Daughters of the Mersey (36 page)

A couple more slates crashed down inside the building. It wouldn’t be safe to go in until daylight when he’d be able to see what the damage was. He went to the bedroom wing and walked through the ceiling-to-floor Victorian sash window straight into his bedroom. Half the heavily moulded ceiling was down and there was glass everywhere, sometimes quite big pieces because he’d glued paper in a criss-cross pattern to prevent it splintering.

He snatched the eiderdown from his bed. Glass from it tinkled down so he shook off all he could, grabbed his pillows and as many of his blankets as he could and retreated to his shed. By the dim light of his torch he made a nest of his bedding on the floor and took off his shoes and his heavy coat. He lay down and pulled his coat over him and nothing could have stopped him falling asleep.

Milo woke up in the grey of dawn feeling stiff and cold. He put on his shoes to take another look at the damage to his home. It confirmed his worst fears. It would not be possible to live in it now. Pots, pans and broken crockery he didn’t recognise had been blown across their garden. All that must
have come from the houses in the next road. The sight of such destruction made him feel sick but he knew now what he must do. He set off to walk to Elaine’s house and break the news to his mother.

Tom was up in his dressing gown making morning tea. Milo felt depressed and near to tears as he blurted out the news. He was pushed towards a chair at the kitchen table and a cup of tea put in front of him. Within moments Mum was sitting opposite to him and then June and Elaine were pulling out chairs to join them. He tried to tell them what he’d seen but he couldn’t stop the tears rolling down his face. ‘Where are we going to live?’ he wailed.

‘There’s the flat over the shop,’ his mother said quietly. ‘It’s a roof over our heads, isn’t it?’ He was surprised at her stoic attitude. ‘We need to salvage the beds because we have none there. Were the beds all right?’

He shook his head. ‘I don’t know.’

Tom said, ‘I’ll drive you down to see for yourselves.’

‘Thank you,’ Mum said. ‘The sooner we sort this out, the better.’ Milo stood up to go with them.

‘Not you,’ Leonie said. ‘Milo, you’re out on your feet. You need more sleep.’

‘I’m coming,’ he told her. ‘I can’t sleep now.’

Milo thought the damage looked worse than ever now the sun was getting up.

‘It doesn’t look safe to go inside,’ Tom warned. ‘That wall could collapse at any minute.’

‘It’s now or never,’ his mother said grimly. ‘We’ve got to have beds and bedding.’

‘Yours first then,’ Milo said. ‘Let’s get out what we can.’

‘Mine’s too big for the small rooms
over the shop,’ she said. ‘Single beds would be better. We’ll take them all, yours, June’s and Amy’s.’

Milo found himself in his bedroom shaking the dusk and dirt from a paperback he’d only half read, and picking up his alarm clock. He could see June was bringing out the same sorts of things from her room.

‘We should concentrate on getting the valuables and essentials,’ he told her.

‘I want these.’

He found two suitcases and gave her one. ‘Put your beads and other trinkets in here,’ he advised.

They worked hard dragging out all they could into the garden and then had to collapse the beds while Elaine loaded whatever would fit into the car. Soon they were all covered with the grey dust that smelled so horrible.

Ida had opened up the shop by the time they got there and was surprised to see both them and the growing pile of domestic goods and utensils being unloaded on the pavement outside.

‘I thought we got off quite lightly last night,’ she said, aghast as she helped wipe everything down before it was carried upstairs.

‘I’m afraid you’ll have to stand in for me today,’ Leonie told her.

‘I’ll be glad to. Everyone will understand if I tell them why. But I can’t work all day, I’ll have to leave in time to collect my grandchildren from school.’

‘I know, I’ll be grateful for any extra hours you can do.’

Milo telephoned his boss at Cammell Laird’s to explain why he hadn’t shown
up for work, and then he asked to speak to Henry Jenkins.

‘Don’t think of coming in today,’ Mr Jenkins told him, ‘and if you need any help, come round and see us tonight.’

Milo thought it amazing that the phone still worked and while his family’s life had been savaged, so little seemed to have changed in the rest of the world.

Elaine wanted to move her desk out from the larger bedroom.

‘No,’ Leonie said. ‘Milo’s bed can go against the far wall and you can continue to work at this end.’

