She's Leaving Home (55 page)

He rose. ‘It could if we both wanted it to.’ Yet the hope was slipping away. Outside the light grew stronger. No church clocks or bells yet: they would come with the ceasefire.

‘You should marry, though.’ Her face was hidden from him and her voice sounded muffled. ‘Marry and have lots of kids. And a little house and be perfectly respectable. That girl, Annie – she’s sweet on you. She’d have you – a nice Jewish girl, that’s what you need. Not a God-awful second-hand hag like me.’

‘Oh, Mary, don’t talk like that. It hurts me so.’

She took pity on him, reached for the ashtray, stubbed out the cigarette and held out her arms to him. ‘So, Mr Daniel Majinsky, you with the lop-sided smile and the moustache and the burning eyes and feverish brow, let’s make the most of the weeks we’ve got, shall we? What time do you finish tonight?’

Simon Rotblatt and Daniel Majinsky were hard at work when Annie slipped into her place between
them, face flushed and hair awry. Simon wagged his shears at her.

‘Heavens, Annie, what time is this? I told the gaffer you weren’t well. You’ll get shot. Don’t you know there’s a war on?’

In a trice Annie had tied on the leather apron and pulled up the box to stand on. ‘My brother Jack came back from Holland, five this morning. I took him home and came straight here. Mother’s like a dog with two tails – that means all her children are safe.’

For a while they concentrated on the tasks in hand. Simon helped Annie lay out her cloth but thereafter she could manage herself. Daniel seemed preoccupied.

The bell rang for teabreak and the three strolled to the canteen. Simon walked with Annie, Daniel pensively followed, alone.

Simon had the previous night’s
Echo
with him. ‘It’s fearsome out there. Your brother’s well out of it. It says that the Allies are flying over four thousand sorties a day to German cities. Imagine! But only twenty-five of our planes went missing last weekend compared with nearly two hundred of Jerries’.’

Annie cast a sidelong glance at Daniel. She wanted to provoke him to join in. ‘They’re taking a hell of a pounding. Did you see Nuremberg on the newsreels? Our bombers got the chemical works and oil refinery. Went up like fireworks. The American airmen said you could see it from a hundred and forty miles away. And then the German High Command squawked about “the enemy’s senseless mania of destruction”. What a nerve, after what they did to us.’

The trio peered at the flimsy four-page newspaper. ‘It’s not senseless,’ Danny muttered. ‘But it’s brutal. Bomber Harris wants to show off what his murderous machines can do. We know all about that in Liverpool. It won’t break the people’s spirit – it didn’t here. But it could leave them sullen and resentful, much harder to rehabilitate. Anyway, if the war’s going to be won it’ll be on the backs of the poor bloody infantry – like your brother, Annie.’

The three drank their tea. Annie found her courage and prodded Daniel. ‘You need cheering up. How about a film?
Love Story
is on at the Trocadero. Margaret Lockwood, Stewart Grainger. I missed it last week. Fancy a night out?’ If she noticed the flash of misery in Simon’s face she did not acknowledge it.

Daniel shook his head. ‘I may go to the Tatler. They’re showing that discussion documentary,
What to do with Germany
. More in my line.’

‘We haven’t beaten them yet. Bit previous, isn’t it?’ This from Simon. He addressed himself to Annie. ‘I’d like to see
Love Story
. Let me take you.’

Daniel rose abruptly and moved away. The bell for the end of break rang. Annie gazed sadly after Daniel’s back. She had not answered Simon.

‘He’s in a pickle, that one,’ she said quietly. ‘You heard the stories, Simon? Got himself a fine lady, a
goy
, but her husband’ll be home soon. If he finds out he’ll kill him. And she’s giving him ideas way above his station about standing for Parliament. He told me a bit about it. Claims she’s Labour: God! What does she know about poverty? Her sort never had to scrimp to buy medicine for a grizzly child. Makes me sick. He could go badly wrong, adrift like that, when the war is over.’

‘Maybe he’ll emigrate,’ Simon replied diplomatically. He hung back. ‘Like those cousins of his. And he has a sister in the States, hasn’t he? She’d help.’

‘His cousins? Big joke that is.’ Annie laughed shortly. ‘Miriam’s got pregnant to catch herself a fat New York sergeant who’s been once married before, and Eva’s knocked four years off her age. I hope they’ll be very happy.’

‘That’s a bit unkind. Why shouldn’t they seize their opportunities? Not much for them here.’ Simon looked uncomfortable as he chided.

