The Bells of Scotland Road

by Ruth Hamilton

  Martin gave his full attention to the senior brother.

  ‘We are sending deputations to America and to London,’ he said. ‘With a view to establishing our order in the new world and in the capital.’ This fellow still made Nicholas feel . . . strange. It was difficult to know Martin Waring, because the man was too careful, far too perfect. He was almost artificial, Nicholas decided. Brother Martin, still a lay member of the fraternity, did his job well, never complained, was never late for mass or benediction. Yet he had made no friends, because he did not discuss himself, made no mention of his earlier life. It was as if Martin had materialized out of thin air, a new but adult creature who had knocked at the door and begged to be admitted. Who was he? ‘Six will be going to America,’ Nicholas added. ‘Or, if you would prefer it, you may opt for the East End of London.’

  Martin sat up and listened intently.

  ‘We feel that you would be very useful,’ continued Nicholas. ‘You are obviously a clever man and I feel that you would find such missions stimulating. Of course, you would return here eventually. What do you think of the idea?’

  Martin breathed slowly, in, out, in, out. Liam kept quiet. This was a decision that Martin should make alone, yet he was fully aware that Liam would speak up as soon as Brother Nicholas had left. If only he could leave Liam Bell behind for ever. If only he could step out into the world without carrying that other person. ‘I’m honoured that you have asked me, Frère Nicholas.’

  ‘You need not give your answer yet,’ said Nicholas. ‘Take a day or two to think it over. If you have any questions, please feel free to come to my office during evening recreation. Your ability to teach adults to read and calculate is of inestimable value in our field of work. Literacy breeds confidence among offenders. They are more likely to obtain proper employment once they can read and write. America needs us, Brother Martin, as does London.’

  Martin watched Brother Nicholas as he walked away.

  ‘Well?’ asked Liam. ‘What are you waiting for?’

  Martin was waiting for a sign from God.

  ‘I’d be safe over there,’ said Liam. ‘We would both be safe.’

  America. America was a very sinful country. Chicago, prohibition, gang warfare, Mafia, speakeasies. The country had gone through some troubled times. ‘We’re needed,’ insisted Liam.

  Martin nodded. He was needed, and Liam would be quieter in America or in London. The concept of putting a few hundred or several thousand miles between Liam and his missing property was attractive.

  ‘Are we going?’ Liam’s tone was excited.

  ‘Yes,’ said Martin. ‘We’re going.’

  ‘Good. Because that’s what God wants us to do.’ Liam Bell, having said his piece, was quiet for the rest of the day.

  Maureen was waiting for Cathy. Whenever Cathy went away without her, Maureen was quiet, almost sulky. But Richard and Edith had decided that visits to Scotland Road might upset the older girl, so Cathy had gone to Nicky’s wedding in the company of Anthony.

  Richard watched Maureen as she ran down the path to greet Cathy. He looked at his wife, shook his head sadly. ‘Cathy won’t be here for ever,’ he said. ‘And I worry in case Maureen’s close attention might impede Cathy’s development in some way. The poor child is shadowed constantly.’

  Edith sighed, put down her book and removed the reading glasses she had been forced to wear of late. ‘Mother Ignatius expressed the same concern,’ she said. ‘It’s all very well Maureen having a job at the school, but it’s as if she depends on Cathy for her sanity.’

  Richard moved the curtain and studied the two girls. ‘That’s it exactly,’ he declared. ‘Nail on the head again, my dear. Without Cathy, Maureen is a lost soul. I wonder why.’ Tears sprang to Edith’s eyes. For a supposedly tough woman, she had certainly been emotional in recent years. It had not been easy for anyone, but Edith had taken to heart the fact that Maureen’s attempted suicide had happened in her house. She should have watched the girl more closely, should have been there to help and advise. ‘It’s Cathy’s innocence, I think,’ she said eventually. ‘Her cleanliness is what attracts Maureen. Maureen cannot be a child ever again, but she stays as near as she can to what she remembers of childhood.’

  Richard saw his wife’s expression. ‘There is nothing you could have done, Edith.’

  ‘And there is much that my nephew should not have done,’ she answered.

