Three Women of Liverpool (4 page)

She had brought Robert home for tea one Sunday and Gwen had made it clear that she strongly disapproved of a woman of sober years suddenly marrying a man she had known less than four months. It did not occur to Emmie that Gwen had been smitten by a lingering envy of her blatant happiness, her obvious contentment.

“I must hurry,” said Emmie, as they sat down to their meal. “I got to be in the canteen by seven. Mrs Robinson and the others were ever so kind about me engagement, giving me a bit of time off when Robbie was free.”

Gwen responded tartly, “Well, I hope you’re doing the right thing.” She stirred her tea hard, in the hope of making half a teaspoonful of her sugar ration sweeten it adequately. She made a face when she sipped it. “Picking up a man like that don’t seem like a good start to me.”

Emmie ached to slap her.

“Now, Gwen,” her husband warned. “Emmie got to know him in the canteen. That’s not picking up. And he took her home to Hoylake to meet his mum and dad – quite proper. He’s given her a nice ring, too.”

Gwen shrugged her shoulders slightly and poured another
cup of tea. Emmie kept her eyelids down and wondered if Gwen had ever been in love with poor David – or with anything except the shiny aspidistra in the front room or the bronze soldiers looking down at them from the living room mantelpiece.

To distract Gwen, David said, “I’ll get me tools and do Mari’s window.”

That brought Gwen back to her favourite complaint – the Donnellys. “We ought to have moved from here years ago – the whole of Toxteth’s gone to pot. The minute Mrs Tasker died next door I knew we’d never get decent neighbours again.”

“House were empty for months. T’ landlord held out for too high a rent.” David gritted his teeth as he pushed away his empty plate.

“Oh, aye. And how does he pay seventeen shillings a week on an air raid warden’s wages, I’d like to know. Maybe it’s true that he’s hand in hand with a gang o’ dock thieves.”

“Gwen!” David was shocked. “That’s just idle gossip. Because he sometimes has lipsticks or silk stockings for sale? He could buy ’em easy from a merchant seaman on the New York run. It don’t make ’im a thief.”

The sharp wail of the air raid siren made David jump. He had been washing himself in the kitchen sink, in preparation for going to bed, and he stood in his undervest and trousers while he dried the back of his neck. He was numb with fatigue after a long day working on the intricacies of the plumbing of the Royal Infirmary, and he felt again a small, choking pain in the middle of his chest, a pain that had been bothering him occasionally for a couple of weeks.

“Blow them,” he muttered, and hastily finished drying himself.

He leaned over the sink to pull back the blackout curtain and look out of the window. There was enough moonlight to cast a shadow of the house across the back yard. Behind the neighbouring chimneys, searchlights suddenly sent seeking fingers across a starry sky. It was much too light for safety. He dropped the curtain into place, making the flame of the candle on the drainboard dance, as Gwen came hurrying from the living room. She carried a steaming kettle in one hand, and the warning had obviously flustered her.

“For goodness’ sake, get your dressing-gown on and something on your feet. We’ll have tea on the cellar steps. What a nuisance they are.”

As she flung two teaspoonsful of tea into the pot, she went on anxiously, “Our Mari’s not in yet, from Dorothy’s. She’s real late. I’ll have to have a word with that young lady.”

“I could go and fetch her,” David offered, without much conviction.

“No. It’d just mean two of you out in the flak. You get out the blankets and cushions and take them on to the cellar steps, while I do the tea tray.” She jumped suddenly, as the steady boom-boom of anti-aircraft fire made the windows rattle. Sometimes the guns sounded more menacing than the bombs did.

David would have been thankful to crawl into bed and risk being blown out of it. He did not feel, however, that he could go to bed while Mari was still not home, so he obediently arranged the cushions on the cellar steps, for them to sit on. With the slope of the staircase overhead, this spot offered good protection and the least likelihood of being crushed.

With a sigh, he sat down and arranged a blanket over his knees. While Gwen held the tea tray a little high, he tucked another blanket round her. He took the candle from the tray and set it on a small shelf above their heads. Gwen scolded, “Be careful, stupid. You’ll upset the tray.” She stirred the pot balanced uncertainly on the tray on her lap, while he listened
for the battery to start firing in nearby Princes Park; the sound would indicate to him how close the raiders were. Beyond the rumble of more distant guns, however, all he heard was Donnelly’s front door slam. Likely, Donnelly was in for a busy night.

