Lights Out Liverpool (3 page)

A trickle of people began to arrive; George Ransome, a middle-aged bachelor with a dashing pencil thin moustache, who worked in Littlewoods Pools, appeared with two bottles of cream sherry. ‘A little treat for the ladies,’ he said with a wink, and there was a rush indoors for glasses. Then Dilys Evans, only fourteen, looking worn out from her new job as a chambermaid in the Adelphi Hotel in Liverpool.

Soon afterwards, Sheila whispered to her sister, ‘I feel as if I’d like a lie down, Sis.’

Eileen nodded. ‘I’ll be in later and help you settle the kids.’ Caitlin had woken up by then, and Sheila led the tiny girl indoors by the hand.

The sky dimmed, turned to mauve, as dusk began to fall and the great orange ball of the sun slowly dipped behind a ridge of roofs, leaving chimneys silhouetted, stark and black, against its fiery brilliance before it disappeared altogether. Then the stars came out; just one at first, then another, and almost within the blinking of an eye, overhead became a blanket of twinkling yellow lights. At long last the air began to freshen and turn cool and the
lamplighter
arrived, propping his ladder against the arms of the lamppost on the corner by the pub. The gas jet began to splutter and fizz and gave off an eerie glow.

‘Be out of a job soon,’ he said mournfully as he was about to leave. ‘Once the bloody blackout comes.’

And still they sat, talking quietly now, unwilling to let the day go; as if the longer they stayed, the longer it would take tomorrow to come, because nobody in their right mind wanted what tomorrow might bring. Dancing had been planned for after dark, the polka and
Knees Up Mother Brown
and the
Gay Gordons
– Mr Singerman had been practising all week – but somehow no-one felt like dancing. Instead, they listened to the haunting sound of Paddy O’Hara on his harmonica, the music quivering like invisible birds in the yellow-hued night air.

The glitter of the day had gone. Reality had set in.

‘When are you sailing, Joey?’ someone shouted across the street.

‘Next Sat’day, on the
Athenia
,’ Joey replied.

‘We’re going steerage,’ put in Mary hastily, as if worried folks might think they’d booked a first-class cabin.

‘Looks like you’re getting out just in time.’

Joey flushed angrily. ‘We’ve been saving for years to go to Canada. Me brother Kevin’s already in Ontario.’

‘D’you know who’s taking on the house, Joey?’ asked Ellis Evans, who lived next door.

‘No-one yet, luv,’ Joey answered. ‘The landlord’s agent said he’ll have a job renting out a house in Bootle, because – well, you know why.’

They knew only too well. When war broke out, Bootle, with its multiplicity of docks and being the nearest British port to the Americas, would be one of the prime targets for Hitler’s bombs. There was a long
silence
as they contemplated the awfulness of this.

‘It mightn’t happen’, Eileen said eventually in a small voice. ‘There’s still time.’ The situation had been building up for years like a pot gradually simmering on a stove. Now, with Hitler about to invade Poland, the pot was threatening to boil over. Surely he wouldn’t go ahead, she thought desperately, not when he knew what the consequences would be? Having guaranteed Polish independence, Great Britain and France would consider invasion as an act of war against themselves and be forced to retaliate.

Eileen was uncomfortably aware of Francis glaring in her direction. Her husband didn’t like her drawing attention to herself in company. She was beginning to wish she hadn’t spoken, when a figure appeared under the flickering gas lamp. Her dad!

‘Jack! Jack Doyle.’ Joey Flaherty jumped to his feet, his face wreathed in smiles. ‘You should’ve come before, Jack. Sit down, mate.’

There was a genuine chorus of welcome from the assembled crowd, and Eileen felt a surge of pride. Jack Doyle was one of the best liked and most respected men in the whole of Bootle.

‘It was a Pearl Street do,’ he said stiffly. ‘It wouldn’t’ve been right when it weren’t my street.’

He touched his daughter’s shoulder lightly and Eileen looked up, expecting some sort of greeting. Instead, he asked gruffly, ‘Where’s our Sheila?’

‘She was a bit tired, she went indoors a while ago.’ As ever, she felt let down. ‘I could be invisible as far as me dad’s concerned,’ she thought bitterly. She recalled the wedding photograph on the sideboard in the house in Garnet Street, her mam, dimpled and smiling, the spitting image of Sheila. Since Mam died so unexpectedly of breast cancer
fourteen
years ago, her father seemed to have transferred almost the entire weight of his affections onto her sister. Her younger brother, Sean, only two when Mam died, had managed to stake a small claim on his dad’s heart, but Eileen felt as if she didn’t exist at all, yet she loved him so much and yearned for recognition.

