The Heart of the Family

Here she was, going to work, and she had no idea if there would be a building still standing for her to work in, but as she turned the corner, and looked up Edge Hill Road, she saw to her relief that the Littlewoods building was still standing.

As had happened the previous day and the day before that, there were ominous gaps and empty chairs at some of the desks where girls had not turned up for work, but it was the empty chair next to her own that caused Katie’s heart to thump with anxiety.

She and Carole had been friends from Katie’s first day at the censorship office when Carole had taken her under her wing, and the fact that Carole was dating one of the men in Luke’s unit had brought them even closer.

Katie knew that Carole was living with her aunt, whose home was much closer to the docks than the Campions’ and, as she looked from the empty chair to her watch and then towards Anne, who was in charge of their table, a terrible thought was filling her mind.

‘Carole isn’t here yet,’ she told Anne unnecessarily, unable to conceal her anxiety.

‘I haven’t been told anything.’ Anne looked tired, dark circles under her eyes, and Katie felt a stab of guilt. Her brother was a merchant seaman, and with one of the convoys, and her fiancé was fighting overseas. ‘Try not to worry. With all the damage that’s been done and the trams and buses not running properly she might just have got delayed.’

Katie gave her a wan smile. Anne was right, of course, but it was still hard not to worry.

The disruption to the postal service caused by the blitz meant that the letters they had to check were only arriving sporadically; Katie tried not to look at the empty chair as she started work.

Theirs was important work – vital for the safety of the nation, as they were constantly being told – and it demanded their full concentration, but it was hard to concentrate on the constant flow of written words, checking them for any sign that they might contain an encoded message, when she was so conscious of Carole’s empty chair. Katie herself was involved – as part of her work – in correspondence with someone who was thought to be a possible spy.

She wasn’t really cut out for that aspect of her work, as she was the first to admit, but as her supervisor had told her more than once, they all had a duty to do whatever had to be done to protect their country from its enemies.

The door to the corridor opened. Katie’s head jerked towards it, her breath leaking from her lungs in a sigh of relief as she saw her friend.

‘I was getting really worried about you,’ she began as Carole sat down, only to break off as she saw the tears fill Carole’s eyes and then spill down her face.

‘What is it?’ Katie asked worriedly.

Carole shook her head, searching in her handbag for an already damp handkerchief before telling her, ‘It’s our Rachel, my dad’s brother’s eldest. She bought it over the weekend. Collapsed building. She’d bin up to London to see her hubby back off to camp. He’d bin home on leave. Seven months pregnant, she was, an’ all. I were her bridesmaid when she got married the year before last.’

‘Oh, Carole …’ Katie didn’t know what to say. It was plain that Carole was very distressed, and with good reason.

Anne looked towards them and said quietly, ‘Katie, why don’t you take Carole down to the canteen so that she can have a cup of tea? Don’t be gone too long, mind. We’re short staffed and there’s a backlog building up.’

Still crying, Carole allowed Katie to guide her back into the corridor and from there to the canteen where a sympathetic tea lady provided them both with cups of hot tea.

‘It will have to be without sugar,’ she warned them.

‘I can’t take much more of this, Katie, I swear that I can’t,’ Carole wept. ‘It’s really getting to me, them bombing raids every night, not knowing if I’m still going to be alive in the morning and not getting any sleep, and now this. Our Rachel was only twenty. Her dad, my uncle Ken, thought she was too young to get married but she said that she was going to be a wife to her George whether her dad let her say the words in church or not, just in case anything should happen to him with him being sent overseas, so her dad gave in. But now she’s the one that’s bin killed and her poor little baby with her. Oh, Katie, what’s going to happen to us and to this country? It’s all right Churchill saying we’ve got to stand firm, but it isn’t him that’s getting bombed every night, is it? I keep thinking that I might never see me mum and dad again, and I’ve a good mind to get out of Liverpool whilst I still can and go home.’

‘London’s being bombed as well,’ Katie felt obliged to point out.

‘Yes, I know, but not like this.’

Katie knew there was nothing she could say, and nothing she could do either, other than put her own hand over Carole’s in a small gesture of comfort.

