don’t know. I heard them. They had loud voices. Mrs Kennedy shouted at them. They were very angry. I could tell but I didn’t go down. Then Mrs Kennedy went away with them.’
Mrs Kennedy! Rita had to stop herself from exclaiming out loud. Winnie was this poor girl’s mother and yet she wouldn’t even allow her to call her by her first name, insisting on the full and more formal Mrs Kennedy. And surely she hadn’t just shut the shop in the middle of the day? Even though she was a shadow of her former self, she still had an eye for profit.
‘You don’t need to worry, Ruby,’ Rita said, thinking fast. ‘It will have nothing to do with you. Otherwise they would have asked to speak to you, wouldn’t they? You haven’t done anything bad. They will have wanted to speak to Winnie. Maybe one of the customers has caused trouble, something like that.’ But Rita didn’t believe that for one minute. If it wasn’t the children, then there was only one person who was likely to bring trouble to this place.
‘So they don’t want to take me away?’ Ruby gasped. ‘They aren’t going to put me in prison?’
‘Of course not. Why would they do that?’ Rita tried to keep her voice reassuring, but she wondered just what Winnie had been saying to the poor girl while she was out of the house. Winnie loved to have control over people and here was a sitting target for her malice, daughter or no daughter. There was no telling how deep her spite ran.
Ruby’s face had just begun to brighten when the all-too-familiar air-raid siren began to wail. ‘Oh no, not again,’ Rita exclaimed without thinking. Then she said, ‘Don’t panic, Ruby, just go and get your bag – you do have it ready just in case, don’t you? – and then meet me downstairs. We’ll go to the shelter at the end of the road. I’ll see what we can take to eat, to keep our spirits up.’ Wearily she began to shrug into the coat she’d not long taken off. Eight thirty in the evening and she hadn’t had a proper meal all day.
Down in the kitchen she put her hand to the kettle and found it was still hot, so she quickly set about making a flask of tea. She knew Winnie kept packets of biscuits where she thought nobody could find them, and hastily bent to put a couple into her bag. A shadow fell across her as she stood up.
‘And what do you think you’re doing?’ Winnie spat.
‘Getting ready to go to the shelter,’ Rita said shortly. She didn’t intend to waste time or energy on her mother-in-law. ‘You’d better grab your things and come with us.’
‘Go to that shelter again? I’ll do no such thing,’ Winnie protested. ‘You get all sorts in there, all squashed in together – it’s not hygienic. You don’t know where they’ve been.’ She caught sight of Ruby hovering in the doorway. ‘My point exactly. I’m not going anywhere where I’ll be seen with her, for a start.’ Her eyes gleamed. ‘I’ll be safe enough in the cellar.’
‘In that case I’ll take that pie for Ruby and me,’ said Rita, catching sight of a pastry crust under a dome of white netting. ‘We all know you’ve got enough to feed an army stocked away down there.’
‘That’s my pie …’ Winnie began to protest, but Rita was too quick for her.
‘That’s my supper. I only just got back from my shift and I opened up the shop first thing this morning, if you remember.’ Rita wrapped the pie in a clean tea towel and added it to her bag. She was about to head out of the door when she paused. ‘Winnie, what were the police doing here? Weren’t you going to tell me?’
Winnie’s head snapped round. ‘Oh, someone’s been gossiping, have they?’
Rita thought that was a bit rich, coming from the vicious-tongued old woman. ‘Just explain to me what happened.’
‘It’s you who’s to blame,’ Winnie hissed. ‘Going round saying things about my Charles that aren’t true. It’s all a mistake. They won’t be back here again to bother me. Not unless you start telling your pack of lies again.’
‘What are you saying?’ Rita was momentarily shocked into silence. Then the penny dropped. ‘I see, they’ve come about him being a deserter, haven’t they? His papers arrived in December and I bet he hasn’t shown up to enlist, so they’ve come for him at last.’
‘He’s in a reserved occupation,’ Winnie insisted, with whatever misplaced dignity she could muster. ‘He would never stoop so low as to desert.’
‘Winnie, this is Charlie’s wife you’re talking to, not one of the customers you’re trying to impress,’ Rita sighed in exasperation. She finished fastening her bag. ‘Since when is being an insurance salesman a reserved occupation? And he didn’t even do much of that.’ She buttoned her coat. ‘And he’s already well practised at deserting – he left me quickly enough for his fancy woman, don’t you remember? Why don’t you tell that to your customers – the ones we have left, anyway. Listen, Ruby and I don’t have time for this, we have to go. Stay in the cellar if you have to … and,’ she added in an uncharacteristic moment of sharpness, ‘do look after that precious box of documents, won’t you? You wouldn’t want them to fall into the wrong hands.’ Leaving Winnie open-mouthed, she hastily took Ruby by the arm and ushered her through the side door and on to the pavement.
Empire Street was lit by a beautiful full moon, but Rita didn’t have time to stop to admire the bright silver light. She knew it would make the bombers’ task easier – although the anti-aircraft gunners would have a better chance of hitting a well-illuminated plane. People were pouring out from every door of the short street, hastening to the communal shelter. There was Violet from her parents’ house, her gawky frame easily recognisable. She waved and came over.
‘You on your own?’ Rita asked her sister-in-law in surprise. The Feenys’ place was usually bursting at the seams.
‘I am,’ said Violet in her strong Mancunian accent. ‘Dolly’s out fire-watching, Pop is on ARP duty, Sarah’s at the Voluntary Aid Detachment post down the docks and Nancy went back to her mother-in-law’s after supper, taking baby George with her. I’ve just locked up, so it’s as safe as I can get it.’ She smiled ruefully.
‘No sign of Frank?’ Rita asked.
‘No, he’s at his digs. He’s doing a lot of night shifts this week,’ Violet said. ‘Hurry up, I don’t like being out in this, it’s like daylight.’
As the alarm continued to wail, the three women broke into a run towards the shelter. Once safely installed alongside their neighbours, they unpacked their provisions and settled down, knowing it could be a long night. Rita was full of admiration for Violet; she never seemed to tire and her spirits never seemed to flag. She led them all in a singsong, though Rita thought the notes of ‘Run Rabbit Run’ and ‘Pack Up Your Troubles’ sounded rather gloomy as they fought with the rumble from the guns and incendiaries outside. And none of it could hide the whispers and mutterings occasionally directed at Ruby from some of the ruder elements among the street’s residents. Rita pulled Ruby closer towards her and made soothing noises to calm the strange girl as they waited, for what seemed like an age, for the all-clear.
Warrant Officer Frank Feeny hurried down the concrete steps of Derby House, ready to show his ID for the second time since entering the building. Nowhere in the entire country was security taken more seriously than in this fortified bunker in the centre of Liverpool, which was now home to the command for the Western Approaches. It was no exaggeration to say that the fate of the war relied on what happened in these two storeys of underground offices, mess areas, and the vital map room, which served as the nerve centre for the Battle of the Atlantic.
He