Gwen’s lips curled. “That’ll be him goin’ down to the wardens’ post. Bangin’ the door, as usual. No manners, that man.”

Their own front door slammed. Quick footsteps ran along the narrow, linoleumed passage, then stumbled through the dark living room and into the kitchen.

“That you, Mari? Come on down, quick now.”

Mari was panting, as she whipped a cushion off the shelf and almost slithered down the concrete steps, her long bare legs flashing white in the candlelight.

She sat down close to her mother. Like many families seeking refuge in this safest corner of the house, they always sat very tightly together, so that if the building was hit they either died or survived together.

Gwen felt her trembling and lifted down the candle to have a closer look at her. The girl’s face was blenched and her eyes stared unblinkingly at her mother from behind the candle flame.

“There, there, luv. No need to be scared. You’re safe home now,” she told the girl quite gently.

Her father turned towards her and added reassuringly, “It don’t sound as if they’re interested in the south end of the town tonight.”

Above them, a number of aeroplane engines throbbed increasingly loudly.

“They’ll be some of ours,” David declared authoritatively. “Always know the difference by the sound o’ the engines.”

His words were immediately belied by a shrieking whistle passing over them. Instinctively, they ducked and flung their hands over their heads for protection. The tea tray on Gwen’s
lap rocked perilously. There was a moment of silence: then a deafening explosion which shook the whole house above them. They waited, like rabbits hiding in a thorn bush from a fox. A piece of plaster plopped from the ceiling on to the tray, and a cloud of thin dust enveloped them.

Mari buried her face against her mother’s bony legs and whimpered in terror. The next bomb in the rack would hit them; she knew it. It would be a judgment on her for what she had allowed Patrick Donnelly to do to her.

He had been bothering her for weeks, touching her when she passed him, holding her against the wall of the alley one day, when she had run down it to visit Dorothy; not hurting her, just making her feel funny when he pressed himself against her. It had been most funny-peculiar, because, despite all her mother’s warning about not letting a man come near her, she had wanted him to remain close. Perhaps the warning didn’t apply to boys, she argued to herself.

Tonight, he had pushed her into a street air raid shelter, which nobody used except as a urinal. He had held her tightly against the wall and her silent struggles had been of no avail against his considerable weight. When in scared despair, she had stopped wriggling, he had lifted her skirt and gently stroked between her legs. And she knew now that she was on her way to hell. It had felt wonderful, incredible; and he had laughed when, not understanding the driving impulse, she had put her arms round him. He had said it was nothing to what he could do. If that was nothing, she decided without really knowing why, it was a good thing that the air raid warning had begun to shriek and that they had both run for home.

Now the bombs were falling all around her. God must be very angry with her.

“Incendiaries! Incendiaries!” Conor Donnelly could be heard, calling his firewatchers to the street.

Despite his wife’s protests, David insisted on going out in his dressing-gown to check his roof, back and front. He came back
very soberly and hauled the blanket round himself again. “Looks like the whole town’s alight. Hope our Emmie’s all right.” Then to his crouching daughter, he said, “Don’t take on so, Mari. Everything’s going to be all right. We’re quite safe here on the steps.”

You don’t know what a wicked daughter you’ve got, thought Mari, not lifting her head from her mother’s knee. God could do anything to us tonight.

As the guns in Princes Park began to roar, Ellen Donnelly finished spreading the washing on her wooden airer in her living room and then heaved the heavy rack up to the ceiling again and tied the rope firmly to hold it there. The clothes began to drip depressingly onto the rag rug below and onto the otherwise bare floor. A few droplets reached baby Michael asleep in a battered easy chair. She edged the chair away from under the rack and flung her black woollen shawl over the sleeping child.

There was a quick patter of bare feet on the stairs, and her eldest daughter, Ruby, still in her clothes, dashed into the room. She was brought up short by the sight of her mother seating herself calmly on a wooden chair in front of the fire.

“Mam, shall I bring Brendy and Nora down? The guns sound awful.” Her voice was tightly constricted, as she tried to control her panic. After the dreadful experience of being buried in the ruins of their former home, the sound of the air raid warning always brought her close to a bout of hysterics. Her breath came in tight gasps and, from under a fringe like a Skye terrier’s, eyes gleamed with tears.

