Three Women of Liverpool (8 page)

Mrs Robinson arrived at the same time as Emmie. She was carrying two parcels and Emmie took them from her. “These are heavy,” she exclaimed.

“Crockery oddments, my dear. After last night, we’re dreadfully short. These are a donation from Lewis’s – I went in to see them this morning.”

In the kitchen, Peggie Evans, another paid member of the staff, was tidying up the last of the muddle from the lunchtime rush. “T’ fish is finished,” she told Emmie and Mrs Robinson, “T’ butcher brought plenty of sausage, though, for tonight. And there’s still a lot o’ dried egg.”

As she put on her overall, Emmie told her how the fish had been covered with dust the previous night. “At first we was goin’ to throw it out. Then Mrs Robinson said what waste. So
we washed it very carefully and put it in the larder. Did you have any complaints?”

“Never a word. Deep fried, there’d be nought the matter with it.” She took her coat off a hook and her handbag out of a drawer. “Was I ever glad I wasn’t here last night. It must’ve been awful.”

“I were scared out of me wits,” admitted Emmie. “I got a proper laugh, though, out of the note you’ve pinned on the sandbags round the door. ‘Open for business – very open.’”

“Aye. I thought t’ lads ’d believe we’d given up on ’em, with the shutters closed, like.”

“You know we had the till cleaned out, during the raid?”

“No?”

“Somebody took the whole night’s takings. Must’ve done it while we was in the shelter. We didn’t stop to lock the front door.”

“Stinking buggers,” said Peggie forcefully, as she clapped a blue beret on her head. “Tara-well.”

Doris did not arrive. She lay dead in the arms of the seaman who had taught her to smoke, under the wreckage of a shop doorway which had suddenly collapsed on them, taking both their lives while they made love.

A white-haired grocer’s wife, Mrs Atkins, and the silent, elegant Lady Mentmore were redeployed to cover the work. “Perhaps she’ll phone later,” suggested Emmie.

“Is the phone working?” Mrs Robinson looked harried. She was bone-tired, her plump, middle-aged body refusing to run at its usual pace.

Emmie went to the table by the window and cautiously lifted the receiver and put it to her ear. “It’s still dead,” she announced.

“Oh, dear! What a nuisance! The crater down the street must be responsible for that. I saw the Post Office Telephones van there, as I came in.”

Mrs Atkins looked up from her carrot scraping. “It really
was an awful night. And it could have been worse. I heard this morning that they were worried about a munition ship called the
Malakand
in Huskisson Dock. It’s being loaded for the Middle East. And with the fires and that being so bad up the north end – poor Bootle – they were mortally afraid it would explode.”

Emmie froze, the fork with which she was pricking sausages poised to stab. “The
Malakand
?” she exclaimed in horror. “My Robbie’s on that.” She turned a stricken face towards the carrot scraper. “He never told me it had munitions in it.”

Mrs Atkins soothed, “Well, nothing’s happened to it yet. Perhaps it will sail today.”

Emmie nodded assent and slowly and heavily she pricked the neat pink rows of sausages. She tried not to weep. To sail the Med with ammunition in the hold! Even if he got out of port safely, it could be a death-warrant! She wanted to scream ‘No’ to God. Was He really almighty? She wanted to faint, to escape the fear which pierced her. But she could not, must not. In a war, she must not give way. Quietly, she went on with her work and missed the pitying glances of Mrs Atkins and the countess. The countess said practically, to Emmie’s back, “I think we all need a cup of tea.”

As she filled the four cups from the samovar, she herself was not feeling very well. The previous night, an incendiary, apparently a dud, had fallen through the thatched roof of her house, and it had taken the combined efforts of her two elderly maids and herself to lift it out of the water tank into which it had fallen. They had thrown it out of the attic window on to the lawn, where it had unexpectedly exploded. A small incident, not worth mentioning, but it had tired her. She yawned behind a heavily beringed hand, as she added lots of sugar to Emmie’s tea; she understood that the lower classes enjoyed plenty of sugar.

Saturday night, when you should be down at the local, sitting by the fire and telling funny stories over a pint of bitter; instead you were stuck in a sandbagged shop labelled A.R.P., listening to the pandemonium in the skies and hoping that nothing fell on you. The strain was telling on Conor Donnelly. He told himself irritably that he had had it up to here. And to add to it all, he had quarrelled with Ellen over a drop of whiskey – and she was still as sour as yesterday’s milk. He went to the door and glanced up at the sky.

