In the heart of Liverpool, Peter dug with the best of them, lifting out injured and dead, young and old, male and female, dogs, cats and a little trembling rabbit. On the end of a rope ten times stronger than the one he had used this morning, he was lowered into a cellar where he found an intact and silent little girl. When they pulled him and the child out, tears streamed and made a clean path down his filthy cheeks. A warden led him away to a shed and forced him to sit and drink sweet tea. ‘Yer all right, lad. You done well. That kiddy was shocked into silence. She could have starved down there. She’s the only one left, because her mam and her brothers were killed, and her dad’s out there somewhere on a ship.’
‘What a bloody mess this is,’ Peter managed.
‘You talk nice, son.’
‘Posh school. Crosby. Merchants.’
‘Well, bloody good luck to you, that’s what I say. What you going to be, like?’
‘A lawyer.’
‘Good. You can start by suing the Dock Board for us. We want the death penalty.’
‘Fine.’ He left the hut and worked for another four hours. As he rode home, his legs could scarcely turn the pedals. Yet he felt . . . good. Because on that third day in May, Peter Bingley grew up. Oh, and he acquired a baby rabbit.
Wabbit was just about old enough for solid food, though he chose to try suckling. Pandora, who took a fancy to the black and white intruder, accepted the circumstance without too much fuss. ‘They match,’ Tom said sleepily. ‘Same colours. And she may produce milk – stranger things have happened.’
Today’s human hero, cleaner after a bath, slept soundly in a rocking chair.
‘I’m proud of Peter,’ Marie said. ‘Somebody took a photograph of him. He could be in the paper. That reminds me, Tom. Did you post the last lot to Phil Watson?’
‘I did.’
Marie continued to smile benignly on her sleeping son. He had saved a little girl and a sweet rabbit. ‘God bless him,’ she sighed.
Gloria simply sat and held her twin brother’s hand. They had been born together, raised together, and as a pair they would face the war, his secret problem, and whatever else lay on the stony road ahead. ‘That sweet rabbit is eating its way through Dad’s shoelace,’ she said.
But Dad, too, was asleep.
‘I’ll try to make him stay at home tonight. He’s so tired.’ Marie moved the shoes. Tom did too much. He could not or would not unload his mental burdens when he got home, refusing point-blank to discuss the war work he was not supposed to do, since he had been instructed to stay at home for his patients’ sake. In his head, he carried the weight of some terrible scenes. Time after time, he left a locum on call so that he could do battle for the city of Liverpool. She had two heroes now, husband and son.
‘Mum?’
‘Yes, Gloria?’
‘The Pendleburys kept rabbits. They may have a hutch.’
Marie beamed. ‘Telephone them, dear.’
‘No line, Mum. They’ve fixed most of Liverpool Road, so Dad’s locum has a phone at the practice, but we’re still out of order.’
‘Oh yes, I forgot. Would you go along and ask about a hutch?’
Gloria walked along silent roads. It was as if this cusp that divided Crosby from Blundellsands held its breath, no sound, no movement, no life. They were waiting to be bombed. She thought about the truly threatened a few miles down the road. Saturdays were almost as holy as Sundays in Liverpool. Me mam and me dad came, as did our Auntie Flo with her new feller from the gasworks, Uncle Fred with our Steve, our ’arry and our Edna, what was just out of jail for shoplifting what she never done, and it never rained but it poured, eh?
Floors of landing houses were scrubbed early on Saturday mornings. Even in wet weather, landing house kids were thrown out while the job was done. They could be picked out at a glance, shivering in shop doorways, walking to the swimming baths with rolled-up towels whose original colours were long forgotten, or kicking a ball, or fighting in a tangle of limbs.
That was their culture, the rhythm they had invented, their own music, their own passion. Mel had often been heard to mutter, ‘It’ll be the poor who suffer most. They’re the ones I’ll be batting for; not as a lawyer, but as a politician.’ Mel was right. They were sure as hell suffering now. Extended families were forced to separate, because houses were gone, and people were becoming careful and wary. Saturday family gatherings were few and far between. A whole way of life had been stolen.
