by Maureen Lee
‘Never mind, luv.’ Eileen briefly stroked her sister’s untidy brown curls. ‘I’d better set to and help with the washing up, else I’ll have people calling me names behind me back.’
She walked down the street to Mary Flaherty’s and found half a dozen women crowded in the tiny, steaming back kitchen washing and drying dishes, and twice as many in the living room having a quick ciggie before starting work again.
‘You lazy buggers,’ she cried. ‘And here was us thinking I was slacking off having a chat with our Sheila.’
‘Did y’see the way them Tutty children ate at the table, Eileen?’ demanded Agnes Donovan from Number 27. Aggie was a terrible gossip. No-one was safe from her vicious tongue and Eileen avoided the woman whenever she could. When Eileen shook her head, Aggie went on breathlessly, ‘Like little animals they were, stuffing food in their mouths with both hands like they’d never eaten in their lives before. Greedy little buggers! I’ve never seen anything like it,’ she finished in an aggrieved voice.
‘I don’t suppose they know any better, poor mites,’ Eileen said reasonably, but Aggie persisted. If it wasn’t the kids’ fault, then it was their mam’s.
‘I’m surprised Gladys had the gall to let them out,’ she complained. ‘Mrs Crean wouldn’t let her two mongol lads come because she doesn’t trust their table manners.’
Eileen reckoned Phoebe Crean was probably keeping Harry and Owen out of sight of gawpers like Agnes Donovan, who seemed to get enjoyment from other people’s misfortunes. She ignored the woman and asked Mary Flaherty if there was anything she could do, ‘Seeing as how all the available help seems to have gone on strike.’
‘Once the kids have finished, you can clear the tables, Eileen,’ Mary told her, smiling. ‘Then give the cloths a shake and turn them over so they’re fresh for us when we sit down to our grub in about half an hour, like. Our Joey’s going to organise some games in the meantime.’ As Eileen was leaving, Mary followed her into the hall. ‘And oh, is your feller back yet with the ale?’
‘Not yet,’ Eileen replied. ‘He doesn’t finish work till two o’clock, then someone’s giving him a lift back in a car and they’re collecting it on the way.’
Mary squeezed her hand. ‘He’s a dead good sport, your Francis, Joey’s really made up. We could never have afforded so much ale if Francis hadn’t been able to get it half price.’
Outside, the children had become restless. Seemingly unaffected by the almost suffocating heat and satiated with food, they were hurling paper plates and streamers at each other. Some had already left their seats and were playing tick round and round the table.
Eileen yelled, ‘Behave yourselves!’ and ducked to dodge a plate meant for the child beside her. She noticed Sheila grinning at her from the doorstep and made a face back. The Tuttys, isolated from the others on their separate chairs, were still gorging themselves. ‘And you two have had enough. You’ll be sick if you eat any more.’ They stared at her resentfully, their open mouths full of half-chewed bunloaf, as she began to clear the table. Joey Flaherty came up groaning, ‘This is the bit I’ve been dreading. Come on, youse lot, fetch your seats down this end and put ’em in a circle, and we’ll play musical chairs.’
‘Best of luck, Joey,’ Eileen smiled, shooing away a couple of cats who were about to jump on the table in search of scraps.
In Number 3, Mr Singerman shoved his parlour window up as far as it would go and began to play a brisk march on the piano. A minute or so later, the music stopped abruptly and Eileen noticed her Tony, hanging back as ever, was the first to be out. A good job Francis wasn’t around to see him lose. Tony came up, looking tearful. ‘I didn’t like pushing anybody, Mam.’
‘All right, luv, it’s only a game,’ she soothed. ‘C’mon, take these into Mary’s, then you can help us turn the cloths over.’ In a while, there’d be more children out and he’d have someone to play with. She noticed Freda Tutty, Wellington boots flapping against her skinny legs, was dragging Dicky around the circle of chairs by the hand, an almost fanatical expression on her little pinched face. When the music stopped, Freda swung Dicky onto a chair and bagged the next one for herself by the simple expedient of removing the boy already on it with a vicious shove of her bony hip. The boy – it was Sheila’s eldest, Dominic – caught his head on the neighbouring chair before landing on the ground. He stood up, blood pouring from a cut on his forehead, and began to yell. Sheila struggled wearily up from the step where she was sitting. Angry at his precious day being spoilt, Joey Flaherty gave Freda a sharp slap on the wrist. The girl stared at him mutinously, eyes full of hate, then dragged her brother down the entry beside the coalyard at the end of the street to go indoors by the back way.
