Three Women of Liverpool (10 page)

“I’m worried about our mam. Mrs Thomas don’t say much.”

Patrick ran his tongue round his lips. Then he said very softly, “She’s dead, Rube. Didn’t you realise it?”

“Oh,” she gasped, putting her hand against her mouth to
control an involuntary shriek. “No, Pat. I thought she’d fainted.”

She put her head down on his blanketed lap and he could feel her shivering. Then she began to sob. He sat stiffly under her weight. “Don’t, Rube,” he muttered. “Don’t.”

“I can’t help it. What are we goin’ to do without Mam?”

“Dunno,” he replied thickly. But he did know. It happened all the time when mothers died. Ruby would take her mother’s place. Like many another motherless girl, she would learn to wash and cook for the family and tend little Michael. He was glad he wasn’t a girl. He lived for the day when he would be big enough, hefty enough, to go down to the docks and stand in the pen, to be picked again and again for work, because he was the biggest and best. And he would bring home real wages and take a pretty girl, like Mari, to the pictures. Ruby would slave most of her life for nothing, because her mother was dead.

No wonder Ruby wept.

During this terrifying Saturday night and Sunday morning, while Gwen coped with her unwelcome visitors, five hundred German bombers converged on the already stricken city, with orders to wipe it out, make it unusable by the convoys of ships from the United States.

They were met by Defiant fighter planes darting bravely in and out of the searchlight beams, in an effort to confuse and harass them. But the Defiants were too slow and their guns were wrongly placed, and not all the gallantry and skill of their crews could compensate for the planes’ deficiencies.

There were not many seamen in the canteen that night, nor had the firewatchers come in for their accustomed snacks. Deckie Dick was seated in his usual place at the centre table, from which vantage point he could look out of the window to
watch the passing scene and also observe all that was going on in the canteen itself. He idly shuffled the deck of cards, from which he derived his nickname, from one hand to the other, as he regaled a bored younger merchant seaman with the story of the rescue work he had participated in the night before.

When the first bombs whistled down, neither staff nor customers sought the shelter of the basement, but when suddenly the attack seemed particularly near and intense, everybody dropped what they were doing and fled for the stairs. As they tumbled down the curving flight, the window shutters flew open with an angry rattle; the front door was blown off its hinges and shot across the canteen, followed by a torrent of sand from burst sandbags. As the blast receded, the door flew out again, to crash against the lamp post on the pavement.

Miss Piggot, one of the volunteers, had tripped on the bottom step and fallen, taking a swearing, flailing Scot down with her. Now, they both picked themselves up off the stone floor and ruefully rubbed their knees. “My poor stockings,” wailed Miss Piggot, lifting her skirts to look at the tears. Mrs Robinson pushed her to one side and quickly closed the stout door which guarded the foot of the staircase. She sat down on one of the benches and smiled at a thin, pimpled Royal Naval rating already perched there. He was rolling himself a cigarette, with trembling fingers. “Soon be over,” she told him comfortingly. He replied wryly, “I’d rather be at sea.” And her plump face creased with laughter.

“Phew!” exclaimed Emmie, as she sat down by Deckie Dick. “That were close.” She shivered and rubbed her bare forearms, as if she were cold.

“Aye. Looks as if we’re in for a bad night.” He looked tired beneath the grey stubble of two days’ beard. As a night watchman, he was not used to heavy physical labour and he had spent the previous night heaving beams and chunks of stone out of the way of rescue squads. As he glanced down at
Emmie’s anxious face, he was thinking he would be thankful to be back at work on Monday night, when he could, between his rounds, kip down in a warm corner of the warehouse which he watched. He leaned his bald head, with its fringe of white hair, against the whitewashed wall and closed his eyes against the glare of the single electric light bulb hanging from the ceiling. Pity the lodging house in which he lived was so noisy; otherwise he could have slept in a bit longer that morning.

As the raid progressed, the electric light began to flicker, so Mrs Robinson opened her capacious handbag and took out a candle and some matches. She lit it and then glued it down on to the corner table, by drips of its own wax. Then she blew it out.

The uproar outside became intense. “Good thing they’re bringing in mining engineers, to help out,” remarked Dick, his eyes still closed. “They can advise the heavy-rescue men.”

