Lime Street at Two

  "Where's the stand?"

  "You've had it."

  Very forlornly he returned to our yard,to be received with laughter by the hands, and to be consoled, with sweet biscuits with his tea, by the girls in the office.

  One favourite youngster, who was called up, returned, six months later, to visit us. His khaki uniform was loose on him and he looked years older.

  "The rumour is that we're going to Palestine," he said unhappily.

  "But you're so young," I said.

  "I'm not. I'm eighteen."

  To cheer him up, we opened up the office safe and carefully poulticed off its door, with the aid of the washroom towels, our favourite centrefold from a men's magazine, a voluptuous blonde in a transparent black nightgown, lying in a languorous pose on a fur-covered settee. We dried her out on the radiator, folded her carefully and put her in an envelope, for him to carry her.

  Laughing, he went back to his unit.

  We were left with a sad sinking feeling that we would never see him again.

  The permanent staff welcomed back a colleague whose health had broken and who had been demobbed.

  I shall never forget my dumb amaze-ment when I saw him seated at his desk on the first morning of his return. He wore a beautifully cut beige suit, perfectly pressed, with a blue tie and blue socks, and from his jacket pocket peeped a pale blue silk handkerchief. His fair hair shone with brilliantine and his shaven face was as smooth as pink icing.

  We had totally forgotten the high standards of dress required by employers before the war. This man had got ready for work with the same care that he must have exercised in 1939, before he was called up. He had taken out one of his suits from his pre-war wardrobe, unaware that few civilians had anything left that was remotely comparable.

  We looked at the other men in their shabby sports jackets, frayed collars, crumpled, mended trousers, and shrunken pullovers. We girls suddenly saw ourselves through his eyes—our shiny skirts, yellowed blouses, and our truly awful collection of cardigans, mostly a musty grey. We were neat, and one girl had a better collection of dresses than many, also from a large pre-war wardrobe, but this vision of sartorial perfection left us lowand dispirited. We realised how far we had sHpped.

  He was a very pleasant person and never complained of his ill-health. We watched with glee his frequent changes of suits and ties.

  "The only way he could get a shave like that," remarked one irate man, "is by having a girl friend in a chemist's shop, to get him razor blades."

  The crews of the American tankers which brought the oil and petrol to our installation were great smugglers and continued to provide us with such luxuries. But their prices were very high —some girls would give a week's pay to get a pair of nylon stockings.

  Our contact was still the dipper. He was the man who climbed the narrow metal steps to the tops of the great storage tanks to dip the contents of the tank, so that the quantity of petrol or oil could be checked. He carried his dipstick in a box slung on his shoulder. Like the policeman guarding the gate, he was part of the landscape and nobody noticed him particularly.

  But when a tanker was in, we would corral him in a quiet corner of the grounds

  and happily rifle his dipstick box, which looked to us like a pirate's treasure trove.

  Another small treasure came our way, when a freighter in the river jettisoned its deck cargo of oranges. They had either been ruined by the ship being driven off-course by the Germans and consequently taking too long to get home, or by machine gun fire. It did not pay to sort through them, to retrieve the fruit which might be still good.

  Leaving our shoes and stockings on the river bank, we spent a merry lunch hour, paddling in the shallows, gathering the oranges as they floated in. Many were, indeed, bad, but I was able to take several home.

  "Eat fruit which has been in the river? You must be mad. Throw them out at once," Mother ordered. But the rest of the staff washed theirs and ate them, and nobody was sick.

  A cook on one of the tankers brought a whole frozen sheep, but was defeated in his smuggling efforts when the tanker was redirected to the Herculaneum Dock next door, where the Customs Officers were much more in evidence.The story of the sheep flew round the office. Our mouths watered. Real mutton! Consuhations were held between the tanker crew and our representatives who went aboard.

  "I'll cook it!" announced the frustrated smuggler. "And you can all come down and eat it for lunch."

  A price was settled, and the number of Installation officials who felt it necessary to inspect the cargo, talk to the ship's master, or take samples, was innumerable.

