The Bells of Scotland Road (61 page)

Martin sat up and listened intently.

‘We feel that you would be very useful,’ continued Nicholas. ‘You are obviously a clever man and I feel that you would find such missions stimulating. Of course, you would
return here eventually. What do you think of the idea?’

Martin breathed slowly, in, out, in, out. Liam kept quiet. This was a decision that Martin should make alone, yet he was fully aware that Liam would speak up as soon as Brother Nicholas had
left. If only he could leave Liam Bell behind for ever. If only he could step out into the world without carrying that other person. ‘I’m honoured that you have asked me,
Frère
Nicholas.’

‘You need not give your answer yet,’ said Nicholas. ‘Take a day or two to think it over. If you have any questions, please feel free to come to my office during evening
recreation. Your ability to teach adults to read and calculate is of inestimable value in our field of work. Literacy breeds confidence among offenders. They are more likely to obtain proper
employment once they can read and write. America needs us, Brother Martin, as does London.’

Martin watched Brother Nicholas as he walked away.

‘Well?’ asked Liam. ‘What are you waiting for?’

Martin was waiting for a sign from God.

‘I’d be safe over there,’ said Liam. ‘We would both be safe.’

America. America was a very sinful country. Chicago, prohibition, gang warfare, Mafia, speakeasies. The country had gone through some troubled times. ‘We’re needed,’ insisted
Liam.

Martin nodded. He was needed, and Liam would be quieter in America or in London. The concept of putting a few hundred or several thousand miles between Liam and his missing property was
attractive.

‘Are we going?’ Liam’s tone was excited.

‘Yes,’ said Martin. ‘We’re going.’

‘Good. Because that’s what God wants us to do.’ Liam Bell, having said his piece, was quiet for the rest of the day.

Maureen was waiting for Cathy. Whenever Cathy went away without her, Maureen was quiet, almost sulky. But Richard and Edith had decided that visits to Scotland Road might upset
the older girl, so Cathy had gone to Nicky’s wedding in the company of Anthony.

Richard watched Maureen as she ran down the path to greet Cathy. He looked at his wife, shook his head sadly. ‘Cathy won’t be here for ever,’ he said. ‘And I worry in
case Maureen’s close attention might impede Cathy’s development in some way. The poor child is shadowed constantly.’

Edith sighed, put down her book and removed the reading glasses she had been forced to wear of late. ‘Mother Ignatius expressed the same concern,’ she said. ‘It’s all
very well Maureen having a job at the school, but it’s as if she depends on Cathy for her sanity.’

Richard moved the curtain and studied the two girls. ‘That’s it exactly,’ he declared. ‘Nail on the head again, my dear. Without Cathy, Maureen is a lost soul. I wonder
why.’ Tears sprang to Edith’s eyes. For a supposedly tough woman, she had certainly been emotional in recent years. It had not been easy for anyone, but Edith had taken to heart the
fact that Maureen’s attempted suicide had happened in her house. She should have watched the girl more closely, should have been there to help and advise. ‘It’s Cathy’s
innocence, I think,’ she said eventually. ‘Her cleanliness is what attracts Maureen. Maureen cannot be a child ever again, but she stays as near as she can to what she remembers of
childhood.’

Richard saw his wife’s expression. ‘There is nothing you could have done, Edith.’

‘And there is much that my nephew should not have done,’ she answered.

This was haunting Edith. As a doctor, Richard felt that he should know what to do, how to help and offer comfort. But Edith was too intelligent for platitudes. The police had found no trace of
Liam. Richard had contacted the Liverpool force on several occasions, but there seemed to be no trail to follow. ‘I wonder where he is,’ he said now to himself.

‘God knows,’ replied Edith. ‘Only God and the devil can be sure of Liam’s whereabouts. Mere mortals have no chance of finding him. You know, he was strange as a
child.’

‘I remember.’

Edith closed her eyes. ‘And now, of course, we have Anthony and Bridie to worry about. I spoke to Bridie on the telephone this afternoon. She has confined Shauna to her room for
misbehaving. The child tried to spoil the wedding breakfast.’

‘Up to her tricks again?’ Richard smiled inwardly. Unlike his wife, he had a grudging respect for the difficult girl.

