Daughters of Liverpool

She missed her parents, though, and she was looking forward to returning home for Christmas, even if she would have only a couple of days with them. Not that she wasn’t enjoying her work or happy in Liverpool. The girls were a good crowd who had made her welcome, and Anne’s calm manner brought a steadying presence to their ‘table’. So far there had been nothing remotely suspicious in any of the letters Katie had read, and Anne had informed her that this was the case with most of the letters.

‘But we still have to be vigilant,’ she had warned Katie, ‘because you never know, and we don’t want any spies sending letters that might get our lads killed or help Hitler to drop bombs on us, do we?’

* * *

‘There you are, Katie; I was just beginning to worry about you,’ Jean greeted Katie when she knocked briefly on the back door and then stepped into the kitchen. Jean had told Katie that she must treat the house as her home and that there was no need for her to knock, but Katie still felt that she should.

‘I’m sorry I’m late, only I saw people queuing, and someone said it was oranges so I joined the queue thinking that you might like them for the twins for Christmas. They’d almost gone by the time I was served, but the grocer let me have four.’

‘Oh, Katie, bless you. You are thoughtful. Did you hear that, Sam?’ Jean called out. ‘Katie’s gone and managed to get some oranges for the twins.’

Sam was more reserved than his wife, but he was a kind man and he gave Katie a warm smile.

‘There’s a letter arrived for you, Katie. Looks like your dad’s handwriting.’

Thanking Jean, Katie took the letter from her. It was indeed from her father. A familiar mix of happiness and apprehension tightened her stomach as Katie opened it. So far her father’s letters had contained nothing but complaints about how hard his life was without her, and how surprised he was that she had not thought of this before taking on her war work.

This time, though, her father’s mood was more positive. He had, he wrote, bumped into an old friend – a musician who had done well for himself, who lived in Hampstead and who had invited Katie’s parents to spend Christmas with him and his wife.

So there’s no need for you to bother coming home, Katie – the Durrants haven’t got any children and since your mother and Mae Durrant were on stage together as girls, we’re both looking forward to having a splendid Christmas reminiscing about old times.

‘Katie, are you all right? It’s not bad news, is it?’ Jean’s concerned voice made Katie look up from her letter.

‘No. Not at all. My parents have been invited to spend Christmas with some old friends and so my father has written to tell me not to bother travelling all the way back to London to see them.’

Jean’s maternal heart filled with indignation. That poor girl. Fancy her parents doing that to her. It was obvious to Jean how upset she was. She was only a girl still, for all that she behaved in such a sensible grown-up way.

‘Well, never mind, love,’ Jean told her sympathetically. ‘You’re welcome to spend your Christmas here with us. In fact I don’t mind admitting that I’ll be glad of an extra pair of hands, especially with our Grace going down to spend Christmas with her in-laws-to-be, and me having invited a couple of elderly neighbours who’ll be on their own to have their dinner with us. Mind you, I dare say the twins will plague you to death, especially when they find out that their brother has gone and bought them both some new records. I’m hoping that he’ll be home for his Christmas dinner as well – our Luke.’

As yet Katie hadn’t met the Campions’ son, or their eldest daughter, Grace, and her fiancé, Seb, but she was looking forward to doing so, given how kind Jean herself was.

‘Now come and sit down and have your tea, Katie love, before it gets cold.’

As Jean said to Sam later in the evening when Katie had gone upstairs at the twins’ request to tell them more about the famous dance bands her father had conducted, ‘I felt that sorry for her, Sam. Her face was a picture although she didn’t so much as say a word against her parents. If you ask me that girl hasn’t had an easy time of it at all, for all that the twins keep on about how lucky she is.’

‘Well, she’s lucky enough now, having you to take her under your wing, Jean,’ Sam told his wife lovingly.

‘Oh, go on with you, Sam. She’s no trouble to have around at all, kind and thoughtful as she is. I admit I was a bit worried at first when she started saying how her mother had been on the stage and her father conducted dance bands, knowing what the twins are like, but I reckon it’s doing them good having her here to tell them what it’s really like, and not all glamour and excitement, like they seemed to think.’

‘Well, you’ve got your Fran to thank for them thinking that,’ Sam reminded her.