  "When can we go down?" the girls demanded.

  The men, sleek from lovely mutton stew, said in shocked tones, "Girls can't go! You'd have to eat in the crew's quarters—and they eat from conmiunal dishes. It wouldn't do at all for a girl."

  "We don't care."

  "You forget. They're Americans. They're not like us!"

  "They won't touch us."

  "You never know!"

  So we sulked, and at teatime we made sure that the men's cups of tea were stone cold.

  Wartime rations did not allow for much breakfast, and in the mornings, with canteen lunches still hours away, we were often hungry. One sunny summer day, the whole staff was complaining about empty tummies. In desperation, one of the male clerks went to the nearest corner grocery shop, and came back triumphantly with a newly baked white loaf and a tiny pat of tightly rationed margarine.

  "Sweet talk," he explained.

  We did not ask him what he had had to pay for such a nice treat. We joyfully tore the loaf into fair shares and dipped our hunks into the fishy-tasting margarine.

  In his spare time, this man was a well-known water colour artist, and I often saw his delicate landscapes in a city art store. I would dearly have loved to own one, but, like the water colour paints that I longed for for myself, they were too expensive. My artistic attempts were limited to drawing tiny pencilled cartoons to amuse the staff.

  One spring, the same man went down to Shropshire to visit his evacuated wife and children. When he returned, he brought with him, for each girl, a large bouquet of primroses centred with a knotof violets and edged with the big, green primrose leaves. We were all so moved that we did not know what to say. Our world was such a depressingly grey place that we had forgotten that spring comes each year, no matter what men do.

  As I carried the precious gift home in the train, I nearly cried with longing for the primrose woods, the sweeps of bluebells, the masses of wild anemones, amid which I had walked as a small child— another world which had gone forever.

  Civilians and servicemen in the train exclaimed at the flowers, and leaned over me to smell them. Mother was entranced by them, and nursed the little yellow and mauve flowers carefully in a soup bowl until they faded, and the last one or two violets were put in an egg cup until they, too, died.

  35

  ONE wet and windy day, the Installation fire brigade decided that, since it would be on duty overnight, anyway, it would give a New Year's Party in the basement of one of the offices. All firewatchers and all the girls in our Department were invited.

  After eating our evening meal in the canteen, the girls streamed back to the office, to monopolise the little sink and badly distorted mirror, while they washed and made up their faces, and redid their elaborate hairstyles.

  In a time of great shabbiness, beautiful hair was of prime importance. I now wore mine in sweeps combed upwards from my face, with an arrangement of soft waves and curls on top, all secured with hair grips from the dipstick man. The back hair was shoulder length, curled and gathered into the nape of my neck by a fine tortoiseshell hairslide. A friend had found the slide in a tiny shop in a Cornishvillage, where she had been for a holiday, and had brought it home to me as a gift. It was my most prized possession.

  We crowded down the narrow stairs into the small basement room encumbered by old desks, a table and odd chairs. The ceiling was a web of
pipes, heavy with dust, and, to one side, the furnace loomed darkly.

  The firemen had lit the room with a few candles. Dressed in their navy blue uniforms, peaked caps pushed to the back of their heads, they handed us each a drink. Mine tasted of lemonade powder, and I did not ask what else was in it, but sipped it slowly. The cigarette smokers lit up and soon the room was a sea of smoke. I sat gravely on the corner of a desk, sticking shyly close to the firewatchers from our Department. From darker corners came an occasional protesting squeak, from girls less nervous than me.

  Unexpectedly, the chief fireman produced a violin and began to play. He went through popular songs, bits of Carmen and some light, classical pieces which I did not know.

  The bow flicked up and down in the softlight of the candles, and I sat spellbound, so happy to hear live music instead of the tinniness of the radio. Occasionally the guests would hum the chorus of a song, but for the most part they sat quietly in a rare moment of relaxation. The music seemed a special New Year's gift.

