Read Lights Out Liverpool Online
Authors: Maureen Lee
Lights Out Liverpool
There was quite a crowd outside, reluctant to return home since hearing the fateful news. One or two were glancing up at the skies, as if already expecting to see enemy planes loaded with bombs to drop on Bootle. Tony and Dominic, both wearing their gas masks, were playing at being aeroplanes, arms outstretched as they swooped on each other. When everyone saw Francis Costello emerge in his uniform, they clustered around, shaking his hand and wishing him well. Annie Poulson, who had her arms around a sobbing Rosie Gregson, looked more angry than upset. Her lads were in Aldershot and she was probably wondering when she’d see them again. Sheila emerged clutching the new baby, Mary, and came across to say goodbye to Francis.
Francis reached for his wife with his free arm and, in a dramatic gesture, swung her towards him. He kissed her long and hard on the lips and everyone cheered.
‘Tara, luv,’ he said, releasing her.
Suddenly, Eileen felt it was all too much. She burst into tears.
‘Don’t worry, Sis, he’ll be back.’
For David, the first one
MAUREEN LEE
Acknowledgments
The following very kindly wrote to me following my letter in the Liverpool
Echo
, to tell me of their experiences during the Second World War. I shall always remain grateful that they were willing to share that extraordinary part of their lives with me.
Mrs V. Armstrong, Alf Blackburn, Tom Brady, Peter Carlin, Margaret Clansey, Jim Collins, Barbara Darlington, Allan Ferris, Cathy Hankin, Mrs E. Jackson, Mary Leatherbarrow, Ken Livesey, Robert McDougall, Mr R.J. McMillan, William Monaghan, Sonny Rafferty, Rita Rees, Roy Stancombe, Mr H.J. Sowden, George A. Turrell, Max Wilson, Mrs M. Wright.
The poem,
THE GATE OF THE YEAR
, was written by Miss Minnie Haskins in 1908.
The home-made bunting crisscrossed the little street from roof to roof, fluttering gently in the soft breath of a perfect late summer day. Half a dozen trestle tables, covered with an assortment of best damask tablecloths, had been set down the centre and strewn with ringlets of bright paper streamers. The tables groaned under the weight of trifles and jellies, plates piled high with sandwiches, home-made sausage rolls and confectionery. Squares of bead-edged muslin protected the food from the wasps and bluebottles which buzzed greedily overhead.
Mary and Joey Flaherty and their three children were going to live in Canada, leaving Bootle forever for a new life in a new country, and throwing a street party on their final Saturday as a gesture of farewell.
The children, almost out of their minds with excitement and waiting impatiently to be called for the first sitting, filled in the time by darting to and fro in search of tar bubbles on the cobbled surface of the street, caused by the relentless heat of the noon sun which poured down out of a cloudless blue sky. When a bubble was found, there’d be a shrill yell of triumph – ‘You wanna see the size o’
this
one!’ – and it would be burst with an already blackened thumb.
The grown-ups, equally excited, hid their feelings behind wide smiles and a general air of enjoyment, though their happiness was tempered by the fearful knowledge of what was going on outside their little world. That madman Adolf Hitler seemed intent on taking over all of
Europe
and gradually, unbelievably, Great Britain was being drawn into the war.
Only the other day, anyone listening to the wireless had been astounded to hear Members of Parliament being urgently recalled to Westminster. Stomachs churned as people sat there expecting to hear hostilities were about to break out any minute. Two days later, the Emergency Powers Act had been passed, giving the Government total control over the lives of its people. Then yesterday, the BBC had announced there would be special extra news bulletins in the morning and afternoon.
In the homes of Army, Navy and RAF reservists, official-looking envelopes containing their recall notices had begun to arrive, and the Territorial Army was mobilised. Already, thousands of young men not yet out of their teens had been called up and were waiting, ready to fight for their country if need be. People felt as if they were on a train heading for a precipice and there was nothing they could do to stop it.
But the residents of Pearl Street were determined not to let this spoil their party, perhaps the last street party they would hold for a long, long time. The women seemed to have taken an unspoken vow not to talk about it. They resolutely pushed to the back of their minds, for today at least, the hideous gas masks collected from the Town Hall, the freshly-built brick shelters to which they were supposed to go in the unimaginable event of an air raid, the impending blackout and food rationing, and the barrage balloon suspended above the bowling green next to Bootle Hospital which looked so pretty, like a silver flower floating in the sky, yet was there for such a grim purpose. In their best frocks and their Sunday pinnies, the women bustled in and out of their own and their neighbours’ houses carrying yet more refreshments. Although the
Flahertys
had provided the ingredients, Mary couldn’t be expected to prepare food for twenty-nine children and over forty adults, not all on her own.
The men who didn’t work on Saturdays, or didn’t work at all, were less inhibited. Many had already become voluntary ARP wardens or joined the Auxiliary Fire Service, and several of the younger ones were expecting their call-up papers at any minute. They stood in little groups, some playing pitch and toss, and from time to time preventing children from other streets from entering, and war was their sole topic of conversation. Despite this, they too seemed to have been affected by the gladness of the day; laughing more than usual and snapping their fingers or tapping their feet as if to music. Although none could be persuaded into their best suits – if they had one – most wore a collar and tie despite the scorching heat. The men had already done their bit towards the party, having collected the borrowed tables from the Holy Rosary Church Hall and put them up. As far as they were concerned, the rest was women’s work.
