‘Well, whether they forget it or not they are not going on it. I’ll not have it. I’ve nothing against your Fran, Jean, you know that, but her kind of life isn’t what I want for our girls.’
‘No,’ Jean agreed.
‘Tell us again about the Orpheans, Katie,’ Lou begged.
The three of them were in the twins’ top-floor bedroom, the music from the gramophone for once turned down so that the girls could question Katie about the exciting life she had lived with her parents.
‘There isn’t anything to tell that I haven’t already told you,’ Katie answered her prosaically.
‘Imagine going out every night and dancing. What did you wear, Katie? If it had been us then we would have had the same frocks made, but mine would have been in black and Sasha’s would have been in white – like mirror images, you know, and then when we do our dance we do it like there is a mirror and it’s just one of us. Shall we show you?’
They were on their feet, finding their current favourite dance tune, and buzzing with excitement before Katie could say a word.
They were talented, no one could deny them that, but Katie knew what the reality of making a living was for girls like them, and she had seen the anxiety in Jean’s eyes when she had watched her daughters.
‘You are very good,’ Katie told them when they had finished their routine and had turned, slightly breathless, to face her, ‘but being on the stage isn’t what you think it is. All that glitter is just a few sequins stuck onto cheap cloth that’s darned all over the place, cheap lodgings where you don’t get enough to eat, damp bedding and bedbugs, and cheap …’
‘Values’, Katie had been about to say but they were too young for her to talk to them about that kind of thing, she decided, watching them grimace over the bedbugs and giggle that she was teasing them.
‘We can’t understand how you can leave something so glamorous to come here and sit all day reading letters,’ Lou told her.
‘No, if it was us you’d never get us doing what you’re doing,’ Sasha agreed.
‘That’s because you don’t know what it’s really like, and that means that you are very lucky,’ Katie told them firmly.
‘Well, we still want to be on the stage, don’t we, Sasha?’ Lou asked her twin.
‘Yes, we do,’ Sasha confirmed, ‘and we’re going to be, as well.’
Not if their parents had anything to do with it they weren’t, Katie thought. She didn’t blame Jean and Sam either, but the twins were stubborn and Katie suspected that the more they were told they couldn’t do something, the more they would want to do it.
‘Well, I must say, Mum, she does seem a decent sort,’ Grace Campion told her mother generously.
Grace had initially felt rather jealous when her mother had spoken so enthusiastically to her about this girl who was billeted with Grace’s parents, but now having met Katie Grace had to admit that she had liked her.
The three of them had gone for a cup of tea at Lyons Corner House, Jean having decided that it was best that Grace met Katie on neutral ground.
Tactfully Katie had now gone off to do some shopping, leaving mother and daughter to talk on their own.
‘She won’t be going home for Christmas so she’ll be having her Christmas dinner with us. I’m hoping that our Luke will get leave to be home. I’ll miss you, Grace love, but it’s only natural that Seb’s family want to meet you.’
‘We’ll be back to see in the New Year with you, Mum. Then I’m on nights again.’
‘You’ll have been busy today, love, with Hitler bombing us again last night. Your dad was out all night helping to put out the fires started down on the docks by the incendiaries. The Dock Board offices and Cunard’s were both hit, and then there was that awful thing down by the railway arches in Bentinck Street. Your dad says they still don’t know how many people who were sheltering under those arches got killed when they collapsed.’
‘Just when we were thinking that Hitler had finished with us,’ Grace agreed.
Jean patted her daughter’s hand. Grace had only just escaped being a casualty of one of Hitler’s bombs herself late in November when she and Seb had been caught in the Durning Technical School bomb blast.
‘I’d better get back, Mum,’ Grace told her mother, ‘otherwise I’ll be late going on duty, and you can imagine how busy we are.’
‘Well, you take care of yourself, remember?’ Jean gave her a fierce hug.
‘And you, Mum. Are you going home now?’
‘Not yet. Whilst I’ve got Katie with me we’re going to nip over to St John’s Market so that I can get me turkey and a few other things.’
Grace laughed. It was a standing joke in the family that Jean complained every year that the poulterer from whom she ordered her turkey always got the size wrong, resulting in Jean worrying about being able to get the bird into her oven.
To get to the market Jean and Katie had to cross Ranelagh Street, where Lewis’s was, and go down the upper part of Charlotte Street, before crossing Elliot Street. St John’s Market ran back from Elliot Street, the whole length of the lower section of Charlotte Street, which divided it into two: the fish market to one side, and the meat, fruit and veg market on the other.
Although it was nothing like the size of Covent Garden, St John’s Meat Market did remind Katie a little of the famous London market, as much, she suspected, for the cheery confidence of those working there as anything else.
With Christmas so close the market was especially busy, with the bustle of porters; horse-drawn deliveries arriving; errand boys ringing their bicycle bells and then pedalling furiously as they raced about, shoppers protesting when they had to dodge them. Stall holders were shouting their wares, whilst small children, bored with the quays, were trying to escape their mothers’ surveillance.
With so many people pressed into the market it was no wonder police officers were patrolling between the stalls, Katie acknowledged. Somewhere like this would be a paradise for thieves and pickpockets.
Jean, raising her voice so that Katie could hear her above the noise as she hurried her through the maze of stalls, pointed out that at the other end of the market were the Royal Court Theatre, then Roe Street and Queen Square.
‘The station hotels and Lime Street itself are only the other side of the fish market,’ Jean added. ‘But you’ll soon find your bearings. Just remember, if you’re walking uphill along Edge Road then you’re heading away from the city centre and the docks; if you’re walking downhill you’re heading for them.’
St John’s Market was especially thronged with people collecting their Christmas orders. Every other stall, or so it seemed to Katie, was filled with poultry. Those that weren’t selling ‘fattened geese and turkeys’ were selling all those things that went with them: strings of sausages, hams and tongues to cook for Boxing Day, special Christmas pâtés and stuffing, whilst in the fruit and vegetable section of the market, which they had come through earlier, Katie had seen stalls selling boxes of dates, even if there were signs up stating, ‘No oranges/lemons/bananas/tangerines or nuts – don’t blame me, there’s a war on.’
‘Sam’s got all the veg sorted out. He’s grown most of it on his allotment and bartered for what he hasn’t grown with some of the other