  This was haunting Edith. As a doctor, Richard felt that he should know what to do, how to help and offer comfort. But Edith was too intelligent for platitudes. The police had found no trace of Liam. Richard had contacted the Liverpool force on several occasions, but there seemed to be no trail to follow. ‘I wonder where he is,’ he said now to himself.

  ‘God knows,’ replied Edith. ‘Only God and the devil can be sure of Liam’s whereabouts. Mere mortals have no chance of finding him. You know, he was strange as a child.’

  ‘I remember.’

  Edith closed her eyes. ‘And now, of course, we have Anthony and Bridie to worry about. I spoke to Bridie on the telephone this afternoon. She has confined Shauna to her room for misbehaving. The child tried to spoil the wedding breakfast.’

  ‘Up to her tricks again?’ Richard smiled inwardly. Unlike his wife, he had a grudging respect for the difficult girl.

  ‘Father Brennan has suggested that Bridie should apply for an annulment. Bridie refuses. She says she might consider the dissolution once Aunt Theresa has died. Theresa still has moments of clarity, it seems.’

  ‘Will an annulment be granted?’ asked Richard.

  Edith nodded. ‘She was forced into the marriage by her father. Also, Bridie is a rich widow. Most things are purchasable these days.’

  The doctor touched his wife’s arm. ‘It’s not like you to be so cynical, my dear.’ After thirty years of marriage, he knew this good woman like the back of his own hand. She was generous to a fault, hard-working, cheerful in the face of all kinds of adversity. ‘Sam wanted them to be together,’ he said softly. ‘Sam knew how young she was.’

  ‘They should be married,’ insisted Edith. ‘It’s so difficult, because I love both of them. But Cathy is . . .’ Her voice tailed away as she looked through the window at Maureen and Cathy.

  ‘Cathy is not ours,’ Richard reminded her yet again.

  Edith inclined her head. ‘She is the nearest we have, just as she seems to be the nearest Maureen has. And I hate to think of Cathy growing up confused because of our nephew and her mother. Things should be tidier.’

  Richard sat down. There were bigger issues to think about. ‘There will be war,’ he said after a silence. ‘Before the end of the decade, Hitler will be growing far too big for his boots.’

  Edith simply sighed. ‘They know he’s a rabble-rouser,’ she replied. ‘The German people are not stupid, Richard.’

  A year earlier, Richard might have agreed with his wife. Even six months ago, the power of Hitler seemed to have waned with the loss of two million votes and thirty-four seats. Yet, in January of this year, an ageing President von Hindenburg had declared Hitler Chancellor of Germany. ‘Senile decay,’ muttered the doctor under his breath.

  ‘Yet she remains physically healthy,’ replied Edith, whose hearing was very sharp.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘Aunt Theresa. She’s sound in body, absent in mind.’

  ‘I was referring to von Hindenburg.’

  Edith sometimes wondered about her husband’s fixation with German politics. He concerned himself with atom bombs, chemical weapons, the Reichstag, Italy. There was enough at home to worry about without taking Europe on board. She left the room and went to discuss supper with Mrs Cornwell.

  Richard Spencer rubbed a hand across his aching brow. A hysterical and uneducated megalomaniac was about to stamp his mark on the world. The jumped-up little madman would goose-step his way across France, no doubt, would threaten Britain by shaking a small, leather-clad fist across the channel.

 
With the burning of the Reichstag, Germany had lost more than its architectural seat of government. Thousands had stood by helplessly to watch the funeral pyre of their democracy. Hitler had instigated a decree suspending all human rights in Germany. Freedom of speech and of the press was a thing of the past, while the German people were forbidden to assemble for any reason. Radio stations were now in the clutches of fascism, their programming organized by Dr Goebbels, an expert in propaganda.

  ‘Where will it end?’ sighed Richard. Jews were being cast out of their jobs, were forbidden to teach in schools and universities. Works by Jewish writers had been incinerated, while their businesses were being forced to close. Hitler aimed to create the perfect Aryan race. Dr Goebbels was encouraging the masses to rid themselves of the ‘Jewish vampires’. Jews were migrating in their thousands all over Europe.

  ‘It’s the perfection that’s terrifying,’ Richard told himself. ‘Because from perfection come the largest flaws.’

  Cathy ran in, put her arms round Uncle Richard’s waist.

  He smiled at her, ran a hand through her hair.

