Put Out the Fires

by Maureen Lee

  “Jaysus! Nine and eleven a yard!”

  “You’d need four yards for a suit, and I charge seventeen and sixpence. That’s less than three pounds for a velvet suit. I reckon it’d cost seven guineas or more in George Henry Lee’s.”

  “I’m not sure, Bren. It’s nearly a week’s wages.”

  “It’s up to you, girl.”

  “I might go to the Co-op on Monday and take a look at their material.”

  “Don’t take too long, now,” Brenda warned. “I’ve already got a rush on to finish stuff for Christmas.” She finished a seam, cut the thread, and started on another.

  “Did you see the King and Queen when they came to Bootle last week?” she asked.

  “Nah!” Eileen said dismissively. “I was at work, anyroad, but you know what me dad’s like. According to him, he came out of the womb a republican and he reckons us three kids should feel the same. He’d have a fit if he thought I’d hang about just to get a glimpse of royalty. Did you go?”

  “I took the girls,” said Brenda. “It was an excuse for them to wear their new frocks.” Brenda’s daughters, Muriel and Monica, were always identically and impeccably dressed.

  “She looked nice, the Queen. Wore a lovely hat tilted on the side of her head and three rows of pearls. The King seemed a pleasant enough chap, though a bit shy. It were good of them, y’know, Eil, to come all the way to Bootle just to see the folks who’ve been bombed out.”

  “Maybe, but it’s only what they’re paid to do out of our taxes.”

  “Your dad’ll never be dead while you’re alive, Eileen,”

  Brenda said with a smile. Jack Doyle’s position as a socialist, trade unionist and sworn enemy of the establishment, was well known and mainly respected throughout Bootle.

  Eileen took the remark for what it was meant to be, a compliment. “In that case, forget about the velvet. I’d feel uncomfortable wearing something that cost more than some men earn in a week to keep their family. I’ll look for something cheaper.”

  “It’s all the same to me, Eil,” Brenda Mahon said cheerfully. “It’s still seventeen and sixpence, whether it’s sacking or gold lame.”

  “Is anyone going down the High Street today?” Carmel screeched. “If so, I’d like a jar of homemade tomato chutney off that woman by the Post Office.”

  “What did you say?” Doris yelled.

  Carmel repeated the request at an increased decibel.

  “I can’t hear you. Say it again.”

  “Have you gone deaf or something?” Carmel frowned suspiciously. “They say too much of the other affects the hearing.”

  “I’m not deaf,” Doris grinned. “It’s just that every time you say ‘tomato chutney’, a shower of spit comes out. I just wondered if the louder you shouted, the further it went.”

  “Cheeky bugger!” Carmel looked affronted.

  It was only then that Eileen remembered she’d left a pound of tomatoes in the cottage, along with a loaf of bread, a tin of salmon and quite a few other groceries. It wouldn’t have entered Nick’s head to throw the fresh food away. He said he hadn’t eaten and almost certainly hadn’t noticed it was there.

  She decided to forgo her dinner, which was no hardship, as she rarely felt like a full blown meal at ten o’clock in the morning, despite the fact she’d been up since five.

  “I’ll get you some chutney, Carmel,” she called.

  “Ta, luv. You’re a dead good sort.”

  “Huh!” said Doris scathingly.

  Eileen ignored the comment. Although most of the women had taken kindly to her promotion, a few, Doris in particular, resented the position of overseer being given to someone who hadn’t worked at Dunnings for as long as they had.

  “I wouldn’t have wanted to be overseer,” said Carmel in the ensuing row, during which Eileen had been accused by Doris of sucking up to Miss Thomas. “It would have been no use asking me. I couldn’t cope with the responsibility.”

  The neither,” echoed Theresa. “Anyroad, if it was the person who’d been here longest, it wouldn’t be you, Doris, but Mona Dewar, and I wouldn’t want her telling me what to do, not in a million years. Mona’s a right ould cow.”

  “Not only that, you’re too young, Doris,” said Lil. “No one wants to be bossed around by a chit of a girl.”

  “Thanks very much!” Doris tossed her head haughtily.

