Lights Out Liverpool Read online

  He hung the last glass on a hook over the bar and was rinsing a cloth in the soapy water to wipe down the tables, when the music on the wireless faded, and a news bulletin began. He listened idly. Little was happening on the war front of any real significance. Then a familiar name caught his ear, and he stood there, the sopping cloth dripping unnoticed onto his boots, fully attentive to the well modulated voice of the announcer.

  ‘… The Midnight Star was sailing back to Liverpool from the South-West coast of Africa when it was attacked and sunk by an enemy ship, the identity of which is not yet known. So far, there have been no reports of survivors …’

  The Midnight Star! Calum Reilly’s ship.

  ‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph’. Mack could scarcely stop himself from bursting into tears. He flung the cloth across the bar in a gesture of despair. It hit the wall and left a wet stain on the green paint before falling to the floor. Considering the war had scarcely started, Pearl Street was having far more than its fair share of tragedies. First Mary, now Calum, and him with a missus and six little nippers.

  Mack dried his hands and went to fetch his coat. Sod the tables and the floor, he’d leave them, although he hated having to do them in the morning. He wasn’t going to tell Sheila, it was up to her family to do that, but he’d best go round to Jack Doyle’s straight away in case he hadn’t heard the news, even if it meant knocking him up. Otherwise, that cow Aggie Donovan might get in first.

  Chapter 5

  It had just gone midnight, and Sheila Reilly was sitting up in bed feeding the baby when she heard the front door being opened. At first, she thought it could only be Cal at such an unearthly hour and felt her entire body tingle with excitement.

  ‘Is that you, luv?’ she called.

  ‘It’s Eileen. Can I come up?’

  She could tell by the tone of her sister’s voice there was something wrong. Perhaps Dad was ill. But a few seconds later, Dad followed Eileen into the bedroom. There was no need to ask why they’d come. Their faces, scared and sorrowful, said it all.

  ‘Ah!’ The anguished cry came from the very core of Sheila’s being. She turned and buried her head in the pillow, and Mary, part of her mother at that moment, seemed to sense her distress. She squirmed in her arms and came off the breast with a little whimper, before re-attaching herself with a grip that was almost painful.

  ‘What happened?’ Sheila asked in a deep, gruff voice that seemed to belong to someone else.

  ‘The Midnight Star’s been torpedoed, luv,’ Dad explained. ‘I reckon it was the Graf Spee.’ The German pocket battleship was responsible for most of the carnage on the high seas.

  ‘Are you sure?’ Sheila demanded angrily. It might be just a rumour. Almost every day, fresh rumours spread around like wildfire and most turned out to be untrue. Though even as she asked the question, she knew it was a foolish one. Dad and Eileen wouldn’t look so grave if that was the case.

  ‘Mack heard it on the eleven o’clock news,’ Eileen said. ‘Dad and I listened to the midnight bulletin, just to make sure.’ She sat on the edge of the bed and patted her sister’s arm somewhat clumsily. ‘I’m sorry, Sheil.’

  Sorry! Such a trite, meaningless little word, thought Sheila. You were sorry if you trod on someone’s toe or spilt tea in the saucer. There should be another word to express what you felt when the dearest husband in the world had been taken away so cruelly. ‘Thanks for telling me,’ Sheila said politely. ‘I’d like to be alone now, if you don’t mind.’

  ‘But, Sheil,’ Eileen began, but Dad said gruffly, ‘Leave her, if that’s what she wants.’ As they left the room, he looked back at his youngest daughter. ‘I’ll be thinking of you, girl.’

  ‘I know, Dad.’

  Sheila Reilly heard the front door close. As she transferred the baby to her other breast, she briefly laid her hand on the pillow where her husband’s head had rested.

  ‘Oh, Cal!’ she whispered. She closed her eyes and concentrated hard and, after a while, could almost feel the pressure of his arm across her belly. He usually laid it there when she was feeding a child. The arm became heavier and heavier and Sheila sat there all night, long after Mary had gone to sleep, scared to move in case Cal’s arm disappeared and she lost him forever.

  Part-time Asistent Wanted.

