Ruby shivered in the draught. She felt as if she had expended every scrap of energy she had, and she was sick with apprehension about her mother; she was silently counting the minutes until morning, when she could ask her father how she was and whether she could go to the hospital to see her.
Gwen pulled out a rose-wreathed chamber pot from under the bed. Michael objected violently to being held over it, and kicked and screamed. Gwen persisted until he made water – she was not going to have her beds soaked. A puddle was left on the heavily patterned linoleum. With the enraged child under one arm, she pulled back the bedclothes, to expose the whitest sheets Ruby had ever seen, and then shoved the little boy into bed.
“Now you be quiet,” she ordered sharply. “Your Ruby’s going to come and lie by you and make you warm, aren’t you Ruby?” Ruby assented and started to climb into bed, shoes, dress and all, but Gwen looked at her in such a scandalised fashion, that she hastily reversed herself and pulled off her faded cotton dress and hooked it on to the bed knob. Then she kicked her worn lace-up shoes under the bed.
“That’s better,” Gwen approved.
Emboldened by the approbation, Ruby inquired, “Me mam? Which hospital did they take her to?”
Gwen looked at the whey-faced, skinny child nearly as tall as herself, the bony chest half-covered by a grubby vest. She knew nothing of the silent terror with which Ruby had faced the night; she saw only that the girl was swaying on her feet. She replied carefully, “Mr Baker was going to see about her being taken to hospital. I don’t know which one, though. But you don’t have to worry. Mr Baker is proper kind, and Mrs Baker will have gone in to comfort her, until the ambulance arrived.” The latter statement made her realise what an accomplished liar she could be, but she cringed at telling the brutal truth. “Now you get into bed, and in no time your Dad’ll be here and tell you all about it. Mr Baker was going to send a message up to the post as soon as the All Clear went.”
Ruby smiled weakly and climbed into the wonderful bed. Two pillows and real white sheets – and blankets. Gwen tucked her and the complaining child into the bed and left them, taking the candle with her. As soon as she had left the room, Ruby got out again and felt around for the chamber pot.
“Our Emmie is going to have to make do on the sitting room sofa, when she comes in,” Gwen told Patrick, who was waiting by the cold fireplace in the living room. He was still holding Brendy. Brendy’s head had sunk on to his brother’s shoulder and he was sound asleep. Patrick had managed to light the gaslight which hung from the middle of the ceiling, and a bright shaft lit up the back yard. Gwen tushed, and ran to the window to close the dusty blackout curtains over the flushed dawn sky. The breeze blew them up into the room, so she hastily picked up her work-basket and balanced it on the sill, to hold them down. A clatter of glass dropped into the kitchen rubbish-bin told her that Mari had done what she had been ordered to do. Gwen sighed, and turned to survey her remaining unwanted guests. “Now, what to do with you?”
“Dunno,” responded Patrick mechanically. Round and round inside his head, went the picture of his mother as he had last seen her; nothing else touched him.
“I know. I’ll put the girl here …” She paused, and then asked, “What’s your name?”
A malevolent, pinched face was turned up towards her. “I’m Nora,” the tight lips spat out.
Gwen recoiled slightly. What a horrid, wizened-faced brat. “I’ll put you and the little lad here – Brendy, isn’t it? – in our Mari’s bed. Mari can sleep with me.” Not for all the wealth in China could she bring herself to put any of the children in her own huge double bed; she would never sleep comfortable in it again, she told herself. “And you, Patrick, can kip down on the sofa here. I’ll get a blanket out for you. But first bring the kids upstairs.”
She preceded him, the candle flame streaming a thin line of smoke behind her. “The whole place smells of smoke,” she remarked over her shoulder, “but it’s all from outside. Nothin’ to worry about.”
Patrick did not care what the place smelled of, as long as he could lie down, curl up and try to obliterate the fact that his maddening, bossy, beloved mam was dead.
Nora’s stony expression relaxed and she followed Gwen up the carpeted staircase, sidling along like a stray dog in search of something to eat, sniffing, touching everything. She went straight to the dressing table and, standing on tiptoe, reached over to pick up Mari’s most prized possession, a china lady in a crinoline.
