Across the Mersey. Annie Groves

      Bella had learned as a child that the best way to get round her father’s ever-ready veto of anything that involved him spending any money was to simply behave as though the issue had already been discussed and agreed. She had never ever asked, ‘Please may I have ballet lessons?’ but had stated instead, ‘When I start my ballet lessons …’ It was a trick she had borrowed from her mother and it worked.

      Since so far Alan had been oblivious to her hints about their getting engaged, she had changed her tactics and begun to talk about their engagement as though it were an accepted fact and the question not so much ‘if’ as ‘when’.

      As a soon-to-be-engaged couple it was natural and wise that they both spent time with one another’s family. Irritatingly, Alan’s parents had not yet extended their invitations beyond casual visits to their home to a proper formal tea party, as Bella felt they should have done, a mistake for which they would pay once she was married to Alan. However, her own parents, especially her mother, were much more up to the mark, and Mummy had been briefed that Bella was expecting Alan to ‘have something special to ask me very soon’.

      ‘Your mother won’t mind if we change our minds,’ Alan told her carelessly, adding, ‘Trixie would have jumped at the chance to come with me.’

      ‘Trixie?’ Bella questioned sharply. ‘When did you see her?’

      ‘She’d called round to see my mother. Something about her own mother and the WVS.’

      Bella thought she had successfully seen off the other girl weeks ago, so Alan’s casual comment about seeing her was not something she wanted to hear, especially not when the place where he had seen her was his own home. It was unthinkable that Alan’s parents could possibly prefer Trixie as a daughter-in-law to her. And certainly impossible that Alan should think of her as his wife!

      ‘Yes, you’re right, I’m sure that Mummy will understand,’ Bella allowed graciously, before adding in a mock-little-girl voice, ‘Of course, I shall expect to be properly rewarded for sharing you with your new car when I thought I was going to have you all to myself.’

      The words might be little-girl lisped and sugar sweet but the look she was giving him was pure Salome and she could see from his smile that he recognised that.

      ‘I’m so glad that you won’t have to go and be part of this horrid war – if it does happen,’ she told him, changing the subject.

      ‘My father’s made sure that there’s no way I’ll be called up if it does,’ Alan boasted. ‘With him being a Master Builder and me working for him, we’re both in reserved occupations, and besides, Dad has plenty of contacts, thanks to him being on the council, and plenty of work coming in as well, what with people wanting shelters put up and walls and that reinforced just in case. I can’t for the life of me understand chaps like Seb who go and volunteer when they don’t need to.’

      Bella nodded her head and tried not to look as bored as she felt. The means by which the money was earned to pay for her new dresses and everything else her family enjoyed was not something that interested her, and once she and Alan were married she intended to make sure that he understood that.

      A couple of hours later they were deep in the Cheshire countryside, and Bella was beginning to feel increasingly bored with Alan’s monologue about the attributes of his new car.

      ‘I want to talk about us, not your car,’ she protested, pouting. ‘You haven’t told me how nice I look or said you love me, not once since you picked me up.’

      ‘Of course I love you,’ Alan told her carelessly, suddenly braking and pulling the car off the main road and on to a rutted cart track that had plainly not been used in a long time. Several yards down it, he stopped the car beneath the branches of a full-leafed oak tree.

      ‘Alan,’ Bella protested as she realised that they were enveloped in dense greenery and hidden from sight.

      ‘Come on,’ he told her, as he reached over and put his arm around her. ‘Don’t act all coy on me now, Bella, not when you’ve been throwing out such tempting hints. You’re far too pretty for a chap to be able to resist, and you know it,’ he added, bending his head to kiss her.

      ‘Say you love me first,’ Bella pouted, holding him off.

      ‘Of course I love you.’

      Satisfied, Bella allowed him to kiss her, mentally imagining how she would show off her ring at work.

      But when Alan started to fondle her breasts and then to unbutton the front of her dress, she tensed and tried to push him away. He was breathing hard, a glazed expression in his eyes, his face flushed. She had never realised before quite how much he looked like his father.

      ‘No,’ she told him, but he ignored her, pushing down her brassiere to squeeze and press her naked breast whilst he kissed her so roughly that her mouth hurt.

      This, though, was the price she must pay to be Alan’s wife; the price every woman paid to get the husband she wanted, Bella told herself. Men who were as popular as Alan was needed a bit of an inducement to help them to recognise which girl they should choose.

      Not that she intended to let Alan go ‘too far’. Her mother had warned her about the dangers of that when she had told her the story of her own two sisters and how one of them had ended up married to a man with no money and no prospects, whilst the other had not married at all.

      A well-to-do husband was the goal every woman needed to achieve if she wanted a comfortable life, and it was in part so that she could have the chance to do that that her mother had nagged her father into moving to a better part of Wallasey, Bella knew. So if getting that husband meant pretending she was enjoying Alan’s intimacies when she wasn’t, then that was exactly what she would do.

      Alan’s hand was on her thigh now, and edging towards the hem of her skirt. Bella trapped it where it was, preventing him from moving it, but he pulled away and then touched her again, this time catching her off guard as he pressed his hand into the V between the top of her legs. Shock and revulsion jolted through her. His hand felt heavy and hot and unpleasantly damp, even through her clothes, and she shuddered to imagine what it would feel like if he was actually touching her flesh.

      Thinking about being engaged to Alan and showing off her ring produced the most deliciously exciting tingling feeling right through her body but enduring his physical touch made her freeze.

      ‘Come on,’ she could hear him demanding thickly. ‘Come on, Bella … Let me.’

      ‘Don’t be silly. You know that I can’t until we’re properly engaged.’

      To Bella’s relief he released her immediately. Even better, he shifted back to his own half of the car instead of leaning all over her.

      ‘Engaged?’

      ‘Yes. You know, Alan, I do think that we really ought to go public soon. My parents keep dropping hints and I know that my father is expecting a visit from you. After all, you’ve said how much you love me, and you know that I love you. Of course we must get engaged.’

      Determinedly Bella stressed the word ‘must’, straightening her clothes at the same time to underline her meaning.

      Alan’s face was still flushed, and there was an unfamiliar and very stubborn look in his eyes. Bella gave a small gasp as, without a word, Alan started to reverse the car back out on to the main road. Things weren’t going the way she had expected and planned at all. Bella quickly dismissed her unease. What was there to feel uneasy about, after all? Alan must want to marry her. How could he not do when, as her mother was always telling her, she was so very pretty.

      Even so, Alan was behaving very selfishly and she had a good mind to tell him so, but she was also aware of how often her own mother allowed her father to get away with the same kind of selfish behaviour, and then made him pay for it later. There could be no question, of course, about Alan not proposing to her and that was all that really mattered. There would be plenty of time for him to learn the error of his ways once she had his ring on