It was late afternoon when I got back to Liverpool. Elizabeth and John had been sitting having their tea in the little kitchen when I knocked at the door but John ran into the hall when Elizabeth let me in and threw himself into my arms.
“Oh, Uncle Richard,” he cried, “I’m glad you’ve come back.”
“So am I, son,” I said and it was true. As much as I loved the farm, this was where I really wanted to be, with Elizabeth and John. If it weren’t for the bombing, nothing on earth would make me persuade them to go back.
I could see myself settling in a little house like this, after the war, where everything was open and simple and spoken out loud. Me, Elizabeth and our son. So it was with a glad heart that I joined them at the small table squeezed in between the gas stove and the kitchen cupboard and tucked in to jam sandwiches.
“How about going to the pictures tonight?” I said to Elizabeth, when John had gone upstairs to find his homework books. It occurred to me that she and I had never been out together as a couple. Indeed, we’d never done any of the normal things that young couples in love did. We’d had sex, but in those days that wasn’t as normal out of wedlock as it is now. The fear of pregnancy was far too great. But we hadn’t been to parties or pictures, or even walked in a park, just holding hands.
She looked doubtful. “What if there’s bombing again?”
“I’m sure they won’t come tonight,” I said confidently, “they’ve been over three times lately. It’s someone else’s turn.” I took her in my arms and nuzzled my lips into her neck. “What about it? There’ll be something on in town,” I urged, “let’s go.”
She grinned. The old Elizabeth was back, relaxed and happy. “Yes,” she said, “I’d really like that.”
John came into the kitchen. “I’ve got arithmetic and geography tonight,” he groaned, “it’ll take me ages and Grandfather said he would take me to the ceilidh at the Irish Club. Colin and his mother are going too. You could come, Uncle Richard, you and Mummy.”
“Uncle Richard and I are going to the pictures tonight, love, but tomorrow, I’m going to make a picnic and we’re all going to the seaside for the day. You’ll like that, won’t you?”
“Yes!” he yelled and I joined him in his little war dance of joy, up and down the narrow hallway.
“Now,” I said, “let’s have a look at that homework. See if I can help you a bit.”
Mr Nugent came home half an hour later, with two oranges and half a pound of sugar in a blue paper bag. Nobody asked where these rations came from, but Elizabeth gave him a little kiss as she took them from his hands and put them safely away in the cupboard. I wondered about Mr Nugent. He seemed to be a gentle old man and was obviously a doting grandfather, but from the little I knew about Elizabeth’s childhood, there had been a time when he had been a drunken and neglectful parent. Something had changed him.
“Come on, young feller me lad,” he said after John had put away his books, homework all neatly written out, “go and get your coat. ’Tis time for the ceilidh.” He looked back at us as he went through the door. “Don’t you two be worrying now; I’ll bring the boy home by ten o’clock and make sure he goes to bed. You have a nice night out.”
“Goodbye, Mummy,” called John, chasing after the old man who was striding out with his slightly rolling gate, down the road towards the docks. “Goodbye, Uncle Richard.”
It was a fine Spring evening with the sun low in a pale sky as Elizabeth and I walked hand in hand through the damaged streets up into the centre of town. Liverpool had been bombed regularly in the last few months, the docks catching the bulk of it though a few stray bombs had done damage further into town. But if you didn’t see the collapsed buildings or catch the whiff of acrid smoke which hung around the dockside, you would never guess that this was a city in fear of its life. The people were as cheerful and funny as ever, couples like us, arm in arm, racing up the streets so that they could be in time for the start of the picture show.
Elizabeth was as girlish and relaxed as I’d ever seen her. She wore a dark green coat over a white blouse and checked green and red skirt. Her hair was caught back in two combs and bounced freely on her shoulders, like it used to in the old days. In later years when I have seen things about the war on the telly, it always appears in black and white, and I think that how most young people think of it. But it was brightly coloured, maybe more than the years just before. I felt proud and happy at the same time. Here I was, a strapping young sergeant with flashes on my uniform drawing respectful glances from other servicemen and on my arm was the prettiest woman in town. I couldn’t have been happier.
