The Mersey Angels

by Sheila Riley

  ‘No, Anna, don’t sink to his level,’ Ellie said, ‘at least we have an idea where he is and can report him to the police. They will know what to do with him. There is no point in putting yourself in danger. It is obvious he has no compunction to strike out at a woman.’

  ‘Don’t you think we should help those two women?’ Anna asked.

  ‘I think they are doing quite well,’ Ellie answered, ‘given the merciless brandishing of their umbrellas.’

  They watched as Woods escaped his attackers and disappeared into the nearby public house, and Anna suspected if Jerky Woods, was anything like his drunken father, he would stay there until throwing-out time.

  ‘I’ve a good mind to call a policeman and have him arrested,’ Anna said. Why should he roam the streets when men like her brother were in the firing line every day? She refused to entertain the idea that Sam could have been injured by now, like young Nipper, knowing the film showed the fighting on the Somme, which had begun back in July. That was three months ago. Anything could have happened between then and now.

  ‘Seeing we have the evening off, why don’t we go and see Lottie,’ Ellie said. ‘We haven’t seen her since August when she married that scoundrel.’

  It would be interesting to see how Lottie was faring. Jerky Woods had always been a stranger to hard work and judging by what they had just seen they had no reason to change their opinion of him now.

  ‘Have you heard from Ned?’ asked Ellie as they headed towards the wall-to-wall courts of Scotland Road, and Anna shook her head. She didn’t want to talk about Ned right now. Not after what she had just watched, knowing that the war at sea was just as fierce.

  ‘Watch your step, here,’ Anna said by way of an answer as they made their way through a litter-strewn alleyway, and her friend’s reaction was as she suspected. Never having experienced anything like this, Ellie was holding a gloved hand to her nose. Clearly, she was trying to prevent the overpowering smell of open middens and decay from assaulting her nostrils. ‘Not one of the most salubrious places, at any time of day,’ Anna said, remembering when she was younger. Running through these backstreets without a thought did not seem so bad.

  However, going through Olden Passage towards Primrose Cottage brought back other memories. The day she should have met Sam but encountered Jerky Woods instead. That day, Ned gave her the courage to fight back… The day her family perished.

  ‘Keep walking,’ Anna said, moving forward. She could not turn and run this time, no matter how much she longed to do. ‘If anybody comes near us, we have our brolly.’ She heard Ellie’s muffled laugh behind her gloved hand. However, knowing these streets as Anna did, she had never been more serious as the early dusk enveloped the dockside streets. Even though she had lived in a better street, with clean steps and tidy curtains, she knew every back alley in this part of Liverpool, too. She knew the hidden nooks and crannies. But the mind plays funny tricks on your memory, she realised. The soot-blackened streets and disease-ridden courts in her head were nowhere near as bad as the reality.

  Pulling the sleeve of Ellie’s coat, Anna hurried through the worst of the depravation, knowing this was a place where sailors came straight off the ships, lived it up for a time, everybody was their friend when the money and the ale was flowing. Then, when it was gone, their poor wives lived hand to mouth with their large gaggle of underfed children, and the sailor was nowhere to be seen. Anna recalled many a foreign sailor who set his seed and buggered off before the result of his effort was obvious.

  ‘Oh, my word,’ Ellie shrieked with fright, bringing Anna out of her shocking contemplation.

  ‘It’s just a dead cat,’ Anna answered, somewhat taken aback at her own detachment. She had seen the sight many times, and despite the better conditions in which she now lived, Anna realised she had not become so genteel as her shocked friend. Furthermore, if she were to follow her desire to go and nurse overseas, she felt she would need some of the dockside toughness, just to get by. ‘Don’t worry,’ she said as if in some way apologising for the state of the substandard, run-down courts where callous, money-grabbing landlords exploited the deprived and the wretched, ‘I won’t let anything happen to you.’

  She could smell Primrose Cottage long before she reached the three squalid, poverty-stricken buildings adjoining each other, which bore no possible resemblance to small flower-strewn houses. And Anna knew that in the daytime well-dressed people would avoid passing through if at all possible and at night the courts were considered unsafe to anybody except the poor wretches who inhabited them.

