Three Women of Liverpool (19 page)

A series of bombers sweeping the length of the fan-shaped city, now dived one after the other to loose their deadly loads, and sent up fountains of rubble as their bombs scored hits. The
three men cowered in the gutter, hearts racing, as all kinds of lethal odds and ends pinged and plonked on the road and pavement round them. A group of soldiers and rescue men, their hooded lanterns bobbing, chanced running for the air raid shelter. Robert heard a muffled cry, as one was hit. He crammed himself further into the littered gutter.

During a moment of lessened hubbub, Robert cautiously turned his face to peep upward. The gun flashes were like an enormous storm of sheet lightning. Tracer bullets and flares added to the scarifying display. A further beat of heavy engines made him push his face tightly against the pavement’s friendly curb. George, his head near Conor’s feet, stretched out a careful hand to touch the warden’s boots for comfort. He could feel panic rising in him, but he was haunted by the sound of the quavering voice and he tried to concentrate on the technical arguments why he should be right. He’d
prove
he was right, he would, even if he had to dig for her himself.

In Paradise Street, a big Victorian chimney, balanced by a piece of side wall from the building in which the canteen had been, shivered and fell, its stonework rattling over the wreckage at its foot. The usual cloud of dust spumed upwards. Through chattering teeth, Conor prayed for his life to his patron saint, who had not heard from him for some years. Conor had said bitterly that he was accursed; yet even so, life seemed unexpectedly precious when it looked like coming to an end.

The Defiants succeeded in disorganising the raiders and the bombing moved further north. Robert was so stunned with noise and fright that it was a moment or two before he could make himself scramble to his feet, to find the constable bending over George, as he got to his feet, and shouting through the noise, “Come on, get back in t’ shelter.”

Though terrified out of his wits, George was determined. “I’m goin’ to try that line again. Won’t take a mo’.”

“You’re clean out of your mind,” the constable bellowed. But he ran with them to the cavity in the street.

They crouched together in the clay hollow. George found the wire with a clamp on it. He clipped on his headphones.

“No.” He found also that he could no longer contact the telephone operator.

“It could’ve been one of the WVS women at the corner singing,” suggested the constable.

George boiled with frustration. He checked his splicing again.

Conor leaned closer to him and shouted into his ear, “I believe you.”

Robert thought he would lose his reason if one of them didn’t do something constructive soon. “It must’ve been the chimney what fell just now – broke whatever connection there was.” He turned to the constable and asked, “Who do we go to – to ask for rescue men?”

“The incident officer, like I said.” The constable was feeling most unhappy and cursed his indecision. He was, in principle, the ultimate authority, but he did not want to pressure the incident officer into a wild-goose chase; yet the engineer presumably knew his business. As they crawled over the gummy clay and out of the hole, he said finally, “Let’s talk to the incident officer.”

A curious chug-chug-chug, like a train coming rapidly into a station, made them all slide back into their refuge and hug the side of it. Not too far away, something crashed into the wasteland. Tensely they waited for the explosion.

Nothing happened.

Cautiously they lifted their heads. Again the sound of a train. Again they pressed themselves into the clay. A tremendous detonation in the direction of Exchange Station drew a string of vivid swear-words from the constable. “Now I know what we got – a bloody land-mine – unexploded. Now isn’t that nice?” His sarcasm was bitter. “Blow us all into next week, it could, while we’re lookin’ for this woman.”

“I’ve never heard of such a thing before.” The hard-pressed incident officer sounded kind, but he was used to survivors clutching at all sorts of straws to assure themselves that a loved one was still alive. “I think you
must
have misheard,” he added to George. “It’s easy enough.”

“We can trace the number,” George informed him coldly. “Look in your telephone book and see what the canteen’s number was, and I’ll trace if the line is the same.”

It took a little while and the close co-operation of the telephone exchange supervisor to establish fairly certainly that it was indeed the canteen telephone line. Then, with his nose in the air, George climbed into his van and went home to bed. Let the high-and-mighty incident officer work out
where
she was.

The incident officer wasted no time. He sent for a heavy-rescue foreman, recently off a train from London, and to his surprise the man said calmly, his Cockney accent sounding strange to the men around him, “There was a case like this in London.”

The plans of the buildings in the Paradise Street area, carefully prepared at the beginning of the war, had been
burned with the command post the previous night, but an off-duty warden, who might know the canteen, was traced with commendable speed, through the warden of his home district; and he tumbled out of the Anderson shelter in his garden and came down on his bicycle while the raid still raged.

