The children left behind, p.6
The Children Left Behind, page 6
‘I can’t, Cherry Bomb. You’ve got me all riled up. You can’t leave me like this . . .’
He was handsome and kind and so funny, she thought. But this side of him? He was also selfish. Did that matter? Bernice said you should always be selfish when you’re young, it’s your only chance – but even so . . .
‘Let me, Alice,’ he moaned. He began tugging at her skirts. ‘Flaming girdle,’ he said.
‘Bob . . .’ She leaned her head back and groaned. ‘We can’t, not here. Not with your ma . . .’
‘Come with me into the yard, then.’
‘What, with the neighbours and the chickens?’ she shot back.
He kissed her again, and this time his hand went up her skirt. There was the sound of snapping and she felt her stocking go loose around her thigh. She felt the shape of him through his trousers against her leg as he pressed his whole body to hers. ‘You’re beautiful, Alice,’ he said. ‘You and me, we’ll make beautiful babbies.’
‘Just not on this sofa,’ she said, slapping his hand away. She sat up, rearranged her skirts. ‘I can’t.’
He laughed. ‘Can’t what?’
‘You know. Can’t do whatever it is you want me to do. How many times must I tell you – I’m not going to be like all the other girls around here, playing Russian roulette with their fellas and then getting pregnant, getting married young.’
‘I’ll be careful. I always am.’
‘Really? I thought I was the careful one, holding you off, Bob. And now I’ve got this new job I want to be especially careful . . .’
‘Yer what? You mean, this new job means you’ll not let me do this to—’
‘No!’ she cried. ‘I’m just not ready for any of it. Babies. Weddings. That’s the real truth of why I hid the ring from me ma.’ She sat up and straightened her clothes, fastening the buttons he had somehow managed to undo on her blouse. ‘Anyway, can I ask you something? What do you want to do in life? I mean, when you get back from the merchant navy.’
‘Where did that come from? . . . Nothing. Apart from make some money and marry you.’
‘But then what?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t know what you mean.’
‘I mean that I want to make something of myself. When I see girls my age who are teachers, nurses, secretaries – that’s what I want. Not scrabbling in the sawdust – a factory girl until I die.’
He laughed. ‘Don’t talk daft. People like me don’t have fancy lines of work. We have jobs.’
‘But there has to be something more. I want something more. Don’t you?’
‘More what?’
‘I’ve got dreams. Haven’t you?’
He shrugged.
‘Well?’ she said.
‘I dunno. You could say I’m pretty happy with my lot. As long as I have a job and you. It’s money that gives us our freedom, isn’t it? Doesn’t matter what job you’re doing. If you have money, you’re free as a bird.’
‘I know, but . . . doesn’t there have to be something more?’
‘Like what?’ He helped himself to a drink from the bottle of sherry on the table, glugging it right from the bottle.
‘I want to do things. Important things. Get away from here, now the war has ended.’
‘You know what – I love you, Alice. But I can’t help thinking you’re living in a world of your own. That kind of life doesn’t really exist, not for folks like us.’ He wiped his lips.
Before she could reply, they were interrupted by a clattering sound from upstairs. Then a loud thumping on the ceiling – a broom handle, banging on the bedroom floor above them. They both glanced up and saw the fringe quivering on the lampshade.
‘Bob!’
‘Coming, Ma!’ he cried. ‘Flamin’ ’eck. Does she never stop mithering?’
‘I need to get back to bath the kiddies,’ Alice sighed. ‘Otherwise, the whole shebang falls apart for me ma. I’ll see you tomorrow.’
‘All right, love,’ he said, giving her a peck on the lips.
As they stepped into the hallway there was another disturbance: hammering at the front door, loud and persistent. Bob shook his head. ‘Bloody hell! What now?’
Alice came up behind him as he opened the door and, to her surprise, saw Brian on the step, his face alarmingly pale. She exchanged a worried look with Bob, who crouched down to the boy’s level.
‘What’s the matter, son?’
Brian was breathing so hard he could barely get his words out. ‘Alice . . .’
‘What’s the matter, love?’ she said.
‘Da. He’s in the hospital. Come quick. He went back to do a late shift and he’s been taken ill. He’s sick, Alice. Really sick, Miss Quick said.’
