Lights Out Liverpool (17 page)

There’d been a moment of great hope at the beginning of November, though, when an attempt had been made on Adolf Hitler’s life at a rally in Munich. Unfortunately, he’d left the rally early, before the planted bomb exploded, but the entire country, perhaps the entire world, had felt this might be a turning point and the people of Germany would rise up against the tyrant who was leading their great nation into a war which no sane person could possibly want. But nothing had happened, the phoney war continued, and Eileen could see no sign of it being over by Christmas as many people still predicted.

This wouldn’t do! She got up somewhat unsteadily and
turned
the wireless on, twiddling with the knob, looking for some cheerful music until she found Gracie Fields singing
Wish Me Luck As You Wave Me Goodbye
, then went into the back kitchen to get washed before Tony came home and wanted to know where the terrible smell came from.

‘Goodnight, Miss Brazier. Do you think you’ll be able to find your way home all right?’

‘I’m sure I will, Mr Sanderson. Goodnight. I’ll see you in the morning.’

The manager of the Co-op was only a few feet away, yet almost invisible, and she imagined him touching his hat courteously. She stood there, disorientated before she’d even taken a step, and felt for the Co-op window before making her way along the pavement, using the windows as a guide. With summertime ending yesterday, this was the first night the shop had closed in darkness. One of the girls had said there should be a full moon, but if so, there was no sign of it. The sky was like a heavy blanket of black, without even a cloud visible.

She collided with someone almost straight away, a woman, who said in a startled voice, ‘Sorry, luv! Isn’t this terrible? It’s like walking through a bowl of ink.’

‘Isn’t it!’ said Miss Brazier.

Everyone else seemed to have the same idea of using the windows as a guide. After several more collisions and ‘Sorry, luvs’ from both sides, she decided to venture, somewhat nervously, further out onto the pavement. Almost immediately, she bumped headlong into a man and almost fell before he grabbed her with both arms. ‘Sorry, luv. Isn’t this terrible?’

‘It’s awful,’ she agreed. ‘I think I’ll bring me torch tomorrow.’

‘They don’t help much,’ he said dismissively. ‘You’ve got to have two thicknesses of tissue paper on the glass and you can only point it downwards. You’re too busy concentrating on your feet to look where you’re going. Well, goodnight, luv. I hope you get home safe and sound.’

‘You, too,’ said Miss Brazier, thinking it would be midnight before she arrived home at this rate. Some girls passed, giggling helplessly. A man cursed, ‘Me toe! I stubbed it on the kerb. Bloody Hitler!’

‘He won’t need to bomb us,’ someone said sarcastically. ‘We’ll all have bumped each other to death by then.’

‘How the hell am I supposed to cross the road?’ a woman asked. ‘Does anyone know where the traffic lights are?’

It was a strange feeling, thought Miss Brazier, so many people, yet she couldn’t see a thing. All that was visible were the little slits of headlights on the occasional car as it crawled by.

Her shoulder caught another somewhat sharply. ‘Sorry, luv,’ she said breathlessly. ‘Isn’t this terrible?’

It was a young woman, who laughed. ‘Don’t apologise, you must be about the fiftieth person I’ve bumped into. Have you got far to go?’

‘Marsh Lane.’

‘You poor ould thing. I’m nearly home. Goodnight, luv.’

‘Goodnight.’

A spirit of camaraderie seemed to develop, a sense of adventure, as people struggled along, and there were more howls of laughter than complaints. Miss Brazier began to feel amost exhilarated.

‘It won’t be so bad once rationing comes in,’ a man said cynically. ‘We’ll all be so thin, there’ll be more
room
for us on the pavement.’

Miss Brazier found herself smiling broadly, though the smile vanished when she heard the lumbering sound of a tram coming directly towards her, headlights dimmed, windows painted black, and she leapt backwards. She must have walked right into the middle of Stanley Road which ran along the top without realising she’d stepped off the pavement. She turned, and walked right into a lamppost. There was a cracking sound as her glasses broke and fell off her nose and her hat fell off her head.

She cried aloud, frightened.

‘Are you all right, luv? What’s up?’ A man’s strong hand grasped her elbow.

‘I’ve broke me glasses and lost me hat.’ She felt around with her foot, located the glasses and bent down gingerly to pick them up. One of the lenses was completely shattered.

‘I’ve got a torch. What colour is the hat?’

