Three Women of Liverpool (16 page)

She was sound asleep in the chair, mouth open, gently snoring, when Conor Donnelly, followed by Ruby, walked in through the open front door.

She awoke, startled to see an awful apparition standing before her on her rag rug. It was white with dust from head to foot, the face caked. Two red eyes glared out at her from under a battered tin hat; ominous brown stains marked the front of him. There was a faint smell about him as if of a butcher’s shop, mixed with old sweat. A gap in the face was mouthing something about Emma.

Frightened, she jumped to her feet so quickly that she nearly knocked him down.

“It’s me dad,” explained Ruby simply.

Gwen forced herself into wakefulness. “Did you say Emma?” she asked. Then, without thinking of the effect on her fireside chair, immaculate in faded cretonne, she said, “My, Mr Donnelly, you look dreadful! Sit down. Would you like a cuppa tea? Have you had your tea?”

Conor flopped thankfully into the little chair and tried to smile. “Ta, I could use a drop.”

“No trouble.” To offer a cup of tea was a strict convention, but she surveyed him with dismay. Never in her life had she seen anyone look so dreadful. Even the chimney sweep at the end of a day’s work – or the coalman – never looked as bad as that. For once her Methodist training surfaced, and she asked impetuously, “I got a bit o’ dinner left. Why don’t you wash your hands and face under the kitchen tap, while I make it hot for you?”

He had eaten nothing hot for forty-eight hours and he accepted eagerly.

It was amazing what a bit of hot food would do for a person, thought Gwen in gratified surprise, as she watched Conor polish off the dinner intended for Emma. Scuttling round to make the food ready, she had forgotten again about Emma, but now as he slurped at a cup of tea, she remembered and inquired if he had news.

He sighed. “Aye, I have, Mrs Thomas. The canteen’s flat. They’re digging into the shelter under it now.”

“And Emma’s in it?” Her heart bounced uncomfortably. It was one thing to wish a person dead or gone; quite another to probably have the wish granted so promptly.

“I suppose she’s there. They’re trying to finish the job afore it’s dark – same as we bin doin’ at The Dwellings.”

“Do you know how things are in Boode?”

Anxious not to scare her unnecessarily, since her husband was out there, he played down the shocking fate of Bootle.

“Me hubby didn’t even come home for his dinner,” Gwen remarked quite crossly. “Don’t they know men have families to look after?”

Conor ignored the remark and pursued the question of Emmie. “Miss Thomas were engaged, weren’t she?”

“Yes.” Gwen was surprised that he knew. She had forgotten that the engagement of a woman of mature years would have been an interesting piece of gossip to be mulled over by the fire in the local public house.

“Is he at sea?”

“I doubt it – yet. They were loading at No. 2 Huskisson, according to Emma.”

“What?”

Gwen jumped. “At Huskisson. Why?”

Conor told her the news, received over the post telephone, of the fearsome destruction wreaked by the exploding
Marakand
. “Most of the bangs you’ve been hearing today is from her,” he finished up.

“Well, I can’t say as I think much of him, to be truthful – but I wouldn’t wish that on him.” She had a sudden picture in her mind of the tall, well-built man, ruddy-faced and blue-eyed, and knew in her heart that she was deeply jealous of Emmie. Emmie was so content, so satisfied, as if part of the time she was moving in a dream. David had never made her glow like that. She felt a surge of longing go through her thin frame and she examined her nails carefully so that Conor would not read her feelings in her face.

Conor said heavily, as he got up from his chair, “I’ll see if we can trace him. Robert Owen, deckhand, on the
Marakand,
wasn’t it?”

She nodded absently.

Neither Emmie nor Dick admitted to each other an increasing hunger; hunger was something which had been with them, on and off, all their lives. At her brother’s house, Emmie had for the first time enjoyed adequate meals, though Gwen was by no means generous in the portions she gave her. Now, however, she endured a clemming misery.

As they became wetter, the water which had been such a Godsend became a trial. Dick shivered constantly, teeth chattering, from the cold as well as from nervous strain.

