Three Women of Liverpool

by Helen Forrester

  Emmie found Dick’s hand and held it, as she dozed. Sometimes a very distant rumble shook their tiny lair; it sounded like big lorries moving, a promise of rescue, and they were comforted.

  Without warning, there was an enormous roar, a detonation greater than any previous one, and the whole ruin in which they lay shivered and groaned. Loud cracks overhead made Emmie scream. She flung herself against Dick; in equal terror, he turned and clung to her. Again, a tremendous dust enveloped them. Instinctively, they ducked their faces into each other’s shoulder, cowering together as they nearly choked.

  The pandemonium died away to a rumble, only to be followed immediately by a whole series of explosions which shook their precarious shelter. Almost directly overhead they could hear the fall of masonry followed by the lesser sound of smaller debris slithering like a hundred snakes down through the wreckage. The great piece of stonework above them shuddered.

  A terrified rat scuttled across Emmie’s lap, sending her into hysterics.

  Despite the desperate efforts of its crew and the fire brigade, fire had finally reached the main hold of the Marakand. Surrounded by flames, dive bombed all night, firemen and crew had been unable to scuttle her, and now, under whatever cover they could find, they crouched defeated. A four-ton anchor, blasted into the air, fell into the engine-room of a hopper and sank it as well. Acres of dock and warehouse were mowed down by the tremendous blasts and the ever-encroaching fire. Only after seventy-four hours of almost continuous racket did a weird silence descend on the embers of a whole district.

  “I never want to see anything like it again,” Robbie muttered fervently to his deckhand friend, as their captain checked his sooty, worn-out crew. “I’ll be thankful to go to sea again.”

  Fogged by fear, unable to produce even one more scream, Dick and Emmie lay tightly together, both breathing shallowly. Each time the torn building over them lurched, a fresh poof of dust would surround them and they would cough and splutter.

  Outside, the late spring morning was made horrible by a blizzard of burned paper which blew about the city, getting into people’s eyes, clinging to clothes and faces like black snowflakes. The burned records of innumerable enterprises flattened during the night had been caught by the wind and whirled out of every broken building. Up and up they went into the smoke haze, to descend again in a supernatural storm. Through the smoke, flames still licked greedily.

  By noon the road outside the canteen was passable to a single line of traffic driving very carefully, and further efforts were being made to find the remainder of the firewatchers assumed to have been on duty with Dolly. The air raid warden on day shift and new police, all looking wondrously spruce, had come on duty, and a heated altercation broke out between a demolition squad foreman puttering along the edge of the debris, and the new warden.

  “How was I supposed to know there was a canteen there? There weren’t no warden around, nor a cop for that matter, on this street. Thought it was all offices – and as for firewatchers, I’ve only got one unaccounted for now.”

  “Well, there was a canteen here and it’d be open,” replied the warden irritably, “and we’d better get weaving on it.” By his accent the demolition foreman must be from Manchester, presumably one of the over three thousand men which the warden had heard were being sent to Liverpool. No wonder the man didn’t know where anything was.

  “How many people, do you reckon?” inquired the foreman resignedly.

  “Could be as many as forty.”

  “Good God! Somebody should’ve told me.” He scratched his crew-cut hair and put his helmet more comfortably on his head. “They didn’t say nothin’ in the command post.”

  The warden raised a gloomy face from contemplation of the anonymous piles of wreckage round him. “The command post lost nearly the whole shift.”

  As he strode towards them, the police constable in charge of the area, looked bleary-eyed, despite a clean and tidy uniform. He had just arrived, to commence his shift, only to find a new command post being assembled and nobody very sure of what the situation was. “Looks as if Constable Wilson got it last night. We can’t find him,” he was told. Heavy-hearted, he had taken the first telephone call on the re-established line. Now he shouted towards the warden, “There’s a phone inquiry about a Miss Piggott – serving in the Sailors’ Canteen – do you know if that’s bin tackled yet?”

  “I only just coom on duty,” replied the warden defensively. “And t’ command post’s only just bin replaced – pack of strangers. There weren’t nobody in a fit state to tell nobody nothin’. Joe, here, he just coom from Manchester.” He cocked a thumb towards the lugubrious foreman, who looked even more glum.

