Lights Out Liverpool Read Online Free

first-class cabin.
    ‘Looks like you’re getting out just in time.’
    Joey flushed angrily. ‘We’ve been saving for years to go to Canada. Me brother Kevin’s already in Ontario.’
    ‘D’you know who’s taking on the house, Joey?’ asked Ellis Evans, who lived next door.
    ‘No-one yet, luv,’ Joey answered. ‘The landlord’s agent said he’ll have a job renting out a house in Bootle, because – well, you know why.’
    They knew only too well. When war broke out, Bootle, with its multiplicity of docks and being the nearest British port to the Americas, would be one of the prime targets for Hitler’s bombs. There was a long silence as they contemplated the awfulness of this.
    ‘It mightn’t happen’, Eileen said eventually in a small voice. ‘There’s still time.’ The situation had been building up for years like a pot gradually simmering on a stove. Now, with Hitler about to invade Poland, the pot was threatening to boil over. Surely he wouldn’t go ahead, she thought desperately, not when he knew what the consequences would be? Having guaranteed Polish independence, Great Britain and France would consider invasion as an act of war against themselves and be forced to retaliate.
    Eileen was uncomfortably aware of Francis glaring in her direction. Her husband didn’t like her drawing attention to herself in company. She was beginning to wish she hadn’t spoken, when a figure appeared under the flickering gas lamp. Her dad!
    ‘Jack! Jack Doyle.’ Joey Flaherty jumped to his feet, his face wreathed in smiles. ‘You should’ve come before, Jack. Sit down, mate.’
    There was a genuine chorus of welcome from the assembled crowd, and Eileen felt a surge of pride. Jack Doyle was one of the best liked and most respected men in the whole of Bootle.
    ‘It was a Pearl Street do,’ he said stiffly. ‘It wouldn’t’ve been right when it weren’t my street.’
    He touched his daughter’s shoulder lightly and Eileen looked up, expecting some sort of greeting. Instead, he asked gruffly, ‘Where’s our Sheila?’
    ‘She was a bit tired, she went indoors a while ago.’ As ever, she felt let down. ‘I could be invisible as far as me dad’s concerned,’ she thought bitterly. She recalled the wedding photograph on the sideboard in the house in Garnet Street, her mam, dimpled and smiling, the spitting image of Sheila. Since Mam died so unexpectedly of breast cancer fourteen years ago, her father seemed to have transferred almost the entire weight of his affections onto her sister. Her younger brother, Sean, only two when Mam died, had managed to stake a small claim on his dad’s heart, but Eileen felt as if she didn’t exist at all, yet she loved him so much and yearned for recognition.
    Her husband poured the newcomer a glass of ale and showed him to an empty chair at the far end of the table. Eileen noticed Francis whisper in the older man’s ear. Her dad nodded and stood up.
    ‘Francis has asked me to say a few words,’ he said. Everyone immediately fell silent and turned to look at the tall charismatic figure of Jack Doyle, docker, unpaid official of the dockworkers’ union and well known scourge of management since the day he’d begun working for them twenty-five years ago. ‘First thing is to wish Joey and Mary and their little ’uns well in their new life.’
    There was a murmur of agreement and shouts of ‘Good luck, Joey, Mary.’
    Jack Doyle continued. ‘Now, the war. It’s going to happen, no doubt about it, any day now. I’ve already fought in one world war and I was lucky. I came through unscathed, but I weren’t happy about risking me life for a country that had given me nowt, that was owned lock, stock and barrel by the rich folk, who only wanted it protected and preserved for theirselves. It weren’t
my
country, it were
theirs
! What thanks did the widders get after their men spilt every last drop of their blood in the trenches of the Somme? Those lions led by donkeys?