Instead, she spent many a sixpence at the cinema, a real cinema, she boasted, not a chapel one like Central Hall. Sometimes she went with Tara and delicate Auntie Ellen, and sometimes with Kathleen and Bridie. Both her girls would have preferred to go dancing, but they could not yet afford the necessary dress and high-heeled shoes, even if they could find them in the shops.
Martha was glad to have at least two of her children – in her opinion, the two more vulnerable ones – corralled with her in the cinema. Girls that went dancing often became pregnant – and the last thing Martha wanted was any more mouths to feed. A lifetime’s observation of errant young seamen, who haunted the area of the docks and who could become the likely fathers of such offspring, had taught her, she said.
She made Tara laugh by telling her, ‘At the hint of a baby, they take off, like rats into the river.’
As the snow melted and a slow spring crept in, clothing Princes Park in faintest green, Martha decided that it was time to go house-hunting. She had not yet been able to pin Patrick down as to the amount of rent he would pay. But she guessed that, now he was experienced, he was earning more.
Strangely, in a time of general shortages, there were quite a number of houses with the To Let sign in their windows. When men were called up and, as a result, incomes shrank, young wives gave up their homes and went back to live with their mothers ‘for the duration’, as they put it.
She put on a decent flowered pinafore, wrapped her black shawl around her, and went to see the agent whose address was on most of the signs.
He was not particularly keen to show her any of the houses available until she mentioned that her husband was a city fireman. Then he immediately produced keys to two of them, for which she signed with a cross.
After living in a court, the streets of Toxteth seemed almost frighteningly wide. Some had shade trees in bud, and each house had a well-swept front step abutting the pavement. The street to which the agent had directed her was empty, except for one or two passers-by and three little girls playing hopscotch.
She found the house she was seeking, and hesitantly unlocked the door. She stepped into a narrow hall, and was faced with a steep staircase to the upper floor. To her right was a closed door.
She cautiously opened it and peeped into a room fairly well lit by a bow window. It had a fireplace littered with ashes; the bare wooden floor looked as if it had not been swept for months. She tiptoed through to a further door, as if she might disturb someone. Behind it, she found a living room with a large kitchen range and a kitchen sink, equally littered with the debris of months.
Through the window of this room, she could see a small yard enclosed by a high brick wall. At the end of the yard was a little shed. She wondered if the shed was a lavatory.
She stood in the doorway, her fingers on the brass knob, ready to retreat. It was so silent, so empty.
She reckoned that upstairs there must be the same space. She took in a big breath – it was silly to be so nervous.
She immediately became aware of an all-too-familiar smell.
Jaspers!
She stepped hastily back into the hall, lest a bug drop on her from the lintel. Bugs go to bed in the daytime, she knew that, but they did not take their odour with them. Her room in the court had been permanently bug-ridden and she was very keen that she might get rid of the pests by obtaining a decent house: most of her family had been bitten by them so often that they were practically immune to the great red welts they produced, but the children would be glad enough not to have to endure any more.
She turned and scuttled out of the house with such speed that she forgot to lock the front door.
She walked over to the second house and found the same problem.
Indignantly, she marched back to the agent, slammed the keys onto the counter, and said sharply, ‘They both got jaspers.’
The agent sighed. He had taken for granted that a woman in a black shawl would be bug-ridden already and would not be bothered by the presence of vermin.
‘And what rent would you be asking for a house – with bugs?’
‘The rent’s controlled – seven shillings a week.’
‘Holy Mother! All that!’
‘That’s a low rent for a through house. We can get the house fumigated for you.’
Martha was shocked at the rent, and ignored the offer of fumigation. ‘Haven’t you got nothing smaller – with no bugs?’
‘Not in this district. We do usually get the houses stoved before each tenant goes in; then keeping them vermin-free depends on the tenant.’
That would get rid of the vermin, thought Martha – but not the rent.
