The Liverpool Trilogy

by Ruth Hamilton

  Outside at last, the two men breathed a sigh of relief, though it didn’t last long, because Eileen shot out of the door.

  ‘I’ll padlock that cage,’ Keith threatened.

  ‘Don’t get killed,’ she begged, her voice trembling with fear.

  ‘I won’t.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Get back in there. I love you so much, I’ll crawl home whatever happens. Go on. I’ve a daughter to find, and he has a son to crucify.’ He kissed her. An embarrassed Tom Bingley climbed into his car. The kiss was like something choreographed by an over-enthusiastic Hollywood director. It was lengthy and passionate. But Tom wasn’t jealous. He had a wife in full working order, and Keith was welcome to his lively little bride. Wasn’t he? ‘Is it always like that?’ he asked when Keith was sitting beside him.

  ‘No,’ Keith answered. ‘Sometimes it’s as boring as the next house. And sometimes Eileen’s in a bad mood. That wasn’t a bad mood; it was the orchestra tuning up. And when Nellie’s in a temper, I live in the shed. As for Eileen, she’s perfect for me. I was a dyed-in-the-wool bachelor who needed livening up a bit. She’s given me plenty to live for, and I’m going to be a dad. What more could a man want?’

  Tom began the journey down Liverpool Road. Anyone with a vehicle and sense would have been driving in the opposite direction, but the need to find offspring had blurred the edges of reason. ‘Into the valley of death,’ he said wryly. ‘And if they’re not in that house, they’ll be the proverbial needle and the haystack might well be burning.’

  They had eventually decided on law. Anyone overhearing their discussions would think they were listening to eighteen-year-olds. Peter Bingley wanted to become a barrister, and he would ‘prat about in a daft wig and a teacher’s gown’, according to the girl who, in ten years, would be Mel Bingley. She was more interested in the coalface, in people and in the preparation of briefs, but both she and Peter were attracted to criminal law rather than the pedantic and predictable side of legal work. The knowledge that she would do the real job while he ‘pratted’ about was a great source of amusement for both. ‘You do the acting, and I’ll write your scripts,’ she reminded him on a regular basis. ‘I’ll be the brains, and you can be the muscle.’

  A small fire flickered in Miss Pickavance’s grate. On the hearthrug, two beautiful children lay, clothes piled on nearby chairs, bodies calmer and appeased after their carefully constructed games. The decision not to indulge in the full act had been taken, and each had pledged to steer clear of such dangerous behaviour until they were much older. Every cell might scream for fulfilment, but such noises would not be heeded, because the future mattered. But Peter was suddenly quiet. He valued Mel, admired her. But … But what? He was confused. I love her, I do, I do—

  A siren sounded. This was a din they dared not ignore. Like a perfectly oiled machine, they responded immediately, clothes first, then a pre-planned pattern of behaviour. Peter doused the fire with water while Mel removed evidence of their feast: greaseproof paper, a pop bottle and a few slices of mousetrap cheese. ‘Cheddar?’ she said to herself. ‘More like soap.’

  ‘I think we made a mistake.’ Peter straightened the rug. ‘It was rash to think the Germans would take the night off. They seem to be becoming obsessed with the idea of wiping Liverpool off the face of the earth.’

  Both stood still in the middle of the room. It was nowhere near four o’clock, and the first wave was already on its way; a dull drone was just about audible above the sound of running feet. People were clearly rushing towards shelters.

  ‘We’ll be all right,’ Mel said reassuringly. ‘You know we’ll be fine.’ With the certainty possessed by all young animals, Mel and Peter remained firm in the knowledge that they could not die. Other people would lose their lives, but the youthful, the beautiful and the gifted were untouchable. And they’d already had their bomb in Miss Morrison’s house.

  Shielded by love and faith, they walked round the outside of the house, opened the rear gate and took their bikes from the yard. Incendiaries floated gracefully through the evening air, landing almost soundlessly on roofs. By some strange, almost osmotic process, these quiet killers disappeared under slates to start deadly fires. The only hope for anyone in a firebombed house lay with fire-watchers, ordinary folk who worked during the day and patrolled a sector at night. Flares and firebombs were useful tools for the Luftwaffe, because they turned night to day and made the destruction of Liverpool much easier.

