Lights Out Liverpool (48 page)

A warning bell began to ring in Cal’s ears. ‘What happens if the bombs start dropping nearer?’ he asked quietly.

‘I’ve no idea, luv. I just hope they don’t, that’s all.’

Cal had finished dressing. ‘I won’t be a minute,’ he said.

It was still daylight when he went outside, and several people were in the street staring up into the sky. The drone of aircraft could be heard in the distance, accompanied by the sound of ack ack fire. Cal felt his blood run cold. He hadn’t realised things had got this bad at home.

‘Jesus Christ!’ he muttered in despair. What had the world come to? It was bad enough having to worry about his own safety, without fearing his entire family might be wiped out in his absence.

He walked around to the nearest shelter. Only a
handful
of people had taken advantage of its protection, and they were sitting on the narrow benches attached to the walls clutching blankets and their gasmasks. The building stank of urine and was lit by just two fluttering candles, one of which decided to go out as Cal went in. He noticed straight away there was no First Aid box, no facilities to make a hot drink.

‘Has someone pinched the door?’ he asked of no-one in particular. There was merely an aperture covered with a black curtain.

‘Is that Cal Reilly?’ a man’s voice enquired.

‘It is.’

‘It’s Ernie Cutler, Cal. I used to work on the docks with Jack Doyle until I lost me arm.’

‘Hello, Ernie. How are you keeping?’ Cal remembered Ernie Cutler well. He’d been a big man once, almost as big and strong as Jack Doyle himself, but since his accident seemed to have shrunk in size, and his face was as wizened as an old man’s. The loose sleeve of his threadbare jacket was tucked neatly in the pocket.

‘I’m bearing up, Cal, bearing up,’ Ernie said cheerfully. ‘Course, I didn’t get any compensation. They insisted it was me own fault, as if I wanted to lose me arm on purpose. Still,’ he shrugged, ‘that’s another story. As to the door, there’s never been one. It was built that way. It’ll be bloody freezing in the winter.’

‘You mean they’re putting shelters up without doors?’ Cal said incredulously.

Ernie gave a bitter little laugh. ‘The whole thing’s a disgrace, Cal. The poorer you are, the less your life is worth – not that we needed a war to tell us that. Better-off folks have got their own Anderson shelters in the garden, but you can’t put an Anderson in a backyard. There’s actually a posh shelter somewhere in town where
you
can rent a place for twenty-seven-and-six a week.’

‘You’re right.’ Cal’s blood began to boil. ‘It’s a disgrace.’ He was risking his life to put food on the tables of the politicians, and they hadn’t the decency to keep his family safe at home. ‘I’m not having our Sheila coming here,’ he swore. ‘It stinks!’

‘I only come for the company,’ said Ernie. ‘The woman next door takes herself and her kids under the stairs.’

‘It looks like our Sheila will have to do the same,’ Cal said grimly.

First thing next morning, he cleared every single item from out of the understairs cupboard and put them in the washhouse in the yard, then bought a can of distemper and painted the inside of the cupboard white. He spent all weekend fitting shelves for his children to sleep on and built a seat in the corner for his wife. He gave instructions to his family on what bedding to bring down when the siren went. ‘Just your piller and a single blanket,’ he said. ‘No toys, there’s no room for toys, except perhaps a book or two and a couple of crayons. Niall, it’s your job to see to our Ryan, and Dominic, you take care of the girls. You mam will have her hands full with Mary.’

‘How will we see to read, Dad?’ asked Niall.

‘I forgot about that,’ said Cal. He went out immediately and bought a box of nightlights and a supply of matches.

‘These are not to be moved,’ he told Sheila. ‘I don’t want you coming out looking for things while there’s a raid on.’

‘No, Cal,’ Sheila said.

‘Put a fresh bottle of water inside every morning, case the kids’d like a drink, and a tin of biscuits wouldn’t come amiss if there’s a few to spare.’

‘Yes, Cal.’

Was there anything else, Cal wondered frantically, as he surveyed the little white cocoon which would keep his family safe. There was nothing, he decided, nothing further he could do, except hope and pray he’d be spared and they’d be spared, until the day came when the whole insane bloody business was over.

In the middle of July, Rosie Gregson gave birth to a 3 lb, 6 oz, baby boy in Bootle Hospital. She called him Charlie, after his dad, who she still felt convinced would return to her one day.