  The constable’s face went red with suppressed rage. Bloody fool, why didn’t he use his common sense and show the new foreman? Poor Wilson and the command post couldn’t help being dead.

  “Get a bearing on where the entrance was,” he ordered the warden through gritted teeth, “and explain to the foreman how it were laid out. I’ll get you more help, and alert ambulance people. The entrance to the shelter underneath the canteen was to the left of the entrance from the street.” He ran back to the newly reconstituted command post.

  While the warden, like a questing terrier, trotted up and down the partially cleared street, the foreman assembled his squad and checked that they were equipped with shovels and crowbars – and skips to hold the rubbish they would have to remove.

  The warmth of the fires, further over, was born towards them, making them sweat. The hiss of water hitting flame and the drum of pumps bewildered the warden. If it were only quiet enough to climb the rubble and listen; then they would stand a chance of hearing survivors tapping. There were other noises to add to the confusion: explosions from No. 2 Huskisson dock; detonations, as Lancashire mining engineers showed another demolition squad how to break a way through mountains of wreckage, without bringing an avalanche down on themselves; the lives of men with demolition experience were to be preserved at all costs – their peculiar skills were all too rare. In a nearby street, a huge bulldozer manned by American soldiers was slowly crunching its way through a blockage, and that also added to the racket.

  “I’ve got it,” shouted the warden triumphantly, as he rubbed one eye watering with a mot in it. “Opposite the stump of this lamp-post.”

  Huge and ponderous as the foreman was, he immediately began to climb the fall opposite the broken lamp standard, walking with surprising lightness, probing gently with his crowbar, before committing his team to the search. When he was satisfied that he understood the lay of the pile, he set his men to work. “Come on, lads. Quick – but careful – mind.” His melancholy expression fell still further. “Doubt anybody’s alive under that.”

  A portly gentleman in a business suit and bowler hat accosted the watching warden, “Excuse me. Can you tell me where the Sailors’ Canteen is? My wife was on duty there last night, and she has not come home this morning. When I tried to telephone, I could not get through.”

  The warden looked up sharply and then bit his lip with tobacco-stained teeth. “Aye,” he said slowly, with a sigh. “It were here. They’re workin’ on it now, as you can see.”

  The gentleman’s ruddy complexion went glistening white. His grey, military moustache quivered; words would not come. Finally, he breathed, “I was afraid of that.”

  The warden caught his arm, concerned that he might collapse. “Sir! They could be safe in the shelter – it were a good stout cellar.” The warden had not an iota of hope. But then, he told himself, you never knew what quirk of fate could save the life of someone. “What was – is – her name, sir?”

  “Clara Robinson, Mrs Clara Robinson.” The man was already out of his black jacket and folding it neatly. He laid it down by the lamp-post stump and placed his bowler hat on top of it. “Thank you,” he said fairly steadily, as he got a grip on himself. Then he turned and picked his way over to a labourer clearing a path from the edge of the fall inwards. “Give me a s
hovel. I’ll help you,” he said between tight lips.

  “Best stay back, sor,” a middle-aged Irish navvy, working ahead of the other labourer, advised him. “It’s dangerous.” He lifted his pick again and swung it down on the obstruction before him.

  “I have to do something,” Alec Robinson said firmly. He undid his gold cufflinks and rolled up his shirt sleeves.

  The foreman came carefully down the slope of the pile, placing each foot precisely so that he did not fall into the debris.

  The warden shouted up to him, “T’ cellar had a pavement light what led right into it.”

  “That’ll save a lot.” The foreman’s face lifted slightly, as he redirected his men, to facilitate the unearthing of this narrow window of heavy glass framed in iron and set directly into the pavement to give some light to the cellar. If it had not been pounded into the ground, it could give the rescuers immediate access. Then he turned and sized up the blenched business man who was working his way towards him.

