Liverpool Angels by Lyn Andrews

chignon, a hairstyle her mother said suited her. Both she and Mae had gone to a private school to learn typewriting after they’d left St George’s, paid for from hard-saved funds by her mam and Uncle John. Despite all their efforts neither of them had been able to master the Pitman’s shorthand so were employed as copy typists, Mae in the elaborate, brand-new and still not fully completed offices of Cunard Steamship Company at the Pier Head – a fact of which John Strickland was inordinately proud – and Alice in the offices of a large shipping agent in Water Street. She had started work six months ago and unfortunately often found the work boring but she did admit to herself that it was far better than working in a factory where conditions were terrible and you came home covered either in flour, molasses or jute dust depending on what was processed there. And the pay was better too. They’d both get an increase when they were eighteen but for her that was still two and a half years away. ‘Will we go somewhere on the Bank Holiday?’ she asked her cousin. She’d been looking forward to a day off for some time.
    Mae looked thoughtful. ‘If it’s going to be as hot as this everywhere will be crowded and after saving up for months for a new hat I don’t want it getting ruined in a crush.’
    Alice nodded her agreement. They both had to dress plainly but smartly for work but they liked to be fashionable too, which wasn’t easy with their limited amount of spending money. In fact when they’d both turned up a percentage towards their keep, after tram fares and lunches there wasn’t much left at all. ‘You’re right. It won’t be much fun being packed on to a ferry or in a stifling railway carriage but I just hope all this talk of war won’t spoil the day entirely. It’s not often we get a day’s holiday.’
    It was Mae’s turn to nod her agreement. For months it seemed as if everyone was concerned with what the Kaiser was doing and planning but during the last weeks the very real prospect of war had become the only topic of conversation everywhere. ‘I saw the headline “Will Britain Fight?” in the paper this evening and everyone seems to think we should and that we will.’
    Alice sighed. ‘I don’t know how we’ve got involved. I don’t understand politics or tsars and emperors or foreign archdukes getting shot and the like. What’s it all got to do with us? I wish someone could explain it but it’s all so . . .  complicated ! But it’s all everyone seems to be talking about, and they seem quite excited about it too, as if it’s some huge adventure.’
    ‘Eddie’s full of it and so are Jimmy and Harry,’ Mae said. Like her cousin, she didn’t fully understand the situation. Her da had often talked gravely about the ever-increasing size of the German Navy and the threat to British superiority at sea, and also the serious implications of the situation in Europe and the Balkans, but she wondered if he in fact understood it all. Her Aunty Maggie often said the Kaiser was getting too big for his boots but the fact that the Mauretania had taken the Blue Riband of the Atlantic from the Deutschland and still held it should surely have served to take him down a peg or two. She looked down the street to where the lamps were slowly being lit, little pools of yellow light in the increasing darkness of the summer night. ‘At last, here’s old Ned. He’s late tonight,’ she remarked as the elderly lamplighter made his way towards them. ‘It’s nearly dark, Ned, did you get held up?’ she called.
    He nodded as he lit the gas light, which threw out a golden circle into which moths and other insects were instantly drawn; the glow cast shadows on Mae’s blonde hair, piled high on her head, and softened Alice’s rather sharp elfin features. They were both pretty lasses, he thought. ‘Aye, I was. Everyone wants to stop and talk about this war, that’s what delayed me, and you can’t move along