Lime Street at Two

by Helen Forrester

  When small snuffles indicated that they had fallen asleep, I told my parents of the incident which had most upset the office. "It isn't in our district—it's in Sandhills —but we had people inquiring about it at our office—some of them relations of those trapped. It's in Bentinck Street, where the railway line crosses it. There is—there was —a row of four or five railway arches there, really well built—solid; a first class air raid shelter, where lots of people slept every night. And last night, you know, Mum, it got a direct hit and the arches came hurtling down on the shelterers. Most of them are dead, but it is believed that some are alive—and they can't get them out—the stone blocks of those arches are so big that they have nothing they can move in which wiU lift them.""What are they going to do?" asked Father.

  "Last thing I heard, they are going to bring something in to spUt the blocks, to make them moveable. But by the time they've done that, it will be too late. Even if some are alive, they'll be horribly injured; they'll wish they were dead. Every time I think about it I feel sick."

  "Poor souls," Mother whispered.

  "One of our wardens told me that there isn't a hope in hell for them—somebody built that bridge all too well." I crunched up my eyes. We all had a kind of faith in the heavy rescue squads, that we would always be dug out. Now that trust was shaken. I wondered how long it would take the living to die.

  I sighed. "I can't imagine what Bootle will be like after tonight. I'll go back first thing tomorrow."

  "On Sunday?" exclaimed Mother.

  "Well, of course. What else can I do?"

  About six in the morning, Brian returned, as filthy as I had been. His grin was as great as ever, when he said, *'Helped to dig out at Mill Road Infirmary."He was followed almost immediately by a white and shaken Fiona, who had managed to get a taxi from the Grafton, after agreeing to share it with three other people.

  "It was awful. Mum. We'd hardly got there—I'd just walked into the ballroom and was looking for the others, when there was a most horrendous explosion. A whole chunk of the roof blew off, and bits came raining down round the alcove in which the band sits. Poor Mrs. Hamer—you know, the lady who conducts—dived under the grand piano! It's funny now." She gave a sheepish giggle. "But it was really scary, and I turned to run outside; I was afraid of being buried. One of the men hanging around the door stopped me. He said I'd get hit by flak, and to stay put."

  "That was wise," said Father, as he helped her off with her coat.

  "Well, I'm glad I stayed. Mrs. Hamer picked herself up, and the band went on playing as if nothing had happened. They tidied up the floor a bit, and we all danced until the all clear went, around five o'clock. We had a good time, thoughsometimes I was a bit frightened when I could hear the bombs dropping nearby."

  Mother was busthng round, making early morning tea. "You shouldn't be out on nights like this," she scolded.

  "Oh, Mummy, I might as well be there as here; they could easily have attacked the south side instead."

  "I get worried about your getting home, as well."

  "That was easy. There was this young army officer wanting to get back to the barracks here. He got a cab from somewhere and shared it with three of us; he was really nice."

  Still gossiping, everybody went to bed and I had my breakfast and went to work.

  10

  THAT chilly Sunday morning, for the first time, I had to show my special identity card, which indicated that I was a social worker.

  I was stopped by a poUce constable on duty near the Rialto Cinema, where Princes Road, Upper Parliament Street and Catherine Street all meet. I had hoped to pick up a tram or bus there.

  "Nobody allowed in the town this morning," he told me, as he handed the little green card back to me. "Where was you wanting to go?"

  "Bootle."

  "Ye Gods! Ye'll have a job." He watched me put the card safely back into my shabby handbag, and then looked past me. "'Alf a mo", they might give you a Uft." He signalled someone approaching from behind me.

  A pohce car, with two constables in it, drew up beside us.

  "This young lady's with the Welfare.She's got to get to Bootle—to work. Could you take her?"

  "Goin' down to Dale Street," answered the heavy, red-faced officer at the wheel. He turned to me. "Could drop you at the corner of Scotland Road, or rather Byrom Street, for starters," he offered.