‘Black.’ For some reason, she giggled, and the man laughed.

‘You couldn’t have picked a worse colour to lose in the blackout, could you?’

She could see the narrow yellow beam of his torch searching the flags. ‘It doesn’t matter. It’s me own fault for not using a hat pin and it was an old one, anyroad,’ she said.

‘Let’s have a look at your face, make sure you haven’t cut it.’ The yellow light shone in her eyes and she blinked uncomfortably. ‘No, you’re all still in one piece, like. Which way are you going, luv?’

‘Marsh Lane.’

‘Well, link me arm and I’ll go as far as the corner with you.’

Before she could say a word, her arm was tucked in his
and
they began to stroll along Stanley Road together as if they’d known each other for years. It was an even stranger sensation than the blackout, linking arms with a man.

‘What’s your name, luv?’ He had a nice voice, neither young nor old, but deep and slightly musical, with the faint suggestion of an Irish accent.

‘Miss Brazier.’

‘Miss? That’s a funny name to call someone!’ he chuckled.

‘Sorry, it’s Helen.’ There’d been no-one to call her by her first name for so long that she’d almost forgotten what it was.

‘Do your friends call you Nellie?’

‘No … well, I haven’t got many friends.’

‘I’m Louis Murphy, known as Lou. And what d’you mean, Helen, you haven’t got many friends, a fine-looking woman like you?’

She felt her cheeks burn and wondered what he looked like. She could tell he was tall, his voice came from somewhere above her head and his arm felt lean and wiry.

‘I looked after me mother till she died when I was twenty-four,’ she said simply. ‘Since then, I’ve never known how to make friends.’ She hadn’t talked so openly to anyone in her life before, but it seemed easy to say these things in the dark to a total stranger she couldn’t see. ‘You’ll never believe this,’ she went on, gaining confidence, ‘but I’ve spoken to more people coming up Strand Road tonight, then I’ve done since I began work in the Co-op when I left school.’

‘You’re just shy, that’s all,’ he said wisely. After a while, he began to tell her about himself. He worked in Burton’s, the Gents’ Outfitters, and lived with his sister,
a
widow with three young children. It came as a surprise when they reached the corner of Marsh Lane and she felt almost sorry he was going.

‘Tell you what, Helen. I’ll meet you on the corner of Stanley Road tomorrow night at the same time, eh?’

‘If you like,’ she said shyly, ‘but how will we know each other in the dark?’

‘I’ll just keep on saying, “Helen, Helen, Helen” over and over again till you answer,’ he laughed. He patted her arm. ‘Don’t worry, luv, we’ll find each other somehow.’

The lathe had turned into a giant mincing machine. A long strip of red meat was being fed through and chopped up into little cubes. The meat began to travel faster and faster until she lost control. Then the entire machine broke away from the floor and began to dance around the workshop with a horrendous clattering noise. The other girls shrieked with laughter as she chased after the machine and tried to catch it.

Eileen Costello woke up, the clattering sound still thumping in her head. It had all been a dream, a rather funny dream when you thought about it. She glanced over Tony’s sleeping form at the clock beside the bed. Nearly half past seven. She gave a muffled shriek. ‘I’ve slept in! I mustn’t have heard the alarm.’

She was about to leap out and throw herself into her clothes when she remembered it was Saturday and she didn’t have to go to work. She sank back onto the pillow, prepared to relish a welcome lie-in after her first exhausting week at work. It was several seconds before she realised that the banging from her silly dream still persisted. Someone was hammering on the door.

‘Damn!’ she muttered wearily. Who on earth could it be at this hour? Her heart turned over at the thought it might be Francis. Perhaps he’d tried to use his key and found it didn’t fit. The banging increased. Whoever was there had begun to use their fists.

She climbed over Tony, slipped into her dressing gown
and
crept downstairs. Peeping cautiously through the parlour curtains, she saw the black-shawled figure of Gladys Tutty outside in the pouring rain, beating on the front door with her fists like a madwoman.

‘Damn!’ she said again as she walked down the hall and opened the door to her neighbour.

‘What’s the matter, Gladys?’ Eileen tried not to sound annoyed. Perhaps it was some sort of emergency.