The brilliance of the flares had put the stars out, and the air smelled as if a million rubber tyres were burning. The shriek of bombs descending on the flaming city centre, about a mile down the hill, could hardly be heard above the concerted roar of their impact, the drone of heavy engines and the scream of night fighters as they dived. Nearer, in the park, the anti-aircraft guns kept up a steady barrage at the bellies of the bombers, which glistened like slugs, in the light of darting flames.

Inside the post, three women wardens were placidly waiting for a tin kettle of water to boil on a primus stove, their imperturbability belied by their ghostly faces. A grey-haired voluntary warden, Montagu Smith, who came in each night there was a raid, was snatching a nap on a camp-bed. In the daytime, he was the manager of the bank round the corner.

Conor had always thought that anyone who had a bank account, never mind worked in a bank, must be hopelessly stuck up. But this pot-bellied man had won his admiration the previous November. He had crawled into the shifting debris of a house, to hold the hand of a dreadfully injured old man until a doctor crawled in, too, to give the victim an injection to ease the pain while they got him out. Then they had worked the
remainder of the night together, under enemy machine-gun fire.

The half-washed Irish labourer and the well-shaven polite banker supported each other. Conor never gave himself credit for the friendliness he exuded, the enthusiasm with which he would do a good turn. Montague – our Mont, to all the wardens – had a quick, orderly mind, able to size up the immediate needs in some of the horrid situations which they faced together.

“G’ us a cuppa tea, Glynis, luv,” Conor asked one of the women. He was hungry. In a day or two, Ellen would get over her sulks and boil up a good stew. Meanwhile, he could whistle for it. A short burst of machine-gun fire directly overhead made everyone duck instinctively. He wished suddenly he had made it up with Ellen. What was a drop of whiskey anyway, in a world where one bullet could finish him? He chewed his thumb uneasily while Glynis made the tea.

Glynis Hughes eased her tin hat further back on her head and grinned up at him. She was a small, brown-skinned woman, suggesting descent from the little people who roamed Britain before the Celts arrived. Her husband was serving in the South Lancashires and she was temporarily living nearby with her mother. She worked in a factory which made aircraft parts and she made many a lewd joke about her production of joysticks. She was used to coping with the appetite of a labourer in a steelworks and she still shamelessly bought any food she could find on the black market. Now she asked, “Like a Spam sandwich?”

“Ah would, if you can spare it.”

She took out from a shopping bag a white, confectioner’s paper bag and from this she carefully drew out a sandwich two inches thick with a thin slice of Spam in it. “I brought some bikkies for you girls,” she told her companions, “Chocky ones.”

The other two women’s faces lit up. “Mm. Where did you
get them from?” They, too, were housewives permanently scrounging through the shops for extra food. To earn the money for it, they worked as labourers, cleaning oil drums at a petrol installation.

Glynis giggled. “Ask no questions, you’ll be told no lies.”

Conor wolfed the proffered sandwich and a chocolate biscuit. He felt much better and walked outside to take another look at what was happening.

The sky was a brilliant pink, with rolling billows of smoke making rosy cushions above him. There was no one, not even a cat, in the street. He went back into the tiny shop and leaned against the wall by the telephone girl, to gossip.

He was jolted upright by a fast puffing sound, closer than the general roar, then a pause, while everyone held their breath. A heavy crump and everyone breathed out.

“Land-mine,” Conor said. “Unexploded.”

“Must have fallen in the park,” Glynis commented, relief exuding from her.

“Here comes another,” squeaked the telephonist, as she laid her head on her table and clasped her arms over her tin hat. The trainlike sound came again and Conor tensed.

An enormous explosion shook the old shop, reverberating round them in swelling waves. The telephone girl was nearly lifted off her chair, and cracks ran up the grubby walls. Mont was on his feet in a split second, clapping his helmet to his head. “My God!” he exclaimed.

A colossal growl, like that of some huge animal, indicated the fall of heavy masonry; it was followed by a rapid tattoo of smaller pieces on to the roof and into the street.

“The tenement?” breathed Glynis through chattering teeth. “The Dwellings?”

