Three Women of Liverpool by Helen Forrester Page A

and only Ruby, eleven months younger than him, escaped being bullied by him whenever he was in a bad temper.
    The noise of the anti-aircraft guns began to shake the old house.
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    Unaware of the frantic clean-up done by candlelight after the previous night’s raid, a dozen men were lounging round the tables of the sailors’ canteen, gossiping amid the usual cloud of tobacco smoke.
    Mrs Robinson arrived at the same time as Emmie. She was carrying two parcels and Emmie took them from her. “These are heavy,” she exclaimed.
    “Crockery oddments, my dear. After last night, we’re dreadfully short. These are a donation from Lewis’s – I went in to see them this morning.”
    In the kitchen, Peggie Evans, another paid member of the staff, was tidying up the last of the muddle from the lunchtime rush. “T’ fish is finished,” she told Emmie and Mrs Robinson, “T’ butcher brought plenty of sausage, though, for tonight. And there’s still a lot o’ dried egg.”
    As she put on her overall, Emmie told her how the fish had been covered with dust the previous night. “At first we was goin’ to throw it out. Then Mrs Robinson said what waste. Sowe washed it very carefully and put it in the larder. Did you have any complaints?”
    “Never a word. Deep fried, there’d be nought the matter with it.” She took her coat off a hook and her handbag out of a drawer. “Was I ever glad I wasn’t here last night. It must’ve been awful.”
    “I were scared out of me wits,” admitted Emmie. “I got a proper laugh, though, out of the note you’ve pinned on the sandbags round the door. ‘Open for business – very open.’”
    “Aye. I thought t’ lads ’d believe we’d given up on ’em, with the shutters closed, like.”
    “You know we had the till cleaned out, during the raid?”
    “No?”
    “Somebody took the whole night’s takings. Must’ve done it while we was in the shelter. We didn’t stop to lock the front door.”
    “Stinking buggers,” said Peggie forcefully, as she clapped a blue beret on her head. “Tara-well.”
    Doris did not arrive. She lay dead in the arms of the seaman who had taught her to smoke, under the wreckage of a shop doorway which had suddenly collapsed on them, taking both their lives while they made love.
    A white-haired grocer’s wife, Mrs Atkins, and the silent, elegant Lady Mentmore were redeployed to cover the work. “Perhaps she’ll phone later,” suggested Emmie.
    “Is the phone working?” Mrs Robinson looked harried. She was bone-tired, her plump, middle-aged body refusing to run at its usual pace.
    Emmie went to the table by the window and cautiously lifted the receiver and put it to her ear. “It’s still dead,” she announced.
    “Oh, dear! What a nuisance! The crater down the street must be responsible for that. I saw the Post Office Telephones van there, as I came in.”
    Mrs Atkins looked up from her carrot scraping. “It reallywas an awful night. And it could have been worse. I heard this morning that they were worried about a munition ship called the Malakand in Huskisson Dock. It’s being loaded for the Middle East. And with the fires and that being so bad up the north end – poor Bootle – they were mortally afraid it would explode.”
    Emmie froze, the fork with which she was pricking sausages poised to stab. “The Malakand ?” she exclaimed in horror. “My Robbie’s on that.” She turned a stricken face towards the carrot scraper. “He never told me it had munitions in it.”
    Mrs Atkins soothed, “Well, nothing’s happened to it yet. Perhaps it will sail today.”
    Emmie nodded assent and slowly and heavily she pricked the neat pink rows of sausages. She tried not to weep. To sail the Med with ammunition in the hold! Even if he got out of port safely, it could be a death-warrant! She wanted to scream ‘No’ to God. Was He really almighty? She wanted to faint, to escape the fear which pierced her. But she could not, must not. In a war, she