Across the Mersey - Annie Groves [100]
‘Francine! My goodness!’
It was such a shock seeing her younger sister so unexpectedly that Jean didn’t know what to say, or do.
It was Francine who, with a sound somewhere between a sob and laughter, moved first, hugging Jean tightly, stepping past the large trunk on the pavement next to her, as she burst into a small torrent of explanations, of which Jean could barely comprehend more than a few words.
Somehow they were inside the hallway, although Jean had no notion of how they had come to be there. She looked anxiously at her sister, almost afraid of what she might see in her face. Nine years was a long time. They might have exchanged regular letters and photographs, but they couldn’t tell what was really in a person’s eyes – or their hearts.
At sixteen Francine had been a stunningly beautiful girl with the kind of looks that turned heads in the street, and a happy-to-lucky attitude towards life, a trust and joy that had shone out of her like her own special sunshine. The beauty was still there, and if anything had grown, but the trust and joy were not, Jean recognised sadly.
When she looked at Francine now what she saw was a woman, not a girl, and yet she still stroked her heavy curls off her face, just as she had done when Fran had been a little girl and she her ‘big sister’ lovingly taking on the duties of a ‘second mother’ to her as instructed by their mother.
‘Oh, Jean.’ Francine was crying now as she gave Jean another fierce hug. ‘I’ve missed you so much.’
‘I’ve missed you, an’ all,’ said Jean. She’d missed her, worried guiltily about her, wished so desperately that things might have been different for her.
‘What are you doing here anyway? Why didn’t you write and let us know you were coming back? It gave me ever such a turn, opening the door and seeing you standing there.’
‘Like a bad penny turning up when you thought you’d got rid of me for good?’
Francine’s words were light enough but Jean could see the pain in her eyes. Now it was her turn to hug her and reassure her.
‘I’ve never thought that about you, Fran. I just thought that you were settled in America, especially when you wrote that you were doing so well with your singing, an’ all.’
‘I was, but I couldn’t stay there, with all that’s happening. I had to come back, Jean, especially now with this war, and … and everything.’
A look passed between them that both understood, and it was Jean who looked away first, her heart suddenly heavy with foreboding.
‘This is still my real home, after all,’ Francine reminded her. ‘I was making plans to come back, and then what should happen but Gracie Fields decided she wanted to do her bit and she asked me if I wanted to go along with her, so we both ended up in France entertaining the boys. Poor Gracie, you’ll have heard perhaps that she’s had to have an operation, and now there’s all this fuss with the Government not approving of her having married an Italian. Ever so upset, she is. They’re in Capri now, her and her new husband, waiting to see what’s going to happen.’
‘I remember reading summat about it in Picture Post,’ Jean agreed, ‘Mind you, there are them that’s bin saying they don’t know why she should want to go and marry a foreigner in the first place.’
‘He’s good for her and he’s kind to her, and sometimes …’ Francine shook her head. ‘Never mind about Gracie, I want to hear all about the family and what’s been going on.’
‘In a minute. I want to hear what you’re doing first,’ Jean told her, taking up her old familiar elder-sister role now that she was over her initial shock.
Francine pulled a face and then laughed. ‘Very well. I volunteered for ENSA whilst I was in France with Gracie, but since they’ve gone and made such a mess of sorting out things – poor Billy Cotton was supposed to be playing for Gracie at her Christmas concert and he never even made it on account of them not getting the transport they’d been promised – anyway, I thought I might as well come home and see how you all are whilst I’d got the chance. The BBC has said that they might have some work