Daughters of Liverpool (35 page)

‘You don’t understand,’ Katie had told him. What if that was the truth? But what was there to understand? He had seen the letter, after all, and he wasn’t going to be taken for a fool by a woman a second time.

Luke lit a cigarette and drew the smoke deep into his lungs. He didn’t know what to think now. But he did know how he felt, didn’t he? There hadn’t been a moment since their quarrel when Katie hadn’t been in his thoughts or when he hadn’t ached with misery over her.

He couldn’t for the life of him think of any logical explanation for what he had seen, but maybe he should hear from her own lips what it was exactly that he ‘didn’t understand’. He crushed out his cigarette. It was going to be a long night with no chance for him to see Katie until tomorrow.

With the money he’d taken off the captain as a deposit on his car in his pocket, a clever plan hatched to explain away its disappearance and get a new car out of his father, along with his elevation to his father’s good books for coming home to discuss with him exactly what he should say and do when he went before the Medical Board prior to being – he hoped – discharged, Charlie was feeling confident that dealing with Dougie would be, as he had put it to himself, ‘a piece of cake’.

He’d been a bit late setting out for the pub where Dougie had told him to bring the money he still ‘owed’ him, because his mother had insisted on regaling him with a dramatic account of the bomb damage Wallasey had suffered in the previous night’s raid.

‘That’s nothing to what they’ve had in London,’ Charlie had been unwise enough to point out at one stage, but eventually he’d been able to get away – supposedly to see the family of a fellow soldier who had been injured in an exercise and assure them that their son was all right.

‘There you are, Edwin,’ his mother had beamed when Charlie had relayed this piece of fiction to his parents. ‘Just look how the other men are turning to Charlie for help and advice. I’ve always said that he’s a born leader. Just like you.’

His father had grunted in response but Charlie reckoned that his mother’s praise must be worth at least a fiver extra a week in his wages once he started working again for his father.

‘Your father’s had a bad week at the office, haven’t you, Edwin?’ she had told Charlie. ‘It’s this new accounts clerk he’s had to take on. A woman – and you know how your father feels about women in business. He doesn’t approve of it at all, do you, Edwin?’

His father’s only response had been a warning rustle of the newspaper he was reading and a third grunt.

The clear brilliance of the evening sky, with the moon already on the rise suggested that it wasn’t going to be the kind of night when you needed a torch, Charlie decided, as he stepped off the ferry along with the other passengers, and then headed down towards the tangle of narrow streets that led deeper and deeper into the slums.

On one street corner a fire was still burning sullenly from the previous night’s bombing, despite the fire service’s attempts to put it out. Thin, grubby-looking gangs of boys in patched hand-me-down clothes were going purposefully through the wreckage whilst one of their number stood on guard.

‘’Ere, soldier,’ one of them called out to Charlie in a nasal whine. ‘Give us a fag, will yer?’

Charlie was tempted to ignore him. He hadn’t wanted to come down here wearing his uniform, but seeing as he was supposed to be on a semiofficial visit to the home of a fellow soldier, he had felt he hadn’t had any choice. If he ignored the kids there was no saying that they might not take revenge by throwing a few bricks at him, but if he did he could end up like the Pied Piper, with them seeing him as an easy touch and pestering him for more.

In the end he decided to play safe, taking a packet of cigarettes from his pocket, opening it to remove the cigarettes and then throwing them towards the boys, telling them with a grin, ‘Here, help yourselves.’

It had been a pack of twenty, and by the time they had picked them all up, with any luck he’d be in the pub.

What he hadn’t reckoned on was how full the pub would be, with it being a Friday night. The place was packed with dock workers relaxing after a hard week’s work unloading freight from the convoys, and getting the ships ready to turn round as quickly as possible.

The sight of an unfamiliar face produced a sudden silence in the tap room, and as Charlie made his way to the bar he was conscious of an atmosphere that, if not entirely hostile, was certainly wary.

Telling the barman that he’d come to see Dougie,
he ordered himself a pint of shandy and gave a friendly nod to the other men standing at the bar.

None of them responded but the barman was already jerking his head in the direction of the door to one side of the bar, telling Charlie curtly, ‘In there.’

Dougie wasn’t on his own in the small snug, and neither was he smiling. He took out a packet of cigarettes as Charlie walked in, putting one to his mouth, his gaze never leaving Charlie’s face as he snapped his fingers and one of the silent men standing with him leaped forward to light the cigarette for him.