There was a general sigh of relief. Eileen’s own relief was mixed with a sense of guilt. Always, she felt as if she should do something about the Tuttys, but never knew what. When she and Francis had taken Number 16 after they got married, the sound of poor Gladys being used as a punchbag by Eddie, her now long-departed husband, had upset her terribly. But Francis had refused to let her tell the Bobbies. ‘It’s none of our business, Eileen. Anyway, the Bobbies won’t do nowt. He’s not breaking any laws.’ Now it was Freda and Dicky’s turn to take the beatings. Gladys had learnt a thing or two from Eddie.
Eileen assuaged her conscience a little by resolving to take a plate of butties and a glass of ale along to Number 14 later on, though Gladys’d far prefer a bottle of gin. Everyone knew the lengths Gladys would go to for a bottle of gin when her Public Assistance money ran out.
Suddenly a cheer went up from the men on the corner, and she glanced across. A black car had stopped at the end of the street. The driver was Rodney Smith, a young man with a cherubic face who worked as a rent collector for Bootle Council. As Eileen watched, a tall figure got out of the passenger seat, a handsome man with a fine head of black wavy hair who beamed at everyone in sight. Francis! He pulled down the boot and began to struggle with something inside. The waiting men went eagerly to help, and a few minutes later a large barrel was rolled down Pearl Street. The ale had arrived.
The day wore on. The vivid sun grew larger, turned from bright yellow to musky gold, as it made its slow and inevitable journey across the gently changing sky, and a line of shadow began to creep across the cobbles of Pearl Street, sharply separating the light from the dark, though the air grew no cooler. Indeed, by late afternoon it seemed more suffocating than ever. The grown-ups had long finished their meal, the tables had been cleared and the cloths removed so they wouldn’t get drink spilt on them, though most of the men sat on the pavement with their backs against the walls of the houses. The younger children began to grow tired and tetchy. Many of the older ones had disappeared, having gone to other streets to find their friends. Brenda Mahon’s little girls were pushing round the home-made dolls’ pram that they were usually only allowed to bring outside on Sundays. Sheila had put Ryan to bed, leaving the window open in case he woke and began to cry. Her next youngest, Caitlin, had fallen asleep in her arms.
The King’s Arms pub on the corner of the street opened its doors, and some customers brought their drink outside to join the party.
At six o’clock, Miss Brazier came wearily around the corner, home from her job in the Co-Op Haberdashery Department, where she sat all day in a glass cage at the receiving end of little metal cannisters containing cash which whizzed across the shop on wires stretching in every direction. Miss Brazier would unscrew the cannister, remove the money, and send it back with the change.
‘We’ve plenty of butties left, Miss Brazier,’ Mary Flaherty said generously. ‘Would you like us to make you a cup of tea, like?’
‘No, thank you,’ Miss Brazier said stiffly, scarcely glancing in their direction. Head bent, she made her way to Number 12 and disappeared inside.
‘Poor ould soul,’ said Mary sympathetically. ‘I bet she’d love to join us, y’know, but she can’t bring herself to unbend.’
‘She’s not so old,’ Eile
en said. ‘No more than thirty-five, I reckon.’
Like Miss Brazier, not everyone in Pearl Street had condescended to join in the festivities. The Harrisons, who owned the coalyard at the end of the street and lived in the house next door, hadn’t deigned to come – Edna Harrison told someone she thought street parties were ‘common’. Nor Alfie Robinson from 22, a solid Orangeman, who’d never spoken to Joey Flaherty since he’d discovered one of Joey’s brothers was in the IRA. The Kellys weren’t there, either, May and her brothers, Fin and Failey, who were Eileen’s other neighbours. The Kellys went into town shoplifting on Saturdays and stayed till late doing a tour of the city pubs to sell the loot – if they hadn’t been nicked first. The Kellys stole to order; give them the size and the colour and they’d pinch the goods from Marks & Spencer or C & A for half the ticket price.
