Put Out the Fires (13 page)

The plane began to approach, growing larger and blacker by the second, and the men on the bridge started to wave and cheer.

“Come on, mate!”

“It’s a Battle of Britain pilot, I reckon.”

The plane was almost upon them by the time the German crosses on the wings and tail could be seen, and the pilot, in his leather helmet and goggles, was clearly visible. As it zoomed downwards, little spurts of fire came from underneath the cockpit, accompanied by a sharp repetitive noise, a rat-tat-tat.

No-one moved, no-one spoke. The only sound to be heard was the noise of the engine as the plane appeared dead set on crashing into the wall where the girls sat.

Then, at the very last minute, with a deafening roar it veered sharply upwards and completely vanished out of sight.

It was only then that everyone emerged from their state of frozen shock.

“He’s shot the women! He’s shot the fucking women!” a man yelled.

Eileen dropped her bag and scrambled down the bank.

The girls were sitting transfixed against the wall, open mouthed, but very much alive. About two feet or three feet above them, a neat row of bullet holes had been chipped out of the brick wall.

“He missed!” screamed Doris. She stood up and shook her fist at the sky. “I caught that bleedin’ Jerry’s eye, and I willed the bugger to miss.”

“Oh, Doris!” Eileen flung her arms around the defiant girl. “You’re so brave.”

Doris said hoarsely, “No, I ain’t, Eil. I was bloody terrified.”

Stunned members of management began to emerge from the side door of the factory, and the shaken women were ushered inside. The canteen was hurriedly reopened to provide cups of tea.

“If anyone wants to go home, I’m quite happy to take them,” Miss Thomas called.

But no-one went home. In less than half an hour, everyone was back at work, though the narrow escape was the only topic of conversation for the rest of the shift. No one could be quite sure if the German pilot had meant to kill them or had deliberately missed.

“I suppose there’s one or two decent Jerries about,” reckoned Theresa. “Maybe he just wanted to give us a fright.”

“Well, he succeeded,” Carmel said with a leer. “I nearly shit me keks, I can tell you.”

“I think it was dead exciting,” said Doris boastfully. “I can’t wait to tell me mam. If I had a choice, I’d sooner be shot at than not shot at. It makes me feel sort of special.”

“You deserve a medal, the lot o’yis,” Eileen told them proudly.

One good thing to come out of the incident was that from that day on, Doris stopped making catty comments about Eileen’s promotion. Indeed, the women grew closer than they’d ever been before.

Chapter 6

The screams coming from next door had become so ferocious that Ruth Singerman, lying in bed with no alternative but to listen—no-one within earshot could possibly sleep through such a noise -began to worry for Ellis Evans’ sanity. It sounded as if the woman was rowing with herself in Welsh. Her voice was the only one that could be heard, a terrible, endless, piercing shriek. If Dai was at the receiving end of the diatribe, he was making no attempt to answer back. The row, if that’s what it was, had been going on for nearly an hour.

There was a raid in progress and Ruth could hear planes overhead and the occasional screech of a bomb to vie with Ellis, followed by an explosion and the terrified whinny of the horse in the coalyard opposite. Both she and her father preferred to ignore the raids, or at least pretend to ignore them, and remained in bed if they’d already gone up by the time the warning siren sounded.

“If I’m going to die, I’d prefer to die in comfort,’Jacob chuckled, though he kept his underwear on. ‘So I can get dressed quickly in case of an emergency.’

Ruth found it astonishing how quickly the air-raids seemed to have become part of everyday existence. So much so, it was the nights there was no raid at all that were remarked on.

“See bloody Hitler had other things to do with himself,” people would say the morning after they’d had an uninterrupted night’s sleep.

Even when folks they knew were killed, everyone seemed to take the loss of a neighbour or a friend in their stride. “What else can they do?’Jacob shrugged when Ruth remarked on this phenomenon. ‘Run around in a panic screaming their heads off like Ellis? People are very brave under the most trying of circumstances. Londoners are having it far worse than us, but according to the papers, they’re taking it like the proverbial bricks.’

Ellis!