“You put that down!” Gwen’s face was dark with immediate anger. “You don’t touch nothin’ in this house, young lady.”
Nora glanced up at her with pale, expressionless eyes. Slowly she opened her hand and let the china figure drop. It broke into three pieces.
“You naughty little vixen,” Gwen shrieked at her. She caught the child by the shoulder and gave her a sound slap on her bottom. “Our Mari’ll be broken-hearted, she will, you little devil. Get your frock off and get into bed afore I mairder you.”
With a look of complete satisfaction on her face, Nora removed her dress, to show only a pair of tattered knickers.
Gwen pulled a chamber pot from under the bed, this one with a pattern of violets to match the mauve curtains. “You pull them panties down and pay a call,” she ordered a bridling Nora. Nora did not seem to hear, so Gwen took her by the shoulder and shoved her down on to it.
Patrick had stood with Brendy in his arms, waiting for Gwen to finish with Nora. He was used to loud voices and slaps and to Nora being a trial to his mother; it was nothing out of the ordinary.
Boiling with rage, Gwen whipped back the bedclothes and he thankfully put Brendy, fully-clothed, into the bed. “And you get in, miss, and let’s have no more trouble,” she ordered Nora. Nora, knowing the precise breaking point of most adults, felt it was wise to comply.
Outside the bedroom, Gwen and Patrick came face to face with a bewildered, sulky Mari; she did not like her room being taken over by two dirty kids. “You get into our bed, Mari – on your father’s side. I don’t know what we do when he comes home. And I don’t know what he’s going to say.”
She opened a drawer of a fine oak chest on the landing, one of the pieces of furniture appropriated from Emmie’s home, and took out two thin, but clean, blankets. “You go make yourself comfy on the sofa in the living room,” she told Patrick.
She had to repeat her command before Patrick took any notice. As Mari passed, she had caught his hand and squeezed it. “I’m sorry,” she had whispered, and he realised with a gleam of comfort that she understood how he felt. He wanted to cry on her shoulder. To Gwen he said, “Yes, missus.”
While Gwen lay, rigid and awake, beside Mari, Mari suddenly remarked, “You know, mam, it’s over half an hour since the All Clear went, and Auntie Emmie isn’t in yet.”
“Your aunt’s big enough to take care of herself. She’ll be in just now – probably gossiping somewhere.” Gwen could not take any more; she had been tried beyond endurance, and the very thought of Emmie and her Robert added to her grumpiness. The sly bitch and her greediness about the furniture.
Though Emmie went through the motions of being a good sister-in-law, her bitter resentment against Gwen’s refusal to help with her sick parents was all too apparent. Mari’s reminder that Emmie had not yet returned made Gwen feel that she did not care if the woman never came back; yet, underneath it all, her Methodist conscience smote her hard – Emmie had carried a terrible load which Gwen could have eased. Angrily, she turned over in her bed. If Emmie were dead, she would be free of the remainder of her own sins of omission. Savagely, she wished her dead, as she lay seething with frustration at her current predicaments.
Suddenly, as a new horror occurred to her, she sat up in bed beside the sleeping Mari. She had never looked to see what had happened to her precious sitting room – the aspidistra in its big, green pottery bowl, set on a table in the bay window, the settee and two easy chairs which she had recently recovered herself in bright orange-flowered
cretonne, and the piano, still not quite paid for, which Mari was learning to play, taught at a shilling a lesson by Mrs Cooper down the road. Was it all ruined by the blast?
She could not bear it, if it were all spoiled. She started to turn back the bedclothes, to go down and look, and then flung them back over herself. She could not endure to know now, and she turned her face into her pillow and quietly wept herself to sleep.
Patrick, too, cried – into the patchwork cushion on the sagging horsehair sofa. The pain was so great that it was as if the shrapnel in his mother’s body had pierced him.
A light tread descending the staircase made him lift his head abruptly. Was Mari coming down?
“Pat, where are you?”
“Here, Rube.” He let his head fall back on to the cushion.
