Donny’s green eyes widened. “Annie Poulson? Didn’t her lads come through Dunkirk?”
“That’s right, Terry and Joe. It was in the Booth Times”
“I don’t half hope I see some action like that!” He actually sounded envious.
Eileen puffed on her cigarette, suddenly angry. “I reckon your mam would do her nut if she could hear you. Poor Annie nearly went out of her mind -with worry while the lads were in France.”
“Well, women don’t take to war like men,” he said loftily.
“That’s ‘cos they’ve got more sense,’ Eileen replied in a tart voice.
Instead of being hurt at the putdown, Donny felt a sense of exhilaration at the fact that Eileen Doyle - he couldn’t remember her married name - actually considered him mature enough to engage in a proper philosophical discussion about the war. He’d had the same discussion often with his mam, though it usually ended up with her in tears when she was quite likely to give him a swift backhander, uniform or no uniform.
“But we’ve got to stop Hitler,” he ventured. “If we don’t, the whole world will end up under the heel of the Nazi jackboot.” He felt sure she’d be impressed with that, which he’d read in the Daily Herald.
“I know,” she said tiredly and clearly unimpressed. “But there’s no need to get so much enjoyment out of it.”
“I’d certainly enjoy killing a few Germans,” Donny said with relish.
“I’m sure you would. Our Tony’s just as bad, and he’s only six. He goes to bed every night with a toy gun under his pillow.”
“I won’t have a gun of me own, seeing as I’ve trained to be a signalman.”
He sounded wistful, and Eileen hid a smile as she began to sip the whisky. “Never mind. Signalman sounds very responsible, probably one of the most important jobs on the ship.”
“I reckon so,” he said, nodding gravely. “Drink doing you good, like?”
“I think it is.” The whisky felt warm and rather comforting as it slipped down, and she began to relax.
“Take a good mouthful,” Donnie advised, so she did, and he began to imagine telling his mates when he went on board ship next day about the lovely blonde, a real stunner and married to boot, whom he’d taken out the night before. “We had a few drinks, then . . . ” He stopped, because he couldn’t visualise Eileen Doyle doing anything other than finishing the drink and going home. Still, he could make up a good story by tomorrow to impress them all. He began to wonder exactly what was wrong. What was she doing on the Docky when she’d just been to a wedding, and why had she been standing outside the pub looking so lost and alone? She’d nearly jumped out of her skin when he spoke.
“I was planning on moving house today,” she said suddenly. “A friend of mine’s got this lovely cottage in Melling - that’s where I work,” she explained, “in Dunnings, the munitions factory. I was hoping to get away from the air-raids.” “I’d hate to come back and find you and Tony weren’t here for me,” Nick had said when she protested she didn’t want to leave her family.
“Why didn’t you?” asked Donnie.
“I missed the train,” she said, then, as if realising this wasn’t an adequate explanation, added in a tight anguished voice, “Something came up.” She finished the whisky in a single gulp.
“Would you like another?”
“No, ta,” she said firmly. The head already feels as if it belongs to someone else.”
Donnie began to run his finger anxiously around the top of his glass. “I won’t half be worried about me mam and dad and our Clare when I’m away at sea, what with the raids getting worse and worse. There were three hundred killed in London last Saturday.” According to his mam, a night hadn’t passed without the siren going since the beginning of September. “That was a right old pounding Bootle got on Tuesday.”
“Well,” said Eileen with a hard smile, “that’s merely another aspect of the war which you men are so fond of.”
She didn’t wait for his reply, but went on, “I have a friend, a scientist, who had a good deferred job in Kirkby. He would have been quite safe till the war was over. ‘Stead, he insisted on joining the RAF. The last few months he could have been killed any minute . . . ’ She broke off. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of young pilots had died as the Luftwaffe tried to wipe the British Air Force off the face of the earth in a terrible battle of attrition, but not Nick. At least not so far. He was, for the moment, quite safe and sound in Melling, perhaps still hoping she’d turn up.
