something he wanted to discuss with her.
‘What is it?’ she had asked him but he had shaken his head and told her gruffly, ‘There isn’t time now. They’ll be waiting for me down at the depot.’ ‘Sam …’ she had protested, but he had shaken his head, making clear that he wasn’t going to be coaxed into saying any more.
‘I don’t doubt that,’ Noreen was saying, dragging Jean’s attention back. ‘We’ve all seen the way in which everyone’s turned to and got on with things.’ She shook her head, her composure suddenly slipping as she added, ‘Even my Frank is saying now that we can’t hold out much longer.’
The two women exchanged mutually understanding looks as Jean removed her coat and hung it up.
Every rest centre had a store of second-hand clothes and blankets it was able to hand out to those in need to tide them over. The rule was that all blankets had to be returned as soon as Government coupons and fresh papers had been supplied, so that they could be put back in store for the next person in need, but as Noreen had pointed out two nights ago, increasingly people weren’t returning the blankets, because they were virtually all they had. The council was doing its best, but the sheer number of people being made homeless meant that supplies were running out.
‘At least we had that convoy of Queen’s Messengers get in from Manchester before the roads got blocked,’ Noreen told Jean.
The Queen’s Messengers was the name given to a mobile canteen service provided by the Queen, with convoys based all over the country, staffed by the WVS and ready to rush to any emergency where food was required.
‘And it’s a mercy that they did. I don’t know how they’d have gone on in Bootle if they hadn’t, from what my Frank’s said.’
Noreen’s husband, Frank, worked for the Gas Company, and like Jean’s Sam he was spending long hours helping to repair bomb damage.
‘From what I’ve heard they nearly got bombed themselves,’ Jean told her.
‘Where’s that billeting officer?’ Noreen continued. ‘She’s normally here by now.’
On the morning after a bombing raid every rest centre that was operational and not bomb damaged received a visit from one of the City Council’s billeting officers, carrying with her lists of available accommodation.
‘It’s all very well the council saying that no one’s ever had to spend a second night at a rest centre on account of them finding them accommodation, but what about all them trekkers?’
In her indignation Noreen’s voice lost its careful gentility, her accent becoming stronger.
‘And don’t tell me that it’s not them that’s responsible for all our blankets disappearing. After all, blankets don’t just walk out by themselves, do they? No. It’s not right, that’s what I say. No decent folk would want to go roaming around the countryside sleeping in barns and that, like that lot do. Stands to reason, doesn’t it, if they choose to do that when the council says it can find them a proper roof over their heads?’
‘I wouldn’t fancy it myself,’ Jean admitted, ‘but then I haven’t been bombed out, and we’ve had some in here that have had that happen to them more than once. I dare say there’s some folk that are just too plain afraid to stay in the city at night.’
‘That’s all very well, but in that case they should stay in the country and not come back here expecting to be fed and taking our blankets.’
Noreen was normally a good-natured soul and Jean suspected that her current snappiness could be put down to the strain they were all feeling.
It was also true that there was some hostility to and suspicion of the trekkers, as they were unofficially called, with some people even suggesting that their number included men who were trying to avoid conscription.
From what Jean had seen, though, they seemed decent enough sorts, albeit from the poorer dock area of the city, which had been more heavily bombed, with a lot of them coming in to work during the day before trekking back out to the country at night.
‘I’ve even heard as how the City’s putting on special trucks and handing out tickets to them for places on them, to get them out at night.’
If that was true surely it must mean that the city was in an even more desperate situation than anyone was saying, Jean thought worriedly. The only reason the council could have for encouraging them to leave at night had to be because they couldn’t provide accommodation for them because so many buildings had been destroyed.
Removing her hat-pin, then taking off her hat and putting it on the shelf above her coat, Jean reached for her apron, ready to relieve the WVS volunteer who was manning the tea urn.
After the first and even the second night of bombing the mood of those who had come to the rest centres had been defiant and determinedly cheerful. Jokes had been cracked and heads had been held high, but now that had all changed, Jean acknowledged as she poured a cup of tea for an exhausted-looking young woman with three small children clinging to her side.
‘’Ere, get a move on wi’ them kids, will yer?’ the woman next to her grumbled, impatient for her own cup of tea, and moving up before the young woman could get out of the way properly, accidentally jarring her arm so that her precious cup of tea was spilled.
Tears filled the young woman’s eyes.
‘Don’t worry, love,’ Jean tried to comfort her, pouring her a fresh cup of tea. ‘The billeting officer will be here soon and get you sorted out.’
The young woman gave a hiccuping sob and shook her head. ‘He’ll be lucky if he can do that.’ She was shaking now.
Catching Noreen’s eye, Jean murmured, ‘Stand in for me for a few minutes, will you, Noreen love, whilst I see what’s to do?’
It was recognised amongst their group that Jean, with her motherly manner, had a way of dealing with situations like this one so Noreen nodded, allowing Jean to leave her post to usher the young woman and her children into the back room, where she offered her a seat on one of its battered hard wooden chairs.
The young woman shook her head again. ‘I darsen’t ’cos if I sit down I reckon I’ll never want to get up again. It’s bin three nights now since we had any proper sleep. Me and the kids were living with my hubby’s mam, but she got fed up, what wi’ the little one crying, and then me and her had words, and she said we had to leave. She’s never liked me. Then we went and stayed with my mam but she’s got our nan and me sisters there with her, and then when I tried to go back to my Ian’s mam’s I found out she’d been bombed. Half the street had gone.’
‘Our nan got killed by a bomb,’ the eldest child announced. ‘Served her right, it did, for throwing us out.’
He was too young to understand, of course, but his mother had gone bright red.
‘I wouldn’t really have wished her any harm, only she didn’t half wind me up and sometimes you say things you shouldn’t. My Ian will have something to say when he finds out. He’s bound to blame me, ’cos she was bad on her legs, you see, and she wouldn’t have gone to the shelter.’
Poor girl. How awful to have to carry that kind of burden of guilt, Jean thought sympathetically.
‘You
