Three Women of Liverpool (17 page)

David felt as if he were floating along in a mist, everything distorted, nothing close to him. He breathed with effort, afraid to move much, lest the pain recommence. The staircase up to bed loomed as an impassable barrier. “I’d like a cuppa tea,” he managed to reply. He closed his eyes, and the faintest smile broke the exhaustion of his face, as he envisaged the whole of Liverpool afloat on pots of tea.

Gwen quickly folded back the little hearthrug. “Aye, David, what a time I’ve had. I’ve got all the kids from next door here. Patrick’s there.” She gestured towards the sofa, half hidden in the gloom. “Poor Mrs Donnelly – struck down in her prime.”

“Dead?”

Gwen was kneeling in front of the fireplace, quickly raking out the ashes and then stuffing balls of newspaper and pieces of firewood into the grate. She paused and turned a pinched, weary face towards him. “Saturday night.”

As best he could, David tried to pay attention to the story of the children, the windows, the broken aspidistra bowl, the dog in the back yard and Emmie’s absence. Finally, she said, “And last night the gas went off. I put a whole shillin’ in the meter and nothin’ happened.”

David sat with his eyes closed. Emma! “What did you do about Emmie?”

“Told Mr Donnelly and he’s inquiring.”

He knew he could not go out himself to look for her, so he simply nodded and said, “You can draw a couple of quid from the Post Office Savings. Aye, I hope she’s all right.” After these garbled instructions, he allowed himself to rest.

He was hazily aware of her feeding a horde of children, correcting them sharply and dispatching them to school. He woke sufficiently to return a hearty kiss and a hug from his daughter, doing his best to appear merely tired. Gwen had handed him a cup of tea, but he sat with it on a little table
beside him until it went cold.

When Ruby left him, Michael yelled and had to be held back from following her. As the front door slammed, he threw himself on to the floor and kicked and screamed, arms flailing.

David was thankful when the piercing howls became sobs and then the sobs were separated by silences, as the little boy discovered David staring at him. The blazing blue eyes closed and, thumb in mouth, he went to sleep on the hearthrug at David’s feet.

Gwen had run upstairs to put on her clothes, and now she came down and said, “Thank goodness, that’s over. He won’t eat, ’cos his mother used to feed him herself. I’ll get him a titty-bottle from the chemist when I go down the road.” She turned to survey David. “Would you like some cornflakes for your brekkie? Or do you want to get washed first?”

“Nay,” he replied slowly. “See if you can get the doctor to come. I keep getting a pain in me chest.”

“Pain? Why didn’t you tell me? You don’t look well, that’s for sure.”

The detail of the cramp in his chest was laboriously explained to her, as she flung her coat over her flowered overall and crammed her beret over her errant curls. She half ran the quarter-mile to the doctor’s house.

According to his troubled wife, the doctor had been out all night. She would send him over as soon as he returned.

Breathless, Gwen returned more slowly. She was sick with fear. Was it a heart attack? Or warning of a stroke? She must keep him quiet – and that meant keeping Michael quiet, as well. She’d pick up a bottle and teat from the chemist when she passed his shop, if he were open.

As she went to turn into the chemist’s doorway – she could see him inside, though the “Closed” sign still hung on his door – she bumped into Mrs Hanlon, a big, florid woman, the wife of a docker who lived a few doors away. Mrs Hanlon was bubbling with the exciting news of the demise of the corner
shop and its owner, which lay in the opposite direction to the doctor’s house and had consequently not been seen by Gwen.

“And what you goin’ to do, now Blackler’s is burned down?” the woman asked, wrapping her black shawl more tightly round her and leaning forward to breath into Gwen’s harassed face.

The news was a real shock to Gwen, and Mrs Hanlon seemed to expand and contract, like a balloon in process of being blown up. Blackler’s gone – and with it, presumably, her wages. Gwen’s heart sank.

“And Lewis’s,” went on Mrs Hanlon ruthlessly. “T’ firewatchers must’ve been roasted alive.”

Gwen felt as if the whole universe was crushing down on her. “I got to go to the chemist,” she intervened desperately. “Mr Thomas is sick.”

Mrs Hanlon ignored the interjection and prattled on happily about The Dwellings and the pile of bodies there.