  ‘What are you thinking about?’ she asked. He was always thinking, always reading or writing.

  He was thinking about war. ‘I was waiting for you,’ he said. The lie was the smaller sin.

  Twenty-one

  She missed him most when the bombs fell, when she and every other living subject felt naked, unsure and childlike.

  It was not too late to escape, Bridie kept telling herself. The war was some twenty months old. If the Luftwaffe’s current performances continued, hostilities could go on indefinitely. Why would she not go? Why didn’t she pack up, get Muth dressed and ready, take herself, Shauna and the old woman to Astleigh Fold, into relative peace and comfort?

  ‘I just can’t,’ she said aloud. Many of those who had chosen evacuation had returned to take their chances alongside the rest of their families. Heroes populated every pub, every shop, every office. Men, women and children went out daily and nightly to dig, often with bare hands, in rubble that contained remnants of life and death. This was a brave city. Battered, bruised and bloody, Liverpool remained defiant.

  Muth would not move, anyway. In her clearer moments, Theresa Bell stood at her window and cursed Hitler passionately; at other times, she screamed her ire at the Kaiser, the Boers and the warden who waved a stick at her whenever she showed a chink of light. ‘Bastard,’ she howled. ‘It’s my bloody house and my bloody shop if you must know.’ Often, she called out for Sam and for her dead husband. With her mind and body withered, poor old Theresa was in no fit state to be shifted. She refused to sleep in a Morrison, refused to leave her bedroom except during the hours of daylight.

  Bridie sipped at her tea, stared through candlelight into the cage where Shauna and Tildy slept. If Anthony could just be here. If only he were nearer, close enough to visit occasionally. But Anthony had a school to run. He and Edith were in charge of a hundred displaced children.

  She stood up and carried the candle across the room until she reached the fireplace mirror. Sam’s tobacco tin remained where it had always been, between the clock and a large brass candlestick. Sam had been a good father to Bridie, had managed, in just a few short months, to compensate for years spent in the dubious care of Thomas Murphy. Even in death, Da had been a bad influence, because Maureen Costigan’s attempted suicide had been a copy of Thomas Murphy’s accident. That last act of Da’s summed up the whole of his life. He had taken from people, had seldom contributed to life. He had ridden into death on the back of a stolen horse that was destined to win a classic race.

  Bridie placed the candle in Sam’s candlestick, looked at her reflection. Candlelight was kind, she told herself. It ran a smoothing iron over thirty-eight years of life, rendered her young again. Anthony. Even unspoken, the name made her shiver with anticipation. With Eugene, there had been warmth and the joy that accompanies youth. Sam Bell had minded her, had altered his spartan lifestyle to encompass Bridie and her daughters. But Anthony . . . Anthony was different.

  She shivered, felt chilled to the core because she could not have her man. The Church had removed the padlocks from its gates, had granted an annulment on the grounds of Bridie’s original antipathy towards the marriage to Sam. But Muth remained alive. Already confused, Theresa might have been shocked to death by a union between her grandson and her daughter-in-law. It was another waiting game, Bridie mused. They waited for the war to end, waited for Muth to die. And since Bridie and Anthony loved Muth dearly, they wanted her to remain alive, happy and as healthy as might be possible for a woman of almost ninety.

  Anthony was forty-odd miles away. In her mind’s eye, she saw him standing beside their bed of sin in his little cottage. He was tanned, muscular and very, very beautiful. He was also outrageously funny, causing her to scream with laughter at the oddest moments. When he touched her, she came to life. Without him, she was nothing, nobody.

  Bridie smiled sadly at herself and sat down in Sam’s chair. Sam wanted her to be with Anthony. Sometimes, when Anthony spoke to her, she saw a little of Sam in his frown.

  ‘Even if we marry, it will be a sin,’ she whispered now. The pleasure they had taken from one another was too intense to be pure. Yet hadn’t God created man? Hadn’t He decreed that the race must continue through acts of love? What on earth was a woman to do when she found the perfect lover? She would not think of him. She would tear up the old sheets she had found, would create some makeshift dressings for the rescue parties. It was silly to sit here remembering the feel of his hands, the sound of his laughter, the scent of his body.

