Three Women of Liverpool (13 page)

There an anxious Ruby found him. She put down on the floor an extraordinarily clean Michael, clad only in his jersey. The child was sucking his thumb, tears still wet on his face. He glanced round the kitchen, looking for his mother. Small sobs shook him from time to time and he stared in a dazed fashion at his big brother.

Ruby put her arms round Patrick. “It’s no good, Pat. She’s gone.”

The boy pushed her away and turned his back on her. He mopped his eyes with the end of the woolly tie of his jersey.

“We have to find some clothes for Mrs Thomas.”

“Damn her.”

“Don’t knock her, Pat. She’s trying to help. We’d be in a right muddle without her – and no Dad either.”

He turned a dark, passionate face on his sister. “I can’t stand her. I’m not having no bath. I’m going to see what Dad’s doin’.”

With a huge sniff, he swung past her, opened the front door and slammed it after him.

Ruby stared after him, her whole body trembling with fear of the responsibility left to her, fear of offending Gwen, fear of not being able to cope with Michael, Nora and Brendy, fear of being terribly alone to face everything – perhaps yet another air raid that night.

“It’s quietened,” Emmie pointed out. “It must be Sunday morning by now. We’ve been here ages, Dickie, and I’m so parched. Are you thirsty?” The voice was thin and quivery.

“Aye, I am. ’Could use a pint.” He cleared his throat. “Yer know, there’s a bit o’ water here, somewhere. I can hear it trickling – faint, like.”

“I know. It’s not very far, but I can’t move ’cos of me hair.” Emmie’s voice quavered and threatened hysterics again.

“There’s a straight wall on t’ other side of you, isn’t there?”

“Yeah.” She raised her arm up as far as she could reach, and winced with pain from bruises acquired in her fall. “There’s enough space above me – I think – for me to sit up. She ran her fingers along the obstruction above her. “It feels as if there’s a very big rough stone over us. It slopes down towards you, till it must touch you. If I could turn on me side, I could give you more room.”

“Sardines in a bloody tin,” he snorted. “Can you reach over your head to your hair where it’s caught?”

“Mm. I’ve bin tryin’ to pull some of it loose.”

“I’ve got a penknife in me pocket. I doubt I can get it out, though. I’ve hurt me wrists, and me hands is as sore as hell.”

“Oh, Dick! You never said you was hurt?”

“It’s nought terrible. Could you reach in me right-hand keck pocket?” She felt him wriggle himself slightly upward, so that he was more level with her.

With her long, bony Lancashire fingers, she hunted feverishly down his side, stretching as far as she could. She touched his belt. “Lower,” he instructed her. “Look, I’m goin’ to ease meself a bit across you.” She felt his head move across her shoulder till it lay against hers. He tried to ease the dead weight of his body over her arm. He grunted. “That’s it. See if you can reach now.”

The long fingers ran down his thigh, paused and then scrabbled at the pocket opening. “If you truly can’t get it, I’ll put me own hand in – but it’s that tender, I don’t want to.”

“Hold still,” she advised him. “I’ll winch the pocket lining out.” She giggled nervously. “You’ve got all sorts in here. I got your hanky out.”

“Well, don’t lose it. Put it where you can find it. We’ll wipe our faces with it.”

She obediently hauled it out and stuffed it down her chest.

Again the long, exploring fingers. He gritted his teeth; not with pain, but to control the sudden arousal which her warm nearness and her gentle fingers was exciting. The tendrils of hair against his cheek were having their effect, too. Many times, when he had seen Robert and Emmie walk out of the canteen with arms around each other, he had been pierced with envy and wondered what she would be like to bed. Now, however, crammed in a hell-hole which was likely to be their coffin, his desire for her was so strong that he longed passionately to roll back on top of her and have her.

She was his best friend’s girl, he reminded himself forcefully, and with eyes screwed tight he kept himself rigidly still, until she almost shouted, “I got it. I got it.”

“Good,” he muttered, and took a large sighing breath and promptly sneezed.

She was panting with the effort she had made and began to cough again. When the paroxysm had passed, she cleared her throat, and said, “Afore I start sawing at me hair, I’m going to wipe your face with the hanky.” She paused, and then added
with a tremor in her voice, “Me own old dial is too sore. I’m bleeding a bit, I think.”