Suddenly, with overwhelming passion, Gwen hated her. Was it really a Roman holiday to her? Didn’t she realise that every bomb that fell was like a huge stone in a pool; the effect grew and grew, like ripples in a pool. Not only did it destroy homes; it upset completely the lives of everybody near. And for what? For what?

As the remorseless voice went on and she tried unsuccessfully to ease herself behind Mrs Hanlon in order to rattle on the chemist’s door latch, she thought of Michael screaming for his lost mam, and she wanted to run home and take him in her arms and tell him everything would be all right – in a while, when the ripples ceased – and to put a hot poultice on David’s chest and tell him the same.

The chemist opened his door and at his polite “Excuse me” Mrs Hanlon moved out of the entranceway. Gwen whirled behind her and left the woman standing open-mouthed.

A frantic Monday for every city official, with one hospital out of commission and several others badly damaged; in Webster Road mortuary over half the bodies nameless; water in short supply; wavering sheets of flame still flaring upwards from burst gas mains; dangerous electric cables snaking over many a road and in and out of wrecked buildings; hordes of hungry and homeless people; and the centre of the city a mighty funeral pyre.

To those Liverpool housewives who still had a home, however, the main problem was that they could not do their washing. Monday was national washing day and on Tuesdays one did the ironing.

As Gwen hurried through her back yard, on her return from the chemist, she realised that even if the trickling kitchen tap provided enough water, she could not hang the washing out in the yard to dry. The air was filled with tiny bits of grit and burned paper – she had a piece in one eye and it was watering miserably. A sandlike film had formed on all her brightly polished window sills, and when she ran her finger along the clothes line as she passed, she found it thick with dust.

She paused for a second, her hand on the doorknob, to get her breath before entering the house, and looked down at the neat sealing-waxed parcel the chemist had made of a feeding-bottle and comforter. Then with shoulders bowed like an old woman, she opened the back door and went slowly in.

David lay on the sofa, asleep. His usually ruddy face was ashen and Gwen noticed with a pang that his two days’ growth of beard was grey, not black. He was still in his overalls.

Michael snuffled gently on the hearthrug. He was awake, sucking his thumb as usual. He held the little, brass-handled hearth brush in his arms as if it were a teddy bear.

She ran upstairs to get a woollen shawl with which to cover David and was immediately thrown into a towering rage when she discovered, in passing, that the drawers of the chest in Nora’s and Brendy’s room had been opened and the contents were scattered all over the floor, amid feathers from a burst pillow. “Blast them!” she cursed, nearly crying.

She had just tucked the shawl over David, who did not stir, when there was a polite knock at the front door. Expecting the doctor, she hastily took off her overall and smoothed down her skirt, before answering. She was still shaking with suppressed anger.

On the unwashed doorstep stood a nun. Gwen glared at the tiny elderly figure in a spotless white wimple and a shabby, but perfectly pressed, black dress. Little highly polished black boots peeped out from under the heavy skirt and a large rosary hung from her waist. Her hands were tucked into her big sleeves. The face in the stiffly starched frame was paper-white and lined like crumpled tissue. Two gentle grey eyes surveyed Gwen and showed faint amusement, as Gwen stepped hastily backwards as if to avoid contamination.

Assuming that the nun was begging, she asked rudely, “What do you want? We’re Methodists. We don’t give to Catholics.” She started to close the door.

“I have come with regard to the Donnelly children. I am from their school.” The voice was soft but authoritative and Gwen opened the door slightly again. “I wanted to inquire if you need help with them.”

With a long sigh Gwen said, “Well, I’m managing.” She bit her lower lip and, remembering her manners, asked, “Will you step in for a minute? The parlour is wrecked, but come in anyways.”

The nun floated in after Gwen and surveyed the dying aspidistra lying amid its earth and the broken shards of its pot in the middle of the red Belgian carpet, the linoleum nailed roughly across the windows, and the soot in the hearth.

Gwen hastily brushed broken plaster off a straight chair brought from her mother-in-law’s house. “Sit down,” she invited cautiously.

“Are
all
the children with you?” asked the visitor, seating herself.

“Yes.” The word came in a little gasp, and suddenly Gwen was pouring out to another woman, a woman, not a nun, all her worries about Michael, her fears that she could not keep Patrick under control, about Ruby’s little shoulders having to carry such a terrible load in the future, and about foul-mouthed Nora and Brendy. “Their gran’s supposed to come today,” she finished, pushing back her wild hair from the eye that was still watering. “And me husband come back this morning with a pain in his chest. He’s asleep back there. We’re waiting for the doctor now.”

