Nothing much had been heard of Peter since he had finished his National Service. His intake had been the last to be called up, after that conscription into the British Army ended. He had gone happily enough by all accounts, but then it was some sort of move away from the East End, if not the ideal one, and after serving two years in Germany he was asked to train as an officer. He didn’t though, instead he had remained in London after being demobbed, though no one seemed very sure what he was doing there. He worked as a barman in an Irish pub in Kilburn until he found his feet, and the next anyone heard he was training to be a teacher. Everything was a stepping stone for Peter, even if he had no interest in teaching children, and Kathy knew instinctively that he hadn’t, it was that much farther away from Moncur Street. There had been one, fleeting, miserable visit home shortly before Lily’s death, when Kathy had resented his being there almost as much as he had resented it himself. Nothing pleased him, everything disgusted him. It was as if he had come back one last time to prove to himself that he didn’t belong there, and when he had gone Kathy felt as much happiness as he did himself. She didn’t know then why he had bothered to come back if everything and everyone displeased him so much, and she hoped he wouldn’t repeat the exercise ever again. And he didn’t, even for Lily’s funeral. A few years later a postcard arrived from Canada, saying he was working there, and then a local man who was in the Merchant Navy reported meeting him in Alaska. In his absence his frontier spirit was held up to be admired by Con and Aggie, and he was much praised. ‘Ah always knew he would make somethin’ o’ himself,’ Aggie would say, her voice cracking with pride and emotion, re-reading the few lines on the postcard, until it became so creased with handling and age that the writing was illegible. Even so, it would be produced for the admiration of everyone who entered the house, regardless of how many times they had been forced to admire it in the past, and for some reason it didn’t seem to occur to her, or perhaps it didn’t matter, that the gaps between future postcards, with their few noncommittal lines, stretched for years, and there were never any letters. During the frequent deification ceremonies of Peter and his postcards, Kathy would catch Harry’s eye and they’d smile like conspirators. She had never heard Harry say anything critical of anyone, not even Peter, but she always knew what he thought because of the bond between them. Peter never came home again, but he was forever announcing himself as being on the verge of doing so, and that was enough for Aggie and Con. Kathy, though, knew better. ‘Liar!’ she would mutter, and wonder what Lily would’ve thought, had she been alive. But Lily had never said much about Peter. Kathy had thought about her mother’s silence on the subject of the prodigal son many times over the years, wondering why she never volunteered an opinion or a thought about him. It was because she knew him, Kathy thought. Lily took no offence at what amounted to Peter’s rejection of his entire family, whether his father and grandmother recognised it or not, because she knew it was how he was and that there was nothing anyone could do to change him. Peter, like Jamie, was as he was, that, Kathy imagined, was how Lily thought of her son, but even so, she wondered, would she have felt hurt or disappointed if she’d known he would never come back? Well, she would never know now, the fire at Stern’s made sure of that.
It was November, a cold Monday. She remembered that so clearly because the next day was Lily’s birthday and Kathy had a present for her that she knew her mother would love. She had come upon it weeks before on one of her hunts for Con. When he went missing there was no doubt that he would be in some drinking howff, and finding the right one was a simple case of following his trail from one to another until he was found in his usual slumped condition. With Jamie in tow as usual, she had been going round the Barras stallholders asking if anyone had seen her Da, when she had spotted it on Cockney Jock’s stall. A Londoner called Dick Lee, he had been renamed ‘Cockney Jock’ and ran a ‘swag’, or fancy goods stall. The unsuspecting customer could buy any number of treasures from Jock, ‘Roldini gold brooches’, ‘South Sea Island Pearls’, all of them one hundred per cent counterfeit, and Kathy was especially fond of him because he got away with the most blatantly dishonest claims. She had been in his audience one day when he’d been selling paint and found himself being constantly interrupted mid-spiel by a heckler. ‘It’s no’ paint at a’!’ yelled the heckler merrily, trying to take over the attention of Jock’s punters. ‘Pull the other wan, it’s even cheaper!’ At each jibe Jock would stop politely and assure the large man and the potential customers in the crowd that it was indeed the finest paint. And not just any paint at that, but of the very best quality, surplus from a job that had just been done at Buckingham Palace and, being a Cockney, by birth at any rate, he had been given the chance to buy, at a knockdown price which he was about to pass on to the lucky punters, what was clearly the Château La Fitte, if you took his meaning, of home decorating materials. Still the large chap shouted him down, till Jock could take no more. ‘It’s merr water than paint!’ came the taunt, at which Jock had tipped a canful over him. ‘What’s up with you?’ Jock demanded as the heckler protested. ‘It’s no’ paint, it’s water, you said so yourself. I’ll do you a good price on a towel to dry yourself off with!’
