The Grafton Girls - Annie Groves [48]
‘Oh, I don’t know about that,’ Ruthie had felt bound to protest. ‘He may not even be there.’ But of course she was hoping desperately that he would be.
She did feel bad about Maureen, though. She had told Ruthie earlier in the week that there was no chance of her ever going out dancing because she was needed at home to help look after ‘the little ’uns’.
‘Well, seein’ as you keep on sayin’ that you and me are friends, will you do us a favour then?’ Maureen asked.
All too relieved at the thought of being able to do something to alleviate her guilt, Ruthie agreed.
‘I’m trying to get some bits and pieces together for the little ’uns – a surprise, like, for Christmas – and I was wondering if you would keep hold of it for me, tek it home wi’ you, like, until I ask you for it.’
‘For Christmas?’ Ruthie asked surprised. ‘But that’s months away yet.’
‘Yes, I know that.’ Maureen sounded impatient. ‘But like I said, it’s to be a surprise and I don’t want the little ’uns cottoning on. It’s not much, just a few tins I’ve managed to save up to get on the black market and some bits and pieces.’
‘The black market! Oh…’
‘There! I knew it! You say you’re my friend but when I ask you for a bit of help you go all hoity-toity on me. It’s all right for the likes of you wot can manage on the ration, but my mam’s got her own kids and we’ve got our Fanny and our Mabel’s kids living wi’ us as well. Poor little mites are starving, crying half the night for their mams, their little bellies half empty on account of this bloody war. All I want to do is give them a bit of a treat for Christmas, but if you don’t want to help me…’
‘No. I mean yes, of course I’ll help you,’ Ruthie assured her sympathetically.
‘Well, that’s all right then. I’ll tell you wot: if you give me your locker key then I can put the stuff in your locker without anyone else seeing. Then you can tek it home wi’ you.’
‘Well…’
‘Well what? What skin is it off your nose?’ Maureen demanded almost aggressively.
‘All right then.’ Ruthie gave in. She wasn’t sure she felt comfortable about handling black-market goods, but she couldn’t refuse to help, not when Maureen had described the children’s hunger so vividly. It was bad enough being grown up and feeling hungry all the time, but it must be truly awful for the children, who couldn’t really be expected to understand why there wasn’t enough for them to eat. Everywhere you went people talked longingly about the food they would be able to eat once the war was over. Sometimes it occupied people’s minds as much as the war itself. That aching, gnawing feeling of hunger was always there, and no amount of Lord Woolton’s pie, or Spam brought all the way across the Atlantic by the convoys, could banish it. Everyone talked longingly of proper fruit cake, and Victoria sandwich cake with real cream and dripping with jam; of chocolate, of roast beef Sunday dinners, rich meaty stews with light-as-air dumplings, of proper bread, and as much of anything as you wanted.
‘It’s all right us talking about food like we all had everything we wanted to eat before this war,’ Jess had told them all at dinnertime earlier in the week when they had sat down together for their canteen meal of thin watery stew and boiled vegetables, ‘but, like my Auntie Jane says, there’s many a family now getting more to eat than they’ve ever had, and more money coming in as well.’
‘Well, we might have more money coming in,’ Lucy had sniffed, ‘but we ain’t got anything to spend it on, ’ave we?’
‘It will be different after the war.’ Those were the words on everyone’s lips and the hope in everyone’s heart, the belief they were all clinging to now with the war in its third year and the struggle of the last three years showing in people’s faces.
Liverpool, more than any other city outside London, had been savaged by bombing raids, the heart wrenched out of it with the destruction of its streets and buildings. Or at least that was what Hitler hoped. The reality was that the people