"Oh, no," she would shriek, much to the glee of the watching staff. "I'm not really late, am I?"
The Senior Clerk would grin, look at her slyly, and slip the ruler one line downthe page, so that she could sign above the red mark.
Sylvia would thankfully scribble her signature, fling off her coat and, still puffing, slip into her seat.
Though Sylvia did not seem to care about being late, I was always very scared of not being on time. The old scars, the old fears of unemployment, were always with me. In this respect, living within a mile of my workplace was very comforting; I was not dependent upon the hard-pressed bus and tram services, of which every air raid took its toll.
On the eighth of May, the whole city was prepared for further destruction. So that Father and Tony could sleep, I helped Mother drag a double mattress downstairs again, and lay it on the cellar floor.
The underground railway stations were packed with people lying on the platforms as tightly as sausages in a frying-pan. Others walked out of the city and into surrounding fields, their bedding and younger children piled into prams. Many children were put to bed in damp Anderson shelters buried in back gardens, and some curled up in the chicken-wirebunks of street shelters, regardless of the foul smell of them. Though used in the daytime by most families as dining room tables, cagelike Morrison shelters were crammed. Many families, like us, dragged a mattress down to the cellar, to lie beside the fine slack left over from last winter's coal.
Father and Tony, both completely worn out, slept as soon as they lay down, and only wakened when Brian returned from his messenger service at the end of the raid. Brian had had a quiet night. The raid was short and scattered, though Bootle had been bombed again, a final eradication of slums built in the 19th century. The gasworks of the suffering little town had also blown up.
Father went off to work on his bicycle, looking much better after practically a full night's sleep.
At the office, I heard that it had been confirmed officially that thousands of workmen had been drafted into the city, to help to repair the damage. The bad news was that much of dockland lay in ruins and huge fires still blazed. The city centre was a smouldering pyre. Rescueworkers were still moling their way into acres of rubble that had once been houses. In the river and docks, fifty-seven ships lay sunk. Out at Bootle, a huge communal grave was being dug in which were laid together the remains of Roman Catholic and Protestant victims, united in death after a lifetime of communal strife.
Grimly the people—and a city is nothing but a mass of individuals— struggled to rebuild, repair, tidy up. Wrecked homes were combed for prized possessions, the dead were buried and the injured doctored. Somehow, shelter was found for the homeless. Companies, too, rescued safes, filing cabinets and precious machinery from the rubble and performed miracles of re-organisation. The Government did well in keeping up the flow of food and repair material into the ravaged port. Marvellously inventive, skilled workmen—the types with whom I had danced at the Club in Toxteth—found ways to hook up telephones, lay water pipes and electric cables and mend the huge sewers. Truckloads of rubble were removed from the streets, to be used aslandfill, wherever possible, and as ballast in empty ships going to the United States.
The lives of survivors were not so easily repaired. In many cases, they had literally to start life anew; they had no possessions, no work, no money, no family, and no home.
As I walked home from work that Saturday afternoon, I remember being humbly thankful that, up to then at least, our house had lost only a few slates, its gutters and down-spouts and a kitchen window blown out. If the water supply was still functioning. Mother and I would soon clear the house of dust and soot, during the weekend. Probably the agent of the Earl of Sefton, who was our landlord, would be able to arrange the replacement of the missing window and the slates. All this, of course, provided we were not faced with another raid that night.
The terror of the concentrated raids had pushed my own sorrows to the back of my mind. Like everyone else, I dreaded further bombing.
As I approached our front door, crunching across the pavement through a mass of small detritus, my eyes felt likeburning coals from lack of sleep. I put my fingers through the letter box and pulled the piece of string which activated the latch. The door swung open.
Mother and Brian were in the hallway putting on their jackets. Mother looked like a small thundercloud. I could almost smell her suppressed anger.
"Don't bother to take your things off," she ordered huffily. "We're leaving."
I stood in the narrow hall, my zipper bag dangling in my hand, and gaped at her. To move was the last thing I expected.
