Put Out the Fires Read Free Page A

dawn.
    “I love the Docky,” Eileen said with a catch in her voice. “When we were little, me and our Sheila used to come and meet me dad when it was time for him to hand in his tally. I was a bit scared in those days. The high walls made me feel as if we were walking on the very bottom of the world.” She also loved the smells, even if some weren’t exactly pleasant; the aroma of oils and spices, of carpets and tea and coal, and all the million and one imports and exports that came from and went to places all over the world. The atmosphere was alien, slightly mysterious, and even now, at this late hour, there were scores of black, brown and yellow faces around, and the gabble of a dozen different tongues.
    The dad said Liverpool Docks are die next to biggest in the world,” Donnie said, as proudly as if he were the owner.
    Eileen nodded. “That’s right, only those in Hamburg are bigger.” They began to walk in the direction of Bootle.
    “Have you finished your training, Donnie?” Eileen asked.
    “Oh, yes.” He squared his shoulders importantly. “I take up me first posting tomorrow. I’m on a corvette guarding a convoy of merchant marine all the way to America.”
    “Our Cal, that’s Calum Reilly, our Sheila’s husband, he’s a merchant seaman and due back from America any minute, God willing.” She crossed herself briefly, the way his mam often did. It wasn’t only in the air that the battle for survival was being fought. The carnage at sea, the loss of life and tonnage of ships being destroyed, was getting more and more horrendous by the day as German Uboats prowled the Atlantic in their search for prey. She looked down at him quickly. “You’ll take care of yourself, won’t you, Donnie?”
    “Oh, you can bet your life on that!” he said cockily. He couldn’t wait to serve his country and give old Hitler the promised kick up the arse. On the other hand, although he did his best not to think about the dangers that lay ahead, . sometimes, alone in the middle of the night, he felt quite scared. You had to be devoid of imagination completely, and Donnie had more imagination than most, not to visualise the ship being torpedoed and him tossed into the icy waters of the Atlantic and struggling to stay above the waves. Or, perhaps worse, trapped by fire in the signalroom and roasting, ever so slowly, to death. There were half a dozen of his mates who’d already lost their dads or older brothers at sea, and his mam behaved as if Donnie had already had a death sentence passed on him. He was only eighteen, thought Donnie, panicking suddenly, and didn’t want to die. There were all sorts of things he wanted to do with his life, and dying young wasn’t one of them. One day, he’d like to meet a girl like Eileen Doyle and get married . . .
    To Donnie’s horror, he felt his eyes fill with tears and he prayed Eileen wouldn’t notice. He’d been trying to impress her as a man of the world, and here he was on the brink of crying in the street like a little boy.
    “Just a minute, I’ve got something in me eye.” The tears were by now coursing down his cheeks.
    The lie didn’t work.
    “Oh, luv!” She pushed him into a doorway and took him in her arms and there they were, in the clinch Donnie had been imagining ever since they met, but there was nothing romantic about it as she patted his back like a baby and said, “There, now. There.”
    “I went into town this awy to buy me mam and dad and our Clare their Christmas presents,” he sobbed, “in case I was dead by the time it came. Then I walked home along the Docky, because it’s where I used play when I was a kid and I thought I might never see it again.”
    When he was a kid! He was little more than a kid now, thought Eileen in despair. What a terrible world it had become, when lads of eighteen expected to be dead by Christmas!
    “I’ll say a special prayer for you every night, Donnie,” she vowed. “Perhaps you can drop in and see us