Three Women of Liverpool

by Helen Forrester

  Relieved, Emmir returned to worrying about the need to go to the lavatory.

  In No. 2 Huskisson, Robbie heaved the last of a series of spitting incendiaries off the foredeck and into the water.

  “Watch it!” shrieked one of his mates, and pointed upwards.

  Robbie whipped round.

  A barrage balloon, half deflated, loosed from its moorings, was settling into the rigging.

  Someone shrieked to Robbie, “Get away. It’ll explode.”

  Robbie scrambled aft and with the rest of the crew watched helplessly as the grey monster was pulled and pushed by the breeze. A particularly strong gust loosened it and it flopped on to the for’ard deck.

  Several men started towards it, but they were grabbed and held back by more cautious seamen.

  A second later, the grey, silky mass burst into flames, a huge, scarifying ball of fire.

  Regardless of the deadly cargo beneath their feet, the officers ordered hoses out and for fifteen agonised minutes the crew deluged the roaring fire with water, while more incendiaries were scattered down on to the hapless freighter.

  A Nazi bomber swooped along the nearby dock sheds dropping a further load of incendiaries. Orange flowers of flame burst from the roofs, and in minutes a mighty conflagration stretched from Huskisson to Seaforth, like a brilliant multicoloured curtain. The wind generated by the fire sent huge fingers of flame out to the boat, and the crew found themselves surrounded by fire licking along the ship from stem to stern. Robbie could see the raw terror which struck him, reflected in the eyes of the others; yet they and the auxiliary firemen sent to help them held on to their hoses until, through the noise of the blaze, came the firm voice of the shore relief master, “Abandon ship.”

  Black, singed and panting, they regrouped on the dockside and were immediately put to work jetting water into the holds, while a special tender was sent for, to bring oxy-acetylene apparatus to the boat.

  “Goin’ to try scuttlin’ her – cut a hole in her side,” a fireman said to Robbie, as they sought to hold a wriggling hose towards the ship.

  “Aye, they’d better be quick,” Robbie gasped, “or we’re all for Kingdom Come, and half of Liverpool as well.”

  iii

  There was a fumbling at the door of the canteen shelter. Mrs Robinson hastened to open it, and an air raid warden entered in a puff of smoke. His tin hat was askew and he was swaying with fatigue. “Just checkin’ who’s here,” he assured them, and, pointing to each person, he counted the number present.

  “What’s happening up there?” asked Mrs Robinson. Her face was wan and her lipstick smudged, giving her a clownlike appearance.

  The warden flopped down on the end of a bench and the weary shelterers turned towards him. He took off his tin hat to rub his bald head. Emmie noticed that his trousers were thick with dust and there were holes in the knees.

  “Lewis’s store is a raging inferno,” he said to Mrs Robinson, in answer to her query. “Must’ve lost most of their firewatchers. T’ firemen is stuck for water.” His dispirited voice lifted a little, and he grinned, “T’ fire brigade has pumped all the water out of the Adelphi’s swimming bath into Lewis’s. That’ll larn that snobs’ paradise.”

  A ripple of laughter at the expense of the city’s finest hotel went through the company.

  Too bad about the firewatchers, thought Emmie, but if you didn’t laugh at what was funny you’d soon go mad.

  “Our telephone at the post is out,” he went on more soberly. “Bloody havoc without it. Seen a couple of post office engineers just now, slinging lines every which way, to get us connected up again. And there’s another two of them sittin’ in a crater right in the street here, splicin’ telephone lines as calm as if they was havin’ afternoon tea at Lyons’.” He stood up and stretched. “It’s a bloody miracle they’re not dead.”

  “Should we try to move out of here?” asked Mrs Robinson.

  “Nay. You’re safer here than anywhere. South Castle Street, at the back here, is a shambles, what with fire and direct hits. I’ll come back and tell you, if the firemen think you should move.”

  “Do they need men up there?” inquired a lanky individual in battered beige denim trousers, as he got up clumsily from the floor.

  “Not now, they don’t. They will when the All Clear goes, though.”

  “Not tonight, Josephine. Sit down again,” cracked a wit.