‘Ta,’ she responded, and walked out. She joined a nearby queue in front of a grocer’s, and was cheered by finding that it was for sausages.
At teatime, so tired that she hardly knew how to stand, she shoved a plate of sausage and potatoes under Patrick’s nose, and then sat down. He was late and the children were out at play, despite the blackout. She told him crossly about the houses.
‘Try down by the Dingle – it’s real nice down there, by the petrol installation.’
‘What about you doing something about it?’
‘What with learning the city, I’m finished,’ he grumbled. ‘I been driving all over the place so I can find anywhere in the dark.’
‘What about me? I’m never off me feet. How do you think I got them sausages? And then I been to see the houses and I come home and cooked and fed the kids.’
‘Ach! Stop it. You don’t know you’re born. All you got to do is find a place not too far from where any of us works – and let them stove it.’
‘And pay seven bob a week in rent?’ she retorted. ‘It’s only one and sixpence here.’
‘Get yourself a regular job like everybody else is doing, and we’ll manage it.’
She swallowed. She felt like murdering him, but she was too tired.
He finished his tea, belched and got up. He slowly put on his uniform jacket again and buttoned it up.
‘Going down to the Coburg?’ she sneered.
He ignored the gibe, opened the door of the room and swung out, only to collide with old Joseph, the pickpocket from the second floor. He was about to ascend the stairs to his room.
For a moment, they were so close that old Joseph had to restrain himself from neatly taking the change out of his neighbour’s pocket. Never a good idea to rob the neighbours, however; he had always held to this precept and never had stolen anything in the house; the result was that, despite his occupation, he was regarded as reasonably trustworthy.
Patrick grinned at him, and continued down the front steps.
To old Joseph, the blackout was a godsend. In the dead dark, quietly and unhurriedly shuffling the length of a cinema queue, making the most of the dim outline of his aged bentness, he could pick several pockets or open a handbag, before vanishing, unsuspected, into the blackness of the street itself.
Unbeknown to Martha or Patrick, he was enjoying himself teaching young Joe, their son, the techniques of his craft. Joe regarded this as a great game; he had enlisted his younger sister, Ellie, into aiding him by begging from a woman to distract her attention, while he neatly took change from her pocket or, preferably, something edible out of her shopping bag.
A few days later, it was Brendan, the seaman son of Kitty Callaghan, his neighbour on the second floor, who, while on leave, alerted Patrick to what was happening.
Young Joe had made the worst of mistakes by trying to take Brendan’s wallet out of his back pocket.
He caught the child by the wrist, held him down against his thigh, pulled down his shorts and gave him a thorough spanking. Then, holding him by his guernsey, he shook him hard.
‘You ever try that again,’ he hissed, ‘and I’ll belt you till you bleed.’ He flung the howling boy away from him and ran down the stairs to meet his girlfriend outside the court.
Martha came to the bottom of the stairs to see what the noise was ab
out, and Brendan smiled at her as he passed her: he had no doubt that Martha would sort out her son in short order.
She met Joe hitching up his trousers, as he descended. He was still crying.
Faced with the need for an immediate explanation, he reduced his wails to a whimper, and said, ‘Brendan pulled me pants down and tried to do something to me.’
Number Nine was sorting his precious cigarette card collection on the floor. He now glanced up nervously at his brother; his mother had warned him not to let anybody touch him or pull his shorts down.
Pat was reading the football news. He looked up, as Martha dragged the boy into their room.
‘Tell your dad,’ she ordered, only half believing the accusation, because Brendan had smiled at her.
The paper was put down. Gimlet eyes glared at the boy. Faltering, Joe repeated the accusation.
There was silence in the room. Patrick knew he must be careful. Someone upstairs would have heard the rumpus and news of the accusation might flow through the court. Honour would demand that he face Brendan with it, and, likely, he would have to fight him. But he had known the lad since he was a kid; he was a nice enough lad, despite his rogue of a father, and he had more girls floating round him than most young men.
