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Better for her to be here, Martha had decided gloomily, rather than being left, as she had been found, hungry and with a broken hip, lying in the unheated hallway of an old house by the Herculaneum Dock.
She had been lucky that the rent collector had found her. When there was no answer to his pounding on the door, he had decided that she might be in but hiding from him, in the hope that he would go away: she was already behind with her rent.
He had knelt down to lift the flap of her letter box and peer through it. When he saw her curled up at the bottom of the narrow staircase, he had immediately run to find the policeman on the beat.
With his own key to the house, the rent collector opened the door for the constable, an ambulance was called from the corner telephone box, and an exhausted, moaning Martha was taken to hospital.
After a spell in hospital, she had been discharged to this old folk’s nursing home, she had told Angie, because she had no one to care for her.
As Martha scolded Angie for her ignorance of the infamous Liverpool court system, she became quite animated, and heaved herself painfully into a sitting position, to better lecture her.
‘You see, Angie, I were born in a court and so was me hubby; we lived in one till the war, so I know how dreadful they were.’ She paused for a moment, and then said thoughtfully, ‘It’s funny, though, I never thought of them as dreadful in them days – they was just normal life.
‘People what had never seen one usually denied they existed – ’cos they didn’t want to know. We was a family of eleven living in one room.
‘There’s people, even now, as don’t believe anybody’s starving or living with at least half a dozen other people in one room – ’cos nice people don’t want to know.’
From her own experience, Angie knew about people who ignored the misery of others, and she nodded agreement, while Martha paused to instruct her fretfully, ‘Don’t tuck me feet in so tight. I get cramp, you know that.’
‘OK,’ Angie replied easily, in her strong Jamaican accent.
Martha repeated vehemently, ‘People don’t want to know anything as makes them feel uncomfortable, ’cos then they might have to do something about it.’ She went on to explain how men like her husband, employed on the docks, had to live within walking distance of them.
‘’Cos, they was casual labour and had to sign on for work twice a day, wet or fine, you see. So houses was built in courts, to cram as many into one acre as they could – and to cram as many people into each house as you could find a piece of floor for them to sleep on. As close to the docks as they could, like, so they could walk to work in a few minutes.
‘All you could see from the main street was an archway, and, if you went through that, you come into a little paved yard. It had eight or ten houses in it.
‘There was two privies at the far end, against the back wall of the next court, and they had to do for all of us.’
She chuckled suddenly, and then added, ‘There was often a proper rush on them, specially in the mornings.
‘For years, there was near thirty people in our house alone. That were nothing like as bad compared to them that lived there fifty years ago, when I were a little girl.
‘There was a pump in the middle of the court, so as we could get water – and you often had to queue for that, too.’
She sighed at the recollection of carrying water for eleven people into her family’s room.
Then, as Angie, astonished at such a lack of lavatories, paused in her tidying of the room, Martha continued, ‘Each house had three storeys and a cellar, two rooms on each floor. And at the top there was an attic.
‘Back rooms had no windows, of course – because their back wall was the back wall for another court’s houses behind ours, you see.
‘Because the houses was in two rows facing each other, with the two lavatories across one end, it meant that we was walled in. Only the front rooms had windows – looking onto the court.
‘The main catch about living in our court was that there was a family in every room,’ Martha went on, the words dragging out of her, as she realised that Angie was beginning to lose interest.
‘You was never alone, Angie, and it was so cold in winter. The back rooms, as well as not having windows, didn’t have no fireplaces either. So even if you could buy coal it wasn’t no good.’
‘It sounds awful,’ replied Angie politely. She did not mention that her own current accommodation was not much better. Instead, she sighed wearily, as she took a quick peek behind the curtain which surrounded Pat’s bed. The curtain had been drawn round her because the doctor was expected to come later in the week to see her, thank goodness; Matron had, at last, taken notice of the aides’ reports on her.
‘It was hell!’ went on Martha forcefully. ‘And yet, you know, I was often happy then. The neighbours was wonderful – good, solid friends.’
Angie could not think of a suitable reply to this confession. She did her best, however, to provide an understanding smile. She knew she would miss her tea if the old bird didn’t stop talking soon.
Martha sighed. She felt that she was as good as in prison. She was never taken out. She had never even been into the garden surrounding the old Victorian house, a garden which she was allowed to look out on only when she was moved into a chair by the window, while Angie changed her sheets each week.
Matron seemed to imagine that clean sheets were the most important thing you could want, and that if something to eat was brought to you three times a day and you had a bath and a shampoo once a week, that was all you needed in life.
