Three Women of Liverpool (6 page)

Emmie watched him wonderingly, captivated by his easy goodwill. Really, she thought, men
can
be kind; and she remembered, for a second, her father’s unremitted bad temper. Who else, of the male sex, had she really known, other than him – and stolid, dull David? They had been no particular recommendation for their sex. She had taken Robert purely on trust; and how lucky she had been. The squatting seaman wondered why she suddenly smiled so sweetly.

While Doris cautiously puffed at her first cigarette, the barrage of noise persisted, as in steady waves the Luftwaffe swept over the doomed port. They were guided, at first, by the fires started the previous night and then by huge conflagrations which now began to flare in every direction. Far down the river, the flames’ reflection danced on the water, lit up the rooms of suburban homes and warned ships at sea not to cross the bar. Forty miles away, in the Isle of Man, residents peeped between their bedroom curtains, to watch the blaze on the horizon mount higher and higher. “Liverpool’s getting it again,” they told each other in shocked whispers, so as not to wake the children.

In the shelter, two young deckhands who had drunk a lot of beer decided that they must go to the lavatory. In a brief lull in the noise outside, they ran up the stairs, across the littered canteen, out through the kitchen door to the cobbled light well, where stood the ancient loos. As they relieved themselves, they look fearfully back over their shoulders through the open doors. What had once been, long ago before the offices had been built round it, the courtyard of a rich merchant’s house
now seemed to be a deadly funnel, down which bits of debris, shrapnel and occasional sparks travelled with unnerving rapidity. After a quick peek through the empty window facing the street, they were thankful to get back to the shelter.

“Proper shambles out front,” one of them reported. “Beams and wires and stones scattered all over. Them last ones must’ve hit real close.”

One of the card players looked up from his seat on the floor, pushed his plug of tobaco into one cheek and said, with a faint sneer, “Don’t need a crystal ball to know they’re close. Listen to ’em now.”

“Ah, shut yer gob,” retorted the returned youngster, hitching his braces up under his jacket.

“Now, gentlemen, this is no time to get upset,” Mrs Robinson interjected hastily, having no illusions regarding the shortness of tempers amongst her usually overwrought, seagoing customers.

The young man made a wry face at Mrs Robinson and drifted over to the other side of the room, while the man on the floor muttered irritably, “Think they’re bloody heroes every time they go to pee.”

The second young man had kept his mouth shut, but now he said, with a tinge of wonderment in his voice, “There’s a WVS canteen parked at the corner. T’ women’s doling out tea and sandwiches as if they was in their parlours at home. Feedin’ the firemen, I think they are. Ordinary women just like me mam. And the flak flying round ’em like confetti.”

A fast salvo of bombs nearly deafened them. Everybody crouched, hands over heads, fully expecting to be buried. When they found they had survived, they ruefully rubbed piercingly painful ears. From the ceiling, whitewash snowed gently.

Suddenly, all heads were raised; all noses sniffed. Smoke. The smell of burning wood was unmistakable. Fear jumped from one face to another. Some people rose quickly to their feet. Doris whimpered, and Emmie felt a rising panic.

“Hold it. No point in getting scared.” Deckie Dick got up and put his pipe into his trouser pocket. “I’ll nip upstairs and take a dekko for you. If I call, you come up orderly, mind.”

The men quickly made a passage for him. Elderly, well-known and with forty years of seagoing experience spanning the First World War, he commanded respect. He ran swiftly up the stairs, the deck of cards which gave him his nickname bulging in his back trouser pocket.

The crowd relaxed slightly as, above the now more distant rumbles from outside, they could hear him working his way through the tumbled furniture of the canteen overhead. The back door slammed, indicating that it was still on its hinges.

Nothing was burning in the light well, though it was smoky. In the flickering light of fire reflected in the remaining windows of the offices across the street, he made his way to the front door with its protective sandbags. He flattened himself against the battered wall of sandbags, as a whistle sounded overheard. A huge explosion from South Castle Street sent shock waves running, and his ears rang. He listened, as intently as his hurt ears allowed. The throb of engines seemed to come from a greater distance, but in the street the smoke was thickening rapidly. Taking a big breath, he ran across the street and looked back up at the roof of the building housing the canteen. There was no sign of its being on fire, though it was outlined against a scarlet sky. The buildings on either side also showed no hint of fire.

