Through the Storm by Maureen Lee Read Free Book Online

understand how you can bring yourself to leave all this.’ He gestured towards the view. ‘It’s glorious.’
    ‘I know,’ said Jess, ‘but I loathe it. It’s dead. I feel as if I’m living in a graveyard, particularly being on top of a museum.’
The Higginbotham Museum of Prehistoric Egyptian and Greek Art
, it said on the engraved brass plate outside.
    ‘I should never have brought you here,’ Arthur said miserably. ‘I wasn’t exactly unhappy myself during the time we spent in Bootle.’
    Jess went over and stood beside him. Their shoulders touched. ‘You love it here, Arthur. It’s an archaeologist’s heaven.’ He spent hours downstairs long after the doors closed, poring over the artefacts, studying papers, writing letters to people all over the world who were as infatuated as he was with Greek and Roman remains. It was the first time since leaving university he’d had the opportunity to indulge in the subject which interested him to the point of obsession. Perhaps if they had more time together, she wouldn’t have felt so cut off from life, Jess thought without rancour.
    ‘I don’t think I can go on living if you’re not here.’ He buried his head in Penny’s hair and began to cry.
    ‘Then why don’t you come with me?’ challenged Jess. She loved him, though he was weak and made her feel more like a mother than a wife. She wasn’t quite sure why, but she prayed he would duck the challenge. He did.
    ‘No,’ he said. ‘I’d sooner wait and hope you’ll come back.’
    Jess knew that she and Penny wouldn’t be gone for long before he’d be downstairs immersed in his treasures and they’d both be forgotten, at least for a while.
    ‘Would you mind carrying the suitcase out to the van?’
    He nodded numbly and put the little girl in her arms. ‘You’ll write?’
    ‘Of course. We’ll still see each other.’
    They went wordlessly down the two flights of stairs. Penny seemed to have grasped something serious was happening. She stared solemnly at her mother and held grimly to her ear.
    Outside, the picturesque High Street was deserted. It was Wednesday, half day closing, and the only sign of life was a cat washing itself on a windowsill opposite.
    Arthur put the suitcase in the back of the van and Jess tied Penny into the passenger seat with her reins. Her pushchair was already there, along with her white painted cot and mattress and her toys, bundles of bedding and several other household items.
    ‘This is stupid!’ Arthur cried. In a frantic gesture, he put both hands to his forehead. ‘Why are you doing this to me, Jess?’
    Jess kissed his cheek. ‘I’m sorry, dear. It’s just that I was beginning to feel as dead as the scenery. I’m a city person, Arthur, a Liverpudlian through and through. I need bricks and mortar around me, people, shops. I’ve never felt so alive as that year we spent in Bootle.’ She seemed to experience all sorts of emotions she’d never thought existed.
    Arthur glanced at Penny through the van window. ‘I can understand that,’ he said bitterly. It was the other man who’d made her feel alive.
    ‘It’s nothing to do with Penny,’ Jess protested, though it was. ‘It was all sorts of things, like the troop concerts I used to give with Jacob Singerman …’
    ‘Jacob Singerman’s dead.’
    ‘I know,’ Jess said sadly. ‘Lots of people are dead, like Eileen Costello’s husband and Tony, her little boy, all gone in the Blitz. That’s something else. It hardly feels as if there’s a war on, living here. Liverpool’s at the very hub, what with the docks being so important.’ One of the first things she’d do when she got back was take Penny for a walk along the Dock Road. ‘I feel as if I’m missing out on all the excitement.’
    ‘Excitement!’ Arthur said derisively. ‘The air raids weren’t exciting.’
    ‘How would we know, Arthur, we weren’t there.’ If it hadn’t been for Penny, she would have left months ago, raids or no