  “There’s nowt wrong with being a chit of a girl,” Lil said reasonably. “We’ve all been chits at one time or another. I think Eileen’s got the right . . . ” Lil regarded Eileen thoughtfully. “The right air of authority.”

  Eileen began to wish she’d never accepted the promotion as she was scrutinised for the appropriate air of authority by half a dozen pairs of eyes, particularly when Doris said, “You mean the right creepy-crawly attitude.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Doris,” she said weakly. “I’ve never creeped or crawled to anyone.”

  “No! You were forever in Miss Thomas’s office sucking up.”

  “How can you say that when you weren’t there?” Eileen began to lose her temper. “If you must know, Miss Thomas was sorting out a domestic problem for me.”

  “I don’t believe you,” Doris said flatly.

  “Well, I don’t bloody care,” Eileen flared back. “Now, get on with your work. That batch is supposed to be finished by going home time and you’ve scarcely started.”

  With ill grace, Doris turned back to her machine, and Pauline said, “I wish you’d shurrup about it, Doris. I don’t give a toss who’s overseer. As long as I get me wages at the end of the week, that’s all I care!” There was a murmur of agreement from the other women.

  The job made little difference to Eileen’s own work. It merely meant consulting with Alfie, the foreman, at the beginning of the day and getting a schedule of work in hand. Then, as each woman completed a batch of work, it was Eileen who assigned the next job on the list. She was scrupulously fair, unlike Ivy Twyford, the previous overseer, who, everyone suspected, kept the simplest jobs for her friends. As everyone was paid on piece work, a string of complicated work assignments could seriously affect the level of wages received at the end of the week.

  Gradually the women grew to accept Eileen as overseer and the tension eased. Doris was the only one who continued to make life unpleasant.

  As soon as the hooter went, Eileen slipped into her coat and made her way down the High Street to the cottage. It was a glorious day for November, brilliantly sunny and unseasonably warm.

  The first thing she noticed was that the windows needed a good clean. She longed to attack them there and then with the new window leather which was in the cupboard under the sink, but there was no time. Inside, the table was still set, ready for tea, and it looked rather ghostly, Eileen thought, with the cutlery and condiments full of dust and the flowers in a bowl in the centre completely dead. She forced herself not to mope and feel sad as she put everything away, though it was hard not to compare the dead, withered flowers which turned to dust when she touched them, with the end of her love affair with Nick.

  The tomatoes were in the larder, squashy and full of mould. She put them in an old newspaper to throw away at work, and flung the loaf, which had turned completely green, out to the birds. The remaining groceries, the salmon, a few jellies, tins of custard and gravy powder, she decided to take home, even the butter, which smelt more than a bit off, but it was silly to waste food during a war.

  “I think that’s it!” she said aloud.

  She was about to leave when she noticed the family photograph on the sideboard; her dad looking like a martinet with his hand on her dead mam’s shoulder, Sean a mere baby, the girls standing one each side, Sheila coyly gazing at the camera, and Eileen looking rather awkward.

  There were other things; little ornaments people had given her for birthdays or Christmas, including a set of lace doilies Brenda Mahon had made. Eileen wasn’t quite sure what prompted her to leave everything where it was.
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  Maybe it was because doing otherwise meant there would be no reason for her to visit the cottage again.

  On the way back, she almost forgot Carmel’s chutney, and had to return to the house by the Post Office, where she bought ajar for herself at the same time. Worried she’d be late, she began to hurry towards Dunnings, but as she approached the factory, realised there was plenty of time.

  The men who usually went for a drink in the pub across the road were still sitting on the bridge which passed over the narrow stream. She could hear the occasional wolf whistle, which meant the girls must have come outside for a breath of fresh air on such a lovely day.

  When she arrived at the bridge, she saw them sitting on the path, their backs against the factory wall. Most were having a last minute smoke before the hooter went.

