Put Out the Fires

by Maureen Lee

  “I do,’Jacob said simply. ‘I’m staying. No-one, not even Adolf Hitler’s going to turn me out of my own bed.’

  It was almost half past ten when the siren went, and Jacob was already half asleep. He ignored the warning, as he always did, turned over, and covered his head with the clothes. Snowy, irritated at being disturbed, jumped off the bed, stretched, and jumped back again and snuggled into Jacob’s back.

  “Well, Snowy,’Jacob muttered after a short while, ‘this is a raid and a half.’ Last night’s blitz paled into insignificance beside this one. He sat up, feeling agitated. ‘It sounds as if they’re trying to bomb Bootle out of existence.’

  Snowy crawled into his arms, where he lay shivering.

  The cat was absolutely terrified of raids. Jacob stroked him, as the bombardment outside increased in ferocity, and he pondered over the evil that men did to each other.

  What need was there for this? What would Hitler do if he won? What possible gratification could he get out of bombing a country into submission? How could a man exist with so much implacable hatred directed against him? You’d think he would shrivel up and die, he was so utterly loathed throughout the entire world. What justice was there on the earth when one single person could inflict so much misery and mayhem on his fellow man?

  Death and destruction rained down all around as the questions chased each other through Jacob’s old brain.

  Every now and then, the house would groan, as if the bricks were shifting against each other.

  It was such a wonderful world, Jacob mused; people could be very happy if left alone to get on with their lives, go to work, bring up their children without interference. Yet, always, always, some power-crazed individual would come along, some malign despot who wanted to take control.

  “It’s not fair, is it, Snowy?” He tickled the furry neck.

  “It’s just not fair.” There was silence for a miraculous second, and somewhere in Pearl Street a baby cried.

  Michael!

  Jacob was about to get out of bed when he remembered Michael was somewhere else, along with Ruth. At least they were all right, he thought with satisfaction, though he wasn’t sure about Benjy or the other children, Simon and Leah. His brow creased as he tried to recall where they were, but couldn’t, no matter how hard he tried. There was a thunderous explosion close by and he felt the house crack, as if it was about to split in two, followed by deafening noise downstairs, and something fell on the roof with an almighty crash and several slates slid off and landed in the street.

  I don’t mind dying, Jacob thought. I’m old, I’ve had a good life. Nevertheless, his heart began to drum and Snowy howled, leapt off the bed and shot out of the half open door.

  Across the road, Nelson whinnied frantically, and Jacob could hear the horse’s hooves thudding against the stable door. He stumbled out of bed, calling, “Snowy! Come here.”

  It was strange, the landing and the hallway were lit by a bright red light. When he reached the top of the stairs, he saw the front door was no longer where it should be, but lying crookedly, still in one piece, on the stairs.

  Something snapped in Jacob’s brain. “Tony!”

  The little boy had escaped, run out into the inferno, and it was all Jacob’s fault.

  “TONY!” he screamed, and somehow scrambled over the front door and ran out into the street after the child he loved so dearly, just as a demented Nelson managed to demolish the stable door that was confining him to his own personal hell and came galloping out, whinnying like a demon, the whites of his eyes gleaming insanely. His owner followed, desperately trying to restrain him.

  Nelson and Jacob hit each other head on, but to Nelson, the old man was merely the flimsiest of obstacles as he galloped off to freedom, and Jacob was trampled underneath the carthorse’s massive hooves.

  “Nelson! Jacob! Oh, Jesus Christ!” Mr Harrison stood in the middle of Pearl Street, his arms spread wide in despair.

  He looked up at the heavens, spilling death, and shook his fist. “What do you think you’re trying to do to us, you bastards!” he screamed. “Whatever it is, you won’t win.

  You can bomb us till kingdom come, you Jerry bastards, but I promise you, you won’t win!”

  “I wonder if there’ll be any of Boode left by the time this is over,” Eileen whispered as another explosion rent the earth, closely followed by another, then a third. A layer of dust flickered down from the ceiling and she coughed.

  Hilda shook her head. She’d been rather subdued all night, not at all her usual buoyant self. “God knows,” she said bleakly.