He drew on it and then exhaled and then drew on it again, this time blowing a ring of smoke, which he watched ascend to the grimy ceiling before saying softly to Charlie, ‘I’m not very pleased with you, Charlie boy. Thought it was clever, did you, passing off them dud rings on me?’

He jerked his head and two of the men standing with him moved towards Charlie to stand either side of him and grab hold of his arms.

‘Answer the boss when he speaks to you,
Charlie
,’ one of the men told Charlie, jerking his arm up his back.

Pain ripped through Charlie’s muscles, fear beading his forehead with sweat.

‘It was a mistake,’ Charlie protested, gasping in agony as the pressure on his arm was increased.

‘It certainly was,’ Dougie agreed. ‘A big mistake – for you.’

‘Look, Dougie … Aaaagghhh …’

Charlie would have collapsed in agony if they
hadn’t been holding him when one of the men doubled up his fist and thumped him in the stomach, warning him, ‘It’s Mr Richards to you, garbage.’

Charlie retched painfully, trying to drag air into his lungs.

‘I’ve brought the rest of the money,’ he managed to gasp out, desperate now to bring an end to what was happening and escape.

Another nod of Dougie’s head had one of Charlie’s captors going through the pockets of Charlie’s khaki battledress jacket to remove his wallet, which he handed to Dougie, who went through it and, to Charlie’s dismay, removed all the money from it, swiftly counting it.

‘OK. Give him his wallet back,’ Dougie instructed his heavies.

‘There’s damn-near a hundred and fifty quid there. I only owe you— Aaggghhhh.’

Before Charlie could finish his protest a fist smashed into him making him double up in agony again.

‘Sorry, Charlie boy. Didn’t I explain? There’s the small matter of interest, and compensation now for all the trouble you’ve caused me, as well as the original debt.’

‘But you can’t—’

Too late to wish he hadn’t said anything, Charlie recognised as he received another blow, this time to the side of his face, followed by another that had blood spurting from his nose and dropped him to the floor, fighting for breath and retching in agony.

The sound of the air-raid siren going off might have belonged to another world, for all that it meant to Charlie, but it certainly meant something to the other occupants of the room.

They looked towards Dougie in tense silence.

Lena winced and tried not to feel scared when she heard the air-raid siren sounding. She should have been in the shelter like everyone else in the street, but she was in disgrace, and so she had stayed behind when her aunt and uncle and her cousin had left earlier, her aunt ignoring her uncle’s protests that there might not be any bombing, insisting that she wouldn’t feel safe unless she was there and that she wanted to go early because she wasn’t going to be beaten to the best places again by ‘her from three down’.

All she’d done was try on her cousin’s new skirt and top, bought for her by her merchant seaman boyfriend, Lena reflected miserably. To hear Doris shrieking you’d have thought she’d have stolen her boyfriend. ‘Parading around in them like a trollop’ had been Doris’s exact words, when she had accused her, and then when Lena had pointed out spiritedly to her, ‘Well, they’re your clothes,’ she had got a slapped face from her cousin, followed by the threat of her uncle’s belt if she caused any more trouble.

She was supposed to have put up the blackout fabric on her bedroom window but she hadn’t done and now she was so scared with being in the house on her own that she didn’t want to.

Charlie had virtually been beaten unconscious when the air-raid siren went off.

Dougie, who had been watching the punishment being handed out, put out his cigarette and told his men, ‘Time to get down to the cellar, lads.’

The cellars beneath the pub had turned out handy during air-raid alarms, since they saved the pub occupants from having to go into the shelter.

‘What about him?’ one of the men who had been hitting Charlie asked.

‘Chuck him out in the street,’ Dougie told him. ‘With any luck Hitler will finish the job off for us.’

Lena didn’t pay much attention at first when two men came out of the pub, dragging a third man between them. Everyone local knew all about Dougie and his gang, but then the whoosh of another explosion and the fire from it lit up the darkness and she saw the hurt man’s face. It was
him
. Her hero. Not that he looked much like a hero now, Lena recognised.

The men had disappeared back into the pub, leaving him lying face down in the street. As Lena watched he tried to get up and then collapsed.