  Jessica Fleming stared at the badly spelt, badly written notice in the half-glazed door of the little shop. The window was full of flesh-pink brocade corsets, winceyette nightwear, lock-knit bloomers, and various other items of women’s cheap underwear. In the centre stood two plaster casts of legs from the crotch down, each wearing a rather picked and tatty lisle stocking. The legs were set at an acute angle to each other, giving the display a crazy, deformed look. Jessica stepped back and glanced at the sign above. Below the single word VERONICA’S she read ‘Ladies’ & Children’s Lingerie’.

  Taking her courage in both hands, Jessica opened the shop door and went in. A bell jangled loudly and her nasal passages were stung by the overpowering smell of lavender. A cadaverous looking woman with jet-black hair permed to a frizz and unhealthy yellow skin appeared from the back making the sign of the cross, and the lavender smell became even stronger. This, Jessica assumed, was Veronica.

  ‘I’d like to apply …’ She paused, her courage failing, and tried to think of something she could buy as an excuse for entering. She’d sooner die than wear a pair of those corsets or one of those scratchy nightgowns – even if she could afford it. She’d always bought her underwear from George Henry Lee’s or Bon Marché or, at a pinch, Marks & Spencer’s. ‘I’d like to see some handkerchieves, please.’ Were handkerchieves lingerie?

  Apparently they were. ‘And what sort would modom like?’ the woman asked in a hoarse, cloying voice. ‘Plain or fancy?’

  ‘Fancy, please.’ Jessica had enough hankies to last two lifetimes, but it was a way of getting out of the shop without embarrassment.

  ‘Lace trimmed or embroidered?’

  ‘Lace trimmed. No, embroidered. It doesn’t matter.’

  Two walls of the shop were covered with glass-fronted drawers reaching almost to the ceiling. The woman pulled open a drawer and produced a selection of handkerchieves.

  ‘How much are these?’ Jessica pointed to some with an embroidered corner.

  ‘Threepence each, best Irish linen.’

  ‘I’ll have four, please. No, two.’

  ‘And what initial, modom?’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘The ones modom has selected are initialled. What initial is modom – I presume they’re for yourself?’

  ‘Oh!’

  ‘O?’

  ‘I’m sorry, I mean J.’

  As the woman sorted through the handkerchieves with her bony fingers, Jessica noticed the nails were long and filthy.

  ‘Does modom live around here?’

  ‘Sort of,’ Jessica replied vaguely.

  ‘That’ll be sixpence, please.’

  ‘Thank you.’ As Jessica paid and the hankies were placed in a white paper bag with VERONICA printed on it in dark blue, her mind was racing. She needed a job desperately. The small amount she’d got for her musquash had made her blanch, less than a quarter of what she’d paid for it. She had her mind set on a proper stove and a new, modern fireplace and she was determined that the house be wired for electricity and a bath installed in the old washhouse in the yard. If she wanted these things, it looked as if she’d have to pay for them herself. Arthur, damn his eyes, had got a job as a lorry driver working for one of their old rivals, and no matter how much she screamed at him, he stubbornly insisted on keeping most of his wages for himself, giving her a measly twelve-and-six housekeeping. She couldn’t believe it when he first told her about the job.

  ‘A lorry driver!’

  ‘I like driving,’ he said simply. ‘I always have.’

  That was how they’d first met, when he was a student at Liverpool University studying archaeology and looking for part-time work to pay for a holiday in Greec
e. Her father had taken a shine to him and given him a job driving at weekends. Somehow, archaeology had been forgotten after he’d taken his degree. They’d married, and Arthur had become immersed in the business.

  ‘It’s degrading,’ she spluttered.

  He shrugged. ‘It suits me.’

  ‘Modom!’ The paper bag was held out for her to take.

  Jessica came down to earth. ‘Thank you.’ She took a deep breath. ‘Are you Veronica?’

  The woman gave a little nod accompanied by a grisly smile which revealed teeth yellower than her skin. ‘I am, modom.’

  ‘I see you require an assistant.’ She had to work, and Ladies’ Lingerie seemed more refined than most other shops.

  ‘Aye, I do.’

