Da that I’d give you a ring, just in case you’d heard we’d been bombed and were worried. No use, for all that. The coin box was jammed full of money. Couldn’t get any more in. I told the girl on the exchange that someone ought to shift themselves and empty it before some scallywag made off with the lot. Get the phone mended, too! And she said it was shortage of manpower, and she would do what she could. I tell you, this war has become the excuse for any old thing that goes wrong! “There’s a war on,” people say, as if it pardons everything!’
‘Ar,’ Nan nodded, taking up her needles again. ‘And if your Da’s goin’ to the Sefton, he can queue at the chippy on the way back. My treat.’ She nodded to where her son-in-law snored gently, newspaper over his face. ‘Give him a shove, Ness, there’s a good girl.’
So Ness told her father they had decided on fish and chips for supper and to remember to get them salted and vinegared before they were wrapped up, because it was never the same if you put salt and vinegar on when you got them home.
There wasn’t a chippy in Nun Ainsty, Ness had to admit, nor in Meltonby, either. Those two beautiful, hidden away, safe little villages didn’t know what they were missing, she sighed. But then, you couldn’t have everything, could you?
Relaxed now, she gazed into the fire, wondering what Lorna was doing. She would be all alone in Ladybower – until William came home on leave tomorrow, that was. And wouldn’t Himself be pleased to find the land girl had gone on leave? And why on earth had a lovely lady like Lorna married the likes of him? Why hadn’t she looked around a bit, tested the water a time or two instead of jumping in at the deep end, head first.
‘Hope your Da gets himself home from the chippy before the siren goes,’ Nan said, wriggling in her chair.
‘There won’t be a siren tonight. Not when I’m home,’ Ness sighed. ‘Oh, it’s absolutely beautiful at Nun Ainsty but it’s so good to be home, bombing or not. Didn’t think I could miss Liverpool so.’
Her Mam’s kitchen with its black-leaded iron fire grate, and Da, having his forty winks with the Liverpool Echo over his face, and her gran, always knitting. And vinegar-soaked, 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,