‘Who’s minding Gabe?’ she said, feeling her stomach somersault.
‘Gwenda.’
‘Go on home, all right? If you see anyone, tell them I’ve gone to the hospital. Don’t cry, Bry. Everything’s going to be all right. You go home and look after the little ’uns. There’s scouse in the pot, and make sure you change Gabe before you put him down. Don’t cry, love. Nothing to cry about until we know what’s what, eh?’
An hour earlier, Ida, with Gabe in a pram, had set off to the washhouse. She had enjoyed the chatter and the gossip, and when she got there Gabe spent a happy twenty minutes playing with soap suds and being passed around from one woman to the next. They all admired his cherubic cheeks and bounced him on their knees and jiggled him in his pram until he giggled and hiccupped so much he turned pink.
When she got back home, an ashen Mrs Hallett had been standing on her step.
‘Ida. I came as quickly as I could. Your Albert’s in the hospital.’
‘Hospital?’ said Ida, frozen in place. She felt the blood drain out of her.
‘Barry said they sent an ambulance. I don’t have much news except, he collapsed. Legs went right under him. On the warehouse roof.’
They got inside somehow but the room seemed to sway; the furniture wavered and the light cord moved like a snake. The statue of Our Lady on the dresser seemed to be squeezing her eyes shut in response to the terrible news. Ida reached out a hand to steady herself against a chair. Gabe started to cry.
‘Gabe’s only two. And Brian, barely out of short trousers . . . and Gwen,’ she murmured. ‘Poor Biscuit and Gravy.’
‘I’m sorry, Ida.’ Mrs Hallett reached out a calming hand.
Ida’s heart thudded in her chest so strongly she thought it might burst. She ran all the way to the hospital, ignoring Mrs Hallett’s suggestion to ask Mr Maloney to drive them, knowing that by the time he had cranked up his precious Austin Ten it would be slower than going on foot. She raced up the hill in a whirlwind of dust and panic and shot through the double doors of the hospital, not knowing where she was going. She could barely breathe. The bright lights swam before her eyes. She felt a sharp pain stabbing at her chest and her throat.
‘You can’t go in there,’ said a nurse.
Panicked, in back-to-front sentences, Ida asked them where her husband was, telling them his name repeatedly.
‘Ah, the fellow from the docks – Lucky, they called him? Come with me . . .’ Not so lucky now, the nurse thought, and she was right.
After two flights of stairs – strip lights thrumming, rooms with their white walls tilting – they arrived at the ward and Ida was led through a curtain to Albert’s bedside. He raised his head from the pillow. She gasped at how grey he looked, hair standing up in tufts, eyes rimmed with red, skin sallow and blotchy.
‘Lie down, Mr Lacey. Heart attack, we think, Mrs Lacey,’ said a younger nurse beside his bed.
‘Heart attack!’ Ida’s voice quavered.
‘Mild. Very mild. Nothing to worry about,’ said Albert weakly.
‘Mild, but still a heart attack, Mr Lacey,’ the older nurse said firmly, looking over the top of her thick spectacles.
‘Always pretending there’s nothing wrong with you . . .’ Ida shook her head miserably. ‘And now here you are in the hospital. I knew it. I knew it was serious. The headaches. The pains in your chest. Your arm. Not just allergic to the zinc cargoes. He’s never been right since the explosion,’ she said to the nurse. ‘Have you told them about that, Albert?’
‘Don’t go on, Ida,’ he murmured.
Suddenly the curtain was yanked back and Alice was standing there, breathless. ‘Da! The nurse said it was a heart attack – I came straight here.’
‘I’m fine, sweetheart.’
Relief flooded her face as she sat on the end of the bed and grasped his hand.
‘No sitting on beds. Germs,’ the older nurse said brusquely, and she and her colleague left them alone.
‘That one’s a dragon, the other is a poppet. Come on – climb back up here with me, Alice,’ said her father, patting the covers. ‘And your ma’s right, I haven’t been a hundred per cent. But it’s just a dicky ticker. And that’s exactly what it was. The zinc, most likely. A reaction. Nothing to lose sleep over.’