‘But they’re heading out into the wide unknown. Wouldn’t suit me. I’m too conventional, I suppose. I’d like a three-bedroom semi-detached house in West Derby with leaded windows and
space for a garage. See – there’s one in the For Sale column at £1,200 – that’d do. And a bit of garden, and English seasons with showers and cool summers. What’ll the Majinsky girls get? A flat in Brooklyn if they’re lucky, a mother-in-law they’ve never met and schwarzes as neighbours. Maybe I shouldn’t say that but you know what I mean.’

‘Oh, forget them, Annie. Will you come to the flicks with me tonight or no? Please?’

The first Quarter Sessions of 1945 at St George’s Hall was formidably busy. Wartime and the
black-out
had stimulated illegal activity on an unprecedented scale; a record number of cases were set for trial. Despite the lofty ceilings and marbled corridors the atmosphere was stuffy, though on the staircase the faces of those newly come in were pinched and cold. Barristers in black gowns and wigs, policemen with helmets under their arms and polished boots, solicitors with armfuls of papers and battered briefcases, worried relatives, bleary accused and mackintoshed reporters mingled and mouthed at each other. Nobody seemed to listen much to anyone else.

Daniel paused bewildered at the top of the stairs, unsure which way to go. He stopped a young woman to inquire.

‘Haven’t a clue,’ she said brusquely in an Irish lilt. ‘I’m here looking for my husband, Joseph O’Brien. You seen him? Drunk and disorderly last night and pinched two hundred cigarettes from a sailor. An’ that’s not all.’ She pushed past and disappeared.

A stout woman in a black robe with a badge of office and a clipboard in her hands bustled up. ‘Which court are you?’

Daniel consulted a paper. ‘Court three. I’m a witness. The Chinese case.’

‘Ho, ho. Lots of excitement.’ The official’s eyes glittered. She gave Daniel a quick approving look; apparently his neat if shabby suit passed muster. Her voice took on a confiding note. ‘Miss Rose Heilbron’s defending. What will she say in mitigation for a bunch of Chinks caught in an opium den in Berry Street who set to and beat up the police? I’ve carried in the evidence – knives, sticks, a shovel, a chair and a motor tyre pump. One of the bobbies is still in hospital. How did you get involved?’

‘I was on firewatch. Saw one of the Chinese climb out of the window down a rope. There was a hell of a row going on. I ran down and grabbed him.’

‘You’ll get a commendation for that. It’ll be heard about three. They’ll get sent down – six months’ hard labour and a bit more for possession. Over there.’

The usher seemed in no mood to rush off. Daniel indulged his curiosity. He nodded at the long line nearby. ‘What are they here for – same case?’

‘Goodness, no. They’re mostly Miss Heilbron’s, though, she does get some dodgy ones. Lovely lady, so clever.’ She pointed at a young woman. ‘That one’s been absent from work without reasonable excuse. Her boyfriend was home on leave from the merchant navy, she says. She’ll be fined: two guineas each count and four guineas costs, most like. Hard-faced bitch if you ask me: been here before, different bloke each time. And him –’ Her finger indicated a wiry man who sat, shoulders slumped, staring at the floor. ‘Theft. Big increase in burglaries this winter. And he’s in a separate case too: an appeal against a sentence of two months’ hard labour for unlawfully wounding his wife.
He
claims he was drunk and didn’t mean to hit her with the plate. Cracked the poor woman’s skull, but he’ll get off with a fiver fine because it’s a quarrel between husband and wife.’

The official started to walk down the line and lowered her voice. Daniel kept pace. ‘Then in court five we have the black marketeers. Everyone else pulls their weight, but not them. That one in the striped suit – he’s a Mr Frank John Morgan – a market fruit trader. Found in unlawful possession of four pounds of mutton, three pounds of pork, two pounds each butter and marge, two-and-a-half pounds of sausages, a pound of cheese and a pound of lard. Plus four hundred coupons. He says he
sold his customers extra fruit and they looked after him in return. He’ll be fined – a tenner, probably – and if he can’t pay, a month in clink.’

‘They all think they can get away with it,’ Daniel murmured encouragingly.

The woman snorted. ‘Don’t they just – and the rest of us keep to the rules. Lord knows I hate rationing, but you have to live with it. Best is tomorrow, if you have the time. The jam factory managers. William Hurst and Sons of Wigan. Should have had a lot more sense.’ She flicked over a couple of pages and read out in a loud whisper. ‘Ministry auditors found that
most
of the firm’s five hundred customers had had excessive deliveries of jam. Nearly fifty tons of sugar had disappeared into thin air. It’s reckoned that over three hundred tons of jam have gone on to the black market – that’s a profit of £3,500. Nice work if you can get it.’

