Free Put Out the Fires by Maureen Lee Page A

Francis,” Eileen said as firmly as she could whilst under the influence of the smile. “Let’s leave the arrangement as it is, if you don’t mind. It means you can come and go whenever you please. I don’t want Tony left on his own under any circumstances, not with all these raids.
    It’ll only be every other week when I’m on the late shift.”
    “Anything you say, princess.”
    He was, she thought wryly, like putty in her hands.
    “Was the raid a bad one?” she enquired. “You can’t hear much in Dunnings’ basement.”
    “George said Great Homer Street caught it really bad, and they got the Carlton Cinema in Moss Lane.”
    Eileen shook her head. “I don’t see the point in bombing innocent civilians,” she said. “No-one expected the war would come so close to home.”
    Francis had almost wished he was back in the safety of Alexandria during the raid. “Maybe it’ll stop soon. As you say, there’s no point.”
    But the air-raids didn’t stop. As September wore on, the raids lasted longer and became more deadly. At first, it was London’s East End that got the brunt of Hitler’s wrath, and the poorest of the poor lost what pitiful few possessions they had, as tenements and entire communities were razed to the ground. But it seemed that no major port, no city, was to be spared the terrible carnage, as the Luftwaffe swept across the dark skies to deliver their nightly load of terror.
    Incredibly, people actually became used to the eerie wail of the siren. It soon became a part of their lives. Some made for the public shelter, others for the Anderson shelter in the garden, or their own makeshift affairs—under the table or the stairs. There were those who completely ignored the warnings and stayed in their beds and boasted they could sleep through the worst raid, or carried on with what they were doing, determined not to let Hitler disrupt their lives.
    No-one, however, got used to hearing the number of people who’d been killed the night before, or coming across an ominous gap in the street where houses had once been, where people had lived and loved, been happy or sad, and where, perhaps, they’d died.
    On Merseyside, everyone was in a state of high dudgeon because the BBC made no mention of the suffering they endured. Their city was gradually being blown to pieces before their very eyes, the streets were blocked by rubble and many of the shops, factories and businesses had been forced to close. Central Station had been put out of action, along with the Mersey Underground.
    T. J. Hughes, a major store, was bombed, and the world-famous Argyll Theatre in Birkenhead gutted by fire. The cathedral and many other churches, along with hospitals and old people’s homes, didn’t escape the random terror that dropped from the sky and even criminals weren’t spared when Walton Gaol was hit and I twenty-one prisoners killed, to add to the hundreds of Merseysiders already dead. The docks, the poor docks, the lifeblood of the city, were a particular target and bombed several times a night.
    But no-one knew this except themselves; news bulletins merely referred to “attacks on the North West”. Scousers; didn’t begrudge the raids on London being fully reported but they would have liked recognition that it wasn’t the only city being bombed.
    “Never mind,” they said stoically. “It can’t get any worse.

Chapter 4
    The woman stood on the corner of pearl Street feeling as if I. her feet were glued to the pavement. She’d come so far, I hundreds of miles, yet she couldn’t bring herself to take I the last few steps home.
    It was raining, not particularly heavy, but a steady penetrating drizzle that had soaked right through her coat during the walk from Marsh Lane station. She’d no idea what time it was; eight o’clock, perhaps nine, and felt weary, having spent the entire day changing trains, standing for most of the way in packed corridors.
    The cul-de-sac looked narrower and shorter than she