  Doris, hands outstretched, was wiggling her fingers wildly in the air—she’d probably been painting her nails with that hideous purple polish she used. All the women were staring as if fascinated at something in the sky and when Eileen followed their gaze, she saw a plane making acrobatic turns in the far distance. It looked no bigger than a fly as it looped and twisted. There was a lazy, idle air about it, as if the pilot had merely gone up to play. If you listened hard, you could just about hear its distant drone.

  The plane began to approach, growing larger and blacker by the second, and the men on the bridge started to wave and cheer.

  “Come on, mate!”

  “It’s a Battle of Britain pilot, I reckon.”

  The plane was almost upon them by the time the German crosses on the wings and tail could be seen, and the pilot, in his leather helmet and goggles, was clearly visible. As it zoomed downwards, little spurts of fire came from underneath the cockpit, accompanied by a sharp repetitive noise, a rat-tat-tat.

  No-one moved, no-one spoke. The only sound to be heard was the noise of the engine as the plane appeared dead set on crashing into the wall where the girls sat.

  Then, at the very last minute, with a deafening roar it veered sharply upwards and completely vanished out of sight.

  It was only then that everyone emerged from their state of frozen shock.

  “He’s shot the women! He’s shot the fucking women!” a man yelled.

  Eileen dropped her bag and scrambled down the bank.

  The girls were sitting transfixed against the wall, open mouthed, but very much alive. About two feet or three feet above them, a neat row of bullet holes had been chipped out of the brick wall.

  “He missed!” screamed Doris. She stood up and shook her fist at the sky. “I caught that bleedin’ Jerry’s eye, and I willed the bugger to miss.”

  “Oh, Doris!” Eileen flung her arms around the defiant girl. “You’re so brave.”

  Doris said hoarsely, “No, I ain’t, Eil. I was bloody terrified.”

  Stunned members of management began to emerge from the side door of the factory, and the shaken women were ushered inside. The canteen was hurriedly reopened to provide cups of tea.

  “If anyone wants to go home, I’m quite happy to take them,” Miss Thomas called.

  But no-one went home. In less than half an hour, everyone was back at work, though the narrow escape was the only topic of conversation for the rest of the shift. No one could be quite sure if the German pilot had meant to kill them or had deliberately missed.

  “I suppose there’s one or two decent Jerries about,” reckoned Theresa. “Maybe he just wanted to give us a fright.”

  “Well, he succeeded,” Carmel said with a leer. “I nearly shit me keks, I can tell you.”

  “I think it was dead exciting,” said Doris boastfully. “I can’t wait to tell me mam. If I had a choice, I’d sooner be shot at than not shot at. It makes me feel sort of special.”

  “You deserve a medal, the lot o’yis,” Eileen told them proudly.

  One good thing to come out of the incident was that from that day on, Doris stopped making catty comments about Eileen’s promotion. Indeed, the women grew closer than they’d ever been before.

  Chapter 6

  The screams coming from next door had become so ferocious that Ruth Singerman, lying in bed with no alternative but to listen—no-one within earshot could possibly sleep through such a noise -began to worry for Ellis Evans’ sanity. It sounded as if the woman was rowing with herself in Welsh. Her voice was the only one that could be heard, a terrible, endless, piercing shriek. If Dai was at the receiving end of the diatribe, he was making no attempt to answer back. The row, if that’s what it was, had been going on for nearly an hour.

  There was a raid in progress and Ruth could hear planes overhead and the occasional screech of a bomb to vie with Ellis, followed by an explosion and the terrified whinny of the horse in the coalyard opposite. Both she and her father preferred to ignore the raids, or at least pretend to ignore them, and remained in bed if they’d already gone up by the time the warning siren sounded.

  “If I’m going to die, I’d prefer to die in comfort,’Jacob chuckled, though he kept his underwear on. ‘So I can get dressed quickly in case of an emergency.’

  Ruth found it astonishing how quickly the air-raids seemed to have become part of everyday existence. So much so, it was the nights there was no raid at all that were remarked on.

  “See bloody Hitler had other things to do with himself,” people would say the morning after they’d had an uninterrupted night’s sleep.