‘What’ll happen to them?’ Daniel asked.

‘Prison,’ the woman answered with satisfaction. ‘Now I must get on. His Honour’ll be back from dinner soon. You sit here and keep your ears open. But don’t talk to the other witnesses in case you get nobbled. Nasty lot, these Chinks.’

To Daniel and his workmates it had felt as if the war would never end. As the hours of daylight began to lengthen, however, he followed with more hope, and a mounting sense of unease, the progress of the conflict. Night after night the press detailed Allied sorties, up to 6,000 planes at a time. The streets of Liverpool were peppered with the uniforms of forty Allied nations, but especially Americans, Canadians and Poles in transit eastward. The
Liverpool Echo
told him that USAF Burtonwood held 18,000 men, and he became accustomed to the bashful New Yorkers who had been captured by his cousins.

He went as often as he could to the cinema, usually alone, but frequently left before the main feature. His objective was the newsreels, increasingly vivid and uncensored. By mid-March it was clear that the Nazis were abandoning their bases on the western border of Germany; Patton, fourteen miles from Mainz, told reporters that Allied planes had destroyed over 1,400 motor vehicles and as many railway cars. As the Wehrmacht tried to save what it could, Allied fliers spoke in clipped if proud terms to the cameras of the ‘utter turmoil and chaos’ in front of General Alexander Patch’s US 7th Army. The 4th Armoured Division captured Bad Kreutznach where the civilians were reported ‘very hostile’: Daniel reflected ruefully how he might have reacted had the invasion been the other way round. In Cologne the Chief of Police who had been imprisoned for anti-Nazi views in 1933 was restored to office (to the applause of the cinema audience), while his local factories were repaired sufficiently to start churning out boots, soap and blankets for the advancing troops.

When he heard that rations were enforced at 1,500 calories a day for German civilians, about one third of the American level, Daniel wondered whether to write in protest to General Eisenhower: but his attention was then held by the pinched faces on the screen of the refugees who streamed in the opposite direction. Especially Poles. Damn the Germans. The Americans were at times not much better. Under February’s Yalta agreement Poland was to be handed over to Russian control, as if a dying Roosevelt had forgotten why war had broken out in Europe in the first place.

Column after column in the
Liverpool Echo
kept Daniel, Annie and Simon informed, with official maps. By 19 April the Germans had evacuated Frankfurt and blown up the bridge. Russian and American armies were about equidistant from Berlin.
‘Another two days’ advance will bring Patton so close to Koniev’s troops that it will become dangerous for either side to use long-range artillery,’
warned Reuters. Montgomery was on the Elbe, the Russians on the Oder and Neisse. The three tailoring friends quivered as they heard that nearly three million troops were embroiled in the concentric attacks on the Reich capital. Annie’s brother had been recalled as they had feared, and was somewhere in that melee near Berlin. Moscow radio spoke:
‘The entire world is holding its breath as it watches the curtain falling on the European war.’

During tea-breaks at the factory the prime topic of conversation began to shift. The cessation
of the conflict could not come soon enough. Then it would be time to catch up with unfinished business at home, those reforms of housing, health and welfare which had been avidly and thoroughly discussed by voters including the three friends and their workmates. Apart from Daniel, their support for the conflict, always faintly conditional, was waning; its continuation further afield no longer seemed a matter for them. Of course they knew that the fire-bombing of Japanese industrial cities such as Nagoya and Osaka had only just started. Should the Japs fight as tenaciously on their own soil as the Germans had done, it could take a further eighteen months to defeat them. But despite Mr Churchill’s desire to make a show in Burma, the truth, as voiced increasingly often in Berman’s canteen and elsewhere, was that many of his countrymen and women were not interested. Once Victory in Europe (VE) day was behind them, they intended to get on with more pressing matters.

Daniel loitered at the bus stop by the bombed-out St Luke’s at the bottom of Leece Street. He and Mary were to attend the Saturday afternoon concert at the Philharmonic Hall which had miraculously escaped major damage. In his hands was the new Labour Party manifesto: ‘Let us Face the Future: A Declaration of Labour Policy for the Consideration of the Nation.’ The thin white pages with the confident red ‘V’ on the cover and the dense print seemed too fragile to bear the weight of such portent. The back page invited readers to join the party for 6d per month.