She's Leaving Home (36 page)

Michael wished he could discuss the matter with somebody. It was unthinkable to toss it around with pals on the base. The name which came to him was his father’s: after thirty years of marriage his Pa might have some advice, without being too prescriptive. But that would have to wait till furlough in July.

As he moved away, head still bowed in thought, Sergeant Newman caught him up.

‘Say, Mike. I dunno if this will help. I’m out all day Sunday – going to explore the Lake District while the weather holds. You can have the keys to my bungalow. Better than shared barracks, hey? No sweat. Enjoy yourself, and your little lady.’

The younger generation coped better than their elders with the heat. School was out for a few days. So Brenda proposed an evening on the
Royal Daffodil
on its two-hour round-trip cruise to the estuary and back. An added incentive was the bar, and the blind eye of its staff to the age of customers.

Helen had chosen black drainpipe trousers and a plain top, with a sweater thrown over her shoulders. Out on the Mersey the air could be breezy and cool. Brenda and Meg were also in trousers;
Colette had on a cotton dress and cardigan, both of which had seen better days.

The wait at George’s landing stage while the boat chugged its way across from New Brighton, its previous destination; the surge as the iron gates were opened and people flooded down the long ramp; the rush on board to find the best spots, near the front on the upper deck, where both a seat and a good view from the rail were to be had: all were part of the delights of a ferry trip on the river Mersey, to be enjoyed as much in anticipation as in the event.

‘Here’ll do!’ panted Meg, as the four girls raced up the stairwell and planted themselves firmly in their chosen place, well forward of the smoky funnel. She glared at three boys who had been hard on their heels. Beaten, the youths slunk away.

The boat wallowed, destabilised. It was soon full with families, courting couples, kids like themselves. Helen mused that in 1940 those soldiers snatched from Dunkirk must have had a thoroughly unpleasant voyage back across the Channel, and worse with German planes strafing them constantly overhead. Still, the alternative was death on the beaches. The city had taken enormous pride in the intervention, among others, of its two little boats (or ships, as it insisted on calling them). Under the funnel a brass plaque commemorated the rescue, with another on the sister ‘ship’
Royal Iris
.

The three boys sauntered nearby, pints of beer in their hands. Meg pulled out her purse. ‘I’m going to get a lager and lime. Anybody else coming?’

‘If you were pally to them they’d probably buy you one.’ Helen indicated the boys but she was only semi-serious. She had brought enough money for two Cokes, as much as she could absorb without having to use the boat’s toilets, which were always foul.

‘Yuk,’ was Meg’s response. She disappeared into the hatchway.

Below them seamen in oily dungarees slipped the hawsers and the vessel began to chug out into the channel. Brenda and Helen sprawled on the metal benches, arms stretched out along the backs, feet on the stacks of lifebelts and faces raised to the salty breeze. Colette, a little apart, leaned over the rail to watch the murky waters churn. Gradually the Liverpool seafront slipped behind them, first the Docks and Harbour board office with its dome copied from St Paul’s Cathedral, then the squat portico of the Cunard building in Portland stone, and third the tall Royal Liver building – an insurance office – an edifice magnificently strident, both symbol and product of a prosperous society, its Liver birds perched on the clock towers, mythical creatures like a cross between an eagle and a turkey, with a leafy branch in their beaks.

‘What d’you think the branch is for?’ Brenda pointed.

‘It’s like Noah’s dove, isn’t it? The idea is that the Liver bird was at the flood too and came back with a proper branch, not a few crappy leaves. So the merchants who sail from Liverpool could expect to return well laden. I think.’ Helen giggled.

‘I love the place,’ Brenda sighed. ‘It has such style. Pity we ever have to leave home, isn’t it?’

‘Yeah – I like coming from a sea-port. If Miss Plumb were here she’d probably be quoting Longfellow,’ Helen answered. ‘You know the bit:

‘Lead me to the Spanish sailors,’ Brenda commented dreamily. ‘But this isn’t exactly the most romantic river, is it? Black wharves and junk in excess but not much magic or mystery.’

At the barrier Colette bowed her head and fiddled with the hem of her dress, but did not join 
in. The engine was up to full throttle; she would have had to shout, or move nearer, which she seemed loath to do.

