Christmas Angels

by Nadine Dorries

  Freddie bit his tongue. They were paid the same money, wore the same cap badge and worked for the same force at the same rank, but Norman appeared to believe that age carried additional authority. Freddie had been a sergeant in the army, whereas Norman had never been more than a foot soldier and had taken his demob at the first opportunity. Freddie had every intention of rising through the ranks of the force. He wanted to work on special investigations. He was just waiting for the one case to come along that would help him prove his worth to his superiors. The petty prostitution, robberies, fights and social problems on his patch had so far not furnished him with sufficient opportunity, but he knew his day would come. He didn’t doubt his future and he thought about it every day. The image of his wife and children, the house they would live in and the job he would rise to played out in his dreams. Every morning he woke thinking about his promising future and every night when he closed his eyes a smile crossed his face. His life was going to be wonderful and he would make it happen. He would be a hero and Norman would respect him. ‘Oh my, the confidence of youth,’ his mother would say when he told her how his life was going to be. But Freddie would not be deterred by the negative comments of those older and supposedly wiser than himself. He would show them all.

  ‘Let’s check these houses together,’ said Norman. ‘We will find the empty one, look around and then, when we set the bloody cat free, we’ll knock on every door and let them know what we’ve done and that they can all sleep safe in their beds. Safe from the marauding tomcat. That way, we’ll knock on the commander’s door and earn ourselves a few Brownie points. All these God-fearing people who have done well and bought their own houses can appreciate our efforts.’

  ‘I bet most of them have never met a policeman,’ said Freddie.

  ‘Oh, don’t you believe it. Crime is everywhere – it’s just that with the likes of people who live around here, it’s not robbing to help pay the bills, it’s not a kid being seconds away from death down on the dock, it’s secret crime. What they call in the papers “white-collar crime”. Embezzling from banks, that kind of thing. The people who live in these houses, they’re human too. Just because they live in a big house doesn’t mean they aren’t capable of straying from the straight and narrow like the women down in Clare Cottages.’

  ‘Wow,’ said Freddie as they got to the end of the first drive. ‘These people haven’t gone away. If they have, they’ve forgotten to take their brand-new car with them.’ He wanted to reach out and stroke the car. In the dim light he couldn’t really tell what colour it was – pale blue maybe, or cream – but what he did know was that one day he would own one just like it.

  ‘Right, on to the next one,’ said Norman. ‘Well, this looks more promising. No lights on. No car. No sign of life. Can you hear anything?’

  ‘I might if you stopped talking and huffing and blowing like a pair of bellows,’ said Freddie.

  His words were blunt but accurate. Few men who lived as close to the Mersey as Norman did and who smoked forty Capstan Full Strength a day could breathe quietly.

  They both stopped talking and Norman, as surreptitiously as was possible, held his breath.

  Freddie heard it first, just as Norman let out his breath and began to gasp. He held up his hand. ‘Norman, be quiet will you! There. I heard it. Did you?’

  Norman was wheezing. ‘Hear it? That almost killed me, not breathing.’ He loudly and dramatically filled his lungs with the damp night air. ‘I’m fighting for me life here, Freddie. I need another ciggie. I can’t do that again.’ He began to fish around in his pockets as Freddie looked at him impatiently. ‘What did you hear? Was it a cat?’

  Freddie furrowed his brow. ‘Maybe. But it sounded different from that, a bit odd.’

  ‘Jesus, it’s effing creepy here. Not a person anywhere on the street. It’s not natural. If we were on Arthur or George Street now, we’d have an audience of fifty kids at least.’

  Freddie wasn’t listening. He was leaning over the gate to try and catch the sound again, but the split seconds of silence were broken by Norman and the lighting of another match. He took in the white-painted five-bar gate and tarmacked entry, also tinged orange in the lamplight, and followed the drive with his eyes. In the distance, just visible over the top of a hedge, he could see a low roof. Despite the wheezing and puffing next to him, the eerie sound came to him again. A wail? A howl? A cry?

  ‘Jesus, I effing heard that.’ Norman blessed himself with the spent match. ‘Come on, let’s go. That wasn’t natural. Let’s get out of here.’