He again looked hard at the squirming ten-year-old, still held in his mother’s firm grip.
He took a chance, and ordered, ‘Now tell me what really happened.’
‘Like I said.’ Joe was scared, and he wriggled harder in hope of escape.
His father stood up, and said, ‘I don’t believe it. Brendan isn’t like that.’
There was no answer.
Patrick suddenly hit him across the face, and Joe yelped and clapped a hand to his stinging cheek, while Number Nine ducked instinctively.
‘You don’t have to do that,’ interrupted Martha. ‘The kid’s scared.’
‘I’ll make him scared. Come on, let’s have it.’
No reply.
He slapped the other side of his son’s face.
‘Want any more?’ he asked.
Joe turned his face into his mother’s ample skirts and howled. Martha hastily slammed the door into the hall, to contain the noise.
Then she put her arm round the boy. ‘Come on, love. You can tell your dad anything. He’ll take care of it.’ She looked warningly up at her husband.
‘He said I was trying to pinch his wallet, and I wasn’t,’ Joe blurted out.
Ellie had been curled up in a corner, trying to keep warm under an old coat while her dress, soaked by rain, dried in front of the fire. Now she unwisely put in a word which she imagined might exonerate her brother. She said, ‘He isn’t good enough to try wallets yet.’
Her father spun round. ‘What?’ he roared. ‘What’re you saying?’
It all came out. Ellie thought it was a game and said so. Joe admitted the truth of it.
Pat strode to the door and, as he ran up the stairs, Martha shouted up to him, ‘Now, don’t hit him – he’s old.’
No, thought Patrick. But I’ll tell him. And when the startled old man opened his door cautiously, Patrick kicked it wide – and told him succinctly what he thought of such a creep.
Expert at looking old and helpless, Joseph cringed. He said he had done it just to amuse the children. He never thought of them putting it into practice. For sure, he didn’t – not with a neighbour, that was certain.
Defeated, Patrick shouted at him not to dare to do it again, and clumped downstairs. He wasn’t past stealing from the docks himself; he had done it many a time. But docks, ships and big stores were fair game and belonged to Them, as Martha often said. Neighbours were different – they were, well, neighbours – and you had to live with them, and simply watch that they did not steal from you.
Downstairs, he threatened both children with a real belting if they tried anything like that again.
White-faced at the thought of what a leather belt with a brass buckle could wreak on their respective behinds, they weepily agreed to instant reformation.
Martha sighed, and pulled the mattress down from the wall.
‘Get to bed,’ she ordered. She turned to Number Nine. ‘And you,’ she added sharply. The child knocked his pack of cards together and hastily scrambled to his feet.
As the mattress flopped to the floor, the air-raid siren began its frantic warning whoop.
THIRTY-ONE
‘It Were a Landmine’
1965
‘That was the worst air raid I ever knowed,’ confided Martha to the long-suffering Angie. ‘It were called the May Blitz.’
She was seated on a hard-backed chair by the window of the ward, her bare feet on the chilly linoleum floor, while Angie changed the sheets on her bed and then emptied the contents of the commode into a slop bucket.
‘Really?’ she replied.
‘Yes. We had seven solid nights of bombing, and that last night they nearly done us in.’
Only half listening, Angie turned to glance at the two dementia cases in the far corner of the room. One of them was becoming restive and was pulling at the rope which tethered her securely to the end of her bed. The other one, her folded hands on her lap, was sitting on the side of the bed, her rope drooping onto the floor.
Angie clicked her tongue irritably. Better have them both back in bed and tie them down, as soon as she had finished with Martha.
Undeterred by Angie’s apparent lack of interest, Martha continued.
‘We was in the cellar, as usual, and I were that worried about Kathleen and Bridie. They was going to the pictures – or that’s what they told me they was going to do.’ She laughed. ‘A pair of minxes, they was; chasing the lads was more likely, I reckon.
‘When they tried to get home, the street had been closed off by the police and we had been moved to a rest centre in the basement of a school and they was sent to join us there.’