  The air was thick with smoke and fumes from the large gasworks and coal-burning railway locomotives on their way to the docks. Coal dust coated everything, including the residents’ lungs and the dilapidated houses swarmed with rats, cockroaches, fleas, and bedbugs.

  Anna knew areas like this lay at the heart of the Industrial Revolution, and the war had offered many women from the area work in factories to produce the weapons needed, while the crowded tenements offered the manpower required for the trenches. But Primrose Cottage, the lowest of the low, was a battlefield of a different kind.

  A fizz of trepidation coursed through Anna’s veins, slamming into her heart, making her breathing rapid. The memory of the day she was confronted by Jerky Woods in an alleyway just like this. She blamed that confrontation on the horror that followed. Of losing her mother and her young twin brothers in that nightmarish house fire. Of losing Sam who had been lifted off the street by the church and sent away to Canada. The fear that constantly lurked at her shoulder had never quite left her. But she fought, as she had always done, to push the anxiety deep down inside her. Maybe she was tougher than she suspected. Her formative years with her cherished family, along with those spent with Aunt Ruby, had imbued her with courage.

  Hurrying through a badly lit alleyway, Anna felt the heat rise to her cheeks, because it was not so dark to block out the sight that met them. A dockside prostitute was plying her trade with a black seafarer who gave a low growl of displeasure at the interruption.

  ‘A tanner to watch, dearie,’ the doxie said in bored tones over his tightly curled head.

  ‘Don’t look, Ellie,’ Anna said as she pulled her friend towards the end of the alleyway towards Lottie’s ramshackle dwelling. And in the flickering light of a gas lamp, Anna’s heart sank at the sight and she wrinkled her nose at the overpowering stench of beer, tobacco and misery emanating from an open sash window.

  ‘How can people live like this?’ Ellie asked from close behind Anna, who knew that Lottie, even in her poorest days, would never let her home get into such a disgusting state.

  ‘Not all the women round here are like this,’ Anna answered as she knocked on the half-opened door that slowly creaked open like a beckoning phantom and sent shivers down Anna’s spine. ‘The lock is broken.’

  The splintered wood surrounding the lock showed the door had obviously been forced and was now swinging precariously on its hinge. As the rising wind grew stronger, it whistled through the large crack in the window.

  There was no answer to her knock and Ellie silently urged her to go forward. Anna stepped inside the bleak interior.

  ‘Hello,’ she called, ‘is anybody here?’ She crept into the dim passage and, even knowing Jerky Woods was not here, she was nervous. I beg you, Lord, she prayed silently, please do not let him come home now.

  She stopped for a moment as a low animal-like groan came from the top of the bare wooden stairs. She listened. Ellie too. Silence… Then, there it was again.

  ‘Hello, Lottie?’ Anna held her body taut, unable to ignore the sound of obvious pain, yet not wanting to witness the cause. Knowing she must go on; she climbed the stairs with hasty steps toward the noise.

  ‘Lottie? Lottie are you in here?’ Anna’s voice was a low whisper and she gingerly pushed open a door to a darkened room, the ancient floorboards creaking beneath her feet as she ventured forth. The only light in the room came from the gas lamp on the wall outside,
which cast an eerie yellow glow.

  ‘Who is it?’ Lottie’s tortured whisper was barely perceptible in the murky gloom as Anna and Ellie edged into the direction of her voice.

  ‘Lottie, it’s me, Anna. Ellie is with me,’ she said, able to make out the bed. She could see the figure of a woman lying amongst the struggle of bedclothes and her back stiffened. The place reeked of something she could immediately determine.

  ‘Gas,’ Lottie groaned as she tried to lift herself from the bed, but she was too weak, ‘thank the Lord the money ran out. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be here,’ Lottie said. ‘It went out yesterday, along with my husband, I did try… I did…’ Suddenly her voice cracked, and the bed creaked under the force of her sobs.

  ‘Did he do this to you?’ Anna asked, her eyes growing accustomed to the dim light, and she could see that Lottie was lying on a blood-soaked mattress. Jerky Woods ought to be locked up, who would leave his wife in this condition?

  ‘It wasn’t his fault,’ Lottie took a deep shuddering gasp of air, ‘he’s out looking for work.’

