The Bells of Scotland Road (69 page)

‘Thanks for all you did for Muth’s funeral,’ said Bridie. ‘Anthony and I really appreciate your efforts.’

Maureen picked up a broom and began to sweep the cluttered pavement. ‘I’ll stop at home till the war’s over,’ she told Bridie. ‘Then, I’m going to . .
.’ Cathy knew. And Mam and Dad. But for the most part, Maureen kept her dream to herself.

Bridie was pleased. Maureen was still a lovely young woman. Maureen had always intended to go into the theatre, and she would probably do quite well. ‘How’s your mother now?’
she asked.

Maureen stopped sweeping. ‘Well, she’s accepted it. I mean, she couldn’t clobber Father Bell, could she? Because he isn’t who he was when he did it. And she’s
pleased because I’m feeling better.’ She paused, looked hard at Bridie. ‘It’s no fault of yours or Anthony’s,’ she said. ‘Or Father Brennan’s. That
po-faced policeman would never listen to anyone who wasn’t a Mason or an Orange Lodger. Still, at least he’s lost his job over it.’

Bridie sighed heavily. When would the Catholic versus Protestant match be over? The game was well into extra time, had gone on for centuries. She wished with all her heart that the antagonism
would cease. Still, the war had brought the factions together, though only when strictly necessary.

‘I’ll miss you,’ said Maureen. ‘And I’ll miss Cathy, too.’ She grieved also for the countryside, for the smell of new-mown hay and the whinny of horses.

‘You can visit after the war,’ suggested Bridie.

‘We’ll see,’ replied Maureen. She picked up the broom and attacked the dust of war. ‘Yes, we’ll see.’

She wore a bit of dyed silk that had been intended for a parachute. It occurred to Bridie that she might be depriving the occupant of some crippled plane a chance to jump out
safely, but Edith reassured her. ‘It has a couple of flaws,’ she explained. ‘It will hold together for a wedding, but not for hundreds of feet.’ She arranged Bridie’s
bouquet of roses and gypsy grass.

Bridie gazed at herself in the mirror over Diddy’s mantelpiece. She had lived here for a couple of weeks, had sheltered in a Morrison under the stairs. Public shelters continued to be one
of Bridie’s nightmares.

Tildy, Maureen, Shauna and Cathy were bridesmaids, but Nicky had gone to work as usual. The noise from the gaggle of female attendants drifted down the stairs. Bridie remembered her last
wedding, the one she had attended with great reluctance and two unhappy children. There had been an over-large wedding ring and an unknown groom.

‘That shade of blue suits you,’ declared Edith. The material had turned out a bit streaky, and the dye would not survive washing, but the overall effect was pleasing.
‘I’m pleased that you and Anthony are to be legal at last,’ she said. Edith had tolerated the relationship eventually, though her discomfort had sometimes been obvious.

Bridie grinned ruefully. ‘Sam knew, Edith. He left me to Anthony like a bequest.’ And Father Michael Brennan had almost lost his parish because of Bridie. He was an unusual priest,
she thought, very human, very gentle and understanding.

‘And I’m glad you’re leaving this place,’ said Edith. ‘It is far too dangerous.’

Bridie swivelled round and faced her companion. ‘That’s not why I’m going,’ she answered quietly. ‘I’m leaving because my husband lives elsewhere.’
There was a void in her heart, an emptiness created by the imminent loss of her dearest friends. ‘I love Scotland Road,’ she said firmly.

Edith tightened her lips. Had it not been for the intervention of Lord Derby, many more would be dying in the raids. Whole families travelled each evening to Lord Derby’s estate. They
slept in his property, then returned to their work and schools every morning.

Bridie took something from her shopping bag and pushed it into a pocket. ‘I’m ready,’ she said. Anthony would be waiting at the church. This time, he would not be sitting with
a crying Shauna, would not be watching his twin brother officiating at the altar.

The bridesmaids, also in dyed silks, clattered down the stairway. Bridie looked at her beautiful daughters, thought about Cathy’s success at school, about Shauna’s undeniable
courage. Tildy was grinning from ear to ear, while Maureen simply stood looking elegant and composed. ‘You are all lovely,’ said Bridie.

Tildy stuck out her tongue. ‘Come on, then,’ she said. ‘Let’s get it over with. I’m expected at what’s left of the library in a couple of hours.’

