Three Women of Liverpool

by Helen Forrester

  Constable Doyle consulted his notebook and then knocked on Gwen’s front door. At least for this family he had good news – as far as it went.

  He made himself smile as the door opened, to reveal Gwen in her dressing-gown, followed by five children in differing states of readiness for school.

  “Me husband?” Gwen faltered, at the sight of the uniform.

  “No, missus. Miss Emma Thomas live here?”

  Relieved, Gwen replied that she did normally, but she was missing.

  “Well, missus, you’ll be pleased to know she’s resting comfortable in Walton Hospital. Be out in a few days.”

  “Thank you kindly for stopping by to tell me,” she began to close the door.

  The constable cleared his throat. “I should tell you, missus, that we’ve heard as the hospital was bombed last night. We don’t know the extent of the damage yet. I’ll know in an hour or …”

  Through white lips, Gwen murmured, “Dave!” and fainted on her neglected doorstep.

  Though the constable was resigned to carrying news that had this kind of result, Gwen’s collapse was unexpected. He helped to carry her in and lay her on the living room sofa. She came round within a minute or two and, through chattering teeth, asked if he or Mr Donnelly would let her know when they had more news of the hospital. “Me husband’s in there, as well as Emma. I’ll go over meself as soon as I’ve got the children away to school.”

  “The north end’s a shambles,” Constable Doyle warned. “I doubt you’d get through. I’ll come as soon as I’ve any news.” He turned to Ruby and Mari – never had he seen two sisters so totally unalike – and told them to make a strong cup of tea for their mam. “Lots of sugar in it – and see she rests a while.”

  ii

  On the previous Wednesday, the day before the raids began, Mrs Owen, Robert’s mother, had said a thankful farewell to the evacuated mother and children who had occupied her spare room for some months. “I can’t stand the quiet out here a day longer,” the mother had told her. “I’m goin’ home to Great Homer Street.”

  Now, on this perfect spring morning, she asked Mr Burnett, the chemist in Hoylake village, for something she might sprinkle round the newly scoured bedroom, to kill off any vermin that her unwelcome guests might have left there. “Me daughter-in-law elect is coming out to live with me. She’s in Walton Hospital at present, recovering from being buried under the canteen she worked in. Poor girl. She’s real nice. I’ll be happy to have her.”

  Mr Burnett looked over his gold spectacles. He swallowed. “Do you know Walton was bombed last night?”

  Mrs Owen’s hand flew to her throat. “Oh, no! Poor lass, poor lass – and poor Robbie.”

  She had trouble waking Robert from the sleep of the absolutely worn out. He would have to go into Liverpool, anyway, she told herself, to be signed off from the Marakand and then find himself another berth. She sighed at the thought.

  When he heard the news, he was wide awake in a moment and jumped out of bed. He seized his trousers and struggled into them.

  “The phone to the hospital’s dead. I tried it – or rather, Mr Burnett did.”

  “I can go over.”

  “Well, you have some tea first. The kettle’s boiling.” Dear Lord, what a mess he was in, too. A black eye, hardly any eyebrows or eyelashes – all singed off – likewise his front hair. And both hands bandaged by the hospital, because of the burns on them.

  iii

  Conor had not been home since before his wife’s funeral on Tuesday. Now, on Thursday morning, after what Glynis Hughes described as a lively night but not in the usual sense, he hesitantly opened his front door. He had snatched an occasional nap at the post, but now he knew he must really sleep; otherwise, he would collapse.

  On the floor of the passage inside, lay his letter to his mother, returned through the dead-letter office. A wobbly hand had scrawled in pencil on it, “Address Unknown. Return to sender”. Then in brackets the writer had added, “Whole street bombed. Tried to trace in Rest Centre without success.”

  He stood in the narrow hall, paralysed. He could not believe it. He had been so harassed himself that he had not thought about his parents’ danger.

  If they were hurt or killed, why hadn’t his married sister, who lived in the same street, let him know?