“Could be,” Mont replied, as he loosened his torch from his belt. All of them dreaded a direct hit on the huge five-storey tenement nearby. It was built in a circle, round a communal yard, and was packed with young families.

Conor had already gone. He ran madly down the pink-lit street and turned left. He was brought up short by an impenetrable cloud of dust. Other than the heavy grumble from the skies, there was a weird silence.

Then, from beyond the dust cloud, came scream after scream of pain and panic. “Oh, Jesus, help us,” shrieked a woman’s voice.

Doors of the row houses close to the warden banged open, as shaken tenants came rushing out. Mont panted up to Conor, and said, “I’ll tell Josie to phone R. and P. We’re going to need a lot of help.”

Conor cleared his throat and spat. “Better have a closer look first. Could be only the houses facin’, not the tenement itself.”

They both took out handkerchiefs to cover their noses from the cloying dust; it was so thick that the beams of their torches were reflected back, as if they faced a wall. They turned the lights down to their feet and picked their way round huge slabs of concrete and piles of bricks, interspersed with threatening electric wires. The dust, now mixed with a strong smell of gas, made Mont cough. He tripped over a broken beam and fell, barking his shins and hands painfully, and got up again. Behind him, Conor could hear other people scrambling over the wreckage; they were shouting to each other, as they converged, and above and beyond the sound of their voices came the screams of the half-crushed.

“’Allo, la,” Conor called. “I’m the warden. All men come to me.” Dear God, send me some wi’ a bit o’ sawy, he added to himself. Judging by the curses behind him, he was not going to have to
ask
people to help tonight, which was a welcome change. He hoped Tom Massey was on duty – biggest bloody rozzer in the whole police force. He knew he could use a dozen heavyweights for this job.

A shrieking woman blundered into him. She clutched his arms and shook him. “Me lads – me lads!” she yelled into his face. She was naked, her clothing blown off her, and long,
black hair flicked across his mouth, as she half turned to look back at the carnage slowly emerging from the fog.

“Hold on there, luv. Did it hit clean on The Dwellings?”

“Aye, into t’ middle yard.” She clawed at him. “For Jesus’ sake, get me boys out.”

Throughout the raid, Conor and Mont, with the Rescue Squad, sweated and cursed their way into the ruins, sickened frequently, occasionally triumphant when they brought out the living, until in the early morning, a filthy, bloodstained Conor went back to the post to write out his report. New orphans, new widows, new cripples and a band of homeless. And what for? What was it in truth all about? God’s curse on them all. He rubbed his torn and dirty hands on his overalls and reached for his pencil.

Arms round each other, Gwen and Mari cowered on the cellar steps, certain that each strident screech above their heads would be the last thing they would ever hear.

The petrifying crash which destroyed The Dwellings made both of them scream. Tinkling glass and a rushing draught told them that the windows had blown in.

“Me shting room! Me aspidistra!” Gwen wailed. Her Holy of Holies would be exposed to the weather – and thieves!

Mari began to cry.

The roar of the attack on the city centre was undiminished, but locally it was as if everything held its breath, as if the explosion of the land-mine had taken everything with it. Gwen and Mari loosed their grip on each other and raised their heads.

The quiet was broken by a frantic banging on the back door. “Missus, missus! Come quick,” a boy’s voice cried.

Patrick! Mari scrambled to her feet.

Her mother caught her by her bare ankle. “You stay here, miss. “I’ll go.”

In the pink light coming from between the flapping remains of the blackout curtains, it was easy to see the familiar terrain of the brick-tiled kitchen. She flung open the back door. Five shadows tumbled in together, wailing like forgotten babies.

Gwen surveyed five shocked faces, in the uncertain light. “For Heaven’s sake, what’s to do?”

“It’s Mam. She’s hurt real bad,” Patrick gulped. “Coom and help her.”

Gwen swallowed. “Where is she?”

“She’s lyin’ by t’ front step. Ah can’t move her. Coom quick.” The usually bumptious Patrick was beside himself, his face ashen.

Crowded close to him, the other children broke into loud howls. Ruby led the hullabaloo. Her mother, her only defence against the terror of the raids, was lying inert at the door of her home; and Ruby was convinced that all the houses would collapse any minute and she would again be buried.