  Freddie shot Norman a look, but Norman was already lumbering towards the lamp-post and the bikes. As if in response to the sound of their voices, the sound came again, this time higher and longer, more desperate. A cold shiver ran down Freddie’s spine. He glanced at Norman, who by now had one foot on the pedal of his bike.

  ‘Come on,’ Norman hissed. ‘Let’s go. That’s not of this world. Sounds like a ghost to me.’

  Freddie hesitated as the realization dawned that this was his moment. His test. This could be all or nothing. He could follow Norman and run away, but if he did, they would never know. What if this was the case that would change his life?

  ‘Will you hurry up!’ said Norman, pulling agitatedly on his cigarette.

  Freddie could only agree that the noise sounded otherworldly.

  ‘You know Liverpool has more ghosts than any other city, don’t you?’ Norman said. ‘They are everywhere. You can’t get away from the buggers, and I’m telling you, that’s one of them there, I swear it. Mrs Poultice, she’s seen dozens of them and she knows exactly how they sound. She’s told me: they don’t speak, they wail.’

  But Norman was talking to himself. As he threw his cigarette to the ground and looked round at the gate, Freddie was gone. ‘Oh, for the sake of Jesus and all the effing saints above,’ he said, letting his bike fall to the ground. ‘Freddie, come back!’ He was still hissing rather than shouting. He didn’t want to attract attention to either of them. Right now they were winning and he didn’t want the residents to realize they were there and run the risk of being delayed any longer. He plodded over to the gate and rubbed his hand across his forehead. ‘Freddie,’ he pleaded pathetically. ‘Freddie, oh God, come back.’

  *

  Freddie could see the house was empty. It wasn’t just that there were no lights on; there were no curtains up at the windows either. The house was bleak and dark and as he moved stealthily down the side and further away from the street light, so was the garden. His heart pounded in his chest like a hammer. He was terrified. He had heard some of the ghost stories that thrived among the Irish diaspora and though he’d always taken a neutral stance, neither believing nor disbelieving them, he now realized that perhaps he really did believe them, even if he wished with all his being that he didn’t.

  He looked back over his shoulder. He’d had to jump the gate because of the chain and padlock holding it to the post. As he’d guessed, Norman hadn’t followed him. The grass beneath his feet was wet and obviously hadn’t been cut for a while. But at least the night was mild for December, which wasn’t so unusual in Liverpool.

  He looked at his watch. He could barely make out the time but knew that he would miss the choir rehearsal down at St Chad’s. He loved to sing and he was as excited as anyone about the joint carol service at St George’s Hall. He’d been sent along by his sergeant as a token contribution. ‘Go on, lad,’ the sergeant had said. ‘There’s a dozen or so of you. It’ll be nice to put on a good show.’ Freddie, always keen to please, hadn’t needed to be asked twice, and besides, he thoroughly enjoyed being in the choir. The sound they made at their first rehearsal in St Chad’s had sent a shiver through him and he’d become so choked by the emotion of it that he’d had to sit out one of the verses, temporarily too moved to sing.

  It was a quite different sort of shiver he was experiencing now. He decided to call out. It seemed to him that the noise had been louder when he and Norman had been talki
ng. ‘Hello?’ he said. There was no reply. His feet began to feel damp. There was a hole in the sole of his right shoe. A hazard of the job and the hours he spent on his feet every day. He had meant to visit the cobbler’s on the way to work tonight, but the cobbler had closed early. Now, standing in the soaking long grass, his sock was absorbing the moisture and his foot was turning cold. Freddie knew he had to look after his feet or in no time at all he’d be like Norman, barely able to move for the bunions and corns and forced to lumber about with an unseemly gait. He’d seen how Norman’s face flinched with pain whenever they stopped for a cuppa and he removed his boots and held his feet.

  ‘Hello, is there anyone there?’ He was breathing so hard, he could hear his inhalations as well as feel them. ‘Hello, is there anyone there?’ He tried again and this time his whole body jolted with the shock as an answer came. It was a wail, a terrifying, lost, desperate wail, but it was not a random wail – it was a response to his call.

