Christmas on the Mersey

by Annie Groves

  ‘She went home and got back into bed,’ Pop said. ‘Not a scratch on her.’

  ‘And poor Danny gets knocked sideways saving the entire docks from deviation.’

  ‘Devastation,’ Pop said in a very low voice.

  ‘I know what I mean, Pop.’

  Pop nodded, puffing on his pipe. Dolly always had the last word.

  For the third night Kitty was busy giving out cups of tea, buckets of water and words of sympathy to the men in uniform, who were helping the civilians of the area to put out fires. She had not slept much, and knew that when she did finally get to bed she might never get up again. With Danny in hospital and Tommy, too, she was too frightened to stop running here, there and everywhere in case the Good Lord caught up with her as well. However, she knew that Dolly and Pop, along with the Feeny sisters, were all visiting the hospital, jumping in to help where they could. Kitty didn’t know where she would be without them.

  The docks were battered but not beaten, and fire-fighters, dropping with exhaustion, were still battling to save what they could. Many crews came over from miles around, even from the other side of the Mersey, desperately trying to put out fires that had been blazing all night. By the look of them, thought Kitty, the docks would be burning a long while yet, as they were full of oil and wood.

  ‘St James’ Church copped it,’ one fire-fighter said as he took a well-earned cup of tea from her in the NAAFI canteen.

  ‘Gladstone Dock warehouses are still burning, and the oil refinery works will blaze for days, by the look of it,’ his pal said as he pinched a few strands of tobacco from his tin to roll his own cigarette, lit it and inhaled deeply.

  ‘Your Danny did the business – he’s a hero, that lad.’

  Kitty felt so proud, but she was going to give him a good talking-to when he was on the mend. Fancy not telling her he had a wonky clock! She knew that there were many heroes last night, and the night before that, too.

  ‘There but for the grace of God,’ she whispered. Her little house was only a spit away from the dockyard devastation and not a window broken. Swallow­ing a painful lump in her throat and feeling the tears well up in her eyes, she turned to get more cups. She didn’t want anybody to see her tears – their Danny would go mad if he thought she was crying over him. He didn’t like a fuss.

  Like everybody else, Kitty would never give in, even though many dwellings round about had been levelled by the bombs. There was word going around that people would have to move out of the area if it got much worse. But when she’d seen Tommy this afternoon he’d been adamant he was not going to be evacuated again, no matter what.

  Kitty could not see how much worse it could get. Nevertheless, while she was needed here, she would carry on, because that was what she had to do.

  ‘You won’t catch me giving in to a jumped-up little Charlie Chaplin impersonator!’ Dolly said with feeling the next day, and the rest of the women on the WVS van laughed. They were all exhausted, but still managed to brew huge pots of tea and serve it with smiles on their faces – albeit weary ones – and comforting words. Everybody was done in, so there was no point in moaning about it.

  A determined woman and a dedicated member of the WVS Housewife Section, Dolly felt she had the capacity to carry on no matter what, because that’s the way she had always lived her life. She took nothing for granted. And, strangely, she seemed to have the energy of a lively two-year-old who could not sit still for five minutes without fidgeting.

  ‘Sure, it’s hard to sit around doing nothing,’ she said, pushing up her sleeves, ‘when there’s plenty I could be getting on with.’ She handed a mug of hot tea to another fireman. ‘I have to thank God that I’m able, as there’s many who cannot help themselves.’

  Eventually, after making countless cups of hot sweet tea, the WVS ran out of supplies.

  ‘Dolly, you look done in, love.’ Pop had just come from Balliol Baths where there had been a collection of cardboard coffins ready for use a few weeks ago. Now they were filled and the dead had been put in the drained swimming pool ready for collection and burial. His weather-beaten face looked as weary as everybody else’s as he beckoned his wife from the tea van.

  ‘We haven’t seen each other since you took me to visit Tommy and Danny in the hospital.’ Last night had seen the third consecutive night of bombing and terrifying raids. Christmas was fast approaching and there had been no let-up so far.

  ‘I heard the Royal Infirmary was hit again,’ Pop said. ‘I went along there and saw Sarah; she was fine – stoic as always, like her mother.’