Lena ran downstairs and opened the front door. He was still there, trying to crawl now, and getting nowhere fast. She hurried over to him, coughing as she breathed in the acrid smoke billowing from a burning building in the next street, dodging the sudden hail of rubble as another bomb exploded close at hand.

At first when Charlie felt her hand on his arm he thought it was one of Dougie’s men, come back
to finish him off, and he tried to push her away, but Lena refused to let go.

‘Come on, you’ve got to get up, otherwise we’ll both be blown to bits,’ she said fiercely.

A woman. Charlie turned his head to look at her – a moment of clarity amongst all the confusion and pain told him that her face was familiar, and very pretty.

‘Hello again, beautiful.’

Lena beamed. It was just like in the love stories she read. ‘Come on,’ she urged him again.

Somehow or other Charlie managed to stagger to his feet. All he wanted to do was go to sleep, but the pretty girl was pestering him to walk, and it was easier to give in than to argue. He leaned against her, almost knocking her over with his weight, but Lena had seen her aunt help her uncle when he was drunk, and she knew what to do. Draping Charlie’s arm around her shoulders she half coaxed and half dragged him down the street back to the house.

Another air raid, and she still hadn’t had the courage to say anything to Jean yet about her leaving, Katie thought miserably as she listened to the drone of the incoming aircraft, surely far more than there had been the previous night.

The moonlight had been so bright when they had hurried down the street to the shelter that no one had needed a torch. A bomber’s moon, people called such bright moonlight, meaning that the bombers would be able to find their targets far more easily – targets like the docks, and other
places where they could do the most damage to the country’s resources and its pride. Places such as the army camp at Seacombe? Katie shivered even though it was a mild night.

Was Carole right? Should she have tried harder to make Luke listen to her?

‘You’re too soft,’ Carole had scoffed, ‘waiting for him to “understand”. Men aren’t like that, and if you was to ask me I’d say that him being a bit jealous shows how much he cares about you. You should have sat him down and made him listen, instead of letting him go off. You love him, after all – anyone can see that. And if you want my opinion, sometimes a girl has to work that bit harder to make things right between them than a chap does. See, a chap’s got his pride, hasn’t he, and it’s natural that he kicks up a bit when he thinks that a girl’s making a fool of him, ’cos he’s got to think of what his friends will think, whilst a girl knows that her friends will sympathise with her if a chap lets her down.’

Did Carole have a point? Carole was certainly far more pragmatic than she was herself, Katie admitted, and talking with her had certainly made Katie begin to question whether or not she was being silly to feel so hurt because Luke had been so quick to misjudge her and too angry to let her try to explain.

A volley of explosions so loud that they drowned out the sound of the incoming planes and the valiant retaliatory thud of the ack-ack gunfire shook the earth floor of the shelter, causing several indrawn breaths.

‘No need to worry,’ someone called out. ‘They say you never hear the one that gets you.’

‘Hitler’s got it in for us with a vengeance tonight,’ another voice chipped in.

‘Come on, let’s have a bit of a singsong, Dan,’ Jean suggested, hiding her own fear beneath a cheery manner. ‘You’ve got your accordion, haven’t you?’

Very soon they were all singing ‘Ten Green Bottles’, and pretending that they couldn’t hear the terror being rained down on the city.

Once she’d got him inside, Lena could see that he’d had a real old pasting, but she’d seen worse, living where she did. Her uncle liked a drink and had come back from a drinking session many a time bruised and battered after a falling-out with a mate.

As her auntie always said, with regard to Lena’s uncle, a bit of blood went a long way and a bruise was better out than in, for all that it made him look like someone had knocked seven bells out of him.

Charlie, half concussed from the blows he’d received, not really aware of where he was or who he was with, bellowed loudly when Lena applied the cloth she’d soaked in cold water to his bloody face and nose, trying to push her away.

‘The ruddy Luftwaffe won’t have no problem finding this place if you keep carrying on like that,’ Lena told him crossly. ‘They’ll be able to hear you in ruddy Hamburg.’

A woman’s voice. Charlie tried to clear his head,
and then ducked automatically as he heard the whine and then the ear-splitting explosion as a bomb went off close at hand, quickly followed by another.

It crossed his mind that they should be in an air-raid shelter, but somehow he couldn’t organise his thoughts properly. His head ached like the devil. He slumped forward in the chair that Lena had managed to push him into.