  ‘Norman!’ Freddie now shouted out loud. He would admit to anyone that he was frightened, but he recognized the sound. He had heard it before, in North Africa during the war, following a raid in which they had lost men. It was a cry of pain and helplessness, and he knew beyond doubt that it was human.

  He broke into a run. There was no sign of Norman, but he had expected that. Before him loomed a wooden garage. It was painted white with a black roof and had a row of windows across the top of the double doors, crowned with arched beams painted black in a mock-Tudor style.

  Freddie took out his torch and shone it at the double doors. They were not locked. ‘Norman!’ he shouted again, loudly this time, and from within came a thready wail. He ran towards the doors, lifted the wooden bar that held them closed and pulled one open. He didn’t dare stop to think – if he did, he might turn around and run and in doing so discover that he was more like Norman than he thought. He might not be the Freddie he wanted and believed himself to be, in which case, what would be his life? Would his dreams also be a sham?

  He flung the second door open and his torch lit up the damp dirt floor. Sweat broke out on his scalp and the back of his neck. He raised the torch and its beam immediately fell on a large coach-built pram. His training kicked in and he flashed the torch around the remainder of the garage. There was nothing. A forgotten grass rake lay across one of the rafters. A spider’s web hung from one corner to the other, supporting a large spider, caught mid meal, in the centre. He thought he heard the scurrying of a mouse, but if he had, it had beaten the sweep of his torch. And then he heard the sound again: quieter, defeated. A breath; a moment of life captured in the air, but what? What was it? Just at that moment a tiny hand grasped the side of the pram and made Freddie gasp out loud as he very nearly dropped his torch.

  *

  Norman was trying to make the radio work. His battery was low and he was aware that his range might be impeded as they were far from the station. He didn’t want to use what battery was left in case they needed to save themselves. From what, he wondered. The ghost? He was nervous that Freddie was out of sight. An uncomfortable feeling had settled in his gut.

  ‘Damnation. You are a little swine, Freddie,’ he muttered as he struggled to clamber over the padlocked five-bar gate. Once on the other side, he switched on his torch. ‘Freddie!’ he shouted. ‘Freddie, where are you?’

  As he raised his torch, he saw Freddie racing towards him with his arms held out and something white trailing from them. He was running faster than Norman had ever seen him and there were tears in his eyes. ‘What the hell is that?’ he asked as his beam fixed on the scrap of fabric.

  ‘It’s a young child, a baby, Norm, and it’s almost dead, God help it.’

  Norman paled. ‘Right, let’s call for an ambulance. We’ll find a house with a telephone.’

  ‘No time,’ said Freddie. ‘It could take an hour to get here. I’m putting it in my jacket for warmth and I’ll cycle to St Angelus. You find a house with a telephone and tell them I’m on my way. I’ll be half an hour, tops.’

  Norman felt rising within him the familiar resentment at being told what to do by Freddie, but it quickly faded. In his arms lay the last thread of a young life and Norman was speechless as Freddie opened the top buttons of his jacket and tucked the tiny scrap inside, resting the child on the belt that fastened around the outside of his uniform. He made one check to the buttons to ensure the baby could breathe and then, draping his cape across his shoulders, he fastened the chinstrap on his helmet and mounted his bike.

  ‘Find a house with a phone,’ Freddie instructed. ‘Follow the telephone cables – look, that post on the corner has one leading up that drive there.’ He pointed to the house with the Christmas tree in the window. ‘Pray they are in, and make the call,’ he said, his voice full of emotion

  Without a word, Norman ran up the path as fast as his bunions and corns would let him.

  *

  Maura lay in bed and waited for Tommy to join her. She had cried herself sick all evening. Within moments of arriving home from the hospital, the kitchen had filled with neighbours and children, everyone wanting to know what had happened. Food had appeared and the kettle been set to boil. Maura had sat on the settle and faced the crowd. ‘She has pneumonia and she has to stay in, for Christmas.’

  A gasp went up around the kitchen. Pneumonia was a killer on the streets. It took both young and old with a regularity that was the price to pay for being poor and living by the river.