Her husband poured the newcomer a glass of ale and showed him to an empty chair at the far end of the table. Eileen noticed Francis whisper in the older man’s ear. Her dad nodded and stood up.

‘Francis has asked me to say a few words,’ he said. Everyone immediately fell silent and turned to look at the tall charismatic figure of Jack Doyle, docker, unpaid official of the dockworkers’ union and well known scourge of management since the day he’d begun working for them twenty-five years ago. ‘First thing is to wish Joey and Mary and their little ’uns well in their new life.’

There was a murmur of agreement and shouts of ‘Good luck, Joey, Mary.’

Jack Doyle continued. ‘Now, the war. It’s going to happen, no doubt about it, any day now. I’ve already fought in one world war and I was lucky. I came through unscathed, but I weren’t happy about risking me life for a country that had given me nowt, that was owned lock, stock and barrel by the rich folk, who only wanted it protected and preserved for theirselves. It weren’t
my
country, it were
theirs
! What thanks did the widders get after their men spilt every last drop of their blood in the trenches of the Somme? Those lions led by donkeys? None! Paddy O’Hara gave ’em his eyes. What did they give you back, Paddy?’

‘A few measly bob a week in pension, Jack, and an empty belly most of the time,’ Paddy shouted.

‘That’s right!’ Jack Doyle’s lip curled. ‘But this war’s
different
, lads,’ he went on. ‘This time it ain’t a way of getting rid of the unemployed – though don’t forget there’s a million and a half of them. If I were a younger man, I’d volunteer. They wouldn’t need to call me up. In fact, I’d have joined the Territorials like my son-in-law, Francis.’

He beamed down at the younger man and laid an affectionate hand on his shoulder. There was a smattering of applause and Francis gave his charming, devil-may-care smile which Annie always said made him look even more like Clark Gable than ever. Eileen wondered for the hundredth time what on earth had come over her husband to make him join the Royal Tank Regiment. He had a good, well paid job and at thirty-six wouldn’t be called up for a while yet, but as a Territorial he would be involved straight away. She suspected it might have something to do with his political aspirations. Francis was an elected member of Bootle Corporation and had Parliament in his sights. He didn’t expect the war to last more than a few months, and a spell in the army would look good on his record.

‘This time,’ her dad was saying, ‘you’ll be fighting to preserve summat worthwhile, to keep the world free from fascism.’ He nodded towards Mr Singerman. The old man nodded back, dark eyes full of pain. ‘Jacob can tell you more about it than I can. He’s heard nowt from his Ruth in Austria for more’n a year now. Yes, this time,’ he continued, his voice rising as he gradually began to be possessed with the rage against inequality and injustice that Eileen knew so well, ‘it’s different, but it’s still only a case of defending the bad against the worse.’ He smiled sardonically. ‘’Course, while you’re fighting, you’ll be told how brave you are, how much you’re needed, but once it’s over, you’ll have no more than you had before. In other words, nowt!’

He paused dramatically with the air of an accomplished orator, yet he’d never addressed more than a few hundred dockers in his entire life. The yellow street lamp sizzled on the corner, but apart from that, the silence was total. He held his audience in the palm of his hand. Word had gone round the pub that Jack Doyle was on his feet and everyone, including Mack, the landlord, had come out to listen. Eileen thought her father would have made a far better politician than Francis, who had to learn every word of a speech by heart.

‘Have you seen that poster?’ He looked at them quizzically and several people shook their heads. ‘It’s all over town. “Your courage, your cheerfulness, your resolution, will bring us victory.” Not
our
courage,
our
cheerfulness,
our
resolution … No, it’s up to us, the workers, like usual, to fight the toffs’ battles for them. Some from Pearl Street have already gone to do their bit, like Annie’s lads, only nineteen and called up last May, and little Rosie Gregson here, wed just six weeks ago and already said tara to her Charlie.’

Annie Poulson reached across the table and took Rosie’s hand. The two women stared at each other for several seconds, the younger one making a determined and obvious effort not to cry.

