Lights Out Liverpool

by Maureen Lee

Genres: Marriage & Divorce; World War II; Sagas; 20th Century Romance

Synopsis

Number One bestseller Maureen Lee's first novel of the hugely popular Pearl Street series. As Britain stands alone against a monstrous enemy, the inhabitants of Pearl Street, in Liverpool, face hardship and heartbreak with courage and humour. The war touches each of them in a different way: for Annie Poulson, a widow, it means never-ending worry when her twin boys are called up and sent to France; Sheila Reilly's husband, Cal, faces the terror of U-Boat attacks; Eileen Costello is liberated from a bitter, loveless marriage when her husband is sent to Egypt and she goes to work in a munitions factory - and falls in love. And Jessica Fleming, down on her luck, is forced to return to the street she'd hoped never to see again.

Release date: November 10, 2011

Publisher: Orion

Print pages: 500

Sample

The home-made bunting crisscrossed the little street from roof to roof, fluttering gently in the soft breath of a perfect late summer day. Half a dozen trestle tables, covered with an assortment of best damask tablecloths, had been set down the centre and strewn with ringlets of bright paper streamers. The tables groaned under the weight of trifles and jellies, plates piled high with sandwiches, home-made sausage rolls and confectionery. Squares of bead-edged muslin protected the food from the wasps and bluebottles which buzzed greedily overhead.

Mary and Joey Flaherty and their three children were going to live in Canada, leaving Bootle forever for a new life in a new country, and throwing a street party on their final Saturday as a gesture of farewell.

The children, almost out of their minds with excitement and waiting impatiently to be called for the first sitting, filled in the time by darting to and fro in search of tar bubbles on the cobbled surface of the street, caused by the relentless heat of the noon sun which poured down out of a cloudless blue sky. When a bubble was found, there’d be a shrill yell of triumph – ‘You wanna see the size o’ this one!’ – and it would be burst with an already blackened thumb.

The grown-ups, equally excited, hid their feelings behind wide smiles and a general air of enjoyment, though their happiness was tempered by the fearful knowledge of what was going on outside their little world. That madman Adolf Hitler seemed intent on taking over all of Europe and gradually, unbelievably, Great Britain was being drawn into the war.

Only the other day, anyone listening to the wireless had been astounded to hear Members of Parliament being urgently recalled to Westminster. Stomachs churned as people sat there expecting to hear hostilities were about to break out any minute. Two days later, the Emergency Powers Act had been passed, giving the Government total control over the lives of its people. Then yesterday, the BBC had announced there would be special extra news bulletins in the morning and afternoon.

In the homes of Army, Navy and RAF reservists, official-looking envelopes containing their recall notices had begun to arrive, and the Territorial Army was mobilised. Already, thousands of young men not yet out of their teens had been called up and were waiting, ready to fight for their country if need be. People felt as if they were on a train heading for a precipice and there was nothing they could do to stop it.

But the residents of Pearl Street were determined not to let this spoil their party, perhaps the last street party they would hold for a long, long time. The women seemed to have taken an unspoken vow not to talk about it. They resolutely pushed to the back of their minds, for today at least, the hideous gas masks collected from the Town Hall, the freshly-built brick shelters to which they were supposed to go in the unimaginable event of an air raid, the impending blackout and food rationing, and the barrage balloon suspended above the bowling green next to Bootle Hospital which looked so pretty, like a silver flower floating in the sky, yet was there for such a grim purpose. In their best frocks and their Sunday pinnies, the women bustled in and out of their own and their neighbours’ houses carrying yet more refreshments. Although the Flahertys had provided the ingredients, Mary couldn’t be expected to prepare food for twenty-nine children and over forty adults, not all on her own.

The men who didn’t work on Saturdays, or didn’t work at all, were less inhibited. Many had already become voluntary ARP wardens or joined the Auxiliary Fire Service, and several of the younger ones were expecting their call-up papers at any minute. They stood in little groups, some playing pitch and toss, and from time to time preventing children from other streets from entering, and war was their sole topic of conversation. Despite this, they too seemed to have been affected by the gladness of the day; laughing more than usual and snapping their fingers or tapping their feet as if to music. Although none could be persuaded into their best suits – if they had one – most wore a collar and tie despite the scorching heat. The men had already done their bit towards the party, having collected the borrowed tables from the Holy Rosary Church Hall and put them up. As far as they were concerned, the rest was women’s work.