  “You could clear some space at the edge of the pavement,” he told him kindly. “Make a way through to where the road has been cleared. We’ll need a bit of space to lay ’em down, maybe, when we bring ’em out.” He saw Alec Robinson’s eyes widen with horror, and added hastily, “They could be hurt.” He turned to the labourer. “Find ’im a shovel.”

  Alec Robinson thankfully took the proffered shovel and bent to the task, his heart heavy. An ambulance was already nosing its way cautiously along the street, followed closely by a fire pump. A wobbly stream of water was directed at the ruins further back, to damp them down and possibly contain the fire raging behind them, until the rescuers had finished their work. The stream was weak because of fractured mains, and the turbulence in the air caused by the fires themselves blew much of the water back on to the firemen and the rescuers. Still, they persisted.

  While the workmen picked their way in with meticulous care, para-medical personnel, black bags in hand, came at a shambling run along the littered pavement opposite.

  They were too early, so, with tin hats pushed to the back of their heads, they lit cigarettes and stood gossiping about a new film one of them had seen.

  In what seemed to have become their own private bomb crater, the clay-bespattered telephone engineers continued their patient splicing of lines.

  When Alec Robinson paused to mop his forehead, he was approached by a tall cadaverous man dressed in the grey uniform of a chauffeur. The man took off his peaked cap, revealing a bald head across which a few wisps of white hair had been carefully plastered. “Sir, I’m looking for the Sailors’ Canteen. I’m Higgins, sir. The mistress has not come home, and we – that is, Mrs. Fleming, the housekeeper, and me – thought I should come down on the bus, to see if she’s all right – the car being mothballed for the duration, sir.” He turned and surveyed the appalling wreckage. “I trust I’m not looking at the canteen?”

  Alec Robinson replied gruffly, “You are. Who is your mistress?”

  “The Dowager Countess Mentmore. She’s a volunteer.”

  A minute later, a chauffeur’s cap and jacket were carefully laid by Mr Robinson’s bowler hat and black jacket, and the demolition foreman had to find work for another volunteer.

  The rescuers worked like moles, shifting obstructing masonry, splintered woodwork, pieces of filing cabinets and desks, a slippery cascade of law books, a huge Victorian lavatory, all interlaced with electric wires which might still be live, and miles of water pipes and gas pipes. A lot of this was passed back and piled on the pavement. Stout pieces of timber, desk drawers, finely panelled oak doors, all were used by the labouring men as props in the twisting passageway they were making. Every time there was a further explosion from No. 2 Huskisson this perilous little entry was shaken by the blast, but still the men perservered.

  x

  That dreadful Sunday, as Emmie lay in Dick’s arms, her mind wandered. Both of them were drained by fear, thirsty beyond words and very hungry. It seemed to her that she was lying in Robbie’s arms on the sandhills, behind the great sea wall at Meols, and they were talking of building a small cottage not too far from there, with a good slate roof and a parlour for best occasions.

  She woke suddenly, not sure what had alerted her. Instead of the sunlight on the waving, coarse grasses of the sand hills, she faced a midnight blackness. She touched Dick’s face with her hand, and he stirred and muttered hoarsely, “OK, luv?”

  “Mm,” she replied. She shivered; the wall felt cold against her back.

  It felt wet! Her cotton blouse and petticoat were sticking to her back. She must have sweated heavily or wet herself again. But there it was once more – a cold drop, a trickle down a strand of her torn hair and across her neck.

  “Dickie,” she gasped. “Wake up. There’s water running down the wall behind me back. I can feel it.”

  Water? He swallowed and tried to answer her, but his dried lips would barely move. He felt clammily cold and he shivered.

  “Sit up, Dick. I’m goin’ to turn meself over.”

  “Can’t sit up, ’cos of the slope over me,” he managed to reply thickly. She was right, though. He could smell the odour of water on dust – and he could also smell an increased amount of smoke. His heart leapt with fresh apprehension. He eased himself away from Emmie, to help her turn.

  Emmie was as excited as if they had already been rescued. Her mind cleared as, wild with hope, she knelt up and ran her hand along the wall. There was a steady dribble down it at one point. She put her sore cheek against it and then turned to lick it. Her tongue was promptly covered with grit, but it was moistened, none the less. She tried again and spat out the grit. “There’s only a bit,” she announced in a fractionally clearer voice. “I’m going to try and soak your hanky, though.”

