry, I didn’t realise . . . Mrs McCabe never said . . . I just wanted to tell Jane . . .’
‘Kathy! No, I don’t suppose Mrs McCabe would have said that Jimmy brought his pal home with him – you know about Mr McCabe, of course?’
The girl called Kathy nodded her head vigorously. ‘Yes. As soon as I saw Jimmy, I guessed something was up. It’s dreadful, isn’t it? I felt so sorry for Mrs McCabe because when it came to it, she didn’t want to go on the ward. I stayed with her while Jimmy went ahead to talk to the nurses. And then he came back for her, put his arm round her waist and led her away.’ She looked around the kitchen, empty now save for themselves. ‘Where are the kids?’
‘I telled ’em to go out to play,’ Jane said. ‘We fed ’em first, of course, and then Mr Hewitt here helped me to clear and wash up. Oh, I haven’t introduced you! Kathy, this is Mr Hewitt, Jimmy’s best pal. Mr Hewitt, this here’s
my
best pal, Miss Kathy Kelling.’
The two shook hands and Alec said firmly: ‘I’m Alec to my friends, Miss O’Brien, and I hope you won’t object if I call you Jane, because Jimmy always does.’ He turned to Kathy, smiling. It had just occurred to him that, if he and Jimmy were to go around the city whilst they were here, a foursome would be a good deal pleasanter than playing gooseberry. ‘What do you say, Miss Kelling? Shall we dispense with formality and call each other Kathy and Alec?’
Both girls agreed, Jane with easy assurance and Kathy with another blush, and whilst Jane poured an extra cup of tea and chatted to her friend, Alec eyed both girls covertly. He decided that Kathy would pass for an attractive girl in any company other than Jane’s, but next to Jane’s brilliant colouring and astonishing good looks Kathy would be almost unnoticed.
The three of them settled themselves around the fire with their cups of tea and Jane turned to her friend. ‘Why did you come in here in such a rush, queen?’ she enquired. ‘You looked as though you had news to impart, only then you saw Alec here and it went out of your head.’
Alec watched as Kathy clearly gathered her thoughts. ‘Well, Mam and Billy went down to Rhyl this morning to have a look at the flat I told you about, the one over the teashop. We’d arranged she’d ring Mrs McNab so I popped in and actually managed to speak to her too. She says the flat’s grand and partly furnished, so she and Billy are going to stay there – it’s daft to come back into danger, even for one night, when you don’t have to. Mam wanted to come back to Daisy Street to collect things, but I said I’d pack up all the stuff she wanted and take it down tomorrow. I – I had hoped you’d come down with me, only I don’t suppose . . .’
‘Of course I’ll come,’ Jane said at once, ‘that is unless the McCabes need me, and I don’t suppose they will. They’re a big family, and everyone will get permission to stay away from work at such a time. And Jimmy says he’ll get a week’s compassionate as soon as he rings his CO to let him know what’s happened.’ She turned her brilliant blue gaze on Alec. ‘What about you, Mr . . . I mean Alec? Will you be able to stay? If so, perhaps you’d like to come down to Rhyl with us, rather than hangin’ around here while Jimmy and Mrs McCabe make funeral arrangements and so on.’
‘I’d like to do that very much,’ Alec said at once. ‘I’ve never been to . . . Rhyl, was it? Is it far from here? Can we go by train or bus, or could we walk?’
Both girls laughed heartily at this and Alec, who knew very well where Rhyl was, was happy for them to do so. But they told him that once they’d crossed the water, a train would probably be easiest, adding that the journey down and back would take them all day, so he had best be quite sure that he was not wanted back at Church Broughton before he committed himself.
Alec laughed. ‘I don’t mind doing jankers for a week if it means having the company of two such delightful young ladies for a whole day,’ he said gallantly. ‘But I’d best clear it with Jimmy and the CO first, I suppose.’ He turned to Kathy. ‘What will you do tonight, Kathy? I gather from what you’ve said that you’ve only one brother, and he’s gone with your mother to Rhyl. Does that mean you’re going to sleep in an empty house?’
‘Well, I may end up sleeping in the shelter anyway, along with half of Daisy Street, if there’s another raid; if not, though, I was hoping that Jane would move in with me, just for a night or two,’ Kathy said. ‘It would be company, you see, because even going to the shelter is better if there are two of you.’