Ruth pulled the bedclothes over her head to shut out the sounds, but it was useless. The screaming persisted and the bedclothes were no help. She wondered if there was something genuinely wrong. Perhaps the entire family were being murdered? If so, Ellis had cried wolf for too long, because no-one in Pearl Street seemed interested.

Another bomb came screeching earthwards and Ruth felt the hairs rise on her neck, though according to Jacob, “If you can hear the bomb coming, it means it’s not meant for you.” Perhaps he was right, because the subsequent explosion sounded several streets away. It was strange how the urge to stay alive persisted, no matter how many times you tried to convince yourself that life was no longer worth living. Even stranger was the fact she felt a sense of immediate danger much more strongly than during the two years spent hidden in Gertrude’s house. In fact, there she’d actually felt quite safe, but in Bootle the bombs weren’t searching for any particular victim; death and destruction was applied quite randomly. Any target, rich or poor, Jew or Gentile, would do.

Ruth decided to go down and make a cup of tea. She’d never fall asleep until the row next door - and the raid was over.

The living room was warm and the remains of the fire still glowed in the grate. Ruth raked the coals into life, filled the kettle and put it on the hob to boil. She didn’t bother lighting the gas mantle. The coals gave off sufficient light to see by and the room seemed cosier that way. Everywhere looked quite different from when she’d first come home; there were new curtains on the window which Jacob had made himself, a proper mat in front of the fire to replace the tattered rag rug, new tablecloths. Ruth got surprising satisfaction out of making life more comfortable for her father. It made up for not loving him as much as she should.

“You spoil me,” he protested when she came in laden with groceries, including the ginger marmalade and shortbread biscuits which she remembered were his favourites.

“It’s only our rations, Dad,” she told him.

“But I wish you didn’t have to work.” He continued to fret, as if she was above work, too genteel to earn an honest crust.

“I love it, Dad, honestly.”

Which was true, in a way. Playing the piano had always been her favourite occupation, and now she was being paid for doing what she liked best. Soon she would have saved enough to redeem the musical box from the pawnshop.

She had decided not to apply for a job in Eileen Costello’s factory, although the pay was good and, apparently, the work not too tiring once you got used to it. Ruth wanted to work in a place where no-one knew anything of her history, a place where she was a total stranger, because people might feel sorry for her and pity was something she couldn’t have stood—or prejudice; after all, Ruth been married to an Austrian, the country that had spawned the monster, Hitler. Perhaps Eileen would have kept quiet, but she would have known.

It had been for that reason, to get away from people who knew her background, that weeks ago Ruth had caught the train to Liverpool city centre in search of work.

Liverpool had scarcely changed since she last saw it. The sights she loved were still there, solid and eternal; St George’s Hall, Lime Street Station, the Walker Art Gallery, though here and there a bomb-scarred shop, the burnt out remains of a building, an ugly heap of debris, reminded her that the world had changed, if not the city. Ruth wandered around the shops and bought two pairs of stockings, a lipstick and a box of Ponds face powder out of the money from the musical box. She justified the extravagance by telling herself she’d soon be earning money of her own.

“You’re lucky,” said the girl on the cosmetics counter in Lewis’s department store. “We’ve just had a delivery.”

“Is powder difficult to get? I didn’t realise.”

“All make-up’s difficult to get.” The girl laughed.

“Where have you been? On the moon, or something?”

“It’s a long time since I bought any,” Ruth muttered.

Despite everything, she was still concerned with how she looked, though in a cold, detached sort of way, because at the back of her mind there was always the image of Benjy’s body swinging in the stairwell and an aching void left by her lost children. For instance, she was quite pleased with her hair. Instead of a perm, only a trim was needed to tidy up the ends. Once washed, her hair had turned quite wavy.

“You were curly as a baby,” Jacob said when she returned from the hairdresser’s. He’d been shocked to the core when she came downstairs that morning minus her long auburn plaits. “I must admit it looks very nice.

Modern, like that film star, what’s her name - Laraine Day.”

Ruth was amused to find he went to the pictures nearly every week, his single indulgence.

“It’s only threepence at the front. I’d sooner go without a meal than miss the pictures.”

