Three Women of Liverpool (12 page)

“Got a cup o’ tea, Glynis?” his voice grated, as she reached him.

She eased her little buttocks past the back of the telephonist’s chair and laid a hand on his arm. “Sure. I’ll get you one. But – but first I got to tell you somethin’. Come out in the street a mo’; it’s quieter.”

How am I going to do it? she worried. He always teased about his old woman, but he was fond of her for certain. And
she was a kind woman, me mam always said. Dumbly, Conor allowed himself to be ushered into the street and a little away from the gossips by the door. Glynis turned and looked up at him compassionately. “Conor,” she whispered.

“Is it one of the kids?” he asked, suddenly alert.

“No, Conor. It’s Ellen.” She grasped one of his hands hanging limply by his side. “She’s gone, Conor. Mr Baker came earlier. Said she got a piece of shrapnel straight to her heart. ’Twas instant. She didn’t suffer. I’m so sorry, Conor.” She was trying not to cry, as he stared unbelievingly down at her. “The kids are all right. Your next-door neighbour – Mrs Thomas, isn’t it – she’s got them all and is taking care of them. The house is OK, too.”

Conor licked his dry lips. “Where’s Ellen?”

“She’s laid out in the church hall – along with the others from The Dwellings. Monty got her picked up from the house real quick, in case your kids went in there. He’s still here, if you want to pop over and see her.”

His hand clenched hers tightly and the weary eyes closed. “I’m accursed,” he said bitterly. “Accursed.”

Glynis shivered. “Don’t say that.”

“First we lose everything we got, and nearly little Rube as well. And now Ellen.”

“Go and see her,” urged Glynis, a little desperately. “Father O’Dwyer’ll be there, no doubt, to talk to.”

“And what good will that do, to me or to him? And what good can I do for Ellen – Ellen!” He almost shouted and then his voice broke.

“You have to arrange her funeral – I’m sorry to say it.”

He looked round him, like an animal trying to escape when cornered, then back at the tearful woman still holding his hand. “Glynis, down behind the filing cabinet in the post there’s some whiskey – there’s half a dozen bottles and more in the cellar. But don’t say nothin’. Just get one out for me.”

She smiled through her tears. So he did indeed smuggle
whiskey. “To be sure,” she said. “Trust me. We’ll have a hot cup of tea with a good swig in it. You come back in, lad, and sit down a minute.”

When she returned to him with a steaming cup of tea smelling strongly of whiskey, he was seated on a wooden chair, his face in his hands, and was weeping. Opposite him a middle-aged man, wrapped in a blanket, his bare feet sticking out from under it, sniffed and caught the odour of the spirit. Out of the corner of her eyes, Glynis saw the tired eyes light up. “I’ll bring you a cup – exactly the same,” she promised. “In a minute.”

She put the cup and saucer into Conor’s hand and then put an arm over his shoulder. He turned to her and hid his face against her breast. The tea slopped into the saucer. “I’m damned, Glynis,” he mumbled. “Why Ellen? She never done anything wicked in her life!”

“I don’t know,” she replied sadly, and patted and stroked him, as if she were comforting one of her children.

When Gwen heard the knock on the front door, she thought it was David returning and that he had mislaid his key. She flew down the stairs clad only in her long, white nightgown and thankfully swung open the door.

She did not recognise for a moment the anguished man on the door step. Then a familiar Irish voice, with an unaccustomed wheeze in it, greeted her politely. “Mornin’, Mrs Thomas. I’m told you kindly took me kids in?”

In the interests of modesty, she wrapped the cotton folds of her nightgown more tightly round her. Then she said, “Yes, indeed, Mr Donnelly. They’re here. I think they’re still asleep.”

Without being invited, he stepped into the highly polished hall. Gwen’s lips tightened, when he failed to wipe his feet on the doormat, a new one with the word
Welcome
knotted into it.
He brought with him a strong smell of whiskey – and raw meat, was it? She shivered as she shut the door quickly behind him.

He looked uneasily round the hall and then sighed. “Do they know?” he asked her bluntly.

“No. Come in here for a minute.” She ushered him into the small sitting room, and nearly cried out at the sight of her biggest aspidistra lying smashed in a pile of earth on her new red, imitation Belgian carpet, a carpet which had only two more payments to be made on it before it was entirely hers. Despite the breeze coming through the glassless windows, the room smelled cold and dank from disuse. Both the cretonne curtains and the blackout were in shreds. Gwen felt, in sudden rage, that she could happily strangle a German with her bare hands.

