by Lyn Andrews
When the flood had diminished to a trickle and they were both exhausted, they stepped out into the street, surprised to find it was daylight. The sun and a blue sky lay somewhere beyond the pall of smoke that hung over the city. They were shocked at the sights that met their eyes but too exhausted even to feel anger and hatred. The burns to their hands and faces began to smart now that there was time to reflect on them.
They found Mrs Gorry alone in the house. Cat and Marie had left for work and Mr Gorry, despite being out all night, had gone to try to maintain his business.
‘Thank God! We’ve been out of our minds with worry, where’ve you been?’
‘First we were at the docks; the Malakand blew up, and then at the hospital – you heard about Mill Road?’ Joe answered.
She nodded grimly.
‘Apart from a few scratches and minor burns we’re alright.’
She stopped chopping the carrots, potatoes and the small onions she had managed to get from the greengrocer’s. It would be ‘blind scouse’ tonight, she hadn’t been able to get any meat. Not even a bit of scrag end. She went into the scullery and returned with a stone jar which contained the precious dripping.
‘Hold out your hands, both of you!’
They complied like small boys and she smeared the grease over the raw patches. ‘Didn’t they put anything on them? Didn’t they give you something to put on them?’
‘They needed everything for the more serious cases.’ Eamon winced as he eased off his jersey while she gently rubbed the grease across his back.
‘What state are the docks in?’
‘Pretty bad, but not out of action.’
‘Then you won’t be off again too soon?’
‘No. We’ll be here for a few days, I should think. We’ll have to report back though. I’ll wait and see Cat then I’ll get off and see Mam.’
‘Not before you’ve had some sleep, my lad! Dear God! It’s enough to make the angels weep! Still, they must be running out of bombs by now, surely?’
Mrs Gorry’s ever-optimistic hopes were dashed. Far from running out of bombs they came again that night and attacked with equal ferocity. Cat and Marie had returned from work and Joe was about to leave when the raid started.
They tried all the usual diversions. Improvised games, family reminiscences going back generations, general chit-chat, until everything was exhausted. Then they tried to sleep but everyone was too restless and on edge.
Just before midnight and with no sign of a let up, Cat broke down. Joe took her in his arms as both Marie and her mother fought to control themselves.
‘Oh, why? Why? Why don’t they leave us alone?’ she sobbed.
‘Because of the port, Cat! They’ve got to try to stop the port from working and the convoys.’
She raised a tear-streaked face. ‘Isn’t it enough that they’ve already sunk so many ships? It’s people now! Innocent children, women and old folk!’
‘Stop it, Cat! This is just what they want, to terrify and demoralise us so that we’ll give up!’
‘But we can’t take much more! Three nights in a row now! There won’t be anyone or anything left to give up!’
He held her away from him and shook her. ‘What’s happened to you, Cat Cleary? Is this the same girl who swore she’d be chief stewardess of an Empress, no matter what? What’s happened to all the fight, all the pig-headed stubbornness?’ he shouted at her, mainly to emphasise his words but also because the noise of the bombardment had grown louder.
The other three sat watching tensely, aware that the outcome of this challenge would affect their own attitudes. In their eyes Cat had fought and triumphed over every obstacle that malign fate had thrown in her path. But she was weakening and that fact eroded their own confidence.
Joe could feel her trembling.
‘It’s all gone, Joe! At the end of this there won’t be any Empresses! There won’t be any ships . . . they’ll have gone . . . like the Empress of Britain!’
He caught her right hand and jerked it upwards so that her fingers were immediately in her line of vision, the back of her hand facing her. ‘Do you remember what I said when I gave you that ring? The tiger’s eye? You can be a right little cat at times, isn’t that what I said? You’ve fought everything and everyone for years, you can’t stop now! I won’t let you stop! You’ve got to fight on, we’ve all got to fight on!’
Her gaze left his face and flickered across the faces of the others, before resting on the ring he had bought her all those years ago and which she had always worn. She felt calmer. Common sense always had that effect on her. In some ways they all looked to her for strength, even Mrs Gorry, indomitable though she appeared. They all needed each other, depended on each other for support. He was right. She couldn’t give up. They couldn’t give up.
