A Nest of Singing Birds

by A Nest of Singing Birds (retail) (epub)

  The day before Joe came home Anne heard the shocking news that Cormac O’Neill had hanged himself and his mother had found his dead body. The shock had been too much for her precarious hold on sanity and she had been removed to Rainhill Asylum in a strait jacket.

  It was just one horror in the midst of many taking place daily but it affected Anne deeply. She had always pitied Kathleen and never liked Cormac, who had not tried to protect his sister, but now as she lay awake at night she saw him for what he was: a pitiable victim of his mother’s obsession.

  How long had Mrs O’Neill been mad? Surely this was something that had been threatening for years? Could nothing have been done? Why had that doctor and priest not forcibly removed Cormac and Kathleen? What had finally driven him to do this dreadful thing?

  Anne wept for him and for Kathleen, who must be told the news, and decided that she must definitely find out where Kathleen was and visit her.

  Anne managed to discover that Kathleen O’Neill had been moved to a small hospital near St Helens in Lancashire and she travelled there to visit her on Sunday.

  She expected to find Kathleen prostrated by the tragedy in her family, but although she spoke sadly of Cormac’s wasted life and her mother’s collapse, Kathleen seemed remarkably untouched by the tragedy.

  She gave Anne potted biographies of all the other patients and told her about her own treatment. ‘A tiny fraction deeper and I’d have been dead,’ she said. ‘I was very lucky, Doctor Boland said.’

  ‘Gosh, and that was shrapnel?’ Anne said. ‘I’ve often seen it falling when I’ve come home through a raid, from that anti-aircraft gun. So you could have been killed by one of our own guns? Red hot too, isn’t it?’

  ‘I don’t remember anything about it,’ said Kathleen. ‘Not until I woke up in hospital.’

  They said no more about her family but Doctor Boland dominated Kathleen’s conversation and when Anne left she felt much happier about her friend. When Anne had tentatively broached the subject of where Kathleen was to go when she left hospital, she said, ‘Doctor Boland says I’ve not got to worry about that. I may train as a nurse.’

  Anne was never miserable for long and the visit to Kathleen, added to an apparent halt in her mother’s disease and long loving letters from John, soon made her feel happy again.

  John was stationed near Cambridge and said in his letters that he liked the men he was with. ‘We have good discussions,’ he wrote, ‘but there are none of the snide comments about “my Russian mates carving up Poland” or “my Commie friends getting more than they bargained for” when Russia invaded Finland, that I had on the building job.’

  Mrs Bennet came every day to look after Julia now and Bridie and Carrie came nearly every day to visit her.

  Bridie’s husband Jack was now in the Merchant Navy and she and Carrie exchanged news about their families as they sat with Julia who lay quietly letting her rosary beads slip through her fingers.

  Finally Carrie said guiltily, ‘Here we are, Julie, going on about all our worries and you never say a word about yours.’

  ‘I’m very lucky,’ she said gently. ‘Tony and Stephen are still at home and Terry’s safe out of it all in Germany, Joe’s safe too training the young lads, and so is Eileen. I’m well blessed. I have Maureen and Anne with me still.’

  ‘Maureen’s doing a grand job driving that ambulance,’ Carrie said. ‘And Anne firewatching now on top of that hard job. They’re all doing their bit.’

  ‘And you in the WVS and Bridie helping in that canteen,’ Julia said with a sigh. ‘Sure there’s only me that can do nothing but lie here and pray for all of you.’

  ‘And that’s the best of all, Julie,’ Bridie exclaimed. And Carrie said, ‘Yes, it’s a comfort to everybody to know they have your prayers.’

  Julia smiled at them and Carrie said suddenly, ‘I didn’t want to upset you, Julie, but I’ve been dying to tell you. Our Minnie and Dympna have flitted!’

  ‘Flitted!’ Julia and Bridie exclaimed in unison.

  ‘Yes. I went to the house and got no answer then the woman next door told me that Brendan came in a posh motorcar. He put four big suitcases in the car then Minnie and Dympna got in and he drove off.’

  ‘Perhaps he’s taken them for a holiday?’ Julia suggested.

