Three Women of Liverpool (15 page)

“That’ll save a lot.” The foreman’s face lifted slightly, as he redirected his men, to facilitate the unearthing of this narrow window of heavy glass framed in iron and set directly into the pavement to give some light to the cellar. If it had not been pounded into the ground, it could give the rescuers immediate access. Then he turned and sized up the blenched business man who was working his way towards him.

“You could clear some space at the edge of the pavement,” he told him kindly. “Make a way through to where the road has been cleared. We’ll need a bit of space to lay ’em down, maybe, when we bring ’em out.” He saw Alec Robinson’s eyes widen with horror, and added hastily, “They could be hurt.” He turned to the labourer. “Find ’im a shovel.”

Alec Robinson thankfully took the proffered shovel and bent to the task, his heart heavy. An ambulance was already nosing its way cautiously along the street, followed closely by a fire pump. A wobbly stream of water was directed at the ruins further back, to damp them down and possibly contain the fire raging behind them, until the rescuers had finished their work. The stream was weak because of fractured mains, and the turbulence in the air caused by the fires themselves blew much of the water back on to the firemen and the rescuers. Still, they persisted.

While the workmen picked their way in with meticulous care, para-medical personnel, black bags in hand, came at a shambling run along the littered pavement opposite.

They were too early, so, with tin hats pushed to the back of their heads, they lit cigarettes and stood gossiping about a new film one of them had seen.

In what seemed to have become their own private bomb crater, the clay-bespattered telephone engineers continued their patient splicing of lines.

When Alec Robinson paused to mop his forehead, he was
approached by a tall cadaverous man dressed in the grey uniform of a chauffeur. The man took off his peaked cap, revealing a bald head across which a few wisps of white hair had been carefully plastered. “Sir, I’m looking for the Sailors’ Canteen. I’m Higgins, sir. The mistress has not come home, and we – that is, Mrs. Fleming, the housekeeper, and me – thought I should come down on the bus, to see if she’s all right – the car being mothballed for the duration, sir.” He turned and surveyed the appalling wreckage. “I trust I’m not looking at the canteen?”

Alec Robinson replied gruffly, “You are. Who is your mistress?”

“The Dowager Countess Mentmore. She’s a volunteer.”

A minute later, a chauffeur’s cap and jacket were carefully laid by Mr Robinson’s bowler hat and black jacket, and the demolition foreman had to find work for another volunteer.

The rescuers worked like moles, shifting obstructing masonry, splintered woodwork, pieces of filing cabinets and desks, a slippery cascade of law books, a huge Victorian lavatory, all interlaced with electric wires which might still be live, and miles of water pipes and gas pipes. A lot of this was passed back and piled on the pavement. Stout pieces of timber, desk drawers, finely panelled oak doors, all were used by the labouring men as props in the twisting passageway they were making. Every time there was a further explosion from No. 2 Huskisson this perilous little entry was shaken by the blast, but still the men perservered.

That dreadful Sunday, as Emmie lay in Dick’s arms, her mind wandered. Both of them were drained by fear, thirsty beyond words and very hungry. It seemed to her that she was lying in Robbie’s arms on the sandhills, behind the great sea wall at Meols, and they were talking of building a small cottage
not too far from there, with a good slate roof and a parlour for best occasions.

She woke suddenly, not sure what had alerted her. Instead of the sunlight on the waving, coarse grasses of the sand hills, she faced a midnight blackness. She touched Dick’s face with her hand, and he stirred and muttered hoarsely, “OK, luv?”

“Mm,” she replied. She shivered; the wall felt cold against her back.

It felt wet! Her cotton blouse and petticoat were sticking to her back. She must have sweated heavily or wet herself again. But there it was once more – a cold drop, a trickle down a strand of her torn hair and across her neck.

“Dickie,” she gasped. “Wake up. There’s water running down the wall behind me back. I can feel it.”

Water? He swallowed and tried to answer her, but his dried lips would barely move. He felt clammily cold and he shivered.

“Sit up, Dick. I’m goin’ to turn meself over.”

“Can’t sit up, ’cos of the slope over me,” he managed to reply thickly. She was right, though. He could smell the odour of water on dust – and he could also smell an increased amount of smoke. His heart leapt with fresh apprehension. He eased himself away from Emmie, to help her turn.