He raced back across the road and down the steps again to the shelter. He reported, panting, “T’ smoke’s nothing, as far as we’re concerned,” and then paused to get his breath while another series of detonations drowned him out. Emmie felt her courage draining from her and she and Doris clung to each other. He continued, “There’s some big fires not far away – and I could hear machine guns for a minute. Bloody Boche going for the firemen.” He looked at the anxious faces surrounding him. “If we try to move, like as not we’ll walk into
more trouble. I’d say stay here.” He sat down suddenly on a bench, aware that he was no longer as young as he had been. He looked down at his shabby boots, while men slowly resumed their seats.

When his heart had stopped racing, he said diffidently, “Think I’ll walk up Lord Street and see what’s to do. T’ rescue squads must be hard-pressed at the back there. Anybody want to come?”

The men stopped their subdued gossiping and looked uneasily at Dick, and Dick said, “Them as has wives and kids, maybe you shouldn’t. A couple of you is perhaps like me – you can please yourselves.”

“My family is killed in Antwerp,” said a melancholy Dutch voice from the far end of the room. “Who to rescue? This is shops and offices round here. Nobody here.” He got up, a big, handsome blond man towering over most of those present.

“There’s firewatchers and caretakers in every building,” replied Dick simply. “Young girls, some of them watchers is.”

Two men in naval uniform stood up and the four of them, without a further word, eased their way through to the staircase. Not to be outdone by the Royal Navy, two merchant seamen followed them.

Mrs Robinson said brightly, “As soon as the raid is over, we’ll see if we can clean the canteen up, ready for business tomorrow.”

The women nodded tired agreement. Emmie was stiff with fatigue and the enforced idleness; the worst thing about air raids was, she thought, that you couldn’t hit back.

The electric light went out. Emmie gave a frightened squeak and Doris drew in her breath quickly. The glowing ends of lighted cigarettes looked like red eyes staring in the darkness. A man laughed shakily. A voice from the gloom said bitterly, “If that isn’t the bottom!”

There was a jingle of keys and change, as Mrs Robinson rummaged in the depths of her shabby crocodile-skin
handbag. “I’ve got a match somewhere. There should be some candles in the drawer of the table.”

Someone lit a match and a male voice from near the floor said, “I’ve got a torch, Missus.”

The beam seemed as brilliant as a searchlight.

“Oh, thank you,” she cried, stumbling over feet as, guided by the torch, she went to the table. She snapped the drawer open. “Really!” she exclaimed. “This is too bad. Somebody has stolen both the candles and the matches. There’s not even a stump here.”

There was an angry murmur through the room. Petty theft was a way of life in Liverpool. Now, with everything in short supply, it could cause real problems. The owner of the torch, however, said magnanimously, “Anybody as needs to move, tell me and I put me torch on.”

Batteries were harder to obtain than candles, so when a young voice said, “Thanks, friend,” it expressed the feelings of everybody.

Listening to the clamour outside, while sitting in total darkness was far worse, thought Emmie. The minutes seemed longer; the noise wrapped one closer. People tended not to talk; instead they huddled together for comfort.

Gwen had told her of a woman in the next street, who had clung to a perfect stranger in the street’s unlighted shelter, while they sat out the Christmas Eve raid, the year before. In their terrible fear, they had become sexually aroused, and now she was pregnant by a man she had never seen. Shocking, Gwen called it; but David, with unexpected understanding, had said that it was Mother Nature’s way of seeing that people who had died in a disaster were replaced.

Gwen had responded tartly, “More likely they didn’t know right from wrong.”

As she hugged Doris, Emmie wondered if she herself were pregnant, or whether the change of life was making its presence felt. Though frightened, in her secret heart she hoped
that she was still young enough for a bun to be in the oven, Robert’s little one.

“I hope Robbie’s sailed and out of this rumpus,” she whispered to Doris.

“You might get a letter tomorrer,” Doris suggested. Her own heart ached at the thought; even the letters her dead husband had written to her when they were courting had been lost, with him, in their burned-out home.

The racket outside seemed to be slackening, the explosions further away. “Sounds like they might be doin’ Bootle or Seaforth,” suggested a disembodied voice.

“God spare us,” exploded Doris. “Haven’t we had enough up there?”