  At five minutes to twelve, the fireman put down his magic bow, and we broke into applause, which sounded thunderous in the confined space. Then, we all stumbled up the dark staircase and out of the office, towards the postern gate, normally kept locked, which led into Grafton Street above the Herculaneum Dock.

  The weather had cleared up, though the sky was still overcast, and it was extremely dark. The river was invisible, except for an occasional glint of a wave. Below us, in the dock, there was the sound of voices; a ship was in.

  Men peered at their wrist watches, trying to see the time.

  "Don't worry, every hooter and siren on the river'U go off when it's time," a fireman assured them. Then he nudgedme. "Keep your eyes on the river. You're in for a surprise."

  Not quite in unison, the hooters and ships' sirens did go off. We all laughed and shouted Happy New Year to each other and to the invisible ships.

  And then the miracle occurred. From end to end of our line of sight, all the ships switched on their lights, giving a glimpse of a peacetime river lasting about five seconds. Then they all went out, and we were left shivering in the dark.

  Bemused, we clasped each other's hands and formed a circle.

  "Should auld acquaintance be forgot and never brought to mind ..."

  We swung our hands up and down as we sang and I was happy, with friends whom I loved dearly, and yet, in the back of my mind there was a silence as if part of me could not join in. There lay a memory of someone who was not there and never would be.

  I missed the last train from Liverpool, and had to cross the river on the ferry boat to the Birkenhead terminal. From there, I walked home through the sleeping town, past fields and villages where nothingstirred. There was no traffic and it was absolutely dark. Only the grey macadamed road showed as a faint line ahead of me. It was a curious beginning to a new year.

  "How did they manage it—the lights, I mean?" I asked one of my colleagues at the office the next morning.

  "It wouldn't be too difficult. Messages go up and down the river all the time between ships and shore. The sparks talk to each other."

  "It was so quick. I don't suppose the wardens would have had more than time to blink before it was over."

  "Nor the ships' masters, either."

  I could almost hear the protests, if the authorities inquired amongst the ships' crews. The rumpled, bleary faces of the morning after New Year, would protest, "Me, Sir? Never touch a light switch. Not my job." Or, "No, Sir. Nobody come in and switch 'em on. I were here meself. I'd know." Or, "I never saw nothin' unusual. Anyway, I were too busy." The flow of Liverpudlian denials would be so uniform that any self-respecting officer would retire in honourable defeat.

  The switching-on of the lights was alovely joke, a schoolboy cocking of a snoot at authority, and for weeks afterwards we would occasionally refer to it.

  Soon after the New Year, I frightened my colleagues by fainting at my desk, as a result of a particularly painful menstrual stomach ache. I was put to bed on one of the firewatcher's beds, and, when I came round, one of the girls offered me two tablets, which I gratefully swallowed.

  They were Codeine, and she told me where to buy them. They released me from a great deal of regular suffering.

  None of the girls realised that the tablets were a derivative of morphine and sometimes addictive. They could be bought at any chemist's, though one sometimes had to sign the Poison Book when purchasing them.

  I gave some of the tablets to my father, when he had salmonella poisoning, from eating improperly processed American dried egg. Our doctor was out on another case, and Father was rolling on the bed, clutching his stomach. He was covered with perspiration, and a further pain in his chest threatened another heart attack. He had been vomiting, but he managed tokeep three tablets down, and the pain vanished.

  Stomach upsets were very common during the war and for some years afterwards. Standards of hygiene were very low in cafes, restaurants and canteens, and more people were eating away from home, partly because of the long hours of work and partly to augment inadequate rations.

  As men were called up and fourteen-year-olds found they could earn more in factories, the innumerable small shops and cafes had difficulty in getting help. Complicated by a sea of Government regulations, it was difficult to find time to keep such places properly clean and food adequately stored. Anyone selling sweets, for instance, had to count, and thread together with a needle and cotton, coupons about a quarter of the size of a postage stamp, before sending them to the Ministry of Food. It must have driven shopkeepers, mostly women, nearly mad. Concentrated bombing, with its subsequent heavy dust fall and its disorganisation, did not help.