“I were so scared, Pat.” She crept towards him through the darkened room and knelt down by the sofa. He sat up and her seeking arms went round him.
“It were the worst raid.” Patrick’s voice was more gentle.
“I’m worried about our mam. Mrs Thomas don’t say much.”
Patrick ran his tongue round his lips. Then he said very softly, “She’s dead, Rube. Didn’t you realise it?”
“Oh,” she gasped, putting her hand against her mouth to control an involuntary shriek. “No, Pat. I thought she’d fainted.”
She put her head down on his blanketed lap and he could feel her shivering. Then she began to sob. He sat stiffly under her weight. “Don’t, Rube,” he muttered. “Don’t.”
“I can’t help it. What are we goin’ to do without Mam?”
“Dunno,” he replied thickly. But he did know. It happened all the time when mothers died. Ruby would take her mother’s place. Like many another motherless girl, she would learn to wash and cook for the family and tend little Michael. He was glad he wasn’t a girl. He lived for the day when he would be big enough, hefty enough, to go down to the docks and stand in the pen, to be picked again and again for work, because he was the biggest and best. And he would bring home real wages and take a pretty girl, like Mari, to the pictures. Ruby would slave most of her life for nothing, because her mother was dead.
No wonder Ruby wept.
ii
During this terrifying Saturday night and Sunday morning, while Gwen coped with her unwelcome visitors, five hundred German bombers converged on the already stricken city, with orders to wipe it out, make it unusable by the convoys of ships from the United States.
They were met by Defiant fighter planes darting bravely in and out of the searchlight beams, in an effort to confuse and harass them. But the Defiants were too slow and their guns were wrongly placed, and not all the gallantry and skill of their crews could compensate for the planes’ deficiencies.
There were not many seamen in the canteen that night, nor had the firewatchers come in for their accustomed snacks. Deckie Dick was seated in his usual place at the centre table, from which vantage point he could look out of the window to watch the passing scene and also observe all that was going on in the canteen itself. He idly shuffled the deck of cards, from which he derived his nickname, from one hand to the other, as he regaled a bored younger merchant seaman with the story of the rescue work he had participated in the night before.
When the first bombs whistled down, neither staff nor customers sought the shelter of the basement, but when suddenly the attack seemed particularly near and intense, everybody dropped what they were doing and fled for the stairs. As they tumbled down the curving flight, the window shutters flew open with an angry rattle; the front door was blown off its hinges and shot across the canteen, followed by a torrent of sand from burst sandbags. As the blast receded, the door flew out again, to crash against the lamp post on the pavement.
Miss Piggot, one of the volunteers, had tripped on the bottom step and fallen, taking a swearing, flailing Scot down with her. Now, they both picked themselves up off the stone floor and ruefully rubbed their knees. “My poor stockings,” wailed Miss Piggot, lifting her skirts to look at the tears. Mrs Robinson pushed her to one side and quickly closed the stout door which guarded the foot of the staircase. She sat down on one of the benches and smiled at a thin, pimpled Royal Naval rating already perched there. He was rolling himself a cigarette, with trembling fingers. “Soon be over,” she told him comfortingly. He replied wryly, “I’d rather be at sea.” And her plump face creased with laughter.
“Phew!” exclaimed Emmie, as she sat down by Deckie Dick. “That were close.” She shivered and rubbed her bare forearms, as if she were cold.
“Aye. Looks as if we’re in for a bad night.” He looked tired beneath the grey stubble of two days’ beard. As a night watchman, he was not used to heavy physical labour and he had spent the previous night heaving beams and chunks of stone out of the way of rescue squads. As he glanced down at Emmie’s anxious face, he was thinking he would be thankful to be back at work on Monday night, when he could, between his rounds, kip down in a warm corner of the warehouse which he watched. He leaned his bald head, with its fringe of white hair, against the whitewashed wall and closed his eyes against the glare of the single electric light bulb hanging from the ceiling. Pity the lodging house in which he lived was so noisy; otherwise he could have slept in a bit longer that morning.