Not only did they lie in puddles of water, but in their own urine and ordure, and the odour vied with the smell of smoke and wet plaster; the wisps of smoke saved them, however, from attacks by rats, the contemplation of which made both of them heave at times; the vermin with which Liverpool was infested retreated as the fires advanced.

At one point they thought they heard the scrape of metal on stone and then a distant shout. In response, they banged the wall with a stone and cried out again and again. The wall was as thick as a castle keep and if there was anyone there, the frantic cries went unheard.

In a sudden burst of fury, Emmie had said venomously, “If I
ever get out of this fix, I’ll go into munitions. I’ll send them something to make
them
smart, I will.”

“You can make good money at it,” Dickie replied practically. “A lot more’n you could servin’ in a cafe.”

This idea had set her off on a laboured, barely audible description of what she would like to do after the war, if she had some savings. “I’d buy a nice little sweet and tobacconist’s,” she confided to Dick. “It’d give me some real independence – and summat to do while Robbie’s at sea.”

“He might like to swallow the anchor and help you.”

“Nay,” she insisted, with unexpected woodenness. “He can have ‘is own job. This is for me. I never ever thought o’ planning for meself afore this.” She contemplated a hopeful future for a little while. Then she said, her voice cracked and broken, “You know, a lot of women get tired of being bossed all the time, but unless you got money you got to put up with it. I’m tired of it. I want to be free – and Robbie will benefit. We’ll have more money for both of us. Go on holidays and suchlike.”

Sporadically, they planned holidays and dreamed of sunny beaches, until an ache in Dickie’s back became a piercing pain; his temperature started to rise and finally his speech to wander, until he was talking to Emmie as if she were one of his sons.

Emmie, too, began to feel light-headed, and the unbroken darkness robbed her of any knowledge of the passage of time. Unaware of the frantic battle being waged in No. 2 Huskisson, in which her beloved Robbie fought as hard as anyone, she concluded from the intermittent booms which shook the ground beneath her that it was night and a raid was taking place at a little distance from the town centre.

Just before midnight, and continuing well into Monday morning, enemy aircraft swept over the east coast, like a cloud of disturbed hornets, curved round over Liverpool Bay and followed the shining Mersey to their target.

The anti-aircraft guns had been reorganised during the day,
to good effect, and a heavy barrage greeted the raiders, making it difficult to bomb accurately. Nevertheless, incendiary bombs deluged the city, and the haphazard scattering of high explosives brought out of bed at a run all those citizens brave enough to retire in the first place. People sleeping on the platforms of the underground railway forgot the hardness of their sleeping place and turned over thankfully, and those in air raid shelters or out in the fields beyond the city congratulated themselves on their forethought, miserable as they might be. The stunned victims of the earlier raids, now herded into schools and church halls, faced this further threat to their safety, and more than one such shelter became a bloody grave before morning.

Though night fighting was a new art, the pilots in their slow Defiants used all their ingenuity to defend the port. “Learnin’ on t’ job, like us,” one auxiliary fireman remarked cynically, as he gazed upwards for a moment at the fireworks in the sky. A thin cheer went up from his battered brigade, when a Nazi airman was spotted bailing out and floating downwards, his parachute spread above him. “Hope he gets lynched,” cried several savagely tired Liverpudlians; but he was picked up from the river the next morning, drowned, like so many of Liverpool’s own men.

Ignoring the pandemonium and the danger, Rescue Squads still picked their way delicately through great heaps of what had once been a city. With the aid of shaded lamps or, infrequently, a floodlight, they peered and called and probed, with occasional success, while searchlights flicked like mad pendulums back and forth across the sky and malevolent pieces of flak flashed like javelins amid the rescuers.

Panting, trying to keep calm, Emmie held the head of a babbling Dick to her naked breast, clasping her arms tightly over him as she sought to protect him. As the hubbub continued, furious sexual desire engulfed her again. It boiled in her, an urgent, primitive need, and she murmured
incoherently to him. Dick himself was aware only of a warm, comforting presence in a world of nightmare, as pneumonia took hold of him. His breath came in harsh rasps.