  A police car would certainly be allowed through any road blocks, so I gratefully accepted. Though there were few civilians about, air raid and fire personnel were clustered round dusty heaps of rubble, some still smouldering, and our driver had to edge his way through several streets which were littered with debris from homes and little shops ripped open from top to bottom, to show an assortment of wallpapers looking garish in the dancing light of lanterns and torches carried by the air raid wardens and rescue workers. It was the coldest and darkest time of the year, the worst time to lose one's home. I hoped it would not snow.

  At the corner of Byrom Street, along which I had flitted through the bhtz only a few hours before, the driver honked his horn at a WVS canteen van. The van drew into the kerb."What's up?" the lady driver shouted.

  The constable in the passenger seat leaned out of the car's window and bellowed an inquiry as to their destination.

  "Bootle."

  "I guessed right," the constable said to me, with some satisfaction, and it was arranged that the WVS driver would give me a lift.

  Sandwiched between two volunteers, both housewives who had been up most of the night and were now taking food to stricken Bootle, I heard their stories of the raids.

  When I saw the office still standing, I muttered, "Thanks be."

  Miss Evans and the first voluntary worker to come in were already besieged by bewildered people, many of whom had been bereaved the previous night and had lost their homes. A greater number of dusty, dishevelled inhabitants had homes only partly damaged. They had, however, had their little store of food ruined, tins squashed or pierced, bread, milk and margarine filled with dust or sand, and their handbags or precious ration books lost in the mess. They had no money to

  buy fresh food and did not know where to get a new ration book on a Sunday.

  One elderly lady, brought in by a neighbour, had lost her spectacles and could barely see. A man's tools had been blown away. Neither had money to replace their loss. Harassed mothers, the usual representative of families, told us that their whole families were so covered with soot falling from the chimney that they were hardly recognisable; there was no water to wash in and they had no change of clothing. And almost every person complained of cold, because, at the very least, their windows had been blown out.

  As the day progressed, our small funds were rapidly depleted and our store of clothing shrank.

  Apart from giving help ourselves or directing people to other sources of aid, we represented the Red Cross Society. The Red Cross had set up a system by which a letter of twenty-five words could be sent to a prisoner of war, who otherwise rarely got any news at all from Britain. It was always a surprise to me that, after an air raid, many of our clients gave first thought to reassuring their husband, son or loverin a German prisoner-of-war camp that they were safe. It was as if they expected that news of a raid on a man's home town would be immediately transmitted to him by some unknown means.

  I marvel at how much love and caring was conveyed in those twenty-five-word messages, by semi-illiterate women often carrying an unbearable burden themselves.

  The most pressing need that Sunday morning was water; water to wash people in, water to wash clothes, water to make tea, water to wash out houses filled with dust and debris. I was told that the municipality opened the public swinmiing pool, provided soap and towels, and invited the soot-covered bombed-out to come to have a bath. We still had a water supply in the office, so our small stock of coal was used to make a fire in the old basement kitchen range to heat it, and we were able to bath a number of children in the big, old-fashioned iron bath, which stil
l stood in our cloakroom. Then we dressed them from the store in our clothing room.

  People were strangely quiet and very practical. We had odds and ends offamilies much in need of comfort; two young girls, who had slipped down the street at the beginning of the raid, to visit friends, had stayed while the bombing continued. They had returned to a hole in the ground where their home should have been, and no family survivors; an unknown baby picked up in the street and howhng lustily for food was brought in by a young boy, who did not know what to do with it; an electrician still in pyjamas, anxious to get to work the following morning, despite his flattened home, had neither clothing nor tools left; two elderly women needed doses of special medicines, their supply having been lost in the ruins of their homes. And so it went, all day long.

  At four o'clock, my colleague, who had worked most of the night, and I, who had had little sleep, were both exhausted. We went together to the waiting room and said sadly that we could do no more. "Could any of you come back in the morning?" we asked in despair.

  Everybody sat firm; they were equally desperate. One woman said kindly, "You go and have a cup of tea, luv, and rest abit. We'll wait." Everybody nodded gently in agreement.