Next morning when Joe and Eamon had gone – Joe to see his mother before reporting back to his ship – she went to see Maisey, dreading what she would find. She found her and her brood sitting huddled dejectedly on the edge of the broken kerb, their possessions in bundles, around them. And although Maisey greeted her with her usual cry of delight, she realised that Maisey was badly shaken.
‘So the rest of it’s gone now,’ she sighed, gazing down the street.
‘There won’t be a bloody ’ouse left in the whole city at this rate! I’ve ’ad enough! Even the rest centres aren’t safe an’ they’re so crowded I can’t keep my eye on this lot!’
She sat down on a mound of rubble beside them. ‘What are you going to do? Mrs Gorry will gladly take you in, you know that. She’s always telling me to tell you that you’re all welcome. Mind you we’d be like sardines in a tin in the shelter, but that wouldn’t matter.’
‘No, luv, we’ll manage. We’re goin’ out ter Huyton Woods to sleep. Everyone’s goin’.’ She indicated the small groups of her remaining neighbours, all sitting patiently in the roadway. Cat waved to the Abbotts.
‘There’s an American canteen lorry what comes ’round, from some place over there, the name’s plastered all over it.’
‘Charlotteville,’ Dora interrupted.
‘Aye, you’d know well enough wouldn’t yer! Yer do enough chattin’ up the driver! Al or Abe or wharrever ’e calls ’imself! As if I ’aven’t gorrenough on me plate without ’er flashin’ ’er eyes at them Yanks! A few pair of stockin’s an’ she’s anyone’s! If yer Da was ’ere, me girl—’
‘You mean you’re going out to Huyton to sleep?’ Cat interrupted. Huyton was a small, rural village on the vast estates of the Earl of Derby.
‘It’s a damned sight safer than the city or what’s left of it! They pick us up about five an’ drive us out there in a lorry. Then we gets a ’ot meal an’ a cuppa. It’s not that bad. It’s not cold an’ we’ve all got blankets. An’ it’s ’ealthier bein’ in the open. Them shelters breed consumption and lice. Yer can’t get nothin’ now ter shift the nits, they just shave all yer ’air off.’ She pointed to a glum, embarrassed Lizzie who was wearing a knitted pixie hood, even though it was warm.
‘They can keep their ’ands off my ’air!’ Dora stated emphatically.
‘Then yer mind who yer stick yer ’ead next to! Tharrall stop yer sneakin’ off when yer think I’m asleep!’
It was as though they were back in the kitchen of number eight instead of sitting in the road where the house used to be, she thought. Nothing really seemed to stop the bickering.
‘But what about during the day?’
‘Oh, we’ll manage. The kids still ’ave lessons, in the church now. The school is a rest centre or at least it was yesterday. Them two can go ter work, termorro.’ She nodded in the direction of Dora and Ethel. ‘As fer me, well I’ll just try ter keep our few bits clean an’ decent, like everyone else does. Anyway, it’ll only be for a while, until Jerry gets fed up an’ goes an’ blasts the daylights out of some other poor sods!’
Maisey’s optimism cheered her up. It was contagious, and she sat with them, occasionally joining other groups to �
��catch up on the news’ until late in the afternoon. She hugged them all as one by one they boarded the lorries that would take them to the comparative safety of Huyton Woods for the night.
‘I’ll come up and see you tomorrow!’ she shouted, waving as the lorries started up.
‘Don’t yer go worryin’ about us, Cat. Jerry’s not cum up against us scousers before, we’re a ’ard lot ter shift!’ She yelled back.
She stood and waved until they were all out of sight.
By the end of that first week in May, 50,000 people were sleeping like the O’Dwyers, as night after night the relentless bombardment went on. From Seaforth to the Husskison Dock the flames raged, in ships, warehouses, dockside sheds and in all the narrow streets that were left. On the night of 8 May the New Brighton ferry the Royal Daffodil II was sunk at her moorings. The head post office, the Central and Bank Exchange, the Mersey dock buildings, Oceanic buildings, India buildings, Georges Dock buildings and the Central Library had been destroyed. St Luke’s Church, at the top of Bold Street and the Parish Church of St Nicholas at the Pierhead were only two of dozens of churches that lay in ruins.