“Aye, luv. Coom ’ere.” Her mother held out a stout red arm to her and thankfully the skinny 12-year-old cuddled close to her heavy breast. “It ain’t likely we’ll be bombed again.”

The guns continued to growl and, after a minute, Ellen said,
“Let’s have a look-see outside. Then we’ll decide if we should bring t’ kids down.” She rose, and went to the front door, Ruby trotting closely behind her for comfort.

With a strong, red hand on either door-post, she leaned out as far as she could. The wind caught her untidy mop of shoulder-length hair and flapped her long black skirt. Metronomic searchlights flicked back and forth across the sky as if to time the drumming guns, and high in the heavens a bright flare floated gently; it silvered the slate roofs of the close-packed houses, gave a halo to a church spire and outlined the solid mass of a nearby tenement building.

“Reckon they’re doin’ Wallasey and Birkenhead tonight,” she opined comfortingly. “Quite away from us. We’ll let the kids rest for a bit. You come and sit by the fire with me and we’ll have a drop of your dad’s whiskey.”

Ruby did not like the taste of whiskey, but since the disastrous raid which had robbed them of their home, her mother had often given her a teaspoonful of it, and it made her feel better. Now, she went to the dying fire to warm her bare feet, while her mother tried to guess where Donnelly’s latest hiding-place for the bottle might be. In such an empty home there were not many places to look.

She found it on the windowsill, behind the blackout curtain, and she sat down while she eased out the cork. Ruby came to lean against her. The glow from the fire lit up their faces, as they solemnly took a sip each from the bottle. Then Ellen took a good gulp, and gasped as it caught her throat. She laughed and set down the bottle under her chair and again put her arm round Ruby.

The front door was flung open. Patrick strolled slowly in, determined to show that he was not afraid of air raids. A cool breeze followed him in.

“What you bin up to?” Ellen inquired truculently. “You’re lookin’ too pleased with yourself by far.”

“Haven’t bin doin’ nothin’.” The satisfied grin on his face
belied his words, but she knew from experience that she would get no more out of him.

A screaming whistle overhead wiped the grin from Patrick’s face, but, hands in pockets, he stood his ground, while Ruby clung shrieking to her mother. Blast swung the front door hard open and shook the old house. The blackout curtains billowed like sails in a sudden gust. A mass of soot descended the chimney, obliterated the fire and covered all of them in black dust. Little Michael, covered by his mother’s thick shawl, continued to sleep, but from upstairs came frightened howls.

Ellen wiped the soot off her mouth. “God’s curse upon the buggers!” she cried, and bent down to reach for the whiskey bottle.

A piece of debris landed on the roof with a sharp crump; then, for a moment, unearthly quiet.

A nerve-racking clatter in the street and the familiar sound of her husband’s running feet caused Ellen to burst out again, “Incendiaries, blast ’em!”

Patrick went to the door. The darkness was broken all along the street by sparks hissing from the small, vicious fire bombs. Dark shadows carrying sandbags ran to dowse the scary, sizzling devils, and one or two bravely tried to put them out by holding dustbin lids over them. Patrick seized one of the sandbags in the hall and ran gleefully out to help.

Opposite, a furious Bridget Mahoney flung up the empty frames of her bedroom window, sat out on the sill with her back to the street and struck out with a broom at an incendiary which had lodged in the gutter of her home. She managed, after a few wild shots, to hook it out and it fell into the street, where Patrick pounced on it happily and covered it with sand. Bridget eased herself back into her bedroom.

“Ow!” she exclaimed, as she caught her arm on a jagged piece of glass left in the window-frame. The blood gushing out looked black in the moonlight. Hastily she picked up her discarded apron from the bedroom chair and wrapped it
tightly round the wound.

Early the next morning, a sympathetic Ellen Donnelly bathed off the apron stuck on the deep, ugly cut and rebandaged it tightly with a bit of an old pillowslip brought by Bridget. Afterwards, they finished the rest of Conor Donnelly’s whiskey and, despite the pain, a fulminating Bridget went off to work in a large garage, where she spent her days sewing aeroplane canvas. As usual, her little boys went to school with clean hands and faces, and stomachs full of porridge.