Most of the front doors were wide open and the old people sat on their steps, sunning themselves, mouths watering at the sight of the food, wishing the women would hurry up and feed the children so it would be their turn to sit down. In the doorway of his lodgings at Number 10, big Paddy O’Hara sat nursing his little dog, Spot, in his arms. Paddy, not old, but blind for more than half his life, was sensually aware of the clatter of the women’s shoes on the pavement, their varying scents, the swish of their skirts as they buzzed to and fro.

‘Ah, ’tis a fine day Joey picked for his do,’ he said to no-one in particular.

‘It is that, Paddy,’ replied Eileen Costello, who caught his words as she emerged from Number 16 carrying two plates of tomato and meatpaste sandwiches. Slim and graceful in her best blue crepe de Chine dress, her long fair hair tied back with a white ribbon, Eileen felt conscious of the heady, electric atmosphere in the street, though she could never have described it. Everywhere just seemed more than usually alive. There was a swing in her step as she took the plates over to the table.

Her sister Sheila, who lived opposite, came up carrying Ryan, her youngest child aged ten months, on her hip. Her pretty dimpled face was covered in perspiration. ‘I’m sweating like a cob, Sis.’ She nodded towards the little flags rippling above them. ‘I wish we could get a bit of that wind down here before I bake to death.’

The heat was palpable. The ruddy chimneys, the grey slate roofs turned silver by the dazzling light, and the neat cobbled ground, seemed to shimmer, actually seemed to move if you stared hard enough, and Pearl Street, a cul-de-sac, was indeed like an oven, hemmed in by red brick terraced houses, fifteen each side, and the blackened, pitted roof-high wall at one end which separated the street from the railway lines beyond. The trains, now electric, ran three an hour during the day; to Liverpool city centre one way and Southport the other.

‘Here, let me take him.’ Eileen reached for the rosy baby. He went to her willingly and immediately began to pull at her hair. ‘Y’shouldn’t be cartin’ him around, not in your condition.’ Sheila was heavily pregnant with her sixth child, which was due in ten days’ time.

‘Those jellies’ll be melted if they don’t eat them soon,’ Sheila said, wiping her brow. ‘I hope the kids hurry up, I’m starving hungry.’

A few yards away, Mary Flaherty suddenly clapped her hands and shouted, ‘C’mon, you little buggers, sit down, and don’t forget your paper ’ats.’

The muslin covers were hurriedly removed as the giggling children scrambled for their chairs like little maniacs. Their voices rose angrily, demanding to sit next to one person, refusing to sit next to another. Eileen, holding Ryan, watched her own son Tony, who was five, slip into a chair without any argument. He sat waiting, wearing an orange paper crown, his hands folded on his lap, looking like a little wise owl in his wire-rimmed glasses. Tony had been well drilled in good manners, though not by her. Whilst he sat quietly, twenty or more hands reached for a sandwich.

‘STOP!’ thundered Mary Flaherty, and the hands paused mid-air. ‘We haven’t said grace.’

Heads were meekly bowed whilst Mary muttered, ‘For what we are about to receive, may the good Lord make us truly thankful. Amen.’

Tony searched for his mam amongst the crowd who were watching benignly as the children fell upon the food – it was rarely that they sat down to such a feast. Eileen caught her son’s eye and gave a slight nod and he took a sandwich. ‘Poor Tony,’ she thought. ‘He’s like a little trained puppy compared to all the rest.’

Ellis Evans, stout and red-cheeked, wearing the stiff blue brocade frock she’d bought for her sister’s wedding ten years ago, said in her Welsh sing-song voice, ‘There’s two chairs empty. Who’s missing?’

The children were hurriedly counted. Only twenty-seven.

‘The Tuttys aren’t here …’ Annie Poulson, Eileen’s special friend, raised her fine arched eyebrows questioningly. ‘What should we do? Oh, I suppose we’d better get them.’

Everyone nodded, albeit reluctantly. The presence of the Tutty children would slightly flaw their perfect jewel of a day.

‘I’ll go,’ Eileen offered. The Tuttys lived next door to her, so she had more to do with them than most.

‘Oh, Mam, I don’t want them sitting next to me,’ Myfanwy Evans whined. ‘They stink something awful.’

There was an immediate general shuffling of seats so no child would be left with an empty chair beside them, which was of course impossible, whilst Eileen hurried down the street to Number 14.

Gladys Tutty opened the door to her knock.

‘The party’s started. There’ll be nowt left for Freda and Dicky if they don’t come soon.’

