Chapter 31

The rescue men put blankets over their shoulders and took them to the nearby church hall where they were told to wait until they had further instructions. As they walked through the streets, numb and dazed, the whole place looked like it was collapsing in on itself. A wall had come crashing down, then a tree had fallen and smashed on top of a car that had crumpled in on itself as if it was made out of plasticine. At the church, tea was brewed, and the first thing Vincent did was make it clear to his mother and father that he wasn’t going to hear a word spoken against Lily. Mrs Wharton sniffed pitifully and apologised and said that now was not the time to talk about the matter of the child.

‘This war makes monsters out of people and I’m ashamed to say it did out of me,’ Mr Wharton muttered over a cup of tea rattling in a saucer.

‘Oh God, Lily. Will you ever forgive me?’ said Vincent clutching her hands. ‘It’s as though I was overtaken by a kind of madness. When I punched that chap, it wasn’t so much that I was angry with you – or him for that matter. It was because I was so hurt. Oh, I love you, Lil. I do. I really do.’

Seeing the sadness in her large brown eyes swollen with tears and her plump, trembling lip, he felt incredulous that he had listened to his mother for even a single second. He loved Lily, and that was an end to it, baby or no baby, whoever’s child it was.

‘Vince, it can’t be Clarence’s baby. You can see that, can’t you? Because I’ve never been with anyone but you …’

And in the cold light of day, it became clear to him that what she was saying made sense. Of course it was his child – why on earth had he listened to his mother?

She looked at him through eyes brimming with tears. His hair doing that thing where it flopped in a front lick over his forehead. ‘I wish I could say something to put things right,’ he faltered.

‘You’re here,’ she said. ‘Alive. Let’s be thankful for that. There’s not been one night that I haven’t worried about that.’

‘Right, we’re all going to Lewis’s basement,’ said a man with a clipboard. ‘Safer there than here.’

Vince clutched Lily’s hand. His parents followed along with the other tired and frightened dozen or so people. Smoke billowed through the city. The pavements crunched with the sound of broken glass when they walked over it and a man using a stirrup pump to put out a blaze from an incendiary bomb started shouting at them to hurry. They knew what was coming. Everyone could distinguish the friendly Spitfires from the sound of the ominous Heinkels.

They reached Lewis’s department store and went inside. A man with a torch led them between the shop counters, his flashlight giving them tantalising glimpses of scarves and gloves hanging on steel hooks, ties laid out in neat rows under glass counters, perfume bottles and jewellery on shelves. Lily stopped for a minute, gazing at all the goods on sale. It was a wonder people didn’t reach out and take handfuls of the stuff. But it was when she walked past the counters with bassinets and baby mobiles, knitted and crocheted blankets for newborns, and teddy bears, that her heart lurched.

‘Come on, love,’ whispered, Vince.

They walked on, under chandeliers dripping with glass pendants, and trod as softly as they could over marble floors, their footsteps echoing and mirrors throwing back rippling reflections. They were taken down a flight of stairs to the basement. It was a huge storage room with sofas and chairs wrapped in plastic, but also the place where the music department was.

‘You can all find a spot here,’ said the man.

Vince took Lily by the hand and led her to one of the sofas. They sat together, he with his arm around her, she with her head on his shoulder. She had missed him so much, missed the smell of Brylcreem in his hair, the pink crescents of his fingernails. She had missed the sound of his voice, the constant jigging of his knee and his fingers tapping out a rhythm on tabletops or countertops. She had missed the dancing, of course, and the milkshakes at the Regal in town, and his easy charm – but most of all she had missed this feeling, that together, despite whatever was happening around them, everything was going to be all right. Including the matter of their child.

‘Are you OK?’ he asked. ‘I mean, you’ve just, well, just had a baby – our baby. Doesn’t that …?’

She felt a shiver through her body. Blinking away tears, she felt his breath on her face as he leaned his forehead on her brow and spoke softly to her, clasping her hands with his.

‘I’m right as rain,’ she answered, but then her bottom lip quivered again and tears spilled down her cheeks. ‘What about your new girl?’ she asked.

He had made her cry. It wasn’t the first time he had made someone cry in his life. But this felt so much worse than any time that he could remember.

‘There is no new girl. Just you,’ he replied. ‘Just you now. But what about the baby?’ he asked.

She felt his arms around her and it was an over-whelming feeling, as if she had come home. She sniffed, touched his cheek. When his face moved towards her, she grasped him by his shirt and kissed him.

‘Vincent. She was your child. I swear she was …’

Was? he thought.

‘I know that, Lily, of course I do. But when can I see her? Where is she now?’ he asked. ‘With your mam?’

And then panic ripped through her and her eyes filled with tears.

‘Oh God, Vince! Didn’t your ma put you in the picture? My mam wrote to her.’

