Three Women of Liverpool Read Online Free

it shyly and had confessed when he had slipped it on to her finger, “I never thought much about getting married before – always seemed to be too much to do, fishing with me father. Prices was so bad we never made much – not enough for me to keep a wife as well. Being Methodists, me and me brothers didn’t drink and we didn’t dance, so we didn’t meet too many womenfolk – a few neighbouring girls – but never anyone like you, Emmie. You’re beautiful and I want you so bad.”
    They had lain in the damp April grass, amid the Meolssand-dunes, not too far from his home. Great rolls of barbed wire stretched along the beach, to protect it from possible invasion. The Home Guard, keeping their nightly watch, had left them undisturbed. Rumour had it that both the beach and the dunes were mined, but they forgot everything in their need for each other. While the sound of the waves rolling softly up the shore, and a silent sea mist drifting inland, cut them off for a little while from a world in torment, two gentle, deprived people found an ecstasy granted to few.
    They lay for a long time in each other’s arms, until Emmie giggled suddenly.
    “I was thinkin’. Supposing I have a baby! It could happen, even at my age.”
    Robert had lifted his head and kissed her again. “Not to worry. It’ll have a proper father. I wouldn’t let you down, luv.” He held her tightly, and then said, “If anything should happen to me before we can be married, and you’re in trouble, go to me mam and dad. They’ll take care of you.”
    “Oh, Robbie,” she whispered with a sigh. “You have to come back safe.”
    “I’ll do me best,” he said, with a forced laugh. “But don’t you forget. Me dad’s earning enough now to keep you for a while.”
    She lay quiet for a moment, and then she said in a puzzled voice, “It’s funny that it’s taken a war to give us decent wages, isn’t it?” She rolled over him until she was lying on top of him, her head on his shoulder, and then she sighed. “But I’d rather manage on poor wages and know you was safe.” She felt him stir under her again and scrambled hastily to her feet. “Enough, luv, enough. I got to go to work on the morning. And you got to have the hospital check your feet again. The cold and wet you suffered on that raft must’ve been proper awful.” She dusted down her skirt and buttoned up her blouse, looking down at him impishly. “But, you know, I wish your feet were still just a bit bad, so as we could have more time together before you have to go to sea again.”
    He had swung himself to his feet and caught her in his arms and kissed her long and hard. “Aye, luv, I don’t want to go either.”
    Another time, while they sat on a bench underneath a chestnut tree in Sefton Park, she had told him about her life with her parents. He had marvelled at her patience and endurance. She had shrugged her shoulders and said, “I only did what a lot of single daughters have to do – who else will look after people like that? Couldn’t let them go into the workhouse. We could just manage if we all three lived together. But there wasn’t nothin’ left over for going to the pictures or suchlike, even if I’d had the time. We was lucky to have a low rent and something to eat each day. We’d have fair frozen to death some winters, if David hadn’t bought some coal.”
    “It’ll be easier from now on, luv,” he had promised her. And she had felt indeed that a new life was unfurling for her as surely as the tiny leaves sprouting on the chestnut tree.
    “Rialto Cinema,” shouted the clippie, and Emmie came sharply back to the present.
iv
    Gwen Thomas always averred that her life was never the same again after that young scoundrel, Patrick Donnelly from next door, had at dinnertime on Wednesday shot an arrow through the back bedroom window of their small row house.
    “There was broken glass all over our Mari’s bedspread. Ruined, it was,” she complained angrily to