“What happened?” Conor almost snapped at her, as he turned to her.

A little frightened of the tight, frozen look of the filthy, tear-stained face in front of her, she stuttered an explanation. “Patrick knows,” she finished up. “He’s asleep on the sofa in the other room.”

“I’ll have to tell ’em, Mrs Thomas.” He looked at her imploringly, hoping she would do it. But she was on the defensive now. There was a limit, she told herself. Enough that she had had these dreadful children thrust upon her. She couldn’t.

“What if I get Patrick in here, and you talk to him?” she suggested.

He nodded, and turned to look out of the devastated window, while she gathered her nightgown even more tightly round her and went to get the boy.

“No!” she exclaimed in genuine horror, as she looked down at Ruby and Patrick tightly intertwined under the blankets on the sofa. She bent down and tapped Ruby on the shoulder. The girl woke with a jump. “Your father’s here,” she announced
frigidly. “He wants to see Patrick in the sitting room. You stay here, miss.” She would deal with their shocking indecency afterwards. Brother and sister sleeping together! She was scandalized.

Hardly comprehending what she had said, the two children looked up at their outraged hostess. Patrick yawned and then, without a word, he swung himself off the sofa and lurched unsteadily out of the room. Mrs Thomas pursed her lips and stared down at Ruby. Ruby slowly laid her head back down on the cushion she had shared with Patrick. She began to cry helplessly.

Gwen turned towards the fireplace and rolled back the hearthrug, preparatory to making the fire. “I should think so, too,” she muttered angrily. “Such behaviour I never did see.”

Yesterday, Patrick would have sworn that he hated his father. But now the object of his jealousy was dead and his father suddenly seemed a pillar of strength. He stumbled towards him and Conor held him, while they both wept heartily. Finally, Patrick snuffled, “Rube knows.”

In the living room, Gwen put down her poker. She was suddenly cold without a word to the weeping girl, she ran quickly upstairs to get her dressing-gown.

Immediately she vanished, Ruby sat up, untangled herself from the blankets and ran, barefoot, into the sitting room and flung herself into her father’s arms.

With an arm round each of his children and tears smudging his dusty face, Conor asked them not to tell the little ones that their mother was dead. “Tell ’em she’s in hospital being mended,” he suggested. “Better they know when your gran comes down from Walton. I tried to phone the post there, so as to get hold of her quick – it were dead – so I wrote to her, but with it being Sunday today, she won’t get it till tomorrer.” Gran was his own mother. Ellen’s mother lived in Dublin – and he realised suddenly that he must write to her as well.

“You all stay with Mrs Thomas, till I can get home. And you
help her, Rube.”

Ruby agreed sulkily that she would help her. “Pat, you feed me cocks – and beg a few scraps from Mrs Thomas for Sarge.” The boy sniffed lachrymosely and nodded agreement. He could hear Gwen in the next room raking out the fireplace. Even the sound of the poker seemed angry.

Gwen was just putting a match to the paper of the newly laid fire, when Conor entered, Ruby hanging on to his arm. Patrick followed, his face stony.

Conor loosed himself from his daughter and bent down to seize one of Gwen’s coal-blackened hands and shake it hard. His breath stank of whiskey; still kneeling, she recoiled from him.

“It’s proper kind of you to take in me kids, Mrs Thomas. I’ll not forget it. Mr Baker said you would keep them for a while. By the looks of things, I won’t be home until tomorrer – at least. It’s terrible up at The Dwellings. You never saw anything like it. Keep the kids away – it’s no sight for them. I’ve written to their gran, but with everything being upset in the town she probably won’t get the letter till tomorrer afternoon at earliest.” He paused for breath and looked at her anxiously.

“I – but – I …” she began, a fearful sinking feeling in her stomach.

He burst into speech again. “I tried to get the wardens’ post up there on the phone. Can’t get through to anybody.” He seemed to take it for granted that she would keep the children with her, and went on, “We won’t tell the little ones their mam is gone, till their granny comes to comfort ’em.” He took a turn about the room, while Gwen watched him, speechless for once. “You can say she’s in hospital, doing fine, soon be home, like.”

She opened her mouth, to make an excuse for not keeping the children, but he deflected her by asking, “Where’s your hubby?”