"What do you mean?" We're going over the water." Over the Mersey? Why?"
Mother jabbed a hatpin into her pink straw hat and glared at me from under its brim. "I told you that we are moving. Do you want to face another raid?"
"Of course not. But—but I think you might have told me, talked it over with me. Where are we going?" I glanced through the open doors of our tiny sitting-room and living-room. The furniture still sat there, filmed with soot. "What about the furniture?"
iC i^iI was indignant at being so unceremoniously uprooted again, as if I was of no consequence. It was a repeat performance of the unconsidered, ill-advised move which had catapulted us into a Liverpool slum ten years earlier, and I wondered what kind of hell we might be heading for this time.
Mother jabbed another pin into her hat, and ignored my questions. "Come along,'* she ordered, as she picked up her handbag. "We'll take a tram to Central Station. Come along, Brian."
Brian, who probably did not remember much of our earlier life or the panic which had brought us originally to Liverpool, had stood grinning at me, enjoying my mystification. Now he buttoned his blazer and made ready to go.
I stood my ground.
"Where's Father?" I asked, trying to keep a tremor out of my voice. "And where are we going?" What had Mother done?
Mother, who could not get out of the front door until I moved, looked as if she would explode at any moment, so Brian hastily interjected, "Mum's found a houseout at Moreton. It's an army officer's house, and it's furnished—he's in Scotland. And Daddy and Tony have already gone there."
I was reminded of Father's set face during the attacks; he had looked on Thursday as if he had reached the end of his endurance. At breakfast time, however, after managing to snatch a night's sleep, he had looked much better.
"OK," I acceded reluctantly. "Give me a minute to put my clothes into my zipper." I had so few clothes that they would easily fit into the small bag. "I'll be quick."
I eased past Brian and started up the stairs.
"For goodness' sake," shouted Mother angrily. "Never mind about packing. Hurry up and come. We don't want to be caught in another raid."
As if I were still six years old, I felt frightened by the loudness of her voice and her intimidating expression—I guessed that she had already had a fight with father, a fight he must have lost.
"Five minutes won't make any difference, Mother," I managed to say.
ZIJShe stamped her foot, and began to shout again, "I insist ..." when Brian announced suddenly, "I've got to go to the bathroom." He turned and trotted through the living-room, to go to the lavatory at the far end of the back yard.
"Oh, really, Brian!" Mother spat at him exasperatedly. Then she said more soberly, "Perhaps I should go myself." She looked up at me poised on the third stair, "You just come downstairs, girl, and let's have no nonsense about clothes. There isn't time."
As she followed Brian out, I flew upstairs. I was once more a child bent on thwarting her. In the bedroom, I tore off my coat and slipped over the dress I was wearing the two other dresses given me by Harry, heaved a skirt over that, and put my coat back on again; it fitted very snugly! Into the zipper bag, I shoved two blouses and my other set of underwear, a spare pair of stockings and a pair of old shoes I wore at home. My night school books, which I prized and still sometimes studie
d, together with a diary I had begun to keep in an old account book, had to be left on the shelf. They were too big to hidein the bag. Makeup and newly bought comb—my only other possessions—were carried at all times in my handbag. I was thankful that I had transferred Harry's few letters from my desk in the Bootle office to the back of the bottom drawer of my current desk. They were as safe as I could keep them.
When Mother and Brian returned from the back yard, I was sitting quietly on the bottom stair, seething with resentment.
It was fortunate, perhaps, that the family still had some clothing in pawn, because, when the removers collected the furniture, there was no clothing, crockery or utensils left in the house. A looter must have climbed through the broken kitchen window and removed them. The thief must have been very poor, or perhaps bombed out himself, to have been interested in such a shabby collection.
During the following week. Mother crossly retrieved some bundles from the pawnbroker's loft, which had miraculously remained undamaged.
