Dancing on Deansgate

by Freda Lightfoot

  Most were open to bribes of cigarettes, sweets and the like but Lizzie never dared take the risk. Besides, where would she find ten quid for a packet of fags? It was easier to nick them, even here in prison. So long as the other inmates never caught her at it, why worry? Life couldn’t get any worse, could it?

  The following morning her optimism was proved to be unfounded. Life could indeed get much worse, proving more forcibly than ever why Lizzie hated being in prison. The smell of it was enough to make her gag. It stank of urine and disinfectant and too many bodies confined in stale air. And she was desperately lonely. Many of the women had visitors which gave them something to look forward to. Bernie would never think to visit, and Lizzie had instructed Jess not to come near. The last thing she wanted was for her daughter to see how low she’d fallen. And there were things going on here that no one should ever get wind of, least of all an impressionable young girl.

  For some reason Lizzie’s one and only friend, Elsie, took it into her head to have an hysterical fit one morning, and started smashing things up in her cell. It happened to everyone from time to time apparently, the result of being confined for eighteen hours or more in any twenty-four. Nobody went to calm her down, or ask her what the problem was. Instead, they opened a small aperture in the cell door, inserted a hose pipe and sprayed her with water until the screams changed to sobs and then finally quietened altogether. It was all over by breakfast time and everyone went to work at the appropriate hour as if nothing untoward had taken place.

  Lizzie ate her dinner alone, wondering what on earth the poor girl had done to deserve such harsh treatment as she hadn’t set eyes on her all day, not since the fracas. Nor did she dare ask anyone. It was always best not to poke your nose in matters which didn’t concern you. Few people even spoke to Lizzie which, in a way, was a relief. Lonely as she was, she didn’t trust anyone, preferring to keep herself to herself. It was safer that way.

  The alert sounded just as they were about to go back to work on the afternoon shift. At first it seemed a bit of a lark to snooze instead of doing their usual two hours of hard labour, sewing mail bags, scrubbing floors, peeling spuds and similar uninspiring tasks. But the All Clear sounded and no one came to let them out. Normally they worked from ten to twelve and two till four every day, and were then banged up for the night in their cells, taking their tea with them. It was almost six now yet with still no sign of release and Lizzie was desperate for a pee. She began to hammer on the door and shout.

  ‘Hey! Anybody out there? I need to visit the netty.’

  An officer’s voice echoed lazily back to her. ‘Everyone does Lizzie, but you’ll have to hold your water. Nobody moves till I’m good and ready.’

  This brought a good deal of ribald laughter and some saucy comments from the other inmates, but Lizzie was having none of it. ‘And how long might that be?’

  ‘Who knows? Might not be till morning. Some of the officers haven’t come back from after the raid yet. So how can I take the risk without sufficient staff?’

  Lizzie was distraught. How was she to manage to cross her legs till morning? She hadn’t relieved herself since dinner time and the pain of being patient, or ‘holding her water’ as the officer so aptly described it, was already excruciating. ‘But I want to go now! Come on, open up.’

  The argument continued for some time but long after the other inmates had warned Lizzie to shut up and pee in the corner of her cell like everyone else, she was still pounding on the door with her mug and shouting for a chamber pot at least.

  And then, catching her quite unawares, the door of her cell flew open. Four women wardens entered, every one of them square-faced and square-shouldered, their stocky bodies filling the open doorway, completely blocking any hope of exit. Lizzie recognised at once that this wasn’t a rescue committee.

  ‘I hear you’ve wet your knickers, FP906.’

  Lizzie shook her head in furious denial, stunned into silence by the grim expressions on their faces.

  ‘Reckon you will have before long.’

  She tried to hold them off but that only made matters worse as they grappled her to the floor, earning her a beating and a cut lip from a heavy bunch of keys in the process. They carried her bodily downstairs to the prison shower rooms where they flung her into a corner and played four hosepipes on her till she had indeed carried out this necessary function.