No-one was well off in Pearl Street, but people had their pride. No matter how poor they were, they kept their houses, inside and out, as clean as humanly possible. The Tuttys’ house stood out like a sore thumb amidst its immaculate neighbours with its grimy, cracked and curtainless windows, its unscrubbed step. The front door, a mass of peeling brown paint, had a scabrous look.

Eileen stood there, still clutching Ryan, repelled as always by the sight that met her and the smell that wafted out from her neighbour’s house. The bare boards in the little narrow hallway were broken and eaten away by rot, and the varnished anaglypta wallpaper was worn more off the wall than on, revealing round sores of filthy crumbling plaster. Every corner was caked with inch-thick hardened dirt.

And, to complete this picture of wretchedness and poverty, there was Gladys. Gladys, in the clothes she wore every day which Eileen had never once seen washed and hanging on the line to dry; a jersey thick with foodstains, fuzzy with sweat underneath the arms, and a long black cotton skirt. Gladys was the only woman in the street who still wore a black shawl when she went out. Her little peaked face, grey, with the texture of rotting rubber, wore a look of utter hopelessness, as if the heart had gone out of her a long time ago.

‘I got nothing to give,’ she mumbled in her low expressionless voice.

‘You don’t have to, luv,’ Eileen said cheerfully. ‘It’s all free and there’s places already set for Freda and Dicky.’ She was uncomfortably conscious of her smart best dress with its puffed sleeves and heartshaped neckline and her sparkling white sandals; of the happy healthy baby on her arm who was cooing as he tried to get his mouth around her pearl stud earring. Eileen felt a world away from this poor little drab woman in the doorway. She stepped back, in the hope of avoiding the stink of decay and unwashed clothes which seemed doubly strong on such a hot day, and turned to look at the women in the street, the children eating, as if to make sure her own world was still there, waiting for her quick return.

Two barefoot scraggy urchins emerged hand in hand from the back of the house and stood behind their mother: Freda and Dicky, their mean narrow faces scabbed and bruised. Freda’s cotton frock, which might once have been pink, was now a grimy grey. Eileen knew that beneath the dress the ten-year-old girl wore no underclothes of any description. Dicky, three years younger, had on a pair of thick flannel shorts and a grubby vest.

Freda muttered, ‘Wanna go to the party.’

Eileen sensed desperation in the girl’s hoarse voice. ‘In that case,’ she said brightly, ‘go and wash your face and hands and find your shoes, and I’ll get a plate of butties ready for you.’

The door closed without a word and Eileen thankfully returned to the party, where the tables were rapidly being emptied. The jelly and custard stage had been reached, though plenty of sandwiches still remained. Her eyes searched for Tony. To her relief, he seemed to have forgotten his inhibitions and was devouring food with as much enthusiasm as the other children. She noticed two chairs standing vacant, close together, separated from the others by several feet. Kids could be very cruel, she thought. She stood Ryan on one of the chairs and gave him a fairy cake, then, holding him by the waist, one-handedly heaped two paper plates with food.

‘They’re coming, then?’ Annie came across to help. Annie looked particularly smart today, in a flowered silk two piece that fitted her slight, delicate figure perfectly. Eileen was the only one who knew the suit had cost just seven and sixpence in Paddy’s Market. Annie’s equally delicate oval face was etched with rather more lines than one would expect to see on a woman of thirty-eight. That, and her rough red chapped hands, which no amount of Nivea cream could return to their original white, were the only indication of the hard life Annie had led since her husband had been killed on the railways a month before her twin lads were born. In the long process of bringing up her sons without assistance from anybody, Annie had gone out and scrubbed more floors and washed more clothes than the rest of the women in the street put together.

Eileen nodded. ‘I told ’em to get washed. They both looked as if they’d been up the chimney.’

Annie gave a rueful smile. ‘I don’t envy the family that gets Freda and Dicky evacuated on them.’

Two women began to bustle around removing the empty pudding dishes, followed by another who placed a clean paper plate in front of each child.

Freda and Dicky Tutty came out, each wearing a pair of tattered Wellington boots. Neither looked as if they’d been within a mile of soap and water. Eileen plucked Ryan out of the way and showed them where to sit. Then she glanced around, searching for her sister. Sheila was sitting on the doorstep, keeping an eye on her four older children, making sure they behaved properly at the table. She looked exhausted but happy, her hands resting on her vastly swollen belly. Eileen went over.

‘You’d better take Ryan for a while, Sheil, while I help with the washing up. Shall I put his reins on and hook him on the gate?’

Sheila’s husband, Calum, had built a slide-in gate which fitted in the doorway to keep the younger children safe inside.