  A slow coldness crept through him. From bitter experience, he could visualise the scene so well. A dozen houses down, a whole series of families related to each other carried out dead or dying; no one surviving long enough to give names to the authorities. Those same authorities, hopelessly overloaded by the sheer magnitude of the raids, would in time name most of the victims – but not yet.

  He leaned his head against his paintless front door, and cried aloud, “Holy Mother have pity on me!” He beat his fist against the unresponding wood. “I’m damned! Accursed!”

  Nearly demented, he fled back to his post – and the telephone.

  With some difficulty, he got through, on the newly restored line, to the wardens’ post nearest to his parents’ house. Then he came slowly back to his own street. Instinctively, he sought the only people left to him, his children; he turned the rapidly tarnishing brass knob of Gwen’s front door and walked in.

  Michael was asleep on the sofa, an empty feeding-bottle lolling by his cheek. From the kitchen came the splash of dishes being washed.

  “Are you there, Mrs Thomas?”

  The splashing stopped immediately and Ruby came running in, wiping her hands on a dish towel. “Dad,” she cried eagerly.

  He held out his arms to her. She ran into them and with his head bowed over her he began to sob helplessly. She drew back. “Dad, what’s up?” she whispered, frightened by such a lament.

  While she sat on his knee in the muddled room, he told her. He wept unrestrainedly, unable to hold in his despair and grief any more.

  Half girl, half woman, she listened quietly, arm around his neck. Then she started to comfort. “Don’t cry, Dadda. We’ll manage,” she said hoarsely. “Mrs Thomas’ll help me – while I get started, like.” She clung to him while he tried to control himself.

  “I’m sorry, luv,” he said, and wept on.

  She was frightened to see her hot-tempered father cry, but it also put him on a level with Patrick, and she said, “Aye, everybody cries sometimes, Dadda,” and gritted her teeth and hugged him closer.

  When her father’s weeping ceased, she said quite eagerly, “Let’s go and buy a bit o’ food, Dad, so as we can move back home.”

  That afternoon, Gwen and Mari sat and looked at each other over their teatime toast and dripping. The house was extraordinarily quiet and seemed to exude the misery of its damage and neglect. Gwen thought her heart had never been so heavy. By dint of taking three trams in a circular route and walking quite a distance, she had managed to reach Walton Hospital. The fright engendered by the bombs on the hospital had given David another heart attack. He had, however, survived, though he would need much nursing and would probably never be able to return to work. She had also briefly visited Emmie, who was heavily sedated and an alarming bundle of bandages and sticking plaster. There she had met Robert, sitting by her bed. He had told her that when Emmie was discharged from hospital, his mother would take care of her at his home in Hoylake, until they were married. It was the only good news of the day. Confound her – and her furniture – she could have the lot of it.

  Mari broke into her gloomy contemplation by saying brightly, between sips of cocoa, “Tomorrow’s your day for Blackler’s.”

  Gwen nodded. “It’s burned down. I’m out o’ work – like plenty of others.”

  “They might start up again,” Mari replied. “You could go and see. There’s probably a notice set up in the ruins, to tell the staff what to do.”

  “Aye. I’d be glad of a full-time job, now your dad’s so poorly.” Her face brightened. “I’ll go this evening. People’s got to buy clothes and bedding from somewhere.”

  “I’ll walk down with you,
if you like.”

  “Would you, dear? I’d enjoy your company.”

  iv

  One of the loneliest people in Liverpool lay unvisited, except by Robert Owen, in a huge, overcrowded men’s ward at Walton Hospital. Identified by the pay slip in his wallet, still in his back pocket, Deckie Dick opened his eyes on Thursday evening, to the long glinting rays of a setting sun reflected on a shiny, white ceiling. He was in a bed and shivering; yet at the same time feeling dreadfully hot. He had been vaguely aware of being bundled about, of being sponged and feeling chilled.

  A face loomed over him. It was topped by a little white cap above a wrinkled brow. A pair of sharp blue eyes, red-rimmed, peered at him. His wrist was clasped by cold, bony fingers.