“Don’t let him die, oh, God. Don’t let him die,” she implored, as she realised there would be no response from him. While the ear-splitting din round her increased, she began to believe that he was indeed dying; her self-control deserted her, her mind gave way and she shrieked like a rabbit in a snare.

As she saw Conor out of the front door, on Sunday evening, Gwen managed to insert into his monologue the suggestion that the children might now return to their own home, since it was fairly certain, from experience in other raids, that the Germans had finished this onslaught. Shocked, Conor had turned back and vehemently begged her to keep them with her for one more night.

“Their nan should be here by tomorrer night,” he assured her. “She’ll stay a few days, though she’s still got me dad to care for at home. Then Rube will have to manage for us – we’ll hope the raids’ll be finished by then.”

When Gwen still demurred, he insisted, “I
can’t
stay home with them tonight. They need every man they can get at The Dwellings. What would people say if I stayed home, I ask you?”

Because of what people might also say about her, Gwen reluctantly agreed to keep the youngsters.

She went slowly back indoors. In the yard, Conor’s dog started to bark and then to whine. “Blast him,” she muttered viciously. The kitchen door to the yard opened, and Patrick entered, the dog sidling after him. He looked white and strained and glanced at her uncertainly before dropping his eyes to the importuning dog and patting it.

He’s scared, Gwen sensed. Frightened to death of something.

“What’s up, lad?”

“I don’t think anybody’s alive down there,” he burst out, his breath coming quickly, as if he had been running.

“Where?”

“Down Paradise – where your Emma was.”

Gwen felt herself go cold. So the worst had happened. She had wished it and she was responsible. She wanted to be sick.

“It’s somethin’ terrible down there, missus. You should see the fires.” His lips trembled. He had seen what he feared even grownups could not cope with and he was frightened, humbled. Dreadful Mrs Thomas looked suddenly like a pillar of strength; her basement steps a safe stronghold.

The gates of hell yawned before Gwen. If you wished a person dead – and it happened as you wished – it was as good as murder. She gaped at the beaten child whose grubby hands clutched for support at the back of the chair. Then she said very slowly, “What you and I need is a cuppa tea.” She tried to pull herself together, and added, “And I’ll make you gooseberry jam butties to go with it.” She walked unsteadily past him to the kitchen and he and the dog followed her forlornly.

Faintly from the street floated the voices of Ruby and some neighbouring little girls singing a skipping song. The thud of the rope stopped and a quarrel broke out, in which Nora’s strident shrieks predominated. A few moment later, a flustered Ruby dragging a recalcitrant small sister interrupted the tea making, and from the staircase another voice chimed in, as Brendy, clad only in his vest, howled, “I want me mam. Where’s Mam?” He came pattering into the kitchen, pushing his way past his sisters.

Gwen gulped and half closed her eyes. “Be quiet!” she cried exasperatedly. “Shut up, Nora.” She bent down to catch Brendy, who threatened to exit through the back door in search of his mam. “Hey, you’re supposed to be in bed, now.”

Nora stopped her battle with Ruby and joined in with Brendy. She looked up resentfully at Ruby and cried, “Aye, where’s me
mam?” She pouted, and rubbed her arm where Ruby had slapped her.

Gwen snatched up Brendy and tried to soothe him. “Your mam’ll be back soon,” she told him, patting his back gently. “You know she’s gone to hospital to be mended.”

Though she heard both Patrick and Ruby catch their breath behind her, this was sufficient to reduce Brendy’s howl to a sob. “Where’s she broken?” he asked with a trace of interest.

Gwen sighed. “She’s got a cut – just there.” She touched Brendy’s protruding ribs. “The doctor’ll sew it up – and then she’ll get better and come home, I hope.”

“Get away,” Nora exclaimed in disbelief, her pout wiped off her face. “With a bloody needle?”

“Don’t you use language like that round this house, miss,” Gwen scolded. “Or I’ll wash yer mouth out with soap.” Nora bridled, her sly eyes peeping defiantly between the almost white lashes. Gwen went on, “For sure, they stitch cuts up with a needle – and white cotton.”