  The dark, dank cellar was lit only by an oil lamp which Hilda herself had provided. The room, scarcely used except for storage, smelt musty, and held only a few empty wooden boxes on which they both sat. There was no way to make a drink, except by going upstairs into the garage and lighting the urn in the mobile canteen, which neither felt inclined to do under the circumstances. Hilda had brought a flask of coffee which had long gone.

  “I’ll buy one of those flasks tomorrer,” Eileen said. “It doesn’t seem fair, me drinking half your coffee every night.”

  “You can’t get flasks for love nor money, just like you can’t get hot-water bottles or clocks and a million other things.”

  “Bloody war!” Eileen snorted. “In that case, I’ll bring a bottle of lemonade.” She wriggled this way and that, trying to get comfortable on the box, and settled back, leaning against the wall, her hands settled on her stomach.

  “Why have you got your hands like that?” Hilda demanded.

  “I used to do that when . . . ” Her face showed a mixture of concern and downright anger. “Are you pregnant?”

  It seemed useless to deny the fact. “Yes,” Eileen said flatly.

  “You silly, irresponsible girl!” Hilda spluttered. “You should have gone to Melling with your sister. It’s outrageous for someone in your condition to be taking unnecessary risks.”

  “Well, if I’m taking unnecessary risks, so are you!”

  Eileen countered heatedly.

  “Don’t be stupid, girl,” Hilda snapped. “You know what I mean.”

  Eileen didn’t answer. She knew exactly what Hilda meant. There’d been times during the night when it seemed as if the world was being blown to pieces and she’d wished she was with Sheila and the other women who had fled to safety, not for her own sake, not for Nick’s, but for her baby’s. She’d already lost one child and she didn’t want to lose another.

  As if reading her thoughts, Hilda said in a more gentle tone, “It’s not fair on the baby, and it’s not fair on your husband. Oh!” She made an anguished face. “I’m sorry, Eileen, I forgot about your husband.”

  “Actually,” Eileen threw back her head and looked Hilda straight in the eye, “it’s not me husband’s baby. It’s someone else’s. We’re going to get married one day, me and Nick.”

  She could die any minute, and she wasn’t going to die and leave Hilda believing a lie. One day very soon, she’d have to tell the street about the baby—she’d noticed Aggie Donovan’s already curious glances, and was aware of the speculative gossip going on behind her back. They’d all assume she was carrying Francis’s baby, and she wouldn’t disabuse them. Francis was dead. What did it matter what people thought? She had to continue living in Pearl Street, and there would be consternation and much unpleasantness, if she told the truth. But right now . . .

  “I see!” Hilda’s voice was totally expressionless.

  The two women were silent for a while. A bomb screamed earthwards, and Hilda put a broad arm around Eileen’s shoulders and they huddled together until the bomb found its target. Dust fell all over them, like the finest snow, as the blast shook the building.

  “They say if you can hear it screaming, it’s not meant for you,” Hilda said.

  “I’ve always thought that a bit stupid. After all, you’d have to be dead before you can prove it wrong.”

  Hilda laughed. She left her arm where it was, and said
in a girlish voice, entirely different from her usual bellow, “You know, I had an affair once!”

  “Never!” Eileen gaped. “You look far too respectable to have an affair.”

  “As a matter of fact, so do you! But it’s nothing to do with respectability, is it? The most respectable people in the world can fall in love quite out of the blue.”

  “Was it during the last war?” Eileen asked curiously.

  “No, it wasn’t.” There was a dreamy look on Hilda’s usually stern features. “It was 1929. I was almost fifty at the time and already a grandmother. He was an accountant and had been sent to my husband’s office to audit the books. Ralph brought him home to dinner and we just . . . I can’t think of the word.”

  “Clicked?” Eileen suggested.

  “That’s it, clicked! Until then, I’d thought myself happily married, and I still think that in a sort of way, but with Peter, it was a different thing altogether, as if . . . ” she giggled,” . . . as if bolts of lightning were passing to and fro between us.”

  “Did you . . . you know?” A stick of bombs fell, one after the other with deadly regularity, but neither woman seemed to notice.