  Jessica noticed she was no longer ‘modom’. ‘What does the job entail?’

  ‘Have you had any previous retail experience?’

  ‘Well, no,’ Jessica confessed, ‘except as a customer. I love clothes, I always have.’ She’d had no experience of working in any capacity. Once she’d left school, they’d moved to Walton and the business had started to expand, so there’d been no need to work. She’d continued looking after her father until she married Arthur.

  ‘I can see that.’ Veronica took in the pure wool camel coat, the pink silk blouse underneath, the expensive lizard-skin handbag. This woman would be an asset behind the counter. ‘The job entails, as you put it, working nine till one and all day Saturday. The pay is elevenpence an hour and there’s two-and-a-half per cent commission on your sales.’

  ‘How many hours does that come to?’ Jessica asked faintly.

  ‘Twenty-seven. If you have trouble working that out, you won’t be much good in a shop.’ Never had a woman changed so much in such a short time as had Veronica. Gone was the cloying smile, the simpering, syrupy voice. Instead, her little black eyes were hard and calculating. The woman was desperate for a job, she could tell. She would enjoy having the stuck-up bitch under her control.

  ‘I wasn’t sure if you had included the Saturday lunch hour,’ Jessica said in excuse.

  ‘I hadn’t. There’s no sick pay and no holiday money. If you don’t come in, you don’t get paid. I only need someone because me veins are starting to come up something awful if I’m on me feet too long. Some days, it’s all go in here, customers in and out by the minute,’ Veronica complained.

  ‘When can I start?’

  ‘I haven’t said you can, yet, have I?’ Veronica gave Jessica a hard glare. Then she shrugged, ‘Oh, I suppose I could give you a trial. See how you get on, like. You can start on Monday.’

  As Jessica trudged home, she tried to decide on her priorities. Which was most important: a new stove, a modern fireplace, electric wiring or a bath? The trouble was, she wanted each one as desperately as the other. Life without proper light was every bit as unbearable as having to bath in a tin tub in front of the fire – when Arthur was out, of course – and just looking at that ghastly black kitchen range made her feel depressed. She got herself filthy, cleaning the dratted thing with black lead. Perhaps she should get estimates for everything and make her mind up then. The money from her musquash was safely in a new Post Office account after the manager of the local bank had refused to let her start up an account without her husband’s signature, as if Arthur’s name was a guarantee of monetary prudence! Jessica cursed men in general and Arthur and bank managers in particular.

  Her heart sank as she approached the corner of Pearl Street and she felt a wave of self-pity, remembering the tree-lined avenue in Calderstones, her lovely house, her Aga. She was no more used to Bootle now than the day she’d moved in. She got up early to brush the step and clean the windows so as not to encounter any neighbours …

  Jessica turned the corner and stopped, appalled. A horse and cart emerged from the coalyard leaving a trail of steaming excrement down the centre of the cobbled street and a woman scurried out and began to shovel it into a bucket. Jessica vaguely remembered her father used to sell their manure to a man who had an allotment. She shuddered. She thought she’d left all that behind forever.

  A little woman in a black shawl came rolling unsteadily down the street and disappeared into a house which looked as scruffy and unhygienic as the woman herself. Several children were kicking a football against the wall, on which goalposts had been roughly chalked. At least there was something to be grateful for, Jessica thought piteously. The steam trains which used to run beyond the wall had been replaced by electric ones, so the washing was free from smuts.

  She was so immersed in her misery she was only vaguely aware of the tall figure approaching, and came down to earth when the figure bumped into her.

  ‘Why don’t you look where …’ She stopped. It was a man with a white stick, a sickly looking little dog at his heels. ‘I’m sorry,’ she stammered. ‘I was miles away. I didn’t see you.’

  ‘And I didn’t see you, either,’ Paddy O’Hara said cheerfully. He raised his cap politely. ‘Mrs Fleming, isn’t it?’

  ‘How … how did you know?’

  ‘I can tell by your voice, luv. Everyone sez you talk dead posh, like. And that scent you’re using, it’s not Evening in Paris, is it? I bet that cost a bob or two.’