  A misty mouth said, “He’ll be all right now.”

  Another blanket was tucked over him. He fell asleep, only to be awakened by more fumbling hands. The air raid warning was wailing its devil’s notes, and two giggling young women were lifting him out of bed. They stuffed him underneath it. “Safest place,” they assured him, and wrapped his blankets round him.

  “Where am I?” he asked.

  “Walton Hospital,” they told him, and he breathed, “Thanks be,” and slept contentedly on the floor through the rest of the night.

  The entire population of Liverpool had been waiting tensely for the warning to go. Some of those who still had a bed had climbed into it, feeling that they must sleep, no matter what happened to them. Now they raised their heads to listen. But the raid was small, short and scattered; many of the townsfolk slept through it. London became the main target, though German squadrons were beginning to regroup in preparation for an attack on Russia. In the days following, mass funerals were held, and people who thought they could not cry another tear, wept some more.

  One morning, a curiously shrunken and shaky Deckie Dick, dressed in clothing supplied by a charitable organisation, tottered out of Walton Hospital and went back to the room he rented in Pitt Street. The landlady had relet it. “Ah thought you must be dead,” she told him. She had, however, stored his few belongings, in case he had a relative to claim them.

  Weak and bewildered, he went into a tiny café, sat down at a greasy table and ordered a cup of coffee. From his wallet he took out a small piece of paper with an address written on it and he smoothed it between thumb and finger. The granny of the young conscript he had met in the shelter also lived in Pitt Street. Robert Owen had told him that everyone in the shelter had been killed. She must be feeling bad, he ruminated, as he slowly stirred his tasteless coffee. It wouldn’t hurt him to go up and see her; the old biddy might even know of a room to let.

  Ten minutes later, he was climbing the bare, littered stairs of a lodging house similar to the one he had lived in, though this one seemed to smell even worse.

  He did not have to knock at the door of the first-floor front room. The occupant had heard his footsteps and had opened it a crack.

  “Mrs Pickles?” he inquired of the one grey eye peeping at him.

  The crack widened. In the dim light he could make out only a female form draped in a black shawl. “What d’yer want?” The voice was full of suspicion.

  “Ah come about your nephew, Wilf.”

  A sharp intake of breath. “Well, what about ’im?”

  “Mrs Pickles, can I come in and sit down? I bin ill or I’d have come before. I met your lad in an air raid shelter and promised to look you up.”

  A pause. “Come in.”

  Inside the bare, clean room, he turned to the woman. She was very small, with a pinched, thin face out of which large steel-grey eyes regarded him with sudden compassion. Her skin looked pale from poor nourishment and lack of sunshine, and was a mass of fine lines. She had no teeth. About 55 years old, he reckoned.

  She said, “Aye, you are ill, I can see that. Sit down on the sofa bed. I was just goin’ to make a pot o’ tea and a bite of toast.” She picked up a kettle from off the small fire and poured boiling water into a teapot, much blackened from being kept hot too near the fire.

  Dickie sank thankfully on to the edge of the sofa; the springs complained bitterly.

  “What about Wilf?” she asked. “You know he were killed? He were all I got – a real nice lad.”

  As gently as he knew how, he told her about the scene in the air raid shelter and of his promise.

  White cup and saucer in one hand, she looked down at him, her mouth quivering. He thought she was going to cry, but she did not. She simply sighed and sat down abruptly. She took the lid off the aluminium teapot and stirred the tea vigorously.

  As she handed a cup to him, she asked, “What was you ill with?”

  He told her about being buried with Emmie and his subsequent pneumonia, and as he talked some of the stress went out of him.

  She listened patiently, and at the end she said, “I don’t think any of us will ever be the same again after all this. It’s as if all our lives was overturned in the course of a week, isn’t it?”

  “Aye.” He smiled wryly, and stirred his tea. He wondered if he still had a job. Then he burst out suddenly, “Being buried like that – it taught me life was worth having. Funny, isn’t it?”

