Across the Mersey - Annie Groves [101]
Whilst Francine was speaking Jean studied her younger sister. Jean might have kept her own trim figure but Francine looked, if anything, slightly thinner than she had done when she had gone to America. Mind you, Jean acknowledged to herself, she’d need a good figure, wearing a frock so snugly fitting on the waist before its full panelled skirt curved out softly over her hips. Not that it wasn’t smart, it was, and in a lovely shade of soft blue as well. The collar of the little fitted jacket that went with it was trimmed with fur, and Jean could just imagine how Vi’s eyes would almost pop out on stalks when she saw how glamorously Francine was dressed. Her shoes and bag were the same colour as her suit, and her hat was trimmed with the same fur as her jacket collar. When you weren’t with her it was easy to overlook the mesmerising effect Francine could have on a person, Jean admitted. It wasn’t just that she was beautiful, which she was, it was more than that somehow. There was something about her that had you looking at her and not wanting to look away – warmth, somehow, and an excitement. It was hard to explain but it was impossible not to be aware of it, even though Francine herself never acted as though she cared two hoots about it. Singing, that was all that had mattered to her when she had been growing up. Mad on it, she had been, singing morning noon and night, determined right from being a little thing that she was going to be a singer. Mind you, she did have a lovely voice. Francine had a voice that was as different from other people’s as plain old walking was from dancing. You caught yourself listening for it and straining to hear more of it even when she was just talking.
‘How is everyone?’ she was asking Jean, her voice suddenly strained with a tension that sent Jean’s heart plummeting.
‘Let me put the kettle on. You just be dying for a cuppa.’
As she bustled busily about her kitchen, Jean was glad of an excuse not to have to look directly at Francine.
‘Well, Luke and Charlie are both with the BEF in France. I dare say you might even have sung for them without knowing it. Bella’s married, of course, and our Grace is training to be a nurse. The twins will be leaving school this summer.’
‘And Jack?’
‘Vi’s had him evacuated into the country for safety.’
‘She never said anything about that when she wrote to me last.’
‘Let’s have that cup of tea, and then we can sit down and talk properly.’
‘I’ve got a favour to ask you,’ Francine warned her as she took the proffered cup. ‘I hate to put on you but I haven’t made any arrangements about where I’m going to stay and I wondered—’
‘You’re welcome to have Grace’s room,’ Jean told her immediately. ‘I know she won’t mind. She’s living in at the hospital. Mind you, I dare say it won’t be what you’re used to.’
‘No it won’t,’ Francine agreed quietly. ‘It’s a long time since I’ve lived in a proper home. Everyone thinks that being a singer is glamorous. Well, it might look like that when I’m up on the stage, but it’s not much fun going back to a single room in a boarding house every night.’
Jean frowned as she heard the weariness and sadness in her sister’s voice. Francine’s voice betrayed her feelings in the way that other people’s expressions would betray theirs.
‘I thought you was doing really well in America, making records and that.’
‘I was, but then there was a problem.’ Francine gave a dismissive shrug.
‘A man?’ Jean guessed.
Francine gave her a small smile. ‘That was quick of you, but then I suppose …’ Her voice trailed away. ‘I suppose I was naïve. I thought I wasn’t, of course. But Hollywood is a different world, where they live by different rules. “Casting-Couch Rules”, they call them.’ She gave a bitter laugh. ‘Only I didn’t want to play the casting-couch game, and because I didn’t all that talk of records and big deals remained just talk. Luckily for me Gracie took pity on me, otherwise I’d have ended up working in a car wash – or worse.’
‘Well, you won’t find the luxury