  Oh no he isn’t, Anna’s thoughts remained unspoken as she and Ellie exchanged knowing glances. They could see Lottie was distressed and right now she did not need to have the truth waved under her nose like a musty old cloth.

  Anna beckoned Ellie towards the bed and kept her voice low. ‘Lottie needs all the help we can offer if she’s going to see another night,’ Anna said as an exhausted whimper alerted her as she knelt beside the bed, taking a deep breath, unprepared for the sight that met her. ‘Oh Lottie,’ Anna was heartbroken to see the cheeky girl, who paid no heed to kindly warnings, lying here all alone, her eyes full of the terror she had gone through and in her arms, she cradled the tiny stiff body of a stillborn baby girl. ‘We will see to you now,’ Anna said, grateful for her medical training, not just because it enabled her to help Lottie, but because it masked the revulsion and the turmoil, she was now experiencing. Turning now to Ellie, she whispered: ‘If she does not get proper medical attention, soon, she will die.’ Ellie’s expression told Anna she had no doubt. ‘I’ll get some hot water and Lysol to clean her up.’ They were already removing their coats.

  ‘I ’aven’t got no money for the meter,’ Lottie’s words came out in a breathless rush, ‘nor no disinfectant… none for days.’

  Anna took her purse from her bag and found the coppers for the meter. She did not hear the footsteps on the stairs. Nor did she hear the door open…

  ‘What’s goin’ on ’ere?’ the surly male voice asked, and Anna whipped round to see the menacing figure of Jerky Woods standing in the doorway. But she was no longer afraid of him. She was too disgusted at his callous, neglectful conduct to be fearful.

  He left Lottie here, alone, to give birth to this beautiful baby.

  Anna stood up, her back straight and she faced him. Her chin tilting upwards in the same way she had seen Ruby’s lift many times before. Her shoulders adjusting to her daring stance, knowing what he was capable of doing to anybody who showed weakness. Something he would readily take advantage of.

  ‘Your wife needs help,’ Anna’s tone was edged with the kind of steel she hardly recognised. ‘We need hot water and disinfectant.’

  Ellie handed him some money, ‘Please hurry.’

  Anna watched him turn and hurry from the room and heard him descend the stairs in two jumps. A practiced measure he had no doubt performed many, many, times. To be able to exit so quickly, she imagined, was proof of his eagerness to escape capture by military or even civilian police.

  When he had not returned half an hour later with the disinfectant or the money, Anna knew without a doubt he had fled, probably to the nearest alehouse.

  She and Ellie made Lottie as comfortable as possible, while Ellie swaddled the baby in a sheet and said a little prayer, tenderly placing the tiny female in the dresser drawer perched on a straight-backed chair.

  ‘The rogue has hopped it with the money!’

  ‘I can’t say I’m surprised,’ Anna replied, ‘although he has sunk to new depths this time.’

  ‘Seeing us here, he obviously felt relieved of all responsibility,’ Ellie answered.

  ‘Well, we will soon see about that.’ Anna’s tone was full of outrage, knowing human life was cheap to him. She tore off down the stairs, almost hopping over the heads of grubby children sitting at the bottom. Why did he not fetch help for Lottie? A midwife, a neighbour? Anna thought. Unable to see Woods, she went into the local shop and bought the necessities. Disinfectant, tea, milk, and sugar to keep Lottie’s strength up.

  ‘He won’t allow anyone into the house,’ Lottie was reluctant to talk against her husband at first, knowing everybody had been right to warn her. But she wouldn’t listen. Sipping the hot tea laced with sugar, she began to thaw a little. Anna knew it did not take much imagination to work out the reason Jerky Woods was shy of visitors and understood perfectly why a coward like him would be so secretive. He should be fighting overseas, not battling in the street with suffragettes. ‘He’s got a good heart,’ Lottie whimpered, ‘he’s staying home to look after me.’

  ‘Lottie don’t defend him! He left you for dead.’ Anna could not believe this girl still thought better of him. ‘He did not give you a second thought. He never has. You deserve a better life than the one he has given you.’

  Lottie looked to the drawer on the chair that held the body of her baby girl and wept uncontrollably.

