Made in Myrtle Street (Prequel)

by B A Lightfoot

  Edward, Liam and Big Charlie stood in La Place and gazed gloomily around at the once beautiful buildings that now stood broken and humbled around the old square. Tall brick chimneys straddled roofless buildings and broken shutters flapped aimlessly over empty windows revealing the smoke blackened walls of the gaping holes behind. Elegantly arched windows of shop fronts pleaded for glass and beautiful clothes whilst broken cast iron lamp standards stood like pointless sentries in the piles of rubble.

  Piled against the walls of many of them were stacks of bricks that had been sorted from the rubble by defiant old men, determined to show that the German explosives could not extinguish their community.

  Some of these old men now sat on chairs outside the boarded-up bar enjoying a coffee and an extra cognac to celebrate the arrival of the British soldiers. Others had occupied the site of a demolished building on the other side of the square and were instructing some teenage boys in the strategy and skills of petanque. In one corner of the square a large group of women chattered excitedly around a cluster of horse drawn carts containing much needed provisions that had been halted in front of the badly damaged church.

  ‘Let’s go and see if we can buy some pommes off them’ said Liam hopefully.

  ‘Aye, alright’ Eddie concurred. ‘But look at the crowd from our mob over there. They’re reading something on that board. Let’s go and see what they’ve found to get excited about first.’

  Pushing their way through the animated group, they discovered to their delighted amazement that they had been granted two weeks home leave.

  Chapter 12

  England 1917

  Big Charlie walked jauntily down Broadway with his kitbag slung across his shoulder and his mind teeming with visions of the culinary delights that awaited him over the next two weeks of this unexpected leave. He had been deprived of his wife’s expertise in the kitchen for almost three years now and his body ached with the eager anticipation of the delights that awaited him. He was already envisaging that big, brown cooking dish full of hot pot crowned by a thick, golden brown crust; juicy red cabbage with vinegar running out to accompany it. He was almost salivating at the thought of a steaming steak and kidney pudding being placed on the table in front of him.

  He had just two small regrets. The first was that he had not sent his wife a note to say that he was coming home so that she could have had a nice suet pudding just reaching its point of maturity as he walked through the door. He didn’t much like that writing business and he generally got Edward to write his letters home.

  The second was that his wife would expect him to sit down and do all that catching up stuff, all that being nice and lovey-dovey and everything, before he could hope to sit down to a good solid meal. It was bad enough after he’d been out at work all day and, when all he wanted was his pint mug of strong, hot tea and a big plate of tasty food, she’d be wanting to know what he’d been doing all day and telling him what the neighbours had been up to. Then she’d start on wondering about why they’d had no kids yet and he’d tell her that he was trying and she’d say perhaps you’re not trying often enough and why don’t you try surprising me when you come home from work. He supposed that he could cope with that. It wouldn’t be too bad and he could even enjoy the nightly routine of getting the zinc bath off the wall in the back yard for the ritual cleansing that she so desperately needed.

  Big Charlie pushed the key in the lock thinking that a big plate of chips and black pudding with thick, rich gravy poured over them might not take too long to prepare. Opening the door he was quite surprised to hear the sounds of music emanating from the parlour and even more surprised to see a black, woollen gent’s overcoat hanging up in the lobby. This was surmounted by a dark grey striped suit jacket and, on the floor below it, a leather case confirmed the presence of a male stranger in the house. Big Charlie’s puzzled eyes followed up the lobby to the stairs where, on the side of each of the bottom two steps, stood a pair of polished black leather shoes whilst on the third a pair of leather slippers waited to welcome their own into domestic comfort. Big Charlie’s discerning glance quickly perceived that the feet for which those shoes were intended were on the small side and so were clearly not his own.

  He felt the hot blood surging up into his head as he slowly pushed open the door of the parlour. There was a small, dapper man at the piano with oily hair slicked back and shirt sleeves restrained by silver arm bands. Big Charlie’s wife, Dot, was standing at the side of the Dapper Man and they gazed into each other’s eyes as they sang together with obvious passion ‘I Love You as I Never Loved Before.’

  The only merit with Big Charlie’s retribution was that, although lacking in planning and finesse, it was meted out swiftly. Grabbing the Dapper Man by the back of his collar, he hauled him off the piano stool, lifted him some distance off the ground then slammed him against the wall. The Dapper Man’s watch jumped out of his waistcoat pocket, his carefully polished, but slightly oversized shoes, fell to the floor and his neatly trimmed moustache was smeared with the mucus that was forced out of his nose by the rapidly exhaled air from his deflated lungs.

  The harmonious singing of only a few seconds before was now replaced by the loud screaming of Big Charlie’s wife and the equally loud, grating moans from the Dapper Man as he struggled to drag air back into his pained chest.

  With a quick jerk, Big Charlie scooped up the groaning Dapper Man, threw him onto his shoulder and strode out into the lobby where he grabbed the offending coats and the leather case. Moments later, he was out through the still open front door and striding purposefully down the street pursued closely by his shrieking wife who had thoughtfully collected the Dapper Man’s rolled, black umbrella. She chased after Big Charlie, aiming repeated blows at his head with the furled umbrella but mostly missing, thereby only adding to the already severe discomfort of the Dapper Man. She surprised Big Charlie and the neighbours, who had now come out of their houses to watch the entertainment, with her, hitherto undisclosed, command of descriptive invective. The colourful harangue, whilst drawing just occasional murmurs of disapproval from the neighbours, had no obvious effect on her husband.