“Let’s see this one,” said Elizabeth looking at the poster outside the cinema. “The girls at the hospital have seen it. They say it’s wonderful.”
We went in and I can remember that film now. It was The Philadelphia Story with Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant. It was on television only a few weeks ago and I started to watch it, but after ten minutes, I turned the set off. It brought so much to the front of my mind. Things that I wasn’t prepared to think about and such overwhelming sadness and despair.
The cinema was full and at the interval, after the news and cartoon, the lights came on. Elizabeth and I held hands like youngsters, foolish I suppose, but our love life up to now had been difficult and constantly separated. Was it surprising that we couldn’t behave like sensible thirty-year-olds? I longed to lean over and kiss her, but she would have been embarrassed in front of all these people. Instead, she talked about her child, our child, who was always to the forefront of her mind.
“I hope John enjoys the ceilidh.”
“Your father will make sure of that,” I replied absently, examining her fingers one by one, admiring the oval of her nails and after a swift look round, drew her hand to my mouth for a kiss.
She giggled and snuggled up to me. “Dada loves him. I think he feels that he didn’t give my poor brother enough time and is making up for it. You knew I had a brother, didn’t you?”
Did I? Maybe. I couldn’t remember. Selfishly, at this moment, I didn’t care.
“My little brother, Ulick. I looked after him when Mammy left. He died of diphtheria,” she said. “He was only six, I was ten and Dada was out drinking. There was nobody to help me, no neighbours that I knew. No doctor.” The fingers in mine squeezed tight. “It was horrible watching him, Richard, he was clawing for breath and I couldn’t help him because I didn’t know what to do. He choked to death.”
I stopped kissing her fingers and looked at her face. It was troubled, but still lovely. My Elizabeth was always the loveliest woman in any room and even when we had stood in the lobby of the cinema, waiting to buy our tickets, some men had turned to look at her. I don’t think she’d noticed. That was the thing about her. She wasn’t aware of anyone outside her immediate circle of interest. I was lucky; she loved me so my interests had now become hers. Maybe this was the time for our chat about home, and I practised a few sentences in my head, as I decided how to broach the subject. But it was no good, she was still thinking about her childhood
“I vowed then that I would never allow myself to be poor like that again.” She gave a short laugh. “And I haven’t been poor, have I? Not in money. Just, well… you know.”
I did know, but here I was planning to send her back to where she would be miserable. My words were pap, but the best I could do. “You’ve got me, sweetheart,” I said, “for the rest of our lives.”
We were quiet then, sitting together in that crowded theatre as the lights went down and the curtains swished open.
The funny thing was that I didn’t really watch the film. My eyes were on the screen, but of course my mind was elsewhere, planning how to tell her that she must go back to the farm and take John with her. They must be safe at all costs. With the two Land Girls and Mother about the place all the time, our Billy wouldn’t dare touch her. Perhaps her father would like to go with them. Then she wouldn’t have to worry about him either. Yes, that was it. That was what I was going to suggest. After the film was over, we would go for a supper at the Kardoma Café and I would explain what I had arranged at the farm and that she had to go. It was relief in a way, to have thought it all out and I sat back then to try and catch up with unfolding story in front of me.
But I was too late. Suddenly, a message was flashed across the screen and the lights went up. An air raid warning was sounding outside and we were instructed to get up calmly and walk outside to the nearest shelter.
“Oh,” whispered Elizabeth and when I looked down at her, I saw that the colour had drained from her face and that her lips were beginning to wobble. “John,” she murmured, “I must get home.”
There wasn’t time. The sirens were wailing as we left the cinema and the ARP wardens were insistent in their directing us to the shelters. We had no choice but to join the throng hurrying down into a damp and smelly underground place of safety. What a dreadful place it was too. For Elizabeth’s sake, I kept my feelings of disgust to myself. This was my first experience of being in an air raid shelter and I fervently hoped it would be my last and hers too. We could hear the sickening crump of bombs falling so close by that plaster and brick dust was shaken loose from the ceiling and showered down on our heads.