  ‘No, the neighbour said she heard a noise and thought Minnie was being burgled so her son got through the window and let her in. I think she just wanted a good nose round. The house was stripped bare except for the furniture and I suppose Lord Muck will provide that wherever he’s taken them. They’ve scarpered all right, Julie.’

  ‘Surely to God she wouldn’t go without a word to her own family!’ Julia exclaimed.

  ‘She’s always been deep,’ Bridie said. ‘And for all the way she bullied other people, she’s always been under that fellow’s thumb and so has Dympna.’

  ‘Perhaps she’ll write to us,’ Julia said, still unable to believe that her sister would just disappear.

  ‘I wouldn’t like to be hanging until she does,’ Carrie said grimly, then noticed that Julia looked upset and said quickly, ‘No, I think you’re right, Julia. I’m sure she’ll write and explain why they went off like that.’

  ‘And whatever kind of a rogue the quare fella is, he’s a good son to Minnie, isn’t he?’ Bridie said and Julia looked happier.

  The air raids continued, increasing in number and intensity. Maureen’s friend Chris was now a full-time fireman and she worried about him constantly. She was still working in the wool shop by day and driving an ambulance at night.

  During a raid in March she heard that a bomb had dropped on a burning building, killing six firemen and injuring others. She was frantic to know more but her own ambulance was involved in an accident and she could do nothing until the end of her duty to learn whether or not Chris was involved.

  Fortunately he was safe on that occasion but Maureen’s fears for him increased. Their duties made it difficult for them to meet frequently but they seized every opportunity to be together and their love grew stronger every day.

  Chris’s wife was now in a different hospital in Shropshire and seemed content to stay there. He and Maureen decided to live for the day and not worry about what the future would bring for them, good or bad.

  All the family thought that in spite of Maureen’s arduous lifestyle, she looked better and happier than she had for several years.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  John came on leave in April. In contrast to the previous month there were few air raids on Liverpool in April and, although the warning sounded several times, no bombs were dropped until the twenty-sixth of the month.

  ‘Perhaps this is the end of it?’ Anne said. ‘I know Belfast has just been bombed, and London, but maybe Hitler’s coming to the end of his resources. This might be the answer to the Day of Prayer.’

  John smiled at her. ‘We’ll hope so anyway,’ he said. He had evidently made up his mind not to argue with anyone while on leave and Sarah told Anne that his family thought that she was a good influence on him.

  Anne managed to get a few days off work during his ten-day leave, and as he had few relatives to visit, they were able to spend blissful hours alone.

  They went to Chester and wandered round the medieval Rows, then took a rowing boat on the River Dee. Trees were bursting into leaf and birds singing as they wandered along the banks of the river, their arms entwined round each other.

  ‘“Sweet lovers love the spring”,’ John murmured and Anne looked at him with surprise and delight. She had been disappointed that he showed no love of the poetry and books which meant so much to her, only reading about industrial history and dry facts and figures.

  ‘That’s the first time I’ve heard you quote poetry,’ she exclaimed and he laughed.

  ‘We sang it as a song in Junior School,’ he admitted but Anne was still happy that he had thought of it.

  Another day they went to take flowers to the grave of John’s grandfather, Lawrie Ward. ‘
I wish you had known him, Anne, and he’d known you,’ John said. ‘You’d both have got on like a house on fire. He was a lovely man.’

  ‘I feel I do know him,’ she said. ‘I’ve heard so many stories about him and all the good he did, and my dad was delighted when he found I was working with Sarah because she was his granddaughter.’

  ‘I know there were crowds at his funeral,’ said John. ‘I just couldn’t stand it. I went off. I realise now it was very selfish of me. It wasn’t fair to my mum or my grandma.’

  ‘I’m sure they understood,’ she comforted him.

  ‘Sometimes I think they were too understanding,’ he said. ‘I got away with far too much. Dad wouldn’t have let me but he held back because he didn’t want to upset Mum and I took advantage.’

  ‘They’re pleased with the way you’ve turned out now anyway,’ Anne said. ‘They’re all very proud of you.’

  ‘Oh, Anne, I don’t deserve you,’ he said impulsively, flinging his arms round her and kissing her. ‘I wish we were married now.’