Martha grimaced. A fat lot she knew; the frantic aides often skipped both bath and shampoo.
But where had real life gone to? Where were the family, the visiting priests, the well-meant visits of amateur social workers, the busy streets, the cars, trams and lorries making pandemonium, the cries of the stallholders in the market, the children all pestering her at once, the family rows, the trips to New Brighton, the colossal fights after the football finals, when everyone got drunk down to their last penny, the interesting gossip with friends she had known all her life, the comfort of a Saturday night pint at the local, the weddings and wakes, the processions on holy days, the men tipsy and longing for you of a Saturday night?
All gone, slowly slipping away through two generations in the turmoil of the war and its aftermath – and no hope of their return, she decided mournfully. Instead, only a clamour of angry young people who did not know what suffering was, all of them wanting things – tellies and phones and expensive blue jeans and fancy kitchens and bands what made a racket like you’d never believe. I wants, she called them.
‘Bring us a cuppa tea, Angie – when you’ve had yours?’ she whined.
The aide nodded conspiratorially, and fled: the patients were supposed to wait for tea until it was served with the last meal of the day. Martha always received a clandestine mugful from Angie, however, because no other patient in the room had a clear enough understanding to demand a cup of tea for herself.
Angie, thanks be, was proper kind to her, Martha decided; she risked Matron being real mad at her if she found out about the illicit cup of tea: she was certain that Matron would consider it to be a wilful waste of tea.
Most of the time, Angie was the only person Martha had to talk to, and now, as the girl went for her meal, an anguished sense of loneliness, of desertion, crept slowly over her. She began to cry hopelessly, allowing the tears to run down her face unchecked.
‘Jaysus, how can I bear it?’ she muttered.
Absently, she took her rosary out from under her pillow. Other than her artificial teeth sitting in a glass of water beside her bed, which she always referred to as ‘me gnashers’, it was the only personal possession she still had: she did not feel that the teeth, provided through the National Health Plan, were really hers, though the dentist had assured her that they were.
Except for the rustling movements and mutterings of the other patients in the small room, and a distant tinkle of china and teaspoons, there was no sound.
‘Dear God Almighty, how do I get out of this place?’ she prayed without hope. ‘I might as well be dead.’
Then she asked herself in despair, ‘And, come to that, if I ever get out, where can I go?’
She could not answer her own questions.
While she waited for her cup of tea, she lay with the rosary in her hand. Then she ran her fingers along the familiar beads.
‘Hail, Mary, full of grace,’ she began. At least, in your loneliness, you could talk to the Holy Mother, she sobbed to herself. Even if she never replied, her silence did not mean that she hadn’t heard you.
ONE (#ulink_ae9bb2d6-ab74-52b2-9feb-5a3dbebf82ad)
‘He Were an ’Ero That Day, He Were.’
April 1937
Mrs Martha Connolly, wife of Patrick and purveyor of clean rags in the city market, sometimes remarked that she did have one lucky strike in her life, although she was not too sure even about that – in the end, she felt, it just seemed to mean more worry and more work for herself. The lucky strike was that her husband Patrick, though only a casual dock labourer at the time, was a good swimmer.
‘Anyways, he were an ’ero that day,’ she would boast proudly to her friends.
In explanation to less well-informed friends, she would say reflectively, ‘He were a lively lad. He swum in the canal ever since he were a kid, and won a few races in his time. It isn’t his fault that he never had a trade. He had to start earning a living the day he were twelve – or he’d have starved. So he took what there was – he went down to the docks with his dad and he’s been there ever since, poor lad.’
After she married him, she ruminated, he had kept up his skill by swimming in the nearby Wapping dock, if there were no ships tied up in it.
Both of them knew that such trespassing was illegal, but she never said a word to anyone about it, because it was such a welcome relief to him after working in claustrophobic warehouses or ships’ holds, or from the fetid confinement of their overcrowded, noisy court dwelling: from her point of view, it was much better than his getting drunk with his pals in the Baltic or the Coburg.
The dock master and the other men working the dock knew his face. They never attempted to stop him unless there was a boat coming in to berth, in which case, they would warn him for his own safety. But in the depth of the Depression of the 1930s boats were few and far between.
One fine Tuesday morning in April, however, instead of trying for work or swimming in the dock, he was hanging around the Pier Head for another reason, while at the same time watching the ferries come and go across the river. On Sundays, during good weather, watching the river traffic was a popular after-church occupation for Liverpool people.