Diddy came in with Billy. She wore a typically dreadful hat, with the same murderous hatpin skewering the less than lovely creation to her tightly curled hair. She was going to miss Bridie.
Holidays had been offered, yet it would never be the same. Bridie was part of the neighbourhood. Would she have stayed if the shop had survived the bombing? Yes, she would have remained until
Sam’s mother’s death, Diddy answered herself.

Bridie held out her arms and pulled Diddy close. ‘Don’t let them take it all away,’ she whispered. ‘After the war, they’ll start moving you out.’

Diddy laughed grimly. ‘They’ll need a battering ram for my house, love. Come on, this is your happy day.’ She pulled away, straightened her collar. ‘Onward Christian
soldiers,’ she cried. ‘Billy? Have you cleaned them shoes?’

Bridie left the house and took the arm of Dr Richard Spencer. He was a splendid man, so much nicer than the one who had given her away last time. They stepped over holes in the pavement, avoided
stretches of hose, picked their way carefully to the church.

The organ played triumphantly. Bridie looked at the packed church, wondered where they had all come from. In the middle of a very cruel war, the folk of Scotland Road had made time for her and
for Anthony. No matter what Liam had done, these people forgave unreservedly.

She stood next to her lover, made her promises happily, then signed the register in the presence of Michael Brennan. Looking a bit wet around the eyes, the priest laughed and joked about how
much he loved a happy ending.

Outside, a few Brownie cameras took snaps, while Richard Spencer used his better camera to mark the occasion. Bridie kissed her husband, kissed her children and everyone else within reach, then
walked back to Diddy’s on Anthony’s arm.

‘What is that in your pocket?’ asked Anthony. ‘Your mother’s rosary?’ He had noticed how his bride had kept plunging her hand into the pocket of her skirt.

Bridie took out the item and showed it to Anthony. ‘It’s all we have left of Sam,’ she said.

Anthony opened the lid, saw the bits of dried-up Virginia and a wedding band. ‘Oh, Bridie,’ he said, ‘how did I manage to get through life this far without you?’

They dried their tears on a shared handkerchief, then strode on towards their wedding breakfast.

Dr Caitlin O’Brien, a woman in her early sixties and of average height and build, rose from her desk and picked up a pile of books. She placed them in a carton with the
photographs she had removed from the walls. Today, she would retire.

How many years had she been at this hospital? She knew every crack in the walls, every corridor, every ward. Thirty, almost exactly, she told herself. Thirty years spent digging her way into the
minds of others. Psychiatrists, she often told herself, were probably the sickest of all people, because they had chosen to spend their lives investigating human behaviour. There was a dent in her
door where an agitated man had tried to smash a chair, and an odd section of glass had taken up residence in one of the windows. The original piece had been removed by an unhappy woman bent on
suicide.

Cait dragged a packet of Benson’s from her bottomless bag and rummaged for a lighter. Inhaling deeply, she pulled out all the photographs again and lined them up along her desk. The
largest was a black-and-white print of the Costigan family, Billy, Diddy, Charlie, Nicky with her Graham Pile, Maureen and Tildy. Jimmy did not feature, because Jimmy had never returned after the
war. This picture had been taken on a very special day, the day when the church bells had rung again after a long silence. The bells of Scotland Road had pealed, but Bell’s shop was no
more.

‘You saw his grave,’ Cait whispered to Diddy. Diddy had been drunk to the point of unconsciousness when she had finally agreed to be poured onto the aeroplane. Of course, with two
airborne journeys under her belt, Diddy had extolled very loudly the virtues of flying, though she had been no further than Blackpool since.

Cait closed her eyes, pushed herself backwards in time to the fateful day when Diddy had moved to Kirkby. The house was boarded up like a fortress. Mammy and Anthony were there, trying to shout
words of wisdom through a letterbox that no longer existed. Diggers and lorries were backed all the way down Scotland Road, the workforce standing by idly while waiting to demolish the street.

‘I’ll come out in a coffin,’ screamed Diddy from somewhere within the citadel.

Tildy and Maureen stood on the pavement with Cait. Nicky and her Graham had emigrated to Canada, had taken Charlie with them. Shauna, too, was in Canada. She had married her Canadian sailor, had
set up in business with Nicky and Graham. The cakes and pies from Pile’s English Bakeries were sold all over the New World.

‘Mam?’ shouted Tildy. She had left her children at home with their dad, a nice, quiet chap with a string of fish and chip shops. Tildy lived in Waterloo, had managed to avoid the
exodus to Kirkby. ‘Mam? What about food?’

‘I’ve got a fridge full,’ came the snappy reply. ‘And a load of tinned stuff.’