  ‘So do I,’ she said, drawing his head down and kissing him.

  ‘Do you think we could get married on my next leave in September?’ he said. ‘We don’t need a big fuss, do we? Or if I go abroad before then will you marry me on my embarkation leave?’

  ‘Of course,’ she said and John asked if her parents would object.

  ‘No. Things are different now,’ she said. ‘Before the war people were engaged for years to have time to get a home together but nobody waits for that now.’

  ‘When this is over we’ll have a nice home, Anne, I promise,’ he said, as she slipped her arms round his neck and kissed him again.

  ‘I don’t care, John, as long as we’re together,’ she said and he kissed her passionately.

  Both their families were pleased about their plans to marry in September but John had to go back before any details were discussed.

  He left on Thursday 1 May and there was a comparatively light raid that night, but it was the start of eight days and nights which would never be forgotten in Liverpool.

  For Anne it was not only the ordeal of the air raids but even more the terror that her mother would die on the bed in the cellar, with only Anne of all her family with her.

  Julia’s illness had suddenly become worse and she was in great pain. Maureen as an ambulance driver and Pat as a rescue man were badly needed, but Anne’s fire-watching at a large store was less essential and it was decided that she would stay with her mother.

  ‘Let them that owns the shop watch over it,’ Mrs Bennet said, ‘instead of skulking in Southport while the likes of youse risk yer lives for it.’

  Many people who were not needed were leaving Liverpool each evening to sleep in the woods at Huyton or at various halls and cinemas on the outskirts of the city, but Julia was too frail to be moved.

  On the Friday night Pat carried his wife to the cellar when the raid started, then he and Maureen went on duty. Mrs Bennet and her daughter Jinny arrived a little later.

  ‘I feel safer here than anywhere,’ Mrs Bennet said, ‘and more comfortable.’

  Her words scarcely registered with Anne as she knelt beside the bed where her mother lay, perspiration running down her white face and small moans escaping her as she was fiercely gripped by pain.

  Anne felt helpless, only able to wipe her mother’s face and grip her hands, praying for some relief for her. Her doctor was busy ministering to the injured and dying victims of the bombers and could not be called to help Julia.

  At some stage during the night an ARP man brought some of the neighbours to the shelter. ‘They were in a street shelter and it got flattened,’ he said. ‘Three dead but these were just shocked. Will you look after them?’

  Mrs Bennet and Jinny took charge of the two women and two small girls, making tea for them and wrapping them in blankets. While Jinny served the tea Mrs Bennet brought a tall clothes maiden from the wash house and draped a sheet over it to give Anne and her mother some privacy.

  The following day Maureen brought out a black bottle of medicine from the cupboard in her mother’s room. ‘I was saving this until Mum was desperate,’ she said. ‘But I think she needs it now.’

  ‘What is it?’ Anne asked, looking curiously at the tall black ribbed bottle.

  ‘It’s some stuff Mum used to get in the market but this is the last bottle,’ said Maureen. ‘I think there’s opium in it, Anne, and if she took it too often it wouldn’t help when she really needed it. I’ll give her a dose now, a small dose, and if you have to give her some tonight make sure it’s a very small amount.’

  ‘I’ll be glad to have something to give her,’ Anne said. ‘I felt so helpless last night.’

  The air raid began at six thirty and continued until about five o’clock on Sunday morning. The throbbing of the engines of hundreds of bombers overhead, the clatter of the anti-aircraft guns, the crump as thousands of high explosive bombs, land mines and parachute bombs found their targets and buildings collapsed, were a background to the terror Anne felt that her mother was about to die.

  At about two o’clock there was an explosion so close that Anne threw herself across her mother to protect her. The house seemed to be sucked in then out again and the foundations shook, but it was solid and well built and it stood firm, although there were crashes and roars from immediately overhead.

  Julia managed to raise her hand and weakly pat Anne’s face. ‘Don’t be frightened, child. Trust in God,’ she whispered through bloodless lips and Anne wept that even now her mother was trying to comfort her. She had given her a tiny dose of medicine just before the explosion and now Julia closed her eyes.