  ‘We won’t make it back to Crosby,’ Peter said as they crossed the main road. ‘Let’s find a shelter. If we follow all those people, they’ll lead us to safety.’

  ‘No, I have to get home. Mam will be worried sick, and she’ll kill me.’

  ‘Mel, if we don’t take shelter—’

  And it happened. The house in which they had so recently lain was sliced off the end of the terrace. Peter threw his companion against a wall and covered her body with his. The noise was deafening. Some instinct informed him that the recessed porch of a shop doorway was nearby, so he edged his way to the right inch by inch, Mel clasped tightly against him. Debris landed on him, and he felt a series of sharp pains in his back. The air was thick and hot. His throat almost screamed for water.

  ‘Don’t touch my back,’ he whispered loudly into her ear. ‘I have glass in it. Pretty large pieces, I think. So we must stay calm, then I shall bleed more slowly. Well, I think so, anyway. Please don’t worry. And we mustn’t pull the glass out. My dad would tell us not to pull the glass out.’

  Reality crashed into Mel’s brain. They weren’t magic. No angel protected them just because they were young and beautiful and clever. Like everyone else, they were flesh, blood and bone; they were vulnerable. ‘Peter, don’t die. Cambridge. Chambers at one of the Inns, me nearby in the city robbing the rich so I can buy their innocence. Professional liars, you and I are going to be.’ She didn’t know what to do. The bomb that had taken Miss Pickavance’s house had been followed by others, and the very building in which she and Peter sheltered could be the next victim. ‘Peter?’

  ‘Yes. I’m fine, don’t worry.’ He wasn’t fine. He wasn’t yet a paid liar, so he should be telling her the truth. ‘Use the whistle,’ he said. ‘I need attention. Bleeding. I feel a bit faint.’ And confused, though he didn’t admit that. He loved her, but … God, he was cold.

  Mel took the whistle from her pocket and blew hard. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘That must have hurt your ears.’

  Tom heard it. Travelling at snail’s pace with windows open, he applied his brake. ‘Get out, Keith. Look along the road and in doorways. They could be anywhere here, or behind the Rotunda theatre. I’m going into Rachel Street.’

  ‘Number one, the house is,’ said his companion before leaving the vehicle. ‘I’ll blow my whistle if I find them, Tom. Good luck.’

  But Tom could not turn into Rachel Street, because the first house was spread across cobbles and two pavements. He began to tremble. His heart kicked into overdrive, and in spite of the cold, sweat beaded his forehead. His boy. His lovely, clever son who wanted to play cricket for his county, who was top of his class in five subjects …

  Bombs continued to fall nearer to the docks, their real targets. Number one Rachel Street was no longer here. There was a crater, there was rubble and, in the dim light provided by other fires, he saw furniture clinging to what was left of the upper storey. A pale dressing gown, hardly touched by the explosion, fluttered on a door. The side wall of the house had crumbled completely. His boy was under that lot. The girl, a clone of her mother, had enticed Peter to his death. But the boy could be alive even now. Pockets were often created among tumbling masonry, which meant that people could be trapped almost unhurt. But then there was the blast syndrome, and— Oh, poor Marie. She would never recover from this.

  Another whistle sounded. On grit-laden air, Keith’s voice floated down Scotland Road. ‘They’re here. Tom, Peter’s here.’

  For the rest of his days, Tom Bin
gley would fail to remember the next couple of minutes, but he must have turned the car round and driven no more than fifty yards. Peter was on his knees, the girl crouched beside him. Blood soaked through the boy’s clothes and stained the hands of Mel’s stepfather.

  ‘You,’ snapped Tom. ‘You Watson girl, get in the back of the car, young lady. My son will lie on his face, and we shall bend his knees so that he will fit. Take his head in your lap and keep him as still as possible. Pray he does well, because you will answer to me, miss.’

  But Mel heard none of his threat. Miracles did happen. She and Peter were special, were meant to live, because the people who had responded to the blast were Peter’s father and her stepfather. She sat in the car and received the precious boy’s head and shoulders on her lap. His father folded Peter’s legs and closed the door. ‘You’d better drive,’ he said to Keith. ‘My limbs are not dependable.’