‘It’ll run out,’ replied the ever sensible Tildy. ‘What happens when you run out?’ She glanced at her watch and frowned. Tildy was supposed to be ordering new stock
at the Picton Library. ‘Mam? Do you want to starve?’

No answer was forthcoming.

Father Brennan arrived. ‘Bring yourselves out of that house this minute,’ he ordered. ‘Billy Costigan? Wasn’t enough harm done the day you marched on the council offices
and got yourselves arrested? You’ll be in trouble again, Diddy,’ he continued. ‘You’ve made your point.’ Reporters and cameramen were arriving. ‘When you built
your bonfire on the steps of the civic buildings, you expressed how you felt, right enough.’

Cait tried again. ‘You can’t stay,’ she told her imprisoned friends. ‘The house comes down today.’

‘Then we come down with it,’ screamed Big Diddy.

Cait turned to the priest. He was well into his eighties, yet he remained sprightly for a man so large. ‘What do we do?’ she asked helplessly.

Michael Brennan grinned. ‘What did we ever do with them, Cathy?’ He always used Cait’s baby name when he saw her. ‘Wasn’t that the most glorious family you ever
met?’ He sighed heavily. ‘Scotland Road was all about family. They survived because they had one another. If a child returned to an empty house, sure he had a dozen aunties and uncles
who would give him shelter and a bite.’

Cait bit her lip, thought about what was happening here. The houses were being destroyed along with a whole way of life. ‘Will they keep them together in Kirkby and Huyton?’ she
asked.

Father Brennan had a theory, but he kept it to himself. The words ‘divide and rule’ had sat at the forefront of his mind for several years. He had seen some of the earlier letters,
had wondered over possible ambiguities. Some of the Scottie Roaders had been overjoyed to move away. Promises of bathrooms and inside toilets had been dangled like carrots before donkeys. There
would be green fields, space, newly built council flats and houses. But many had moved to Kirkby in the mistaken belief that their old homes would be demolished and rebuilt.

‘Father?’

‘Yes, Cathy?’

‘Will they keep the extended families together, within reach of one another?’

‘No. They’ll be put where they fit and they’ll fit where they’re put and to hell with what they might be wanting.’

‘God,’ breathed Cait.

‘I’ve said a word or two to Him myself,’ replied the priest. ‘We’ve women coming back here two and three times a week to shop. They stand where their houses used to
be, and the sadness in their faces would break the hardest heart. They’ve few shops out there, you know. And a boy I met told me about his dad walking to work every day with the other
dockers. The lad would stand at his window and watch a river of ants making its way homeward each evening. Those ants were working men travelling home after a day’s toil. Let’s hope
they get some more buses soon.’

Tildy was becoming upset. The bailiffs had arrived with large hammers and tin helmets. ‘Stand back,’ roared one of them. He swung his hammer while Tildy ran at him. She clouted him
across his back with her shopping bag. ‘My mam’s nearly seventy,’ she roared at him. Cameras clicked. A BBC outside broadcast crew filmed the action.

Anthony grabbed Tildy’s arm. ‘Leave them to it,’ he said quietly.

‘They’re pulling my bloody house down,’ cried Tildy. Huge tears ran down her face while newsmen moved in on their prey. ‘Bugger off,’ yelled Tildy.
‘You’re like Dracula, always drinking in other folks’ lifeblood and misery.’ Since becoming a qualified librarian, Tildy had adopted a colourful turn of phrase.

The hardened crews remained unmoved, kept their film rolling.

Bridie pushed aside the man with the hammer. ‘Diddy?’ she called.

‘What?’

‘You can’t stop it. You can’t stop what’s happening. And you’ve a good man in there who’s recovering from a heart attack. This will do him no good at all.
Diddy, it’s like trying to hold back an erupting volcano. No matter what you do, the house is coming down.’

A reporter approached Bridie. ‘Is there anything you would like to say to our readers?’

Bridie stared into the dispassionate eye of a television camera. ‘Oh, yes,’ she replied sweetly. ‘I’ve plenty to say.’ She eyed the newspaper man, smiled
over-sweetly at the television crew. ‘This is euthanasia,’ she said. ‘Many of the younger folk have moved on voluntarily – not all to Kirkby, I might say – to better
themselves, yet here’s the hero of the piece,’ she waved a hand at the man with the hammer, ‘come to throw out the older people. They don’t need to go yet. Why drag them
screaming all the way to those little cardboard houses with no shops, no cinema, insufficient buses? Why? Can’t they have their last years in peace in the place they love?’