  “Of course we did!” Hilda said indignantly. “I said I had an affair, didn’t I? We didn’t pussyfoot around. We met in his hotel room every afternoon for three days. Then he went back to his wife, and I went back to Ralph—not that I’d ever left in person.”

  “It sounds as if it was dead romantic,” Eileen breathed.

  “It was, and it’s something I’ve never told a living soul before, but there’ve been a few times tonight when I’ve felt as if I was about to meet my maker, and it was rather nice to confide in someone for the first time.” Hilda squeezed Eileen’s shoulders. “Now, this Nick. I want to know all about him. Where did you meet?”

  “Well,” Eileen began, “it was Christmas. I was in this cafe in Southport, and . . . ”

  It was quiet in the cottage. All that could be heard was the soft sound of breathing. Sheila Reilly, curled up in an armchair fully dressed, hadn’t managed to sleep any more that night than she’d done the night before. She got up and peered at the clock on the mantelpiece—half past four, yet still the bloody battle raged over Liverpool. She could hear the dull thuds in the distance and every now and then tried to convince herself the sounds were growing fewer, but in her heart she knew they weren’t.

  Ruth stirred in the other armchair. They’d tossed a coin for where to sleep and Brenda had won the settee.

  Sheila crept out of the room, opened the front door and went into the garden. It was a lovely night, beautifully clear and the moon was crisp and sharply defined. The birds, or perhaps it was some other creatures, were rustling in the hedges.

  But, Jaysus! The sky was redder than ever. She said a prayer, for everyone in Liverpool and the rest of the country, and for the German civilians being killed by British bombs . . .

  “Sheila?”

  “Who’s that?”

  “It’s Ruth. I couldn’t sleep.”

  “Nor could I.”

  Ruth stood beside her, looking in the same direction. “I hope my father is all right.”

  “Aye.” It was no use offering platitudes, saying, “Of course he’ll be all right.” Instead, Sheila nodded. “I hope so, too,” she said.

  They stood together silently for a long rime, each woman preoccupied with her own thoughts. Then Ruth shoved her hands in the pockets of her cardigan and said casually, “I’ve got something to tell you. I’m getting married on Saturday.”

  Sheila’s jaw dropped. She forgot, for the moment, all her various worries. “Y’what?”

  “I’m getting married.”

  “Who to?” It seemed a funny question to ask, “Who to?”, when you saw someone almost every single day of the week and they’d never even mentioned a man’s name, let alone been seen with one.

  “Matt Smith. He’s a friend of your father’s.”

  “Matt Smith! I remember him, he’s dead goodlooking, me dad brought him to our house on New Year’s Eve.

  You’re a canny bugger, Ruth Singerman,” Sheila said incredulously. “I didn’t know you two were going out!”

  “He started coming to Reece’s,” Ruth lied. “We got to know each other very well. It’s not exactly the romance of the century,” she added hastily, in case people noticed they weren’t all lovey-dovey the way newly married people usually were. “We just decided to try and make a go of things together, that’s all.” How had Matt put it? Like flotsam and jetsam thrown together on the shore. Although Matt hadn’t intended it to be, Ruth thought it sounded rather romantic.

  “Well, I hope you do—make a go of things, that is.”

  Sheila found it hard to keep the sympathy out of her voice. What a way to enter a marriage! Still, it took all sorts . . .

  “I wondered if you’d pass the word round,” said Ruth.

  “You know what the street’s like. It’ll be a registry office wedding, no guests, no reception, and I’d like people to know who Matt is when he moves in.” They’d decided it would be best if he slept in the box room, so they would have the same address and it would look authentic when she applied to adopt Michael legally.

  “I’ll pass the word round, don’t worry.” Sheila could hardly wait. “What does your dad have to say? I bet he’s pleased.”

  “I haven’t told him yet. It’s going to be a surprise,” Ruth said awkwardly. Every time she started to tell Jacob, the words died in her throat. He could see through her like no other person. The old gossip may well have told Jack Doyle she needed a husband, but it had probably been said as a joke. He’d be distraught if he knew she and Matt were marrying out of convenience. On the other hand, she thought with a smile, she could put the blame on him. “It’s your fault, Dad. It was you who put the idea in Matt’s head!”

