‘Phew,’ Carole announced breathlessly, sinking down into her chair as her partner returned her to their table, ‘that was fun. You’ll never guess what,’ she added after she had finished fanning herself energetically with her hand, ‘Andy’s only asked me if I’ll go to the pictures with him the next time he gets a pass out. The boys are based only down the road at Seacombe.’ She gave Katie an arch look. ‘I saw you dancing with that corporal; he’s ever so good-looking, isn’t he?’
‘Is he? I hadn’t noticed,’ Katie lied.
Carole laughed and shook her head in a way that implied that she didn’t believe Katie for one minute.
Whilst the band was playing it was relatively easy to forget what was happening outside, but whenever the music stopped the sound of German planes dropping bombs was a stark reminder of the reality of the situation.
Whilst Katie and Carole were in the ladies, two other girls were discussing the bombing, one of them complaining to the other, ‘I told you we shouldn’t have come out tonight after the bombing last night. If we’d done as I said then we’d be safe in a proper air-raid shelter now.’
Her friend tossed her brown curls and argued firmly, ‘Well, I’d rather be bombed here, whilst I’m enjoying meself, than stuck in some air-raid shelter, and besides, they aren’t always safe. There was that one at the Durning Road Technical School where all those poor folk were killed in November, and I’ve heard of others as well. If a bomb drops on a shelter, then you could end up being buried alive. At least if we bought it here, I’d have had some fun.’
‘Fun. That’s all you think about, Marianne Dunkin. I’m more interested in staying alive,’ her friend retorted tearfully, ‘and if you think I’m letting you persuade me to come dancing again whilst this war’s on then you’ve got another think coming.’
They were still arguing as they left the cloakroom, the door swinging closed after them.
Carole, who had gone unusually quiet and rather pale, shivered and asked Katie anxiously, ‘You don’t think we’ll get bombed again, do you?’
‘Of course not. No one ever gets bombed twice in the same night,’ Katie reassured her with a conviction she was far from feeling.
* * *
The toffee-nosed girl seemed to be enjoying herself dancing with the young Canadian airman who was partnering her now, Luke recognised as he watched Katie dance past. The Canadian looked pretty smitten with her. Well, more fool him, since he was only a lowly private.
Luke was itching to leave the Grafton and set to with the work he knew would be going on, to do what could be done to counter the effects of the bombing, but his first duty was to his men. He had sneaked outside a couple of times to look with despair at the destruction that the bombs had caused. The electric tram wires were down along the West Derby Road, outside the Grafton, and broken glass from blown-out windows covered the road. Instead of the Christmas skies being filled with Santa’s sledge piled high with the presents of children’s fairy tales, the skies over Liverpool were filled with the Luftwaffe, bringing death and destruction as Christmas ‘gifts’ to the people of the city.
They had made it. Emily leaned gratefully on the inside of the front door as she stood in the dark hallway of her home, the boy at her side.
There had been plenty of moments when she had feared that they wouldn’t make it, but they had.
Wave after wave of planes had come in over their heads, heading for the docks, where they dropped their deadly cargo. The north side of the city seemed to be ringed with fires lighting up the night sky.
The worst moment was when they had walked past a newly bombed house and Emily had seen the tears sliding down the faces of the children standing outside it, making oily tracks through the soot from what had once been their chimney. They had been inside when the bomb had hit, Emily had heard one of the children telling their rescuers, taking refuge under the table they had put under the stairs, just like the local ARP man had told them, and now their granddad was dead and their mam taken off to hospital.
As she and the boy had turned into Emily’s own road, she had heard a thin reedy elderly female voice calling out, ‘Tiddles, where are you?’
Emily’s father had had electricity installed in the house at the earliest opportunity, and its welcoming light banished the shadows from the hallway.
Gently pushing the boy in front of her, Emily headed for the kitchen where mercifully the Aga was still on and the kitchen warm.
She had expected the boy to be overawed by the house, but instead he seemed to take its comforts for granted.
‘You can sit on here whilst I stoke up the Aga and put the kettle on,’ Emily told him, pulling a chair out from the table but removing the cushion from it before letting him sit on it. ‘But no moving off it, mind,’ she warned him. ‘I’m not having you messing up my house, filthy like you are.’
He was trying to stifle a yawn, his face white with fatigue, and Emily had to harden her heart against the pathetic sight he made.
‘I know you’re tired,’ she told him, ‘but I’m not having you sleeping between my nice clean sheets until you’ve had a bath.’
He still hadn’t spoken, but he was listening to her and watching her.
Quickly Emily banked up the Aga. She was tired and hungry, but she couldn’t eat without feeding the boy as well and he certainly couldn’t eat using her clean china in the filthy state he was in, so she would have to wait until she had made sure he was bathed and clean.
‘Come on,’ she told him. ‘Come with me.’
In the airing cupboard she found some old towels that she kept for the theatre because of all the greasepaint that Con managed to get on them. It never washed out properly, no matter what instructions she gave them at the laundry.
‘Here’s the bathroom,’ she told the boy, opening the door to show him. ‘I’ll run you a bath and then you’ll take off your clothes and get in it and give yourself a good scrub.’
Normally Emily stuck rigidly to the letter of the law, but the boy was so dirty he was going to need two baths, not just one, and she certainly wasn’t going to let him put those filthy clothes back on. He’d have to sleep in one of Con’s old shirts tonight.
It was gone midnight before Emily finally climbed into her own bed. The boy, bathed, fed and wearing an old flannel shirt that trailed on the floor behind him, was tucked up in bed in the spare room with a hot-water bottle to keep him warm. There’d been a black rim round the bath like she’d kept coal in it, and when she’d washed his clothes, his vest had fallen apart in her hands, it was that full of holes. Poor little mite. She’d been surprised to see what a nice-looking lad he was once he was clean, but it was beginning to worry her that he wouldn’t speak. Could it be that he was deaf and dumb? There’d been a girl when she’d been at school whose sister had been like that, and her family had made signs to her when they wanted to tell her something, Emily remembered.
She yawned tiredly and reached out to switch off the bedside light, only realising as she did so that Con hadn’t come in. Well, his absence was no loss to her.
It was half-past five in the