Helen concurred. ‘I wish we’d known it in its heyday. A hundred years ago, say, when its great achievements and wealth were still in the future. I feel as if we’ve been born too late. Wherever you look it’s going downhill.’

‘My father says it’s the Common Market,’ Brenda continued. ‘Liverpool’s now on the wrong side of the country. We’ve been attuned to the Americas – first the slave trade and cotton, and sugar and rum and tobacco, then manufactures, now oil from places like Venezuela. Over on the Continent they’ve picked themselves up very quickly and trade is booming. Rotterdam’s doing brilliantly. They were smashed to pieces in the war same as we were, but they used their Marshall Plan money to reconstruct industry whereas in Britain it was spent on new housing. At least, that’s my father’s theory.’

‘We certainly didn’t splurge much on industry. Or the railways. The opposite, in fact. If Dr Beeching gets his way we won’t have any railways.’

Meg reappeared with her own drink and three Coke bottles with straws on a plastic tray. ‘If you want something different, go get them yourselves,’ she said. ‘It’s a bit rough in there.’

The other three accepted lazily and paid her. Brenda and Helen made room for her beside them. The boat had neared the opposite shore with its gaunt cranes and blackened shipyards and lifted in the swell. At the bow, eddies and vortices formed and swirled. The tide was turning.

‘Not much trade on the river tonight,’ Brenda remarked. ‘My mother remembers some days when being on the ferry was like trying to cross a busy main road. Ships from everywhere. Not now. And Cammell Lairds isn’t doing a lot of overtime either.’

‘Their own bloody fault,’ Meg interspersed. ‘They won’t work and they won’t modernise. They think it’s all right to hand over a ship when
they
want to; the men’ll go on strike for more money two weeks before it’s due and then it’ll be three months late. My uncle’s a ship broker and he says the Swedish shipyards deliver on time, always. Their initial contracts look expensive compared with ours but you get what you pay for – no hidden extras. The big yards at Bremen and – where did you say, Bren? – Rotterdam, are the same.’

‘But it doesn’t have to be like that,’ Helen countered. She had donned the angora sweater and snuggled down in its softness. ‘We used to have trade with the whole world, not just with America.’ She recounted the details of the Finnish gravestone she had seen in St James’s cemetery. ‘There’s no law says this port has to go downhill. The workpeople here are as smart as anywhere else. With better management – if they realised they were up against the competition, that they couldn’t take their position for granted –’

‘It’d need more than management.’ Brenda was paraphrasing remarks she heard at home. She ticked off on her fingers in unconscious imitation of her father. ‘You’d need huge investment – the docks are in a dire state. They were old fashioned before the war so can you imagine what they’re like now? Meg’s right. Every single job in those workshops is done by tradesmen, by hand like before the
first
war, let alone the last one. You’d need modern methods such as the Japanese have pioneered – preconstruction, standardisation. Mechanisation. And guess who’d put a stop to all that?’

‘The unions,’ Meg and Helen chorused together.

Brenda gazed at the cranes overhead. ‘My Dad says the Japanese are already launching more shipping tonnage every year than this country. Bulk containers, each one an exact copy of the next. No need for fancy design – off the shelf, virtually. Cheap, and reliable. Like their cameras. No class whatsoever, but the customer doesn’t give a damn. We’re still operating in another century.’

Helen persisted. ‘Liverpool does
not
have to deteriorate. But it’ll have to be quick. I mean, if you asked around at school, how many of our Sixth Form plan to stay put? Not many. It upsets me a bit, but I can’t see what we can do.’

‘If people like us leave, then the life blood drains away,’ Meg commented sombrely. None of her hearers thought comical or conceited the notion that the senior pupils of the Liverpool Institute High School for Girls, and by implication their fellows in the Institute for Boys, were the future life blood of their native city. They were the elite: that had been drummed into them since day one, and was precisely the reason they had been selected from their age cohort throughout Liverpool.

‘Makes you worry, though,’ Brenda mused. ‘If we clear off we may in a small way hasten the decline, ’cause we won’t be around to notice or do our bit. On the other hand, if we stay we may get dragged down ourselves, either ’cause we’ll be as complacent as the next person, or because it’ll be too damn difficult for one small group to do anything about it. So you may be wrong, Helen – it may be inevitable.’