He could not suggest where Emmie could be, but, when asked to draw a plan of the canteen, he included the cobbled back-yard.

“Where was the phone?” asked Robert.

“It were in the kitchen at the back.”

“Exactly where?”

“On a little table by the window, as I remember – though I can’t be sure.” He stubbed out his cigarette. “T’ window faced the yard.”

“She must be in the yard, or in the wreckage of the kitchen,” interjected Conor between a series of yawns. His legs felt like lead and he told himself that once they started to dig, he would go home and kip down for a while.

To Robert Owen, the dark small hours were a nightmare, while with infinite care the heavy-rescue foreman from London and a group of miners from nearby St Helen’s, with other experienced people, plotted Emmie’s possible position. They decided to explore whatever might remain of the light well.

Robert was sick with fatigue from the battle in No. 2 Huskisson; burns on his hands were a throbbing misery. Conor tried to persuade him to go home for a few hours, but he refused. Someone thrust a mug of coffee into his hand and he drank it gratefully. Then he insisted on going down to Paradise Street to help the rescue squad. Shoulder to shoulder with the miners, he helped to pass debris back to the road, as painstakingly slowly a new tunnel was made, to pass over the huge stone wall which had formed the back of the canteen shelter. Pieces of office equipment, beams, furniture and some precious pit-props were carefully eased into place, to hold the
tunnel open. He worked like an automaton, the fear he had felt when he went to the Mercantile Marine office to obtain another ship long since forgotten, lost under greater and more immediate terrors. Nothing seemed to matter now, except that Emmie be found alive.

When the All Clear howled across slateless rooftops, to be followed shortly by the first rays of the rising sun, the pace of work increased. A rotund WVS woman, a flowered wrapover pinafore covering her uniform, brought mugs of tea and a basket of fresh scones with a scraping of margarine on them. “Made them myself before I set out,” she told them proudly. “We’ve still got gas on our side of the water.”

Her face showed the same weariness as that of the rescue team, but she was so fresh and clean that Robert felt as if his mother had come all the way from Hoylake to help. “Have you heard her yet?” the woman asked.

“Nay. T’ foreman’s goin’ to go in a bit further, now he’s got a block and tackle rigged. Then he’s goin’ to ask the fire engines and everything to be quiet, while he listens – afore the streets get busy, like. Couldn’t do it while the raid was on – no point in it, with guns and all.”

She touched his arm and said comfortingly, as the weary group munched and slurped thankfully. “Och, you’ll find her if she’s there. You’re all great lads.”

Robert lifted his mug to her, his eyes twinkling suddenly. “You’re great ladies,” he said.

It was only when the new police constable on duty managed to organise a short period of quiet that Robert realised what a shambles of noise they had been working in. In the stillness, he was surpised to hear a seagull squawk, as it came to rest on top of the broken roof of the building behind him. Not very far away, burning wood crackled, and from the direction of the river a ferry boat hooted cheerily.

The squad waited, tense as Olympic runners, while a miner as small as a jockey eased his way along the tunnel they had
made. Apart from his torch, he carried a piece of piping to use as a listening device.

To Robert, it seemed a lifetime before a soft rustle and a tumbling pebble heralded the man’s careful emergence. Once clear, he stood up and removed his mask; he coughed helplessly to rid his lungs of dust. His watering eyes made little rivulets through the dust on his cheeks. He nodded negatively.

Robert’s teeth began to chatter. He clutched the foreman’s arm. “Let me go down,” he pleaded.

“No, son. You’re too big.”

During Tuesday morning, Gwen, with Michael on one arm, squeezed into the stuffy privacy of the nearest public telephone box. It was still functioning, so she telephoned Walton Hospital.

A tired, uninterested voice assured her that Mr Thomas was resting comfortably.

Gwen determined that on Wednesday morning, she would keep Ruby home from school to care for Michael while she attempted the journey across the town to visit the hospital. She fully expected, however, that keeping Ruby home would not be necessary. Grandma Donnelly would surely arrive in time for her daughter-in-law’s funeral that very afternoon, and would remain to care for her grandchildren. After lunch she must see that Ruby and Patrick were clean and tidy, ready to accompany their father to the funeral.