Alice shivered to see how pale he looked. She glanced at Ida, who was twisting her handkerchief. You could see his veins. Blue threads, like twisting pulsating knotty ropes under his skin.
‘I was up on the roof at the warehouse. We had just been shifting cases of bananas . . .’
‘We know.’
‘But it’s going to be fine. I need to get back to work. Probably just indigestion. Ida, you said some of your girls at St Mary’s get it so bad, it’s a pain like you can’t believe.’
‘No, Da, it wasn’t indigestion. You heard the nurse. Heart attack,’ said Alice.
‘Mild,’ he replied.
‘What will happen?’ said Ida.
‘Happen? You mean the rent, if I can’t work? Don’t fret. They can’t just chuck us out on the street, if that’s what you’re worrying about.’
‘But you look white as a sheet. And can you even stand?’
‘I’m right as rain,’ he said. He struggled to sit up and failed, instead letting his head loll back against the pillow. ‘Tickety-boo.’
Alice glanced at her mother, who picked up her look.
‘I’m just being practical. We need to be practical, Al – when you’ve got three small children, you have to be. What if . . .’
‘She’s right, Da,’ said Alice.
‘I am being practical.’ He winced.
She saw her mother’s lip quivering.
‘What you need to do is go to Barry and tell him what’s happened,’ her father said. ‘If they hadn’t pushed me to come back in and do that late shift . . . I shouldn’t have been on the roof in the first place. The Echo might even do a story. I’m only forty-two – and me lungs . . . One slip and you’re on the scrapheap.’
Ida bristled. ‘Maybe if you didn’t smoke so much.’
Alice squeezed her eyes shut. How could her mother go from one minute looking as if her life would be over if anything happened to her beloved Albert, to berating him in the very next breath?
The older nurse reappeared, pulling back the curtain. ‘Visiting over,’ she said firmly. ‘He needs his rest. Don’t you, Mr Lacey?’
‘That’s us told,’ he said, and smiled. ‘Go on home and don’t make a fuss. I’ll be up and about in no time.’
But Alice heard his laboured breathing, and saw how his hands trembled and his eyes dulled. She had a horrible feeling this would not end well.
Chapter 7
‘Alice, I don’t like leaving you, with your da ill like that,’ said Bob.
He’d been waiting for her at the house, pacing the linoleum. It was already worn smooth but it would soon have a hole in it if he carried on walking up and down like he was. ‘Should I tell the ship’s master I’ve changed my mind? I could be away for three months . . .’
‘Don’t be stupid,’ she said, with more confidence than she felt. ‘We’ll manage. He’ll be home from hospital soon and making plans with his union mates – taking on the world. It’ll keep him going. What time does your boat leave?’
‘Eight thirty tomorrow. Though we’re supposed to board this evening.’
A cloud came over her expression. ‘I’ll come and wave you off,’ she murmured, and kissed him on the lips. Her eyes turned glassy with tears as she lingered for a moment.
‘You don’t need to, Alice, love. It’s not like the war. No danger of us being bombed.’
‘Please come back safely.’
‘Three months will go quickly. I’ll be back before you know it and we’ll make up for the time I’ve been away, eh? We can start planning the wedding. I’ve always fancied a wedding at St Anthony’s, and me and Matty can do a pub crawl. The Liverpool Lane mile.’ He kissed her again, plunging his tongue into her mouth, twisting it around her teeth. ‘Be a good girl while I’m away, won’t you? You can send me word with the postman if you catch him at the docks, let me know how things are. It’ll get to me eventually. Look after your da and the kiddies. And your ma.’
She felt his heart beating against hers as he pulled her even closer and kissed her harder.
‘Aye. Me ma. That’s the tricky one,’ she murmured as his hand squirmed under her blouse and squeezed her breast. ‘Gerroff, Bob,’ she said, slapping it away.
‘You still telling me I have to wait until I’m back?’ he said sulkily.
‘Aye. Absence makes the heart grow fonder.’
‘And it’s the thought of that absence is making me Johnson—’
‘Bob! Don’t say it! You’re terrible!’ she said.
‘I’m sorry, Cherry Bomb. But you turn me into a wild animal, just the touch of you, and the smell of you . . .’
‘Not now, Bob. Let’s just concentrate on getting you away to sea first,’ she said with a weak smile. ‘And in the meantime, I can get me da better.’
