The September Girls (48 page)

He decided to fetch the ring at dinnertime when there was more chance of the house being empty - Maria and the lads at her mam’s and his own mam gone to the shops. He easily found the little dark-blue velvet box in which the ring was kept in the top dressing table drawer, underneath a pile of hankies. He opened the box to make sure the ring was inside and it twinkled at him brilliantly. Tyrone heaved a sigh of relief and put it deep into his trouser pocket, then sank on to the bed, feeling dead ashamed.

What a way for a 24-year-old man to conduct his life, stealing jewellery from his mother. He resolved that never again would he play cards for money. Trouble was, he was always on the lookout for a bit of excitement, but now see where it had landed him!

He stood, groaning when he thought of the example he was setting for his lads. He’d never been much of a dad, spending far too much time in the pub. Weekdays, he didn’t set eyes on them; they were in bed when he left for work and in bed when he got home. Recently, Joey had been asking to be taken to a football match, but Tyrone had better things to do with his Saturday afternoons and had told him to sod off.

‘I’ll take him on Sat’day,’ he vowed. ‘And I’ll take them both to the park on Sunday, Maria an’ all.’ Tyrone genuinely loved his wife and sons, although he’d never given them much reason to love him. Once all this horrible business was over, he’d take Maria away for the weekend, somewhere quiet where they’d have a bit of peace. It wouldn’t exactly be a second honeymoon, as they’d never had a first, but the break would do their marriage good. She’d been a good, loyal wife who’d stuck by him through his moods, hardly ever complaining. He almost wished she’d come back so he could tell her how much he loved her, but it was time he returned to work.

Groaning again, Tyrone left the house, feeling the box with the ring in rubbing against his thigh. He would leave the Irish men waiting until the very last minute, until about five to eight, before he turned up with the ring. It wouldn’t hurt to let them sweat a bit.

 

‘I may as well be living in this place by meself,’ Brenna declared aloud when she went in and found the house empty. Maria and the lads spent more time at Mrs Murphy’s than they did at Shaw Street, Tyrone was either at work or the pub, Fergus at least had the decency to come home for a meal before making his way to Jessie Clifford’s and she wasn’t seeing all that much of Colm who for months now had been working late, leaving no time to eat before taking up his duties as an ARP warden. Some nights, she didn’t see him until the early hours and he’d even taken to working some weekends.

She slammed the shopping on the table with unnecessary force. Everything had gone wrong. She hadn’t seen Eleanor or Nancy in weeks, not since Cara had come home, and she had no intention of going to see her daughter without giving her a piece of her mind. It just wasn’t
in
her to accept the despicable things she’d done.

‘It’s not my way,’ she told herself. ‘She’s behaved really badly; sleeping with that RAF feller, hiding out in Parliament Terrace for months, marrying Marcus Allardyce on the sly in one of those heathen Registry Office places, having a baby without telling her mam.’ At this last, Brenna suppressed a sob. ‘She deserves a good telling off,’ she finished with a sniff.

She went into the kitchen and put the kettle on. Was it her own fault that everything had gone so badly wrong? Colm had suggested it more than once. ‘You’re too rigid, luv. You should learn to bend with the wind.’ But Brenna had no intention of bending in a full-blown storm. She had her standards and expected people to live up to them.

The kettle boiled, she made tea and took it into the living room. Time was when a quiet cuppa was a luxury, but now the house was quiet all the time, although that could easily be changed. All she had to do was slip on her coat and go to see Cara, pretend nothing untoward had happened and the old, loving mother-and-daughter relationship would return. Cara would come to see her every day with the baby and that Fielding person she’d met in the Army, or Brenna could go and see her.

No
! It wouldn’t be right, she thought, her mouth setting in a straight line - rigid, Colm would have called it. It would be too humiliating. She would be condoning a multitude of sins.

She was about to peel a pile of spuds, when she remembered there was an almost full pan left over from the night before that she could slice and fry with bacon when people came home. These days, she never knew how many, apart from Fergus, would turn up for a meal. Sometimes, Maria and the lads ate at her mam’s. For pudding, there was half of one of them eggless sponges also left over from yesterday. There’d been a time when it would have vanished within seconds, eggs or no eggs, when the whole family had sat down to tea together.