‘Do y’mind, Sis? I haven’t got the energy to hold him and he’ll scream blue murder if he’s stuck inside.’

The reins were hanging over the gate and Eileen buckled them on to the reluctant baby and sat him on the pavement. He immediately began to crawl away, straining against the leather straps. Both women laughed.

Eileen looked down at her sister wonderingly. Sheila never ceased to amaze her. They’d never been close as children, having little in common. Whilst Eileen stayed in, her head buried in a book or listening to plays on the wireless, her flighty, featherbrained younger sister was out having a good time with a never-ending stream of boys. Until seven years ago, that is, when she’d met Calum Reilly and fallen deeply and madly in love. To Eileen’s surprise, Sheila had settled down to married life with Calum as if it were the role she’d been waiting to play since she was born. Her sunny contented nature seemed to expand and grow in order to encompass her ever-increasing family within its loving sphere. It was only the last few weeks of each pregnancy that wore her down, the baby pushing and kicking inside her womb, heavy and debilitating.

‘I wish our Cal was here,’ Sheila said wistfully. ‘He’s coming home next Thursday, and y’know how much he loves a party.’

That was another thing, thought Eileen. It wasn’t as if Sheila had her husband there for most of the time. Calum Reilly was in the Merchant Navy and away at least ten months of the year.

‘Never mind, luv.’ Eileen briefly stroked her sister’s untidy brown curls. ‘I’d better set to and help with the washing up, else I’ll have people calling me names behind me back.’

She walked down the street to Mary Flaherty’s and found half a dozen women crowded in the tiny, steaming back kitchen washing and drying dishes, and twice as many in the living room having a quick ciggie before starting work again.

‘You lazy buggers,’ she cried. ‘And here was us thinking I was slacking off having a chat with our Sheila.’

‘Did y’see the way them Tutty children ate at the table, Eileen?’ demanded Agnes Donovan from Number 27. Aggie was a terrible gossip. No-one was safe from her vicious tongue and Eileen avoided the woman whenever she could. When Eileen shook her head, Aggie went on breathlessly, ‘Like little animals they were, stuffing food in their mouths with both hands like they’d never eaten in their lives before. Greedy little buggers! I’ve never seen anything like it,’ she finished in an aggrieved voice.

‘I don’t suppose they know any better, poor mites,’ Eileen said reasonably, but Aggie persisted. If it wasn’t the kids’ fault, then it was their mam’s.

‘I’m surprised Gladys had the gall to let them out,’ she complained. ‘Mrs Crean wouldn’t let her two mongol lads come because she doesn’t trust their table manners.’

Eileen reckoned Phoebe Crean was probably keeping Harry and Owen out of sight of gawpers like Agnes Donovan, who seemed to get enjoyment from other people’s misfortunes. She ignored the woman and asked Mary Flaherty if there was anything she could do, ‘Seeing as how all the available help seems to have gone on strike.’

‘Once the kids have finished, you can clear the tables, Eileen,’ Mary told her, smiling. ‘Then give the cloths a shake and turn them over so they’re fresh for us when we sit down to our grub in about half an hour, like. Our Joey’s going to organise some games in the meantime.’ As Eileen was leaving, Mary followed her into the hall. ‘And oh, is your feller back yet with the ale?’

‘Not yet,’ Eileen replied. ‘He doesn’t finish work till two o’clock, then someone’s giving him a lift back in a car and they’re collecting it on the way.’

Mary squeezed her hand. ‘He’s a dead good sport, your Francis, Joey’s really made up. We could never have afforded so much ale if Francis hadn’t been able to get it half price.’

Outside, the children had become restless. Seemingly unaffected by the almost suffocating heat and satiated with food, they were hurling paper plates and streamers at each other. Some had already left their seats and were playing tick round and round the table.

Eileen yelled, ‘Behave yourselves!’ and ducked to dodge a plate meant for the child beside her. She noticed Sheila grinning at her from the doorstep and made a face back. The Tuttys, isolated from the others on their separate chairs, were still gorging themselves. ‘And you two have had enough. You’ll be sick if you eat any more.’ They stared at her resentfully, their open mouths full of half-chewed bunloaf, as she began to clear the table. Joey Flaherty came up groaning, ‘This is the bit I’ve been dreading. Come on, youse lot, fetch your seats down this end and put ’em in a circle, and we’ll play musical chairs.’

‘Best of luck, Joey,’ Eileen smiled, shooing away a couple of cats who were about to jump on the table in search of scraps.