“Well, I’ll be buggered!” Nora’s eyes opened wide with amazement. “They couldn’t?”

Gwen put down Brendy, picked up Nora’s hand and smacked it on the back. “I told you to mind your language, you little vixen.”

Nora scowled and was silent.

Brendy pulled at Gwen’s apron. “When’ll she come?” he asked piteously.

“Soon, luwie, soon. Now you come up to bed. You’ll get cold down here.”

After Gwen, Ruby and Patrick had shared a pot of tea and he had told them some of the details of the shambles in the town, including the information that the rescue squads were still digging for survivors, Gwen sat white and silent for a moment. Then she said heavily, “You’d better go and feed your dad’s cockerels.”

He went grudgingly into his own back yard and stood
watching the birds in their separate cages pecking at the black market corn, as he sprinkled it in front of them. When he unthinkingly put his fingers on to the chicken wire which held them in, one bird pecked him. He swore at it. The burst of anger brought him out of the lethargy into which he had sunk, and as he sucked his finger, he watched with interest a plane high in the sky. It climbed in the pearly atmosphere until he could hardly hear its engine, and slowly a great ambition rose in him, to fly himself, to be a bomber pilot and give the Germans what for. He looked at the closed back door, where his mother had been fond of leaning, her latest baby in her arms, to catch the sun and wait for him to come back from school. Tears welled up and with them a murderous desire for revenge, a boiling tide of feeling which stayed with him for years. “I’ll teach ’em!” he cried, as tears of grief ran down his face.

Gwen crawled into bed beside Mari. In the next bedroom Michael whimpered fretfully.

“I wish Ruby could shut that kid up,” she fumed uselessly.

Mari stirred uneasily. “He’s hungry, Ruby says. He wants his mam. She used to feed him from her breast. I seen her.”

“Good Heavens! That’s not decent. He’s far too old for that.”

“Ruby says that’s why he wants his mam so bad.”

Gwen cleared her throat, a little embarrassed. “Well, a little girl like you shouldn’t be talkin’ about such things.” She turned over, and buried her head in her big feather pillow. Mari thought she had gone to sleep, but she said abruptly, “I’d better get him a titty-bottle from the chemist tomorrow.” She sighed, and then went on, “Till I can teach him how to drink from a cup.”

A resounding crash, an hour later, took the corner grocery
shop, and the sunken-cheeked woman who kept, it straight into oblivion. Mother and daughter flew out of bed. Nora, Brendy and Michael were howling in unhappy unison with the air raid siren.

Ruby met them on the landing, with a bawling Michael in her arms. She was panting with terror, her big grey eyes nearly popping out of her head. Nora and Brendy crowded behind her.

“Downstairs, quick,” ordered Gwen, as she struggled into her dressing-gown. “And you, Mari, take the candle – and don’t drop grease on the stair carpet.”

Patrick had opened the front door and was watching the Defiants darting in and out amid the searchlight beams. “For goodness’ sake, come in,” yelped Gwen in nervous concern. “That’s how your mother caught it.”

He shut the door reluctantly as the other children scampered through the living room to the kitchen and the cellar steps. Inspired, Gwen snatched her sweet ration out of the sideboard drawer as she went past, and what had threatened to be a weary, noisy gathering became suddenly happily quiet when she distributed toffees all round.

At half-past four on Monday morning, they went gratefully back to their beds.

At five o’clock, David was dropped at his door by a car intended to carry the walking wounded.

He staggered into his home and sank thankfully into the familiar depths of his easy chair. He leaned his head back and the pain in his chest surged again. To hunt for the matches and light the gas jet was out of the question; he concentrated instead on trying to breathe. Finally, the spasm passed and he sat absolutely still, beads of perspiration coating his forehead, until he heard Gwen running down the stairs. She hurried in, tying her plaid dressing-gown round her, as she pattered across the linoleum. Patrick stirred but did not wake.

“Dave!” she exclaimed. “Am I ever glad to see you.” She
peered at him in the half light. “Golly, you look dirty. Have you had any tea?”