I put my arm round Elizabeth’s shoulder and muttered some words that I hoped would comfort her as we sat huddled together on the slatted bench. She was white with anxiety and flinched each time the distant thud of an explosion echoed through the cavern. “Will they be all right, Richard?” she kept saying, and then, “we should never have left them.”
“Don’t worry,” I said trying to keep my voice as light and cheerful as possible, “your father will look after John. They’ll be fine.”
She nodded, but I could see that my words had not reassured her.
It was nearly two hours later when we were able to leave the shelter and climb nervously up the steps and out into a dusty night. The city was a horrible sight, bleak and dark around us, with people scurrying away, shouting desperate goodbyes to each other as they hurried home. To the south, down by the river, the sky was lit up by huge fires stretching like burning fingers into the sky and the air was full of acrid smoke.
“Quick!” said Elizabeth, tugging at my hand. Her eyes were wild as she looked towards the dock area.
The closer we got to the docks, the brighter the night became. A red glow suffused the sky, and it seemed that everything in front of us was part of a great inferno. The noise was tremendous, with further explosions and the sound of collapsing buildings and above all the banging and crashing, the incessant ringing of ambulance and fire engine bells told a frightening story. These appliances kept passing us, backwards and forwards, swerving round corners in their terrible haste and each time an ambulance screamed past, Elizabeth would whimper in terror and increase her headlong dash to the little terrace house that she had made her own.
“Get your breath,” I said, taking her arm in an attempt to halt her reckless flight, but she shook me off as though I was nothing but an unnecessary hindrance.
“I have to get to John,” she gasped. “Don’t try to stop me.”
I wasn’t, but it would have been useless in trying to point that out so I hurried along beside her, jostling now and then with other frightened people who were running in the same direction. I knew that they were the same people we had seen, laughing and joking on their way into town only a few hours earlier. Then they had been enjoying the peace of a Spring evening and now they were grim-faced and terrified. The fate of their loved ones was all that concerned them.
We came to the top of the street where Elizabeth lived and to my relief, I saw that the houses were standing. There was damage. Most of the windows were out and the road was littered with bricks and slates from the roofs, but you could see that none of these houses had taken a hit.
“It’s all right,” I said, as we looked towards Elizabeth’s house. “It hasn’t been touched. You can stop worrying.”
“Thank God,” she whispered and took my hand again while we walked, slower now, towards the little red brick terraced dwelling.
It was all agog in the street. People were out, standing back to look up at their houses, pointing out broken windows and chimneys to their neighbours. Relief was almost tangible and within minutes, you could hear the shouted jokes and good humour returning to these brave men and women. But my heart sank when I looked towards the bottom of the street where a huge fire was burning. It would seem that a docked ship had taken a direct hit and even as we reached Elizabeth’s front door, an ambulance, bell clanging dementedly, rattled past us up the hill.
“Poor souls, whoever they are,” said Elizabeth, sympathetically her eyes following the white vehicle as she opened her front door. She paused and turned back to me. “I think I’d better go into the hospital. I expect I’ll be wanted.”
“Yes.” She was right, I suppose. In war we all had to do our bit, but I had hoped to spend the night in her arms and I was bitterly disappointed.
“John, Dada,” she called as we went into the hall. The house was dark, the electricity had gone from the whole street and a keen draught was coming in through the smashed front windows.
“John, we’re home. Where are you?”
I could hear the wind getting up and the crackling of wood in the distance. Flecks of soot danced in through the windows, bringing a sour hot smell of burning paint. I could imagine the mess down at the docks, see the mangled iron work and smashed buildings. I could even picture grey paint curling and squirming into vapour as it burnt off the hulls of docked ships. But that was down there. Here, the house was not that badly damaged and could be repaired quickly. The only thing was that it was empty. We received no reply to Elizabeth’s call and I think I knew then. The silent house presaged the silent years to come.
“John!” Elizabeth’s voice was getting more hysterical and I could only stand back helplessly as she tore up the steep narrow staircase and then down again and into the little back kitchen.
“They’re not here,” she wailed and ran out of the house into the street.
