Lights Out Liverpool (11 page)

‘Well,’ he said cheerfully, ‘I’d better start sorting this lot out. Some of the stuff will have to go in the boxroom. Pity about that tea, though. I could have really done with a cup.’

He went into the lounge, leaving Jessica in the chaos of the living room.

They’d brought too much furniture from Calderstones, even though the smallest items had been taken, such as the three-piece out of Jessica’s little sitting room, and the table and chairs from the nook. Even so, everything was too large. In fact, they could scarcely move. They had to edge themselves sideways into every room.

Jessica stood staring out of the window at the tiny whitewashed yard. The walls were scrawled with coloured chalk and the door to the outside lavatory was hanging half off its hinges.

An outside lavatory! She’d forgotten. She closed her eyes in horror, imagining the hell of sitting out there in winter. When she opened her eyes again, the room seemed to have grown smaller and she felt panicky and closed in. The house wasn’t big enough for hens to live in, let alone people. Everything seemed to be on top of her, there was no space to breathe, and she felt sure she was going to faint.

‘Arthur,’ she whispered plaintively, but he was too busy to hear and she was glad. He was the weak one, she the strong. She wished she had someone to talk to, though, a friend. It was ironic, she thought, all those hundreds of women she’d got to know over the years, yet there wasn’t a single one she could confide in. Now she thought about it, they’d been more rivals than friends, always trying to go one better than the other, whether it be clothes or cars or dinner parties. Though
Jessie
had been the first to get an Aga, she thought with satisfaction.

Arthur had begun to sing, ‘
I, yi-yi-yi-yi, I like you verry much. I, yi-yi-yi-yi-, I think you’re grand
,’ a song Jessica particularly hated, along with the woman who sang it, Carmen Miranda, who wore too much make-up and looked as common as muck in her tutti frutti headgear.

She sighed. It was dark in here. She went to put the light on but couldn’t find the switch. Frowning, she glanced behind the door and in the hall, but there was no sign. Then she looked up at the ceiling, saw the gas mantle, and shrieked, ‘Arthur!
There’s no electricity
!’ She had entirely forgotten!

Arthur appeared, grinning. ‘In that case, you’d better get on to the landlord, hadn’t you?’

Vivien had worked a minor miracle, Clive Waterton thought proudly as he sat in his office and his thoughts turned, as they so frequently did, to his wife. In the five weeks since they’d had them, their evacuees had been transformed into a respectable-looking pair of children. They’d put on weight and numerous visits to flat, silvery Southport beach or the sandhills at Birkdale during what had been an exceptionally fine September had given them a healthy tan and cleared away all their spots and sores and those terrible purple bruises. Their behaviour had improved enormously. At first, Vivien had played a little game at mealtimes.

‘Whoever is the
last
to finish gets a little prize!’ So the two of them sat there eating sedately, dragging the meal out.

‘There!’ Vivien would sing. ‘Doesn’t food taste so much nicer when it’s eaten slowly?’ Now, there was no need to offer a prize. Vivien had taught them how to use
a
knife and fork properly and they ate like any other well-mannered children, perhaps more so. It was a pity Mrs Critchley hadn’t taken to them, but as long as she kept her opinions to herself, it didn’t matter.

In the office, several colleagues had complained about the children who had been billetted on them. ‘Bloody little savages. The house is like a jungle.’

‘My two are fine,’ Clive would declare smugly.

‘You’re lucky. We can’t wait to see the back of ours.’

The boy, Dicky, remained a bit sullen, obviously missing his mother, but seemed happy enough to go along with his sister or play with his train set, but it was Freda who had altered out of all recognition, as if it had only needed a good wash and a few pretty clothes to reveal the real child underneath. She had a quick, intelligent brain and Vivien was teaching her to read. The two would sit crushed together in an armchair looking at fashion magazines and discussing clothes and make-up as if they were the same age and had known each other forever. Of course, Freda was far too old for her years and Vivien seemed to be getting younger by the day. Clive supposed they sort of met in the middle.