  Afterwards, she was handed a rough sacking nightdress to wear in place of her usual one, marched back up to her cell and locked in, shivering, cold, and soaking wet. The rough nightdress offered little protection for what proved to be the longest, coldest night of her life. They didn’t even provide her with the usual chamber pot. Long before morning, Lizzie had abandoned the last remnants of her dignity, and used the corner like everyone else.

  Cora stood with her fists firmly clenched against her substantial waistline and looked at her two sons as if they’d run mad. ‘You’ve fetched me what, a lorry load of sugar? And what the hell am I supposed to do with that lot?’

  ‘Don’t worry Ma, Dad’ll see to it. We just need somewhere to store it while we take the van back. We have to look sharp or we’ll be missed.’ Harry had the doors open and was already starting to unload, arms full of large blue bags.

  ‘Heaven help me, you can’t fit a lorry load of sugar in my pantry.’

  ‘It’s a van Ma, not a lorry.’

  Bert stopped juggling bags of sugar and frowned. ‘She’s right though, our Harry. There’s not enough room in the pantry for all this lot.’

  ‘Shurrup, muzzle-head. I know that, don’t I? I were only going to give you a few bags, Mam. To stock up like. We’ll sell the rest.’

  ‘Where? When?’ Bert wanted to know, hopping from one foot to the other and sounding agitated. ‘There must be tons of the stuff here. Where can we keep it all, our Harry?’

  ‘Shurrup, will you. Stop asking so many questions.’

  Storage was a complication Harry hadn’t properly considered. Acting on impulse to take the van had seemed like a golden opportunity but perhaps, in retrospect, he’d been a touch reckless.

  When Bernie arrived minutes later, having been dragged from his favourite watering hole by a frantic Cora, it was to find a big black van blocking the back street. His pantry, kitchen table, even the Anderson Shelter in the backyard were all full to the brim with blue bags of sugar.

  ‘Where are your brains, you great gobbin?’ he yelled at Harry.

  ‘I thought you’d be pleased, Dad. This sugar’s worth a fortune.’

  ‘It’s worth several months in Strangeways, if not life imprisonment. How could you take such a risk in broad daylight? D’you want to get nicked? Your mam’s right for once, where are we supposed to store it? It’ll take us months to shift this lot, a few bags at a time.’

  And so it proved, but at least the Delaney family could pander to their sweet tooth without a care in the world. Though what would happen at the next air raid when they needed to use the Anderson Shelter, no one cared to consider.

  The moment arrived sooner than expected, by which time they’d only managed to shift a fraction of the sugar, which meant there was room for only Cora, Jess and the three younger children to sit with any safety in the air raid shelter.

  ‘We could always use them as sand bags,’ Cora suggested, but since Bernie didn’t find this the least little bit amusing, nobody else dared laugh either, although young Tommy went very red in the face for a while as he desperately held his mirth in check.

  The boys and Bernie took refuge in the cellar with several bottles of beer to keep them company. As enemy aircraft droned overhead, dropping their weapons of destruction upon the city of Manchester, Cora said, ‘Aren’t we the lucky ones?’

  In a way Jess had to agree. She’d had enough of cellars to last her a lifetime.

  But young Sam and Seb clung to Cora as if to their own personal life line, pushing their little faces into her big, fat belly for comfort, desperately blocking their ears against th
e dreaded drone of aircraft and whine of falling bombs. Sandra, wearing her usual scowl, said, ‘Mam, I’m hungry, can I have a sugar butty?’

  There followed a number of raids in quick succession and Harry and Bert soon grew bored with being confined in the cellar and announced their intention of going down to the shelter on Dolefield. They felt in need of a bit of company, they explained. In truth they intended to do some scavenging in the bombed-out ruins. A bit of salvage work, as you might say. Where was the harm in that?

  The back yard was already a clutter of junk: bits of old bicycles with wheels or chains missing, car tyres, lengths of timber which might come in useful one day, unused gas masks, rolls of chicken wire they’d picked up for a song. It did no harm to add to the collection. You could make a tidy profit out of selling anything these days, particularly if you hadn’t paid for the stuff in the first place.