She returned to the sitting room, feeling bored with nothing to do. The house was scrupulously clean, there was no polishing or dusting to be done, everywhere was tidy - no, not
every
where. What sort of mess had Maria had left in the bedroom? It wouldn’t surprise her to learn that the Murphys had never been in the habit of making beds and Maria only made a rough and ready job of it.

‘I might have known,’ she muttered when she entered the room and found Maria had merely straightened the coverlet and not bothered to tuck in the blankets underneath. Brenna tut-tutted as she made the bed
her
way: the same with the lads’ bed in Cara’s old room.

Before returning downstairs, she went into her own bedroom to take a look at the sapphire ring. Unknown to Tyrone, his mam looked at the ring quite a few times a day. Only occasionally did she wear it: when she went to meetings of the Townswomen’s Guild, for instance, or to Mass on Sundays, or if she was in the house by herself when she would slip it on her finger, twist her hand this way and that, getting enormous pleasure from the way it flashed and sparkled in the light. In fact, she’d wear it now while she still had it, before Cara wanted it back.

But the little velvet box wasn’t underneath the hankies, the place it was always kept, the place where she’d put it only last night before getting into bed after admiring it for the umpteenth time. Had one of the lads got hold of it? She felt underneath the hankies, stockings, gloves and scarves, then threw them on to the bed leaving the drawer empty. There was no sign of the ring. Frantic now, she did the same with the other drawers, but the ring wasn’t there either, not that she’d expected it to be. It had been put under the hankies last night: she could remember quite distinctly.

Was it possible that Colm had taken it to give back to Cara? Much to Brenna’s annoyance, he visited his daughter whenever he had a rare free moment and she might have asked for it. But surely he wouldn’t have done that without telling
her
? Unless, she thought uncomfortably, he wanted to avoid a row and was waiting until she found the ring missing and a row became inevitable.

Someone came in the back door and Fergus shouted, ‘I’m home, Mam.’

‘I won’t be a mo, darlin’,’ Brenna called. She went slowly downstairs. Earlier, she’d been looking forward to the fried potatoes and bacon, but now she couldn’t have eaten a thing. It was silly, but she would have liked to have said goodbye to the ring, had a good look at it, knowing it would be the last time it would be in her possession.

‘You’re on edge tonight, Mam,’ Fergus commented, as she flitted in and out of the kitchen, standing up and sitting down for no apparent reason.

‘D’you think it’d be all right if I went round to the ARP station to see if your dad’s arrived yet? No one’d mind, would they?’

‘I’m sure no one’d mind a bit, but seeing as there isn’t a raid on, Dad would’ve come straight home, wouldn’t he?’

‘I suppose.’ Brenna had often wondered how it was that Colm seemed to arrive in Toxteth the minute a raid started so there wasn’t even time to drop in for a cup of tea and a snack. She went into the hall for her coat. ‘Even so, I’ll pop round there now, just in case, like. Tara, son.’

The ARP station was situated in a scout hut in Park Road. Brenna had never been before. The furniture consisted of a long, worm-ridden table with a telephone on top and a dozen or so chairs. There was a map of the area on the wall that two elderly men were studying when she went in, and a clock announcing the time was ten to seven. ‘Excuse me,’ she said brightly.

The men turned. ‘How can we help you, missus?’ asked one.

‘I’m looking for Colm Caffrey. D’you know what time he’ll be here?’

The other man shook his head. ‘We haven’t seen Colm in a few days. He telephoned to say there was trouble at home or summat like that.’

‘I’m his wife and there’s no trouble at home.’ There would be if she discovered he’d returned the ring to Cara and not said a word.

‘In that case, I’m afraid we can’t help you, missus. I’m only repeating what Colm told us.’

‘Ta.’ Brenna tossed her head and marched out. The man was talking rubbish. Colm had probably said there was trouble at work, not home. It made far more sense, even if he’d hadn’t said anything to her about it. And what did it mean that Colm hadn’t been seen for a few days? Perhaps the man had got him mixed up with someone else. She felt uneasy and a bit confused. She couldn’t stand things not being completely straightforward and uncomplicated. It was the way she liked life to be, the way she ran her own. She didn’t hold with people who removed rings without telling anyone, or left messages, the meaning of which was unclear.