‘Come on, lads, tea break’s over – back to work,’ Luke instructed his men.

They’d been working for over four hours, since six in the morning, helping to clear the debris from one of the main roads out of the city. A few yards away a group of men from the Liverpool Gas Company, aided in their work by men from the Pioneer Corps, had also been having their tea break, the tea supplied by volunteers from the WVS and their mobile canteen.

‘You’re Sam Campion’s lad, aren’t you?’ one of the older men asked Luke, nodding his head when Luke confirmed that he was, and saying triumphantly, ‘Thought you were. You’ve got a real look of your dad. Working with him the other day, we were, when the Salvage lot were helping us to get what we could out of Duke Street, after it got bombed.’

Now it was Luke’s turn to nod. The Gas Company’s mains’ records and control equipment had been housed in their Duke Street premises and it had been vitally important that they were salvaged.

The city had been lucky in that, despite a large number of electricity substations being damaged, with temporary repairs, the power company was still able to supply everyone with electricity.

‘Jerry can’t come back much more,’ the other man told Luke, handing his cup over to the waiting WVS volunteer. ‘There ain’t much left to bomb.’

Not much left to bomb and a hell of a lot of clearing up to do, Luke thought grimly, as he turned back to his own men.

They had been detailed to work alongside the men from the city’s Debris Clearance and Road Repair Service, shifting the rubble of bombed and collapsed buildings out of the way so that the damage to the roads underneath could be repaired and the roads made passable.

Unlike the previous Sunday when they had been working in the city centre, today they were working closer to Bootle, where the majority of the bombs had been dropped during the night.

Whilst one work party cleared the debris into a large mass, another transported the rubble by requisitioned lorries to temporary tips on Netherfield Road and Byrom and Pitt Streets, and a third was responsible for shifting this debris into the lorries.

It was backbreaking work – unless of course you were detailed to drive one of the lorries.

They’d been working for another half an hour when there was noisy commotion in the street behind them. Luke turned and watched grimly as a huge piece of machinery was driven down the road towards them.

He’d already heard all about the fun and games caused by the overenthusiastic help of the newly arrived detachment of American engineers and their heavy excavating and earth-moving equipment, sent to England under the new Lend Lease Act, along with the engineers who were to show the British how to use these monster machines.

In order to speed up clearing the rubble from the bombed buildings, the City Fathers had asked the Americans if they could help. Liverpool’s streets, though, were not designed for wide American machinery, and it had turned out that the instructors sent over with them had not actually driven the machines before themselves. There had been one or two unfortunate incidents, including one in which a machine had become stuck down a narrow street. The sight of such a thing lumbering towards them now had Luke’s men exchanging knowing looks.

‘I guess you guys could use some help,’ the gum-chewing sergeant, who had clambered down from the cab of the vehicle along with four GIs told Luke laconically.

One of the tall, broad-shouldered black GIs grinned and commented, ‘Hey, Sarge, look at that. They’re using shovels. Ain’t that something?’

His tone was affable enough but Luke could see that his men were bristling slightly, and he could understand why. He wasn’t too keen on the big American’s manner himself, although he suspected that rather than being deliberately patronising, the GI simply wasn’t aware of the effect his words were likely to have on men who had had little sleep during five continuous nights of heavy bombing, and who had just spent the last four hours trying to deal with some of the aftereffects of those bombs.

‘Hey, buddy, we’ll have that truck filled for you in ten minutes flat,’ the sergeant told Luke.

‘Ten minutes. Hey, Sarge, I reckon we could do it in five. In fact I’m ready to bet on it. Ten dollars says we fill the truck in five.’

Luke frowned. He had no ideas of the rules governing the US Army but in the British Army gambling was forbidden. Some of the men might run illegal card schools but they would never have challenged a sergeant to a bet – especially not in public. The Americans were slouching against the cab of their vehicle, laughing and smoking even though they hadn’t been given permission to stand easy, and talking to their sergeant as though they were all equals and they had no respect for his rank at all. Luke’s frown deepened. He might only be a corporal but he knew how to make sure his men were a credit to their regiment and he would certainly never have tolerated such sloppy, unsoldierly behaviour.