In Number 3, Mr Singerman shoved his parlour window up as far as it would go and began to play a brisk march on the piano. A minute or so later, the music stopped abruptly and Eileen noticed her Tony, hanging back as ever, was the first to be out. A good job Francis wasn’t around to see him lose. Tony came up, looking tearful. ‘I didn’t like pushing anybody, Mam.’

‘All right, luv, it’s only a game,’ she soothed. ‘C’mon, take these into Mary’s, then you can help us turn the cloths over.’ In a while, there’d be more children out and he’d have someone to play with. She noticed Freda Tutty, Wellington boots flapping against her skinny legs, was dragging Dicky around the circle of chairs by the hand, an almost fanatical expression on her little pinched face. When the music stopped, Freda swung Dicky onto a chair and bagged the next one for herself by the simple expedient of removing the boy already on it with a vicious shove of her bony hip. The boy – it was Sheila’s eldest, Dominic – caught his head on the neighbouring chair before landing on the ground. He stood up, blood pouring from a cut on his forehead, and began to yell. Sheila struggled wearily up from the step where she was sitting. Angry at his precious day being spoilt, Joey Flaherty gave Freda a sharp slap on the wrist. The girl stared at him mutinously, eyes full of hate, then dragged her brother down the entry beside the coalyard at the end of the street to go indoors by the back way.

There was a general sigh of relief. Eileen’s own relief was mixed with a sense of guilt. Always, she felt as if she should do something about the Tuttys, but never knew what. When she and Francis had taken Number 16 after they got married, the sound of poor Gladys being used as a punchbag by Eddie, her now long-departed husband, had upset her terribly. But Francis had refused to let her tell the Bobbies. ‘It’s none of our business, Eileen. Anyway, the Bobbies won’t do nowt. He’s not breaking any laws.’ Now it was Freda and Dicky’s turn to take the beatings. Gladys had learnt a thing or two from Eddie.

Eileen assuaged her conscience a little by resolving to take a plate of butties and a glass of ale along to Number 14 later on, though Gladys’d far prefer a bottle of gin. Everyone knew the lengths Gladys would go to for a bottle of gin when her Public Assistance money ran out.

Suddenly a cheer went up from the men on the corner, and she glanced across. A black car had stopped at the end of the street. The driver was Rodney Smith, a young man with a cherubic face who worked as a rent collector for Bootle Council. As Eileen watched, a tall figure got out of the passenger seat, a handsome man with a fine head of black wavy hair who beamed at everyone in sight. Francis! He pulled down the boot and began to struggle with something inside. The waiting men went eagerly to help, and a few minutes later a large barrel was rolled down Pearl Street. The ale had arrived.

The day wore on. The vivid sun grew larger, turned from bright yellow to musky gold, as it made its slow and inevitable journey across the gently changing sky, and a line of shadow began to creep across the cobbles of Pearl Street, sharply separating the light from the dark, though the air grew no cooler. Indeed, by late afternoon it seemed more suffocating than ever. The grown-ups had long finished their meal, the tables had been cleared and the cloths removed so they wouldn’t get drink spilt on them, though most of the men sat on the pavement with their backs against the walls of the houses. The younger children began to grow tired and tetchy. Many of the older ones had disappeared, having gone to other streets to find their friends. Brenda Mahon’s little girls were pushing round the home-made dolls’ pram that they were usually only allowed to bring outside on Sundays. Sheila had put Ryan to bed, leaving the window open in case he woke and began to cry. Her next youngest, Caitlin, had fallen asleep in her arms.

The King’s Arms pub on the corner of the street opened its doors, and some customers brought their drink outside to join the party.

At six o’clock, Miss Brazier came wearily around the corner, home from her job in the Co-Op Haberdashery Department, where she sat all day in a glass cage at the receiving end of little metal cannisters containing cash which whizzed across the shop on wires stretching in every direction. Miss Brazier would unscrew the cannister, remove the money, and send it back with the change.

‘We’ve plenty of butties left, Miss Brazier,’ Mary Flaherty said generously. ‘Would you like us to make you a cup of tea, like?’

‘No, thank you,’ Miss Brazier said stiffly, scarcely glancing in their direction. Head bent, she made her way to Number 12 and disappeared inside.

‘Poor ould soul,’ said Mary sympathetically. ‘I bet she’d love to join us, y’know, but she can’t bring herself to unbend.’

‘She’s not so old,’ Eileen said. ‘No more than thirty-five, I reckon.’