18
IN the dim electric light of Central Underground Station, we picked our way carefully through families sitting or lying on the dusty platform—people were easily incensed at passengers who brushed them when passing, or who trod on the blankets they had spread to mark their space. The reek of urine, of babies who needed their nappies changing, of old sweat, and musty clothing, was mixed with the peculiar, clammy odour of underground railways, and the sound of a myriad conversations rose and fell around us like the sea washing up on a shore. I thought with misgiving of the disease and vermin which could run through such a tightly packed crowd sleeping together, with inadequate lavatories and no water supply. It was only a very few years since we had ourselves finally got rid of body vermin, and I remembered how body lice could carry typhus, and how quicklyinfluenza and typhoid could plague such a gathering.
Two feet from the edge of the platform had been kept clear by the station staff, for the use of passengers, and we waited there.
On the tram bringing us to the station, Mother had maintained a forbidding silence, and she continued frigidly silent, as we sat in the unlighted train, surrounded by an Air Force contingent. For servicemen, they were unusually quiet. They clutched bumpy-sided kit-bags and seemed to be festooned with other canvas bags hanging from their shoulders. I did not know then that close to Moreton was a Royal Air Force transit camp where men were collected prior to being sent overseas, and that the thought of being overseas was not always greeted with excited anticipation.
Looking down at my hands tightly clasped in my lap, I began to worry about how I was to get to work each day. There would be train fares from Moreton to Liverpool, I fretted, and then tram fares out to the Installation. I remembered the unbearable effort I had made to reach mywork in Bootle. Would I have the same difficuhies all over again?
There had been a time when I had looked out over the Mersey river and prayed to God to send me twopence, so that I could take the ferryboat across it and escape to my grandmother's house. Now, it seemed a cruel joke that I should be passing underneath the river and was worrying about getting back into Liverpool.
With eyes cast shyly down I sat tightly wedged between two tall servicemen carrying on a desultory conversation over my head. I began to tremble, and one of them looked down at me and asked if I was all right. Mother scowled at him from the opposite seat, and, after a sheepish grin at me, he resumed his conversation with the other airman.
The little train rattled out of the tunnel into fading daylight. Birkenhead Park and Birkenhead North. Memories of childhood journeys to Grandma's house overwhelmed me for a moment. Then Bidston, a country station, and Leasowe, a clean waste of fields. Moreton was the next red brick station, eight miles from the Birkenheadferry. The airmen began to stir and haul their kitbags closer.
I had never been to Moreton. I had merely passed through it on the train. I knew that much of it was twenty feet below sea level and was, in those days, protected by a sea wall which was much admired by Dutch experts when they visited the village. As a child, I had viewed with disgust the shanty town built between the railway and the sea wall, just after the First World War, by people who could find no other cheap place to live. I had been told that there was only one source of water there, to serve several hundred people, and I had seen that when there was heavy rain or a very high tide these miserable shelters were flooded.
Immediately adjacent to the station a neat village of council housing had been built, but some people still lived in the old shanties. The original village of Moreton was clustered round Moreton Cross about a quarter of a mile away.
As we trudged silently towards the Cross that mild May evening, a familiar odour was borne on the clean breeze. I could smell the sea!
W"How wonderful it would be to run along the shore, dance in and out of the oncoming waves, and look for sea-shells again. Despite my worries, I took a big breath to savour the famihar odour, and my spirits rose.
We turned into a road lined with fairly new houses. Each had a front garden. In some there were more weeds than flowers —those would be the houses where the menfolk had gone to war—but in others, spring flowers were in full bloom. I could not remember when I had last seen tuUps growing in a front garden.
We turned into a garden where the weeds were beginning to choke out the smaller plants. We crowded on to the porch.
Before Mother could get the key out of her handbag, the door was opened by a stout, white-haired lady. I stared at her, utterly confused.
In a soft Irish accent, she welcomed me effusively. "Come in, come in." Then she realised my surprise, as I stepped over the doorstep, and said, with a note of puzzlement in her voice, "Your Mam must've told you? I'm going to share the housewith you. I was bombed out." She ushered me into the modern httle hallway.
