Across the Mersey - Annie Groves [155]
‘No, I don’t, and I don’t think that Teddy would think so either,’ said Seb seriously, still holding her hand. ‘We already know how we feel about one another, and my guess is that your Teddy’s up there somewhere watching over you and that what he wants more than anything is for you to be happy, Grace.’
‘Oh, Seb …’ Grace’s voice was muffled. ‘I think you and Teddy would have got on really well together.’
‘I think so too,’ Seb agreed. The public air-raid shelter at the bottom of the street was crammed with people. One household had been having a party when the siren had gone off, and the men had grabbed their beer and the women the sandwiches, and now the party was continuing inside the shelter in a very jolly way indeed, with one of the guests playing his harmonica and several of the men singing at the tops of their voices.
Jean gave the twins a warning look when she saw them exchanging looks and giggling. Of course the old-fashioned songs weren’t to their taste, but at least they drowned out some of the noise of the bombs going off.
Sam was on standby down at the Salvage Corps headquarters in Hatton Gardens, and Luke was on duty at his barracks.
The harmonica player had stopped to have a sandwich, allowing them all to hear the fierce retaliatory fire from the ack-ack guns defending the city.
‘It’s been the early hours of every other night damn near all month now that we’ve had this going on,’ one of the women complained. ‘I’m sick of having to get up out of me bed and come down here.’
‘Well, you’d be a hell of a lot sicker if one of them bombs landed on the house whilst you was in the ruddy bed,’ her husband pointed out.
A couple of women had young children with them and were hugging them protectively, making Jean think of Vi and Jack – and Francine, of course. There was no doubt in Jean’s mind that Francine had taken the BBC work so that she could be close to Jack.
Of course, Vi was bound to be feeling smug about sending Jack away now that Wallasey had been bombed a couple of times – not that Jean had seen anything of her twin since the day she and Edwin had come round to collect Jack.
Vi had told her then that Charlie, like Luke, had been posted to Home Duties in case of an invasion, and of course she had been full of Charlie’s bravery at Dunkirk, saying how she thought he deserved to get a medal.
Up at the hospital Grace would be on duty, and Jean said a special prayer for her eldest daughter. It had been terrible what had happened to that young lad she had been friendly with, but Jean had noticed a certain sparkle in Grace’s eyes on her last visit home, and there’d been a lot of references to ‘Seb’ to accompany that sparkle.
The all clear sounded, breaking into Jean’s thoughts and bringing with it a wave of relief that had everyone in the shelter gathering up their possessions and getting ready to go home.
Outside the sky was already lightening, revealing the familiar and blessedly undamaged outline of the street and their homes.
The air, though, tasted of smoke and dust, and there were fires burning down by the docks.
* * *
‘They got the Customs House and a couple of warehouses, and by all accounts there was a fair few bombs dropped on Wallasey again,’ Sam told Jean as he demolished the breakfast she had made him when he had arrived home just after six in the morning.
‘I can’t stay. We’ve got some salvage work to do on some warehouses that got hit,’ had been his first words to her after he had given her a reassuring hug and a kiss on the cheek, ‘but I wanted to make sure you were OK. Oh, and there was a bomb went off up near the hospital but no one was hurt.’ He was pushing his chair back and standing up as he finished his cup of tea, kissing her again and telling her cheerfully, ‘Better get back, love.’
Vi was still in shock, still unable to do anything other than stare in disbelief at the scattered still smoking rubble that had once been a house. She hadn’t been able to bring herself to look at the shrouded stretcher she had seen carried away.
‘Well, I never thought that Hitler