That day, Kathy’s eyes had fallen on something in the corner of Jock’s stall and as soon as she had seen it she knew Lily must have it. It was a rectangular box about ten inches long, covered in bright red, padded satin with a heart design woven into it, and finished around the edges with gold cord. She asked if she could see it and Jock handed it to her, muttering with hurt pride that it had been left over from Valentine’s Day, and it wasn’t his fault that Glaswegians had no romance in their souls, was it? The inside of the box was lined with mock red velvet, and a removable shelf had been fitted with various compartments so that it could be used for anything the owner required. Leave the shelf intact and it could be a jewellery or a sewing box, remove it and you could store photographs or papers or whatever you wanted. She asked Jock how much he wanted and unable to do a deal without at least the pretence of haggling, he grinned and asked her how much she had on her. Kathy had rifled in her pockets and come up with 2/6d, gleaned coin-by-coin from her lunch money over several weeks, and a further search of Jamie’s pockets turned up another 2/–. ‘Take it,’ Jock said happily. He’d sold it, a couple of months late, but still, honour had been restored. ‘It’s only taking up room anyway.’ So she carried it home wrapped in brown paper and hid it carefully in her bedroom, knowing how delighted Lily would be, anxious for her birthday to arrive. Lily’s world was completely devoid of anything feminine or frilly, there was no satin and lace about life with Con, but now she would have something pretty, and more to the point, it wasn’t worth enough at the pawn shop for Con to hawk it for booze money, so Lily had a chance of keeping it.
So it was Monday, the day before Lily’s birthday, and Con was doing whatever Con always did, probably helping around the market for ready cash after the busy weekend trading, then making for the Sarrie Heid, as Lily worked in Stern’s warehouse. She had been so happy to get a full-time job at last, after years of doing three or four jobs a day, working herself to death for a collective pittance that never amounted to a full-time wage. Working herself to death; now there was an ironic phrase. B. Stern & Co Ltd was an upholstery firm, housed in an old whisky bond built in 1850 in James Watt Street, in the warren of narrow streets down by the River Clyde. It hadn’t been used as a bond since 1961, but the wooden interior staircases were still there, and every window had remained protected by iron bars, even though these days anyone breaking in to the three-storey building would find only sofas and armchairs to steal. Stern’s neighbours were mainly just as far removed from the old days of whisky bonding: a tobacco warehouse, the local branch of the Seamen’s Union, a glassware warehouse, and just 400 yards away was Cheapside Street, where nineteen men from the Fire Service had died fighting a blaze eight years before. Lily had enjoyed working at Stern’s, the other workers were a good lot, she said, a mixtu
re of around twenty-seven men and women, from teenagers to sixty-somethings. She liked the companionship and the easy friendships with people like herself, and before long families had been shared. Kathy knew all about Nancy, whose daughter had given birth to a profoundly handicapped baby girl a couple of years before, only Nancy couldn’t accept that there was anything wrong with her grand-daughter. She would come in to work with pictures of a toddler who, though beautiful, was clearly ‘no’ right’, who had to be held in a sitting position for the camera. She was, said a desperately upbeat Nancy, who deep inside knew the truth, ‘a wee bit slow’, but she was improving every day, and sometimes the other women would feel her pain so strongly that they would hit out at her. ‘She’s no’ right, Nancy! Will ye stop kiddin’ yersel’?’ they’d say, and Nancy would rush to the toilet in tears, locking the door behind her and refusing all entreaties to come out till she had composed herself. By that time the women would feel guilty about what they had said and once again look at the latest clutch of photos, announcing that ‘Ye’re right, Nancy, the wee yin’s gettin’ oan fine, so she is!’, all the while exchanging sad glances behind the delighted Nancy’s back. And Kathy knew from Lily whose daughter was having a baby soon, whose son was doing well at school and, she supposed, the other women had also glimpsed something of the difficulties in Lily’s life. It was how women were in those days. It was an era when they accepted that their lives were devoted to their families, and that included having to take low-paid work outside the home. The money they more than earned went towards providing for their children, and there was no thought given to their own career structures, competitiveness or promotion. They did dull, boring, repetitive jobs for little money, and found whatever satisfaction they could in being together, in having a laugh and a gossip and sharing their family worries and joys with each other. Being working class it was all they had been conditioned to expect of life, and regardless of how intelligent they were, or what heights they might have reached had they been given an even playing field, it was a situation they had to accept for themselves, even in the Sixties. They knew they had been short-changed, that they were being used, but what was new in that? But one day, they hoped, it would be better for their daughters, and that was very often why they accepted their own lot. Many of the women were saving every penny to put their children, girls as well as boys, through university, so that they wouldn’t have to work in places like Stern’s.