  Even when folks they knew were killed, everyone seemed to take the loss of a neighbour or a friend in their stride. “What else can they do?’Jacob shrugged when Ruth remarked on this phenomenon. ‘Run around in a panic screaming their heads off like Ellis? People are very brave under the most trying of circumstances. Londoners are having it far worse than us, but according to the papers, they’re taking it like the proverbial bricks.’

  Ellis!

  Ruth pulled the bedclothes over her head to shut out the sounds, but it was useless. The screaming persisted and the bedclothes were no help. She wondered if there was something genuinely wrong. Perhaps the entire family were being murdered? If so, Ellis had cried wolf for too long, because no-one in Pearl Street seemed interested.

  Another bomb came screeching earthwards and Ruth felt the hairs rise on her neck, though according to Jacob, “If you can hear the bomb coming, it means it’s not meant for you.” Perhaps he was right, because the subsequent explosion sounded several streets away. It was strange how the urge to stay alive persisted, no matter how many times you tried to convince yourself that life was no longer worth living. Even stranger was the fact she felt a sense of immediate danger much more strongly than during the two years spent hidden in Gertrude’s house. In fact, there she’d actually felt quite safe, but in Bootle the bombs weren’t searching for any particular victim; death and destruction was applied quite randomly. Any target, rich or poor, Jew or Gentile, would do.

  Ruth decided to go down and make a cup of tea. She’d never fall asleep until the row next door - and the raid was over.

  The living room was warm and the remains of the fire still glowed in the grate. Ruth raked the coals into life, filled the kettle and put it on the hob to boil. She didn’t bother lighting the gas mantle. The coals gave off sufficient light to see by and the room seemed cosier that way. Everywhere looked quite different from when she’d first come home; there were new curtains on the window which Jacob had made himself, a proper mat in front of the fire to replace the tattered rag rug, new tablecloths. Ruth got surprising satisfaction out of making life more comfortable for her father. It made up for not loving him as much as she should.

  “You spoil me,” he protested when she came in laden with groceries, including the ginger marmalade and shortbread biscuits which she remembered were his favourites.

  “It’s only our rations, Dad,” she told him.

  “But I wish you didn’t have to work.” He continued to fret, as if she was above work, too genteel to earn an honest crust.

  “I love it, Dad, honestly.”r />
  Which was true, in a way. Playing the piano had always been her favourite occupation, and now she was being paid for doing what she liked best. Soon she would have saved enough to redeem the musical box from the pawnshop.

  She had decided not to apply for a job in Eileen Costello’s factory, although the pay was good and, apparently, the work not too tiring once you got used to it. Ruth wanted to work in a place where no-one knew anything of her history, a place where she was a total stranger, because people might feel sorry for her and pity was something she couldn’t have stood—or prejudice; after all, Ruth been married to an Austrian, the country that had spawned the monster, Hitler. Perhaps Eileen would have kept quiet, but she would have known.

  It had been for that reason, to get away from people who knew her background, that weeks ago Ruth had caught the train to Liverpool city centre in search of work.

  Liverpool had scarcely changed since she last saw it. The sights she loved were still there, solid and eternal; St George’s Hall, Lime Street Station, the Walker Art Gallery, though here and there a bomb-scarred shop, the burnt out remains of a building, an ugly heap of debris, reminded her that the world had changed, if not the city. Ruth wandered around the shops and bought two pairs of stockings, a lipstick and a box of Ponds face powder out of the money from the musical box. She justified the extravagance by telling herself she’d soon be earning money of her own.

  “You’re lucky,” said the girl on the cosmetics counter in Lewis’s department store. “We’ve just had a delivery.”

  “Is powder difficult to get? I didn’t realise.”

  “All make-up’s difficult to get.” The girl laughed.

  “Where have you been? On the moon, or something?”

  “It’s a long time since I bought any,” Ruth muttered.

  Despite everything, she was still concerned with how she looked, though in a cold, detached sort of way, because at the back of her mind there was always the image of Benjy’s body swinging in the stairwell and an aching void left by her lost children. For instance, she was quite pleased with her hair. Instead of a perm, only a trim was needed to tidy up the ends. Once washed, her hair had turned quite wavy.