Donnie had been well to the fore in the queue when brains were handed out, and he began to put two and two together. She had a “friend” with a cottage in Melling, and another who’d joined the RAF. Some sixth sense told him the friends were one and the same person and Eileen Doyle was almost certainly having an affair, which gave her an added air of mystery and only made her more seductive in his eyes. He glanced at her keenly. The whisky had brought a flush to her smooth cheeks. She was a bit too wholesome to be termed beautiful; there was a touch of the farmer’s daughter in her fresh, regular features and creamy hair which she wore in an unusual style, not permed like most women, but dead straight and in a fringe on her forehead, though her dad, big Jack Doyle, had probably been no nearer the countryside than his own. Her soft violet-blue eyes were moist, as if she might cry any minute. He felt a strong rush of sympathy and thought, somewhat wryly, that even if Eileen Doyle undressed on the spot and offered herself to him, he would turn her down, because she was too upset to know what she was doing and probably slightly drunk. He racked his brains to remember who she was married to. What was he like?
Well, there was no harm in asking.
“What does your husband do, Eileen?” he enquired casually.
The husband?” She looked slightly startled, as if she’d forgotten she had one. “Oh, Francis was in the Territorials when the war started, like, so he was called up straight away. The Royal Tank Regiment were sent to Egypt last February.”
Francis! Of course, Francis Costello, who worked for the Mersey Docks & Harbour Board and had a seat on Bootle Corporation. Donnie remembered the chap distinctly. He was one of those silver-tongued Irishmen with the gift of the gab who was great mates with Jack Doyle. Everyone spoke highly of Francis, though Donnie, more astute than most, hadn’t taken to him much. He seemed a bit of a fake, insincere, as if everything he said was only to impress people.
“I suppose you miss him, like?” he probed.
“I suppose,” she replied listlessly, which Donnie took to mean she didn’t miss him at all, though she missed the “friend”, the one with the cottage in Melling who’d joined the RAF. She gave a funny, cracked laugh and seemed to pull herself together. “I’m not exactly cheerful company, am I, luv? Anyroad, I’d best be going. I only came out for a breath of fresh air, like, and I’ve been gone for ages. It’ll take half an hour or more to get back, and me feet are killing me in these shoes.”
“I’ll walk with you,” he said with alacrity, wishing he was big enough to carry her, which he would have offered to do willingly if she’d let him. “In fact, I might call on your Sean. I haven’t seen him since I got me uniform.”
“Well I never!” she said in surprise as soon as they were outside. “The sun’s come out.”
The dark clouds which had appeared when she left the house, as if in sympathy with her mood, had completely disappeared and the sky was a dusky blue. The sun itself was out of sight, but the tops of the ships anchored behind the high dock walls were suffused with an unnaturally vivid light.
A cart passed them, drawn by two horses, magnificent beasts, their sleek bodies as black as coal and with tumbling silken manes. The wooden wheels bumped on the uneven surface of the road, and the driver held the reins loosely in his hands, as if fully confident the animals needed no directions. His shoulders were hunched and he looked tired, as well he might, for he’d probably begun work before the crack of dawn.
“I love the Docky,” Eileen said with a catch in her voice. “When we were little, me and our Sheila used to come and meet me dad when it was time for him to hand in his tally. I was a bit scared in those days. The high walls made me feel as if we were walking on the very bottom of the world.” She also loved the smells, even if some weren’t exactly pleasant; the aroma of oils and spices, of carpets and tea and coal, and all the million and one imports and exports that came from and went to places all over the world. The atmosphere was alien, slightly mysterious, and even now, at this late hour, there were scores of black, brown and yellow faces around, and the gabble of a dozen different tongues.
The dad said Liverpool Docks are die next to biggest in the world,” Donnie said, as proudly as if he were the owner.
Eileen nodded. “That’s right, only those in Hamburg are bigger.” They began to walk in the direction of Bootle.
“Have you finished your training, Donnie?” Eileen asked.
“Oh, yes.” He squared his shoulders importantly. “I take up me first posting tomorrow. I’m on a corvette guarding a convoy of merchant marine all the way to America.”
“Our Cal, that’s Calum Reilly, our Sheila’s husband, he’s a merchant seaman and due back from America any minute, God willing.” She crossed herself briefly, the way his mam often did. It wasn’t only in the air that the battle for survival was being fought. The carnage at sea, the loss of life and tonnage of ships being destroyed, was getting more and more horrendous by the day as German Uboats prowled the Atlantic in their search for prey. She looked down at him quickly. “You’ll take care of yourself, won’t you, Donnie?”