Emmie nodded and leaned forward to rest her face on her hands, to stop herself shaking.

Mrs Robinson turned to the taciturn countess, who was seated stiffly opposite her, her ankles crossed neatly, her skirts precisely arranged around her. ”I wish I had shut the canteen at ten o’clock,” she remarked. “I had an uneasy feeling this morning that there would be another raid tonight.”

The countess looked down her Norman nose and sniffed delicately. “On no account should you have closed. It would show that we are intimidated.” Her wonderful diamond rings flashed, as she dismssed the Luftwaffe with an impatient gesture.

The naval rating drew on his cigarette and stared at her. Proper rum old dame, she was. If he were as rich as she looked, he would be thirty miles away from any place like Liverpool.

A gaunt and hunched ship’s stoker, sitting cross-legged on the floor playing cards with three others, suddenly looked up. “Can yer smell smoke?” he inquired nervously of the company.

“Be funny if we couldn’t, after last night’s effort,” grunted one of his fellow players. He shuffled his cards secretly, close to his face.

“I mean in here,” the stoker responded irritably. Holding his cards to his chest, he got up, went to the door and opened it. Conversation ceased. He crept up a couple of steps and peered around, then bolted down again, as a huge swish followed by a roar and the sound of tumbling masonry indicated a hit nearby.

“Shut the door, you bloody fool,” shouted a highly alarmed voice.

“Had to take a look-see,” grumbled the equally shaken stoker. “T’ canteen might’ve bin bairnin’ over our heads.”

Emmie fidgeted unhappily beside Deckie Dick. Why planners never put lavatories in air raid shelters was beyond her. It was certain that they must live far away from air raids; otherwise they would have known that the banshee wail of the warning was like a switch turning on your waterworks. She wondered if some of the fellows felt as she did, and she giggled shakily.

Deckie Dick opened his eyes. “What’s ticklin’ yer, luv?”

She blushed and whispered into his ear. He laughed, and replied, “I’m in the same boat.”

The card players had been murmuring together. Now the owner of the pack knocked them together and put them in his back pocket. They got up and stretched. “Got to get back to the ship,” they informed Mrs Robinson, “raid or no raid.”

Mrs Robinson, alarmed, half rose from her bench. “You can’t go out in this, Mr Petersen. No one would expect you to.” But she read the panic in their eyes, and she sank down again. A ship out in the river might seem a safer place than the bedlam surrounding them.

Their opening of the door let in a dull roar, punctuated by occasional shouts and the sound of lorries from the docks being driven in low gear, as drivers tried to get themselves and
their loads to safety. They scurried up the steps, only to throw themselves flat on the littered floor at the top, as another deafening detonation made the old building shudder and sent bits of plaster flying from the ceiling. The subsequent rumble of falling masonry confirmed their opinion that, if they
could
get away, they preferred to be aboard ship. Who wanted to be buried under eight floors of eighteenth-century stone blocks?

As they scrambled over the remains of the sandbag wall, they were shaken to see that the street was as light as day.

“Get under cover,” shouted an irate auxiliary policeman, running towards them half sideways, like a crab, to gain the greatest protection from the office walls.

The men took no notice of him and sped past him, bent on reaching the overhead railway which might well still be running and would take them south, away from what appeared to be the raid’s main targets. In so doing, they saved their lives.

With her face buried in her lap and her arms clasped over her head for maximum protection, Emmie prayed that Robert was safely out of the port. She jabbed Deckie Dick with her elbow, and shouted above the noise, “Do you think Robbie will’ve sailed yet?”

Dick paused before answering. He knew that the
Malakand
had not yet left dock and he knew what she was being loaded with. But why add to the girl’s worries? He answered her quite cheerfully, “She may have got away this mornin’.”

Relieved, Emmir returned to worrying about the need to go to the lavatory.

In No. 2 Huskisson, Robbie heaved the last of a series of spitting incendiaries off the foredeck and into the water.

“Watch it!” shrieked one of his mates, and pointed upwards.

Robbie whipped round.

A barrage balloon, half deflated, loosed from its moorings, was settling into the rigging.

Someone shrieked to Robbie, “Get away. It’ll explode.”

Robbie scrambled aft and with the rest of the crew watched helplessly as the grey monster was pulled and pushed by the breeze. A particularly strong gust loosened it and it flopped on to the for’ard deck.