  ‘Rita’s supposed to be at Linacre Lane hospital but I gather from someone who came by earlier they haven’t seen her. Bootle General is taking casualties and then sending the injured elsewhere.’

  ‘Aye,’ said Pop, ‘and they’re using the clinic across the road for emergency cases, so Rita might be there. I’ll check it out just as soon as we get you sorted.’ He beckoned her from the van and she did not protest. She had been so busy looking after everybody else – now it was Pop’s turn.

  Pop put his arm around Dolly’s shoulders. ‘Nancy’s back at the house making something to eat – you never know, it might be edible.’ They laughed: Nancy was a terrible cook. ‘But at least it will be hot. Violet’s helping out at the town hall. And I went to see Tommy again. He’s going mad because he can’t go collecting shrapnel.’

  ‘What about his ears?’ Dolly sighed, partly with relief and partly with exhaustion.

  ‘Aye,’ said Pop as they sauntered back to Empire Street, ‘he’s still got two, and they’re beginning to work, but he said the volume is still a bit low.’ Pop smiled and Dolly laughed. Their sense of humour had not been injured, thank the Lord.

  ‘Kitty’s kept the NAAFI open for the last four days,’ Pop said, puffing away on his pipe. ‘She and the other NAAFI girls are doing a sterling job down there on the front line of the docks.’

  ‘I’ve told Nancy to make a few pans of stew; we’re going to need them with everyone working so hard. Even Nancy can manage stew.’

  ‘Where are we getting the ingredients for a few pans of stew?’ Pop asked, and Dolly gave him an old-fashioned look that told him to ask no questions and he would be told no lies.

  ‘They’ll all be exhausted when they get back.’ Every street, every neighbour, every household was being used to the full in this awful time. People were dropping with the want of a sleep. Some were sitting on the pavement with their feet in the gutter, while others were wandering aimlessly. Last night’s raid had been the worst yet. Houses were gone, schools, factories, parts of the docks had burned for three days, but thankfully all the houses in Empire Street had escaped except for a few shattered windows. However, the corner shop and the pub had taken a bit of a battering. They dodged cracked and broken paving flags.

  There was still much to do and Dolly had not only dished out tea on the WVS van but also good advice – telling the homeless where they needed to go to get their ration books renewed, or sorting out burial arrangements for those that needed to know.

  ‘Come on, Doll, you’ve done enough for now,’ Pop said. ‘An empty sack won’t hold up, you know.’

  ‘You’re right, Pop, I won’t argue with you there,’ Dolly said, waving goodbye to a woman she had helped out this morning.

  ‘Come on, love, let’s get you home and get a bit of food inside you,’ Pop said.

  Dolly, noticing the concerned look in Pop’s eyes, said in return, ‘I didn’t do it alone. Let’s go and get some breakfast.’

  ‘You haven’t slept for three days, Doll,’ Pop said, knowing his wife would carry on until she dropped if need be, ‘and breakfast time came and went long ago.’

  ‘Everybody’s in the same boat,’ Dolly said wearily. Her bed would be a welcome sight if the raids kept off. Surely the Germans must be running out of bombs by now.

  ‘I’ll just nip home for half an hour. Make sure all is as it should be,’ she said, and Pop sighed with relief.

  W
hen he brought her a hot cup of tea and a sandwich from the back kitchen, she was fast asleep in the chair by the fire – and she still had her coat on.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Even the raids could not wipe all thoughts of Jack Callaghan from Rita’s mind. And as she now said another quick prayer of thanks to anybody in heaven who might be listening, for sparing her and her family, she automatically said one for Jack as well. Since the last letter from Jack, he had written to her twice more. He had told her about his injured arm which had caught a bullet from the strafing when his ship went down. It was his left arm which had been injured so he was still able to write, thankfully. From the dates on the letter, Rita thought he couldn’t be too far away now as they didn’t seem to have taken that long to reach her. She had prayed fervently for the Lord to protect him and bring him home safely.