“Ta.” Poor kid, he thought. If her face is ruined, how’ll she endure life, even if we are rescued?

She could feel his breath on her cheek. “Is
your
face hurtin’ at all, afore I touch you?”

“No, Em. I think I were pressed against you when we fell.”

His face was carefully wiped. She spat on a corner of the hanky and ran it clumsily around his eyelids. God, how he wanted her. She was surprised, yet pleased, when a kiss was planted on her cheek. She pushed the hanky back down the front of her blouse. “Now,” she said almost cheerfully. “I’m goin’ to start chopping. Proper sight I’ll be when I’m finished.” It was comforting to feel the man’s warmth against her, especially when a particularly loud crash made the whole structure above them vibrate, and small rushes of debris slithered down on them.

The smell of gas had gone, Dick realised. The firemen must have managed to turn off the main. So much for that. He did not know whether to feel relief or disappointment. Willy-nilly, as shock had receded and been replaced by more mundane yearnings, a faint hope crept into him, that maybe the bomb that hit the canteen was not engraved with his and Emmie’s names, that they might, by some miracle, be found.

Whimpers came from the girl next to him, as she tugged and cut hair by hair. She sighed and stopped work, to rest herself for a moment. Then she said without preamble, “We must have fallen into somebody’s cellar – right under the yard, ’cos we was still outside – and I fell and slid quite a ways.” Her voice was mournful. “I ache all over from it. Who’d build a cellar under a yard?”

“Plenty o’ people, not too many years ago – about a coupla hundred, maybe. For keeping smuggled goods in – or privateers hiding their loot.”

“They would? How’d they bring the stuff in?”

“A hidden door from the cellar under the building – where the shelter was, like.”

“There weren’t no back door out of that shelter.”

“Could’ve been bricked up when they built the present building.”

She sighed, and recommenced the cutting of her hair. If she could get her head free, perhaps she could move enough to find the water that trickled so maddeningly close to her. As they lay at present, Dick could not move much either.

Though the raid was over, and to Emmie, deep in her prison, the din seemed less, the noise outside from the roaring fires was sufficient to make everyone converse in shouts.

With shoulders hunched and bodies bent close to their jetting hoses, firemen had managed to advance a little into the raging inferno of South Castle Street, at the back of Paradise Street. Then the water pressure fell to a trickle and they had to beat a hasty retreat. Petrol in a pump caught fire and it blew apart. Dispirited men watched helplessly as, fanned by a light breeze, the flames began to eat their way towards Paradise Street. Wandering wisps of smoke worked their way through the wreckage. Neither Emmie nor Dick said anything, as they lay rigid with fear in the face of this new menace.

The building in which the canteen had been housed had blown outwards across the street. It effectively blocked the movement of traffic, already in difficulties because of the bomb hole further down, in which Post Office engineers struggled to restore some kind of telephone service for the authorities.

A gang of Army Pioneers, aided by volunteers, both civilians and servicemen, inched their way down the centre of Paradise Street, shovelling smaller rubble into wicker skips; larger pieces were hauled to one side. “For Christ’s sake, why don’t they bring in some cranes?” groaned a man in blue mechanic’s
overalls, as he heaved and shoved in company with a German Jewish pioneer. They turned to move a huge metal desk which had lain upside down under the girder they had just shifted. “Jesus!” the mechanic exclaimed, as he stooped to get a grip on it. With all his strength he heaved and rolled it on to its side – and looked down in horror at what had once been little Dolly, the firewatcher.

Her uniform had been blown off her. Terribly crushed, her entrails spread out, only the long gleaming hair indicated that there lay someone who had been soft and pretty.

The Pioneer looked down at her in silent pity, while the less hardened civilian shouted, “Curse them, curse them!” beside himself with horror. He bent down and gathered the frail, sticky remains up as best he could and took them to the pavement. There was nothing to cover her with. Soon, he knew, somebody would come along with a bag to put her in. Weeping, savage with rage, he went back to work.

Help
was
coming. Through moonlit lanes and narrow streets snaked a stream of fire engines and ambulances, water tankers, kitchen lorries, mobile canteens and vans of food. Rescue parties, including miners and demolition experts, spent an uncomfortable night crammed into trains as they converged on Liverpool. Through broken roads, spanking clean American soldiers manoeuvred bulldozers and dump trucks, and great shovels, also mounted on caterpillar tractors, bigger than anything most Britons had seen before. They would eat into the choked thoroughfares and make a path for other vehicles.

