Lights Out Liverpool Read Free Page B

the party.
    At six o’clock, Miss Brazier came wearily around the corner, home from her job in the Co-Op Haberdashery Department, where she sat all day in a glass cage at the receiving end of little metal cannisters containing cash which whizzed across the shop on wires stretching in every direction. Miss Brazier would unscrew the cannister, remove the money, and send it back with the change.
    ‘We’ve plenty of butties left, Miss Brazier,’ Mary Flaherty said generously. ‘Would you like us to make you a cup of tea, like?’
    ‘No, thank you,’ Miss Brazier said stiffly, scarcely glancing in their direction. Head bent, she made her way to Number 12 and disappeared inside.
    ‘Poor ould soul,’ said Mary sympathetically. ‘I bet she’d love to join us, y’know, but she can’t bring herself to unbend.’
    ‘She’s not so old,’ Eileen said. ‘No more than thirty-five, I reckon.’
    Like Miss Brazier, not everyone in Pearl Street had condescended to join in the festivities. The Harrisons, who owned the coalyard at the end of the street and lived in the house next door, hadn’t deigned to come – Edna Harrison told someone she thought street parties were ‘common’. Nor Alfie Robinson from 22, a solid Orangeman, who’d never spoken to Joey Flaherty since he’d discovered one of Joey’s brothers was in the IRA. The Kellys weren’t there, either, May and her brothers, Fin and Failey, who were Eileen’s other neighbours. The Kellys went into town shoplifting on Saturdays and stayed till late doing a tour of the city pubs to sell the loot – if they hadn’t been nicked first. The Kellys stole to order; give them the size and the colour and they’d pinch the goods from Marks & Spencer or C & A for half the ticket price.
    A trickle of people began to arrive; George Ransome, a middle-aged bachelor with a dashing pencil thin moustache, who worked in Littlewoods Pools, appeared with two bottles of cream sherry. ‘A little treat for the ladies,’ he said with a wink, and there was a rush indoors for glasses. Then Dilys Evans, only fourteen, looking worn out from her new job as a chambermaid in the Adelphi Hotel in Liverpool.
    Soon afterwards, Sheila whispered to her sister, ‘I feel as if I’d like a lie down, Sis.’
    Eileen nodded. ‘I’ll be in later and help you settle the kids.’ Caitlin had woken up by then, and Sheila led the tiny girl indoors by the hand.
    The sky dimmed, turned to mauve, as dusk began to fall and the great orange ball of the sun slowly dipped behind a ridge of roofs, leaving chimneys silhouetted, stark and black, against its fiery brilliance before it disappeared altogether. Then the stars came out; just one at first, then another, and almost within the blinking of an eye, overhead became a blanket of twinkling yellow lights. At long last the air began to freshen and turn cool and the lamplighter arrived, propping his ladder against the arms of the lamppost on the corner by the pub. The gas jet began to splutter and fizz and gave off an eerie glow.
    ‘Be out of a job soon,’ he said mournfully as he was about to leave. ‘Once the bloody blackout comes.’
    And still they sat, talking quietly now, unwilling to let the day go; as if the longer they stayed, the longer it would take tomorrow to come, because nobody in their right mind wanted what tomorrow might bring. Dancing had been planned for after dark, the polka and
Knees Up Mother Brown
and the
Gay Gordons
– Mr Singerman had been practising all week – but somehow no-one felt like dancing. Instead, they listened to the haunting sound of Paddy O’Hara on his harmonica, the music quivering like invisible birds in the yellow-hued night air.
    The glitter of the day had gone. Reality had set in.
    ‘When are you sailing, Joey?’ someone shouted across the street.
    ‘Next Sat’day, on the
Athenia
,’ Joey replied.
    ‘We’re going steerage,’ put in Mary hastily, as if worried folks might think they’d booked a