‘After all,’ Milo said, ‘you only use it in the daytime.’

‘Milo, are you sure you won’t mind doubling up?’ Elaine said.

‘He won’t,’ his mother assured her. ‘Milo can be pretty messy but no doubt you’ll both manage once you get used to it.’

‘I’ll have to go to the office,’ Tom said, ‘but I’ll run you back to Mersey Reach. Elaine will want to stay and help you sort things out.’

Before she left, Leonie rang George Courtney at the shop and asked him to come down to see if any antiques could be salvaged. Back on the Esplanade they found the wardens and police had taken charge and were telling them it was too dangerous to go inside the house again.

‘We have to,’ his mother insisted, ‘if we are to salvage any more from our home of thirty years. We need the stuff, we can’t buy replacements.’

Milo thought of what had happened to Pa when he’d ignored that advice. But he had to go in too, he couldn’t leave that to the women of the family. They carried on.

‘We have officially requested
that gas, water and electricity supplies be cut off,’ a warden told them, ‘and what remains of the building be made safe.’

‘You think it’s a write-off?’

‘Almost certainly,’ he said.

‘I’ve lived here all my married life.’ Milo heard the agony in his mother’s voice.

‘I’m sorry, it’s official policy. I understand there’s government compensation you can apply for.’

‘All the same, we’ll salvage all we can now,’ she said in her usual stoic manner.

Milo saw George Courtney and one of his assistants arrive in the firm’s van to help. They, too, crunched through the broken glass to climb inside and assess what remained.

‘Careful,’ Milo warned. ‘The floor isn’t safe in the dining room, part of it has fallen in.’ He carried out several of the heavy ship pictures of which his father had been so proud.

‘I’ll have them all cleaned up and sell them in the shop,’ George said. ‘A few of them need to have their frames repaired and at least two have scratch marks on the painting itself, but I think they’ll sell.’

‘Do your best with them, George.’

‘I will.’

Milo helped him pick out the best of the antiques to go to the shop and George arranged for a considerable collection of household bric-a-brac to be sent to auction.

O
N THAT SAME FRIDAY, AMY
was also having a
difficult time. Her examination was getting close and she was doing homework every night. She felt she had very little time to herself but in addition, last month Mrs Roberts had decided that all her pupils should learn a craft. ‘Would you like to learn to knit, Amy? Or do embroidery?’

She didn’t want to do either at the moment, she wanted to relax and read when she’d finished her homework. But June was good at knitting so she picked that.

Mrs Roberts had loaned her a simple pattern for gloves that would fit her, Auntie Bessie had provided her with some blue wool and she’d painstakingly begun to knit. Now every evening, in addition to homework, she had to knit enough for Mrs Roberts to appreciate that her glove was growing.

Yesterday, she’d reached the bottom of the fingers and Mrs Roberts had done the difficult part of casting on stitches for the first finger. She’d been told to finish that finger for today and had managed it. Mrs Roberts had smiled and said she was pleased to see her so enthusiastic about knitting. ‘I’ll cast on the stitches for the second finger so you can carry on over the weekend.’

Amy felt she’d been standing at Mrs Roberts’ desk for ages. She was shifting
her weight from one foot to the other as she tried to concentrate on what she was being told. She’d been embarrassed to see her teacher marking two of her sums wrong and felt guilty because she’d rushed her homework last night so she could go out and milk with Uncle Jack.

‘Do those two again for me tonight,’ she said, and in addition Amy received a double ration of homework for the weekend.

She was looking forward to talking to her mother and also Pat on the way home. It was her Friday-night treat. She escaped from school as quickly as she could and rode her bike down to the phone box, leant it against the grassy bank and went inside. Mum was always at the shop on Friday afternoons.

She heard the phone ring. It seemed nobody was there, so she tried her home number. Nothing happened, it didn’t even ring. Finally she tried Pat’s number.

Pat’s voice answered but she sounded rushed, excited and shocked and not really like her. ‘Amy, is that you? We had a terrible night last night and your house got bombed. Half the roof has been blown off.’

Amy felt her heart jolt against her ribs. She was horrified. ‘Where are Mum and Milo? Are they all right?’

‘Me and Alison went along to look but we couldn’t find either of them. The hens are all right though.’