“John,” she called again, looking up and down, searching the faces of the people who were standing around, for the two she wanted to see. “Dada,” she screamed and her voice grew more and more desperate.
I took her arm. “Stop it,” I said. “Pull yourself together.”
She had started to cry and I reached for and took her into my arms, but it was no good. She didn’t want me. She wanted her son.
“They’ll be at club,” I said. “I expect they went into the shelter when the warning came and then continued the dance when the all clear sounded. Look,” I pointed to my watch, “it isn’t even ten o’clock yet.”
“Oh, d’you think so?” Her face relaxed and she clung to my hand. “That’ll be it, won’t it?”
I nodded, but truth to tell, even then I was doubtful. The docks had taken a fearful hammering and the Irish Club was right there, beside the shipping offices.
“You stay here,” I said. “I’ll go down and find them and bring them home. I’ll give your father what for, for frightening you so.”
She wouldn’t have it of course, determined to accompany me down the street until we came to the T-junction and broad road that bordered the dock. It was a dreadful sight down there. Burning ships and buildings crackled and split in the ferocious heat and people running about like demented animals. It’s hard to be brave when your fellow man is suffering and you can’t do anything about it.
We were stopped about a hundred yards along the road by an ARP warden and a policeman.
“You can’t go any further, Sergeant,” said the warden, putting up his hand to stop us. “It’s too dangerous.”
Elizabeth spread her arms in a pleading gesture. “Please,” she said, “please. My son and my father came down here tonight. To the Irish Club. It’s just over there. I want to see if they’re all right.”
I caught the look that passed between the two men and my heart turned to ice. The place she had indicated was a smouldering ruin of broken bricks and roof tiles.
“Best not,” said the policeman looking meaningfully at me. “I think you should take the lady into the church there,” he pointed towards a wretched little chapel that stood at right angles to the road and bore a large sign, which read “Accounting Station.” “There’ll be people in there who can help you.”
“Oh, God,” said Elizabeth brokenly and I took her arm and half carried her into the church.
Inside, it was very quiet. Two or three stunned-looking women sat on the pews and, towards the back, where the font should be, a couple of men sat at a table and stared fixedly at a list of names. I sat Elizabeth in the nearest pew and went to the table.
“I’m looking for John Wilde, a young lad and his grandfather, Ulick Nugent,” I said. “They came down here this evening.”
“Where they in the Irish Club?” said the older man. I noticed he wore a dog collar and that the cuffs of his jacket were worn and dirty. A smear of soot painted one eyelid and cheek and his white hair was full of dark specks.
“Yes.”
“I’m sorry.” He had an educated voice that sounded strange here, but it was full of compassion. “It took a direct hit. No survivors.”
I wanted to vomit. My stomach lurched and heaved like the worst case of seasickness and when I turned to look at Elizabeth, it felt as though the world had suddenly turned into slow motion and that every sound was coming to me from a long way off.
“No!” she was shouting, “no!” and she was getting up from the pew and racing towards the church door.
With legs like lead I followed her, my steps seemingly huge but somehow not covering the ground and I feared I would never catch her. To my relief, the man sitting beside the minister, jumped from his chair, took her in his arms and brought her to a halt.
“Steady, Missus,” he breathed. “There’s nowt you can do out there.”
She started screaming then and, coming to my senses, I took over from the young man and held her in my arms, shushing her cries and stroking her hair until the screaming stopped and she was still.
After a minute she whispered with renewed confidence and determination, “it isn’t true, Richard. They must have already left and had gone into town to find us.”
What could I say? Only that it was possible and that we would go back to the house and find them there waiting. But I knew that it would be a lie, so I put my arms around her again and pressed my face into her hair.
The minister pushed back his chair. “If I can have word,” he said, touching my elbow and jerking his head towards the vestry.
I straightened up and whispered to Elizabeth, “I won’t be a moment,” and walked to where the old man was indicating.
“There a few bodies in here,” he said, pointing towards the closed door. “They need to be identified.”