  Anna nodded to Ellie, who went to the local hospital to summon an ambulance to take them all back to Ashland Hall. Offering her another cup of strong sweet tea, Lottie gratefully took it. Over the next few minutes, she told Anna the whole story.

  ‘Jerry enlisted but due to the lack of accommodation, he was sent home,’ Lottie said, ‘and because he’d served a day with the colours, they let him come home to take up normal employment until he were needed.’ She shrugged hopelessly, ‘But, in Jerky’s case, it meant having money in his pocket to go drinking and gambling and when he were called, he refused to go.’

  ‘How do you manage to live?’ Anna tried to keep the disgust from her voice and Lottie sighed, her once vibrant eyes now dead as a day-old cod in the fishmonger’s window.

  ‘The first day they give him one shilling and ninepence,’ Lotte said, ‘he thought he was king of the midden.’ She took a sip of tea, ‘Then every day after that, until he was called up, proper like, he got what they called a retainer, sixpence a day. He thought he was in God’s pocket, but I never saw none of it.’

  ‘Surely they must have somewhere for him now?’ Anna asked, knowing the military were not going to pay men to be idle at their expense.

  ‘He said he didn’t like the infantry… said he wasn’t going back.’

  ‘Surely the money stopped?’ Anna asked.

  Lottie nodded, but said nothing and Anna suspected he would stoop to stealing to pay his own way. But she did not broach the subject with Lottie. The girl had gone through enough already. Unwilling to risk his freedom, he was prepared to let his wife die along with their premature baby daughter. Anna could have cried for this once proud girl who had sunk so low, so fast because she was lonely and married the first man to show her any attention. Even if that consideration was not the kind she had been looking for.

  ‘How anybody could be so callous is beyond me.’ Anna was growing even more angry. Woods did not care who he hurt, so long as he got his own way.

  Having used the police telephone to call Archie, when she went for supplies, Anna was not too surprised when she heard a commotion in the lobby downstairs. Cries of disbelief. Scurrying feet and cursing drew Anna to go and investigate. Leaning over the bannister, she saw two policemen. One, a burly six-footer, easily overpowered a wriggling Jerky Woods who had returned to the house.

  ‘We’ve been waiting for you,’ he told Woods.

  ‘He stole Ellie’s money,’ Anna pointed an accusing finger.

  ‘It weren’t me,’ Woods roared, ‘she’s a liar.’ He was struggling und
er the constable’s firm grip, ‘I ain’t done nothin’ wrong.’

  Anna knew different.

  ‘This aint right,’ Woods cried as he was led to the police van in handcuffs, ‘what have I done?’

  ‘You’re a deserter, a dirty little coward,’ Anna called over the bannister as she made her way back to Lottie. Then she noticed Lottie’s eyes close. She had lost a lot of blood.

  As the police van which had come to take Jerky Woods to his day of reckoning left, a horse-drawn ambulance arrived amid much curiosity. This was a notorious area, Anna knew, where police were not welcome, and horse-drawn ambulances were something of a myth. If people were sick round here, local women tended them.

  ‘Let’s get you back to Ashland Hall, Lottie,’ Anna said to the girl who had paid a huge price for her reckless moments. ‘That selfish husband of yours will get what’s coming to him.’

  Ellie agreed as the ambulance pulled away from the dilapidated door of Lottie’s home.

  ‘The authorities will deal with Jerky Woods, I’m sure,’ Anna’s feisty nature had come to the fore once again when faced with her childhood foe: a deserter, thief, murderer and arsonist who left his wife to die and deliver her stillborn child. Anna could not think of anybody more evil than Jerky Woods and she couldn’t wait to hear that he had been given his just deserts. But one thing she knew for sure, the blight of her life did not shatter her determination all those years ago, and he certainly had not done so now. ‘Don’t you worry, Lottie,’ Anna told the stricken woman, as she smoothed damp hair from her brow, ‘you are in safe hands now.’

  22

  It took weeks for Lottie to get her strength back. However, thanks to Anna and Ellie, she recovered well and went back to live over the shops with Izzy, who took her motherly care very seriously, keeping Lottie’s strength up and making her comfortable. Lottie was the daughter she never had and the two of them got on very well.