The women stood forlornly at the top of the shelter stairs. The All Clear had sounded; the noise abated. Through the gaping front windows, the whole town seemed to glow, the shattered room lighted up as if a good coal fire was burning in the old-fashioned grate. As they moved forward, glass and china crunched beneath their feet. The counter, which normally held the tea and coffee samovars, flanked by plates of buns and sandwiches, had been swept clear. Both samovars lay on their sides on the floor, silent humps in pools of black liquid, their copper exteriors reflecting the dancing light from outside.

The light from outside did not penetrate the kitchen, so Mrs Starr struck a match. “Ah, that’s better,” she cried.

Though very dusty, the kitchen was practically undisturbed. The telephone, which Emmie had put on the sill to hold down the blackout curtains of the small window, had fallen on to the table beneath the window. Emmie lifted the curtain to peer out and was surprised that, at least there, there was still glass to look through.

Mrs Starr, one of the volunteers, asked Mrs Robinson a little diffidently, “Would you mind if I phoned my son to say I am all right?”

Mrs Robinson looked up from her task of setting out candles and lighting them. “Of course not,” she replied.

The phone was dead. Mrs Starr sighed, and looked at her watch. It was nearly 3 a.m.

An air raid warden paused by the open front door. “Anybody here?” he shouted. Drawn by the sudden flare of the candles, he clumped towards the kitchen. His face was gaunt, eyes burning with fatigue. A striped pyjama collar stuck out untidily from the neck of his uniform.

“Are we safe from the fires?” Mrs Robinson asked, after greeting him.

“Aye. There’s a firewatcher on the roof – young Dolly – she’ll tell you if fires out t’ back are spreading this side.”

“What’s burning?” Mrs Starr asked.

“Church House. It’ll be gutted. Too far gone to save. And the Corn Exchange and the White Star building – God knows how many others. Bootle’s calling for fire-engines out there, but they can’t spare none from here.” He heaved a sigh. “Must go check next door. Ta-ra.” He crunched his way back across the strewn canteen floor and they heard him curse as he caught his boot against one of the recumbent samovars and it clanged like a bell.

While Emmie and Gwen cleaned up their home and David laid new waterpipes in the Royal Infirmary, Conor walked round his district to assess the damage of the previous night.

“Rain’ll do more damage than t’bombs,” he told the already very depressed families, who a few streets away from his own home had lost their roofs. “I’ll get you some tarps to lay over the rafters.”

He returned to the post and put in a request for tarpaulin. Then he retrieved the front and back doors of the oldest couple affected, and helped the old man hang them again.

From nearby homes still comparatively undamaged, older women, silent, hands clasped over their stomachs, drifted over to watch and then to help their stricken neighbours shovel plaster and soot out of their chaotic little homes. Children, too small for school, found jam butties thrust into their hands by strange, smiling women. Buckets of water and trays of tea were lugged from several streets away, where water was still available. Friendships which were to last a lifetime were made between tearful outbursts from women beginning to quiver from delayed shock. The acute shortage of young, strong men to help was remarked upon and an extra tear was shed for those of them fighting in Greece or on a warship somewhere in the Mediterranean. And slowly, painfully slowly, some order was restored.

While he munched a very dry sandwich, back at the post, Conor wrote out his reports. After that, seething with rage, he went to see the bitch who had refused to produce the street’s stirrup-pump, at a time when the whole road had been littered with incendiaries.

God, how he needed a drink. He seemed to be floating, rather than walking. Lightheaded, that was the word. And what a fool he had been to put at the back of the cellar of the post the half dozen bottles of whiskey he had lifted from a lorry unwise enough to park in the district a couple of days before. Now, the post was as busy as a tram terminus and he could not retrieve them without its being noticed. If he had found a better place for them, he could have had a drink right now and flogged the rest for good money.

He slammed down his fountain pen and went home.

With one side of her face still slightly swollen from the blow he had given her, Ellen was in no mood to be conciliatory. Practically the whole of the family’s bacon radon piled on his
plate, however, suggested that the storm might be passing. He was too tired, too overwhelmed by other people’s troubles laid upon his shoulders, to make an effort to break the silence between them, and as soon as he had mopped up the last bit of grease from his plate with a piece of bread, he announced that he was going to bed.