She was halfway home when the siren went, signalling a raid was about to start - and on such a lovely May evening, too. The sun was a great golden ball in a sky the same colour as the stones in the missing ring. She didn’t quicken her pace; the siren usually gave people plenty of time to get to their shelters.

It therefore came as a fearful shock when she heard the drone of aircraft overhead and saw what looked like a good hundred planes appear in the sapphire sky like a flock of evil blackbirds bringing more death and destruction to the city of Liverpool.

She fled home. ‘Is there anyone in?’ she yelled when she ran into the house. There was no reply, but she noticed Maria’s shopping bag on the chair. She must have come back and gone out again to the public shelter when the siren went. Maria couldn’t stand being in the house during a raid with only the lads for company. Brenna was sorry they’d missed each other. She preferred having company during a raid herself and the lads hated the shelter, unable to sleep in the racket. Joey was scared of the drunks who came pouring in when the pubs closed. He was a nervous little boy, just like Fergus used to be before he’d started sleeping with married women.

Brenna picked up her handbag and shut herself in the cupboard under the stairs, preoccupied with the missing ring and the odd message Colm had left at the ARP Centre. Irritating though these things were, however, it dawned on her after a while that the raid in progress was a raid like no other she’d known before. The bombs were raining down, there were explosions every few seconds, the earth shook, the house trembled and it was bedlam outside, what with the screams and shouts, the bells and the hooters, the thud of feet along the pavement and the sound of children crying.

At a time like this, a person needed their family around them, hands to hold, shoulders to lean on, lips to kiss. But Brenna had no one. She began to weep.

 

The Irish men had another think coming if they expected him to turn up on a night like this. Tyrone had no intention of risking his life walking through the streets as far as the Docky to deliver the ring. In the pub he was in now, a few men had left for home when the siren went, but most had stayed and continued supping their beer as if nothing untoward was happening. They might wince if there was an explosion close by and there’d be a slight pause in their conversation, but otherwise they stayed calm. A few were playing cards for matchsticks, but Tyrone had lost all interest in cards. He found it hard not to hope that the Black Horse would receive a direct hit and all his problems would be over: he’d put the ring back in the dressing table drawer and Mam would never know it hadn’t been there all the time.

 

‘This is it!’ Nancy said grimly as she shielded her head with her hands when there was a bang that nearly burst their eardrums. A cloud of plaster drifted down from the ceiling and two plates fell off the dresser. The bricks of the big house seemed to shift slightly and the beams creaked and groaned, followed seconds later by the loud rumble of collapsing buildings. The rumbling seemed to go on for ever. More dust fell from the ceiling.

Cara almost bent double as she tried to shelter her sleeping child. Kitty opened her eyes, disturbed by the bang, sighed briefly and closed them again. ‘It’s all right, sweetheart,’ she whispered. ‘You’re quite safe with me.’ But it wasn’t all right and it wasn’t safe. Tonight it was hell on earth and it had been going on for hours. She’d be surprised if there was much of Liverpool left standing by morning.

‘It wasn’t “it”,’ Fielding crowed when, suddenly, there was silence and the house had remained intact. ‘We’re still alive!’

‘So we are!’ Nancy laid her arms on the table and they grinned at each other. ‘But that was close. Would you like some more wine, pet?’

‘Wouldn’t say no. I’d like to get completely blotto and not be able to hear a thing.’

‘Good idea.’ Nancy refilled both their glasses. ‘Are you sure you wouldn’t like some, Cara?’

‘No, ta. I’m still breastfeeding Kitty, aren’t I?’ Cara said shortly. The pair were getting on her nerves. You’d think Fielding was Nancy’s long-lost daughter the way they’d taken to each other and she felt a tiny bit jealous, having always considered Nancy belonged to
her
. Between them, they were gradually demolishing the contents of Marcus’s cellar. If the raids went on much longer, the cellar would be bare.

‘Would you like us to make you a cup of tea, pet?’ Nancy asked kindly. ‘It’s so much worse for you, isn’t it? You’ve got Kitty to worry about as well as yourself.’