  It began. Flinging aside her bandages, Bridie snuffed out the candle and stood still for a few moments. Antiaircraft fire boomed its quickening temper into the skies. In a lull between explosions, Bridie heard the sickening drone that foretold the coming of Heinkels. The Germans had long ago demolished the fake Liverpool built on the Dee’s banks. In early raids, the enemy had killed rabbits and birds, had unearthed coffins in a cemetery, had thrown their loads onto farmland and into rivers. But they were getting better at their job; they were preparing to destroy English cities. Liverpool, a thriving port, was a prime target.

  ‘Jesus save us,’ Bridie prayed. She lowered herself into the Morrison. ‘It’s all right,’ she told Shauna.

  Shauna sighed, fell asleep again. Tildy, whose ability to remain unconscious was legendary, snored, coughed, turned over.

  The ground shook. Bridie pulled a rosary from her pocket and prayed that this prison of steel girders and mesh would save them. A Morrison was supposed to support, pending rescue, the weight of a whole house, though Bridie had her doubts. Yet the thought of being trapped with others in a large shelter was unbearable.

  As the bombs hit their targets, she heard Anthony’s voice again. ‘Look, the Costigans will stay in Liverpool no matter what. Leave the place, please, please. Bring Grandmuth to Edith. Marry me, live in the cottage with me. We can get a bigger place, then Cathy will live with us, too. You cannot stay there—’

  A tremendous explosion passed through Bell’s Pledges and jarred the bodies of its occupants. ‘Our Father, Who art in heaven . . .’ Bridie’s fingers clutched the beads tightly.

  ‘Mammy?’

  Even Tildy was wakeful. ‘What the bloody hell was that?’

  Had the occasion been different, Bridie might have remarked on Tildy’s language. ‘It was near,’ was all she managed.

  Shauna was sobbing.

  ‘I want you to return to Astleigh Fold,’ said Bridie. More bombs fell.

  ‘No,’ answered Shauna. ‘I ran away last time and I’ll run away again.’

  Tildy sat up, banged her head on the cage. ‘Bloody hell,’ she repeated.

  The smell of fire hung in the air despite tightly closed doors and blacked-out windows. Many of the people Bridie loved were out there at this moment in this mess. Diddy was with the WVS, Billy had become a fireman, Nicky’s Graham and Charlie Costigan were wardens. Graham Pile
had been declared unfit for active duty because of his eyes, and Charlie had never been built for war. Dolly Hanson ran her shop during daylight, manned a first aid post at night. Father Brennan, older and fatter, wandered the streets night after night, helping where he could, blessing when no more could be done.

  ‘Nicky’ll be in a shelter,’ said Tildy. Like Bridie, she had been accounting for those close to her. Everyone was very proud of Nicky. She worked at Littlewood’s, which had become a centre for the censoring of all parcels and written messages. Nicky had unearthed from within herself a tremendous talent for code-breaking. She opened the parcels and the letters, scrutinized everything that passed through her hands. ‘I hope me mam’s not hurt,’ added Tildy.

  Bridie held on to the weeping Shauna. The bombs were dropping fast, crashing into buildings and making the earth shiver. Then a new sound arrived, half-screech, half-drone, the unmistakeable death-throes of a doomed bomber.

  ‘We’ve got one,’ declared Tildy.

  Where would it land? Bridie wondered.

  Tildy listened hard. ‘Fighters,’ she said after a moment or two. ‘There’s Spitfires out there, Bridie.’

  The bomber exploded, caused further detonations, then the raid ceased. Bridie and Tildy listened to the enemy’s retreat, heard the ack-ack of British fighters bidding a less than fond goodbye to the intruders.

  ‘It’s getting worse,’ grumbled Shauna petulantly.

  Tildy prodded the girl with a none too gentle finger. ‘Do as your mam says – get to Astleigh Fold.’ Tildy had a fondness for Shauna, saw in the fourteen-year-old a replica of herself. People thought Shauna was naughty, but she wasn’t particularly so. In Tildy’s book, Shauna was merely clever and determined. She knew what she wanted and she went for it, allowing nothing to stand in her path. The girl’s enormous love for her mother was what kept her here in this city of hell.

  Bridie finished her decade, blessed herself and turned once more to her daughter. ‘You are selfish, Shauna,’ she accused. ‘I love you. You are my daughter and I want you to survive.’