Emmie was as excited as if they had already been rescued. Her mind cleared as, wild with hope, she knelt up and ran her hand along the wall. There
was
a steady dribble down it at one point. She put her sore cheek against it and then turned to lick it. Her tongue was promptly covered with grit, but it was moistened, none the less. She tried again and spat out the grit. “There’s only a bit,” she announced in a fractionally clearer voice. “I’m going to try and soak your hanky, though.”

The water flowed faster, forming a small pool round her knees. The handkerchief was soon quite wet and she passed it to Dick to suck. He thankfully wiped his lips and put a corner in his mouth. He too had to spit out grit, but the relief was tremendous. He managed to move a little out of his niche and
curve himself round Emmie as she knelt, to dip the hanky again into the wondrous little pool.

Emmie undid her skirt button and awkwardly hauled off her blouse, cursing roundly when she caught her elbow on the rough wall. She pressed the garment into the tiny stream. As it became wetter, she struggled to get out of her cotton petticoat in order to soak that also. “It’ll make a little store of water,” she puffed.

“I’m sorry I can’t see you.”

She blushed, and managed a small giggle. In the dark, she had not considered her nakedness. Thankfully, she pressed the sopping blouse to her throbbing face. She tried to wipe it gently but it hurt too much.

All around the great slab that protected them water began to drip, to a point where, no matter how they lay, they became wet, and they again huddled in each other’s arms, to keep warmer, while they speculated on the source.

“Could be a leak from a pool which built up somewhere above us,” offered Dick. “And now it’s sifting down to us.”

Their little lair shuddered, as a quick series of explosions from the
Marakand
shook it; a heavier splatter of droplets fell round them. Dick felt Emmie begin to tremble and he held her closer. Again he was tempted to take her, now that the air felt cleaner and he could breath properly. She wriggled more tightly to him and he knew that she wanted him. She turned on her back and he moved on top of her, so that there was space above them.

Despite the limited space, it was a wild lovemaking, as if both of them were young and filled with the frantic desire of youth. Every terrifying shift of the broken buildings above them; every great blast that numbed their ears as the deadly cargo of the
Marakand
wreaked havoc, though adding to their fear, also intensified their passion, until finally they lay exhausted and almost unbelievably at peace. They continued to caress each other, Emmie with a strange wonder that some
one other than Robbie could make her feel so good. As she stroked him, she murmured incoherent endearments and he chuckled. “Not bad for an old man, eh?” he joked, and fell asleep.

He was awakened by her hoarse voice saying, “Dickie, I thought I heard something scrabbling about then.”

“Eh, what?”

“Listen? Is that a voice?”

They held their breath; then without a further word felt round for the stones they had used to bang the wall with.

Frantic with hope, they both banged, and shrieked, “Help! Help! Help!”

Emmie’s voice was much weaker than she realised, her throat swollen from her earlier screams, and Dick’s was not much better; he realised ruefully that he had exhausted himself with Emmie; it was hard to get breath enough into his lungs to yell.

They paused to listen again. They could hear only the groans of the pile above them, as it slowly settled. Emmie began to cry.

Gwen felt, that Sunday, that her life had been broken into, just like burglars broke into houses, that her house was as good as doorless and anybody could plunge in and out of it without so much as a by-your-leave. Never before had she had to extend a hand to anybody; she prided herself on minding her own business, on having the whitest doorstep in the street, the best-dressed daughter and the cleanest-looking husband – and, of course, getting her washing out on the line before any of her neighbours, on a Monday morning. Sunday was a day to meet one’s friends at chapel and show off the hat one had retrimmed, and to anticipate with pleasure eating one’s meat ration, slowly braised in the oven while one was at service.

And instead, she was surrounded by the most awful bunch of
little horrors anybody could have wished on her. She surveyed them grimly, as they sat round the table at midday, eating like starving dogs. It was a pure miracle, she thought, that she had managed to provide a dinner at all; just like the story of the loaves and fishes. The Thomases’ meat ration had been extended into a stew with the aid of a bag of potatoes, culled from Mrs Donnelly’s kitchen, and three pennyworth of fades – discarded, shrivelled vegetables – from the corner shop. Nora, who had been entrusted with the message to the corner shop, had also brought two loaves of yesterday’s bread and some milk – on credit. “The first time in me life I ever arst for anythin’ on tick,” moaned Gwen.