‘I want me kids back,’ said Gladys hoarsely. She was soaking wet and swaying on her feet. Her matted hair stuck up wildly around her head like the tails of little animals, and rivulets of rain made white streaks on her filthy face. Eileen reckoned she’d probably been out all night drinking in the illegal den she frequented somewhere down the Dock Road. It was said by those who knew these things that Gladys would go outside with any man for a double gin.

‘Well, I haven’t got your kids, have I, Gladys?’ Eileen said irritably, thinking about the warm bed she’d just vacated and to which she longed to return.

‘I want them back!’ Incredibly, the little woman looked on the verge of tears.

‘You’ll have to go and see the billeting people or something,’ Eileen explained patiently. As if to prove how unreal the war was, how phoney, virtually all the children who’d been evacuated had come back weeks ago. Billy Templedown from Opal Street, who was only ten, had walked home from Southport on the railway line all by himself.

‘The what?’ Gladys’s jaw dropped and she looked vacant.

‘The billeting people, the ones who came to see you when Freda and Dicky were evacuated.’ When Gladys looked no more enlightened, Eileen said reluctantly, ‘Oh,
I
suppose you’d better come in.’ She hated having Gladys Tutty in her house, the smell persisted for days, but the poor woman was getting more soaked by the minute. As Gladys went down the hall, her too large men’s boots squelched, squirting water all over the linoleum.

‘D’know where Freda and Dicky are?’ asked Eileen when Gladys was sitting down.

‘Southport.’

‘I know that much, Gladys. I meant have you got their address? Have you had a letter from them?’ Even as she spoke, Eileen knew the last question was stupid. She couldn’t for the life of her imagine Freda or Dicky writing a letter to their mam.

‘I got a letter telling me the address where they were staying,’ Gladys said vaguely. Then she added in a stubborn voice, ‘I want me kids back. I want them back today. Everyone else’s kids are back except mine.’

Which was, when you thought about it, and Eileen hadn’t thought about it before, somewhat amazing. She would have expected anyone blessed with Freda and Dicky Tutty to have got rid of them at the very first opportunity. She wanted to ask Gladys
why
she wanted them back. Gladys paid no heed to her children. She fed them when she thought about it and then only with bread and dripping. During her frequent drinking bouts she often stayed out all night, and Freda and Dicky were left to their own devices in the cold, comfortless house. And when Gladys was there, the only acknowledgment the pair received was the occasional swipe or a good beating if their gin-starved mam was in a particularly foul mood. The Schoolie had long given up coming round to see why they weren’t in school and the poor little mites were kept going by their own streetwise ability to stay alive and the goodwill of the neighbours who gave them food
from
time to time, though they were difficult kids to help. But, Eileen supposed, Gladys loved her children in her own peculiar way, every bit as much as she loved Tony.

‘I want me kids back,’ said Gladys, who’d begun to sound like a needle stuck on the turntable of a gramophone. Gladys could never have told anybody why she wanted her children. Deep within her muddled brain, she felt something was missing from her wretched life, that there was a curious emptiness she couldn’t always put her finger on. Coming home that morning, she’d remembered. Freda and Dicky! They’d been gone for days, or was it months? How to get them back was quite beyond her, her mind couldn’t begin to cope with the problem, but Eileen Costello would know. Eileen Costello seemed to know everything.

Eileen sighed. ‘I’ll tell you what, Gladys. Go and get that letter you mentioned and I’ll write to the billeting people and ask them to send Freda and Dicky home.’

‘I want them back today,’ Gladys muttered. Rain was dripping from the ends of her shawl and the hem of her black skirt, making little puddles on the floor beneath the chair. The chair would be soaked, Eileen thought. She’d have to wash the cover and put the cushion in the airing cupboard to dry.

‘But Gladys, there’s nowt I can do about it,’ she protested.

‘This place, Southport. Is it far, like?’

‘About fifteen miles, I reckon. You’re not thinking of going, are you, Gladys?’ The idea of Gladys catching a train and finding the address was ludicrous.

‘You can fetch them for me.’

‘
Me!
’

Gladys began to cry with hoarse, heartrending sobs
that
shook her entire body. ‘I want me kids back,’ she moaned.

Eileen immediately felt terrible. The poor woman was obviously distraught, yet here she was, concerned only about her cushion covers getting wet and puddles on the lino. On the other hand, going to Southport to request the return of Freda and Dicky seemed a bit much to ask, though whoever had them would probably be only too glad to see the back of the pair – and they had to come home some time.