On this weekday, however, there was an unusually large crowd, because HMS Ark Royal was being launched from the other side of the river: the Pier Head was a perfect place from which to view it. Chances of getting any work, he had decided, were remote, and his Sundays off would never offer such a good spectacle as the launch of a big ship. Better, by far, to be present at this historic occasion.
He made the excuse to himself that his back hurt abominably from a particularly heavy job he had done the previous day: working today would only make the pain worse. He hoped that Martha would never find out that he had failed to go to the stand, as usual, in hope of getting work.
On Sundays, if he did not go down to the Pier Head, he preferred to lie on the old mattress on the floor of the family’s single room. There, he rested and enjoyed the rare quiet, while Martha herded six of their nine children to the nearby church. As a live-in servant, Lizzie usually attended the church closest to her employer’s home; Colleen, aged ten, lay fighting tuberculosis of the hip in Leasowe Children’s Hospital, far away on the other side of the River Mersey; and James, little Number Nine, was babysat by their neighbour, Mary Margaret, who lived in the back room upstairs.
Nowadays, Mary Margaret always said she coughed too much to be welcome at Mass – the noise disturbed the praying. But, in truth, though she loved the glittering little church with its theatrical service, she no longer had the energy to walk that far.
This particular Tuesday, amongst the many others strolling up and down or waiting for the launch, Patrick recognised a well-known city councillor. Most Merseysiders had seen his ruddy, moustached visage more than once in either the Evening Express or the Liverpool Echo. He was a man much given to noisy controversy on any subject which might give him publicity and convince Liverpudlians of his care of their city.
Outstanding in a crowd of mostly thin people, the councillor’s well-padded frame, encased in a three-piece suit, with a bowler hat rammed firmly on his head and a walking stick beneath his arm, suggested a successful man well content with himself.
His dirty macintosh flapping in the wind, Patrick watched him with the lazy indifference of the unemployed and hungry, as the floating landing stage heaved gently beneath their feet.
He was standing near the end of the stage, where a small private yacht with a broken mast had been temporarily moored: he had wandered over to look at the little craft. The councillor reached the end of his stroll at the same point, but, before turning back, paused beside him to peer down at the stricken boat.
‘Must’ve got caught in last night’s storm,’ he remarked to Patrick, as he turned to view him with friendly condescension.
‘Oh, aye,’ replied Patrick. ‘Real bad, it was.’ He was not interested enough to continue the conversation, or to warn the stupid man when he unwisely stepped over the guarding chain to look more closely at the little yacht.
While docking, a ferry bumped into the floating stage. The stage gave an unexpectedly big heave. The councillor staggered, failed to regain his balance, stumbled over a mooring rope and with a mighty plop fell into the river.
Patrick stared dumbly as the water settled again. Then the councillor, his bowler hat bobbing slowly downstream, came spluttering to the surface.
It became obvious to Patrick as the man floundered that the councillor could not swim. The current began to push the struggling man away from the stage, and, before going under again, he screamed for help.
Patrick swore to Martha, afterwards, that he did not plunge in to save him because he was a councillor and therefore important.
‘Might’ve left the silly bugger to fend for hisself, if I’d remembered,’ he told Martha scornfully. ‘What use is he to folk like us? And him a Prottie, too.’
But Protestant or not, he did instinctively plunge in to rescue the drowning man. A few powerful strokes and he caught him by the collar of his jacket. He shouted to him to stop struggling, but it took a second or two for the instruction to penetrate. Then, to Patrick’s relief, the councillor obeyed.
Swimming on his back, Patrick began to tow him towards the landing stage.
The current was against them and it took all Patrick’s strength to make headway towards the stage, where, as the accident was noticed, there was sudden activity.
With one hand Patrick finally managed to grab a hold on the gunwale of the little yacht.
As a crowd of helpers rushed to the edge of the stage, all shouting advice at once, the yacht threatened to turn over. One would-be rescuer with more sense threw a life buoy with a rope attached to it.
The current pushed the buoy away. A swift jerk brought it closer, and Patrick and the terrified councillor thankfully grasped its looped ropes.
In addition, a small rowing boat nudged at Patrick’s back, as its owner shipped his oars. Breathless after his quick row towards them, the rower gasped encouragement to both men to ‘’Old on, there, na. Seen you dive in, I did. Soon get you out.’
With the aid of an assortment of idlers, the city councillor was roughly heaved back onto the landing stage, while a panting Patrick hauled himself out.