  We sat quietly by our one-bar electric fire, while a volunteer in a rather better state of repair than we were made tea. We shared the bread and margarine I had brought from home and a chocolate bar provided by the volunteer; we drank our tea in quick, scalding gulps. Then we went on again.

  We closed the office at seven o'clock. By that time bombing had recommenced, and nobody fresh had come into the waiting room since the air raid warning had blasted out over the ruined little dockside town. We dealt with everyone remaining, and then set out for home.

  My colleague had the use of a little car owned by the Charity, so I presume she went home in that; the Society's petrol ration was so small, however, that there was no possibility of her driving me home to the south side of Liverpool. A tram trundled slowly along Stanley Road and I thankfully swung myself on to it. In the harried city centre, however, there seemed to be neither tram nor bus going in the direction of the Rialto cinema, so, drunkwith fatigue, I walked the rest of the way home.

  Though all around me an orange sky and persistent explosions proclaimed more disasters, the need to get home was paramount, and I concentrated on putting one weary foot in front of the other.

  The whole family came up from the cellar steps, to greet me. Each vied with the other to tell of the devastation they had seen during their Sunday walks. They were electrified by the drama of it all.

  "It's too bad," Father exclaimed, "St. Nick's has gone."

  The loss of the Sailors' Church, Our Lady and St. Nicholas, hurt. It was part of our waterfront, part of our heritage. And Wallasey!" Fiona chimed in. Not Liverpool at all—across the river. It's got nothing to do with the war—it's just houses. And it was bombed like anything! What would the Germans want to do that for?"

  I shrugged helplessly.

  "The biggest bang was Evans, Sons, Lescher and Webb going up," announced Tony, in reference to a chemical company for whom my old friend, Sylvia Poole,

  ii iiworked. "They said it was like an enormous firework display!"

  "Poor Sylvia," I said. "That will put her out of work."

  I drew up a chair to the living-room table and hastily ate a very dried out Sunday dinner, which had been keeping hot for me in the oven of the big iron range, since midday.

  "Where's Brian?" I asked, suddenly realising that he was missing.

  "The fool's gone upstairs to bed," Mother snapped crossly. "He refused to take cover on the steps with us—the stupid boy said he was too tired. I'm worried to death about him, up there. Supposing the bedroom window is blown in? He'll be cut to pieces."

  I did not reply. While Mother poured herself another cup of tea and took it back to the cellar steps, I took my dinner plate and cup to the kitchen sink and washed them under the cold tap; a rime of gravy refused to come off the plate, so I left it to soak.

  Suddenly, my senses began to reel and I clutched at the draining board for support. Then I staggered to the open cellar door.The family looked up. In the warm candlelight their faces reminded me of a mediaeval painting; the children's innocent looks, their parents' careworn visages, could have been the detail filling the corner of some great canvas from Siena.

  "I'm sorry, Mother," I said flatly, "I have to lie down; otherwise I'll collapse. I'm going to bed."

  At the foot of the cellar steps was a single mattress on which Tony, Edward and Avril would soon curl up together. Behind it lay a small pile of softly glittering coal, and to the left I could see the dim outline of a big clay and brick wash-boiler, and in front of it an open space. It was not considered safe to put another mattress in this space, because of the weight of furniture in the room above it. So the older members of the family always sat on the steps during raids.

  Followed by Mother's fretful clucking, I staggered through the living-room and up the stairs. Through the uncurtained window of my bedroom the sky looked like Guy Fawkes Day. I kicked off my shoes and fell on to the bed. I did not hear the all clear sound, but the next morning,Monday, I was up at six and went back to work. In Bootle, there was no sound of carols in the streets, no busy last-minute shopping for Christmas amid bright lights. Instead, there was dire need amid the almost total darkness of the blackout.