‘There’s one thing I haven’t touched on,’ Jack Doyle continued, ‘but I reckon I should, an’ that’s this Non-Aggression Pact Russia’s signed with Germany. It stinks, friends. It stinks bad. I’ve never actually
been
a Communist, I’ve allus stuck with Labour, but I never thought our Soviet comrades would betray us like that. After all …’

Suddenly, the night air was rent with a shrill scream. Jack Doyle paused and looked up at the open window of Number 21 where the sound had come from. ‘That’s our Sheila!’

Eileen jumped to her feet and raced into her sister’s house and up the stairs. Sheila was lying on the double bed in the front bedroom doubled up in agony. The red eiderdown beneath her was stained and wet. Eileen paused in the doorway, horrified, thinking the stain was blood.

Sheila laughed hysterically. ‘Me water’s broke, Sis. The baby’s on its way, no mistaking it.’

‘Jesus, Sis, we’ll never get the midwife here in time!’ Sheila always had her babies quick.

Half a dozen women had followed and were standing on the landing or the stairs demanding to know what was going on.

‘Someone send for Mollie Keaney, quick. The baby’s coming.’ Eileen was even more hysterical than her sister. ‘Put the kettle on for hot water. Christ Almighty, is there anyone here knows how to deliver a baby?’

‘Get out’a the way, girl. You’re bloody useless, you young uns. Nobody had a midwife in our day.’

Eileen was roughly shoved aside by two of the older women. She went downstairs, legs shaking, and found her dad waiting outside on the pavement, smoking a cigarette.

‘It’s the baby,’ she explained and he nodded, no longer concerned.

‘It’ll be all right,’ he said complacently. ‘Our Sheila has babbies easier than peas pop out of a pod.’

They stood there, listening to the sounds coming out of the open window above their heads. Between the agonising screams of labour, Sheila laughed, then cried, then laughed again. The women’s voices could be heard, gruffly telling her when to push and when to hold back.

The men, uninterested – after all, it was only another woman having another baby – had started to fold the tables up. Joey Flaherty was tipping the barrel to drain the last few drops of ale, and most of the women had gone
inside
to make a cup of tea, though a few still waited, eager to know what Sheila Reilly would have this time.

Jack Doyle said to his daughter, ‘It’s about time you had another babby or two, Eileen.’

Eileen didn’t answer. Her dad went on, ‘A fine man like Francis deserves a big family. And after all, you’re getting on.’

‘I’m only twenty-six,’ Eileen said stiffly.

He’d used the same words, ‘You’re getting on,’ when she was twenty and he’d urged her to marry Francis Costello. And she’d done it, married him to please her dad, though she could never understand the awe in which this totally decent man held her husband. Francis had charmed him, the way he charmed everybody.

The sound of a new baby’s piercing, almost inhuman wail came from the upstairs window and Jack Doyle and his eldest daughter smiled at each other, sharing a rare moment of intimacy.

Agnes Donovan shouted, ‘It’s a bonny girl. Reckon she’s a good seven and a half pounds,’ and a cheer went up from those who waited.

Most of the men, including Francis, had disappeared, having gone to the Holy Rosary to return the tables. One by one, the front doors began to close as people went into their houses for the night.

Eileen’s father said, ‘Well, I’m off to wet the babby’s head in the King’s Arms. I’ll see our Sheila later.’

He left, and suddenly, almost incredibly, Pearl Street was empty for the moment, except for Eileen Costello standing alone outside her sister’s house.

She shivered, struck by the desolation compared to the scene that morning; the blank front doors, the empty pavements. There was something almost sinister about the way in which a single paper streamer rolled silently
across
the cobbles, and for a dreadful moment Eileen felt as if the entire day had been a dream and she was the only person left in the world. Then a burst of raucous laughter came from the King’s Arms and inside Sheila’s a woman yelled, ‘D’you wanna cuppa tea, Eileen?’ Tony appeared with his cousin, Dominic, each carrying a bag of chips. Eileen smiled, relieved.

‘We met Mr Singerman,’ Tony said. ‘And he gave us a penny each. He said Dominic’s got a new sister.’

‘That’s right. C’mon, let’s go indoors and take a look at her.’ She ushered them inside, her spirits lifting at the thought of the new life, though in a somewhat precarious world.

All in all, she thought with satisfaction, it was impossible to imagine a more perfect end to an almost perfect day.

It was Sunday, sunny and fresh, with an invigorating tang in the air. The heavy overnight rain seemed to have washed away the sultry heaviness of the previous week.