A trickle of people began to arrive; George Ransome, a middle-aged bachelor with a dashing pencil thin moustache, who worked in Littlewoods Pools, appeared with two bottles of cream sherry. ‘A little treat for the ladies,’ he said with a wink, and there was a rush indoors for glasses. Then Dilys Evans, only fourteen, looking worn out from her new job as a chambermaid in the Adelphi Hotel in Liverpool.
Soon afterwards, Sheila whispered to her sister, ‘I feel as if I’d like a lie down, Sis.’
Eileen nodded. ‘I’ll be in later and help you settle the kids.’ Caitlin had woken up by then, and Sheila led the tiny girl indoors by the hand.
The sky dimmed, turned to mauve, as dusk began to fall and the great orange ball of the sun slowly dipped behind a ridge of roofs, leaving chimneys silhouetted, stark and black, against its fiery brilliance before it disappeared altogether. Then the stars came out; just one at first, then another, and almost within the blinking of an eye, overhead became a blanket of twinkling yellow lights. At long last the air began to freshen and turn cool and the lamplighter arrived, propping his ladder against the arms of the lamppost on the corner by the pub. The gas jet began to splutter and fizz and gave off an eerie glow.
‘Be out of a job soon,’ he said mournfully as he was about to leave. ‘Once the bloody blackout comes.’
And still they sat, talking quietly now, unwilling to let the day go; as if the longer they stayed, the longer it would take tomorrow to come, because nobody in their right mind wanted what tomorrow might bring. Dancing had been planned for after dark, the polka and Knees Up Mother Brown and the Gay Gordons – Mr Singerman had been practising all week – but somehow no-one felt like dancing. Instead, they listened to the haunting sound of Paddy O’Hara on his harmonica, the music quivering like invisible birds in the yellow-hued night air.
The glitter of the day had gone. Reality had set in.
‘When are you sailing, Joey?’ someone shouted across the street.
‘Next Sat’day, on the Athenia,’ Joey replied.
‘We’re going steerage,’ put in Mary hastily, as if worried folks might think they’d booked a first-class cabin.
‘Looks like you’re getting out just in time.’
Joey flushed angrily. ‘We’ve been saving for years to go to Canada. Me brother Kevin’s already in Ontario.’
‘D’you know who’s taking on the house, Joey?’ asked Ellis Evans, who lived next door.
‘No-one yet, luv,’ Joey answered. ‘The landlord’s agent said he’ll have a job renting out a house in Bootle, because – well, you know why.’
They knew only too well. When war broke out, Bootle, with its multiplicity of docks and being the nearest British port to the Americas, would be one of the prime targets for Hitler’s bombs. There was a long silence as they contemplated the awfulness of this.
‘It mightn’t happen’, Eileen said eventually in a small voice. ‘There’s still time.’ The situation had been building up for years like a pot gradually simmering on a stove. Now, with Hitler about to invade Poland, the pot was threatening to boil over. Surely he wouldn’t go ahead, she thought desperately, not when he knew what the consequences would be? Having guaranteed Polish independence, Great Britain and France would consider invasion as an act of war against themselves and be forced to retaliate.
Eileen was uncomfortably aware of Francis glaring in her direction. Her husband didn’t like her drawing attention to herself in company. She was beginning to wish she hadn’t spoken, when a figure appeared under the flickering gas lamp. Her dad!
‘Jack! Jack Doyle.’ Joey Flaherty jumped to his feet, his face wreathed in smiles. ‘You should’ve come before, Jack. Sit down, mate.’
There was a genuine chorus of welcome from the assembled crowd, and Eileen felt a surge of pride. Jack Doyle was one of the best liked and most respected men in the whole of Bootle.
‘It was a Pearl Street do,’ he said stiffly. ‘It wouldn’t’ve been right when it weren’t my street.’
He touched his daughter’s shoulder lightly and Eileen looked up, expecting some sort of greeting. Instead, he asked gruffly, ‘Where’s our Sheila?’
‘She was a bit tired, she went indoors a while ago.’ As ever, she felt let down. ‘I could be invisible as far as me dad’s concerned,’ she thought bitterly. She recalled the wedding photograph on the sideboard in the house in Garnet Street, her mam, dimpled and smiling, the spitting image of Sheila. Since Mam died so unexpectedly of breast cancer fourteen years ago, her father seemed to have transferred almost the entire weight of his affections onto her sister. Her younger brother, Sean, only two when Mam died, had managed to stake a small claim on his dad’s heart, but Eileen felt as if she didn’t exist at all, yet she loved him so much and yearned for recognition.