Mr Pendlebury promised to bring a hutch later on. ‘Go home, Gloria. The Bosch are getting confident, and I shouldn’t put it past them to arrive in daylight. They’ve been doing that for months down south.’
She walked home. Soon, all windows would be blacked out, all doors closed. This wasn’t living; it was an existence, no more. Many children had never seen a banana, an orange, a pineapple. Food was so scarce that hunger was a constant companion. Hemlines had ascended to knee level in a bid to save cloth. The cotton mills were concentrating on calico for shrouds, a thought that made Gloria shiver.
She wasn’t to know yet that this was the day on which all levels of the Divine Comedy would be visible. The descending circles of Dante’s Inferno would be displayed, all the way from its seething rim down into the deepest realms of torment. But Wabbit would have a hutch, a surrogate mother, some greens, and a carrot. For now, that was Gloria’s sole concern.
For the people of Liverpool, Lewis’s department store was sacrosanct.
Blackler’s was high on the list, too, so the loss by fire of these two large emporia would be bemoaned for some considerable time to come. All seven storeys of Lewis’s were destroyed, while Blackler’s, already seriously lacking in windows, was also burned to death. Among the shop’s contents, ten thousand pounds’ worth of fully fashioned silk stockings had recently been delivered, and they melted alongside everything else in the building. This crime alone would be judged massive in the opinion of the city’s already angry women.
Tom heard about these events, but he was on the dock road with several people who had been seriously hurt in a collision involving four vehicles. In truth, no one needed telling about the fires; even from the edge of the city, the devastation was visible. More news arrived. The William Brown Library had been eradicated along with the music section, and every book had been consumed by flames.
Tom placed two dead children on the pavement. They could wait there until an ambulance came. Minutes earlier, they had probably been sleeping in the car, but they would never wake again. His stomach rumbled angrily, though he could not have eaten to save his life. Dead children had always been the worst part of his job. He patched up a couple of adults, stepped back when ambulances arrived. At least three more were dead, but he could now leave them in safe, respectful hands. Because something was developing in the area of Huskisson Dock Two, and as he ran along the road his eyes remained riveted to the sight.
At about a quarter past eleven, a burning barrage balloon had freed itself from its moorings and floated gracefully past Tom, the ambulances, the suffering and the dead. It landed, after a few pirouettes, on the deck of SS Malakand and became entangled with the rigging.
‘Oh, bugger,’ said a nearby dock worker. ‘That ship’s packed with explosives.’ After a further fifteen minutes the fire had been extinguished by the crew, but here came the Germans. They dropped firebombs and high explosives onto dock buildings, and burning debris fell on the steamer, igniting it from stem to stern. The order to abandon ship could be heard above anti-aircraft fire and falling bombs.
There was nothing Tom could do but wait while the crew obeyed the captain’s orders. Many stayed on the quayside and fought to scuttle their ship, but she refused go down. He was probably wasting his time, so he backtracked into the city. The wind was up, the water mains had been blasted out of existence, and fire-fighters stood with dry hoses, many of the men in tears. Tom touched the arm of the nearest. ‘Can I do anything?’
The man allowed a hysterical laugh to leave his d
ry throat. ‘No. They’ve even burned Sammie, and all the fish boiled to death.’
‘The museum?’ Tom enquired.
‘What sodding museum? We haven’t got no museum no more. Even Sammie, poor little Sammie. All the kids loved him.’
Tom blinked. Sammie the seal had been everyone’s favourite. ‘I want to hit somebody,’ he whispered.
The fireman pointed to a colleague. ‘Hit him,’ he suggested. ‘He’s an Everton supporter.’
Fire raged and closed in on the city centre from all sides. And still a few loiterers circled, great iron birds spewing bombs, hatred and flame on a dry, windswept city. Over six hundred incidents had been counted by the time SS Malakand blew in the early hours. She scattered herself just about everywhere within miles of her mooring, yet only four people died, two of them a civilian couple on their way home via the dock road.