  It was a difficult journey, since the need to reach safety quickly fought with the desire to cause no further damage to the patient. It was pitch dark, and the car’s hooded headlights offered few clues about where road ended and pavement began. But Tom, who had learned the route off by heart, knew when they had arrived. ‘Stop here,’ he said. ‘His best hope is in my office where I have some equipment. The hospitals will be too busy.’

  At the surgery, Tom regained sufficient strength to carry the unconscious Peter through to his consulting room. ‘Sweep every bloody thing off this desk,’ he snapped at Keith. ‘Then phone my wife and yours. No. Wait while I think.’ He placed his son face down on the patients’ trolley before hurriedly covering his desk with trays and instruments. ‘Take my car. Take her with you.’ He nodded in Mel’s direction.

  ‘I’m going nowhere,’ she said.

  ‘Tell your wife, then pick up Marie.’ Tom faced Mel. ‘You have to go to show Keith where my house is. If you insist, I suppose you may return here.’

  They left. Please let the research be right. O negative is thought to be the universal donor, and I need to believe that. Did a German discover it? Clever bastards, the Krauts. He rifled madly through papers on the floor, found the document, scanned it. Yes. For almost two years, O negative had been keeping people alive until their own group had been located. He had to trust that.

  Tom cut away his son’s clothing and discovered that no major vessel had been ruptured, though there was considerable damage. Peter needed a transfusion, because a great deal of glass was embedded in his flesh, and an incalculable amount of blood had been lost. Trauma and bleeding were the probable causes of the boy’s failure to wake. First, the shards needed to be removed. This was the most terrifying moment of Tom’s life so far.

  Slowly and carefully, he picked out the larger pieces, thanking God that Peter remained unconscious during this process. Having removed all visible foreign bodies and smaller glass fragments, the doctor stopped and watched the bleeding. It was not too bad, though there had probably been a sizeable loss of blood since the bombing.

  Determined to succeed, he placed a hypodermic in his own left arm, another in his son’s. With O rhesus negative dripping down a tube into Peter, Tom continued to inspect the wounds. He had to concentrate. Passive blood donors often felt faint, and he was playing two parts, donor and surgeon, so his blood would leave him more quickly due to a faster heartbeat.

  One-handed now, he lifted the glass away from his son’s prone form and placed it on a corner of the desk. He checked Peter’s bleeding again, then sat and waited, left arm held aloft so that the transfusion would be effective. One of the wounds remained feisty, and he stuffed it with wadding. Marie would soon be here. Marie would help in the saving of this precious life. Not for the first time of late, he thanked God for his wife’s existence.

  When he knew he had reached his limit on the bloodletting front, Tom removed the needle from his arm and placed a plaster on the small wound. This valued boy would live. ‘But don’t wake up yet, son.’ He couldn’t get the suture right, couldn’t hold the needle steady. He had done the right thing, because Peter had needed blood, and Tom was almost sure his red stuff could keep anyone going. ‘I gave too much,’ he said to himself before sinking to the floor.

  The door flew open. Keith, Eileen, Marie and Mel entered the room.

  ‘Oh, my poor darlings.’ Marie rushed to her two boys. The senior one was on the floor. ‘How much?’ she asked. ‘How much have you given him? And aren’t you O? But he’s A like me.’

  ‘It’s all right. The antigens won’t fight – Rh neg, and it’ll keep him going. I showed you how to suture, didn’t I? About a pint and a half, I think I gave, and it left me too quickly. I was working on him.’

  She checked her son’s pulse. ‘You saved him, Tom. Thank goodness you found them, Mr Greenhalgh. Eileen?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Hot, sweet tea for the upstanding and floor-sitting. Keith, is it?’

  ‘Aye, that’s me.’

  ‘Blood group?’

  ‘A positive.’

  ‘Good. Will you give? No bad illnesses, hepatitis, TB, blood disorders?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Will you give?’ she repeated. ‘Because I will be stitching his wounds, so I need to remain intact.’

  ‘Of course I’ll give. I already donate regularly for the war effort.’

  ‘Sit on the windowsill and keep your arm up as high as you can. Another pint will suffice. Now. Sutures.’