  “You know, luv,” Sheila Reilly said wistfully, “it’d be a shame to go without a reception. Pearl Street loves a wedding. We could all club together and make a few sandwiches. If it’s a nice day, we could set them out in the street

  “Thanks all the same,” Ruth said quickly. “But Matt doesn’t want any fuss.” Funnily enough, she wouldn’t have minded taking Sheila up on her offer. At odd moments, she even found herself looking forward to sharing the house with Matt.

  “Oh, well, if you change your mind . . . ” “That’s not likely.”

  Sheila took a final look at the sky. “It’s a waste of time trying to go to sleep. I’ll make a pot of tea.” As they began to go indoors, Sheila went on, “I think I’ll go to six o’ clock Mass. I’ll take the kids to a later one. I’ve a feeling today’s the sort of day when it wouldn’t hurt to go to Mass twice in one morning.”

  They closed the door, just as the All Clear went, and the high-pitched drone had never been so welcome.

  The whole of Merseyside, from Birkenhead and Wallasey, across the city and out as far as the town of Bootle, had merged into one vast raging inferno. From horizon to horizon, the heavens were a canopy of bloody crimson, shot here and there with a hint of orange from the flickering flames and darkened by clouds of swirling black smoke. The few barrage balloons that still remained looked pretty, like silvery-pink flowers thrusting upwards into the sky.

  On the ground below, there was utter pandemonium.

  Fire engines and ambulances screeched this way and that on urgent errands of mercy, and the air was thick with ash and fluttering scraps of burning paper.

  Shortly after the All Clear, Hilda and Eileen emerged from the garage into Marsh Lane with the canteen. The urn, operated by a gas canister in a cupboard underneath, was bubbling with freshly boiled water. The van’s tyres crunched over millions of fragments of glass which covered the road like a carpet of diamonds. Hilda stopped the van a few yards out and they stared, horrified, at the utter devastation that confronted them.

  Landmarks, places which Eileen had known all her life, had completely disappeared, had been turned overnight into vast brickfields em
itting clouds of dust and flames, with girders and joists protruding crazily. A piano stood in the middle of the street that faced them, slightly skewed, but undamaged, as if ready for someone to sit down and play a tune. Which street was it? Eileen couldn’t tell.

  “This is inhuman,” she wept. “It’s nowt but sheer bloody carnage.” It was a scene from an unimaginable nightmare and she knew she would never forget it as long as she lived.

  Everywhere was lit by a sinister red light and no matter which way she looked there was nothing but havoc and broken houses, broken lives. Even the places that stood were blighted, with half their roofs gone and no windows left, the curtains hanging limply outside. As she watched, the front of a burning house seemed to bend outwards, almost in slow motion, and topple to the ground in a heap of bricks. Several men standing nearby jumped swiftly out of the way. Incredibly, one of them actually laughed.

  In the midst of this chaos, the ARP and Civil Defence workers beavered away, a look of gritty determination on their tired faces, as they tried to rescue the people trapped underneath the rubble. Several ordinary civilians worked alongside them, desperately throwing chunks of masonry and bricks to one side. Eileen could hear a woman’s terrified wail, “Our Sally’s down there. I’ve got to find our Sally.”

  There was a shout, and a young boy was gently pulled out of the wreckage, placed on a stretcher and carried to an ambulance.

  To the left of the van, two firemen were standing precariously on the top of the ruins of a house, their hoses directed through the windows of a shop Eileen knew well: a little sweetshop and tobacconist’s in which Tony used to spend his pocket money and which she herself had used as a child. The inside of the shop was burning as fiercely as a furnace, and she felt a searing sense of loss at the thought that the shop would never serve another customer.

  It seemed as if she had been watching forever, but it must have been only a few seconds, because Hilda nudged her and said briskly, “I think there are a few people here who might like a cup of tea, don’t you?”

  Daylight dawned. There might have been a sun behind the smoke and flames and dust that rose from Bootle that morning, but if so, it didn’t shine on that first Sunday in May.