Winter on the Mersey(22)

Nancy hadn’t stayed long at her mother’s, as she was still full of rage at the slight of being overlooked in favour of Kitty as godmother to Ellen. Kitty Callaghan, for heaven’s sake! What did she know about bringing up babies? All right, she’d helped raise Tommy when their mother had died, but she hadn’t given birth to him, had she? She hadn’t gone through all that, and she knew nothing about a mother’s feelings for a baby. Despite all her frustrations, Nancy loved Georgie with a genuine and sometimes almost overwhelming love, and she simply could not believe that Kitty was capable of experiencing anything like it.

Also, Kitty had been away for over three years with hardly a visit home in between. That made her out of touch with everybody and what the family was like now. The war had changed everyone and all their relationships, and surely Kitty couldn’t begin to realise this. Fine, so Rita wrote to her, and Danny probably did as well, but it wasn’t the same as being here with them all. Kitty had hardly exchanged two words with Violet; she hadn’t been here for the Liverpool Blitz when so many had been killed or injured from their own small patch of Bootle, and she certainly didn’t know Ellen. You couldn’t just assume all babies were the same – even Nancy, living a few streets away, had picked up from her sisters’ and mother’s chatter that the little girl had her own sleep patterns, her preferences for how she liked to be carried, what made her comfortable and what didn’t. Kitty would be a useless godmother. She herself, Nancy, would be a far better one, and yet she’d been royally snubbed. She thought she would burst at the insult.

She glared at the urn and wondered if it was broken. She hoped not, as finding spare parts would be almost impossible. Maybe Mrs Moyes would know of someone. Nancy sighed and turned away from the hateful machine and decided to sort out the cutlery while she waited. She picked up the butter knife and all but stabbed it into the box where it belonged. It wasn’t as if there was much butter in the first place.

‘Are we ready, Mrs Kerrigan?’ Delia Moyes was much older than Nancy and had a motherly way about her, a sensible but immaculately well-pressed apron stretched across her neat peppermint-coloured twinset, an amber necklace at her throat. Matching tiny earrings twinkled behind her greying curls. She was the epitome of respectability, the embodiment of the WVS.

Nancy liked to think she herself represented the other side of the Women’s Voluntary Service, bringing a little much-needed glamour to the proceedings. However, she didn’t feel very glamorous this morning, with all the cares of the world on her shoulders. Gamely she painted on a smile, as there was no point in annoying her supervisor. ‘Almost there, Mrs Moyes,’ she replied, and just at that moment the reluctant urn finally began to boil. Nancy thought it was a lucky sign and that maybe this shift wouldn’t be so bad after all.

‘Excellent, Mrs Kerrigan, you know we don’t like to keep our brave boys waiting,’ said the older woman, smiling encouragingly. ‘They look to us for comfort now they are so far away from home, as you are well aware.’

‘Yes, Mrs Moyes, they count on us, don’t they?’ said Nancy loyally. She swiftly sorted the teaspoons while her supervisor went to open the main door. She could see through the window that a few servicemen were already gathered waiting for their tea, sandwiches and company. She told herself to snap out of her bad temper – she had a job to do.

The shift was almost over and Nancy was on her last legs. For ages she had secretly mocked her sisters, both nurses, for their frequent complaints about sore feet and tiredness from running around all day at work, sure they were exaggerating to get some sympathy. Now she understood better. Her calves ached and her toes were pressed up against the blunt ends of her shoes, chosen for their stylish effect rather than their practicality. Now she knew why her sisters always wore flat heels. But she’d been so desperate to cheer herself up this morning that she’d gone against her better judgement and dug out her old two-tone stacked heels with their jaunty red bows.

‘Do sit down, Mrs Kerrigan, you haven’t stopped all day,’ advised Mrs Moyes. She’d often had her doubts about her youngest recruit, but today she had to admit the girl had done her share and more, nipping between the tables to collect used crockery, dispensing tea with a wide smile that never wavered, staying just on the right side of friendliness before it tipped over into flirtation. ‘Why don’t you have some soup? We ought to get rid of it anyway before we have a fresh batch for tomorrow, so you’d be doing us all a favour.’

‘Oh …’ Nancy could barely get out a sentence as she sank heavily on to a wooden chair, the cushion for which had long since vanished. She knew full well that the soup could equally well be heated up again, but she wasn’t going to turn down the offer. ‘I’d love some, Mrs M. That will put me right back on my feet in no time.’

‘Then I’ll fetch you some,’ said Mrs Moyes, thinking how wan the girl looked today once she let the cheerful mask slip. Perhaps she was worried about something – maybe her little boy was sick again. Children picked up everything at that age, she remembered from her own brood.

Nancy threw a quick glance over her shoulder towards the rest of the room, and then raised her legs to rest her feet on another chair, almost groaning as the pain in her stubbed toes eased a little. That would teach her. She’d be back in her low brogues tomorrow. In some ways she hated them, they were such a dull brown and screamed ‘sensible’, but her feet couldn’t take another shift like this. She’d have to bathe them in warm water when she got back. She took her mind back to her pre-war, pre-Sid days, working at the big George Henry Lee department store, and the fabulous lotions for sale there – what she wouldn’t give for a bottle of one of those to ease her throbbing feet.