Read Online That Liverpool Girl by Ruth Hamilton - Free Book Online Page A

the boy would be conscripted. He had not inherited his father’s flat feet, but his twin sister had. Peter was fit. Peter was going nowhere, Tom decided as he cleared the table. His wife seemed to be on strike.
    The kitchen bore a strong relationship to a battle zone. Remnants of high tea shared with Mel Watson and her mother lingered on the drop-down middle section of one of a pair of green cupboards known as kitchenettes. Saucepans, abandoned on the hob of the gas cooker, had traces of the last supper encrusted on their interiors. A grill pan contained congealed lamb fat, while peelings from carrots and potatoes occupied a colander in the sink. This was what she faced each day, and more than once. Marie was a bloody good mother who always gave one hundred per cent of herself.
    Tom rolled up his sleeves and set to. He did everything properly, dealing first with glassware and cutlery, changing water for crockery, soaking pans, wiping surfaces.
    ‘Thank you, Tom.’
    He turned. ‘Marie.’ He was a bad man, and she deserved better. ‘Men don’t realize what women cope with until they’re stuck with it,’ he said.
    ‘I wouldn’t have left the washing up.’
    He looked at her; she looked at him. After shifting her clothes from the marital wardrobe and into the spare room, she was hot and sticky and her hair was corkscrewed. Tom, in a flowery apron and damp shirt, brought to mind some henpecked character from a Charlie Chaplin film. They burst out laughing simultaneously. He remembered the girl he had married; she thought about the laughter that had accompanied their courtship. ‘I don’t hate you,’ she said quietly.
    ‘Same here.’
    ‘We’ll just have to muddle through, Tom.’
    ‘Yes. You, me and the armed forces. Life’s rich tapestry, what?’
    She nodded and began to dry dishes.
    Eileen opened the door. ‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph,’ she mouthed.
    ‘Hardly,’ said the policeman who held one struggling boy in each hand.
    ‘Philip, Rob and Bertie,’ said the second, who was holding on to Rob. ‘Jesus and his mam and dad never turned up, said they were busy. But these three were there. I believe you are the owner of these fine young criminals?’
    Eileen stepped aside to allow the representatives of the law into her parlour. There was scarcely room for family in the tiny front room, so by the time the three offenders were lined up in front of the fireplace she and her mother were forced to stand with their backs to the opposite wall, the one to which Mel’s bike was affixed, while the constables had to occupy the window area.
    ‘What now?’ Nellie asked resignedly. ‘Have they burned down the Liver Buildings, sunk the Isle of Man ferry, or is it something serious like high treason?’
    ‘There’s a special school opening,’ said one of the men. ‘It’s for young delinquents, and it’s in the middle of Derbyshire. We can kill two – or three – birds with one stone, because it counts as evacuation as well. They won’t be bombed, but they’ll be knocked into shape. God knows they need it.’
    ‘What have they done now?’ Nellie repeated.
    One of the pair delivered the opinion that what these three hadn’t done would make a shorter list. The other attempted a reply. ‘They’ve been running bets for Nobby Costigan, pinching fruit from the Jubilee Stores, and when we finally caught up with them they were trying to work out how to free a barrage balloon from its moorings with a penknife and an axe. The axe is being kept as evidence, but the penknife broke and one of these heroes chucked it in the river.’
    ‘Why?’ Eileen asked.
    Philip answered. ‘Because it was a no-good knife. Couldn’t cut butter.’
    Eileen closed her eyes for a moment. ‘Not the knife, soft lad. Why the balloon? Why did you try to free a balloon that’s there to protect our city?’
    ‘We wanted to see what would happen.’ Bertie swallowed hard after this admission. ‘If it got loose, like, and floated off.’