Ida arrived at St Mary’s orphanage the following day. There was a new girl sitting at the back of the sewing class. I recognize that kind of girl, thought Ida – Liverpool is full of them. The kind that for some reason, certain people wanted to break their spirit.
Ida tried to raise a friendly smile. ‘Hello,’ she said.
Angela was in the centre of the room, on a rickety chair. She cradled her bump.
‘The baby didn’t come early after all?’ asked Ida.
Angela sighed. ‘No, more’s the pity. I’m as big as a whale.’
Ida wanted to ask her what she would be doing once she had the baby. She looked around the room at the others. Surely some of them had an older sister, or a distant aunt or cousin – someone who would take them in after the child was born, so they wouldn’t have to come back here? What must it feel like to have no one in the world who would give you a roof over your head?
‘Miss – I saw a baby dress in the catalogue, Miss. It’s so pretty. Will you help me make one like it?’ Mildred asked. She took a crumpled piece of paper out of her pocket and opened it out to show a picture of a chubby baby, smiling on a crocheted blanket. ‘Isn’t he sweet? I like his matching booties, with the ribbons threaded around the tops an’ all.’
Ida nodded. It was heartbreaking to think of these girls making going-away outfits for their babies, lovingly stitching and knitting and dressing them, then placing them into the arms of strangers. She wondered why the nuns made them do it but had to admit that, oddly, it did seem to give them some purpose.
‘Not long until the stork comes, Miss,’ said Angela. ‘Month and a half, they think. I go off to the mother and baby home next week.’
Doreen giggled. ‘If it’d been the swallow, you wouldn’t be in this mess.’
‘Such a potty mouth, Dore,’ Angela snorted.
Ida was surprised and pleased to see that even June smiled at this.
‘June’s fine now,’ said Mildred. ‘Once you realize there’s other poor stupid lassies like you in the same pickle it’s not so bad, is it, June? We even had a laugh the other day, over your fella who says his r’s like w’s.’
‘He’s called Ricky Reardon,’ Angela explained, for Ida’s benefit. ‘Wicky Weardon’s wun off and left you high and dwy, hasn’t he, love?’
‘He has now.’
‘Oh dear, I’m so sorry. Shall we start on our hemming?’
‘She met him at the docks. He works on the ships. You were in love, weren’t you, pet?’
June nodded sadly.
‘Until he took a ship back to Australia,’ said Angela.
One of the girls sitting at the back let out a load groan.
‘What’s the matter, dear?’ Ida was relieved at the interruption.
‘Me fingers are too big for the threading.’
‘Not just her fingers. Her ankles are big an’ all, Miss.’
‘Oedema. The fat ankles. Read it in a medical dictionary in Sid’s office,’ said Angela.
‘I feel like the blinking Michelin Man,’ the girl said. She was trying to thread a needle and at the same time letting out short, frustrated breaths and humphs.
‘Girls, girls . . .’ Ida rapped a ruler on the desk. ‘Can you turn around and listen to me?’
The rest of the lesson passed with endless interruptions and arguments, and finally tailed off when someone announced they were going out for a cigarette. Ida pretended she hadn’t heard and packed up her sewing box.
When she got outside she saw an orderly crocodile of small children in brown tunics and shorts walking across the lawn in pairs, holding hands. At the front, Sister Cyril clapped her hands to keep time. ‘Jesus is my Sweet Saviour . . .’ she sang in a thin, reedy voice as they walked in time, trying to sing along while she made vague conducting gestures.
Ida feared the tune would lodge in her head like a bad seed. As she turned to go, the nun moved away from the children and swept towards her.
‘Ida, dear, did you have a good morning? Doreen give you her sob story, did she? And did Angela tell you her ma wants her back after she’s had her baby?’ She shook her head. ‘The day that girl’s mother takes her back is the day I’ll be eating scouse with the Pope.’
‘They were all grand, Sister. Good girls, all of them.’
‘Good girls! They wouldn’t be here if they were good girls.’
Ida looked back at the line of children. Without the nun’s attention they had dispersed into little groups: a few crouched on their haunches plucking daisies, a boy threw a conker up into the air, and two girls raced round a tree.