Jean sighed. ‘All this business of them wanting to sing and dance is just a bit of a phase, I reckon. Once we’re into the new year and they’re both working at Lewis’s they’ll forget all about wanting to be on the stage.’

‘Well, whether they forget it or not they are not going on it. I’ll not have it. I’ve nothing against your Fran, Jean, you know that, but her kind of life isn’t what I want for our girls.’

‘No,’ Jean agreed.

‘Tell us again about the Orpheans, Katie,’ Lou begged.

The three of them were in the twins’ top-floor bedroom, the music from the gramophone for once turned down so that the girls could question Katie about the exciting life she had lived with her parents.

‘There isn’t anything to tell that I haven’t already told you,’ Katie answered her prosaically.

‘Imagine going out every night and dancing. What did you wear, Katie? If it had been us then we would have had the same frocks made, but mine would have been in black and Sasha’s would have been in white – like mirror images, you know, and then when we do our dance we do it like there is a mirror and it’s just one of us. Shall we show you?’

They were on their feet, finding their current favourite dance tune, and buzzing with excitement before Katie could say a word.

They were talented, no one could deny them that, but Katie knew what the reality of making a living was for girls like them, and she had seen the anxiety in Jean’s eyes when she had watched her daughters.

‘You are very good,’ Katie told them when they had finished their routine and had turned, slightly breathless, to face her, ‘but being on the stage isn’t what you think it is. All that glitter is just a few sequins stuck onto cheap cloth that’s darned all over the place, cheap lodgings where you don’t get enough to eat, damp bedding and bedbugs, and cheap …’

‘Values’, Katie had been about to say but they were too young for her to talk to them about that kind of thing, she decided, watching them grimace over the bedbugs and giggle that she was teasing them.

‘We can’t understand how you can leave something so glamorous to come here and sit all day reading letters,’ Lou told her.

‘No, if it was us you’d never get us doing what you’re doing,’ Sasha agreed.

‘That’s because you don’t know what it’s really like, and that means that you are very lucky,’ Katie told them firmly.

‘Well, we still want to be on the stage, don’t we, Sasha?’ Lou asked her twin.

‘Yes, we do,’ Sasha confirmed, ‘and we’re going to be, as well.’

Not if their parents had anything to do with it they weren’t, Katie thought. She didn’t blame Jean and Sam either, but the twins were stubborn and Katie suspected that the more they were told they couldn’t do something, the more they would want to do it.

FOUR (#u7c118bb9-cbea-5d60-9460-947a256bb209)

Saturday 21 December (#u7c118bb9-cbea-5d60-9460-947a256bb209)

‘Well, I must say, Mum, she does seem a decent sort,’ Grace Campion told her mother generously.

Grace had initially felt rather jealous when her mother had spoken so enthusiastically to her about this girl who was billeted with Grace’s parents, but now having met Katie Grace had to admit that she had liked her.

The three of them had gone for a cup of tea at Lyons Corner House, Jean having decided that it was best that Grace met Katie on neutral ground.

Tactfully Katie had now gone off to do some shopping, leaving mother and daughter to talk on their own.

‘She won’t be going home for Christmas so she’ll be having her Christmas dinner with us. I’m hoping that our Luke will get leave to be home. I’ll miss you, Grace love, but it’s only natural that Seb’s family want to meet you.’

‘We’ll be back to see in the New Year with you, Mum. Then I’m on nights again.’

‘You’ll have been busy today, love, with Hitler bombing us again last night. Your dad was out all night helping to put out the fires started down on the docks by the incendiaries. The Dock Board offices and Cunard’s were both hit, and then there was that awful thing down by the railway arches in Bentinck Street. Your dad says they still don’t know how many people who were sheltering under those arches got killed when they collapsed.’

‘Just when we were thinking that Hitler had finished with us,’ Grace agreed.

Jean patted her daughter’s hand. Grace had only just escaped being a casualty of one of Hitler’s bombs herself late in November when she and Seb had been caught in the Durning Technical School bomb blast.

‘I’d better get back, Mum,’ Grace told her mother, ‘otherwise I’ll be late going on duty, and you can imagine how busy we are.’