‘I’m not going to hang about and find out.’ Meg bit her nails. ‘You have to think of yourself.’

‘So: where do we go, then?’ Helen grinned at her friends. ‘As far away as – Manchester?’

‘London for me,’ said Meg suddenly, as if she had just made up her mind. ‘I like big cities and a woman’s got a better chance there than up north.’

‘I’ll try for Oxbridge.’ This from Brenda to Helen. ‘You should too, don’t argue. I won’t get in, though. But Colette there would. Hey, Colette! We’re talking about you. Northern grammar-school girl scientist, and with blazing green eyes and an Irish accent to boot! Perfect.’

A wan smile came from Colette but no answer.

‘Maybe it’ll get easier for all of us girls before we finish college,’ Helen suggested. ‘If Labour get in there’s talk of legislation to ban discrimination on grounds of sex.’

Brenda hooted. ‘Can you just see Bessie Braddock in charge? Our Scouse battlin’ grannie as a government Minister. She’s thick as a plank nailed together at both ends. Come off it, Helen, the idea’s ludicrous.’

‘There are others,’ Helen defended. ‘Barbara Castle from Blackburn. She’s smart, and pretty. Oxford – Somerville.’

‘Next thing you’ll be telling us you’d like to be a lady MP. Storm Westminster in high heels and
Miss Dior
.’ An edge of malice crept into Meg’s voice.

‘No,’ said Helen softly. ‘I could never do it. But change’ll come. And either we’ll be part of it, or it’ll bear down like a steam-roller and flatten us.’

The boat left the silent shipyards and headed west towards the open sea. The estuary was broad and dangerous, with unpredictable flows. Here the vessel lurched and groaned in the heavy waters. One of the boys staggered out of the bar, his face ashen, reached for the barrier, leaned over and threw up. After retching noisily for several moments he wiped his face with the back of his hand, pushed himself upright then tottered back to the bar.

‘Charming,’ sniffed Meg.

Brenda settled herself deeper in her seat. The wind was quite strong and smelled sulphurously of the ICI works at Runcorn and the power station. She nudged Helen. ‘So: how’s the love life? Your parents still threatening fire and brimstone if you dare sigh over anybody adorable?’

‘Aren’t they just,’ Helen muttered. ‘I don’t want to deceive them but I can’t see how to avoid it.’

‘You should come round to my house. One of my brothers, Ally, quite fancies you. We could make a foursome. Your parents couldn’t object, surely?’

‘They could,’ said Helen firmly. ‘It’s not that they worry I’ll get in with a bad crowd. I’m sure your Ally’s super. It’s simply that unless he’s circumcised and never eaten pork in his life, he’s
verboten
.’

‘I think he’s circumcised,’ Brenda snickered. ‘I mean, most baby boys are these days, for health reasons. Not that I’ve ever taken a dekko, of course,’ she added hastily.

‘Shows the old Jewish teachers were right. Problem is, it’s all or nothing. You’re either 
Jewish or you aren’t. My parents would
never
accept somebody like Ally however wonderful he was because he’s not a Jew.’

‘So what’s a Jew, then?’ Brenda was genuinely curious. ‘Is it somebody who says he is, or that other people thinks is, or do you have to have a big nose and look the part? Is there a test? D’you have to be born one, or can you convert?’

‘It’s blood only. Conversion is skin deep, my Mum says. And you can’t inherit through both parents – it goes through the mother.’

‘So that means your kids will be Jews whether they want to be or not?’

Helen struggled. ‘Depends what you mean by Jew. My children can decide for themselves – I’m set on that, and I’ll love them whatever they are. But to be accepted by the community – the answer’s yes. Whether that’s an advantage or not…’

‘Damned complicated.’ Meg rose and stood facing them, and leaned on the rail, her back to the wind. ‘Any other religion, you’re in it if you believe it, and nobody makes you believe. Colette’s a Catholic not only because she was brought up that way, but because she goes to church and confession – don’t you?’

Colette nodded. She had not uttered a word and seemed lost in her own reverie.

‘So most faiths, people choose for themselves. But not yours.’

‘Ours isn’t solely a faith. It’s a people. A race, if you want to use that word, though I don’t like it. A culture, is better, that’s lasted thousands of years. And what you say’s not true. I have free choice.’