The sergeant, though, far from castigating the soldier, was unbuttoning the flap on his pocket and removing a wad of notes, peeling some off and slapping them down against the shiny metal of the machinery.

‘Ten says you can’t and another twenty says you can’t do it in four minutes.’

‘Hey, boys, come and see the sarge lose his money,’ the private called out.

Laughing and whooping, the men crowded round, all of them peeling off notes.

‘You’d better have big pockets to match that big mouth of yours, Clancy,’ the sergeant derided the GI, ‘’cos you sure as hell are going to have to dig deep into them.’

The Americans were behaving more as though they were on a bank holiday outing than involved in the serious business of dealing with war-damaged buildings, but then of course this wasn’t their home country or their war, Luke thought bitterly, remembering that the American were still neutral and staying out of the war. Given the choice, his pride would have inclined him to turn his back on them and simply pretend that they did not exist. But of course he knew that he couldn’t.

‘OK, you guys, let’s get to work,’ the sergeant announced, stepping away from the machine so that the soldier he’d addressed as Clancy could climb up into the cab and set the thing moving.

The sound of it alone, rumbling down the road, was enough to bring down any unstable buildings, Luke thought sourly as he walked alongside it.

Luke took his role as corporal very seriously. His men, their safety and the proper execution of whatever work they were given to do were his responsibility.

Clancy brought the machine to a halt and then activated the large ‘shovel’ to grab some of the rubble, swinging it over to the waiting truck.

The American soldiers cheered as the claws opened and deposited the rubble into the lorry.

‘Hey, buddy, here’s twenty bucks says you can’t clear the lot in ten minutes,’ the sergeant yelled, as a second load was added to the first, and then a third.

‘He can’t do that,’ Luke protested. ‘There’s a weight limit on those trucks. The axles won’t stand up to them being overloaded.’

Strictly speaking the British driver of the truck wasn’t under Luke’s command and was in any case a civilian. Luke, though, wasn’t about to stand to one side whilst the truck driver was placed in danger, and he could see that that was going to happen.

‘Hey, buddy,’ the sergeant slapped Luke on the shoulder, ‘This is the US Army you’re dealing with now, and we say there ain’t no such thing as can’t.’

The American soldier in the cab of the earth-moving vehicle was grinning as he yelled back, ‘You’re on, Sarge. Watch this.’

Angry now, Luke warned the sergeant, ‘Look, you’ve got to stop this. There’s at least two full loads and maybe three there. It’s impossible to get it all into one truck.’

Ignoring Luke’s warning, the sergeant called up to the driver, ‘Go to it, Clancy. Let’s show these Brits what being American is all about.’

Luke was in danger of losing his temper. ‘Any fool can see that there’s too much there to go in one truck, and that it’s asking for trouble to try,’ he insisted.

‘Hey, buddy, you’re the one who’ll be asking for trouble. See these stripes?’ the sergeant told Luke. ‘They say sergeant in any man’s language. Now go watch how we clear the roads in America – and that’s an order, soldier.’

Luke could feel his face burning with humiliation and fury. They both knew that the American had no authority over him, but the damage had been done and he had humiliated Luke in front of Luke’s own men as well as his own.

Walking away from him Luke went over to where Andy was leaning on his shovel, watching grimly as the lorry was heaped with load after load of rubble.

‘Go and find whoever’s in charge of the nearest ARP unit for me,’ Luke told him. ‘Perhaps Mr Know-it-all back there will listen to him—’ He broke off as suddenly the lorry buckled and then tilted, calling out a warning to its civilian driver, who had been standing a couple of feet away, smoking. But it was already too late and the man’s screams as the lorry fell on top of him were filling the street.

Luke and his men ran towards the scene. The collapsed lorry had disgorged its contents, covering the street in the debris they had spent four hours clearing up, but none of them gave that a second thought as they rushed to the aid of the suddenly silent driver.

Luke had known that there would be nothing they could do – the full weight of the lorry had fallen sideways onto the driver – but he and his men still worked frantically to lift it.