‘Father Brennan has suggested that Bridie should apply for an annulment. Bridie refuses. She says she might consider the dissolution once Aunt Theresa has died. Theresa still has moments
of clarity, it seems.’

‘Will an annulment be granted?’ asked Richard.

Edith nodded. ‘She was forced into the marriage by her father. Also, Bridie is a rich widow. Most things are purchasable these days.’

The doctor touched his wife’s arm. ‘It’s not like you to be so cynical, my dear.’ After thirty years of marriage, he knew this good woman like the back of his own hand.
She was generous to a fault, hard-working, cheerful in the face of all kinds of adversity. ‘Sam wanted them to be together,’ he said softly. ‘Sam knew how young she
was.’

‘They should be married,’ insisted Edith. ‘It’s so difficult, because I love both of them. But Cathy is . . .’ Her voice tailed away as she looked through the
window at Maureen and Cathy.

‘Cathy is not ours,’ Richard reminded her yet again.

Edith inclined her head. ‘She is the nearest we have, just as she seems to be the nearest Maureen has. And I hate to think of Cathy growing up confused because of our nephew and her
mother. Things should be tidier.’

Richard sat down. There were bigger issues to think about. ‘There will be war,’ he said after a silence. ‘Before the end of the decade, Hitler will be growing far too big for
his boots.’

Edith simply sighed. ‘They know he’s a rabble-rouser,’ she replied. ‘The German people are not stupid, Richard.’

A year earlier, Richard might have agreed with his wife. Even six months ago, the power of Hitler seemed to have waned with the loss of two million votes and thirty-four seats. Yet, in January
of this year, an ageing President von Hindenburg had declared Hitler Chancellor of Germany. ‘Senile decay,’ muttered the doctor under his breath.

‘Yet she remains physically healthy,’ replied Edith, whose hearing was very sharp.

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Aunt Theresa. She’s sound in body, absent in mind.’

‘I was referring to von Hindenburg.’

Edith sometimes wondered about her husband’s fixation with German politics. He concerned himself with atom bombs, chemical weapons, the Reichstag, Italy. There was enough at home to worry
about without taking Europe on board. She left the room and went to discuss supper with Mrs Cornwell.

Richard Spencer rubbed a hand across his aching brow. A hysterical and uneducated megalomaniac was about to stamp his mark on the world. The jumped-up little madman would goose-step his way
across France, no doubt, would threaten Britain by shaking a small, leather-clad fist across the channel.

With the burning of the Reichstag, Germany had lost more than its architectural seat of government. Thousands had stood by helplessly to watch the funeral pyre of their democracy. Hitler had
instigated a decree suspending all human rights in Germany. Freedom of speech and of the press was a thing of the past, while the German people were forbidden to assemble for any reason. Radio
stations were now in the clutches of fascism, their programming organized by Dr Goebbels, an expert in propaganda.

‘Where will it end?’ sighed Richard. Jews were being cast out of their jobs, were forbidden to teach in schools and universities. Works by Jewish writers had been incinerated, while
their businesses were being forced to close. Hitler aimed to create the perfect Aryan race. Dr Goebbels was encouraging the masses to rid themselves of the ‘Jewish vampires’. Jews were
migrating in their thousands all over Europe.

‘It’s the perfection that’s terrifying,’ Richard told himself. ‘Because from perfection come the largest flaws.’

Cathy ran in, put her arms round Uncle Richard’s waist.

He smiled at her, ran a hand through her hair.

‘What are you thinking about?’ she asked. He was always thinking, always reading or writing.

He was thinking about war. ‘I was waiting for you,’ he said. The lie was the smaller sin.

She missed him most when the bombs fell, when she and every other living subject felt naked, unsure and childlike.

It was not too late to escape, Bridie kept telling herself. The war was some twenty months old. If the Luftwaffe’s current performances continued, hostilities could go on indefinitely. Why
would she not go? Why didn’t she pack up, get Muth dressed and ready, take herself, Shauna and the old woman to Astleigh Fold, into relative peace and comfort?

‘I just can’t,’ she said aloud. Many of those who had chosen evacuation had returned to take their chances alongside the rest of their families. Heroes populated every pub,
every shop, every office. Men, women and children went out daily and nightly to dig, often with bare hands, in rubble that contained remnants of life and death. This was a brave city. Battered,
bruised and bloody, Liverpool remained defiant.