“Still workin’ out at Bootle. And our Emma isn’t in yet.”

Overwhelmed by his own troubles, Conor failed to realise that Emmie must have been in the thick of the air raid. He said mechanically, as he hugged Ruby again and turned towards the door, “She’ll probably be in just now.”

While the children saw their father out, Gwen leaned forward and mechanically struck another match to light the fire, which had failed to kindle. She sat on her heels, watching the flames creep through the newspaper and wondered what to do. There was not enough food in the house to feed everybody and little money in her purse to buy more. David would be furious if she exceeded her housekeeping money. Mechanically she gave the fireplace a quick whisk with a brass-handled hearth brush, and then continued to sit listening to the wood crackle, feeling exhausted, defeated.

Ruby watching her, hesitated in the doorway and then advanced diffidently. She put her arm shyly round Gwen and said, “Don’t cry, Mrs Thomas. I’ll help yez.”

Starded, she turned in the curve of the child’s arm. A little stiffly, she put her own arm round Ruby. “Well, thank you, Ruby.” The girl smelled to high heaven. Hadn’t her mother taught her to wash herself? Perhaps she hadn’t been taught not to sleep with her brother, either, she meditated grimly. She scrarnbled to her feet. She
must
do something.

While Mari still slept, Ruby and Patrick were set to work, she to sweep up the remaining glass in the living room and he to tack some pieces of old lino culled from the cellar, over the gaping windows. The table was laid and a small helping of cornflakes put out for each child.

“And after breakfast, if you’re going to be here overnight, everybody had better have a bath.”

Both Ruby and Patrick were taken aback. They had never had a bath; only an occasional wash all over in the kitchen bowl; they were saved from having to reply by Nora and Brendy rushing down the stairs in a panic, having forgotten where they were. They surveyed the living room with popping
eyes, broke into roars of tears and demanded to go home to Mam. Ruby mothered them both and soon they were shovelling cornflakes into their mouths, while they watched very suspiciously the preparation of the tin bath set in front of the fire.

Michael shrieked from upstairs and Ruby ran up to him. He had soaked the bed and was standing on it, holding the brass head rail. In the half darkness of the room, Ruby held him to her and told him Mam would be coming soon to fetch him. No amount of soft talk, however, would persuade him to eat cornflakes or even drink milk from a glass. He wanted his mother’s breast.

Gwen surveyed him in harassed silence for a moment, as he sat on Ruby’s knee kicking out in a furious paddywack. Finally she said wearily, “He’ll eat when he’s real hungry. Let him be for now. We might as well bath him first.” She moved the dish of cornflakes away from Michael’s flailing arms. “Do you have any clean nappies or pants for him at home? And any clean clothes for the other kids?”

“There’s some,” Ruby answered her doubtfully. “Me mam washed Thursday.” She dreaded that Gwen might command her to go to fetch them. Her stomach churned at the idea of finding her mother lying so still in the hall.

Patrick came in from the kitchen, carrying a steaming bucket of water to tip into the tin bath. “I’ll go and get ’em,” he said heavily. “I got to feed the birds – and Sarge. They’ll have taken Mam to hospital by now – won’t they, Mrs Thomas?”

Gwen had forgotten about Ellen. She hesitated, and then said, “I think so, lad.”

Mr Baker had remembered to let the dog out into the tiny back yard, and Sarge greeted Patrick ecstatically. He padded into the house behind the boy.

Patrick went straight to the front hall, almost hoping that his mother would be lying there, made comfortable by nurses, and that she would open her eyes and say she was fine, just waiting
for the ambulance. But there was only the quilt from Ruby and Nora’s bed piled against the wall. Slowly an all-consuming rage spread through him, that strangers had taken away his mother without his seeing her again. He kicked angrily at the quilt, and Sarge, who had been nosing round it, slunk back, tail between legs. He stamped his feet and then banged his fists against the wall, bent his head and hit that too against the hollow plaster. “Yer pack of sewer rats,” he screamed at the anonymous ghosts who had come in the night to carry away his mother. He forgot about the clothing he was supposed to collect and ran through the house, up the stairs and down again, kicking open doors, screaming obscenities which echoed through the house, yelling what he would do to a German if he ever met one. He picked up some used cups from the kitchen table and slammed them on to the floor and crunched the broken pieces under his boots, until the fury of frustration waned and he stood sobbing helplessly in the deserted kitchen.