“I understand. I can quite understand your concern.” Gwen had been standing in front of her, and now the sister caught her hand and patted it. “I’ll have some additional clothing sent over to you – and a box of groceries – you could pass them on to their grandmother – if she arrives safely.”

Afterwards, Gwen warmed some milk and put it into the new feeding-bottle. How strange it was. Under all that black cloth lay the kindest of human beings. She said to Michael, who was sitting on the rug, rubbing his eyes and whimpering, “I won’t be a minute, luv. Auntie’s coming with a nice bottle – and an old lady’s goin’ to send you some little pants – specially for you.” She picked the child up and held him in the crook of her arm, his drooping head against her flat chest, and put the teat into his mouth. After a moment’s experimentation, he began to suck eagerly.

The shops which had survived were closed. The black-clad assistants were hurrying home, after a frantic Monday of
dusting and sweeping and the resorting of stock blown off the shelves. The foreman of the rescue squad wriggled out of the zigzag tunnel he and his gang had moled into the ruins of the air raid shelter under the canteen. He took off his breathing apparatus.

“We’re into it,” he announced to the anxious little crowd hanging about outside. “But there don’t seem to be nobody alive.”

Mr Robinson’s mouth tightened and Higgins threw away his cigarette end angrily. They climbed as close to the tunnel entrance as the foreman would allow them. There, they leaned on their shovels and waited. Both were covered with dust, their blackened shirts clinging to their backs with perspiration. Not by so much as a quiver did either show their agony of mind; yet Alec Robinson thought that if it were not for the support of the shovel, he would collapse. The tall, thin chauffeur took a cigarette packet out of his shirt pocket and offered a smoke to his companion. Without taking his eyes off the tunnel entry, Alec Robinson nodded refusal.

He was able to identify his wife of thirty years by the modest engagement ring on her crushed hand. The chauffeur, faced with the naked, torn body of his beloved mistress, peered in the gathering gloom at her contorted face and then at the three magnificent rings on her hands, and muttered, “Yes, it’s Her Ladyship,” before quietly fainting. He had to be carried across to the other side of the street by two exhausted labourers and revived by the First Aid contingent. When the body of Her Ladyship was turned over to her family’s undertaker, the rings were missing.

The police reported to the constable in Toxteth that no one answering to Emmie’s description had been found.

It was as if the whole population was swaying on its feet.
One more blow and it would, if from nothing else, collapse from fatigue. By Monday evening Gwen had decided that the Sunday night raid must be the last one; the Germans had never before raided four nights in succession; she reckoned they would not come a fifth time. If it wasn’t the last of the series, she felt she would drop dead; she could not take any more.

Conor Donnelly had not helped this feeling of despair. He had slapped the children’s and his ration cards on the kitchen table, as if they had come to stay another week at least. Then the doctor had arrived, taken one look at David and hurried home to his telephone, to order an ambulance; Gwen had hardly had time to wash her husband’s face and hands and help him out of his dirty overalls, before the vehicle arrived and whisked him off to Walton Hospital.

“They would choose the hospital furthest away,” she grumbled to Mari, Patrick and Ruby, at lunch-time. “How’m I goin’ to get out there to visit him, I’d like to know. This mornin’ I’d no one to leave Michael with, so as I could go with him, to see him settled in, like.”

Mari ignored her mother’s whining complaints. “He’s not going to die, is he, Mam?”

“Of course not,” snapped Gwen peevishly. “If they can’t cure a heart attack we’re in a proper bad way.” Her panic regarding Dave must not be conveyed to Mari.

In the afternoon, she announced to Michael, who was having a great game on the heathrug with a collection of saucepans and lids, “Now we got to go and do the ration books – yours as well – ’cos Annie’s corner shop’s gone with the wind. Got to find a new grocer. And all that beastly red tape, to register again.”

As she trudged back home up her own familiar street, carrying a very tired and fretful Michael, she passed the pile of rubble which had been Annie’s shop and she stopped to sigh sadly in front of it. The pillar box still stood amid the rubble, and Mr Marsh, the neatly uniformed postman, was just
unlocking it to collect the letters from it. “Nice day,” he said mechanically, and she laughed almost hysterically, “Aye, I suppose it is.”