Winter on the Mersey(38)
Rita got up and pulled Violet to her feet, shoving open the door and leading her into the coolness of the hallway, with its faded wallpaper rubbed shiny from where years of Feenys had brushed against it to hang up their coats on the hooks next to the cupboard under the stairs. ‘We’ll have some tea,’ she said, pulling her friend into the kitchen. Violet made no protest but moved like an automaton. Rita set baby Ellen down on some cushions arranged in a corner of the sagging armchair, and went to the teapot. Violet stood blankly, her arms at her sides, staring seemingly at nothing. Rita turned her back to reach for the caddy and kettle, and then Violet bent suddenly forward. ‘Sick,’ she gasped, and bolted through to the back kitchen and then outside to the outdoor privy.
Rita ran the tap hard but could hear Violet heaving violently all the same. Then the noise stopped. Rita set down the kettle to boil and went out into the bright sunlit yard and drew her friend back inside. Her own thoughts were in complete turmoil, but her instincts were to calm Violet before she allowed herself even to begin thinking about what had happened.
Violet sank on to a chair at the table and mindlessly took the cup of tea Rita gave her. They stared in bewilderment at each other for a moment, and then Violet shook her head, as if by doing so she could make the news go away. ‘Safe,’ she said at last. ‘He was meant to be safe. I thought he was going to Canada.’ A sob broke from her. ‘He should have been going to Canada. What was he doing in France? It’s the wrong way; he shouldn’t have been there, shouldn’t have been there …’ Then the tears finally came and she let her head fall into her hands, her shoulders shaking with the exertion, her whole body trembling as the enormity of what had happened struck home.
Rita went across and rubbed Violet’s back, moving dumbly through her own pain and shock, wanting to let her friend know she was there all the same. Bitterly she remembered something Danny had said, not long after Eddy and Jack’s leave had finished. Danny had dropped a heavy hint that just because the Merchant Navy vessels had mostly been deployed in the Atlantic up to now, it didn’t mean that this was how things would stay. She’d brushed it aside as the sort of cryptic comment Danny was prone to these days, a result of him being too long underground and studying pages of gobbledegook. Yet Danny had known there was a risk. Probably Frank had too. Had Eddy? He’d said nothing when he was on leave. Neither had Jack. She pushed that last idea aside – she couldn’t cope with that on top of this morning’s news.
‘There, there,’ Rita said, comforting her sobbing friend, staring over Violet’s shoulder in numb disbelief, fearful of facing her own grief until she was alone. Time seemed to stand still, but at last she heard the sound of someone – Pop or Dolly or Sarah – coming in through the front door. Quietly, and with a heavy heart, she made her way out to the hallway, shutting the kitchen door behind her, realising with increasing dread that she would have to break the news to the rest of the family. Violet had lost a husband, but they had lost a son – or a brother, just as she had.
Violet sat up at the sound of the door closing and saw she was alone except for little Ellen, wedged into her cushions. She sipped the lukewarm tea, clinging to the idea that it would be good for shock, but it made her feel sick all over again and she put it down. Ellen stirred and began to grizzle. Violet hauled herself out of her chair and went across to the armchair, bending over slowly, like a woman four times her age. Carefully she picked up the little girl and held her close, rocking her rhythmically, even as her own sobs subsided.
It seemed to do the trick. Ellen grew quiet again and then Violet could hear her small breaths turning into tiny snores as the little girl fell asleep on her shoulder.
Violet shut her eyes, smelling the top of the baby’s warm head, her heart breaking as she faced the end of everything she had hoped for so keenly: the life that she and Eddy had planned ever since they had met – having their own house, a lovely garden, and children of their own. Now it would all come to nothing, and there would be no life with Eddy after the war. She would never see his beloved face or feel his strong arms around her ever again.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Alfie Delaney rubbed his hand over the top of his head and cursed that his hair was thinning and receding so quickly. It was a good job that everyone in the services had to keep their hair short to regulation length, and some went even further and had it cut as tightly to their scalp as possible, so his near-baldness didn’t stand out too much. Not that he was in any of the services. He’d managed to avoid that, by claiming he was in an essential job on the docks. When he’d had to get out of Merseyside after the contaminated meat incident, he’d got himself taken on in Glasgow, but unfortunately they’d made him work so hard he’d almost regretted dodging the call-up.
The sun was beating down on him and he could feel his head getting burnt. He hadn’t thought to bring a cap, which was careless, he realised now. In the city there was always shelter and shade. Out here in the countryside it was relentlessly hot and there was nowhere to hide from the sun’s merciless rays. He hoped the trip would be worth it.
In the end he’d avoided being called up without the help of Danny Callaghan, but that didn’t mean he’d forgotten Danny’s refusal to go along with his scheme. All the man had had to do was to take Alfie’s medical test for him and it would have been so easy, but no, Danny had to go all law-abiding and preachy and insist it was wrong. It would have been no skin off his nose, nobody would have guessed, and Alfie could have rested easy knowing his records would forever show he had a dicky heart and was unsuitable for everything but the lightest work. He certainly wouldn’t have had to put up with the Clydebank conditions, which were nothing short of hard labour, he convinced himself. He would have had a nice indoor desk job – like Danny Callaghan had managed, so he’d heard. A lovely safe, warm, easy desk job. He’d harboured his resentment of Danny all the time he was away, until it had grown to the proportions of a grand betrayal.