  ‘I don’t think it’s as bad as it was, even last winter,’ a voice piped up. ‘They have tablets now that can make them better. Mrs Green, she had it last year, remember? And look at her now, she’s still turning out two matinee coats a week on her needles. They kept her in though, over a month it was—’ The neighbour stopped talking as she was shushed and elbows prodded her sides. She was not helping.

  ‘Did they say how bad it was, love?’ asked another neighbour as she sat down next to Maura and put her arm around her shoulders.

  Maura gripped her damp handkerchief, twisting it round and round into a knot. From somewhere in the crowd, Kitty’s arm appeared, holding out a steaming mug of tea to her mother. Maura never let her make tea, said she was too young and might scald herself, and, unused to the weight of the enamel mug, Kitty’s wrist wobbled. An adult hand reached out and whipped it off her.

  ‘Good girl,’ Peggy from next door said. ‘Did you put sugar in? Your mam’s going to need it.’

  Kitty nodded. She’d seen the midwife put sugar in her mam’s tea when she delivered the twins and she’d thought that this situation was equally serious.

  ‘Come on, love, get this down you. Come on now – you weren’t this bad when your Kitty was in, you weren’t.’

  ‘No, but that was tonsils. This isn’t tonsils, Peggy, this is serious,’ said Maura as she took the tea and held it to her lips.

  The women looked at each other, eyes loaded with concern. Maura had voiced what they were thinking.

  ‘Right,’ said a voice from the sink. It was Kathleen from down the street. ‘Come on, everyone, you know what this one is like. She needs to get to bed, but she won’t rest until everything is done. Let’s get cracking. Now, who’s bringing the washing in? I’ve got a huge pan of scouse on the range, I’m taking Maura’s bread bowl to fill it up. Peggy, you get the washing in, it’s as damp as when it went out. Put it on the clothes horse in front of the range. Who’s filling the coal bucket? Let’s get those twins fed and ready for bed.’

  And on it went until the kids had been fed and bathed, and the kitchen was spotless, and all Maura’s jobs had been completed by the army of women who knew that there but for the grace of God went any one of them and any child on their streets.

  *

  Tommy was leaning against the bar of the Admiral, sipping his Guinness when his best mate Jerry walked in. No man whose child was in hospital bought his own drinks and there was already another pint lined up next to that one.

  Tommy shook his head. ‘Don�
��t buy one, mate,’ he said. ‘This is my third and I can’t stop them coming. If I go home reeking of ale, I’m a dead man.’

  ‘I wouldn’t worry about going home yet,’ said Jerry, ‘half the street is in your house. It’s panic stations.’

  Tommy nodded but said nothing.

  ‘Go on then,’ said Jerry. ‘What happened?’

  Tommy was slow to answer. The experience at the hospital had alarmed him. ‘I don’t know, Jerry. Sure, Angela was sleeping – you know what she’s like, she never stops – and then she just turned blue as the doctor lifted her out of the pram. He started shouting for the nurse and then your man came running in with an oxygen bottle and then he was shouted at by the doctor and told to take her straight to the ward, on the oxygen, and he picked her up and his sidekick picked up the bottle and they ran.’

  Jerry lifted the pint, took a long draught of the black velvet and said, ‘Your Maura will be demented. She was bad enough when your Kitty was in and that was only for her tonsils.’

  ‘I know,’ said Tommy. ‘I don’t know what to do.’

  ‘You do nothing,’ said Jerry. ‘Leave it to Kathleen, Peggy and the rest. We only have one job: to keep out of the way. Let’s order another pint.’

  *

  The smell of stale smoke and Guinness fumes entered the bedroom long before Tommy, who was struggling up the stairs. Maura lay there, her worst fears realized. It took him a full five minutes to navigate his way across the floor and then he almost toppled over as he fumbled around under the bed for the pot.

  ‘Where were you?’ asked Maura.

  ‘Jesus! Fecking hell, Maura, I almost dropped the pot.’

  ‘Don’t miss it,’ Maura said.

  Tommy sighed. There was heat to her voice, but even in his state he could detect too much in the way of despair. He began to relieve himself in the pot and the room filled with the sound and smell of Tommy urinating.