Free Blitz Next Door by Cathy Forde

hall.
    “Let’s walk and talk where it’s cheerier,” he said, his big voice back. Outside the cupboard he wiped his hands with yet another patterned silk handkerchief as he steered Pete through his own front door.
    “Beth wasn’t in the house when the bomb fell.” Mr Milligan joined his hands and raised them as if he was offering up a prayer of thanks. He must have read the relief on Pete’s face because he patted his shoulder.
    “Spent the night of the Blitz in the air-raid shelter with me, my mother, all the neighbours. I don’t remember myself, thank God. Just a bairn, like Princess Chookie. But my mother’s never forgotten, so neither have I. Never will.” Mr Milligan was pointing towards the crater. “How she and Beth staggered out the shelter at dawn, me in her arms, to utter…”
    Mr Milligan stared into space, shaking his head, lips pursed in a silent whistle. “My mother claims that’s why I ended up an architect. Raised hearing about so many homes coming down and lives destroyed round here I wanted to try and design buildings that would survive. Better, stronger, safer.”
    “But none of Beth’s family was hurt when the house came down, were they?” Pete double-checked.
    Mr Milligan started to say something, but checked himself. He walked to his car, shaking his head, his mouth a grim line. Pete was sure he spotted tears glinting in the old man’s eyes.
    “I didn’t help her.” Mr Milligan turned his gaze towards the ruin of the Winters’ old house.
    “She told me,” Pete said.
    “Too feart.” Mr Milligan shrugged.
    “She said that too.”
    “Well, I was only about five the first time I remember her calling…” Mr Milligan held his fingers up in front of his mouth as if he was playing a recorder. “That bally ‘Skye Boat Song’. Not long moved into that room you’re in now. Slept in the one next to my mother’s before that…”
    “Jenny’s room now.”
    “…though to be honest I spent most nights cooried in with my mother. Tumshy mammy’s boy, so I was,” Mr Milligan boomed in a very un-tumshy voice. “Still am. Aye…” Mr Milligan was gazing into space again, then he flapped his hand in front of his face, raked through his quiff with his fingers. “Anyway, ended up flitting back into the room next to my mother’s, because I was hearing Beth so much.”
    “What did your mum say?” Pete asked.
    “‘Poor wee Beth, she’s a lost sowl.’ Then she’d get upset.” Mr Milligan shrugged. “So I stopped telling her I was hearing anything. Stopped hanging about down in the shelter too. Beth was appearing in there sometimes, long after the war. I’d be down there having a…” Mr Milligan puffed on an imaginary cigarette. “Silly boy that I was.” He shook his head, then switched it in the best version Pete had seen yet of Beth’s plait flick. “And she’d brush past me with a right dirty look. And then,” Mr Milligan held his hands to his ears as though he wanted Pete to hear something, “all Beth’s visits and concerts and shuffling about stopped. By this time it was the fifties and I…”
    Mr Milligan curled his lip. He twisted the front of his hair into a lick and tugged it down his forehead. “I was far too busy to care about hearing anything but Elvis and Buddy and Little Richard.” Mr Milligan shook his head at Pete. “You probably don’t even know who I’m bally talking about.”
    “ Elvis ? Everyone knows Elvis. Well I do. He’s great.” Pete was nodding so hard at Mr Milligan his neck muscles hurt.
    “No, Pete.” Mr Milligan pursed at Pete. “He isn’t great. He is the greatest. Is. And always will be: The King.” Mr Milligan grinned. “When I was sixteen I’d two delivery jobs to pay for all the records I used to order from the States. Was I popular?”
    “You’ve still got them?” For a moment, Pete forgot all about Beth Winters.
    Mr Milligan quirked his eyebrows at Pete and puffed as if the question was pointless. “Maybe let