“All she’s ever wanted was a wedding ring and Mrs in front of her name. She goes round looking like the cat that ate the cream.”
Now that Albert was to become a father, his joy knew no bounds. Flo was pleased for him: he was a nice man who deserved happiness. But when it came to Martha, she felt only bitterness.
Frequently, in the dinner hour or on her way home, she walked down Clement Street, but she never set eyes on Nancy and there was never a pram outside number eighteen. Once, she thought she heard a baby cry as she passed, but that might have been her imagination.
Everyone in the laundry was pleased to be invited to Flo’s twenty-first. “It won’t be much,” she warned. “There won’t be any fellers, for one thing.”
“We don’t mind,” Jennifer and Joanna Holbrook said together.
The husband wouldn’t let me go if there were,” remarked Moira.
Lottie’s husband was away in the Army. Nevertheless, she would have felt disloyal going to a party where there were fellers.
“I’m not bothered,” Peggy said, from somewhere within a cloud of steam. “Anyroad, I see enough of fellers at home. You could ask Jimmy Cromer if he’d like to provide some masculine company.”
“I’m not going to a party full of ould married women,”
Jimmy said in a scandalised voice.
“I’m not old and I’m not married,” Flo reminded him.
Jimmy leered at her far too maturely for a fifteen-year-old.
“Will you come out with me, then?”
“I’ll do no such thing!”
“In that case, I’m not coming to your party.”
The first week of May brought air raids worse than any the city had known before. For a week, it seemed as if the Luftwaffe’s intention was to blast Liverpool out of existence.
Flo was convinced that her party would never take place. By the eighth no one would be left alive and there wouldn’t be a building still standing. At night she stayed indoors, worried that if she went dancing a raid might start and that she really would be too scared to come home alone. In bed, with her head under the covers, she listened to the house grinding on its foundations as the bombs whistled their way down to earth and the ground shook, though it was the parachute mines, drifting silently and menacingly, that caused the greatest carnage. Bells clanged wildly as fire engines raced to put out the hundreds of fires that crackled away, turning the sky blood red.
Next morning, exhausted but still in one piece, Flo would go to work. There was rarely any sign of public transport and she had to make her way carefully along pavements carpeted with splintered glass, passing the sad, broken remains of buildings that had been the landmarks of a lifetime, and the little streets with yawning gaps where houses had been only the day before. The air was full of floating scraps of charred paper, like black confetti at a funeral.
Everyone at the laundry was miraculously still there to exclaim in horror about the events of the previous night: the narrow escapes, the bomb that had dropped in the next street killing a girl they’d gone to school with, or a chap who’d nearly married their sister. Moira lost the godmother of her youngest child. Peggy’s brother-in-law, an ARP warden, was killed outright when the building he was in got a direct hit. How long, everyone wondered, would the terror continue?
“It can’t go on for ever,” Peggy maintained.
It was that thought that kept them going. It had to stop sometime.
Flo arrived on the Friday of the nightmarish week to find that during the night all the mains had been fractured.
There seemed little point in a laundry without electricity, gas or water so she told everyone they might as well go home. “You’ll still get paid,” she promised, not caring if Stella would approve or not. “It’s not your fault you can’t work. It’s that bloody Hitler’s.”
“What are you going to do?” one of the twins enquired.
“I’ll stay, just in case things come on again.”
“We’ll stay with you.”
“Same here,” echoed Peggy.
The, too,” said Moira.
The next few hours always remained one of Flo’s most vivid memories, proof that the human spirit obstinately refused to give in, even in the face of the worst adversity.
Peggy produced a pack of cards and they played Strip Jack Naked, Rummy and Snap, and shrieked with laughter for no reason at all, though anyone listening would have thought the laughter a mite hysterical and a bit too loud. Every now and then, they’d pause for a singsong: “We’ll Meet Again”, “Little Sir Echo”, “Run Rabbit Run”.
In their quavery soprano voices, the twins entertained them with a variety of old songs, “If You Were the Only Girl in the World”, and “Only a Bird in a Gilded Cage”.
Mid-morning, when they would normally have stopped for a cup of tea, Moira said wistfully, “I’d give anything for a cuppa.”