Alec liked her voice; it was low and musical and held almost no trace of a Liverpool accent. He wondered at the differences between two girls of roughly the same age, living in the same area for most of their lives. Kathy’s speech was almost unaccented, whereas one could never fail to realise that Jane was from Liverpool. He knew he could scarcely comment upon it but decided to ask Jimmy as soon as circumstances permitted.
‘Of course I’ll move in wi’ you. There’s dozens of us O’Briens, so Mam can spare me,’ Jane said at once. She turned towards Alec, giving him a smile in which sweetness and coquetry were nicely mingled. ‘Unless Alec here would prefer to share your nice neat home, rather than muckin’ in with a dozen McCabes,’ she said teasingly.
‘Jane, how can you?’ Kathy squeaked, colour flooding her face once more. It made her eyes look very bright and Alec noted, for the first time, that her hair was not just brown, but contained other shades of chestnut, auburn and gold. Surprised, he looked at her again and saw she had large hazel eyes fringed with dusky lashes, beautifully clear skin, not cream and roses like Jane’s, but sun-kissed, and her mouth, when she smiled, had an upward tilt which was very appealing. But now she was scarlet with embarrassment and telling Jane off in no uncertain way. ‘You’ve embarrassed me and poor Alec must think us very odd people up here in Liverpool, so just you say you’re sorry.’ She turned back to Alec as Jane, laughing, said that it was only a joke and Alec was not to mind her. ‘Where do you come from, Alec? I don’t think it’s London, because Mrs Bellis, one of our neighbours, comes from there and her voice is – is sort of sharper than yours.’
‘I’m from Norfolk,’ Alec said at once. He grinned at the two girls. ‘
Norfolk born and Norfolk bred, strong in the arm and thick in the head,
that’s an old country saying. My mother always uses it when Dad or I annoy her by not immediately taking on board what she’s saying. Not that she’s one to talk, because she’s Norfolk born and Norfolk bred, just as much as Dad and me.’
‘Norfolk! I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone from that side of the country, but aren’t there lots of airfields there? It’s East Anglia, isn’t it? And I seem to remember it’s very flat and sort of sticks out into the North Sea,’ Kathy said, after a moment’s thought. ‘I wasn’t bad at geography at school but we didn’t do a lot on Great Britain, it was mainly abroad. Capital cities and big rivers and stuff like that, and who produced what, of course. China was rice and silk, I seem to remember, and India was tea and – and . . .’
‘. . . and elephants,’ Jane said triumphantly. ‘Or was it ivory? I weren’t no good at anything much when I were at school. But what’s the odds in the end? Me and Kathy work side by side at the same bench, making parts for machine guns. We get paid the same, we get bawled out by the supervisor when she’s in a bad mood, and we eat in the same canteen, yet Kathy here won a scholarship to the high school and is ever so clever, whereas I stayed at Daisy Street till I were fourteen and then gorra job on a fruit and veg stall in the market. An’ I only got that ’cos me dad worked there,’ she finished.
Kathy gave a snort. ‘Jane was just as clever as I was but she’s the eldest of a big family and her parents didn’t think education was much good for a girl,’ she told Alec. ‘And anyhow, they’ve been proved right. I meant to go to university but, as Jane says, we’re both factory hands now.’
‘Do you like factory work?’ Alec asked curiously. ‘It must be pretty boring, I’d have thought.’
Kathy stared at him. ‘Yes, it is,’ she said slowly. ‘In fact, if it hadn’t been for my mam and little brother I wouldn’t have stuck it for so long. But now that they’ve left Daisy Street . . . there’s no reason why I shouldn’t do the same.’ She jumped to her feet, crossed the kitchen and pulled Jane away from the sink so that they were facing one another. ‘Jane, now’s our chance!’ she said excitedly. ‘Mam and Billy don’t need me now.
I’m
going to sign on for the WAAF – care to join me?’
Alec had known air raids before. He had been in Norwich when it was bombed, had been on airfields when the Luftwaffe had come in low, guns spitting, and had dropped bombs on the runways and even on the huts. But he had never been in a raid such as the one Liverpool suffered in the early hours of Tuesday morning. He had bedded down on the McCabes’ kitchen sofa, well wrapped in blankets, and had slept at once, exhausted by what had been a very long day. He supposed that he must have heard the sirens, warning that an attack was about to start, but if so they had not completely woken him, for it was Jimmy, shaking him roughly, who brought him struggling up out of a sleep that seemed fathoms deep to find himself sitting up in the dark kitchen, whilst all around him children murmured and collected the things they would need in the shelter.
