Queen of the Mersey by Maureen Lee Read Free Book Online Page A

things worse for him. He was holding up so well. ‘I’m amazed the War Office managed to find you,’ she said in a shaky voice. ‘And why are you being sent away so quickly? I thought you were supposed to have a medical first?’
    He didn’t answer for a while then, with a little shrug, he said, ‘They didn’t need to find me, Lo. I’ve already had a medical. I volunteered, that’s why.’
    ‘And you didn’t tell me!’ She leapt off his knee and stared at him accusingly.
    ‘You want to leave, don’t you? You can’t wait! You don’t care what will happen to me and Hester if you’re killed.’
    ‘I won’t be killed,’ he said confidently.
    ‘How can you possibly know that?’
    ‘In six months, the whole thing will be over.’
    ‘And how can you possibly know that?’
    ‘It’s only common sense, my darling Lo. Come here!’ Once again, he held out his arms, but this time she ignored them.
    ‘Don’t darling me, Roderick Oliver.’ She stamped her foot, angrier than she’d ever been before. ‘You actually want to fight. You’re raring for it. That’s because you’re a man and men are stupid. They start wars, can’t wait to rush off and fight them, and us women are left behind to pick up the pieces.’
    Roddy looked impressed. ‘Where did you get that from? You don’t usually have such strong opinions.’
    ‘Oh, go and jump in the lake, Roddy.’ She went to the front door and shouted loudly for Hester. Two gulls on the roof opposite immediately took flight, and Hester arrived looking scared. ‘What’s the matter, Mummy?’
    ‘Ask your father.’ Laura stamped into the kitchen to get the dinner.
    ‘Our Billy’s going on Monday, too,’ Vera told Laura the following day.
    ‘I bet he wasn’t silly enough to volunteer,’ Laura grumbled. She’d come across to Vera’s first thing for a moan. Vera appeared quite happy to leave the breakfast dishes on the table in favour of a chat. She wore a crossover pinny that had stopped crossing over a long while ago and now barely met on her chest.
    Hester and Mary were squabbling upstairs.
    ‘Billy wouldn’t dare. He’d have got a black eye, if he had.’
    ‘Roddy didn’t even tell me.’ Laura’s brown eyes shone with indignation. ‘He just went and did it without a word. That’s what I find so maddening. If he’d been called up because it was his turn, it would be different. We fought all night.
    It was our first proper row.’
    ‘Well, there’s a first time for everything, Laura, luv.’
    ‘He said it was his duty. I said it was his duty to stay with me and Hester for as long as he could, but he can’t see it that way.’ She snorted contemptuously.
    ‘I wanted to kill him.’
    ‘That wouldn’t have helped much.’ Vera leaned towards the other woman and said confidentially, ‘You’ll never guess what my Albert’s gone and done.’
    Laura gasped. ‘Don’t tell me he’s volunteered too.’
    ‘Not at fifty-six, luv, no,’ Vera hooted. ‘But he’s giving up the trams and going to work in a munitions factory. Mind you, the pay’s good, though it’s shift work.’
    ‘Good for Albert! I want to do something like that, but when I told Roddy, he had a fit. He insists Hester and I are evacuated. He said it would be dangerous to stay in Glover Street, so close to the docks, and I said it would be less dangerous than him going off to fight.’ She rolled her eyes. ‘We rowed about that too.’
    Vera reached for the teapot. ‘Pass us your cup, luv. It sounds as if there was a right old barney going on in your house last night.’
    ‘Indeed there was, though it makes a change. It’s usually that horrible Mrs Tate upstairs making all the racket.’ Laura frowned. ‘It’s strange, but she’s been quieter than a mouse recently. It’s not a bit like her.’
    ‘Now that you mention it, I haven’t seen Aggie Tate around in a while.’
     
    Laura went straight from Vera’s to the shops in Marsh Lane, where she bought two ounces of Emu 3-ply khaki wool. With a feeling of despair, she saw signs that war was imminent everywhere. Sandbags were