Tom, exhausted by lack of sleep and food, decided to call it a night. The all-clear had sounded, the city was a blazing wreck, and he had worked non-stop for five hours. The damage was unbelievable, yet it was only too real. A total lack of water due to bombed mains, coupled with a skittish wind, had taken away the core of Liverpool. But not its heart, never its heart. The pulse was in the people, in their intelligence, their humour – Hit him, he’s an Everton supporter. Even while they wept, even when their clothes were almost on fire, that cheeky, confident banter floated to the surface. ‘God help them all,’ he muttered as he stepped into his car.
Forced to follow a tortuous route in near-darkness, he could only hope that the moon would continue to offer some glimmer of light. Roads that led directly to Crosby were not easily reachable; every few minutes, Tom had to negotiate a way past rubble, craters, abandoned vehicles. Mel’s voice, mingled with Gloria’s laughter, echoed in the sad, dulled chambers of his mind. I miss Wagner, she had said. But it seems unpatriotic to listen to music favoured by a psychopath. I shan’t give up Beethoven, though, not even for England. And Pandora’s eating one of your mother’s best shoes . . . Mel summed up what he meant, what he felt about the people of this city. She was strong, passionate, smart and down to earth. As was her mother.
He stopped the car and closed his eyes. This going home business was too complicated for an exhausted man. While he nodded, the moon played hide-and-seek behind cloud or smoke, and as he neared sleep Tom didn’t hear the ominous rumble, didn’t see the nearby wall of a house peel away from its foundations. He and his car were buried; and the moon came out to play once more.
SUNDAY
Eileen, who resembled a question mark when standing, was now allowed to walk a few paces. According to Sister Mary Dominic, this would keep her blood on the move. ‘We don’t want to be having an embolism now, do we?’
‘You can please yourself,’ was Eileen’s reply. ‘I am not having one; a bag of chips with plenty of vinegar will do me, ta.’
‘And you’d be straighter if you let us put the twins on the bottle. You’ve stitches, there could be adhesions—’
‘Give over,’ Keith advised. ‘She does what she does, and nothing shifts her.’
‘I’m learning that. She’s a madam, a bold girl.’
Eileen stood still. ‘Shut up, both of you. Wasn’t there enough noise in the night? You’ve half a ship planted in your rockery for a start. I’m telling you now, we’re going home. I mean, look at us, six o’clock in the blinking morning, three hours’ sleep. Sister, go away. I’ve had enough. And no, I haven’t said me morning prayers.’ Eileen’s mood was real; she wasn’t acting up on this occasion. Liverpool was gone. With a sky as red as last night’s, the whole of the centre must have been destroyed.
The nun left the room, and Keith followed with towel, toothbrush and shaving equipment. The wing was full of women, of course, so his shower had to happen at the crack of dawn. But in the corridor, Mary Dominic stopped him. ‘We’ve a . . . what you might call a situation, son. Away to the office. No one can hear us down there. You’ll be all right for one day without the ablutions.’
A bemused Keith followed his new friend into the den of Mother Superior; Mother Superior, a fierce lady who always avoided him as if he were a pile of dog muck, was out, and Keith breathed a sigh of relief.
His little pal almost disappeared from view when she sat in Mother’s chair. She moved a few things on the desk before speaking. ‘Keith, you know how we closed down public rooms here and upstairs as our bit of war work?’
He nodded.
‘Well, we used just upstairs at first. We tried not to affect maternity, but upstairs got busy, so we had to bite the bullet and use every room we had. You see, those who come here are in need of a priest or a vicar – we don’t mind which. Very few walk out. This must not be told to any of the new mothers.’
‘So they’re dying?’
She sighed. ‘We sometimes manage the odd miracle, because surgeons do their best in the theatres above. But, for the most part, our patients leave by a back door in a hearse and in the night. That’s just to spare our mothers and babies. With this little lot down here at the start of their lives, it seems wrong to have the dead in the same building, but we have a Christian duty. Now, pin back your ears, this isn’t going to be easy . . .’
Bad news travels fast, and truth hurts.
On Sunday, the fourth day in May, the whole Merseyside area of West Lancashire was in mourning. Many of the dead were still under rubble, as were several living souls. Even where fires had burned themselves out, the fabric of crumbled buildings remained hot, sometimes too hot to touch.
