Across the Mersey - Annie Groves [62]
Jean was right, though, in saying that Sam and Luke were alike and Luke had inherited his father’s pride and his stubbornness. He was ready to forget their quarrel and his father’s harsh words to him, but he was certainly not ready to abandon his belief that his decision to join up had been the right one.
‘Mind you, I reckon the old man will bend a few ears and get me out,’ Charlie was saying confidently, his tongue loosened by the amount he had had to drink. ‘He’s taking his time about it, though. He was in the devil of a temper with me when he found out I’d been called up. Not my fault, though, ishh it?’ Charlie was slurring his words now as he knocked back another drink. ‘Bloody stupid, thinking that. If I’d really wanted to volunteer I’d have gone for the RAF, not signed on in the ruddy TA.’
Charlie looked balefully at his father, who was standing with a group of his fellow councillors in front of the ballroom’s imposing marble fireplace, his chest puffed out and his face red with heat and self-importance.
Edwin wasn’t enjoying the wedding. For a start it had cost him an arm and a leg, and that was before he had been daft enough to let Vi persuade him into buying the newly married couple a house. Edwin still wasn’t sure just how or why he had come to agree to part with so much money, but at least, as he had just told his fellow councillors in a voice deliberately loud enough to reach the ears of George Parker, Alan’s father, he had had the sense to put the house in his own name.
Ruddy weddings. Edwin tugged at his collar, which felt too tight, constricting his neck. If he had cherished hopes of being envied and revered by his fellow councillors because of the extra business the war was going to put his way, and his daughter’s marriage to Alan Parker, he had quickly come to realise that just the opposite seemed to have happened and that it was being made clear to him that he was still very much an outsider as far as Wallasey’s long-time residents were concerned, even though they were more than happy to fill their glasses at his expense. And then there was that young idiot Charlie, who didn’t have a brass farthing’s worth of sense and who should have been here at home, working in the business, not playing at ruddy soldiers. Of course he’d have to find a way of getting him out of the TA and back where he belonged, but not yet. It would serve him right to have to wait, and teach him a well-needed lesson.
Jean looked across at the twins. They looked ever so nice in the matching dresses she had bought them at Lewis’s, white cotton with an all-over pattern of blue and pink flowers, and nipped in a bit at the waist, making them suddenly look rather more grown up than Jean really liked. Even though Grace wasn’t working there any more, she had had a word with the manageress of the Gown Salon and Jean had been given a bit of discount off the price because the dresses were really summer stock and would be going in the next sale.
Her own suit was new as well. Sam had insisted, and Jean had to admit that she felt proper smart in it. The tweed jacket had slightly padded shoulders and a bit of a military cut to it – a fashion that was now coming in because of the war, Grace had told her when they had gone to Lewis’s together to choose it. It had given Jean a real thrill of pleasure to discover that her waist was still neat enough for her to wear something so tailored, even if she had worried that the suit’s skirt was a little bit on the short side for a married woman with a grown-up family. Its brown heathery flecked