The looters came gaily from the suburbs and the countryside, to rob those who had already lost so much.

An unexploded land-mine, sitting quietly at the back of a deserted insurance office, suddenly blew up and the
ear-splitting bang shook Emmie’s and Dick’s tiny refuge. It shook not only the debris above them, but the ground on which they lay, like some huge earthquake. In terror, they clutched each other, their heads buried into each other’s shoulders, to avoid the dust which rose once more around them. Bits and pieces rattled and fell above them. The great stone over their heads held, however, though the beam which was holding down Emmie’s hair shifted slightly and the remaining strands of her hair were freed.

“My God!” Dickie’s teeth were chattering helplessly, as the bang was followed by a series of rumbles, gradually dying away into quiet.

Ears pricked, they waited for the next onslaught, but there was only the creaking and shifting of the ruins and the occasional splash of water. Very dimly, they also could hear what might have been slow traffic and, at times, felt the faint vibration of it.

As the dust settled again, Dickie muttered to a whimpering Emmie, “It
has
to be morning – that bang were too big for a bomb – it were something special. Come on, luv. Now’s the time to feel around for a stone and bang on that wall by you, so a rescuer knows where to look.”

Emmie stirred and half sat up. Dickie exclaimed at her sudden movement.

“Me hair came free in the last shake-up.” She laughed tremulously and felt round for a likely stone.

For nearly half an hour, they banged steadily, to no purpose. During that time they had both, shamefacedly, to urinate and now lay in wet clothes.

As they rested, feeling surprisingly weak, Emmie said, “David – me brother – ’ll be out lookin’ for me. What about your folks?”

Dickie explained that he had nobody and that this was his weekend off from his duties as night-watchman at a seed warehouse. “They’ll wonder where I am come Monday,
though, when I don’t turn up for work.”

“Gwen – that’s Dave’s wife – she won’t bother. She hates my guts. Be glad to see me dead, I truly think. All she cares about is her house. If you breathe out, she’ll dust all round you.”

Dick laughed. “She can’t be that bad.”

“She is,” insisted Emmie. “Dave’s proper patient with her. It’ll be him as comes to find us.”

“The wardens and the Rescue Squads is good at finding buried victims,” Dick replied, to reinforce her hope of help.

David was, however, sound asleep on a bunk made of chicken wire in a street shelter in Bootle. He had worked until the siren went, on repairing water pipes in narrow, badly damaged streets, while housewives and children hung round him, waiting for the taps, or at least the fire hydrants, to start gushing again. They also had no gas with which to cook, and often torn chimneys made it impossible to build a fire in a grate. Once water was restored, a good many kettles got boiled in the back yard on a fire made from splintered beams. In most cases their tiny stores of food were ruined, tins laced by slivers of glass, the contents of cupboard blown into pieces and lost in the general mess of broken plaster.

On Sunday morning, fed by a grateful housewife, David and his mate, Arthur, continued to work, laying new water pipes. Two streets away, another gas main sent a scarifying sheet of flame into the sky, threatening to engulf the slums around them in fire.

A little soothed by the thought that David would be seeking her, Emmie said to Dick, “You’d better have your knife back afore I lose it in the dark.”

He fumbled round until he found her hand and the knife. As he slipped it into his shirt pocket, he felt her begin to sit up again.

“My God! Me poor back,” she groaned, as the stiffened muscles were stretched.

“Now watch it,” Dick warned. His voice sounded muffled,
the words coming reluctantly from a parched throat. “Move carefully. If you touch something solid, don’t push it or we’ll have an avalanche down on us.”

“OK.” If she could stop shivering, she thought, she would be less clumsy. The shivering would not stop, however. As she sat up, it became a wild shaking, her teeth chattering uncontrollably.

Dick heard her wincing, and the shuffle of her skirts against the loosened earth, as she finally got herself seated upright. Instinctively, she turned towards him, to bend forward and touch him. “Ow!” she squeaked, as she hit her head on the sloping stonework over him. When she rubbed her scraped forehead, it hurt much more than she had expected; there was a trickle, which might have been blood, down over one eyelid, and she whimpered slightly as she carefully wiped it away with a shaky finger.