Three Women of Liverpool (14 page)

“Steady on, girl.”

“Suppose I move too far away and I can’t find you again?” she croaked.

“Na,” he assured her. “We’re like a pair o’ mackerels in a tin – waitin’ for the tin-opener.”

Her shaky laugh was close to being a sob.

She heard Dickie sigh with relief as the pressure of her body on him was eased when she moved. Very carefully she tucked her feet under herself and then kneeled up. She promptly hit her head again and sat back dizzily until the throbbing stopped. In a wild hope that there might be an aperture through which they might creep to greater safety, she rapidly ran her hands up and down and along the wall beside her. Her spirits fell, when she found that the huge rough-hewn stones of the wall met tightly with the sloping slab which roofed them over. There was enough height on the wall side for them to sit up, if they kept their heads bent, and she reported this to Dick.

“That’ll be a relief,” he replied. “I’ll stay put till you’ve felt right round.”

She crawled with difficulty a foot or two along the wall, until, where her feet had rested, her exploring fingers found what felt like a metal girder sloping the opposite way to the stone above her. She tried to reach over it, but the way was blocked with rubble; she managed, however, to slip her hand under it and work her fingers through a pile of cobblestones and plaster. As she eased her hand carefully in, there was a loud creak and dust began to rise.

“For God’s sake!” Dick’s voice held panic.

She snatched her hand back under their sheltering slab. “I’m doing my best,” she said crossly, and then sneezed. The sound was answered by another small rattle of debris from the same direction. She stayed frozen until the last small piece seemed to have dropped. Then she voiced the need of both of them. “I wonder where the water’s running?”

“Let’s listen hard.”

The sound indubitably came from somewhere beyond the iron girder.

She burst into tears.

“I’m comin’ up beside you, Em. Just sit still. Steady as you go, there’s a girl.”

He wriggled out of his narrow niche, his shoulders aching sharply, the rest of his bruised body complaining bitterly. Guided by her whimpering, he hauled himself alongside her. He sat, panting and dizzy half leaning against her, and then he straightened up. “Phew, that’s better.” He listened again, and then said, “There’s water there all right. May be from the pipes leading to the canteen taps.”

Emmie sniffed. “Doesn’t matter where it’s from. It’s on the other side of a bloody great girder, and the girder’s too big to either climb under or over. Even if you could, there’s a lot o’ smallish bits very loose there.” she tried to still her chattering teeth, and then quavered, “I don’t know what we did to deserve this. We’re not wicked.”

Dick gave a rattling laugh. In the pitch-darkness, he tried to
visualise the tiny space in which they found themselves. Then he said ruefully, “War’s like the weather; it falls on the good and the bad alike. Only them what starts it takes care to be well away from it.” Then, with determined cheerfulness, he went on, “Never mind that. First, I’m going to move forward a bit, so you can lie along this big wall. You lie on your stummick, and very, very slowly slip your hand under the girder again and work your fingers into whatever’s there. See if you can feel wet. It’ll be easier for you to do than me – ’cos o’ me weight, like. I’m plain fat.”

“Right.” Her voice was a little firmer. After a tight squeezing past each other, she managed to do as he had suggested, and she worked her arm further and further under the girder until part of her shoulder lay under the unyielding metal. It was all bone dry.

With her arm still stretched into the rubble, she lay and listened carefully. “It’s no more’n a foot beyond, I’m sure,” she wailed in despair.

“Not to worry,” Dick wheezed. “It might make a puddle in time and we’ll be able to reach it. Have you still got me hanky?”

“Yes. Down me chest.”

“Good. If it makes a puddle we can reach, we’ll get at it by soaking the hanky in it.”

She remained prone for a moment, while she mentally savoured the joy of cold water. Then she cautiously withdrew her arm and heaved herself round until she could sit up.

“Eh, I’m that sore, and you must be, too,” her tremulous voice came out of the darkness. “Why don’t they come? It’s been pretty quiet for a while now. It has to be morning. Surely they’ll be lookin’ for us?”

“As soon as you hear anything that sounds like them coming, we’ll shout as hard as we can, so they know we’re here. And we’ll bang with the stones again.”