  Like a well-oiled machine, Marie Bingley set up the crude transfusion system, plucked packing and debris out of her son’s wounds, washed them, stitched her baby back together, checked the flow of Keith’s blood, shone a light in his eyes to make sure all was well. ‘Drink your tea,’ she ordered. ‘You need it.’

  Tom was picking up. He glared at Mel. ‘It was all your doing,’ he accused her vehemently. ‘Had it not been for you, this would never have happened.’

  Marie tutted. ‘Oh, do shut up, dear. He’s been after her for months, and well you know it. Fourteen is like twenty these days. But no babies, Mel. I’ll say the same to this fellow when he comes to. There. He’s all stitched up like an old darned sock.’ Only then did she react. When the last stitch was in, she sat in her husband’s chair and wept like a child.

  Eileen joined in. She wasn’t one for allowing anyone to weep without company. She looked at Marie Bingley with respect, because the quiet little woman had proved her worth tonight. Eileen liked her. More than that, she knew she had a friend, as the woman was trying to smile at her.

  Mel stepped forward and hovered over Tom, who was sitting up and drinking tea. ‘I’m sorry. I don’t know what else to say to you. We’re young, but we love each other. We’re probably older in our heads than most people our age.’

  ‘I shall send him to boarding school,’ he barked.

  She shrugged. ‘Send him where you like, because he’ll come straight back.’

  ‘She’s right, I will.’

  ‘You said that without moving your lips, Dr Bingley.’ Mel squatted down and stared into the eyes of her beloved Peter. ‘Thank goodness you’re back, you dirty stop-out. You’ve a road map on your back. Very colourful. Keep still, because my dad’s blood’s going in, so don’t waste it.’

  Keith grinned. This was the first time he’d been called Dad by any of Eileen’s children.

  ‘Where does the map go, Mel?’

  ‘All the way to Cambridge.’

  Peter turned his head and looked at his father. ‘We’re like a pair of gloves, Dad. She’s the left-hander, because she’ll be the one voting Labour. She’s still not forgiven Churchill for bombing the French fleet in Oran.’ After this lengthy piece of oratory, he passed out again.

  Marie pulled herself together before separating Keith from the recipient of his blood. ‘Thank you so much. Now he’s fit to travel to hospital. We aren’t going to bother the ambulance service; from the sound of the symphony down the road, they’ll be up to their eyes. I shall drive. Eileen, if you and Keith would walk home when he gets stead
y, we’d be grateful. Mel can come with us. It’s plain now that these two will not be separated.’

  Throughout this speech, Tom’s eyes stared directly into Mel’s, and she gazed back at him without fear or embarrassment. He was a doctor, a clever man, a member of polite society. Yet she scarcely blinked, because that unswerving arrogance granted to the young and gifted was alive and well in her soul. He was a man; he was an adult. Yet she was his superior, though she didn’t know why or how. Perhaps she would learn in the future; perhaps she would come to realize that the females of the species were born old, while males sometimes remained forever children. Tom Bingley was vulnerable, and he wore his heart on his sleeve. Mel kept hers hidden …

  ‘What do you mean?’ Gill cast an eye over the two invaders. They seemed very worked up and out of sorts, and that would be Jay the Joker’s fault. A great charmer of women, he could persuade the fairer sex to believe just about anything. She would put their minds at rest immediately. ‘He’s at work. He isn’t in hospital, he’s fixing a sink somewhere and putting shelves up in a pantry. Four Oaks, I think. Anyway, Maisie wants changing and she needs a feed, so I’ve no time for his larking about. He needs to grow up.’

  Elsie looked at Jean; Jean looked at Elsie. They would probably have got more sense out of the baby had she been capable of speech. ‘Gill?’ Elsie walked up to the young mother. ‘Look at me. He fell in the trough at Four Oaks and came out soaked to the skin in ice-cold water. He’s got hypothermia, and that’s the top and bottom of it.’

  Gill shook her head. ‘No. He gets hypo-something or other, but it’s not thermia. It’s to do with sugar if he doesn’t eat right.’

  ‘Well, he’s got that on top of the other.’

  Gill expressed the opinion that Phil Watson was a good minder, and he wouldn’t allow anything like that to happen to her husband. ‘He’s a grand lad, is that. More sense in his little finger than Jay has in his head. He wouldn’t let anything go wrong, because it’s his job to make sure Jay’s in one piece.’