I swallowed and could feel myself backing away. I couldn’t do this. I couldn’t look at smashed and broken corpses that only a few hours earlier had been so alive and joyful. But I glanced back over my shoulder to where Elizabeth was sitting totally alone and desolate in the hard polished pew and took a deep breath. I had to do it. I couldn’t let her look at her son and father in the state they were probably in. So I nodded and let the old minister lead me into the little room behind the chapel.
It was lit by an oil lamp like the one we used to have in the kitchen and as I sniffed the oily smoke, comforting memories of home flashed into my head. These were soon dashed when I looked down. About ten bodies lay on the floor, covered in red ambulance blankets.
“Are these all of them?” My words were foolish but hope began to spring. There must have been more people than this at the ceilidh. Obviously, some had escaped.
The minister cleared his throat. “These are the only ones that could be possibly identified,” he said. “The others were too,” he stopped and looked at me, hoping, I suppose for some measure of understanding, “too badly damaged. Please look for your loved ones.”
I didn’t find Mr Nugent but John’s was the third body in the back row. The minister had gently lifted the blankets one by one until I stayed his arm when he came to our boy. He lay like a sleeping child, half on his side and barely marked, apart from a large gash stretching the length of his white forehead and trailing up into his dusty thatch of red hair.
“Oh my God,” I groaned, as I stopped and knelt beside him and put a trembling hand on his cheek. He was already cold and getting stiff.
“Can you identify this child?” said the minister, formally.
At first I couldn’t speak. I had so desperately hoped that Elizabeth would be right and that they had escaped. But here, lying before me was the lie to that and I was obliged to answer. “Yes,” I said, my voice hollow and weak. I suddenly felt so tired. “This is my son, John Edward Wilde.”
And do you see? With those words, I had been allowed to acknowledge my own child for the first time. It was almost a comfort.
The tears came then, not noisy or hysterical but deep and wrenching as though a part of me had been torn out and thrown into oblivion. I mourned him then and for ever after. He was a lovely boy and would have been a fine man who, had he been allowed to live. He would be here now to see me through this last journey.
“I must tell his mother,” I said, wearily standing up and moving carefully away from the kind hand that the minister had lain on my shoulder. “She might want to see him.”
When I went back into the church, she looked up at me and her eyes searched mine vainly for some inkling of hope. It was so painful having to witness her distress and I think those hours that followed were the hardest I ever had in my life. There was nothing I could do but just sit beside her and put my arm round her thin shoulders.
“Have you found him?” she asked.
I nodded. “You must go in. It would be better.”
“Is he…?”
“He looks all right,” I said. “As though he’s sleeping.” I pulled her to her feet. “Come on, my love. Come and say goodbye to our little lad.”
I was proud of her. She didn’t scream or fuss as I took her gently by the arm and led her into the vestry. The minister was there standing beside the still little body and at Elizabeth’s approach he lifted the blanket away from John’s face.
“Oh, my son,” she crooned, kneeling on the floor beside him, “my baby boy.” And while I stood there, helplessly, beside her, she gathered his small stiff body into her arms and rocked him and stroked the hair from his darkening face.
After a while, it was more than I could bear and I knelt down beside her. “Leave him now, Elizabeth, and come home. You can’t stay here any more.”
But she had changed again. Her face was terrifying when she looked up. “Take your hands off me,” she snarled. “This is my son and I’ll stay here as long as I want.” And she went back to her rocking and crooning, for all the world like some wounded animal.
I looked up to the minister, hoping for some words from him that would persuade her but he folded his lips and turned away. Another man had come into the vestry and was standing, looking at the blanketed corpses with an expression of disbelief.
“Can I help you?” the minister was saying but I lost the rest of the quiet conversation because Elizabeth had started to cry with great wracking sobs and I had to comfort her.
“Oh, come now, sweetheart,” I said. “Leave him, he’s safe here,” and I gently pulled my son from her arms and laid him back on the scratched wooden floor boards. “We’ll take him home, when I’ve found some decent transport. I’m not carrying him through the streets in front of all your neighbours. It’s not dignified.” I dragged her away, out of the little chapel and up through the now deserted streets to the dark and empty house.