This time, the BBC named the city. This time, nothing could be hidden, though the media did not go into too much detail. The most moving moments came when Manchester arrived in all kinds of vehicles, and when North Wales emptied itself into the centre of Liverpool. People cared, and that mattered. A pair of proud Liver Birds supervised a city that was no longer there, a city to which non-residents had come to help clear up.
It would have been easier to count the few buildings that remained, and most of those were singed. The cultural area was destroyed. The overhead railway, known locally as the Dockers’ Umbrella, was a tangle of metal. Wool and tobacco warehouses were no more, and Post Office engineers laboured with miles of wire, since the telephone exchange had been eliminated. Oil and fat works continued to burn, and the destruction of Inland Revenue premises was the only occurrence that gave rise to subdued laughter. Unfortunately, an employee ventured inside and found all records intact in a fire-proofed strong room. Fortunately, his excitement was so great that he ran out to spread the good news, forgetting to close the doors behind him. The strong room was burned out, and all records were lost.
Into the city cycled Peter Bingley with his father’s camera. Dad hadn’t come home, so Peter had expected to find a mess, but this was . . . this was murder on a vast scale. Temper rose like vomit in his throat, and he was forced to breathe through his mouth in order to still his stomach. There were no church steeples, no bell towers, and very few shops remained. Oxygen was lacking, too. Where was Dad? How could he find him in the midst of such devastation? Taking photographs was no easy task, as his hands shook. But Phil Watson had to record this in his paintings. ‘And I’m giving up German,’ Peter muttered under his breath.
All punctuation marks, all points of reference had been removed. Where was he? Paradise Street, Lord Street, St John Street, Canning Place – all burned out of existence. The words ‘Turn left at Lewis’s’ would not be used for some time to come. ‘We’ll get you,’ he told a murky sky. ‘By God, you’re finished.’
He started to search for his father. He found bodies, injured people, bits of people, blackened, charred figures that had once been people – one of those might easily have been Dad. After an hour or so, he became an automaton. Amidst the Welsh, the Mancunians and the people of Liverpool, he was just another silent worker. Occasionally, someone would shout, ‘Anybody in there?’ Apart from that and shifting rubble, there was little sound, not even birdsong.
He went to the warden who was minding Dad’s camera.
‘All right, son?’
‘I have to go home, because my father’s missing and Mum’s frantic.’
‘You get yourself away and back to school tomorrow. We’re going to need brains like yours soon enough.’
‘Be safe,’ Peter ordered. ‘And it’s been a pleasure to talk to you.’
The man smiled through layers of soot. ‘They done us good and proper this time. Trial by fire, eh?’
‘Indeed.’
‘Ta-ra, then, lad.’
‘Liverpool will be back.’ Peter picked up the camera. ‘Because the Liver Birds are still here. As long as they stay where they are, there’ll always be a Liverpool. It’s the law.’
‘And you’re the lawyer.’
‘Something like that.’ He set off homeward.
Elsie ran in and placed herself opposite Nellie at the kitchen table. ‘Buggering bastards,’ were her first words.
‘You what?’
‘They’ve done that place with the daft name – Bootle, is it? It’s not there any more. And all the shops in Liverpool and the libraries and museums and art galleries and docks and—’
‘Slow down,’ Nellie ordered.
‘Toffee factory, Bootle town hall, Scott’s Bakeries and twelve WVS dead with a direct hit. Oh, and some hospital called Mill Road Infirmary—’
‘Elsie!’
‘What?’
‘You’ll be having a stroke. Begin at the start.’
Elsie inhaled deeply. ‘Right. You know her with the funny legs lower down?’
‘You mean her ankles?’
Elsie groaned. ‘Lower down the road. You know who I mean. Her pins don’t seem to like each other; they stay apart. The lads could use her as goalposts at a football match. Frizzy hair, blue mac with a hood, had to get her wedding ring cut off with roomy-tied arthuritis.’
‘That’s Alice.’
‘Right. Well her husband’s high up in the Home Guard, and he came home skriking his eyes out. That big bang were a ship blowing up. It took Hodgkinson’s Dock with it.’
That Liverpool Girl Page 43