At the end of that horrendous week the lone statue of Queen Victoria, seated in her dome monument at the top of Lord Street, looked down on a radius of three-quarters of a mile of wasteland where not one single building remained standing.
Ships had been damaged, sunk and diverted, sheds, warehouses and their contents destroyed; dock communications interrupted; gates, basins and quaysides struck; cranes left as mangled, twisted lumps of metal. But the port struggled on and at the end of the month, when the enemy had seemingly exhausted itself, the first convoy sailed.
They all went to see Joe and Eamon leave and it seemed that most of the city went, too. There was an atmosphere of grim defiance and on the faces of the crowd there was pride. Despite everything the Port of Liverpool remained operational.
‘Eh, up, girl! Purrim down, yer don’t know where ’e’s been!’ A grinning docker called to her as she hugged Eamon.
‘I bloody well should do, he’s my brother!’ she laughed.
‘Oh, that’s alright then, I thought it was yer ’usband!’
In such a crowd there wasn’t much chance of a private goodbye she thought as Joe took her in his arms, but she clung to his lips just the same. After the horrors of the past weeks she had drawn a little comfort from the fact that they had endured it together. He had been safe, if anything could be considered safe. Now he was leaving her again. Leaving to face the silent, unseen enemy and the merciless sea.
‘Promise me there won’t be any repetition of that night in the shelter?’
‘I’ll try! Oh, come back safe!’
He kissed her again. ‘Don’t worry I will! I’ve got you to come back to.’
She pulled off the tiger’s eye ring. ‘Take this! Take this to remind you.’
He kissed her again and she never wanted him to stop, locking her hands tightly behind his head, until at the warning blast of the Firefly’s siren, he pulled them gently away. He pushed the ring on the only finger it would fit. His little finger.
‘I’ll buy you another one in Canada. A proper engagement ring!’ And with a final hug he turned and shouldered his way through the crowd.
She clasped Marie’s hand tightly, her vision blurred by tears. ‘I don’t want an engagement ring! He can buy me a wedding ring when he gets back!’
‘And I’ll be your bridesmaid,’ Marie answered with a trace of sadness as she returned the squeeze.
It wasn’t often that Joe and Eamon had time for conversation. At sea they seldom saw each other and when they did it was usually just a hurried exchange. They had different messes, different watches and different jobs which kept them apart. Joe’s domain was the hot, smelly, noisy engine room, in the bowels of the frigate. Eamon was a gunner, having shown an early aptitude and a rare accuracy which he put down to his deadly aim with a catapult as a lad in the backstreets of Liverpool. He could always hit a tin can, or more usually a ‘jigger rabbit’ from a fair distance, he had told his mates when he had been elevated to his present position.
He didn’t envy Joe now, though he still looked up to him, as he had always done. Joe Calligan had been his boyhood hero. But as they steamed through the cold, dark waters of the Atlantic, eyes always searching, ears always straining, he knew Joe’s chances in the engine room were slim should they be hit. He’d seen it happen all too often. No, it was better to be on deck, despite the cold, the rain, the wind and often mountainous seas. The only time he felt uneasy was when he went below to sleep and he never slept deeply. Exhausted though he often was, some sixth sense made him wake instantly, immediately alert, at any unusual sound. Joe, on the other hand, could only hear the noise of the turbines, see only the boilers, pipes and gauges in the steamy gloom of the engine room. No, better to be up top, even if it was huddled, cramped and often bitterly cold, in the gun turret.
He studied Joe’s tall form, outlined in the dim lights of the bridge. Tonight for the first time their watches had coincided. Chief Petty Officer Drummond stood at the wheel, a silent and morose man, lost in his own world. He would go for hours without speaking.
‘What’s the matter, missing your boilers and the warmth?’ he joked, sensing Joe’s tension.