As if in answer to Moira’s prayer, Mrs Clancy appeared suddenly at the side door carrying a teapot. “I expect you’re all parched for a drink,” she said cheerfully. “I always run a bucket of water before I go to bed, just in case, like, and Mrs Plunkett next door’s got one of them paraffin stoves.”
There was a mad dash for cups. As usual, the twins had brought milk because they never used all their ration.
“I’ve got Albert at home,” Mam said to Flo. “He hurt his leg fire-watching. He’s a terrible patient. All he does is complain about people getting away without paying their fares.”
“There’s hardly any trams running.”
“That’s what I keep telling him. There’s lines up everywhere.”
She patted Flo’s hand. “I’m off to work now, luv.
I’ll call in for the teapot on me way home.”
“It’s all right, Mam, I’ll bring it. I wouldn’t mind having a word with Albert. What time will you be back?” She would take the opportunity of Martha’s absence to reassure Albert, though not in “words, that they would always be friends. She’d prefer him not to be alone, just in case there was a message in his eyes it would be wiser not to see.
“I’ll be home about half two. Sal’s on mornings, so she’ll be back not long afterwards.”
Later that morning the gas supply was reconnected, and just after one o’clock water came gushing out of the tap in the lavatory, which had been left turned on. There was still no electricity, so the steam-presser remained out of use, but the boilers could be loaded with washing and the ironing done. Flo gave a sigh of relief as the laundry began to function almost normally, the women setting to work with a will. Normality seemed precious in an uncertain, dangerous world, though it didn’t last for long.
Just as Flo was thinking that it was almost time to nip round to Burnett Street with the teapot, the air-raid siren began its sinister wail. She particularly hated daylight raids. They were rarely heavy and usually brief but, unlike the night raids, were impossible to ignore—or, at least, pretend to. The women groaned, but when Flo suggested they abandon work for the shelter on the corner, they flatly refused.
“The shelter’s just as likely to get a direct hit as the laundry,” said Lottie, who’d recently changed shifts with Moira. “I’d sooner stay.”
There seemed no argument to this, although the laundry was flimsy in comparison. Soon afterwards a solitary plane could be heard buzzing idly overhead.
Everyone went outside to take a look. They could see the German crosses on the wings.
“Is that a Messerschmidt, Jo?”
“No, Jen. It’s a Heinkel.”
Suddenly the plane went into a dive. It appeared to be coming straight for them. Peggy screamed and they ran inside and slammed the door. Almost immediately, there was a loud explosion, followed by another, then several more. The plane must have dropped a stick of bombs.
From somewhere within the building, there was a thud and the crash of breaking glass.
“Jaysus! That was close!” someone gasped.
They stood still, scarcely breathing, as the plane’s engine grew fainter. Then the sound disappeared and the all-clear went. The raid was over.
The laundry had suffered superficial damage. At least, Flo assumed that a shattered office window and the door blown off its hinges could be described as superficial.
“The thing is,” she said shakily, “I’d forgotten today’s the day I do the accounts, otherwise I’d have been in here sorting out the wages, or writing the statement for Mrs Fritz.” There was a small crater in the street outside, and the houses opposite had also lost their doors and windows, but thankfully, no one had been hurt.
The twins began calmly to sweep up the broken glass and restore the room to relative order. Flo decided to take the money home and leave the bank till Monday, but it was important that the women were paid. Using the presser as a desk, she counted out the money and wrote each name on a little brown envelope. She felt angry with herself because her hands were trembling and her writing was all over the place. She’d had a close shave, that was all. Some people suffered far worse without going to pieces. Her stomach was squirming. She felt uneasy, full of dread. “Pull yourself together, Flo Clancy,” she urged.
“Flo, luv,” a voice said softly.
Flo looked up. Sally was standing at the side door and the feeling of dread grew until it almost choked her. She knew why Sally had come. “Is it Mam?” she breathed.
Her sister nodded slowly. “And Albert.”
Sally said, “Promise you’ll make things up with Martha.”
“Why should I?” demanded Flo.