She had had a sharp spat with Patrick that morning about the necessity of going to school. The broken nights had taken their toll and he wanted to remain in bed. It had ended with her slapping him hard across the head and threatening to complain to the headmaster, if he did not go. At first she had thought he would slap her back, but he had got up and gone sulkily to school with the other children.

At lunch-time, as she handed him a bowl of soup and a cob of bread, she said to him, “You’re a bright lad, Patrick. If you learn to read and write as good as Mari, you’ll never be hungry or out of work. And I would like that for you, scamp that you are.”

He had nodded agreement and lost some of his sulky look. He dreaded the afternoon. He was afraid he would cry at the funeral.

Ruby sat silent, steadily drinking her soup. She knew
her
reading and writing days were over. She looked down at the soup bowl, spoon poised, and wondered what happened at funerals. Her thin lips quivered.

A box of groceries, some children’s clothing and a parcel of nappies were delivered immediately after lunch by a cheeky youth on an errand boy’s bicycle. Gwen smiled. The nun had not forgotten.

A worried Conor, looking incredibly neat in a clean blue overall, washed and ironed for him by Glynis Hughes, collected Patrick and Ruby. “Their gran and me brothers’ wives haven’t come from Walton yet,” he told a very sober-looking Gwen. “Here’s a slip of paper telling ’em which church. Will you give it to them, if they come late?”

“Where you goin’?” asked Nora, held back firmly by Gwen, while Brendy sucked his thumb and stared at the funeral-goers.

“Never you mind,” Patrick told her savagely. “You and Brendy go to school.” Ruby began to cry.

“You stay with me, and after school we’ll go down the street and buy a sweetie ration.” Gwen shepherded the youngsters back into the house, where Michael was trying to feed Mari’s long discarded wooden bricks to a patient Sarge.

Grandma did not arrive that day, nor did any other relation, and an extremely hurt Conor went straight back to his post after returning Patrick and Ruby to Gwen’s house. “I’ll try to get through on t’ telephone to the warden up there and ask him to send a message. They may’ve got t’ lines restored by now.”

Once more a resigned Gwen saw her charges scrubbed from
head to foot and put into bed, Michael soothed with a bottle of milk and Brendy happily sucking his brother’s dummy.

“What about me mam?” asked Nora, sitting up suddenly in her white bed. “A girl at school says she’s dead. What’s dead? Is it like when the cat was run over?”

Gwen gulped, while Ruby shivered by her in one of Gwen’s own nightgowns. Ruby’s eyes were huge and imploring. Gwen said coolly, “They’re still mending your mam. You don’t have to worry about her. And soon your gran’ll come to take care of you.”

“Well, what
is
dead?” Nora insisted, as she unhurriedly pulled the blanket over herself, and Gwen tucked the sheet round her chin.

“It’s when you go to Heaven,” replied Gwen, and added almost wistfully, “It’s proper peaceful, like, and you’re with God.”

“Oh, aye,” replied the child, just as if they were talking about lollipops, “Sister Theresa talks about it sometimes. Do you get lots to eat there?”

Gwen laughed, for the first time for a week. “To be sure,” she replied promptly. “No shortages at all.”

She waited for Ruby to climb into her bed beside Michael. The girl looked drained and as hagridden as Bridget Mahoney from across the road had looked that afternoon. Impulsively Gwen bent and kissed her on the cheek. “Now you cuddle down and sleep and don’t worry about nothin’. You’ll feel better in the morning.”

When she went into her own bedroom to see Mari, the girl was sitting on the edge of her bed, pulling off her socks. She, too, looked older than her age, her eyes black-rimmed. “I wish we had news of Auntie Emmie,” she greeted her mother.

Gwen sighed. “They’ll find her. Don’t worry. Now hurry up and get into bed and get some sleep.”

She went slowly down the darkened staircase, automatically holding a corner of her apron under the candlestick, to catch
any wax before it fell on to the stair carpet.

In the living room Patrick was sitting on the black, horsehair sofa. He had his head in his hands and was crying.

She put the candlestick down on the table and held him against her apron. “Now, don’t take on so, luv. She’s at peace now.”

She took her handkerchief from her pocket and bent and wiped his tears. He took it from her and blew his nose hard.

Gwen felt as if she herself had hardly got into bed before the air raid siren went, followed almost immediately by a tremendous run of explosions. Once more, she gathered her frightened brood and hastened to the cellar steps, where, for four hours, she tried to cope with tears and quarrels, while outside a thundering tumult raged.