  Anne watched her anxiously, not sure whether she was asleep or unconscious. Her mother seemed scarcely to breathe as she lay immobile and Anne felt a tremendous surge of relief when the cellar door opened and Helen came down the steps.

  ‘Helen, what happened?’ Anne exclaimed as she came into the light and they saw that her head was bandaged and her right arm strapped across her chest. Her WVS overall was torn and bloodstained but she smiled reassuringly at Anne.

  ‘The rest centre was hit,’ she said. ‘And I couldn’t do any more to help so I came here.’

  ‘Oh, Helen, I’m so glad to see you!’ Anne exclaimed. ‘I don’t know whether Mum’s asleep or…’

  Helen bent over her mother-in-law. ‘Don’t worry, love,’ she said to Anne. ‘It’s a kind of sleep and she doesn’t feel pain while she’s like that. Has she had anything to ease her?’

  Anne showed her the black bottle. ‘Maureen told me to give her just a small dose and I did,’ she said. ‘And, oh Helen, Mum said: “Don’t be frightened…”’ She could say no more and wept bitterly. Helen comforted her and Anne wiped her eyes. ‘I’m ashamed carrying on like this after what you’ve been through,’ she began but suddenly there was another tremendous crash and roar.

  The lights went out and Mrs Bennet said, ‘Bloody hell. I was just going to make a cup of tea and now the lecky’s gone.’ There were candles in readiness and Anne quickly found some and lit them. Her mother’s eyes were open and Helen bent over her and reassured her.

  One of the children was crying loudly and Mrs Bennet said, ‘Ee are, queen, here’s a biscuit I just found in me pinny pocket.’ She held a candle aloft and saw the other child looking at her with eyes like saucers. ‘And here’s one in me other pocket, girl. She got one for crying and you can have this one for not crying.’

  ‘Isn’t it exciting, just having candles?’ Helen said gently to the little girls.

  ‘I wish I’d had time to make that tea,’ Mrs Bennet said. ‘We could do with a cup, especially you, girl.’

  Helen smiled. ‘I’m all right,’ she said. ‘Someone gave me one at the First Aid Post. I wish Tony was here. He’s working a double shift though.’

  ‘He’ll be all right in Edge Lane,’ said Anne. ‘It seems to be mostly round here, doesn’t it?’

  ‘It’s everywhere, Anne,’ Hel
en said. ‘The whole city seems to be on fire, and across the river too. The ships and the docks.’ Then as she saw their startled eyes in the light of the candles, she added hastily, ‘Of course it’s hard to tell. It’s probably scattered incendiaries.’

  ‘Jeez, I could do with that cup of tea,’ Mrs Bennet said, putting her hands over her ears to shut out the tumult above and Anne decided to go upstairs to see if the gas was still on.

  She picked up a candle and ran nimbly up the steps and into the kitchen. There was no need for the candle. The room was lit by a red light from the burning houses behind it as Anne crunched over broken crockery and plaster. The window frame hung drunkenly across the cupboard in the corner with a piece of glass held together by the criss-crossed brown paper hanging down from it like a flag.

  She looked for Patrick’s photograph and saw it under the sofa. The glass was cracked but it was otherwise intact and Anne looked at the smiling face of her dead brother. ‘Oh, Patrick, pray for us,’ she whispered, holding the photograph close. She shivered. Would her mother soon be with Patrick, the child she had never ceased to mourn?

  She looked round the disordered kitchen. The dresser drawers fallen out and spilled, the dishes from the shelves above in fragments on the floor, the chairs thrown about as though by a madman, the table upended and even the black kettle from the hob lying among the debris.

  Suddenly Anne thought of the kitchen as it had been throughout her childhood, a warm, secure and loving haven. She remembered when she was the only child at home, playing with her dolls on the rag rug before the fire and listening to the purring of the kettle on the hob, her mother singing as she worked in the back kitchen, waiting for the others to come home.

  Her father and Maureen! A stab of fear went through Anne as she thought of them out there in that inferno. What was happening to Aunt Carrie and to John’s family? Bridie, she knew, had taken the children out to sleep in a church hall in Ormskirk so they would be safe.

  What would John and Eileen and Joe think when they heard of this? She must write a note to each of them to tell them the families were safe as soon as they were all accounted for.