“T’ warden what come to the canteen counted us all. He’ll tell the rescue men how many people to look for.”

“Aye, he will.”

Outside in the street, the Pioneers carefully consigned the warden to the mortuary and, with him, the remains of the police constable, who would at least have known there were people sheltering in the canteen basement.

Further down the street, in a bomb crater, a newly bathed and clean-overalled Post Office Telephones engineer relieved his exhausted colleague. Elsewhere, linesmen continued to string wires from anything they could hang them on, in an effort to re-establish communications within the city.

As less fatigued aid arrived from other towns, a mood of ebullience spread amongst the toilers. This was the end of this run of raids, they told each other. Everybody would be able to go to bed tonight and sleep it off, ready for work on Monday.

Emmie found Dick’s hand and held it, as she dozed. Sometimes a very distant rumble shook their tiny lair; it sounded like big lorries moving, a promise of rescue, and they were comforted.

Without warning, there was an enormous roar, a detonation greater than any previous one, and the whole ruin in which they lay shivered and groaned. Loud cracks overhead made Emmie scream. She flung herself against Dick; in equal terror, he turned and clung to her. Again, a tremendous dust enveloped them. Instinctively, they ducked their faces into each other’s shoulder, cowering together as they nearly choked.

The pandemonium died away to a rumble, only to be followed immediately by a whole series of explosions which shook their precarious shelter. Almost directly overhead they could hear the fall of masonry followed by the lesser sound of smaller debris slithering like a hundred snakes down through the wreckage. The great piece of stonework above them shuddered.

A terrified rat scuttled across Emmie’s lap, sending her into hysterics.

Despite the desperate efforts of its crew and the fire brigade,
fire had finally reached the main hold of the
Marakand
. Surrounded by flames, dive bombed all night, firemen and crew had been unable to scuttle her, and now, under whatever cover they could find, they crouched defeated. A four-ton anchor, blasted into the air, fell into the engine-room of a hopper and sank it as well. Acres of dock and warehouse were mowed down by the tremendous blasts and the ever-encroaching fire. Only after seventy-four hours of almost continuous racket did a weird silence descend on the embers of a whole district.

“I never want to see anything like it again,” Robbie muttered fervently to his deckhand friend, as their captain checked his sooty, worn-out crew. “I’ll be thankful to go to sea again.”

Fogged by fear, unable to produce even one more scream, Dick and Emmie lay tightly together, both breathing shallowly. Each time the torn building over them lurched, a fresh poof of dust would surround them and they would cough and splutter.

Outside, the late spring morning was made horrible by a blizzard of burned paper which blew about the city, getting into people’s eyes, clinging to clothes and faces like black snowflakes. The burned records of innumerable enterprises flattened during the night had been caught by the wind and whirled out of every broken building. Up and up they went into the smoke haze, to descend again in a supernatural storm. Through the smoke, flames still licked greedily.

By noon the road outside the canteen was passable to a single line of traffic driving very carefully, and further efforts were being made to find the remainder of the firewatchers assumed to have been on duty with Dolly. The air raid warden on day shift and new police, all looking wondrously spruce, had come on duty, and a heated altercation broke out between a demolition squad foreman puttering along the edge of the debris, and the new warden.

“How was I supposed to know there was a canteen there?
There weren’t no warden around, nor a cop for that matter, on this street. Thought it was all offices – and as for firewatchers, I’ve only got one unaccounted for now.”

“Well, there
was
a canteen here and it’d be open,” replied the warden irritably, “and we’d better get weaving on it.” By his accent the demolition foreman must be from Manchester, presumably one of the over three thousand men which the warden had heard were being sent to Liverpool. No wonder the man didn’t know where anything was.

“How many people, do you reckon?” inquired the foreman resignedly.

“Could be as many as forty.”

“Good God! Somebody should’ve told me.” He scratched his crew-cut hair and put his helmet more comfortably on his head. “They didn’t say nothin’ in the command post.”

The warden raised a gloomy face from contemplation of the anonymous piles of wreckage round him. “The command post lost nearly the whole shift.”