  ‘I thought you didn’t like the municipal shelter,’ Bernie mildly enquired.

  The two lads exchanged a quick glance, having no wish to divulge their plans at this stage. Harry was worried that Bert might blurt it out, and Bert was half convinced his father could read his mind anyway, so they both looked guilty.

  ‘We don’t like it much but it must be safer than our cellar, and the main thing the Anderson is protecting is that blasted sugar.’

  ‘I don’t like the communal shelter. Can I stop at home, Bernie?’ Cora asked, glancing nervously at her husband. He’d never objected before but you never could tell with Bernie.

  ‘Course you can love. You can keep an eye on our investment.’

  Cora went happily off as usual with her brood to settle in among the heap of blue bags and Jess went along with her. It didn’t seem fair to leave her aunt to cope with three children on her own.

  Bernie said no more as his sons swaggered off, but his eyes narrowed with suspicion. He’d need to keep a close watch on them two. They were getting a bit too big for their boots. Happen he should have encouraged them to join up after all. A bit of square bashing might have done them both a world of good. Harry in particular might like to give the impression he was obeying instructions but half the time Bernie suspected he was doing exactly as he pleased.

  As for young Tommy, he wasn’t even here this evening as he’d taken it into his head to volunteer his services as a fire-watcher. He’d gone along a few weeks ago with his pal Frank Roebottom to the nearest warden post where they were each given a steel helmet and an axe and told to stay awake and use their common sense. At first they’d thought it all a great adventure, a bit of a lark, messing about in the dark, sleeping in odd corners of factories and pretending they were heroes while they waited for action. But when it came, it had been a different story. They’d found themselves kicking incendiaries off the roofs of buildings, suddenly realising that war was a very serious business indeed.

  This particular evening they were at a warehouse on Liverpool Road. Which was a pity in the circumstances, as they might have recognised the dull thud as the incendiary landed on the scullery roof. Nobody else heard it, or understood the nature of the sound if they did; not until the back door blew off and the roof fell in.

  When the siren sounded, Leah welcomed it with heartfelt relief because it put an end to yet one more long and fruitless argument with her mother.

  To most people going to the shelter might represent a restriction to their freedom, for Leah it was beginning to represent escape. Down there she could talk to real people about real things, and put an end to her mother’s machinations. Until the next time at least.

  This small victory allowed her to smile as she reached for her coat and the latest romance she’d borrowed from Boot’s library. ‘Here we go again, Mother. Grab your knitting bag. Let’s go.’

  Mrs Simmons disliked going down into the communal shelter. She told herself that it wasn’t because of any snobby tendencies on her part, but a perfectly natural desire to be clean. The smell of those places was quite nauseating and the sight of so much human suffering always depressed her. But knowing there was no help for it, she pressed her lips together with firm resolve, picked up her bag and followed her daughter down the back stairs and out into the street.

  One glance along the lobby told Leah that the girls in the shop had already gone, no doubt quickly locking up and taking the cash box with them, as instructed. Her father, who was this evening doing his stint as an ARP Warden, had set rigid rules which he was most insistent they follow most precisely. Leah quickly closed the interior lobby door and led her mother out the back way. It was only as she turned the key in the lock that Muriel remembered that she’d left her spectacles behind and began to fluster, wanting to go back for them.

  ‘You can surely manage without them for once, Mother,’ Leah protested, feeling suddenly anxious. Manchester was a prime target. It didn’t do to hang around dithering.

  ‘No, no, I need them. You know how bad my eyesight is these days. Where do you think poor Robert got it from? I can’t do a thing without them and a night spent in a shelter is miserable enough without being deprived of my knitting. I simply won’t be able to read the pattern.’

  Leah sighed. ‘You stay here then, I’ll go.’

  She unlocked the back door again and shot upstairs, running from room to room in a frantic search, finally unearthing the spectacles from under a cushion where her mother had tucked them. Leah pounded back downstairs, banging the door to behind her. ‘Got them. Come on, we must hurry.’ Grabbing her mother’s arm she began to propel her along the back street.