Muth would not move, anyway. In her clearer moments, Theresa Bell stood at her window and cursed Hitler passionately; at other times, she screamed her ire at the Kaiser, the Boers and the warden
who waved a stick at her whenever she showed a chink of light. ‘Bastard,’ she howled. ‘It’s my bloody house and my bloody shop if you must know.’ Often, she called out
for Sam and for her dead husband. With her mind and body withered, poor old Theresa was in no fit state to be shifted. She refused to sleep in a Morrison, refused to leave her bedroom except during
the hours of daylight.

Bridie sipped at her tea, stared through candlelight into the cage where Shauna and Tildy slept. If Anthony could just be here. If only he were nearer, close enough to visit occasionally. But
Anthony had a school to run. He and Edith were in charge of a hundred displaced children.

She stood up and carried the candle across the room until she reached the fireplace mirror. Sam’s tobacco tin remained where it had always been, between the clock and a large brass
candlestick. Sam had been a good father to Bridie, had managed, in just a few short months, to compensate for years spent in the dubious care of Thomas Murphy. Even in death, Da had been a bad
influence, because Maureen Costigan’s attempted suicide had been a copy of Thomas Murphy’s accident. That last act of Da’s summed up the whole of his life. He had taken from
people, had seldom contributed to life. He had ridden into death on the back of a stolen horse that was destined to win a classic race.

Bridie placed the candle in Sam’s candlestick, looked at her reflection. Candlelight was kind, she told herself. It ran a smoothing iron over thirty-eight years of life, rendered her young
again. Anthony. Even unspoken, the name made her shiver with anticipation. With Eugene, there had been warmth and the joy that accompanies youth. Sam Bell had minded her, had altered his spartan
lifestyle to encompass Bridie and her daughters. But Anthony . . . Anthony was different.

She shivered, felt chilled to the core because she could not have her man. The Church had removed the padlocks from its gates, had granted an annulment on the grounds of Bridie’s original
antipathy towards the marriage to Sam. But Muth remained alive. Already confused, Theresa might have been shocked to death by a union between her grandson and her daughter-in-law. It was another
waiting game, Bridie mused. They waited for the war to end, waited for Muth to die. And since Bridie and Anthony loved Muth dearly, they wanted her to remain alive, happy and as healthy as might be
possible for a woman of almost ninety.

Anthony was forty-odd miles away. In her mind’s eye, she saw him standing beside their bed of sin in his little cottage. He was tanned, muscular and very, very beautiful. He was also
outrageously funny, causing her to scream with laughter at the oddest moments. When he touched her, she came to life. Without him, she was nothing, nobody.

Bridie smiled sadly at herself and sat down in Sam’s chair. Sam wanted her to be with Anthony. Sometimes, when Anthony spoke to her, she saw a little of Sam in his frown.

‘Even if we marry, it will be a sin,’ she whispered now. The pleasure they had taken from one another was too intense to be pure. Yet hadn’t God created man? Hadn’t He
decreed that the race must continue through acts of love? What on earth was a woman to do when she found the perfect lover? She would not think of him. She would tear up the old sheets she had
found, would create some makeshift dressings for the rescue parties. It was silly to sit here remembering the feel of his hands, the sound of his laughter, the scent of his body.

It began. Flinging aside her bandages, Bridie snuffed out the candle and stood still for a few moments. Antiaircraft fire boomed its quickening temper into the skies. In a lull between
explosions, Bridie heard the sickening drone that foretold the coming of Heinkels. The Germans had long ago demolished the fake Liverpool built on the Dee’s banks. In early raids, the enemy
had killed rabbits and birds, had unearthed coffins in a cemetery, had thrown their loads onto farmland and into rivers. But they were getting better at their job; they were preparing to destroy
English cities. Liverpool, a thriving port, was a prime target.

‘Jesus save us,’ Bridie prayed. She lowered herself into the Morrison. ‘It’s all right,’ she told Shauna.

Shauna sighed, fell asleep again. Tildy, whose ability to remain unconscious was legendary, snored, coughed, turned over.

The ground shook. Bridie pulled a rosary from her pocket and prayed that this prison of steel girders and mesh would save them. A Morrison was supposed to support, pending rescue, the weight of
a whole house, though Bridie had her doubts. Yet the thought of being trapped with others in a large shelter was unbearable.