‘Sorry to wake you, old feller, but I’m gettin’ Mam and the kids down to the shelter before the Jerries get goin’,’ Jimmy said. His mother, plainly used to evacuating her family on a nightly basis, was handing out blankets and packing a basket with a loaf of bread, a pot of jam and a flask which, Alec assumed, contained tea. ‘I’m not goin’ to stay in the shelter meself. I’m goin’ along to the Stanley Hospital or one of the air raid wardens’ posts to see what I can do. If those bastards drop more incendiaries, then we’re in real trouble, and it’s me
home,
old feller! I can’t sit in a shelter while me home burns.’
‘I’ll come with you,’ Alec said at once, climbing rather stiffly off the couch and folding his borrowed blankets into a neat pile. ‘What about the girls, though, Jimmy? Should we go round to the Kellings’ house, persuade them to go to the shelter? They’re only young and they’ve been awake every night since the blitz started. It would be awful if they slept through it and – and got themselves badly hurt or – or killed.’
Jimmy, hustling his younger brothers and sisters towards the door, raised a quizzical eyebrow. ‘D’you think our Liverpool judies is made of sugar, old mate?’ he asked. ‘Believe me, you’re wrong. Jane will have woken at the first sound of the siren and be halfway along to her own home before you can say knife, and Kathy won’t be far behind. Mrs O’Brien’s a lovely woman but she’s always been a bit of a butterfly, if you understand me. Mr O’Brien and Jane are the steady ones in that family, and Mr O’Brien’s still in hospital, so it’ll be Jane what supervises and bullies them all into the shelter, just you see if it ain’t.’
And presently, Alec saw that his friend was right. Ahead of them in the darkened street, lit only by the moonlight, he could just make out the slender figures of the two girls, shepherding a rabble of kids ahead of them towards the shelter. In the distance, only just on the edge of hearing, he could make out the thud and thrum of the heavy bombers. He recognised the engine notes of Dorniers, Heinkels and Junkers and reflected, bitterly, that this seemed to presage an enormous raid, as big or bigger than the one which had been reported on the national news the previous weekend.
By the time he and Jimmy were settling Mrs McCabe and her family into the shelter, the planes were directly overhead, a carpet of fearsome sounds but, so far, without the whistle and thud which announced the arrival of high explosive bombs. Alec put his mouth close to Jimmy’s ear and remarked, optimistically, that since nothing had been dropped yet it might merely be that these planes were on their way to bomb someone else. After all, having found that they could reach Liverpool with ease and return safely, the Luftwaffe must also realise it was on the west coast of Britain that His Majesty’s Government had the most shipping, docks and warehousing.
Jimmy agreed that Alec might well be right but his voice lacked conviction and soon, when the two young men came out on to the street once more, it became glaringly clear that whilst a large number of enemy aircraft had indeed passed overhead without inflicting any more damage on the city, those that followed were by no means friendly. Incendiaries lit up the night sky and very soon more buildings were in flames, though mostly it seemed that the target tonight was south and central Liverpool.
When they presented themselves at the nearest wardens’ post they were hailed with considerable relief and given a section of streets nearby to patrol. ‘Kick the incendiaries into the middle of the road, where they can do little harm,’ the chief warden advised them. ‘We’re supposed to carry a bucket of sand to extinguish them, but it weighs you down and besides, we’ve run out. If you see anyone above ground get them off the streets and into the shelters wherever possible, and if you see a really big fire starting go to the nearest telephone and dial 999 for the fire brigade. They’ll come if they can . . . and if you come across a newly bombed building try and rope it off so kids can’t run inside and get hit by masonry which is ready to fall.’
‘Right,’ Alec said, a little bewildered by these rapid instructions. ‘Anything else we should know?’
‘Don’t think so,’ the man said. ‘Just use your common sense – the one thing folk don’t do in an air raid, unfortunately. They run back indoors to fetch a photo of Aunt Lizzie, or to rescue a cat which has probably been out all night anyway, and then they’re surprised when they get themselves killed.’