well-salted fish and chips, wrapped in newspaper!
It wasn’t until her father had left for the Sefton Arms, and Nan had gone to sleep that Ness was asked,
‘Are you all right, girl? I mean – is it getting any better? Oh, I know you joined the Land Army to help put it behind you and I can understand that, but was it worth giving up a good job for? I often think about what happened, y’know, and I sometimes feel you should have stayed and faced it out.’
‘No, Mam. I did the right thing. And I like it where I am. Ladybower is a beautiful house; very old with big rooms and a wide staircase. And Lorna is a love and Kate at the farm, too. And you said yourself I was looking well – in spite of the fact I’d been awake all night, worrying.’
‘So you’re getting over – things?’
‘Getting over Patrick? Yes. And Mam, sooner or later they’re going to call up women of my age. From twenty-one to twenty-five, it’ll be. Hairdressing is classed as a luxury trade now, so there’d have been no way I could have stayed at Dale’s much longer. And talking about my trade, your grey bits are showing. What say I give you and Nan a hairdo before I go back? And Da’s hair is in need of my scissors, an’ all!’
‘Well, I told him he looked like Shirley Temple with his hair so long, but he said he’d wait till you came home. You’ve spoiled him for going to a barber, you know. Says no one can cut his hair like our Ness.’
‘Spoiled him ’cause I don’t charge like the barber does!’ Ness laughed, relieved Mam had had her little say and that it wouldn’t be mentioned again – not this leave, anyway.
But getting over Patrick? There were some days she was shocked to find she had not thought about him at all, but there were other days when the hurt of it was still with her, keen as on the day it happened. Get over him? She would have to.
She lay wide-eyed in bed that night listening, she told herself, for the wailing of the siren, though really it was the strangeness of the little room that kept her awake. The bed she had once thought comfortable made her back ache, and though the room was very dark she knew that the walls pressed in on her and that if she drew back the blackout curtains and squinted into the night, there would be no outlines of rose bushes, nor of the wood behind them; no starbright sky that was wide and stretched for ever; no precious village built from the stones of a priory where lepers once came, in hope.
Outside her, in the shifting darkness, would be streets and rows of rooftops and rubbish-strewn jiggers because there was a war on and street sweepers in short supply. And outside, too, the city waited for an alert – her city, the place she was born in and grew up in and worked in. Liverpool was every bit as precious, in a roundabout way, as Nun Ainsty. Both equal in her affections. It was just that it suited her to live at Ladybower now, and work at Glebe Farm and be a land girl for the duration of hostilities, because that was what she had signed up for. And how long a duration lasted no one knew.
She closed her eyes and pretended she was in her bedroom at Ladybower with Lorna next door and the hens, secured for the night, on the lawn. William would be home tomorrow. Gawd …!
‘Thanks for the card, by the way.’
‘Thought you’d like it. View of the Liver Buildings with the birds on top. Sailors coming home, up river, can see them and know they’ve made a safe landfall.’
‘The Liver Birds. Fat and funny. Wonder what they’re supposed to be?’
‘Dunno. They’ve been there all my life and all Mam’s life, an’ all. People say that if ever they’re taken down – or are destroyed in the bombing – then Liverpool is at risk. And you’re saying it wrong. If you came from my part of the country, you’d call them the Liver Bayds. And when I left they were still there. There were no more raids, but at least I went home – saw they were all right.’
‘So you didn’t have to run to the shelter?’
‘No. And anyway, they’ve got their own, at home. Our house is old; built solid, for all that. When I was growing up, I always wanted Mam and Da to move out; get one of the little sunshine semis that were all the rage. I wanted a bathroom, see, and a garden at the back. Well, when you haven’t a bathroom and only a yard that opens onto a jigger, – er – alley, then of course you want a sunshine semi. But I was glad Mam didn’t say yes. Them little new houses don’t come with coal cellars, like Ruth Street’s got. You should see it now! Mam said that since coal was rationed she could keep all we were likely to get in the yard, and she set to and cleaned that cellar and whitewashed the walls. Uncle Perce works in a timber yard, and he got Da some hefty props, cheap, to support the ceiling, and Mam put old lino down and old rugs and bought a kitchen table in Paddy’s Market for two shillings – a big one. And Da shortened the legs so it was nearer to the floor and said that if the bombing got really bad, then they could all creep under it for extra protection. It’s the best little shelter in Liverpool. I reckon they’ll be safe enough, down there, even if Hitler decides to blitz Liverpool like he’s doin’ to London. But how did it go for you – and William?’
‘Just fine. We went to church last Sunday – it being a national day of prayer, of course. William was in his uniform and the Local Defence Volunteers were all there, in theirs. I didn’t do a lot of praying, Ness. I just knelt there and thought – about that tiny chapel and the hundreds of people who must have prayed there, over the years, for England.’
‘Ar. By the way, I knew it’d be all right to send you a card; that it wouldn’t drop on the doormat and get William upset like that letter did.’ Best get off the matter of religion. ‘I figured that you bein’ the postie, you’d be able to slip it in your pocket! Was William bothered about your war work, by the way?’
‘No, he wasn’t. Never said a word. And when Nance Ellery asked him if he was proud of me doing my bit, he said that yes, he was! I – I think he had things on his mind, things he hadn’t been able to leave behind him. I suppose he was preoccupied with that promotion he wants. Anyway, my week passed all right; quite enjoyable, in fact.’
Enjoyable, was it, Ness shuddered inwardly, when it should have been wonderful and full of love and kisses and early nights and – and –
‘Bags of passion, eh, Lorna?’
She bit on her tongue. She shouldn’t have said that. What went on between a man and his wife who haven’t shared a bed for weeks wasn’t open to skitting, and she was glad she had the grace to blush at her clumsiness. Or at least until Lorna said, quite off-handedly,
‘Oh, yes. Nothing’s changed in that department. The usual twice a week!’
‘Beg pardon?’
‘William and me, I’m talking about. We always do – er – make love twice a week; always did, right from the start,’ she smiled.
‘But twice, Lorna? Never once, or three times? I mean – has it got to be twice?’ She was missing something. She had to be!
‘We-e-ll, William and I were very frank with each other before we got married. It was good of him to consider my feelings, though I knew what went on in the privacy of the bedroom. You learn a lot, you know, at boarding school.’
‘Didn’t know you’d been away to school,’ Ness floundered, amazed at such directness.
‘When