Her husband poured the newcomer a glass of ale and showed him to an empty chair at the far end of the table. Eileen noticed Francis whisper in the older man’s ear. Her dad nodded and stood up.
‘Francis has asked me to say a few words,’ he said. Everyone immediately fell silent and turned to look at the tall charismatic figure of Jack Doyle, docker, unpaid official of the dockworkers’ union and well known scourge of management since the day he’d begun working for them twenty-five years ago. ‘First thing is to wish Joey and Mary and their little ’uns well in their new life.’
There was a murmur of agreement and shouts of ‘Good luck, Joey, Mary.’
Jack Doyle continued. ‘Now, the war. It’s going to happen, no doubt about it, any day now. I’ve already fought in one world war and I was lucky. I came through unscathed, but I weren’t happy about risking me life for a country that had given me nowt, that was owned lock, stock and barrel by the rich folk, who only wanted it protected and preserved for theirselves. It weren’t my country, it were theirs! What thanks did the widders get after their men spilt every last drop of their blood in the trenches of the Somme? Those lions led by donkeys? None! Paddy O’Hara gave ’em his eyes. What did they give you back, Paddy?’
‘A few measly bob a week in pension, Jack, and an empty belly most of the time,’ Paddy shouted.
‘That’s right!’ Jack Doyle’s lip curled. ‘But this war’s different, lads,’ he went on. ‘This time it ain’t a way of getting rid of the unemployed – though don’t forget there’s a million and a half of them. If I were a younger man, I’d volunteer. They wouldn’t need to call me up. In fact, I’d have joined the Territorials like my son-in-law, Francis.’
He beamed down at the younger man and laid an affectionate hand on his shoulder. There was a smattering of applause and Francis gave his charming, devil-may-care smile which Annie always said made him look even more like Clark Gable than ever. Eileen wondered for the hundredth time what on earth had come over her husband to make him join the Royal Tank Regiment. He had a good, well paid job and at thirty-six wouldn’t be called up for a while yet, but as a Territorial he would be involved straight away. She suspected it might have something to do with his political aspirations. Francis was an elected member of Bootle Corporation and had Parliament in his sights. He didn’t expect the war to last more than a few months, and a spell in the army would lo
ok good on his record.
‘This time,’ her dad was saying, ‘you’ll be fighting to preserve summat worthwhile, to keep the world free from fascism.’ He nodded towards Mr Singerman. The old man nodded back, dark eyes full of pain. ‘Jacob can tell you more about it than I can. He’s heard nowt from his Ruth in Austria for more’n a year now. Yes, this time,’ he continued, his voice rising as he gradually began to be possessed with the rage against inequality and injustice that Eileen knew so well, ‘it’s different, but it’s still only a case of defending the bad against the worse.’ He smiled sardonically. ‘’Course, while you’re fighting, you’ll be told how brave you are, how much you’re needed, but once it’s over, you’ll have no more than you had before. In other words, nowt!’
He paused dramatically with the air of an accomplished orator, yet he’d never addressed more than a few hundred dockers in his entire life. The yellow street lamp sizzled on the corner, but apart from that, the silence was total. He held his audience in the palm of his hand. Word had gone round the pub that Jack Doyle was on his feet and everyone, including Mack, the landlord, had come out to listen. Eileen thought her father would have made a far better politician than Francis, who had to learn every word of a speech by heart.
‘Have you seen that poster?’ He looked at them quizzically and several people shook their heads. ‘It’s all over town. “Your courage, your cheerfulness, your resolution, will bring us victory.” Not our courage, our cheerfulness, our resolution … No, it’s up to us, the workers, like usual, to fight the toffs’ battles for them. Some from Pearl Street have already gone to do their bit, like Annie’s lads, only nineteen and called up last May, and little Rosie Gregson here, wed just six weeks ago and already said tara to her Charlie.’
Annie Poulson reached across the table and took Rosie’s hand. The two women stared at each other for several seconds, the younger one making a determined and obvious effort not to cry.
