Christmas on the Mersey

‘I will, Mum, don’t worry.’ Michael took his sister’s hand and gave his mother a brave smile.

‘That’s my boy.’

Rita bent down to give Megan a kiss on her cheek, but the moment was too much for the child and she threw her arms around her mother’s neck and let out an anguished sob.

‘Please come, Mummy.’

Rita tried hard to mask her own emotions, but her heart was breaking and she couldn’t disguise the catch in her voice as she said, ‘I’ll be thinking of you both every moment of every day and as soon as Daddy has settled you in, I’ll be there. It won’t be long, I promise.’

Rita removed her daughter’s arms from around her and picked up the little bear that Megan was holding.

‘Bobby Bear is going to give you a cuddle every night and sing you to sleep, aren’t you, Bobby?’ Rita made the bear nod his head and give a little dance. Megan giggled, Rita was pleased to see. She handed Megan the bear to hold again and as she shut the back car door, Charlie cut in.

‘Sorry to interrupt this touching scene, but it’s time to go.’ He barely glanced over his shoulder at her as he started the car and made to shut his door, but before he did, Rita said, ‘Remember what I said, Charlie. I meant every word.’

Charlie gave her a cold look and started the engine. ‘Goodbye, Rita.’

‘Goodbye, Charlie. I’ll be seeing you, you can be sure of that.’

As the car drove away, Rita saw the two faces of her children, smiling and waving as they retreated into the distance, followed noisily by a gang of children who still hadn’t got over the novelty of having a motor car on their doorstep. Rita watched until the car reached the end of Empire Street then turned the corner, her children disappearing with it.

She returned slowly to the house, where Mrs Kennedy had taken up her usual place by the window, all the better to see what the rest of the street was up to.

‘Are you happy now?’ Rita asked her mother-in-law.

Ma Kennedy pursed her lips. ‘You should be proud of Charlie, taking it into his own hands to make the children safe.’ She paused and stared at Rita, who put her hand to her forehead and felt a trickle of blood seep through the headscarf. Her head was now starting to throb painfully. Damn Charlie Kennedy.

‘What happened to you?’ For the first time, Rita thought she saw an element of doubt flicker across the older woman’s face.

‘That’s right, Ma. You’ve got a son to be proud of all right. Anyone can see that.’

And with that, she left her mother-in-law to her own thoughts and headed out to Empire Street, where the children were now playing a game of coins up against the corner shop wall.

CHAPTER FOUR (#u373bd5f6-51f8-57fa-96af-4974433170d2)

The light drizzle was turning heavier as Kitty turned into Empire Street. It had been a long day at the NAAFI canteen where she worked and she would be glad to get home this evening. She hoped that her brothers, Danny and Tommy, weren’t in before her. Danny, who was twenty, had got a new job on the docks and Kitty hoped that working alongside older men with families and responsibilities would knock some of the rough edges off him. Danny had a habit of sailing a bit close to the wind in the law-abiding department and Kitty worried that he would get his collar felt one of these days. Tommy, meanwhile, was still a little weak after contracting a nasty bout of diphtheria while an evacuee, and his health was a constant nagging anxiety for her. Despite the bombing Kitty was loath to send him away again and in the face of all of the warning voices around her, she wouldn’t ever trust anyone outside of the family with his wellbeing again.

Kitty had looked after her brother and her father, Sonny, since her mother died when she was just a young girl. Her father had hardly done his best by his children and they had often had to go without while he drank away his meagre earnings at the Sailor’s Rest. They’d frequently had to rely solely on their older brother, Jack’s, wages from the foundry, but they had all been floored when Sonny had died just before last Christmas, even Jack, who’d had a difficult relationship with their father. Kitty found comfort in believing that her mother and father were united again, and never questioned the burden of running a family from such a young age.

She sidestepped the puddles in the gutter as she made her way across the street. There was a big hole in her shoe but money was tight and she hadn’t scraped enough together to get a new pair. She’d been trying to put a bit aside each week, but her savings weren’t growing very fast. She hoped she’d have a new pair before the bad weather set in. There were now shortages and rationing for most of the essentials. Kitty had heard a rumour that clothes rationing was going to be introduced and she half thought that she was more likely to get a new pair of shoes with rationing than without.

