Daughters of Liverpool by Annie Groves Read Free Book Online

Christmas, and sleeping in her own childhood bedroom, so she wouldn’t have to listen to the mother and daughter going on and on like they did about Jan and how wonderful he was.
    ‘Come along then.’ Vi started to cross the road, having spied another vegetable barrow. Bella made to follow her and then stopped, opening her handbag to remove a ten-shilling note and then hurrying over to the girl with the pram.
    ‘Here, this is for the baby. Buy her something pretty,’ Bella told her.
    The young mother’s face betrayed her shock, followed by anger.
    ‘I’m not a beggar, you know,’ she began.
    ‘Bella, what are you doing?’
    The sound of her mother’s voice had Bella turning away from the pram.
    ‘Very well then, I’ll take it, but only because me husband’s been laid off from his ship on account of him not being well.’ She took the note, pushing it quickly into her pocket.
    ‘Bella …’
    ‘Coming, Mummy.’
    ‘What on earth were you doing?’ Vi demanded crossly when Bella caught up with her.
    ‘I was going to buy some chestnuts but then I decided not to bother,’ Bella fibbed. She had no idea why she had given in to that impulse to give the other woman something. She could still see the baby’s big brown eyes and sweet smile. The pain was back again. It was silly of her to feel like this. She hadn’t even wanted a baby really, had she? But she had been having one and now she wasn’t, and somehow that had left her feeling different and sad, even though she didn’t want to feel like that; as though there was an emptiness in her life and as though she really wished that she was still going to have a baby after all.
    ‘I just don’t know what I’m going to buy your father for Christmas, Bella. He’s not easily pleased at the best of times, and with this war on …’
    ‘You could always buy him something to water down his gin.’
    Vi’s face took on a high colour and she gave her daughter the kind of displeased look she normally reserved for others. Vi had spoiled her daughter and boasted about her to everyone who would listen, but having a daughter who was widowed, and, even worse, whose husband had been carrying on before his death and threatening to leave her, was not easy to boast about.
    ‘I’m surprised at you, Bella,’ Vi told her daughter, ‘making a comment like that about your father. It’s only thanks to him that you’re living in that house;those refugees seem to have taken over without you putting your foot down and stopping them.’
    ‘I can hardly go against the Government and turn them out,’ Bella pointed out. ‘Everyone with a spare room empty is expected to go on the register with the billeting officer, you know that, Mummy. The only reason you haven’t had to is because Daddy’s on the council, and he’s claimed that he needs the bedrooms in case he has to put up some of the men from the Ministry of Defence who come to see him because of the work he does for the navy. Not that I’ve heard of any of them staying with you, Mummy.’
    ‘Now that’s enough of that,’ Vi reproved her daughter crossly. ‘Your father is only doing his duty. You know that. Your auntie Jean has had to take someone in, but she’s only got the one, not two like you – some young girl, it seems, who’s working sorting letters or some such thing …What do you think about this cravat for your father, Bella? We’ve been invited round to the Hartwells’ for drinks on Boxing Day, you know. Mr Hartwell is on the council with your father. He took Alan’s father’s place.’
    ‘Yes, I know, Mummy. I can’t see Daddy wanting a cravat, though.’ Bella picked up a pair of leather driving gloves, wondering if they would do for her brother, Charlie, and then suddenly remembered something she had intended to mention to her mother. Putting the gloves back, she told Vi, ‘I almost forgot. Mrs Lyons from three doors down from me called round again the other day to ask if I’d thought any more