As the raid progressed, the electric light began to flicker, so Mrs Robinson opened her capacious handbag and took out a candle and some matches. She lit it and then glued it down on to the corner table, by drips of its own wax. Then she blew it out.
The uproar outside became intense. “Good thing they’re bringing in mining engineers, to help out,” remarked Dick, his eyes still closed. “They can advise the heavy-rescue men.”
Emmie nodded and leaned forward to rest her face on her hands, to stop herself shaking.
Mrs Robinson turned to the taciturn countess, who was seated stiffly opposite her, her ankles crossed neatly, her skirts precisely arranged around her. ”I wish I had shut the canteen at ten o’clock,” she remarked. “I had an uneasy feeling this morning that there would be another raid tonight.”
The countess looked down her Norman nose and sniffed delicately. “On no account should you have closed. It would show that we are intimidated.” Her wonderful diamond rings flashed, as she dismssed the Luftwaffe with an impatient gesture.
The naval rating drew on his cigarette and stared at her. Proper rum old dame, she was. If he were as rich as she looked, he would be thirty miles away from any place like Liverpool.
A gaunt and hunched ship’s stoker, sitting cross-legged on the floor playing cards with three others, suddenly looked up. “Can yer smell smoke?” he inquired nervously of the company.
“Be funny if we couldn’t, after last night’s effort,” grunted one of his fellow players. He shuffled his cards secretly, close to his face.
“I mean in here,” the stoker responded irritably. Holding his cards to his chest, he got up, went to the door and opened it. Conversation ceased. He crept up a couple of steps and peered around, then bolted down again, as a huge swish followed by a roar and the sound of tumbling masonry indicated a hit nearby.
“Shut the door, you bloody fool,” shouted a highly alarmed voice.
“Had to take a look-see,” grumbled the equally shaken stoker. “T’ canteen might’ve bin bairnin’ over our heads.”
Emmie fidgeted unhappily beside Deckie Dick. Why planners never put lavatories in air raid shelters was beyond her. It was certain that they must live far away from air raids; otherwise they would have known that the banshee wail of the warning was like a switch turning on your waterworks. She wondered if some of the fellows felt as she did, and she giggled shakily.
Deckie Dick opened his eyes. “What’s ticklin’ yer, luv?”
She blushed and whispered into his ear. He laughed, and replied, “I’m in the same boat.”
The card players had been murmuring together. Now the owner of the pack knocked them together and put them in his back pocket. They got up and
stretched. “Got to get back to the ship,” they informed Mrs Robinson, “raid or no raid.”
Mrs Robinson, alarmed, half rose from her bench. “You can’t go out in this, Mr Petersen. No one would expect you to.” But she read the panic in their eyes, and she sank down again. A ship out in the river might seem a safer place than the bedlam surrounding them.
Their opening of the door let in a dull roar, punctuated by occasional shouts and the sound of lorries from the docks being driven in low gear, as drivers tried to get themselves and their loads to safety. They scurried up the steps, only to throw themselves flat on the littered floor at the top, as another deafening detonation made the old building shudder and sent bits of plaster flying from the ceiling. The subsequent rumble of falling masonry confirmed their opinion that, if they could get away, they preferred to be aboard ship. Who wanted to be buried under eight floors of eighteenth-century stone blocks?
As they scrambled over the remains of the sandbag wall, they were shaken to see that the street was as light as day.
“Get under cover,” shouted an irate auxiliary policeman, running towards them half sideways, like a crab, to gain the greatest protection from the office walls.
The men took no notice of him and sped past him, bent on reaching the overhead railway which might well still be running and would take them south, away from what appeared to be the raid’s main targets. In so doing, they saved their lives.
With her face buried in her lap and her arms clasped over her head for maximum protection, Emmie prayed that Robert was safely out of the port. She jabbed Deckie Dick with her elbow, and shouted above the noise, “Do you think Robbie will’ve sailed yet?”
Dick paused before answering. He knew that the Malakand had not yet left dock and he knew what she was being loaded with. But why add to the girl’s worries? He answered her quite cheerfully, “She may have got away this mornin’.”
Three Women of Liverpool Page 9