‘I’ve got used to it now and all this,’ he threw out his arm in a wide sweep indicating the ocean, ‘makes me uneasy at times. Especially at night.’
Few men voiced their fears. It was defeatist and bad for morale. Drummond said nothing. Eamon respected Joe for his frankness, though, remembering he had been at sea for years when the sight of the ocean at night had held no hidden terrors.
‘What were you shouting to Cat when we left? Are you going to make an honest woman of her at last?’
‘Yes. I promised to buy her an engagement ring in the first port we reach.’
‘Don’t count your chickens, Calligan,’ Drummond muttered.
‘When I was a kid, she used to say work hard at school and you can grow up to be just like Joe. I thought you’d have married her years ago.’
‘It’s a wonder you didn’t grow up hating my guts, having me held up as such a paragon!’
‘I never looked at it like that. I only ever saw you as grown up and usually in a fancy uniform and able to hand out a few coppers for sweets.’
‘So that’s why you joined the bloody Navy?’ Drummond questioned flatly.
They exchanged glances. He was talkative tonight.
‘She’s got a lot to answer for has Cat.’ Joe’s voice was amused.
‘God, I used to hate her when she dragged me round to Our Lady’s school and Father Maguire used to put the terrors on me! Funny how things like that stick in your mind. Funny how your outlook changes too, I look at him now and he’s just an old man and a nice enough bloke, too.’
Joe shifted his position. The weather was foul. It was not a typical May night, but then the North Atlantic was never typical, always unpredictable. A cold drizzle was falling. The sea was heavy, breaking over the bows, and the wind from the south south-west was threatening to develop into a full gale. They were well into the danger zone, some sixty miles north of the coast of Ireland. Ahead of them, strung out, was the convoy. A shiver ran through his body. Someone walking over his grave, he thought.
‘Must have been somewhere near here that the Britain went down. I hate the North-western approaches, I’ll feel better when we’re further away from land – any land!’ Eamon muttered.
Or someone passing over the grave of others, entombed in another ship fathoms below, Joe thought, before pushing superstition away.
‘How did she take it? I mean really take it, when they got news of the Britain?’
Eamon didn’t reply for a while. He had talked for hours with Mr Gorry about that terrible day. He had been away at the time.
‘She was upset for Marie, Brian and the others. She was upset about the ship itself. Everyone thought she was too big, too fast, and Cat l
oved that ship.’
‘Everyone thought the same thing . . . then,’ Drummond interrupted.
Eamon lowered his voice. ‘But she wasn’t heart-broken about him, if that’s what you mean. I asked Mr Gorry. He said she had cried, but it was more for . . . for everyone, collectively. She’d got over him. I wasn’t sorry about him, God forgive me. I should have been – poor sod, we all know what he faced. But he’d hurt her and at the time I could have killed him for that.’ He paused again, sweeping the murky darkness with his binoculars. ‘He would have made her life hell. He was weak, basically. You know the type, domineering mother, he had to try to prove he was strong when he was away from his mother’s influence. Dinny Lacey was like that. Terrified of his Mam. She was always belting him and bawling him out. But away from her he acted big, bullying everyone who wouldn’t stand up to him. Now I hear he belts the daylights out of his wife, whenever he’s home. Barratt was like that, I don’t think he’d have physically harmed her, but . . . why the hell did you let her get involved with him?’
‘There wasn’t much I could do about it. You know what she’s like.’ He smiled grimly. ‘But she won’t get away from me this time.’
‘We’re in for a wild night,’ Drummond interrupted, as the sea broke over Firefly’s forecastle.
‘What’s our position?’ Joe yelled over the increasing howl of the wind.
‘About latitude 59 degrees, North. Speed about thirteen knots.’ Drummond yelled back. The ship was plunging and straining.
‘I can’t see the convoy!’ Eamon was peering through the binoculars.
‘No bloody wonder in this weather! We’ll be lucky if they’re not scattered by daylight.’ Drummond clung tenaciously to the wheel.
A huge wave broke over the plunging bows and there was a dull thud. The ship shuddered, then a huge column of water erupted high into the air. The ship listed to port, sending them all sprawling on the deck.