‘But Mum? Where is she?’

‘I don’t know, Amy. My mum went along to see for herself but she found nobody there. Everybody is panicking round here. My family is going to be evacuated this afternoon. Dad’s found a house for us near Chirk. We’re all going. Mum is going to stay with us but Dad and Alison will come back on Monday. We’re going to go to new schools there. We’re
all frantically packing. Mum says she can’t stand any more nights like last night. It was terrifying because it was so near.’

‘But what about my mum?’

‘Honestly, we don’t know. We haven’t seen any of your family. Dad forbade us to go to your house, he says it’s dangerous and more of the roof could collapse on us.’

‘Is my mum in hospital?’

‘We know nothing. Dad’s shouting for me to come. The car’s packed and we’re ready to start.’

‘My mum isn’t dead, is she? She can’t be. And what about Milo?’ Amy heard the pips telling her the money had run out. ‘Ring me back.’ She was reading off the number of the call box as Mum had taught her to do. She shouted, ‘I’ve got to know what’s happened.’

‘I can’t—’ The line went dead.

Amy waited, her heart drumming, but it didn’t ring again. Her head was reeling. What was she to do now?

Her eyes stung with unshed tears. If her home had been bombed and lost part of its roof then the explosion would have disconnected the phone but Mum and Milo could have been hurt and sent to hospital or, even worse, be dead.

She got on her bike and cycled down the road with a feeling of cold horror settling in her stomach.

Some of her school friends had walked past the phone box while she was inside. She rode straight past them to get home to Auntie Bessie. She left her bike in its usual place in an outbuilding at the nearby farm and jogged up two fields. She saw Bessie in the meadow doing something with one of the sheep she and Jack had brought down from the hill a few weeks ago. She ran towards her instead of going to the house.

‘Bessie, I think
my mum could be dead!’

Bessie’s face contorted. ‘No, bach, she won’t be.’

‘What’s that you’re doing?’

‘Trying to get this lamb out. Has something happened?’

‘Our house has been bombed, half the roof is missing.’

‘Who told you that?’

‘Pat did.’

‘Pat? She’s just a child, bach, how do you know it’s true?’

‘It is. I know it is. I’m afraid something dreadful has happened to Mum.’

‘Well we don’t know that for sure.’

‘I’m worried. She’s not at her shop and she always is. She waits for me to ring.’

‘I know, but perhaps today – wait a moment. I have to do this first.’

‘I’ve got to go home. I want my mum.’

‘No, bach. Let me think about it. Look, here’s the lamb coming now. It’s quite a big one.’ She put her finger in its mouth to clear its airway. ‘It’s breathing, a fine healthy ram lamb. Jack will be pleased with this. I must just check that it isn’t a twin. Yes, I think – yes, it is. We’re lucky, we’ll have two. See how the mother is licking this first one? Amy? Amy, where are you going?’

She was running up the steep hill towards the house. ‘Set the kettle to boil,’ Bessie called after her. ‘We’ll have tea as soon as I come up. Everything is ready.’

Amy was panting when she reached the house. It was too early for Jack to be home from work and as usual the front door was propped open. The table was set for tea with a glass dish of strawberry junket and a jug of cream, her favourite, but she went straight
upstairs to get her money from the pretty cardboard box on her dressing table that had been given to her by the postmistress.

She had a pound note that smelled of chocolate because the box had once held chocolates. She pushed it into the pocket of her coat, together with the several half-crowns and other silver and dumped her homework bag on her bed before scampering back down the stairs. She headed down the meadow towards the other farm and the outbuilding where she’d left her bike. Auntie Bessie was still in the field attending to that ewe, and calling to her.

‘I’ve got to go home to find my mum,’ she shouted back. She didn’t stop. To go home now was much the best thing to do, she’d find out then about Mum and Milo.

She retrieved her bike and rode as hard as she could into town. Mum always came on a special coach when she visited, but Amy knew there were trains that would take her home. She rode straight to the station at the top of town and wheeled her bike inside. She knew about trains, that was how they travelled when Mum took them to the seaside for their summer holidays. But stations were busy places and she thought at first this one was deserted. Then she saw an elderly man in a peaked cap and navy serge uniform sitting behind a glass panel with gold lettering on it spelling out the word ‘Tickets’.