by Maureen Lee
“I’m not very good at this,” he stammered, when he stood on her toe.
“Then you must learn,” she chided him. “All servicemen should learn to dance. This is a waltz, the easiest dance of all. You’ll find yourself in all sorts of different towns and cities and it’s the best way to meet girls.”
He swallowed, and said daringly, “I won’t meet many girls like you. I hope you don’t mind me saying, but you’re the prettiest one here.”
“Why on earth should I mind you saying a lovely thing like that? What’s your name, luv?”
“Gerard Davies. I come from Swansea.”
“Pleased to meet you, Gerard. I’m Flo Clancy.”
“Pleased to meet you, Flo.”
It always started more or less the same. She only picked the shy ones, who were usually, though not always, very young. Gerard looked eighteen or nineteen, which meant he’d not long left home and would be missing his family.
When the waltz was over, she fanned herself with her hand and said, “Phew! It’s hot in here,” knowing that almost certainly he would offer to buy her a drink. He took the opportunity eagerly, and she chose the cheapest, a lemonade. They sat in a corner of the ballroom, and she asked him about his mum and dad, and what he’d done for a living before he was called up.
His dad ran a smallholding, he told her, and his mum worked in the shop where their vegetables were sold. He had two sisters, both older than him, and everyone had been very proud when he’d passed the scholarship and gone to grammar school. Less than three months ago, he’d gone straight from school into the Navy, and he had no idea what he wanted to do when the war was over.
Flo noticed that he had the merest trace of a moustache on his upper lip, and his hands were soft and white. It was easy to believe that until recently he’d been just a schoolboy.
His brown eyes were wide and guileless. He knew nothing about anything much, yet he was about to fight for his country in the worst war the world had ever known. Flo felt her heart contract at the thought.
The drink finished, they returned to the dance floor.
Flo could tell that he was gaining confidence because he had a girl on his arm, and it grew as the night progressed.
At half past eleven, she said she had to be getting home.
“I have to be up for work at the crack of dawn.”
“In the laundry?”
“That’s right, luv.” She’d told him quite a lot about herself. She gave a little shudder. “I don’t live far away, but I’m terrified of walking home in the blackout.”
“I’ll take you home,” he said, with alacrity, which Flo had known he would. She wasn’t a bit scared of the blackout.
Outside, she linked his arm in case they lost each other in the dark. “Have you got long in Liverpool?”
“No, we’re sailing tomorrow, I don’t know where to.
It’s a secret.” She felt his thin, boyish arm tighten on her own, and reckoned he was frightened. Who wouldn’t be, knowing about all the ships that had been sunk and the lives that had been lost, mainly of young men like him?
When they got to her flat she made him a cup of tea and something to eat—he appeared to be starving the way he downed the two thick cheese sarnies.
“I’d better be getting back to the ship.” He looked at her shyly. “It’s been a lovely evening, Flo. I’ve really enjoyed myself “So’ve I, luv.”
By the door, he flushed scarlet and stammered, “Can I kiss you, Flo?”
She didn’t answer, just closed her eyes and willingly offered her lips. His mouth touched hers, softly, and his arms encircled her waist. She slid her own arms around his neck, and murmured, “Oh, Gerard!” and he kissed her again, more firmly this time. She didn’t demur when his hands fumbled awkwardly and hesitantly with her breasts. She had thought this might happen. It nearly always did.
It was another half-hour before Gerard Davies left Flo in her bed. “Can I write to you?” he pleaded, as he got back into his uniform. “It’d be nice to have a girl back home.”
“I’d like that very much, Gerard.”
“And can I see you if I’m in Liverpool again?”
“Of course, luv. But don’t turn up unannounced, whatever you do.” She worried that more than one of her young lovers might turn up at the same time. The landlady upstairs wouldn’t like it a bit. I’ll give you the phone number of the laundry so you can let me know beforehand, like.”
“Thanks, Flo.” Then he said, in an awestruck voice, “This has been the most wonderful night of my life.”
Gerard Davies was the seventh young man she’d slept with. Flo told herself earnestly that it was her contribution towards the war. Tommy O’Mara had taught her that making love was the most glorious experience on earth, and she wanted to share this experience with a few bashful young men who were about to fight for their country. It made her heart swell to think that they would go into battle, perhaps even die, carrying with them the memory of the wonderful time they’d had with Flo, the pretty young woman from Liverpool, who’d made them feel so special.
It was important that she didn’t get pregnant. She’d asked Sally, casual, like, what she and Jock used.
“It’s something called a French letter, Flo. They’re issued by the Navy. I think you can get them in the chemist’s, but I’m not sure.” Sally grinned. “Why on earth d’you want to know?”
“No reason, I just wondered.”
