Annie Groves - Christmas on the Mersey

Please, Lord, make them safe, she prayed silently. Don’t let anything happen to my babies.

Michael and Megan would now be huddled in the corner of the cellar beneath the shop where Rita lived with her husband, Charlie, and his poisonous mother, Winnie Kennedy, who owned and ran the corner store. The cellar was where she stored her stock and they should be safe down there. Rita wished that she were there with them, but when the country was crying out for nurses, how could she duck her duty, especially after the fall of France last June? The enemy was only just across the Channel.

‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph!’ Nurse Maeve Kerrigan said. ‘Sounds like all hell is breaking loose out there.’ Rita and Maeve had been firm friends since they started work at Bootle Infirmary on the same day. Maeve had been a cheeky upstart but her sense of humour and ability to keep everyone’s spirits up had built bridges with Matron, and the patients all adored her. Maeve quickly took in Rita’s furrowed brow.

‘I can imagine what’s going through your head. But the ould battle-axe will manage your two young snappers,’ she said quietly, so as no one would overhear. ‘She might be a witch, but she’s still their granny.’

‘But she’s not their mother.’ Rita knew her friend was trying to calm her as they eased a post-operative patient into a wheelchair. ‘I’ll never forgive myself if anything—’

‘Enough of that,’ Maeve whispered. ‘You’ll drive yourself demented if you carry on thinking that way.’

Rita nodded, turning to help another patient into his dressing gown. It was impossible not to be burdened with maternal guilt. If one hair on either of their heads was hurt …

‘Anyway, if the Germans did land, you could hand her over first. They’d swim back over the Channel faster than you can say “Jack Robinson” once they got an earful of her bile. She’d make up a whole new front!’ Maeve added in that crisp Irish tone that could change from angelic to raucous in the blink of an eye.

‘Come on, let’s get the patients out of here.’ Rita pulled herself together and took a deep breath to calm her racing heart; there were thousands of mothers going through the same thing all over England. She had her patients to think about now.

The almost deafening sound of an explosion close by made the medical staff move even faster.

Michael and Megan would be terrified. The thought made Rita blanch. Her skin was now clammy. It would be her fault if anything happened to her children. She was the one who had persuaded Charlie to let her bring them home from the farm when there were no signs of air raids or invasion, something the news­papers called ‘the phoney war’. Charlie had said Michael and Megan were safer in the countryside, but after Rita’s repeated begging, he had reluctantly agreed to let them come home. However, now Rita was certain she had done the wrong thing – Empire Street, right by the docks, was one of the most dangerous places in the world.

Please Lord, Rita sent another silent prayer to heaven as she moved the patients, please keep my children safe.

Rita could recall with clarity the look on Charlie’s face seven and a half years ago when he held Michael for the first time. Sometimes, Rita could still feel the crippling remorse that she experienced then, but now it was for a different reason. Now her remorse was for the choices she had made and for the life she would never have. Any guilt she had left was for her children and her inability to give them a happy home life and an adoring father. Her husband had proved himself to be a liar, a cheat and a brute.

However, this was not the time for thinking such things, she acknowledged as another barrage of anti-aircraft fire stalled further thoughts. Right now her priority was the safety of her patients.

The blast from nearby incendiaries shuddered through the building and Rita fought the urge to duck under the nearest bed, instead calling for the nurses to remain calm and go about their work as quickly as they could. She thought she had moved all the patients from along the far wall where splintered glass from a whole row of shattered windows jettisoned onto the ward, causing the blinds to flap like startled blackbirds in the chilly, damp night air. To her horror, however, Rita could now see that Albert Scott, a kindly old man who had taken a nasty fall during one of the recent raids and had broken his hip, was still in his bed near the window and urgently needed moving into the middle of the ward.

‘Don’t worry, Bert, I’m on my way,’ she called as she ran across, careful to sidestep the broken glass that littered the whole floor. The deafening roar of exploding bombs and anti-aircraft fire coming through the windows was disconcerting, but Rita could see that the ward was a sitting duck for the bombers with the blown-out windows and blackout curtains torn to shreds.

‘Turn those lights off!’ she yelled, and the room switched to sudden blackness, lit only by the fires that blazed outside and the searchlights directing the ack-ack gunfire.

‘Are you all right, Bert?’ she asked, taking the old man’s hand.

He gripped hers tightly, but his voice, though weak, was determined. ‘Don’t you be worrying about me, love. I saw worse than this in the trenches. Jerry didn’t get me then, and he won’t get me now.’

‘You tell ’em, Bert.’ She squeezed his hand. ‘Now bear with me while I just try and get you a bit more comfortable. Maeve, come here and give me a hand with this.’

Rita shook broken glass from the blankets, then asked Maeve to help her manoeuvre a heavy mattress from one of the empty beds over Bert, who could not move from his own. But the mattress was covered with shards of broken glass and Rita had underestimated the weight of it. It took the combined strength of both women to lift it off. As they did, there was another ear-splitting scream overhead and then another blast shook the building, loosening more glass from the damaged windows.

‘For God’s sake, get down!’ Rita screamed, and Maeve fell to the floor and crawled beneath one of the beds, while Rita desperately tried to cushion herself and Bert with the mattress. The bombardment continued for several more minutes though it seemed to Rita to last for hours.

Once the planes had dropped their deadly load and passed over, Rita lifted her head and saw to her horror that it was too late. She had managed to shield Bert from the worst of the falling glass and masonry, but it had all been too much for him and she thought that his heart had given out. He lay still, his eyes glassy and empty. ‘He’s dead. The bastards!’ Maeve swore to the sky. Rita did not admonish Maeve – she felt exactly the same way – but she urged Maeve to keep her voice down so as not to scare the other patients.

‘Oh, Bert,’ Rita whispered, looking sadly down at the dead man. Gently she touched his pale and wrinkled hand. ‘He’d already been through so much.’

Rita felt the sting of tears behind her eyes but she knew there was no time for indulging her emotions. The all clear was sounding and she had to organise the clear-up.

‘Right, everyone, we need to get the ARP to help us board up these windows and get all of this glass up. Don’t be tempted to clean it up yourselves; you’re likely to be cut to shreds.’

Over the next few hours, Rita even had the staff singing to keep up morale as they moved the patients back to bed and continued the clean-up. Eventually, the glass was cleared and they were busy boarding up the windows.

After welcome cups of cocoa and slices of freshly made toast were given to the shaken-up patients, the nurses themselves were able to take a breather and headed for their own cups of cocoa in the small kitchen at the end of the ward. It is a wonder no other patients were harmed tonight, Rita thought. The dead man was taken to the morgue while she said a silent prayer of thanks that everybody else had come through the awful barrage unscathed.