She was keen to get the dinner on. She’d managed to pick up a few sausages extra to the ration from the butcher and Pop had given her some potatoes from his allotment, so she was looking forward to making some hearty sausage and mash for the three of them. When Pop had brought the potatoes round this morning before she left for work he had also told her that their Frank was coming home. Kitty’s heart was almost in her mouth at this news. The last she’d seen of Frank was before he’d gone off for rehabilitation after losing his leg. Things had been awkward between them and Kitty had been forced to remind herself that there was no reason that Frank should give her any special treatment. He’d been through a lot and any idea she’d had that there was something between them was just a lot of silly girlish nonsense. Frank just saw her as one of the family; the girl across the road. That was that.

Still, Kitty couldn’t help a pang of emotion when she thought about the dance and the kiss that they had shared the night before he’d returned to his ship. She didn’t think she’d ever forget it. She sighed now as she pushed open the door to their little terrace – it was never locked. She still hoped she’d see Frank, though. Perhaps she’d pop round with something later on or tomorrow … perhaps an apple pie? The butter ration didn’t go far but she’d managed to eke it out. Frank would like that. He had a sweet tooth.

Frank watched from the shadows as Kitty closed the street door behind her. Even though he couldn’t see her closely, his heart had ached as he took in her dark hair and fine features. Kitty was beautiful and she didn’t even know it. Frank cursed himself for being a romantic twit. He’d walked past Kitty’s house at least a dozen times earlier on his stiff false leg. However, he couldn’t bring himself to ‘just call in’ like he always had in the past. Too much had happened since this bloody war had started. What could she possibly see in a man like him – one who was damaged beyond repair? Nothing, he imagined. He and Kitty had grown up together, and since her mother had died he’d been like a brother to her, but now what he felt for her was more than brotherly love. Something had changed between them but since he’d lost his leg he knew that he would never be good enough for her.

Dressed in his uniform of a petty officer of the Royal Navy, Frank acknowledged cheery greetings from passers-by he had known all his life. He smiled to hide his shame, but that was all that he could feel now: shame for being half the man he had been. He hated the two sticks that enabled him to manoeuvre on his new tin leg. He’d had it only a couple of months and it still didn’t feel comfortable. It rubbed like hell, and each day he had to massage the tender stump before re-dressing it ready for the false leg. Kitty would be sickened, he was sure.

However, he was glad of one thing: he had been allowed to stay in the navy – in the recently established Weapon and Radio branch at HMS Collingwood naval base – which spared him the humiliation of being invalided home.

Gulls and pigeons bullied the sparrows that swooped for scraps from the hessian sacks being carted along the busy dock road. Frank had arrived home only that morning and it was wonderful to see his family, but the constant questions and chatter were wearing him down already.

He toyed with the idea of knocking on Kitty’s door again. Seeing her up close and in the flesh would be a sight for sore eyes. He imagined her face, lit up like a Christmas tree when she was happy – God, imagin­ing it was unbearable. But then he imagined her face as she took in his new leg. He did not want to see the pitying look in her eyes nor the exaggerated look of pleasure when she saw he was actually walking again. No, Kitty had her own life – she didn’t need to be hindered by a cripple. Frank was scared of neither man nor beast but the thought of being rejected by Kitty put the fear of God into him. Better leave things alone, he thought as he ambled along, knowing he could fight most things but he could not battle his feelings for Kitty Callaghan …

Frank’s thoughts were interrupted by a swaying woman who might well have been pretty at one time, but was now hard-looking and weary. She came towards him, scraping her heels against the stone pavement as if the effort to hold herself upright was too much to bear; she greeted him with a practised smile.

‘Hello ’andsome, fancy a jar?’ By the sound of her tired voice she couldn’t care less if he wanted one or not.

‘Not tonight, girl,’ Frank smiled politely, ‘but here, have one on me.’ He gave her half a crown and hoped she would go home to her kids, or whoever it was who was waiting there for her. She kissed him on the cheek.