  The warden clapped his helmet back on to his head, grinned in a friendly way and clumped back up the steps.

  A collective sigh went through the company and they settled back to wait again.

  The light went out. Mrs Robinson quietly lit the candle. Its flame seemed to emphasize the lined faces of the men and women, picking out a drooping eyelid, a blackened tooth, the sole of a shoe with a hole in it, the glitter of a cheap ring on a chapped hand.

  From the gloom, a forlorn young voice informed its neighbour, “Me leave’s up at eight o’clock tomorrer mornin’. Got to be back in camp by then. I were on me way to the station when this lot started. Ah coom in ’ere, thinkin’ it’d all blow over in an hour.”

  “You got a bleedin’ hope, mate. You live around here?” Deckie Dick inquired.

  “Aye, wi’ me gran. Lives in Pitt Street. She were scared enough last night, without this on top.”

  Emmie remembered that a heavily built youth in battledress had scuttled into the canteen when the first bomb fell. Poor lad. No more’n eighteen, he must be.

  The young voice continued, a little muffled from the owner’s face being buried in his lap, his tin hat perched atop the back of his head. “Dunno whether to go back home or go t’ station and show up late at camp anyways.”

  “Report back to camp,” rumbled several voices, and Deckie Dick added, “Aye, you’ll be in real trouble if you don’t – absent without leave, they’ll jump you for. There’s people as’ll look after your gran.” He raised his head from his lap, to look at the crouching boy. “I’ll go meself, if you like. You give me your address and her address. I’ll go and see her tomorrer – and I’ll write to you straight away. You’ll get it the next day.”

  The boy glanced up quickly at Dick’s ruddy, good-natured visage, faintly lit by the candle. “She’d be proper pleased. She’s real lonely,” he said somewhat more cheerfully.

  With Mrs Robinson’s fountain pen, he clumsily printed the addresses on the back of a café receipt and passed the paper to Dick.

  Dick folded it up carefully, put it into a shabby wallet and returned the wallet to his back pocket. Above the wallet he pushed in a grubby comb; he always said that a comb was the best defence against pickpockets or even plain losing your wallet. Now he thought that it would not hurt him to go and sit with some old Irish biddy for an hour, to help a youngster. It would be something to do. He had been lonely ever since his wife’s death a year earlier.

  The noise outside gradually lessened, as if the main target of the raid had been shifted. Ears pricked and heads were cautiously raised.

  Emmie thought for a second that she heard women’s voices outside. Women’s Voluntary Service van, she guessed, feeding the firemen and the wardens. My, she could use a cup of tea herself.

  “I’m goin’ upstairs,” announced Deckie Dick heavily. He winked down at Emmie.

  Emmie promptly jumped up. “I’ll come, too.”

  It was evident from a lewd gesture on the part of Deckie Dick where he was going, and Mrs Robinson said apprehensively, “Emmie, you should not go upstairs yet; it’s too dangerous.”

  Emmie was immediately defensive. Nobody was going to tell her any more what she should or should not do; she’d had a bowlful of that from her parents. Besides, if she didn’t go soon, she’d wet her knickers.

  Emmie smoothed her skirts and tossed her head. “I’ll be all right, Mrs Robinson. Dickie’ll look atter me.” She glanced teasingly at Dick, as if single-handedly he could force the Luftwaffe into retreat.

  Left to himself, Dickie would have run up the stai
rs and urinated just outside the front door, and then returned as fast as his tired legs would have carried him. But Emmie would be counting on his going through to the backyard privies.

  The man sitting next to Dick yawned and glanced at Emmie. “You lucky bastard,” he muttered to Dick.

  Dick laughed. He felt that at his age it was a compliment.

  In the middle of the wrecked canteen, they paused to look through the gaping hole where the window had been, at the dancing shadows on the wall of the building opposite.

  “Good Heavens!” Emmie exclaimed fearfully. “There must be an awful fire behind our building.”

  “T’ warden said as we were OK. Come on now, quick.” His words were nearly drowned in the rumble of a series of bomb explosions, as the Luftwaffe took a run at the centre of the fire they had started alongside No.2 Huskisson.