She paused to clear her throat, and then went on reflectively, ‘There was over a hundred people crammed in with us; some of them had been there for days, bombed out and nowhere to go. And there was only one lavatory: you can imagine the mess; even the court was better than that.
‘Pat told me later that They refused to put in more lavatories, or some mattresses to sleep on – nothing to make it comfortable – because they wanted the bombed-out to be forced to go and find new homes by themselves; They didn’t want them to settle in and live in the shelter.’
She snorted, as she added, ‘I think we would have starved, if it hadn’t been for the WVS, coming in with soup and sandwiches regardless of the bombing. Wonderful volunteer ladies, they was. Real brave.’
Angie had given Martha’s pillow a final pat and had slammed the lid on the slop bucket. She paused, however, before getting her patient back into bed, not quite believing that she had heard aright.
‘Only one loo, Martha. It couldn’t be?’
Martha shook a finger at her. ‘It was deliberate, as I just told you. To drive people out; that means women with young kids – and no transport – to find a place for themselves. Imagine a city with miles and miles of ruins, if you can. Near hopeless, it had become.’
‘Good Lord!’
Martha rose slowly, but steadily, ready to get into bed again, and then she asked, out of curiosity, ‘Do you know what a landmine’s like? ’Cos that’s what we got in the middle of the court. It was a dud and it didn’t explode, praise be.’
‘No, what is it like?’ replied Angie, her interest now aroused.
‘It’s like a big red pillar box – except it isn’t red. The police got everyone tiptoeing out of the court, fearing it would explode before they got us all past it – it had gone halfway through the paving stones.’
The new occupier of Pat’s bed said slowly, almost sleepily, ‘I know what a landmine’s like, my God.’
Martha was startled. They were the first words the woman had spoken since she had been brought in a couple of days before. According to Angie, she had been transferred from the hospi
tal because she, like Martha, had no home to go to.
Martha turned towards her, amazed that, unlike the other patients in the room, she could speak. Oh, blessed relief! Talk!
‘You do, Missus?’ Martha asked gently.
‘Oh, aye. They’re as big as a pillar box, like you said. One fell on our house.’ The woman stopped, and then said in a faltering voice. ‘Blew out three houses. Killed me hubby and me four kids. They said I were lucky – because I were visiting me cousin down the road at the time.’
She paused again, and then added bitterly, ‘I don’t think I was lucky.’
Holding Martha’s arm ready to help her into bed, Angie gazed compassionately down on the new patient.
‘Don’t say that, Missus,’ she pleaded. ‘It must’ve been awful. But you’re here still.’
‘I don’t want to be.’ Though vehement, the woman still sounded a little sleepy, as she went on, ‘And the pills you keep stuffing into me don’t help, I can tell you. I can barely put two words together.’
At the latter remark, Martha gave a little laugh. Then she said in the most consoling tone she could muster, ‘None of us wants to be here, love. I’m real sorry about your hubby and the kids. I know how terrible it is to have nobody left – and I’m real glad to have you next door to me to talk to.’ She smiled her most winning smile at her fellow sufferer.
The woman nodded. ‘That’s proper nice of you to say so,’ she replied politely, and sighed. She lifted her head slightly from her pillow, and asked, ‘Nurse, could you give me a glass of water – I’m fair parched.’
Full of pity, Angie left Martha standing, while she went to a little centre table, where there was a jug of water and a glass, to be shared by all five occupants of the room. She poured the water and handed it to the woman. The glass was drained and handed back to her.
‘Ta ever so.’
For the moment, Martha could not think of anything more to say, so she stared longingly out of the window, where a ray of sunshine was lighting up a broken statue of Cupid in the middle of a weed-ridden lawn. She dreamed of being allowed to sit outside in the sun and breathe real fresh air, but, according to Angie, Matron disapproved of the idea.
A Cuppa Tea and an Aspirin Page 22