Aggie Donovan had scarcely finished going around Pearl Street to collect for a present for Rosie’s baby when an item of far more startling news was received, which meant she had to go around all over again.

To everyone’s amazement, Gladys Tutty announced that Freda had passed the scholarship and would be going to Bootle Secondary School in Breeze Hill.

‘Y’could have knocked me down with a feather when she told me,’ said Aggie, as she banged on doors for the second collection. People dug deep into their pockets and their purses and enough was raised to buy Freda Tutty a satchel for her posh new school.

‘Thanks,’ said Freda carelessly, when Aggie presented the gift. It wasn’t a leather satchel, which she would have preferred, but made of canvas, the edges bound with tape. Still, it would do, and would save dipping into Clive’s nest egg.

‘I bet you never thought you’d see me go to school in a uniform?’ she said boastfully.

‘I never thought I would and I never thought I wouldn’t,’ Aggie replied.

‘Well, thanks, anyway,’ said Freda, slamming the door.

‘Stuck-up little bitch,’ Aggie Donovan muttered to herself as she walked away.

Not long after Dunkirk, the dinner hour in Dunnings had been cut by half and tea breaks done away with altogether. Although the trolley still came round, the women were expected to take their drink without stopping the machines.

No-one complained, no-one had to be persuaded to work harder in order to produce more planes for the battle that was gradually beginning in the air. According to the newspapers, output rose by two hundred and fifty per cent in factories throughout the land. By the end of the July, the desperately needed Hurricanes and Spitfires were being built in their hundreds.

As July gave way to August, the war reached a new stage of ferocity. But now, instead of the battle taking place out of sight on strange foreign shores, it was being fought right in the British backyard, as wave after wave of German bombers poured in over the south coast, ostensibly to destroy airfields, but destroying the lives and the homes of ordinary civilians in their wake. Not that the Royal Air Force allowed the Jerries to get away with much, and German losses were far greater than the British. In other parts of the country, people could only read about the onslaught in their papers or listen to the commentators on the BBC.

Eileen Costello wasn’t the only person to regard the way the whole thing was reported as offensive.

180
FOR
26,
ENGLAND STILL BATTING
, news vendors scrawled on their placards. To those with a loved one at risk, it was the smaller number that mattered, for it meant twenty-six British aircrft had been lost. Not all pilots managed to land safely once their plane was
damaged
. A good proportion of the twenty-six would be dead, and as far as Eileen Costello was concerned, one of them could be Nick!

He said little in his letters. After less than a month’s training, Eileen knew he was already taking part in sorties. In fact, he’d sent a snapshot, which she couldn’t bring herself to show anyone yet, of him standing beside his plane which had been christened
E for Eileen
. Underneath the name, there was a little black swastika.

‘The swastika means I’ve already got a Messerschmidt under my belt,’ he wrote on the back.

Eileen felt she was living on a knife edge – who didn’t, when they had a man away doing his bit? For a time, she was worried that, if the worst happened and he was killed, she’d never know. The RAF authorities would inform his next of kin, his mother in America. When she expressed this fear in her next letter, he wrote back straight away.

As if I hadn’t thought of that already! I gave your name and address to the landlady of the local pub. If anything happens, she’ll write and let you know. But nothing WILL happen, my dearest girl. I feel as if there’s an angel watching over my shoulder when I’m in the air. And don’t forget our song!
We’ll Meet Again
. If you sing it loud enough and often enough, then we’re bound to meet again one sunny day.

So, keep smiling through – Your most loving and adoring, Nick.

Eileen did her utmost to keep smiling, but as each sunny golden August day gave way to the next, men continued to offer up their young lives in increasingly large numbers. Scores took off by day and by night, never to return. Instead, they were burnt alive in the cockpits of
their
Hurricanes or Spitfires, and the resulting fireball would plunge to earth and explode into smithereens in a Kentish field of swaying yellow corn, or a green Sussex valley or a Suffolk marsh, or it would land with a mighty sizzle in the English Channel, in which so many dead seamen, soldiers and airmen already lay.

Winston Churchill honoured the sacrifice in the House of Commons. ‘
Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few
.’

It was nothing but sheer carnage, Eileen thought bitterly; a whole generation of young men was being wiped out at the whim of a madman.