  Except for glassless windows, all the buildings round the light well seemed undamaged, though the sky glowed red above them. They ran across the cobbled yard, glass crunching under their feet, and with sighs of relief paid the long-delayed calls.

  Close to hand, the tumbling roar of a wall collapsing brought them both out at a run, Emmie still pulling up her knickers. It buried the warden beneath its shattered stone, as he ran along the street. Another bomb exploded in the fire at the back of them, sending a shower of sparks into the air. Emmie screamed.

  A further swish and crash made Dick hurl her to the ground, his plump body on top of her.

  “Jesus, save us!” she shrieked, as she hit the unfriendly cobblestones. She clung to him,

  “Keep yer head down. God, that was …”

  With a deafening crash, the whole of the canteen was blown out.

  An agonised blow on the forehead made her yell again, as she and Dick were lifted by the blast. Then, clinging to Dick, she was rolling and falling. She saw the ground beneath them crack and open in a tremendous yawn, as if in some unearthly dream. Dick seemed to slip from her, as she hit sliding rubble and then half fell, half slid, down and down on to a shuddering floorspace, mercilessly bumped and bruised as she went. She was aware, in a split second, of the earth closing over her as if a great door had been slammed, of a dreadful weight on the lower part of her body and of an ear-rending storm of noise. Then silence, except, from nearby, thin horrifying screams like souls crying out in Dante’s Inferno, as she sank into oblivion.

  iv

  In smothering dust, Emmie fought for breath. As she coughed and choked and spat, the pain in her head was all-encompassing. She endeavoured to raise a hand to clear her face of rubble, but both hands were pinned against her stomach by a huge, warm solid mass; she shuddered as she realised what it might be.

  She tried shaking her head and then moaned when the movement not only added to the pain in her head, but pulled her hair as well; its longer strands appeared to be caught under some unyielding weight.

  Suddenly she sneezed enormously, her nose ran and she could breathe a little more easily. Small anonymous pieces of rubble, dislodged by the sneeze, slipped down the sides of her face.

  As greater consciousness seeped back into her and she laboured for air amid the cloying dust, the dawning knowledge that she was buried made her tremble violently.

  She became aware of stinging pain all over her face, in addition to the throbbing in her head. Cautiously, fearfully, she opened her eyes a slit. She could see nothing.

  She was blind! She was sure of it. The trickles she could feel from her eyes must be blood, not tears. She screamed in horror, a howl of pure terror. Dust again entered her throat and the screams became strangled coughs. Then the pain in her head overwhelmed her and she faded into unconsciousness again.

  She came round slowly, aware now of being surrounded by reverberating, booming noise. The ground under her, if it were ground and not a floor of some kind, vibrated continuously, adding to her own shuddering. The sagging weight on her body also moved slightly. At first her fogged mind believed the movement was also caused by the noise; then a large breath was exhaled, followed by a series of coughs.

  In sudden joy, she croaked, “Is that you, Dick?”

  Though she got no reply because of the paroxysm of coughing, she felt a hand run down the side of her and heard a faint rattle of what sounded like pebbles falling as the same hand apparently explored a little further. Then, with a satisfied grunt as the coughs eased, the body carefully rolled over until it was positioned tightly beside her. A series of muffled curses in a man’s voice came from close to her ear. Thankfully she took a larger breath, to ease her constricted lungs, only to set off a further desperate coughing which threatened to cause her to vomit, as powdered plaster cloyed her throat again.

  Above her, there was a series of ominous creaks, and in the distance the sound of water trickling. The surrounding uproar seemed to have decreased.

  “Hold it, luv. Hold it,” came a frantic whisper. “Yer noise’ll bring the whole issue down on us. Breath shallow, if you can.”

  She did her best to control the coughing, lifting a hand, tingling with pins and needles, to cover her mouth. Between efforts to clear her throat, she giggled hysterically, “Oh, Dickie, I’m so glad you’re here.”

  “I’m not,” came the dry response. The body packed tightly beside her fidgeted slightly. “God spare us!”

  She began to laugh wildly at this, only to choke again and to have her hair pulled painfully as she moved.