“Oh, you can bet your life on that!” he said cockily. He couldn’t wait to serve his country and give old Hitler the promised kick up the arse. On the other hand, although he did his best not to think about the dangers that lay ahead, . sometimes, alone in the middle of the night, he felt quite scared. You had to be devoid of imagination completely, and Donnie had more imagination than most, not to visualise the ship being torpedoed and him tossed into the icy waters of the Atlantic and struggling to stay above the waves. Or, perhaps worse, trapped by fire in the signalroom and roasting, ever so slowly, to death. There were half a dozen of his mates who’d already lost their dads or older brothers at sea, and his mam behaved as if Donnie had already had a death sentence passed on him. He was only eighteen, thought Donnie, panicking suddenly, and didn’t want to die. There were all sorts of things he wanted to do with his life, and dying young wasn’t one of them. One day, he’d like to meet a girl like Eileen Doyle and get married . . .
To Donnie’s horror, he felt his eyes fill with tears and he prayed Eileen wouldn’t notice. He’d been trying to impress her as a man of the world, and here he was on the brink of crying in the street like a little boy.
“Just a minute, I’ve got something in me eye.” The tears were by now coursing down his cheeks.
The lie didn’t work.
“Oh, luv!” She pushed him into a doorway and took him in her arms and there they were, in the clinch Donnie had been imagining ever since they met, but there was nothing romantic about it as she patted his back like a baby and said, “There, now. There.”
“I went into town this awy to buy me mam and dad and our Clare their Christmas presents,” he sobbed, “in case I was dead by the time it came. Then I walked home along the Docky, because it’s where I used play when I was a kid and I thought I might never see it again.”
When he was a kid! He was little more than a kid now, thought Eileen in despair. What a terrible world it had become, when lads of eighteen expected to be dead by Christmas!
“I’ll say a special prayer for you every night, Donnie,” she vowed. “Perhaps you can drop in and see us whenever you’re home, just so’s I know you’re all right, like.” He was a kind lad, and had been a tremendous help that day.
“Come on, now, luv, dry your eyes and we’ll go home.”
“I don’t think I’ll call on Sean,” he sniffed. “I’ll go back to me mam and dad and have a game of Snakes and Ladders with our Clare. It’s me last night . . . ” He stopped and gave his nose a good blow on a rather grubby handkerchief.
“That’s a good idea,” she said comfortably. Anyroad, knowing Sean, he’d be out with one of his never-ending stream of girlfriends.
They scarcely spoke again the rest of the way as they turned off the Dock Road and walked passed the Goods Yard and through the warren of narrow streets of two-up, two-down terraced houses where they lived. Eileen seemed lost in thought and Donnie felt too embarrassed to say another word. What on earth would she think of him, breaking down like that?
“This is our street,” he said awkwardly when they reached the Chaucer Arms, and she came to, blinking, as if she’d forgotten he was there. He almost wished he could run away without another word.
“Take care,” she said. “Don’t forget, I’ll be praying for you.”
“Ta.” He shuffled his feet awkwardly. “I hope you come through the raids all right, and . . . ” He wanted to say he hoped her RAF friend would come through, too. Instead, just to be polite, he said, “And I hope your husband comes home safe and sound.”
To his surprise, she gave a little bitter laugh. “There’s no need to worry about Francis, he’s quite safe, if not entirely sound. He arrived back unexpectedly this afternoon and they’re going to discharge him from the army. He’s home for good.”
Chapter 2
Eileen waited on the corner for Donnie to wave goodbye.
But she waited in vain, for the small hunched figure merely crossed the street and went into the house without a glance in her direction. No doubt he felt awkward bursting into tears like that, she thought as she continued towards home. She reckoned, somewhat sadly, that she’d probably never see Donnie Kennedy again unless they met by accident.
It had been four o’clock exactly, and she’d been about to slam the door on 16 Pearl Street for the final time, already late for Nick, having missed the train through no fault of her own, when an ambulance turned into the street, bringing Francis Costello home to his family. Eileen was put in the worst predicament she’d ever known; how could you walk out and meet your lover when your husband had returned injured from North Africa?