‘God bless yer, lad, you don’t know what that means ter me.’

Frank could only imagine as she wended her way along the dock road. He gave a gentle laugh and shook his head. He’d called her ‘girl’. He was sure she hadn’t been a girl since Adam was a lad!

‘How did that happen?’ Dolly’s eyes were wide when she saw the gash on the side of her daughter’s forehead the day after Frank’s return.

Rita called in most days but had tried to keep out of the way yesterday. However, she wanted to hear all about Frank.

‘It happened during the raid,’ Rita lied, knowing Pop would be out on horseback looking for Charlie Kennedy if he suspected Rita had been mistreated. ‘The windows on the ward were blown in. Luckily we were over the other side but when I dived under the bed I caught it on the steel frame.’ Rita was amazed at the ease with which the lies tripped off her tongue.

‘I hope you got one of the doctors to look at it,’ Dolly said, her brows pleating. ‘Is it sore?’

‘It’s fine, Mam!’ Rita said a little impatiently, then she relented. It was normal for her mother to be concerned and so she said in a more tender tone, ‘At least I came through it.’

‘Glory be to God!’ Dolly said in her quick Celtic way, but she couldn’t help but feeling uneasy all the same. There had been no suggestion before this that Charlie was violent with her daughter, but Dolly heard the rumours, the same as everyone else, and she knew that of late he had taken increasingly to gambling and to drink. He’d been ruined by his own mother, Dolly knew, and if he ever harmed her daughter …

‘So help me, I’ll swing for him!’ she muttered out of Rita’s hearing.

‘Oh, Mam, I will miss Michael and Megan even more after having them home for the past months.’ Rita sat at the table in the kitchen of her mother’s three-bedroomed, gas-lit terraced house, situated on the other side of the alleyway from Winnie Kennedy’s corner shop.

‘Who did he say they were staying with?’ Dolly, a loving, sensible mother who was everybody’s mainstay, was pouring tea into a cup with a hairline crack, something that would never have happened before the war. The cup rattled a little on the saucer as Rita took the hot tea. It would never occur to Dolly to offer a cup of tea without a saucer. She still had her impeccable standards, even though the shortages had forced her and the rest of the country to lower them a little.

‘A woman called Elsie Lowe, someone Charlie’s mother knows … She runs a boarding house for businessmen, in Southport.’ Rita sipped at the hot tea, used to not having sugar since it became rationed last January.

‘Is she old, then?’ Dolly asked. ‘I mean, won’t the kids be a bit of a handful for a woman who has a boarding house to run?’

‘Apparently not,’ Rita answered, nodding to Nancy, who was just bringing baby George in from his nap in his pram, which was parked on the small terracotta-tiled pathway under the parlour window.

‘Did you use the cat net?’ Dolly asked Nancy, who scowled. ‘Only, you forgot it yesterday and next door’s tabby was sniffing around the pram for milk.’

‘I won’t forget again in a hurry, not after it lay on his face and almost suffocated him!’ Nancy said with venom. ‘I’ll get Pop’s gun and shoot that bloody cat!’ Pop was the local ARP warden and allowed to have a gun in the house. Not that there had been any reason to use it. They even had a white diamond painted at the side of the front door to identify this as the warden’s house.

‘Everybody in the hospital was talking about the raids,’ said Rita, trying to take her mind off her own troubles. She did not mention the fact that they had a German airman in a single secure ward with armed soldiers standing guard outside. ‘The wards have been cleared of patients who were almost ready for dis­charge and allowed an early release.’

The raids had people’s nerves rattling, their tetchiness showing in all sorts of different ways. In Nancy’s case she thought she had the given right to go around with a scowl on her face just because Gloria had come over the other night after Nancy had got all dolled up and told her that the dances were off for the foreseeable due to the raids.

‘I’ll go mad if they close down all the dance halls and theatres the way they did at the beginning of the war,’ Nancy said, passing her son to Rita, who wrinkled her nose before proceeding to remove his blue cotton helmet. Giving George a loving kiss on his plump little cheek brought a gurgle of baby bubbles from his smiling pink lips.