Three Women of Liverpool by Helen Forrester Page B

clenched. He was tortured by the idea of his mother lying alone in the house next door. He wanted to go to her, look at her, try to wake her from her long sleep. But he was afraid of the demons in the sky, afraid of facing alone the fact of her death. After a while, his head fell forward, his mouth opened and he, too, slept.
    Just before five o’clock, they all awoke with a jerk to a profound silence, except for Gwen who continued to snore.
    Mari shook her mother’s arm. “Ma, it’s stopped. They’ve gone.”
    “Who? What?” Gwen jerked her head from against the cellar wall and blinked. She had been having a nightmare, a nightmare in which the whole house crawled away as a result of the infestation brought in by the Donnelly children. Through her fogged brain, she heard the long, thin cry of the All Clear.
    “Phew!” she exclaimed. Then she gazed blearily down at the appalling weight of responsibility sitting on the inhospitable stone steps below her.
    Brendy, aged 5, struggled awake and stood up on wobbling legs. He stared round the alien staircase and then roared tearfully, “Where’s me mam?” He started to struggle past the knees of the other children, to get to the top of the steps, howling like a miserable dog. Nora, a year older, turned to follow him. She began to whimper. As she threatened to teeter backwards down the steps, Ruby grabbed her wrist.
    “Leave me go,” the child yelled savagely. She began to beat her big sister in the face with a small clenched fist.
    Patrick got up slowly. With frightened, bloodshot eyes, he glanced down at his hostess and then at the other children. A curling spiral of unvented rage ran through him. “Brendy! You shut up or I’ll clobber yez. Mam’s been hurt and can’t come to yez.”
    Brendy’s howls came down a full octave, and Nora stopped trying to get a hold on Ruby’s hair to tear it out; when Patrick decided to hit someone, he often distributed the favour throughout the family. Nora’s white-lashed eyes narrowed and she made an obscene gesture at Ruby.
    Patrick addressed his snivelling siblings again, his voice suddenly placating. “Mrs Thomas is going to let us stay here, aren’t you, Mrs Thomas?” His eyes were on Gwen now, pleading, defeated.
    Gwen was dizzy with lack of sleep and could not bring her mind into focus. She rubbed her face and then ran her fingers through her frizzy hair. She nodded. Even if Ellen Donnelly’s body had been removed, the children would feel the absence of their mother more keenly in their own home and would ask more questions – and she did not want to have to break the news to them that they would never see her again. Better by far to keep them in her own home and let Donnelly do the job in the morning.
    She stood up. Her whole body ached. And where was David in all this? He should be at home taking charge of everything. It was unfair that she should carry the whole burden. She began to simmer with resentment. And Emmie hadn’t turned up either, to give her a hand.
    “I want to pee,” wailed Brendy, clutching at himself.
    “For heaven’s sake, take him down the yard,” she ordered Patrick, as she yawned mightily. “Tut, he hasn’t got any shoes on – lift him over the glass in the kitchen – and no socks neither – ’is poor little feet is purple.”
    It was as if Brendy’s sad straits forced her awake. She turned to her drooping, equally sleepy daughter. “Mari, get the dustpan and brush, and get the glass off the kitchen floor, so the little boy – and the little girl – you ain’t got no shoes neither, luv? – don’t cut their feet.”
    Nora was not to be wooed by a kindly tone. She stuck her finger in her mouth and looked sulky. Gwen turned to Ruby. “And you, what’s your name?”
    “Ruby, missus.” From beneath her shaggy fringe two sad eyes gleamed dully.
    “Well, you got shoes on. You bring the baby upstairs with me, and we’ll put him on a potty and then into bed. The little girl can