But Clive was worried. Several evacuees had already returned home. After all, they’d come to get away from air raids and there hadn’t been a single one so far in the entire country. In fact, a curious calm seemed to have descended and the Americans had begun to refer to the war as ‘phoney’ – though the Americans hadn’t been on the
Athenia
, or the
Courageous
, or all the other ships sunk by the Germans, Clive thought disdainfully. The Jerries even had the gall to bomb the
Royal Oak
at anchor in Scapa Flow, the British Naval Base up in the Orkneys. But apart from the bloody activity on the high seas, nothing had happened. According to someone from the
office
whose brother was in the Royal Warwickshires, the British Expeditionary Force was having a fine old time in France, going to nightclubs and being wined and dined by the French, at least the officers were. All that the Royal Air Force had been allowed to drop on Germany was leaflets telling them to give up. There’d been a joke going around the office the other day. Some young pilot had returned earlier than expected from his mission dropping leaflets and explained he tipped them out still wrapped in parcels. ‘Good God, man,’ his CO said anxiously, ‘you might have killed someone!’ The war itself seemed a bit of a joke so far and when a communication arrived last week telling Clive to collect their Identity Cards, it had come as a little shock as, along with most other people, he’d almost forgotten they were in a state of conflict. Of course, the blackout was a bit of a bind, but since the children had arrived, he and Vivien didn’t go out much of a night, so it didn’t inconvenience them as much as it did some.

The last thing he wanted was for the war to escalate, but nor did he want his evacuees removed. Vivien had never looked or been so well. She was full of energy, and it was an indication of her amazing achievement that he actually wished to
keep
the two filthy little urchins who’d come into their lives on the first day of September. Not for his own sake, he didn’t give a damn if he never saw either of them again, but for Vivien’s, and not so much the boy, either, but the girl. Vivien loved her and he had no doubt that the girl genuinely loved her back. Sometimes he felt almost jealous, slightly shut out, when the two of them sat giggling together, but that didn’t matter. All that mattered was his Vivien was happy.

Francis Costello came home on leave, unannounced,
taking
Eileen completely by surprise. To everyone’s amusement, The Royal Tank Regiment had only gone as far as Crosby, no more than a few miles down the road, and most of the men had been sent home when it was discovered there were no sleeping facilities, but to Eileen’s heartfelt relief, Francis had been despatched to Kettering on a typing course.

Somehow, Eileen guessed who it was immediately the key sounded in the front door and her heart sank. She went into the hall.

‘Hallo, luv.’ He kissed her on the cheek. He looked bronzed and fit in his uniform. When he removed his hat, she saw his hair had been cut very short, though you could still see the little crinkly waves.

‘Hallo, Francis.’ Having greeted him, she could think of little else to say and was relieved when another khaki-clad form came into the hall behind him. It was a young lad, no more than eighteen, with a bright open face and girlish flushed skin.

‘This is Pete English.’ Francis introduced them. ‘He’s got no home to go to, so I thought I’d bring him back with me.’

‘I hope you don’t mind, Mrs Costello?’ Pete said in a cracked voice that sounded as if it hadn’t yet broken. He had a broad Lancashire accent.

Before Eileen could open her mouth to say Pete was more than welcome, Francis said for her, ‘Of course she don’t mind. Y’can sleep in the parlour and there’s plenty of food – I hope.’ There was a slight threat in the last two words, as if he’d like to find fault with her the minute he came in.

‘I’ll have to pop out later and buy a bit more stewing steak for the scouse,’ Eileen said stiffly. ‘I wasn’t expecting you, was I? I’ll go and make a cup of tea.’

As she put the kettle on, she noticed her hands were shaking. Ever since Francis left, she’d been going over and over in her mind what to do when he came back. She’d sworn to herself she’d never sleep with him again. There was no way she’d put up with that indignity one more time. She’d discussed it with Annie, who didn’t know the full facts, of course, and Annie had said she and Tony could always sleep in her house if she wanted. But that seemed a coward’s way out, thought Eileen. She should stand up to Francis and tell him of her decision to his face.

‘How’s our Tony?’ Francis shouted from the living room.

‘He’s fine,’ she shouted back. ‘He doesn’t come home at dinner time no more, they give them a nice meal at school.’

‘I bet he’s missing his dad,’ Francis called, then, in a quieter voice to Pete English: ‘He’s a nice little lad, you’ll meet him later.’