Most of the front doors were wide open and the old people sat on their steps, sunning themselves, mouths watering at the sight of the food, wishing the women would hurry up and feed the children so it would be their turn to sit down. In the doorway of his lodgings at Number 10, big Paddy O’Hara sat nursing his little dog, Spot, in his arms. Paddy, not old, but blind for more than half his life, was sensually aware of the clatter of the women’s shoes on the pavement, their varying scents, the swish of their skirts as they buzzed to and fro.
‘Ah, ’tis a fine day Joey picked for his do,’ he said to no-one in particular.
‘It is that, Paddy,’ replied Eileen Costello, who caught his words as she emerged from Number 16 carrying two
plates
of tomato and meatpaste sandwiches. Slim and graceful in her best blue crepe de Chine dress, her long fair hair tied back with a white ribbon, Eileen felt conscious of the heady, electric atmosphere in the street, though she could never have described it. Everywhere just seemed more than usually alive. There was a swing in her step as she took the plates over to the table.
Her sister Sheila, who lived opposite, came up carrying Ryan, her youngest child aged ten months, on her hip. Her pretty dimpled face was covered in perspiration. ‘I’m sweating like a cob, Sis.’ She nodded towards the little flags rippling above them. ‘I wish we could get a bit of that wind down here before I bake to death.’
The heat was palpable. The ruddy chimneys, the grey slate roofs turned silver by the dazzling light, and the neat cobbled ground, seemed to shimmer, actually seemed to move if you stared hard enough, and Pearl Street, a cul-de-sac, was indeed like an oven, hemmed in by red brick terraced houses, fifteen each side, and the blackened, pitted roof-high wall at one end which separated the street from the railway lines beyond. The trains, now electric, ran three an hour during the day; to Liverpool city centre one way and Southport the other.
‘Here, let me take him.’ Eileen reached for the rosy baby. He went to her willingly and immediately began to pull at her hair. ‘Y’shouldn’t be cartin’ him around, not in your condition.’ Sheila was heavily pregnant with her sixth child, which was due in ten days’ time.
‘Those jellies’ll be melted if they don’t eat them soon,’ Sheila said, wiping her brow. ‘I hope the kids hurry up, I’m starving hungry.’
A few yards away, Mary Flaherty suddenly clapped her hands and shouted, ‘C’mon, you little buggers, sit down, and don’t forget your paper ’ats.’
The muslin covers were hurriedly removed as the giggling children scrambled for their chairs like little maniacs. Their voices rose angrily, demanding to sit next to one person, refusing to sit next to another. Eileen, holding Ryan, watched her own son Tony, who was five, slip into a chair without any argument. He sat waiting, wearing an orange paper crown, his hands folded on his lap, looking like a little wise owl in his wire-rimmed glasses. Tony had been well drilled in good manners, though not by her. Whilst he sat quietly, twenty or more hands reached for a sandwich.
‘STOP!’ thundered Mary Flaherty, and the hands paused mid-air. ‘We haven’t said grace.’
Heads were meekly bowed whilst Mary muttered, ‘For what we are about to receive, may the good Lord make us truly thankful. Amen.’
Tony searched for his mam amongst the crowd who were watching benignly as the children fell upon the food – it was rarely that they sat down to such a feast. Eileen caught her son’s eye and gave a slight nod and he took a sandwich. ‘Poor Tony,’ she thought. ‘He’s like a little trained puppy compared to all the rest.’
Ellis Evans, stout and red-cheeked, wearing the stiff blue brocade frock she’d bought for her sister’s wedding ten years ago, said in her Welsh sing-song voice, ‘There’s two chairs empty. Who’s missing?’
The children were hurriedly counted. Only twenty-seven.
‘The Tuttys aren’t here …’ Annie Poulson, Eileen’s special friend, raised her fine arched eyebrows questioningly. ‘What should we do? Oh, I suppose we’d better get them.’
Everyone nodded, albeit reluctantly. The presence of the Tutty children would slightly flaw their perfect
jewel
of a day.
‘I’ll go,’ Eileen offered. The Tuttys lived next door to her, so she had more to do with them than most.
‘Oh, Mam, I don’t want them sitting next to me,’ Myfanwy Evans whined. ‘They stink something awful.’
There was an immediate general shuffling of seats so no child would be left with an empty chair beside them, which was of course impossible, whilst Eileen hurried down the street to Number 14.
Gladys Tutty opened the door to her knock.
‘The party’s started. There’ll be nowt left for Freda and Dicky if they don’t come soon.’
No-one was well off in Pearl Street, but people had their pride. No matter how poor they were, they kept their houses, inside and out, as clean as humanly possible. The Tuttys’ house stood out like a sore thumb amidst its immaculate neighbours with its grimy, cracked and curtainless windows, its unscrubbed step. The front door, a mass of peeling brown paint, had a scabrous look.
Eileen stood there, still clutching Ryan, repelled as always by the sight that met her and the smell that wafted out from her neighbour’s house. The bare boards in the little narrow hallway were broken and eaten away by rot, and the varnished anaglypta wallpaper was worn more off the wall than on, revealing round sores of filthy crumbling plaster. Every corner was caked with inch-thick hardened dirt.