  “Hold your hush, luv,” he cajoled softly and caught one of her hands as if to comfort her.

  She sobered as best she could. “Are you hurt, Dick?” she inquired hoarsely.

  “Not much, I don’t think. Wind kicked out o’ me.” His breath came laboriously. “Feel like I did after a fight once, in a bar in New York. Got beat up.” He squeezed her hand. “How about you?”

  He could feel her trembling increase. Carefully, he lifted an arm round her, as she whimpered, “Dickie, I think I’m blinded. I can’t see anything. Me hair is caught under something – and me face is all wet and sticky. I’m afraid to touch it.”

  He did not reply for a moment and then he assured her, “Well nobody could see in this dark. Are you sure? Open and close yer eyelids. Do they work? You’re lying on your back, aren’t you?”

  “I can move me lids. They’re awful sore.”

  “Humph. Well, try touching round them, very lightly, to see if the eyes is still in their sockets.”

  Sickened by the implication, she nevertheless moved her fingers cautiously round her cheeks and over her closed lids. She moved her eyes from right to left and then blinked. “They seem all right,” she announced with marked relief. “They’re running like mad.”

  “Aye, you probably got dust in them; but it’s my bet you’ll be all right, when there’s light to see by. I were lucky – I had me face against you when we fell. Can you move your legs?”

  Diverted, her trembling lessened, and she obediently bent her legs slightly and wiggled her feet. He felt the movement, when she arched her back. “All of me seems to work,” she announced with a tremulous laugh. “I can’t turn me head, though, ’cos me hair’s caught under summat.”

  They lay quiet for a minute, while the dust thinned. Then she asked pitifully, “How long will it take ’em to get us out, Dickie?”

  He sighed – carefully, so that he did not commence to cough again. He had been thinking about this and was privately convinced that it would be a miracle if they were ever found. While Emmie had been unconscious, he had lain over her, dazed by the fall, his mind trying to grapple with the mystery of where they were.

  They had been in the light well, lying on the ground, against the wall of the canteen under the little kitchen window. They must, he argued, have fallen straight through a fissure opened up by the bomb explosion. Yet, could they fall though a solid yard? He had definitely fallen through open space – he would remember the sensation until the end of his days.

  The answer seemed to be that they lay in some old cellar under the cobbled yar
d. And who would dream of looking for them there? Only the people in the shelter knew that he and Emmie had gone into the yard, and judging by the fearful groans and shrieks with which his ears had been tortured for a moment or two after the bomb fell, those in the shelter were either dead or dying.

  If all the buildings had come down, there could be sixty feet or more of debris above them. This had to be the end. And yet in him, bruised and scared as he was, lay a tremendous passion to live.

  “How long, Dickie?”

  “Dunno.” The dust was settling now and it was much easier to breath, but delayed shock caught up with him and he fainted. Emmie felt the body stuffed in beside her relax and she thought he had died. She poked him with her elbow. He did not respond. “Dick! Oh, Dickie!”

  Total fear engulfed her again and she began to scream helplessly, rendered almost insane with fright. She gibbered at him, as she tried to reach his face and finally succeeded in running one hand over it. Then she felt his chest heave slightly. She quietened and it seemed as if he were sleeping, and indeed he did pass into a light slumber.

  She lay sobbing softly and between the sobs prayers tumbled from her lips. Promises to lead an immaculate life if only God would get her out of the tomb in which she lay came almost incoherently forth, as she tried to make a pact with the Almighty.

  “I’ll never hate Gwen no more. I’ll help her all I can. She can have the bloody furniture. Oh, Jesus, hear me. What will Robbie do if I die? He’s been so lonely for lack of a wife, oh, God. Have pity on him, if not on me. I know I’m as wicked a piece as ever was made, but I’ll never miss chapel again, I won’t. God have pity on me.”

  Deckie Dick became gradually aware of this litany, as he awoke and his mind began to clear. He was himself afraid of death, particularly a painful death. How would the Grim Reaper strike? Would the debris shift, to slide down and crush them? Would they die of thirst? Or starve like rats? Or, worse still, be eaten by rats before they had a chance to starve?