  The Germans left us alone during the Christmas holiday itself. I imagined, with a wry chuckle, the entire Luftwaffe, all overweight and ash blond, standing round Christmas trees and singing Holy Night, Silent Night. I did not wish them joy. I was at work throughout that time. If the family had a Christmas dinner, I did not share it. I left my humble gifts on the Uving-room table for them to find on Christmas morning. I suppose they must have given me gifts, but I have no memory of them. I was so exhausted that I forgot my own grief.

  11

  A GIRL named Belle, whom I was to meet later in the war, was in Mill Road Infirmary when it was bombed during the Christmas blitz. She told me how scarifying it was to lie helpless after having her appendix out, not daring to move in case she burst her stitches and bled to death, while bits of plaster from the ceiling fell on to her bed and she expected the roof to cave in on her any moment.

  "When the nurse came and put my pillow over my face, I thought I'd suffocate," she said. "But she was only trying to save me from being cut by flying glass. As if a pillow was much good—I've seen glass slivers go right through a mattress!"

  The memory of the bravery of the nurses remained with her for many years afterwards; they were true heroines, and it was the same at the Royal Infirmary.

  I wondered why they—that almighty They—did not paint red crosses on theroofs of hospitals; and then I reahsed that it would be difficult in the case of our hospitals; most of them had been built in Victorian times, with fancy turrets, twisting chimneys and steeply sloping roofs, not a very practical surface on which to paint a cross.

  When I suggested this to Father, he laughed cynically.

  "They wouldn't show any mercy, anyway," he assured me. "There isn't much mercy in hand-to-hand fighting. And killing from a distance, as they are doing? I don't suppose they feel the slightest qualm."

  I thought of the babies born during the blitz—life going on, despite the fear of death. There were some hair-raising stories of babies being born in air raid shelters, and at least one made his way into the world under the counter of his parents' tiny corner shop. When her birth pangs began, his mother crawled into the shelter of its heavy oak slab. The midwife, when she arrived after cycling through the raid, crawled in after her, and delivered the baby by the light of a candle. We actually had a terrified girl begin to give birth toher baby on our office floor. Mothers in shock sometimes produced a dead child, which was an added grief, and in Bootle a lot of miscarriages were blamed on the frightening experiences of expectant mothers whose homes were damaged or demolished.

  Doctors were another group who, with wond
erful courage remained at their posts. Raids began in the middle of operations; lights failed, when crackling electric cables were knocked down; floors caved in under them or fell on them, incendiaries falling slantwise came crashing through roofs and windows at the most inopportune moments; injured civilians buried under menacing piles of fallen masonry had, somehow, to be reached and their agonies assuaged. More than one gave his life for that of his patient.

  On the Boxing Day of that sad bUtzed Christmas, our old alarm clock clanged at six in the morning, and I shot out of bed. I had to go to work.

  While the rest of the family slept on, I ran downstairs. In order to see what the weather was like, before I put the light on,I folded back the heavy wooden shutters of the living-room window.

  It was bitterly cold and the unheated room still smelled of soot from a bad shake which our house had received, when a bomb had fallen a few streets away and had brought down all the soot from the chimney. I lifted the window in the hope of letting out some of the sooty odour, but the still air outside was so full of fine dust particles from the raids that it did not smell any better.

  I leaned over the sill and looked up at the sky. It was still very dark, and the dust haze made it worse; it seemed to me, however, that there was some cloud cover as well as dust.

  "Dear God," I thought, "if you are up there, send us some snow. Send it now, while we've got the people under cover at least—before we get more homeless on our doorstep."

  Snow would clean the air. Snow would blur the image of the city, partially camouflaging it. If the snow were heavy enough, flying would become difficult and the Luftwaffe might be deterred from a further raid.Shivering with cold, in my nightgown, I leaned out and prayed passionately, "Snow, O Lord, snow! Enough to give us time to clear up a bit before the next raid, please."

  And it did snow, fine, soft flakes sizzling into the still glowing furnaces which had been buildings, covering churches and public houses, shops and warehouses and homes. It covered our wounds and made everything virginally beautiful with its gUt-tering whiteness.