"I didn't know," I replied, as I shook her hand, and Mother, wearing her best society smile followed me in.
"Well, I'm Mrs. Callaghan," she told me. "I met your Mam in the butcher's queue the other day, and we got talkin'."
As we took off our hats, and Mother hung her coat up, all kinds of unwelcome thoughts spun in my head. How long would these two ladies get along together, I wondered bitterly. Mrs. Callaghan appeared to be a very kind and charming woman, however, so I swallowed my growing sense of panic, and said, "I'll put my coat in whichever bedroom I am to be in." I was anxious that Mother should not see how I had transported my small wardrobe, in spite of her instructions.
"You'll share the hall bedroom with me," Mother told me. "Brian, Tony and your father will have the back bedroom, and Mrs. Callaghan will have the front bedroom."
Apparently the living-rooms, kitchen and bathroom would be held in common, and, as I went up the well-carpeted stair-case, I thought of the clashes of personality that would indubitably occur as a result of this.
It was a very pleasant house, newly decorated, and furnished with modern, shiny pieces. The owner was a childless army officer, and his wife was currently staying near to his camp. I guessed that they had not been long married.
Down in the white-tiled kitchen, I helped Mother cut bread and spread it with margarine, while Mrs. Callaghan got out six plates and put a slice of cold meat on each. When she carried some of these into the dining room, I asked Mother in a whisper why we were sharing the house.
"We have to share the rent. We can't afford it alone."
As I went to help Mrs. Callaghan find the knives and forks, my thoughts turned to Father. Perhaps the move would truly benefit him and thus be worthwhile.
"We're all going to eat together," Mrs. Callaghan explained to me, as I took cups and saucers out of a sideboard and set them on the table. "And I might as well do the shopping, being as I don't have to go to work as early as your Mam has to."It took about forty-eight hours for a sharp difference of opinion to arise between Mother and Mrs. Callaghan. Mrs. Callaghan had a much more generous idea of how much food to buy for six people than Mother had, and she was discovering that she was paying
in part to feed us, as well as herself. As well as doing all the standing in queues, she seemed to do most of the cooking.
Aggrieved, she protested politely.
Mother told her icily that she could cater separately.
Our furniture arrived and was stowed in the attached garage, except for one or two pieces for which room was found in the house.
Ten days later, while everybody was still at work, except for Mrs. Callaghan, a woman friend of our new landlord called, on his behalf, to complain that no rent had been paid, though it was due every Friday.
Mrs. Callaghan asked the lady into the sitting-room, and assured her that she had paid her half of the rent to Mother. She insisted that the rent must have been sent by Mother, by post, to the landlord.
"What about the first week's?" inquiredthe visitor coldly. "That was promised for the day you came in. It has not arrived."
Mrs. Callaghan, as she told me later, was so worried that she was stricken with palpitations in her heart. "I was sure your Mam must have the receipt for it stowed away somewhere," she said. "And I cast about as to where it could be. Then I realised that your Father's bureau had been moved into the sitting-room, and I thought it was sure to be in that. In the circumstances, I didn't think your Mam would mind if I had a look."
Apparently, she opened the unlocked bureau and began to sift through the papers in it, and, at that moment. Mother, having returned early from Liverpool, heard a stranger's voice and walked into the room, to see who it was.
"What are you doing in there?" she shot at the hapless Mrs. Callaghan.
"And then, my dear," Mrs. Callaghan told me, "there was a dreadful row, and the lady who came went away nearly crying. When your Mam come in I was that flustered I didn't know what to say."
On returning from work, I had found the poor woman standing on the frontgarden path, surrounded by her luggage, while the next door neighbour's young son went to the village to get a taxi for her. She answered my inquiries as to what had happened, by saying, with a hint of awe in her voice, "Your Mam was that angry she was nearly in hysterics. I couldn't believe it. I explained that I was just looking for the rent receipt—but she just went for me. There was naught I could say except that I would leave immediately. I reckoned she must have paid something in advance. But she hadn't paid nothin'. Just talked her way into the house."
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