Patrick had been soundly clouted over the head by his father, for coming to view the ravaged Dwellings, and he now sat sulkily shovelling stew into his mouth, while Gwen slapped a couple of spoonfuls of it on to her own plate. She picked up her knife and fork and began to cut the tiny cube of meat, when suddenly she remembered.

“Emma!” she exclaimed, and put down her fork.

Ruby looked up from her task of feeding an unwilling Michael with bits of bread sopped in a saucer of gravy. Mari who had got up only in time for the meal, asked with a small yawn, “Isn’t she in bed?” She smiled across at Patrick, but he dropped his eyes and did not smile back.

“It were such a hectic morning, I clean forgot her. She never come home.”

Mari stared at her incredulously, while Ruby stuttered, “Do you think she caught it last night?”

Mari licked her lips. “What about Daddy?”

“He’ll be all right.” Gwen’s reply was automatic. Her husband was always all right, as dependable as the Liverpool one o’clock gun, which, before the war, had marked the time for the city. No one had told her of the carnage in Bootle – or, indeed, in the city itself; the wireless had merely reported a raid on a north-west town.

She sighed, as she looked round the table. Only Ruby and Mari were interested in Emma; the others continued to eat, Brendy happily pushing bits of vegetable into his mouth with his hand. “Really, Brendy,” Gwen expostulated. “Use your spoon, you naughty boy.” He took no notice and she leaned across the table and gave his hand a small slap; then she stuffed a spoon into it. He tried shovelling.

She turned to Patrick, as being the only older male present, and said agitatedly, “I’ll save her some dinner, anyway. And you, when you’ve finished, run over and tell your dad she’s missing. He’ll know what to do. He’ll ask about her for us.”

Patrick nodded agreement. If he had a real message to deliver, surely he would be able to stay to watch the men at work on The Dwellings. He quickly ate the last mouthful on his plate and half rose from the table.

“Have your pudding first,” Gwen ordered. “A few more minutes ain’t goin’ to make no difference.”

Pudding as well. For the first time that day, Patrick’s spirits rose a little, and he ate eagerly the large helping of bread-and-butter pudding she put in front of him.

“Where did Miss Emmie go?” he inquired.

Gwen explained about her job in the Sailors’ Canteen in Paradise Street and that she was on the evening shift. She ran her fingers through her greying red curls. She had been too busy to comb it and had not even washed her face.

“I’ll take me dad’s bike and tell ’im first; then I’ll ride down to Paradise Street and see what’s to do there.” He looked excited at the prospect and gave Gwen the same beguiling, conspiratorial grin that had mesmerised Mari in the air raid shelter. Mari, seeing it, felt again the extraordinary sensation which his exploring fingers had introduced her to. She flushed and went slowly on with her dinner.

“I hope she’s all right,” Gwen said mechanically. “She might’ve gone over to see Robert Owen’s mother.” In her heart she felt that Emmie was a deliberate nuisance in not
turning up for either breakfast or dinner. Serve her right if she’d got killed. Decent girls came straight home. And then there were all those merchant seamen hanging around the canteen – a lot of no-goods with only two ideas in their heads, drink and women.

Patrick could not find his father at The Dwellings because he had taken half an hour off to go to see the local undertaker about his wife’s funeral. He reluctantly approached the constable in charge of the incident, who promised to put an inquiry about Emmie in motion immediately, and to let Mrs Thomas know as soon as he had news. The constable refused to allow him to go close to the ruins, so Patrick again mounted his father’s rusty bike and sped away to join the sightseers in the town. At the top of Duke Street, he was stopped by a soldier with a rifle on his back, who wanted to know his business and promptly turned him back.

Patrick knew the town like a rabbit knows its warren. He gravely cycled round the corner out of sight, then dived down an alley and proceeded along back ways. He did not return for tea.

Gwen gave the children a tea of bread and margarine and home made gooseberry jam and sent them out to play in the street. It was the first day in her married life that she had given barely a thought to the condition of her little house, except nearly to weep over the bed which Michael had wetted; it was now being dried out with the aid of three hot-water bottles. She sat with eyes closed, wishing passionately that David would return. He would know what to do about the Donnelly children – and Emma and the windows – and the fact that she was going to be over her housekeeping money.