It was almost midnight. The sisters were as yet too exhausted to grieve. They paid no heed to the raid going on outside, which was as bad as any experienced so far, decimating the beleaguered city even further. They were in William Square, the only place Sally had to go now that she’d lost her home in Burnett Street. The joint funeral would take place on Monday, the day after Flo’s twenty-first birthday. There was room for Albert in his motherin-law’s grave, where she would join her beloved husband. The wreaths had been ordered, a Requiem Mass arranged, and a friend of Mam’s had offered to provide refreshments after the service. Father Haughey was trying to track down Albert’s cousin in Macclesfield. The address would have been in the parlour, but there was no longer a parlour, no longer a house, nothing left of the place to which Mr and Mrs Clancy had moved when they married, where they’d brought up their three girls. The bomb had gone through the roof and exploded in the living room, demolishing the houses on both sides. Martha had been safe at the brewery but Mam and Albert, sheltering under the stairs, had been killed instantly. Their shattered bodies lay in the mortuary, waiting for the funeral director to collect.
“Oh, Flo,” Sally moaned, “how can you be so unChristian and unforgiving? Martha’s pregnant and she’s lost both her mam and her husband.”
Martha had been whisked from the brewery to Elsa Cameron’s house. When Sally went to see her, she was fast asleep, the doctor had given her a sedative.
“I can’t begin to imagine how I’d feel if I’d lost Jock and Mam at the same time,” Sally shuddered.
“But you’re in love with Jock,” Flo pointed out.
“Martha was no more in love with Albert than I was and all three of us loved Mam.”
“You’re awful hard, Sis.”
“I’m only pointing out the obvious. What’s hard about that?”
“Oh, I dunno. It’s just that you always seemed such a soft ould thing. I never dreamed you could be so unsympathetic.”
“I feel sorry for our Martha,” Flo conceded. “I just don’t want anything more to do with her, that’s all.” She felt irritated that Sally didn’t seem to appreciate the enormity of what Martha had done. Maybe, because Flo’s baby was a bastard, she wasn’t supposed to love him the way a married mother would.
“Despite our Martha being an ould bossy-boots, she depended on Mam far more than we did.” Sally sighed.
“She’ll miss her something awful. We loved Mam, but we didn’t need her.” She turned to her sister and said, “Don’t think I’ve forgotten about Tommy O’Mara and the baby, Flo. But you’re a strong person, a survivor. You’ve got yourself a nice little home, an important job. It’s time to forgive and forget.”
“I’ll never forgive Martha, and I’ll never forget.” Flo’s voice was like ice. “I’ll speak to her politely on Monday, but that’s as far as I’m willing to go.”
But Martha was too ill to attend the funeral. And Sally had been right: Elsa Cameron reported that it was her mother Martha kept calling for. There was no mention of Albert.
The momentous year had flown by. Suddenly, it was Christmas again and Liverpool, though battered and badly bruised after the week-long May blitz, had survived to fight another day. The raids continued fitfully, but it was rare that the siren went nowadays. Life went on, and mid-December, Martha Colquitt gave birth to a daughter, Kate, named after the grandmother she would never know.
“She’s the prettiest thing you’ve ever seen,” Sally told Flo. “Ever so placid and good-humoured.”
“That’s nice.” Flo did her utmost to sound generous.
“But I wish Martha’d find somewhere else to live.”
Sally’s brow puckered worriedly. “I wouldn’t want that Elsa Cameron anywhere near a baby of mine. She treats Norman like a punch-bag, poor bugger. He’s only four, and such a lovely little chap.”
“What’s happened to her husband?”
“Eugene used to come home from sea every few months, but last time he told her she was crackers and he’s never been back since. I reckon he’s done a bunk, permanent, like.”
“Martha said once Elsa had a sort of illness,” Flo remarked. “She said some women go that way when they have a baby. Afterwards they’re never quite right in the head.”
Sally nodded. “There’s summat wrong with the woman. By rights, Norman should be taken off her.
She’s not fit to be a mother.”
It seemed grotesquely unfair that Elsa Cameron, unfit to have a child, and Nancy O’Mara, unable to have one, should both have become mothers, yet Flo was childless.
She changed the subject before she said something she might later regret.
“What d’you think of me decorations?” she asked. The room was festooned with paper chains and tinsel. Clusters of imitation holly hung in both windows.
“It looks like a grotto. I tried everywhere for decorations, but there’s none to be had in the shops.” After living for a few months with Flo, Sally had found herself a small flat not far from Rootes Securities in Speke, which meant that she and Jock could be alone together during the precious times he was on leave.