  The water flowed faster, forming a small pool round her knees. The handkerchief was soon quite wet and she passed it to Dick to suck. He thankfully wiped his lips and put a corner in his mouth. He too had to spit out grit, but the relief was tremendous. He managed to move a little out of his niche and curve himself round Emmie as she knelt, to dip the hanky again into the wondrous little pool.

  Emmie undid her skirt button and awkwardly hauled off her blouse, cursing roundly when she caught her elbow on the rough wall. She pressed the garment into the tiny stream. As it became wetter, she struggled to get out of her cotton petticoat in order to soak that also. “It’ll make a little store of water,” she puffed.

  “I’m sorry I can’t see you.”

  She blushed, and managed a small giggle. In the dark, she had not considered her nakedness. Thankfully, she pressed the sopping blouse to her throbbing face. She tried to wipe it gently but it hurt too much.

  All around the great slab that protected them water began to drip, to a point where, no matter how they lay, they became wet, and they again huddled in each other’s arms, to keep warmer, while they speculated on the source.

  “Could be a leak from a pool which built up somewhere above us,” offered Dick. “And now it’s sifting down to us.”

  Their little lair shuddered, as a quick series of explosions from the Marakand shook it; a heavier splatter of droplets fell round them. Dick felt Emmie begin to tremble and he held her closer. Again he was tempted to take her, now that the air felt cleaner and he could breath properly. She wriggled more tightly to him and he knew that she wanted him. She turned on her back and he moved on top of her, so that there was space above them.

  Despite the limited space, it was a wild lovemaking, as if both of them were young and filled with the frantic desire of youth. Every terrifying shift of the broken buildings above them; every great blast that numbed their ears as the deadly cargo of the Marakand wreaked havoc, though adding to their fear, also intensified their passion, until finally they lay exhausted and almost unbelievably at peace. They continued to caress each other, Emmie with a strange wonder that some one other than Robbie could make her feel so good. As she stroked him, she murmured incoherent endearments and
he chuckled. “Not bad for an old man, eh?” he joked, and fell asleep.

  He was awakened by her hoarse voice saying, “Dickie, I thought I heard something scrabbling about then.”

  “Eh, what?”

  “Listen? Is that a voice?”

  They held their breath; then without a further word felt round for the stones they had used to bang the wall with.

  Frantic with hope, they both banged, and shrieked, “Help! Help! Help!”

  Emmie’s voice was much weaker than she realised, her throat swollen from her earlier screams, and Dick’s was not much better; he realised ruefully that he had exhausted himself with Emmie; it was hard to get breath enough into his lungs to yell.

  They paused to listen again. They could hear only the groans of the pile above them, as it slowly settled. Emmie began to cry.

  xi

  Gwen felt, that Sunday, that her life had been broken into, just like burglars broke into houses, that her house was as good as doorless and anybody could plunge in and out of it without so much as a by-your-leave. Never before had she had to extend a hand to anybody; she prided herself on minding her own business, on having the whitest doorstep in the street, the best-dressed daughter and the cleanest-looking husband – and, of course, getting her washing out on the line before any of her neighbours, on a Monday morning. Sunday was a day to meet one’s friends at chapel and show off the hat one had retrimmed, and to anticipate with pleasure eating one’s meat ration, slowly braised in the oven while one was at service.

  And instead, she was surrounded by the most awful bunch of little horrors anybody could have wished on her. She surveyed them grimly, as they sat round the table at midday, eating like starving dogs. It was a pure miracle, she thought, that she had managed to provide a dinner at all; just like the story of the loaves and fishes. The Thomases’ meat ration had been extended into a stew with the aid of a bag of potatoes, culled from Mrs Donnelly’s kitchen, and three pennyworth of fades – discarded, shrivelled vegetables – from the corner shop. Nora, who had been entrusted with the message to the corner shop, had also brought two loaves of yesterday’s bread and some milk – on credit. “The first time in me life I ever arst for anythin’ on tick,” moaned Gwen.