The American sergeant’s voice was thin and strained with shock as he muttered, ‘How the hell did that happen?’

Luke turned to look at him, saying fiercely, ‘You killed him. You know that, don’t you, Sergeant.’

‘It was an accident. We were trying to help.’ For such a big man, now he seemed oddly diminished and very afraid, but Luke was in no mood to show him any mercy.

‘No, you were trying to win a bet,’ said Luke coldly.

Inwardly he was shaking with a mixture of savage fury and despair. Hadn’t the city lost enough lives without this? But what did these Americans know? How could they understand? They weren’t even in the war.

FOUR

Even though it was now late morning, the small rest centre where Jean worked as a volunteer as part of her WVS duties, handing out cups of tea and offering words of comfort to those who needed them, was packed with people who had been bombed out in other parts of the city, and whose local rest centres had been demolished along with their homes.

Jean had to squeeze her way past them, calming the fraught nerves of people queuing, who thought she was trying to jump in front of them by showing them her WVS badge and explaining that she was on her way to the kitchen to relieve one of her colleagues. The heartfelt apologies that followed her explanation brought her close to tears. People were so frightened and so grateful for even the smallest amount of help.

‘Jean, thank goodness you’re here.’ Noreen Smith, who was in charge of their small group, sighed in relief when Jean finally made it through to the small kitchen. ‘We’ve been rushed off our feet, with last night’s bombing. Bootle got hit ever so bad and we’ve got folk coming in from there with nothing apart from what they’re standing up in. I don’t know how the city’s going to cope, I really don’t, what with so many roads blocked, and no proper supplies or outside help able to get in.’

‘Well, my Sam and our Luke will be doing their best to get the roads cleared, along with everyone else on clearing-up duties, that I do know,’ Jean told her stoutly, a small frown creasing her forehead when she remembered that just before he had left for work this morning Sam had told her that there was something he wanted to discuss with her.

‘What is it?’ she had asked him but he had shaken his head and told her gruffly, ‘There isn’t time now. They’ll be waiting for me down at the depot.’ ‘Sam …’ she had protested, but he had shaken his head, making clear that he wasn’t going to be coaxed into saying any more.

‘I don’t doubt that,’ Noreen was saying, dragging Jean’s attention back. ‘We’ve all seen the way in which everyone’s turned to and got on with things.’ She shook her head, her composure suddenly slipping as she added, ‘Even my Frank is saying now that we can’t hold out much longer.’

The two women exchanged mutually understanding looks as Jean removed her coat and hung it up.

Every rest centre had a store of second-hand clothes and blankets it was able to hand out to those in need to tide them over. The rule was that all blankets had to be returned as soon as Government coupons and fresh papers had been supplied, so that they could be put back in store for the next person in need, but as Noreen had pointed out two nights ago, increasingly people weren’t returning the blankets, because they were virtually all they had. The council was doing its best, but the sheer number of people being made homeless meant that supplies were running out.

‘At least we had that convoy of Queen’s Messengers get in from Manchester before the roads got blocked,’ Noreen told Jean.

The Queen’s Messengers was the name given to a mobile canteen service provided by the Queen, with convoys based all over the country, staffed by the WVS and ready to rush to any emergency where food was required.

‘And it’s a mercy that they did. I don’t know how they’d have gone on in Bootle if they hadn’t, from what my Frank’s said.’

Noreen’s husband, Frank, worked for the Gas Company, and like Jean’s Sam he was spending long hours helping to repair bomb damage.

‘From what I’ve heard they nearly got bombed themselves,’ Jean told her.

‘Where’s that billeting officer?’ Noreen continued. ‘She’s normally here by now.’

On the morning after a bombing raid every rest centre that was operational and not bomb damaged received a visit from one of the City Council’s billeting officers, carrying with her lists of available accommodation.

‘It’s all very well the council saying that no one’s ever had to spend a second night at a rest centre on account of them finding them accommodation, but what about all them trekkers?’

In her indignation Noreen’s voice lost its careful gentility, her accent becoming stronger.