An ambulance brought him to the house, a couple of hours later and I laid him on the bed that had belonged to his grandfather. My Elizabeth never spoke, but got a basin and cloth and washed him, kissing his face and hands all the while. Later she dressed him in clean clothes and bringing a chair from her bedroom sat beside him through the last few hours of the night.
We buried him two days later in the churchyard of the sailors’ church not far from where he’d died. I’d managed to telephone home and tell them the sad news. I thought that Billy might come to the funeral, but he wouldn’t.
“I can’t,” he said brokenly. “It would be too hard. You must be in charge.”
“Elizabeth won’t bring him home,” I said. “He’s to be buried here.”
There was silence at the end of the line and then Billy cleared his throat. “It doesn’t matter. I’ll put a memorial for him in the churchyard. His name won’t be forgot.”
Mother came on the phone then and cried so bitterly that we had very little conversation. “She must bring him home,” she sobbed.
But I told her what had been decided. “Its Elizabeth’s choice,” I said. “Her comfort is all that matters, now.”
I did try to persuade her otherwise. “We must take him home,” I said, on the morning after his death. “He must be buried in St Winifred’s.”
“No!” Her voice was cold and strange. “I don’t want him alone with all those Wildes who he never knew. He can rest here until I take him back to his people.”
“What people?” I said, confused.
“Mine.”
She meant Ireland and that is where he is now. With her and her grandparents and the little plaque added to the gravestone that remembers her father, whose body was never found. There’s space there for me too and I have made all the arrangements. In eternity, Elizabeth and John and I will be together.
Mother came to the funeral, arriving by train. She was in the church before the coffin arrived and Elizabeth and I, walking side by side behind the coffin that contained our son, were surprised to see her.
“Thank you for coming, Mother,” said Elizabeth placing her cold face against Mother’s tear-stained one. “It is a comfort.”
I don’t think it was. Elizabeth had retreated into her own self and had drawn up a barrier around her that shut out everyone, including me. Our brief conversations in the two days following John’s death had been those that dealt with practical details. I had arranged the funeral, ordered the single wreath and asked the kind minister who had been present in the temporary mortuary to conduct a short service.
But all of this I did on my own. Elizabeth drifted around her little house like a ghost, never in the room that I was in but leaving an aura of her sadness that was almost tangible. She couldn’t be comforted.
I thought about asking the minister to speak to her; maybe he would know the words that would give her some measure of peace
Poor man, he did try. “Maybe,” he said, kindly, “the Lord in his goodness will bless you with another child. Not to make up for this sweet soul gone to glory but another child who will be loved for his own sake.”
It wasn’t his fault, he didn’t know the true circumstances and Elizabeth turned away from him and me and went back up the stairs to sit beside her son.
He tried again at the funeral. “You have had your son for ten years,” he said to us, as we sat numbly in the bare church staring at the small coffin. “That is what you must carry in your heart. He has given you a love that will never die.”
I can’t remember anything else, but I do know that he was as good at conducting a funeral as any other priest I’ve ever met. The words were kindly meant and if we couldn’t appreciate them, it wasn’t his fault.
Elizabeth, Mother and I followed the little coffin to the cemetery where my son was temporarily laid to rest in a small grave close to others who had died on same night. Several funerals were taking place that afternoon and our little procession was swamped by the grieving families of other victims. But it was all properly done and I think Elizabeth understood that the fortunes of war led to scenes like this.
“I have to go,” I said the day after. My leave was over and I had to go back to war. “I don’t want to leave you, but I have to return to my unit.”
“Yes,” she said. But I don’t think she cared. Her mind was totally wrapped up in the deaths and nothing else mattered.
“Will you go back to the farm?” I asked. “Mother needs you.”
“The hospital needs me.”
I shook my head. “They’ve got volunteers. You must go home. It’s not safe here.”
But she wouldn’t listen and when I hugged her and kissed her goodbye, all that I got in return was a disinterested request to look after myself.
Nothing more than that and I went back to war, confused and heavy of heart. I had lost my only son and with him, all my plans for our happy future had blown away like blossom on a cold northern wind. And there was no comfort for that.