As he strode towards them, the police constable in charge of the area, looked bleary-eyed, despite a clean and tidy uniform. He had just arrived, to commence his shift, only to find a new command post being assembled and nobody very sure of what the situation was. “Looks as if Constable Wilson got it last night. We can’t find him,” he was told. Heavy-hearted, he had taken the first telephone call on the re-established line. Now he shouted towards the warden, “There’s a phone inquiry about a Miss Piggott – serving in the Sailors’ Canteen – do you know if that’s bin tackled yet?”

“I only just coom on duty,” replied the warden defensively. “And t’ command post’s only just bin replaced – pack of strangers. There weren’t nobody in a fit state to tell nobody nothin’. Joe, here, he just coom from Manchester.” He cocked a thumb towards the lugubrious foreman, who looked even more glum.

The constable’s face went red with suppressed rage. Bloody
fool, why didn’t he use his common sense and show the new foreman? Poor Wilson and the command post couldn’t help being dead.

“Get a bearing on where the entrance was,” he ordered the warden through gritted teeth, “and explain to the foreman how it were laid out. I’ll get you more help, and alert ambulance people. The entrance to the shelter underneath the canteen was to the left of the entrance from the street.” He ran back to the newly reconstituted command post.

While the warden, like a questing terrier, trotted up and down the partially cleared street, the foreman assembled his squad and checked that they were equipped with shovels and crowbars – and skips to hold the rubbish they would have to remove.

The warmth of the fires, further over, was born towards them, making them sweat. The hiss of water hitting flame and the drum of pumps bewildered the warden. If it were only quiet enough to climb the rubble and listen; then they would stand a chance of hearing survivors tapping. There were other noises to add to the confusion: explosions from No. 2 Huskisson dock; detonations, as Lancashire mining engineers showed another demolition squad how to break a way through mountains of wreckage, without bringing an avalanche down on themselves; the lives of men with demolition experience were to be preserved at all costs – their peculiar skills were all too rare. In a nearby street, a huge bulldozer manned by American soldiers was slowly crunching its way through a blockage, and that also added to the racket.

“I’ve got it,” shouted the warden triumphantly, as he rubbed one eye watering with a mot in it. “Opposite the stump of this lamp-post.”

Huge and ponderous as the foreman was, he immediately began to climb the fall opposite the broken lamp standard, walking with surprising lightness, probing gently with his crowbar, before committing his team to the search. When he
was satisfied that he understood the lay of the pile, he set his men to work. “Come on, lads. Quick – but careful – mind.” His melancholy expression fell still further. “Doubt anybody’s alive under that.”

A portly gentleman in a business suit and bowler hat accosted the watching warden, “Excuse me. Can you tell me where the Sailors’ Canteen is? My wife was on duty there last night, and she has not come home this morning. When I tried to telephone, I could not get through.”

The warden looked up sharply and then bit his lip with tobacco-stained teeth. “Aye,” he said slowly, with a sigh. “It were here. They’re workin’ on it now, as you can see.”

The gentleman’s ruddy complexion went glistening white. His grey, military moustache quivered; words would not come. Finally, he breathed, “I was afraid of that.”

The warden caught his arm, concerned that he might collapse. “Sir! They could be safe in the shelter – it were a good stout cellar.” The warden had not an iota of hope. But then, he told himself, you never knew what quirk of fate could save the life of someone. “What was – is – her name, sir?”

“Clara Robinson, Mrs Clara Robinson.” The man was already out of his black jacket and folding it neatly. He laid it down by the lamp-post stump and placed his bowler hat on top of it. “Thank you,” he said fairly steadily, as he got a grip on himself. Then he turned and picked his way over to a labourer clearing a path from the edge of the fall inwards. “Give me a shovel. I’ll help you,” he said between tight lips.

“Best stay back, sor,” a middle-aged Irish navvy, working ahead of the other labourer, advised him. “It’s dangerous.” He lifted his pick again and swung it down on the obstruction before him.

“I
have
to do something,” Alec Robinson said firmly. He undid his gold cufflinks and rolled up his shirt sleeves.

The foreman came carefully down the slope of the pile, placing each foot precisely so that he did not fall into the debris.

The warden shouted up to him, “T’ cellar had a pavement light what led right into it.”