  She knew Bootle was no place for children right now, but neither was that place where Charlie was playing happy families. She had pleaded with Matron for time off so she could go and see Michael and Megan, but as the raids grew heavier – last night being the worst and the one people on the wireless were now calling ‘the Christmas Blitz’ – she knew her place was at the hospital. Her children were safely away from the raids. That’s all that mattered for now and she had to put her own selfish longing to one side until she could get to see them.

  She hoped she would manage to get to Southport to give them their presents on this, the second Christ­mas away from home, if indeed they had returned to Southport.

  Christmas? A time of goodwill to all men. Rita sighed; there had not been much evidence of it when the Luftwaffe did their best to wipe them out. She realised that this war might have broken some people’s sleep but it didn’t break their spirits. Houses destroyed and shattered families were now a common sight, but life had to go on. They must not lie down and take it – they weren’t made that way, as Mam would say. Most people had nothing to begin with after the Depression of the thirties. God alone knew if the forties would kill them or make them stronger.

  No, Rita decided, she must not be selfish. At least she still had a loving family. There were people caught up in the bombings who needed round-the-clock care. She could not desert her post at a time like this. There were just not enough nurses here to cope, even if there were trains to Southport, which she doubted.

  Michael Kennedy was keeping himself busy making paper aeroplanes out of old bits of his father’s newspaper. It was dark. The lights were off as both he and Megan were now in bed, but he’d managed to find an old torch in the cupboard under the stairs of the boarding house in Southport and most nights, when he knew no one was prowling around he would be underneath the covers of his bed either reading his favourite comics, The Beano or The Dandy, or drawing pictures of his favourite planes: Lancaster Bombers or Spitfires.

  Tonight, both his dad and Elsie had gone to the pub up the road and left them both alone with Ruby. He liked Ruby, she was a bit odd but you could have a bit of fun with her, though even Michael was sure that she wasn’t the best person to look after them if anything went wrong. What if the bombs starting to fall again like they had back home? His father said that they were safe in Southport but he had heard some bombers passing over the other night and the noise from the incendiaries had seemed quite near. Michael wasn’t scared, but he did want to do the right thing and look after his sister. He’d promised his mam he would!

  He hadn’t minded coming to Southport. When it had been warmer, he would go with Elsie, Ruby and Megan along to the seafront and sometimes meet up with other boys and have a bit of fun larking about. But since he and Megan hadn’t yet started going to school – his father kept promising but it never seemed to happen – and the stream of visitors to the boarding house had dried up, things had started to become very dull.

  He was disturbed by a small noise from the bed next to his. He immediately recognised it as his sister Megan having another bad dream. Michael threw his own covers off and using the torch to guide him made his way over to his younger sister’s bed.

  He could see by the light of the torch that her little face was creased and anxious. Tossing and turning, she let out small cries which sounded like Mam. It had been like this for a while now. Michael thought that far from getting used to being away from home, Megan was finding things harder and harder. Why couldn’t they just go back to Empire Street?

  ‘Hey, Smidge,’ Michael whispered and nudged her gently awake. Megan rubbed her eyes and looked around her, almost as if she wasn’t sure where she was.

  ‘I had a bad dream that we were lost and Mummy couldn’t find us.’ Megan’s cheeks were flushed as she sat up in bed. Michael thought she might cry and decided it was best to distract her.

  ‘Here, let me show you this.’ He grabbed his comic and started to tell her all about the characters in The Beano. His favourite was Lord Snooty and he always enjoyed seeing him get his just desserts.

  ‘When Uncle Eddy wins the war, can we go home?’ Megan asked her brother, her big eyes looking up at him imploringly. ‘I miss Mummy and don’t like Elsie. She tells me off if I don’t eat the rice pudding, but I don’t like rice pudding.’

  Michael thought for a minute. Maybe he and Megan could write to their mam and ask her to come and visit? He had a shilling that one of the boarders had given him for helping to fix a puncture on his bicycle and he hadn’t spent it yet. Perhaps he could get Ruby to take them to the post office where they could buy a stamp?

  ‘Let’s write Mam a letter. You can tell her all about Southport and ask her to come and see us. She’d like that.’