Suddenly on that Monday the fire alarm had sounded. The secretary had tried to dial 999, but an incoming call prevented her, so the Seamen’s Union next door summoned the fire brigade. The fire started on the first floor, where the showrooms were situated, and the building very quickly ‘went up like a box of fireworks’, according to a survivor. For a few moments a man was seen inside, frantically trying to force the iron bars covering the only escape route, with several women behind him. Then, as the attempt failed, the desperate faces behind the barred windows were lost in the smoke. The only doorway to freedom and safety was locked, the key that would have opened it locked in a downstairs office. People working in other warehouses came running, alerted first by the screams, and repeatedly tried to force their way through the smoke and flames, choking with the heat and the fumes. Two men were seen inside the warehouse, trapped in a lift that had become stuck between floors, the flames licking around it, as the wooden staircases, then the roof, collapsed, bringing down the floors below. Twenty fire units rushed to the blaze, and three foam units, as the thick smoke rose hundreds of feet into the air above the city, the firemen helplessly trying to find an exit route for the twenty-two terrified souls who clawed at the barred windows. Then the screaming stopped and the faces disappeared from the windows, leaving only outstretched, charred arms visible through the smoke.
At Our Lady and St Francis Convent School in Charlotte Street Kathy’s class was doing a double period of Art that afternoon, and as Art was one of Kathy’s favourite subjects, she was happily engrossed in what she was doing. She was distantly aware of the door opening and someone entering the Art Room and whispering to the teacher, who looked up quickly at Kathy Kelly. She felt the hairs standing up on her neck. It must be Con. How many times had she imagined this scenario in her mind? He had either been found drunk somewhere and they wanted to know where Lily was, or he’d fallen in front of a bus; oh, please, let it be the bus! She felt her cheeks flush red with embarrassment. Funny to think there was a time when she’d been so innocent that she actually believed there were some folk who didn’t know what he was like, and how desperately she had wanted to keep the knowledge secret. Now everyone would know her father was a drunk, she would be shamed in front of them, even if, deep down, she had always known it would only be a matter of time anyhow. ‘Kathleen,’ said the teacher quietly, ‘you’re to report to the Headmistress.’ Everyone in the class looked at her as she left her desk and walked to the door. Walking along the corridor she had whispered to the messenger, ‘Whit is it? D’ye know whit she wants me for?’ The girl shrugged and ran back to her own classroom, leaving Kathy to do the long walk on her own. She knocked on the door and entered, looking quickly at the Sister’s expression, trying to guess what was wrong. A black look; yes, this was the day. From now on everyone would know. Even looking back from nearly thirty years the impression of slow motion persisted. She sat down and the kindly Sister told her gently that there had been a fire. Even then Kathy had wondered if Con had burned the house down, and if he had, where would she and Lily live now? Well it certainly wouldn’t be with Aggie, even if Aggie’s house had escaped unscathed, there was no chance of that! She was still working out the logistics, hoping Jamie’s house wasn’t damaged, when she heard Stern’s being mentioned. The Sister must be asking if her mother was working at Stern’s. Kathy nodded; yes, she was. It took an interminable time for her to understand that the fire hadn’t been at Moncur Street, but at Stern’s, that Lily was involved, not Con.
They took her to a Seamen’s Hostel down by the Broomielaw, where other relatives were gathering, hoping against hope for good news. They looked at each other only briefly and spoke little. An instinct was at work. By then it was clear that the fire had been a major one, that many had died, and some of the people in the room would undoubtedly be told that their relatives were dead. So there was a feeling, a tacit agreement, that you didn’t want to speak to one of the potentially bereaved, in case the bad luck that had already settled on them would somehow rub off on you. It was stupid, but it was there. If you kept to yourself then it wasn’t happening to you, it was happening to those other people, and as you weren’t one of them, you should keep your distance. It took a long time, days in fact, and they were all thinking the same thing. Even though you knew there was no chance, until you were told, officially and irrevocably, you just didn’t believe it. Lily could be anywhere, Kathy decided. Maybe she hadn’t been inside the warehouse when the fire broke out, what if she’d nipped out to a nearby shop for something? And even if she had been inside, in the confusion she could’ve got out without anyone noticing and gone into shock. She could, at this very minute and two days later, be wandering the streets, cold, hungry and lost, but alive. It was possible, there were even stranger stories than that in the Weekly News every Friday. The day after the fire Con and Aggie, accompanied as ever by Father McCabe, had gone to James Watt Street where, much to Kathy’s fury, they had knelt in the street and prayed. Kathy had broken away, she was having no part of this, and instead she had run through the streets, still heavy with the acrid, choking smell of burning, shouting Lily’s name till her throat ached and her legs gave way. There was no answer.
Twenty-two people died in the fire, spanning the same cross section of men and women that Lily had described, aged from seventeen to sixty-four, all of them so badly burned that identification took days. The number of corpses was too much for the city mortuary to cope with, so the gym of the Western Infirmary was used as a temporary mortuary, and years later those who had worked in the hospital, all fair
ly unshockable folk, could still recall, with a shudder, the smell of burnt flesh that permeated the corridors from the basement, upwards and outwards. They talked in hushed tones of how the arms of the blackened bodies still stretched out in death, as if in a last desperate attempt to escape through the barred windows. Lying on their backs, warped and twisted by the flames, each one indistinguishable from the others, their arms reached straight upwards, an image that would stay with those who saw it, as indelibly as the sight of their terrified faces would remain in the memories of those who had tried to rescue them.
Chasing Angels Page 7