Several men started towards it, but they were grabbed and held back by more cautious seamen.

A second later, the grey, silky mass burst into flames, a huge, scarifying ball of fire.

Regardless of the deadly cargo beneath their feet, the officers ordered hoses out and for fifteen agonised minutes the crew deluged the roaring fire with water, while more incendiaries were scattered down on to the hapless freighter.

A Nazi bomber swooped along the nearby dock sheds dropping a further load of incendiaries. Orange flowers of flame burst from the roofs, and in minutes a mighty conflagration stretched from Huskisson to Seaforth, like a brilliant multicoloured curtain. The wind generated by the fire sent huge fingers of flame out to the boat, and the crew found themselves surrounded by fire licking along the ship from stem to stern. Robbie could see the raw terror which struck him, reflected in the eyes of the others; yet they and the auxiliary firemen sent to help them held on to their hoses until, through the noise of the blaze, came the firm voice of the shore relief master, “Abandon ship.”

Black, singed and panting, they regrouped on the dockside and were immediately put to work jetting water into the holds, while a special tender was sent for, to bring oxy-acetylene apparatus to the boat.

“Goin’ to try scuttlin’ her – cut a hole in her side,” a fireman said to Robbie, as they sought to hold a wriggling hose towards the ship.

“Aye, they’d better be quick,” Robbie gasped, “or we’re all for Kingdom Come, and half of Liverpool as well.”

There was a fumbling at the door of the canteen shelter. Mrs Robinson hastened to open it, and an air raid warden entered in a puff of smoke. His tin hat was askew and he was swaying with fatigue. “Just checkin’ who’s here,” he assured them, and, pointing to each person, he counted the number present.

“What’s happening up there?” asked Mrs Robinson. Her face was wan and her lipstick smudged, giving her a clownlike appearance.

The warden flopped down on the end of a bench and the weary shelterers turned towards him. He took off his tin hat to rub his bald head. Emmie noticed that his trousers were thick with dust and there were holes in the knees.

“Lewis’s store is a raging inferno,” he said to Mrs Robinson, in answer to her query. “Must’ve lost most of their firewatchers. T’ firemen is stuck for water.” His dispirited voice lifted a little, and he grinned, “T’ fire brigade has pumped all the water out of the Adelphi’s swimming bath into Lewis’s. That’ll larn that snobs’ paradise.”

A ripple of laughter at the expense of the city’s finest hotel went through the company.

Too bad about the firewatchers, thought Emmie, but if you didn’t laugh at what was funny you’d soon go mad.

“Our telephone at the post is out,” he went on more soberly. “Bloody havoc without it. Seen a couple of post office engineers just now, slinging lines every which way, to get us connected up again. And there’s another two of them sittin’ in a crater right in the street here, splicin’ telephone lines as calm as if they was havin’ afternoon tea at Lyons’.” He stood up and stretched. “It’s a bloody miracle they’re not dead.”

“Should we try to move out of here?” asked Mrs Robinson.

“Nay. You’re safer here than anywhere. South Castle Street,
at the back here, is a shambles, what with fire and direct hits. I’ll come back and tell you, if the firemen think you should move.”

“Do they need men up there?” inquired a lanky individual in battered beige denim trousers, as he got up clumsily from the floor.

“Not now, they don’t. They will when the All Clear goes, though.”

“Not tonight, Josephine. Sit down again,” cracked a wit.

The warden clapped his helmet back on to his head, grinned in a friendly way and clumped back up the steps.

A collective sigh went through the company and they settled back to wait again.

The light went out. Mrs Robinson quietly lit the candle. Its flame seemed to emphasize the lined faces of the men and women, picking out a drooping eyelid, a blackened tooth, the sole of a shoe with a hole in it, the glitter of a cheap ring on a chapped hand.

From the gloom, a forlorn young voice informed its neighbour, “Me leave’s up at eight o’clock tomorrer mornin’. Got to be back in camp by then. I were on me way to the station when this lot started. Ah coom in ’ere, thinkin’ it’d all blow over in an hour.”

“You got a bleedin’ hope, mate. You live around here?” Deckie Dick inquired.

“Aye, wi’ me gran. Lives in Pitt Street. She were scared enough last night, without this on top.”