  Megan’s eyes lit up. ‘I can draw a pretty flower for her.’

  Michael dived under his bed and fished out some paper and a pencil. He’d also ask Ruby if they could buy an envelope.

  By the light of the torch, the two children wrote their mother a letter.

  Nancy, Sarah and Dolly were just finishing off the last of the toast when the letterbox shut with a thud. Sarah, who had not long come in after a night’s duty at the hospital, headed to the back kitchen to get the tray to collect the breakfast dishes while Nancy, at the sound of envelopes scattering across Dolly’s highly polished linoleum, scurried to the lobby.

  Tomorrow was Christmas Eve and there was still much to do.

  ‘I’ve got supplies for the Red Cross parcels, Mam,’ Sarah said, coming in with the tray as Dolly cleared the breakfast things from the table and put them on it. ‘People are so generous,’ she told her mother. ‘Even now, when they have so much to worry about, Christmas seems to bring out the best in people.’ She watched as her sister came in reading a letter, another envelope sticking out of her cardigan pocket. Nancy dropped the remaining mail on the sideboard near the door without looking up from the blue lined paper.

  ‘Well, it brings out the best in some people,’ Sarah added, emptying the brown carrier bag of supplies that had been donated to the hospital and would be added to the Red Cross box ready for distribution later.

  ‘I’ll sort them out in a minute, love,’ Dolly told her daughter.

  Sarah’s latest pursuit when she was off duty was, like Dolly, collecting and sending comforts to prisoners of war. Nancy’s husband, Sid, was a prisoner of war, which gave Sarah and Dolly more incentive – as if they needed any – to collect for men who would not be home with their families this Christmas. She knew Sid would not mind when he received a parcel or a letter, just as long as it was something – it would be a little more like Christmas then, no matter how late.

  ‘She’s eager this morning,’ Sarah said in the back kitchen to her mother after eyeing the Forces mail notepaper. ‘I didn’t know Sid would manage to write from the prison camp.’

  ‘It must have been written months ago – they take ages to get here,’ Dolly said, busy at the sink. ‘Mrs Simpson’s son is a prisoner and they’ve never yet had a letter.’ Dolly had noticed that Nancy rarely wrote to her husband. When Dolly questioned her about it, Nancy said she was trying to steel herself
against bad news. What a lot of tosh! The girl could not be bothered – out of sight out of mind, by the look of it. No wonder Mrs Kerrigan got annoyed with her.

  Collecting the items that would be sent to Geneva and then on to the POW camps in Germany, where Sid had been held since the Germans overtook France last June, Dolly was certainly concerned about her daughter’s increasingly carefree ways. However, as a caring mother, she tried not to show it. They had a lot on their plates and it was hard to know what to deal with first.

  ‘You’d think she would be a bit more interested in helping out with the war effort.’ Sarah knew their Nancy had her silly head in the clouds most of the time, listening to dance tunes on the BBC Forces Programme on the wireless. Sorting the donations into different categories Sarah added, ‘If that letter’s off Sid she doesn’t sound happy about it – there isn’t a peep out of her.’

  ‘She’ll tell us in her own good time,’ Dolly answered, and Sarah nodded.

  Nancy’s heart was now beating wildly as her eyes flew across the page for the third time. Stan, who had helped her so gallantly after the raid, had popped a note through the door. She was so glad she had gone to fetch the post because Mam or Sarah would have asked questions if they’d seen the envelope without a stamp.

  He wanted to meet her! Stan said in the letter that he could not stop thinking about her! Nancy’s mouth was dry with excitement. She wondered if she dared. It had been so wonderful snuggled up against him when she had the excuse of being in shock after that raid, but she was a married woman – and if she was caught fraternising with another man when her husband was in a prisoner of war camp her name would be mud. She hadn’t even opened her other letter yet, although she had recognised Gloria’s handwriting.

  As Sarah put a tin of pilchards into a brown cardboard box on the back kitchen table, along with tinned peaches and a packet of cigarettes, she knew Sid wouldn’t get these for many weeks or months – if at all! But some poor soldier would.