Sitting on the edge of the stage, Patrick wiped the water from his face with his hands. Then he took his boots off and emptied the water out of them. He examined them ruefully. ‘Should have took them off,’ he muttered to himself. ‘Nobody should try swimming in boots.’
Reclining on the stage, supported by two friendly ferrymen, it seemed as if the councillor spat up half the Mersey River before both he and Patrick were escorted into the nearest warm place, the Pier Head teashop.
The sopping wet councillor was soon seated in the tiny café. A mug of hot tea was immediately proffered him by the startled woman in charge; she kept asking no one in particular, ‘Whatever happened to him, poor bugger?’
Near him stood the owner of the little rowing boat, who had helped to push the pair of them up out of the water. He was nearly as wet as the other two.
In the opinion of the boat owner, this chap in a three-piece suit was obviously a Somebody. Though he did not recollect who he was, it seemed likely that he might receive a decent tip for taking care of a Somebody. So he paid the penny for tea for him, in addition to a mugful for himself.
All attention was focused on the councillor and on the boat owner standing close behind him. It did not occur to anybody in the small crowd of interested onlookers, amongst whom stood the penniless Patrick, boots in hand, that he, also, might be glad of a hot cup of tea; or might even like the chance to mop the water out of his hair with the dish towel quickly produced for the councillor’s use.
While his ruined suit still dripped mournfully over the bare wooden floor, the councillor, aware of who had really rescued him, groggily thanked Patrick. Then, after a moment’s silence, he asked what he could do for him in recompense for his remarkably quick deliverance from drowning.
‘You could have lost your own life – that current is deadly,’ he added, with a hint of respect in his voice.
Looking like a sewer rat newly removed from a drain, Patrick stared at him, nonplussed. He had lost his cap and scarf to the river, and his ill-cut hair draggled over his eyes and down the sides of a gaunt face blackened from years of dust from a multitude of ships’ cargoes.
With an effort, he tried to clear his mind. He wondered if the councillor would consider the replacement of his cap and scarf. Then, as he trembled with exhaustion, the very basic desire of his life swelled up in his mind and expelled any other consideration.
Why not ask? he thought. Why not?
He took a long chance, and whispered almost without hope, ‘If you could get me a regular job, sir…if you could, sir?’ His exhaustion made it difficult to speak.
It was like asking for gold, in a city with thirty-three per cent unemployment. But bearing in mind that this was probably his only chance to talk to a man who might be the equivalent of Father Christmas, he added hastily, ‘And a decent place to live.’
The equally exhausted councillor blew through his lips, and his moustache dripped its last drip.
He turned to the woman behind the counter. ‘Ask this man his name and address and write it down for me,’ he ordered, in a voice still rather weaker than his usual stentorian tone. He turned to the boat owner, and added, ‘And this man’s, too.’
The boat owner smirked with satisfaction.
While the woman hunted in the pocket of her grubby apron for a nub of pencil and then in a drawer for a piece of paper, the councillor turned back to his rescuer and, with a wry smile, said to Patrick, ‘Aye, that’s an ‘ard one, lad!’ He chewed his lower lip for a moment and scratched his wet grey hair, while Patrick waited in almost unbearable suspense. Then he asked, ‘’Ave you got a trade?’
As a member of the City Council, he enjoyed, occasionally, being able to show a little munificence, and here he was, now, seated in front of a small crowd: a good moment. He’d be sure to get his picture in the paper; he had noted that a holidaymaker had leaned over the side of the tied-up ferry to take a snap of him, as he sat on the landing stage. Just now, he had seen the same man at the back of the crowd raise his camera to take another one. He would probably sell the pictures to the Post. Not exactly dignified, he considered, but to have it on the front page of a local newspaper would be useful publicity. And he might, at least, be able to get his rescuer a medal.
Because he had had no breakfast and felt faint, Pat badly wanted to sit down on a nearby stool. He feared to do so, however, because he might offend, by his disrespect, a man who was rich enough to own a gold pocket watch, which still dangled on a chain, secured to a button of his waistcoat.
‘I’m a dock porter, sir,’ he replied, shamefacedly.
‘Humph. Casual? Unskilled, eh?’
‘Yes, sir,’ Patrick muttered. ‘It’s all I could get, ever since I were a kid.’ Then, gaining courage, he added, ‘But I’m strong, sir. I’m a hard worker.’
The councillor nodded, accepted a second mug of tea from the fawning boat owner, and drained it.