There was no way Flo would even consider entering a chemist’s to ask for French letters, so she inserted a sponge soaked in vinegar which she’d once heard the women in the laundry say was the safest way. But Flo had the strongest feeling she would never have another baby.
It was as if the productive part of her had withered away to nothing when her little boy was taken away.
Just after Martha’s wedding, Bel wrote to say she was expecting. “I’ll be leaving the ATS, naturally. Bob’s being posted to North Africa, so I’ll be back in Liverpool soon, looking for somewhere to live. Perhaps I can help out in the laundry if there’s a sitting-down job I could do.”
Flo wrote back immediately to say she’d love to have Bel stay until she found a place of her own and that, if necessary, she’d invent a sitting-down job in the laundry.
She bought two ounces of white baby wool to knit a matinee jacket, but in April another letter arrived: Bel had had a miscarriage. “You can’t imagine what it’s like to lose a baby, Flo. I’m staying in the ATS, though I was looking forward to living in William Square and working in this famous laundry.”
The knitting was put away, unfinished. She seemed to waste a lot of time making baby clothes that would never be worn, Flo thought sadly. She wrote to Bel. “I wouldn’t know, of course, but I can imagine how heartbreaking it must be to lose a baby.”
Flo was proud of the way she’d run the laundry since Stella Fritz had returned to Ireland four months ago. As well as the Holbrook twins, she now employed two young mothers, friends, who worked half a day each.
Lottie would turn up at midday with several lusty toddlers in a big black pram, and Moira would take them home. There was also Peggy Lewis, a widow, only four and a half feet tall, who worked like a navvy. Peggy had to leave early to prepare a massive meal for her three lads who worked on the docks and arrived home famished and ready to eat the furniture if there was no food ready.
When the delivery-boy, Jimmy Cromer, a cheeky little bugger but reliable, gave in his notice, having been offered a job with a builder at five bob a week more, Flo immediately increased his wages by ten. Jimmy was thrilled. “If I stay, can I paint ‘White’s Laundry’ on me sidecart?”
“Of course, luv. As long as you do it neat and spell it proper.”
Every Friday, Flo sat in the office working out the week’s finances, putting the wages to one side, and taking the surplus to the bank. There were usually several cheques in settlement of their big customers’ bills. She paid everything into the Fritzes’ account, then made out a statement s
howing exactly what money had come in and what had gone out, to send to Stella Fritz in County Kerry. At the bottom, she usually added a little message: the laundry was doing fine, there were no problems with the house, the window-cleaner still came once a month and she assumed this was all right. She kept all her own personal bills, stamped “paid” by the gas and electricity companies, just in case there was ever any argument.
Not once did Stella acknowledge the hard work Flo was putting in to keep the business going and looking after the house. I suppose she’s too busy breathing in the good clean air and looking out the winder, Flo thought.
In the absence of any authority to tell her otherwise, she promoted herself—she’d remembered a white overall in the office cupboard with Manageress embroidered in red on the breast pocket. It had been there for as long as she could remember, together with a few other odds and ends that customers had forgotten to collect.
“You look dead smart, luv,” Mam exclaimed. She often called in on her way to or from work. “Manageress at twenty! Who’d have thought it, eh?” Flo did her utmost not to preen. “Which reminds me,” Mam continued, “we were talking about you the other night. It’s only a fortnight off your twenty-first. May the eighth. Martha and Sal both had a party. We can’t let yours go without a little celebration, drink your health an” all. What do you say, Flo?”
“Where would the party be?”
“At home, luv, where else?”
Flo shook her head stubbornly. “I’m not coming home, Mam, not while our Martha’s there.”
“Oh, luv!” Mam’s face was a mixture of grief and vexation. “How long are you going to keep up this feud with Martha? After all, the girl’s expecting. I can’t wait to have me first grandchild,” she added tactlessly, as if Hugh O’Mara had never existed.
“Sal told me about the baby, Mam, and it’s not a feud with Martha. I’m not sure what it is.”
“You’ll have to speak to her sometime.”
“No, I won’t.” Flo thought about Hugh. Then she thought about Nancy O’Mara, and that no one would take Martha’s baby away and give it to a Welsh witch. “I don’t have to speak to our Martha again as long as I live,” she said abruptly.
Mam gave up. “What about your twenty-first then?”
“You and Sal can come to William Square. I’ll ask the women from the laundry, get a bottle of sherry and make sarnies. You can drink me health there.”
Sally reported that Albert seemed relatively content now that he was a member of the family he’d grown so fond of. “He’s started calling Mam ‘Mother’ and she’s a bit put out—she’s two years younger than him! He always asks about you, Flo. He can’t understand why you never come to visit.”
“Tell him I can’t stand his wife,” Flo suggested. “How’s her ladyship taken to married life, anyroad?”
“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 para
ffin 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.