  In the spring of 1943, the first marriage in our family took place. Alan was to beposted to North Africa and decided to marry his sweetheart, an ATS girl serving on a gun post, before he left. Like many wartime marriages, the arrangements were made so quickly that our family could not get to the ceremony, held in the south of the country. He did, however, bring her to stay with us for a few days' honeymoon.

  There was a hasty doubling up in an already overcrowded house, so that we could give them a bedroom where the roses were growing right across the window, the only pretty thing we could offer in our shabby home.

  Though we three sisters were delighted by the new bride, it took very little time for her to become the victim of Mother's vicious temper; and Father was by no means nice to her. He seemed to think she was just a housemaid.

  This sickening situation was the beginning of a clear separation between my family and myself. I had always kept my own council, but now I intensified my independence. When the war was over and life in Britain had settled down, I would try to build a home of my own—it was as well that I did not realise that it would bemany years before life in Britain returned to normal! All I knew was that I could not stomach such unkindness towards a stranger, and it brought home to me what my future life would be, if I stayed with my parents. Occasionally, I would tell myself that I might marry, anyway, and that would take me away—but I was not going to count on it.

  36

  AFTER Christmas, 1943, London became the target of a new German A. X. weapon, an extremely fast and destructive pilotless plane, which the British named the Doodlebug. A number of Londoners fled to the north, amongst them the sister of Alan's wife, and her Uttle daughter. It was decided that they should stay with us.

  It took only a week or two for this terrified woman to decide that the Doodlebugs were preferable to Mother, and she returned to London.

  Eddie came on leave, and I waited for him under the clock in Lime Street station. I wondered how he would behave, after our last meeting.

  It was as if nothing had changed. He took me to our usual cafe, and we gossiped about everything under the sun, except what lay between us.

  "The invasion won't be long now," he told me jubilantly."How can you be so cheerful about it?*'

  "Well, if you know you're going to be hanged, it
's a relief to have some idea when!" He then went on to tell me that he had been returned to his own unit, half way through some advanced Commando training. "I'm too heavy. Every time I climb a tree, for sniping, the bally tree bends and tells the world that I'm there!"

  From later conversation, however, I gathered that probably the main reason the Commandos did not want him was that he was older and, consequently, not as quick and agile as a youngster would be. He said flatly, "If I'm killed, it will be because I can't move fast enough."

  With the aid of the greasy menu, a teaspoon and a piece of string, he instructed me in how to climb a quarry wall or the side of a cliff, or even a building. At first I laughed at him. But then I sobered, as I saw, mentally, men struggling through surf, to reach a sandy shore overshadowed by well-defended cliffs. The invasion, I thought, could be another Dardanelles, another botched effort, like Dieppe, where under-trained men had been simply butchered by theGermans. He must have seen it, too, because he put the spoon down quietly and shoved the menu to one side.

  Seeing his expression suddenly harden, I asked quickly, "How are the kittens?"

  He grinned. "They've got great-greatgrandchildren. The ruddy castle's rotten with them—they all hunt for themselves. Our sergeant found one on his bed last week, and he was properly put out. Told us we could get some practice wringing the little tykes' necks. Says the Old Man himself is saying there are too many pets, and that they've got to be cleaned out."

  "Never mind," I comforted. "There's probably not a mouse in the place. If you're right about the invasion, it'll soon be over, and you can come home. What are you going to do then?"

  "Go back to Shell, I suppose, if I've any sense. The way they pay, it would be beer money at least." He grinned wickedly at me, and I was again reminded how alike we were—he could have been my brother, with his greenish eyes, his big nose and thin, reddish skin. We shared an underlying endurance, too, a particular inner strength. His young life had not been easyeither. We shared, also, an inner reserve; his covered by a humorous defiance of hfe, mine by a highpitched chattiness or a nervous silence. I liked immensely the man behind the facade, his interest in everything going on around him, his care for his mother, his general exuberance.