  She smiled and her eyes crinkled up with a promise of laughter, when she felt better. “Have another piece of toast,” she invited.

  Through two pots of tea and a pile of toast, they sat knee to knee, two lonely people tossed together by a war they did not understand.

  He stayed with her for the rest of his life.

  SUNDAY, 29 JUNE 1941

  “It feels proper queer – to be married at last,” remarked Emmie. “I thought we’d never make it.”

  “You mean when you was buried?”

  They were wandering along Hoylake Promenade, idly pausing from time to time to watch children digging in the sand, while their elders snoozed beneath copies of the Sunday newspapers, and dogs ran yapping after balls tossed by strolling owners. It was hard to believe that, not too far from them, out to sea, men stalked each other mercilessly and that, in Europe, the art of murder was reaching new heights, while in England itself cities burned.

  “Not so much being buried,” Emmie replied uneasily, “Though that were bad enough. But you havin’ to go back to sea afore I were out of hospital – and bein’ so long in the hospital, with me nerves, and lookin’ like a piece of red raddle when they took the bandages off me face; I were fit to die when I saw meself in the mirror. I thought you wouldn’t want me no more.”

  “Tush, luv. I’d always want you. There’s more to a woman than a face. Anyways, there’s nothin’ that time and a spot o’ warpaint won’t cover.” He bent and kissed the top of her newly permed hair. No need to tell her that he had been nearly shocked out of his kecks when he had first seen her. But the doctors had been right, She was healing and they’d done some neat stitching on her, which they swore would fade, and the bruises on her poor body were going, too. The doctors had said it was a pure miracle that she had no broken bones and she wasn’t blinded.

  He tightened his arm around her waist and he saw her wince and immediately loosened it again. Bugger the Nazis. Just wait till he got a chance at one, he promised himself bitterly. He’d never felt such boiling hatred in his life before. It bubbled in him, awaiting only the opportunity to explode.

  She turned her face towards him. “I love you so,” she said unexpectedly, and he was diverted immediately by a fresh surge of longing.

  “Look, duck. Let’s nip ’ome. Me mam and dad allus goes over to see me brother on Sunday afternoon. Let’s go ’ome and have a little matinee. What say?”

  She bit her lip and then grinned quite cheerfully. Why say that so much of you still ached that you could hardly bear to be touched. He’d be gone on the eight o’clock train, back to his boat and the god-damned Atlantic. She’d have weeks of nothing before he returned – always supposing he got back safe. Time enough to get herself well again – and try for a job in munitions, so she could send a bit back to the Jerrie
s with her best compliments.

  About the Author

  When the air raid siren sounded on 1st May 1941, Gwen Thomas, her family and her neighbour, Ellen Donnelly, with whom she waged an intermittent private war, had no idea what it presaged for them. Ellen and her large family had already been bombed out; they felt they were unlikely to suffer a second time. Gwen’s mind was filled with the petty irritations of keeping house for her plumber husband, her schoolgirl daughter and her sister-in-law, Emmie; she had no time to think about the war itself. Emmie had just become engaged to a merchant seaman and dread of what might happen to him in the Battle of the Atlantic outweighed any other consideration. The three women, each in her own way, tried to deal bravely with the holocaust when it hit them, small people caught in a ruthless tide of destruction.

  By the Same Author

  Alien There is None

  Most Precious Employee

  Twopence to Cross the Mersey

  Liverpool Miss (Minerva’s Stepchild)

  By the Waters of Liverpool

  The Latchkey Kid

  Liverpool Daisy

  Copyright

  © Helen Forrester 1984

  First published in Great Britain 1984

  This edition 2012

  ISBN 978 0 7198 0762 6 (epub)

  ISBN 978 0 7198 0763 3 (mobi)

  ISBN 978 0 7090 0764 0 (pdf)

  ISBN 978 0 7090 1418 8 (print)

  Robert Hale Limited

  Clerkenwell House

  Clerkenwell Green

  London EC1R 0HT

  www.halebooks.com

  The right of Helen Forrester to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988