  ‘It did,’ Jessica said briefly. She had no intention of gossiping on the pavement, though it was difficult to be rude to a blind man. ‘Well, Mr …’

  ‘Call me Paddy, Paddy O’Hara.’

  ‘Well, Paddy, I’d better be getting home,’ she said awkwardly. ‘My hubby comes home early on Saturdays.’

  ‘And I suppose Arthur likes his dinner on the table, eh?’

  Mumbling something incomprehensible, Jessica fled.

  Once inside the house, she stood in the tiny hallway and leaned against the front door, panting. So, Arthur was already on first name terms with the neighbours! To her utter disgust, he’d started using the pub on the corner and went most nights for a drink. To him, it was all a bit of an adventure. He’d never mixed with people like this before. His father had been in insurance, manager of his own department. Arthur came from a home that was utterly respectable, a nice roomy semi-detached in a small village just outside Chester where his mother had been a stalwart of the local church, the Women’s Institute and the Conservative party. What would they say if they could see him now, Jessica wondered? Thank God they were dead, along with her own father.

  Arthur came home from the pub with all sorts of bits of gossip, which, despite herself and despite the fact she still wasn’t speaking to him, at least not properly, she sat and listened to avidly. The woman who’d lived in this house before them had died on the Athenia which made Jessica feel peculiar; she had expected the ghost of Mary Flaherty to pop up now and then and accuse her of not keeping the range clean or complaining about the fact her children’s chalk marks had been obliterated when the backyard was covered with a fresh coat of whitewash. The man next door was a retired tailor, a widower, Jacob Singerman, who hadn’t heard from his daughter in Austria for more than a year.

  ‘Singerman! You mean we live next door to a Jew boy?’

  ‘We live next door to a Jewish gentleman of eighty, Jess,’ Arthur replied gently and Jessica felt herself blush. In fact, the piano music from next door had come as a pleasant surprise when they moved in; sad, classical pieces played with feeling and a certain amount of skill, so different from the sounds coming from the people on their other side, who screamed at each other late at night in Welsh. The man seemed to be having a feud with the ARP warden and there were frequent rows over whether a light was showing or not.

  Sighing, Jessica climbed the narrow stairs to the rear bedroom where there was a single bed. She hadn’t slept with Arthur since the night he’d revealed their world was about to fall apart. She hung her coat in the wardrobe and lay down on the dark-green silk coverlet. Arthur would just have to wait for his lunch when he came home.

  Something else he’d said the other night came to her; a man from along the street who was in the Mer
chant Navy was missing, presumed killed, his ship torpedoed by the German battleship Graf Spee. He’d left a wife and six small children, the youngest only eight weeks old.

  ‘Six!’ said Jessica contemptuously. ‘Those Catholics, they breed like rabbits.

  Arthur said nothing.

  ‘Six.’ Jessica repeated, this time in a softer voice with a touch of longing. ‘Six children!’

  ‘It would have been nice, wouldn’t it, Jess?’

  Nice! Lying on the bed, Jessica thought it would have been more than nice, it would have been heaven. Six children! She cursed fate for making her barren.

  There were voices coming from the adjacent yard outside, and she got up and peeped through the lace curtain. There were two men in the yard, one partially hidden inside the washhouse, moving something around. The one outside was obviously Jacob Singerman, a stooped elderly figure with wispy grey hair.

  ‘Will that do you, Jacob?’

  ‘Thanks, Jack, that’ll do fine. It’s just that the roof’s leaking and turning the boiler all rusty. I tried moving it myself, but it wouldn’t budge.’

  The other man emerged and regarded the roof critically. ‘If I can get me hands on a couple of slates, Jacob, I’ll fix it for you.’

  Jack Doyle! Jessica’s hand tightened on the curtain. She would have recognised him anywhere. He was as handsome and as striking now as he’d been thirty years ago when he’d been the bane of her father’s life, coming round to the yard regularly in a towering rage to complain about the fact some old lady had been given tuppence for a precious family heirloom worth at least five pounds, perhaps ten.

  ‘You bloody, capitalist filth,’ he’d yell. ‘You’d sell your own grandma if she’d fetch a good price.’