Across the Mersey - Annie Groves [104]
‘It’s just that … well, even when we go to the pictures he never puts his arm round me or … or anything else … and the other girls … well, they keep asking me …’
‘Never mind the other girls. It sounds to me as though he’s a decent well-brought-up young man who knows what’s proper,’ Jean told her with relief, deliberately choosing not to remember the passionate kisses she and Sam had shared in the dark privacy of the cinema in their own courting days.
Francine, on the other hand, was frowning slightly and Grace found that it was to her aunt she was looking for an explanation of Teddy’s unfathomable behaviour and not her mother.
However, before she could say anything the twins came bursting in in their normal noisy fashion, hugging Grace, and chattering nineteen to the dozen and making the kind of discussion Grace had wanted to have impossible.
Instead they wanted to talk about the ENSA variety show Francine was rehearsing for, which meant she would be staying in Liverpool for the duration whilst the show toured local Armed Forces bases and some of the factories where women were working long shifts making parachutes and munitions.
They were going through one of their periods of wanting to look as alike as possible and so were wearing matching plaid skirts and green jumpers, with red ribbons in their plaits.
‘Fancy singing here in Liverpool.’ Lou pulled a face. ‘If it was me I’d much rather be going overseas, wouldn’t you, Sasha?’
Before her twin could reply Francine was saying calmly, ‘After the mess that was made of getting us to our venues when we were in France, the last thing I feel like doing at the moment is being sent overseas. Billy Cotton was fit to spit feathers, I can tell you when a bridge went and collapsed when him and his band were on their way to a show. You should have seen his face when he ended up with a coachload of players on one side of the river and their instruments on the other. We might not have been crossing the blue Danube, but the air was pretty blue, I can tell you. It’s all right for Basil Dean running ruddy ENSA from Drury Lane and never putting a foot outside the Theatre Royal. Billy Cotton completely missed his Christmas Day concert with Gracie.’
‘Was that the one you were singing in as well, Francine?’ Lou asked eagerly.
‘That’s right. Three numbers, I had.’
‘And you wore that blue dress with the silver embroidery, didn’t you?’
The twins were entranced with everything about their young aunt. They had only been five when she had left for America, but they were approaching the same age Francine had been when she had first started to sing on stage.
‘Yes. I bought it in Bloomies just before we left New York. That’s Bloomingdale’s,’ Francine explained for Grace’s benefit. ‘It’s a big famous store in New York.’
‘I wish we could go to New York,’ Lou breathed enviously. ‘We’d volunteer for ENSA if we were old enough, wouldn’t we, Sasha?’
When her twin nodded, Jean told them both firmly, ‘Well, it’s just as well you aren’t because your dad would never agree to you going.’
‘Why not? Auntie Francine does it,’ was Sasha’s wide-eyed response.
‘Ah, but there’s only one of me,’ Francine told them quick-wittedly, earning a grateful look from Jean.
‘It’s not that me or their dad have anything against singing,’ Jean told Francine later when the twins were upstairs and Grace had gone back to the hospital, ‘but they haven’t got a sensible thought between them and that’s the truth. They egg each other on and, never mind double trouble, it’s more like four times the trouble of having one.’
Francine laughed dutifully. ‘I don’t blame you and Sam for not wanting them to follow in my footsteps, Jean.’
‘Oh, it isn’t that,’ Jean assured her quickly – too quickly, she realised, when she saw