And while the slaughter went on, in Pearl Street the children, who were on holiday from school, drew wickets on the railway wall and played a genuine game of cricket, and Mr Singerman had his windows smashed twice in one week. Rosie Gregson did her pathetic best to suckle her sickly baby, but although the women tried to help, the child just wouldn’t thrive. A card arrived for Eileen Costello from Helen Brazier, who was in Scotland, ‘having a wonderful time’, on the same day the Harrisons heard their eldest grandson had been killed in action in North Africa. Chris Parker continued to court Annie Poulson, to the general approval of the street – a firebobby was quite a catch for a woman going on forty. Jack Doyle heard through a friend who had a son in Alexandria that Francis Costello had been injured. The details were vague and when he told his daughter, she’d heard nothing. ‘So’s it can’t be serious, can it?’ Eileen said. As for Jess Fleming, she just got bigger and bigger …

The air raids over Liverpool began to increase in their intensity. Bombs were no longer dropped on fields, but on built-up areas, and to everybody’s horror, five people
were
killed by high explosive bombs in Wallasey and Prenton, and several seriously injured.

Like Calum Reilly, Eileen had cleared out her understairs cupboard and brought down the palliasse off Tony’s single bed. The fit was snug and Tony thoroughly enjoyed the time spent waiting for the All Clear to sound. He seemed to consider the whole thing some sort of adventure.

The expression on Annie’s face was grim when Eileen arrived home after she’d been on the late shift. ‘I’ve had the wireless on. There’s been terrible raids on London and Portsmouth.’

‘Jaysus!’ Eileen sat down quickly. ‘Who was it said this war would be over by last Christmas?’

‘Your Francis did, for one.’

‘He’s not
my
Francis!’ Eileen said quickly.

‘Sorry, luv. Of course he ain’t. I bet he wishes he never joined the Territorials now.’

Eileen shuddered. ‘I’m sorry he’s been hurt, but even so, I’d sooner forget about Francis. I wish there was something nice we could talk about for a change.’

‘Well, actually,’ Annie said, ‘there is. Chris and me are getting married! He only asked yesterday.’

‘Annie! Oh, I’m so pleased, I could cry!’ Overwhelmed, Eileen did just that. ‘Congratulations, luv,’ she sobbed. ‘I wish you all the happiness in the world.’

‘I would never have guessed!’

‘Have you fixed the date?’ Eileen asked, still sniffing.

‘Not yet,’ Annie replied.’ We’ll leave it till all three lads are home on leave. I’ve written to Terry and Joe and told them to toss for who’ll give me away. Chris’s lad, Mark, will be best man. I wondered if you’d consider being me Matron of Honour, Eileen?’

Eileen cried, ‘Of course I will, luv. What would you like me to wear?’

‘Don’t get nothing new,’ Annie said dismissively. ‘After all, there’s a war on. That pink suit you bought for London would be the gear. As for meself, I’ll just get something from C & A.’

‘What colour?’

Annie smiled shyly. ‘Yellow! Chris asked specially if I’d wear yellow, because it was the rose your Tony gave me that first made him notice me in the pub that day.’

‘You suit yellow, Annie.’

‘Ta!’

There was silence for a moment. Then Eileen said worriedly, ‘You don’t seem very excited, luv.’ Despite the wonderful news, her friend looked remarkably subdued.

Annie began to play with the top button of her blouse, twisting it one way, then the other. She looked at Eileen with a strange expression in her dark eyes.

‘I’m so happy, it terrifies me,’ she said quietly. ‘I’m too scared to be excited, in case it all goes wrong.’

‘Chris loves you. He won’t let you down.’

Annie gestured impatiently. ‘’T’ain’t that! I’ve only known him just over a month, but I’ve as much faith in him as I have in meself. It’s all the things outside my control that worry me. A fireman’s job is dangerous enough in normal times, but now! Then there’s the lads, his and mine …’

Eileen looked at her friend helplessly. ‘I don’t know what to say, Annie, but then I never do.’

Annie shrugged. ‘Who does, these days?’

‘Is he going to move in with you once you’ve tied the knot?’ Eileen asked, half dreading the answer. Her fears were confirmed when Annie shook her head.

‘No, luv. I’m moving in with him.’

‘Oh, Annie! How can I live without you just down the street?’

The two women stared at each other, too full of emotion to speak.