‘Oh, yes,’ she lied. Tony may well think he was missing his dad, but he’d come out of himself lately and been far more lively and animated, a different boy altogether, as if freed from an awful weight of oppression. Eileen understood the feeling exactly.

‘It was terrible about Mary Flaherty,’ Francis shouted. ‘Rodney Smith wrote and told me about it.’ There was a hint of accusation in his voice and Eileen felt a mixture of guilt and resentment. She’d only written to him once, a stiff polite little letter, not at all the sort of letter any normal wife would send to a husband who was away at war. But then, she told herself, Francis wasn’t a normal husband.

She went to the doorway. He was lounging in his chair as if he’d never been away, and Pete English was sitting
awkwardly
at the table.

‘They said a special Mass for Mary in the Holy Rosary last Sunday,’ she said. ‘But y’should see the people who’ve moved into their house, Francis. They’re terrible posh. The man’s all right, he speaks to you ever so friendly and he’s got no side at all, but the woman acts like she’s queen o’the midden. Y’get a nod if you’re lucky, but she can scarcely bear to look at you in case she catches something.’ She spread the next-to-best blue damask cloth on the table, kept especially for visitors.

‘How’s your dad keeping?’

‘He’s fine,’ she said, glad of the mundane conversation. ‘He’s begun conducting the war from Garnet Street. I’m not sure who he likes less, Chamberlain for doing nowt, or Hitler. You’ll never believe this, Francis, but he’s suddenly taken up with Winston Churchill. Reckons he should be Prime Minister.’

‘
What?
’ Francis was astounded. ‘I thought he hated Churchill?’

‘Oh, he does, in fact, he hates most politicians, even some of the Labour ones, but he hates fascism more. He reckons Churchill would make a far better war leader than Chamberlain.’

She returned to the kitchen; the kettle had started to boil. Francis shouted, ‘I still think it’ll be over by Christmas. It’s all phoney, like they say in the papers. By this time next year, we’ll have forgotten there’s ever been a war.’

‘I hope so, for everyone’s sake,’ she replied, though she wondered if it was so phoney, then why had Mary died, and why was poor Annie going out of her mind with worry and her sister Sheila too terrified to listen to the wireless or read a newspaper in case she learnt another ship had been sunk? Eileen listened eagerly to the latest
bulletins
on the wireless whenever she could, and read the
Daily Herald
from cover to cover every day. She felt convinced Hitler was playing a waiting game. Any minute now, he’d pounce somewhere else and another country would be swallowed up by the mighty German army. But it was wise not to say anything to Francis. As far as he and a lot of other men were concerned, women weren’t supposed to have an opinion on the war.

‘Come on, Pete,’ she said as she carried in the teapot. ‘You’re allowed to speak, y’know. You won’t get put in the guardhouse, or whatever it’s called, just for saying a few words. How much sugar d’you take?’

The boy smiled weakly, ‘One spoonful,’ he whispered.

‘How long are you home for, Francis?’ Eileen asked casually, praying he only had a twenty-four-hour pass. He might even have to go back that day.

‘Till Thursday,’ he replied.

Three days, two nights! Her hands began to shake again as she poured the tea. ‘And are you going back to Kettering?’

To her relief, he nodded. She’d been worried he was only returning to Crosby.

‘You haven’t noticed something,’ he said boastfully.

‘What’s that?’ She looked at him, but couldn’t see any difference. Except for his hair, he looked exactly the same as the day he left.

‘He’s got a stripe,’ Pete English said in his strange squeaky voice. ‘He’s a Lance Corporal.’

‘Congratulations!’ She tried to sound pleased. ‘Actually, Francis, I’ve got a bit of news meself. I’m starting work in November.’ It was best to tell him now while someone else was there; he wasn’t likely to get so mad.

She regarded him nervously, biting her lip. He hated her taking decisions, doing anything of her own accord,
and
he’d refused to let her work before. He was staring at the cup in his hands, frowning, and she could tell he was angry. There was a dark look in the brown eyes that seemed to smile so warmly at everyone outside the house, but never on her, and never on Tony.

‘What sort of job?’ There was menace in his voice. If Pete English hadn’t been there, she knew he would have done something to her, something painful.

‘It’s in a factory in Melling. I’ll be working on a lathe, making parts for aeroplanes. The money’s good.’

‘And who’s going to look after our Tony?’