Across the Mersey - Annie Groves [97]
‘Yes, please.’ The WVS volunteer turned back to the waiting woman, and told her, ‘You and your daughter will both be billeted with Mrs Parker. She will take you home with her now.’
Her daughter? Bella stared at the WVS worker in furious outrage. ‘I never said anything about taking two of them.’
Was that triumphant dislike she could see in the volunteer’s eyes as she told her calmly, ‘Well, you’ve signed for them both, my dear, so I’m afraid you have no alternative. Next,’ she called out determinedly, ignoring Bella’s fury.
Two of them! Just what she hadn’t wanted, and she had been tricked into having them, she knew she had, Bella fumed as she glared at the two women who were now standing huddled together watching her.
The daughter was as plain and unprepossessing as the mother, both of them sallow-faced, with brown eyes and limp brown hair. They were as thin as sticks, and their clothes looked like rags. Bella was ashamed to be seen with them, even if they were only refugees and nothing really to do with her at all. How dreadful it was that these wretched refugees should have come over here like this, expecting to be taken into decent people’s homes, and how wrong of the British Government to force people to accept them.
By rights Alan should have been here to help her with them instead of expecting her to manage on her own. It was his mother’s fault, after all, that she had been landed with them, Bella decided crossly, ignoring the two women following her as she walked quickly home, hugging the warmth of her fur coat around her, her feet snug inside the thick fleecy boots her mother had bought for her.
Luckily, because of his business, her father was able to get a regular supply of coal and had had the good sense to stock up with it down at his business premises so that Bella was able to keep two good fires burning in the house, which was more than Alan’s mother was able to do, she thought smugly as she turned her key in the front door.
‘You two are to go down there,’ she told the two refugees, indicating the pathway that led to the back door of the house. She wasn’t going to allow them to use the front door.
When she had let them into the back kitchen, Bella made them stand there whilst she went to telephone her mother.
‘But, Mummy, you’ll have to come round,’ she insisted. ‘Daddy can drive you. I can’t let them go upstairs until I’m sure they haven’t got you-know-what.’
Having persuaded her mother to come round, Bella went into the kitchen and lit a cigarette, sitting down at the table so that she could watch her unwanted lodgers through the open door.
Half an hour passed, by which time Bella had smoked another cigarette and made herself a cup of tea, without bothering to offer her lodgers one.
The daughter looked angrily at her and said fiercely, ‘My mother is very tired. Where is her bedroom, please? She needs to have some rest.’
Bella stubbed out her cigarette. The cheek of it – making demands as though she had every right to do so.
‘I don’t care how tired she is. She’s not going anywhere until I’ve made sure that she’s fit to sleep in one of my beds.’
‘Fit?’ The girl looked puzzled. ‘But I have just said that she is not fit. She is tired.’
‘Look, I’ve just told you, she isn’t going anywhere—’ Bella broke off when she heard the doorbell.
‘They’re in the back kitchen,’ she told her mother after she had let her parents in.
‘Where’s Alan?’ her father asked sharply. ‘This is his responsibility, not ours.’
‘He’s still at work,’ Bella told them. ‘He’s always at work. Just wait until you see them, Mummy. They’re virtually dressed in rags. No wonder Hitler doesn’t want them.’
Bella could see from the expression on the daughter’s face that she had heard her. Good! She needed to know how lucky she was instead of looking at Bella with that proud angry look on her face.
‘Do they speak any English?’ Vi looked uncertainly at Bella.
‘We do speak English but my mother speaks less than me.’
Vi and Bella exchanged looks.
‘What are their names, Bella?’ Vi asked, still ignoring the refugees.