Like Miss Brazier, not everyone in Pearl Street had condescended to join in the festivities. The Harrisons, who owned the coalyard at the end of the street and lived in the house next door, hadn’t deigned to come – Edna Harrison told someone she thought street parties were ‘common’. Nor Alfie Robinson from 22, a solid Orangeman, who’d never spoken to Joey Flaherty since he’d discovered one of Joey’s brothers was in the IRA. The Kellys weren’t there, either, May and her brothers, Fin and Failey, who were Eileen’s other neighbours. The Kellys went into town shoplifting on Saturdays and stayed till late doing a tour of the city pubs to sell the loot – if they hadn’t been nicked first. The Kellys stole to order; give them the size and the colour and they’d pinch the goods from Marks & Spencer or C & A for half the ticket price.

A trickle of people began to arrive; George Ransome, a middle-aged bachelor with a dashing pencil thin moustache, who worked in Littlewoods Pools, appeared with two bottles of cream sherry. ‘A little treat for the ladies,’ he said with a wink, and there was a rush indoors for glasses. Then Dilys Evans, only fourteen, looking worn out from her new job as a chambermaid in the Adelphi Hotel in Liverpool.

Soon afterwards, Sheila whispered to her sister, ‘I feel as if I’d like a lie down, Sis.’

Eileen nodded. ‘I’ll be in later and help you settle the kids.’ Caitlin had woken up by then, and Sheila led the tiny girl indoors by the hand.

The sky dimmed, turned to mauve, as dusk began to fall and the great orange ball of the sun slowly dipped behind a ridge of roofs, leaving chimneys silhouetted, stark and black, against its fiery brilliance before it disappeared altogether. Then the stars came out; just one at first, then another, and almost within the blinking of an eye, overhead became a blanket of twinkling yellow lights. At long last the air began to freshen and turn cool and the lamplighter arrived, propping his ladder against the arms of the lamppost on the corner by the pub. The gas jet began to splutter and fizz and gave off an eerie glow.

‘Be out of a job soon,’ he said mournfully as he was about to leave. ‘Once the bloody blackout comes.’

And still they sat, talking quietly now, unwilling to let the day go; as if the longer they stayed, the longer it would take tomorrow to come, because nobody in their right mind wanted what tomorrow might bring. Dancing had been planned for after dark, the polka and Knees Up Mother Brown and the Gay Gordons – Mr Singerman had been practising all week – but somehow no-one felt like dancing. Instead, they listened to the haunting sound of Paddy O’Hara on his harmonica, the music quivering like invisible birds in the yellow-hued night air.

The glitter of the day had gone. Reality had set in.

‘When are you sailing, Joey?’ someone shouted across the street.

‘Next Sat’day, on the Athenia,’ Joey replied.

‘We’re going steerage,’ put in Mary hastily, as if worried folks might think they’d booked a first-class cabin.

‘Looks like you’re getting out just in time.’

Joey flushed angrily. ‘We’ve been saving for years to go to Canada. Me brother Kevin’s already in Ontario.’

‘D’you know who’s taking on the house, Joey?’ asked Ellis Evans, who lived next door.

‘No-one yet, luv,’ Joey answered. ‘The landlord’s agent said he’ll have a job renting out a house in Bootle, because – well, you know why.’

They knew only too well. When war broke out, Bootle, with its multiplicity of docks and being the nearest British port to the Americas, would be one of the prime targets for Hitler’s bombs. There was a long silence as they contemplated the awfulness of this.

‘It mightn’t happen’, Eileen said eventually in a small voice. ‘There’s still time.’ The situation had been building up for years like a pot gradually simmering on a stove. Now, with Hitler about to invade Poland, the pot was threatening to boil over. Surely he wouldn’t go ahead, she thought desperately, not when he knew what the consequences would be? Having guaranteed Polish independence, Great Britain and France would consider invasion as an act of war against themselves and be forced to retaliate.

Eileen was uncomfortably aware of Francis glaring in her direction. Her husband didn’t like her drawing attention to herself in company. She was beginning to wish she hadn’t spoken, when a figure appeared under the flickering gas lamp. Her dad!

‘Jack! Jack Doyle.’ Joey Flaherty jumped to his feet, his face wreathed in smiles. ‘You should’ve come before, Jack. Sit down, mate.’

There was a genuine chorus of welcome from the assembled crowd, and Eileen felt a surge of pride. Jack Doyle was one of the best liked and most respected men in the whole of Bootle.

‘It was a Pearl Street do,’ he said stiffly. ‘It wouldn’t’ve been right when it weren’t my street.’

He touched h