There was only one thing for it, and that was to tell him every last detail. To be truthful. And so, hopeful that he would understand, that he wouldn’t hate her for it, she spilled out the whole story in one outpouring of grief and apology and regret.

‘Slow down, slow down,’ he said. He reached out and stilled her with his hand, squeezing hers firmly, twisted to her, put her head under his chin and spoke into her hair. ‘We’ll just get her back. Surely we can do that?’ he added with a shrug. For him, it was simple. If the nuns had taken her, well, she was still their child, they would just get her back, wherever she was.

Lily looked at him. ‘D’you think so? I’ve signed the papers, Vince.’

‘You might have signed the papers, but I haven’t. And I’m the father. I could kick up a right stink about that. Couldn’t the couple just have another baby? It’s not been that long. There must be others.’

The way he said it, so certain, so sure, so young and optimistic, sent waves of relief passing through her and her eyes shone as her spirits rose.

‘Maybe we can get her back. Janet told me you have six weeks to change your mind. They make you stay for at least six weeks at St Jude’s after you have your baby, just in case. And surely the nuns would want any child to be with their parents? Surely that’s what God would want? So why wouldn’t they? Oh, Vince! I feel better already.’ She smiled hopefully at him and in response, he squeezed her hand and kissed the top of her head.

A man in an ill-fitting suit sat down at the piano stool.

‘Give us a tune?’ someone said. ‘Something to get this wretched sound of bombing out of me head.’

The pianist’s fingers began to wander over the keys, picking out single notes, then chords, then harmonies and gentle tunes.

‘Sing something to get the kiddies asleep,’ said a woman.

People began to settle onto the camp beds that were arranged in rows between the supporting pillars.

‘A lullaby?’ someone asked. ‘Something to drown out this blessed droning of them flipping planes …’

He began to sing ‘The Sandgate Dandling Song’ as he played. ‘Fa la la la … Hold your way, my bonny bairn.’ It was lyrical and easy to pick up and a few joined in, though he changed the words to suit the circumstances. ‘Hold your way up on my arm, Dad he’s long in coming from the war. Though his mucky face’ll be like hell, I like a kiss from Daddy …’

And then came the horrific crescendo of sound as even more planes roared over in waves. The ground shook again and a stack of china rattled, a vase smashed as it fell onto the floor. Someone jigged a crying baby up and down and played peek-a-boo with the child as a lump of plaster fell off the wall behind them. ‘I see!’ the mother chimed, and put her hands over her eyes, removed them, and delighted in the baby’s giggles. Vincent caught Lily watching the mother and child, and whilst the Moaning Minnies, as the sirens had become known, wailed and the ack-acks fired, he reached out his hand and gently squeezed hers.

And still the man played. It was certainly comforting. And then someone, a man in his silk pyjamas and a dressing gown, amidst all this worry and fear, had the idea to dance.

‘If we get through this alive, there’ll always be the coal-hole, but there’s not always a fella sitting at a piano and a polished marble floor like this one,’ he said to his wife as he took her by the hand and they began to move gracefully across the floor. As the fellow played ‘Dancing Down Lime Street’, other dancers began to join them.

‘Come on, Vincent,’ said Lily. ‘Let’s dance as well – I’ve missed that so much …’

She stood, took his hand, moved in to him, slowly rhythmically, his arm around her waist, her head on his shoulder. And as they danced, they took comfort in each other’s bodies and the music – and the hope that, as soon as they were out of here, something would change for the better. ‘You can find yourself and lose yourself at the same time on the dance floor,’ Lily remembered her father saying, and it was never truer than now.

Finally, the hellish noise of the bombing that had accompanied the roaring of the aeroplanes receded as dawn began to break and in the silence that fell a cuckoo sang. Then the sirens began to wail again for the all-clear.

Lily felt so hopeful with Vince by her side as they came out blinking into the sunlight. She saw a woman was pushing a pram. Might that be her soon? More often than not, after an air raid like that night’s, the sole conversation revolved around who had died, who had survived. But now it was the city of Liverpool itself that gave her courage, battered and bruised as it was, as they walked hand in hand towards home with the Liver Bird’s still wings outstretched above them, proud and regal and steadfast.

Stella opened the door to them at Caryl Street.

‘Good God!’ she said. ‘Look at the state of you! I’ve been worried sick!’

Lily’s eyes shone with excitement.

‘Mam! We’re going to get our baby back!’ she cried. ‘Vincent’s coming with me. Everything is going to be all right.’

Stella paled.

‘What?’ she said, inwardly terrified, her heart leaping to her mouth. How much she loved this daughter who thought life was so simple, so straightforward, and whose greatest fault was that she believed everyone was as good and as kind as her.

‘Vincent knows the truth now. Me and him, we’re grand, Mam. So, our baby. We’re going to get her back.’