He knew the names of all the stars and enthused over Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, Myrna Loy and William Powell, his favourites. Perhaps, thought Ruth, he’d like to see Gone With The Wind, which she’d noticed was showing at the Odeon. They could go together as a special treat one Saturday. Presuming she got a job, of course, which wasn’t likely if she merely wandered around buying stockings and make-up; spending money rather than finding a way of earning it. She was, she confessed to herself, at a loss where to look.

A familiar shop came within view when she turned the corner at the bottom of Ranelagh Street: Cranes in Hanover Street, where she used to buy most of her music. Ruth hurried across the road, drawn somewhat inexplicably by the sight of a white baby grand piano in the window. There were no customers inside and no sign of an assistant when she entered, though plenty more pianos, all upright. The sight of so many brought back the urge to play. She hadn’t played a piano since the Hun took the Steinway. There’d been a reluctance to use the one at home once her father told her it was badly out of tune.

Remembering how he’d cared for his beloved piano, it would have made her feel even more guilty for neglecting him when she found the old mellow velvet notes off key.

She’d never realised how poor he was. In fact, it was only over the last two years at Gertrude’s that she’d given him much thought.

The baby grand’s lid was propped open and there was music for a collection of Chopin waltzes on the stand, just waiting to be played. Unable to resist, Ruth sat down and opened the music. She played hesitantly at first, then with growing confidence. Her fingers flew over the keys.

Chopin was glorious!

She was approaching the end of the second page and was preparing to turn the music over, when a wizened liver spotted hand reached out from behind and turned the sheet for her. Without pausing, Ruth played on. The sheet was turned again and again, until she finished with a flourish and looked up.

A very old lady, well into her eighties, was standing directly behind. She wore a black ankle-length dress and several rows of jet beads, and her deeply lined face was as liver-spotted as her hands. Her blue eyes belied her age, bright and full of life.

“That was beautiful.” She nodded approvingly. “You’re Ruth Singerman, aren’t you? I recognised you straight away, more from the way you sit, than anything. Your back is incredibly arched when you play.”

“You recognised me?” gasped Ruth. The woman’s rather clipped, well modulated voice was as youthful as her eyes.

“You gave two concerts at Crane Hall. I recall them distinctly, even though it must be more than twenty years ago. Everyone thought you would be a great pianist one day, but . . . ” She paused.

Ruth raised her eyebrows. “But not you?”

“No, if you don’t mind my saying. You were brilliant, but not brilliant enough.”

“I haven’t got the span.” Ruth spread her hands. “See?

They’re not big enough.”

The old lady nodded. “Even so, you could have made a living giving concerts to the masses, the ones who can’t recognise brilliance from genius. What happened?”

Ruth shrugged. She rather liked the woman’s blunt candour. “I got married and had a family. That seemed a better thing to do than earn my living as a second-rate pianist - not that I felt I was making a choice at the time.”

“You did the right thing,” the woman said approvingly.

“Do you play?” asked Ruth.

“Not very well. I suppose you could say I was adequate.”

“This is a beautiful instrument!” Ruth ran the back of her hand along the milky-white keys. “It has the tone of a harp.”

The old lady smiled for the first time. “I don’t suppose I can persuade you to buy it?”

“I couldn’t afford the music, let alone the piano!” Ruth got to her feet, suddenly embarrassed. “What a terrible nerve, walking in off the street and taking over your most expensive piano! I’m so sorry.”

“Please don’t apologise!” The old lady squeezed Ruth’s hand. “I enjoyed the Chopin immensely.”

“I don’t suppose you need staff?” Ruth said hopefully.

“That’s what I’m doing in town, looking for work, but I’ve no idea where to start.”

“The Echo’s the best place, dear. There’s a whole list of vacancies every day. We’re fully staffed, I’m afraid. Some of our assistants were called up, which is why I’m here part-time, along with one or two others who retired many years ago.”

“I’ll buy a paper later on.” Ruth glanced around the showroom, grateful for the woman’s good manners or lack of curiosity in not demanding a detailed explanation of why she was in need of work. “It’s just that selling pianos is the thing I’d most like to do.” “Playing would be better, surely?”

“Of course it would! But I need to earn some money, and who will pay me to do that?”