  ‘Did you remember to lock the door, darling?’

  Leah hadn’t the first idea whether she had or not. She was out of breath, hot and bothered and desperately anxious to get off the street before the raid started. Already she could hear the dreaded drone of enemy planes getting ever nearer, a sound that softened her bones to water and blotted every sensation but fear from her mind. She knew the shop door would be locked, so what did it matter about the one at the back? Most folk didn’t bother to lock any doors at all on the grounds that there were far more important considerations to think of, like saving their lives.

  Even as she hesitated, considering the question, there came the all too familiar whine, cut off into an ominous silence, followed seconds later by a blast that blew them both off their feet, even though it must have come from a couple of streets away. The air was thick with dust, the smell of cordite choking their lungs and making them both cough. Winded but still in one piece, Leah dragged herself and her mother to their feet, and even retrieved the tangle of knitting.

  ‘I’m certainly not going back again to check. Quick, run for it.’

  Chapter Seven

  Leah and her mother were still safely in the shelter an hour later when the Delaney boys ambled from street to street, about their usual scavenging. As always Bert found it impossible to walk in a straight line and, whistling tunelessly, dashed to and fro peering in windows, trying doors, generally prying into every nook and cranny. They’d discovered how very careless folk were with their goods and chattels once they heard the air raid warning. Exactly as they’d hoped.

  Passing The Globe, they noticed the door standing wide open and not a soul inside. ‘Hey up, someone’ll be in bother,’ Bert remarked. ‘They’ve up and made a dash for it without bothering to lock up.’

  ‘How fortuitous,’ Harry commented. ‘I don’t know about you but these raids always leave me fair parched.’ And giving a little swagger, he wandered into the pub, calling out hello as he went, just in case. But as Bert had rightly suspected, the place was deserted.

  They helped themselves to a couple of pints each, followed by several shots of whisky as a chaser, leaning contentedly on the bar counter and drinking at their leisure, as if the war would be happy to wait until they were done. ‘We’d best lock up when we go,’ Harry said. ‘Make sure it’s safe like.’

  ‘Aye,’ Bert smirked. ‘Wouldn’t be right for the poor barman if owt got nicked, would it?’ After stuffing their pocke
ts with a few packets of Woodbine and Craven A, the pair left, carefully locking up behind them and posting the key through the letterbox.

  Several streets later they were back on Deansgate, and once again Bert took the lead, suggesting they take a shufty round the back of Simmons’ Tea Rooms, just in case.

  They couldn’t believe their good fortune to find the back door unlocked, and didn’t hesitate to go inside. First they went along the lobby and into the confectioner’s shop. Ignoring the door which led into the tea room they went straight to the counter, looking for the till. They couldn’t find it anywhere but the silver trays of cakes arrayed in the glass display counter looked tantalisingly delicious.

  ‘By heck, see that custard slice. It must be three inches thick.’ Bert stretched out his grubby fingers and took one, barely wiping the custard from his mouth before reaching for another, and a third after that. Harry helped himself to a wedge or two of apple pie, to which he was partial, before finally coming to his senses.

  ‘Here, what we wasting time on this muck for. If there’s no till, where’s the cash box then?’ To their great disappointment they couldn’t find that either. Someone had judiciously taken it with them to the shelter, so they went upstairs instead. Here they had better luck, discovering the Simmons’ identity cards and ration books in the kitchen drawer, and a wallet full of notes in the dresser.

  ‘The best of it is there’s no fear of being interrupted during an air raid, and even the police who haven’t gone off to fight are a Mickey Mouse crew. I knew it would be profitable to go out and about doing a bit of business while everyone else cowers in the shelter,’ Harry bragged.

  ‘So long as we don’t get bombed,’ Bert said, his thin face creasing into a worried frown.

  ‘No fear of that. We’re indestructible,’ and stuffing all of these precious treasures into their pockets, along with a cameo brooch and a pretty blue necklace that might be sapphires which they’d found in the dressing table drawer of the front bedroom, they let themselves out and went happily on their way, still whistling.