‘And don’t tell me that it’s not them that’s responsible for all our blankets disappearing. After all, blankets don’t just walk out by themselves, do they? No. It’s not right, that’s what I say. No decent folk would want to go roaming around the countryside sleeping in barns and that, like that lot do. Stands to reason, doesn’t it, if they choose to do that when the council says it can find them a proper roof over their heads?’

‘I wouldn’t fancy it myself,’ Jean admitted, ‘but then I haven’t been bombed out, and we’ve had some in here that have had that happen to them more than once. I dare say there’s some folk that are just too plain afraid to stay in the city at night.’

‘That’s all very well, but in that case they should stay in the country and not come back here expecting to be fed and taking our blankets.’

Noreen was normally a good-natured soul and Jean suspected that her current snappiness could be put down to the strain they were all feeling.

It was also true that there was some hostility to and suspicion of the trekkers, as they were unofficially called, with some people even suggesting that their number included men who were trying to avoid conscription.

From what Jean had seen, though, they seemed decent enough sorts, albeit from the poorer dock area of the city, which had been more heavily bombed, with a lot of them coming in to work during the day before trekking back out to the country at night.

‘I’ve even heard as how the City’s putting on special trucks and handing out tickets to them for places on them, to get them out at night.’

If that was true surely it must mean that the city was in an even more desperate situation than anyone was saying, Jean thought worriedly. The only reason the council could have for encouraging them to leave at night had to be because they couldn’t provide accommodation for them because so many buildings had been destroyed.

Removing her hat-pin, then taking off her hat and putting it on the shelf above her coat, Jean reached for her apron, ready to relieve the WVS volunteer who was manning the tea urn.

After the first and even the second night of bombing the mood of those who had come to the rest centres had been defiant and determinedly cheerful. Jokes had been cracked and heads had been held high, but now that had all changed, Jean acknowledged as she poured a cup of tea for an exhausted-looking young woman with three small children clinging to her side.

‘’Ere, get a move on wi’ them kids, will yer?’ the woman next to her grumbled, impatient for her own cup of tea, and moving up before the young woman could get out of the way properly, accidentally jarring her arm so that her precious cup of tea was spilled.

Tears filled the young woman’s eyes.

‘Don’t worry, love,’ Jean tried to comfort her, pouring her a fresh cup of tea. ‘The billeting officer will be here soon and get you sorted out.’

The young woman gave a hiccuping sob and shook her head. ‘He’ll be lucky if he can do that.’ She was shaking now.

Catching Noreen’s eye, Jean murmured, ‘Stand in for me for a few minutes, will you, Noreen love, whilst I see what’s to do?’

It was recognised amongst their group that Jean, with her motherly manner, had a way of dealing with situations like this one so Noreen nodded, allowing Jean to leave her post to usher the young woman and her children into the back room, where she offered her a seat on one of its battered hard wooden chairs.

The young woman shook her head again. ‘I darsen’t ’cos if I sit down I reckon I’ll never want to get up again. It’s bin three nights now since we had any proper sleep. Me and the kids were living with my hubby’s mam, but she got fed up, what wi’ the little one crying, and then me and her had words, and she said we had to leave. She’s never liked me. Then we went and stayed with my mam but she’s got our nan and me sisters there with her, and then when I tried to go back to my Ian’s mam’s I found out she’d been bombed. Half the street had gone.’

‘Our nan got killed by a bomb,’ the eldest child announced. ‘Served her right, it did, for throwing us out.’

He was too young to understand, of course, but his mother had gone bright red.

‘I wouldn’t really have wished her any harm, only she didn’t half wind me up and sometimes you say things you shouldn’t. My Ian will have something to say when he finds out. He’s bound to blame me, ’cos she was bad on her legs, you see, and she wouldn’t have gone to the shelter.’

Poor girl. How awful to have to carry that kind of burden of guilt, Jean thought sympathetically.

‘You mustn’t blame yourself,’ she told her. ‘And as for your husband having something to say, well, I reckon he’ll be too relieved to see that you and his kiddies are safe, to do anything but give you a big hug. That’s better,’ Jean smiled approvingly when the young woman took a deep breath and stopped crying. ‘You go and wait for the billeting officer, and no more tears.’