  Big Charlie, aware of the fact that the people in the street had, in the past, witnessed various public, albeit minor, humiliations of him at the hands of his considerably more diminutive wife, felt reinforced by their vocally encouraging presence as they gathered in their doorways. The doubts that had started to creep in to his mind were dispelled as he demonstrated his masterfulness in handling his deceitful spouse and her snivelling suitor.

  Despite the blows being rained on his head by his brolly wielding wife, and those to his back by the wretched Dapper Man, Big Charlie marched proudly forward, waving the suitcase occasionally to the cheerfully supportive audience. Emerging into Broadway like a gladiator entering the forum, he was joined by some young urchins skipping along in front of him. Followed closely now by an ever-growing throng of neighbours he stepped over to the horse trough where he dropped the suitcase and coats to the floor. Reaching up, he then grabbed hold of the terrified Dapper Man and held him suspended over the water for a few seconds before dropping him in with a mighty splash, followed immediately by the suitcase and coats.

  Big Charlie smiled and waved briefly at the laughing crowds before pushing his way through them in order to pursue what now seemed to be the only course of action that was available to him and that was to go for a few pints of beer. Minutes later he was sitting gloomily staring into his pint in The Clowes Hotel and contemplating his now grim looking future and what it held in store for him. No longer stimulated to minor hero levels by the cheering neighbours and forced by the quiet loneliness of the bar to consider his situation more rationally, his mind seemed to have been enveloped in a cold, grey fog.

  The thought of going home to face his wife, and of trying to further pursue this briefly held dominance as master in his own house, filled him with an untold dread. His determined response of only a quarter of an hour ago had some
how lost its momentum and become quickly enfeebled. Almost as bad was the thought of going to his Mam’s and asking her for his old bed. That would almost certainly result in a clout round the ear – probably delivered, humiliatingly, whilst he remained standing on her doorstep.

  Thoughts chased each other in a hopeless whirl round Big Charlie’s head and came to nothing. He took a large gulp out of his pint glass and watched the barmaid mop limply round the line of empty ashtrays.

  ‘I just heard about you dumping that oily little sod in the trough down Broadway,’ she said. ‘Should have held his head under for a bit longer. Mind you, that might have poisoned the horses.’

  Big Charlie smiled bleakly. His dreams of nourishing days of good Lancashire meals had rapidly vanished to be replaced by the unpalatable prospect of a future without the woman that he needed so much. He had to admit that things had not always been quite right between them. Her sudden eruption into screaming rages, her capacity for rapacious derision and his bulky awkwardness in her slight presence made him almost fearful of physical contact. He had done his best to understand her torment but the memory of her in loving harmony with the dapper man made him now realise how badly he had failed.

  A pat on the back and a cheery greeting ‘You did well to give that bloody dandy-pants a good dousing, Charlie,’ broke into his reverie. One of his neighbours joined him at the table whilst another went over to the bar to get them all a pint. Gentle probing was not a conversational art form that Big Charlie felt particularly familiar with so he was grateful for the subsequent willing disclosure by the two men of the story of his wife and the Dapper Man. It seemed that his wife, having endless lonely hours in the evenings to fill and not having the commitments that are the natural concomitant of a young family, had decided to take the first, faltering step in pursuit of an ambition that she had cherished since childhood. She had joined the Salford Glee Club that met every Tuesday and Friday evening at the Trafford Road Assembly Rooms. Her modest talent for singing, combined with a surprising gift for expressive drama, had soon resulted in her elevation to the ranks of the lead players.

  From time to time the Salford Glee Club gave enthusiastic, if somewhat melodramatic, evenings of songs and sketches to parties of old people at the Regent Assembly Hall and to socials at a variety of churches. Their recent performance in front of an audience of injured soldiers at the wartime hospital in Langworthy Road School had been a triumph.

  Occasionally, they went to the main hospitals to cheer up the patients with renditions of currently popular music hall songs and, only last Christmas, they had presented to a rapturously appreciative audience of four hundred inmates at the Salford Workhouse, a specially written version of Cinderella. Big Charlie’s wife, Dorothy – billed exotically by the Glee Club as Dolly de Vine – had given a tear jerking performance as Cinders. She had touched the hearts of the wretchedly unfortunate inmates with her interpretation of the role as the beautiful, though often beaten and humbled, young girl who did all the chores whilst her privileged, but ugly, older sisters went off to the Ball at the Palace.

  So sympathetic had they been to the plight of the unfortunate Cinders that members of the audience had shouted angrily at the ugly sisters when they had told Cinders to go and prepare their gowns and then to clean the kitchen. The two loathsome women had then told her that she wasn’t allowed to go to the Ball and that she must stay behind and clear the cinders from the fireplace and scrub the floor. So moved were the socially disadvantaged inmates by this outrageous exploitation of the sobbing child that, when the brutish sisters took out a stick to thrash their desperate sibling, three unmarried mothers had jumped on the stage and attacked the startled bullies. A group of wardens had leapt forward to restrain the incensed women and a sword wielding Prince Charming – actually the Dapper Man, Sidney Snelgrove – had jumped in from behind the bed sheets that substituted for curtains at the side of the stage, having been forcibly propelled from there by the robust Chairwoman and director of the pantomime, Mrs Bollevant. Whilst the wardens grappled with the unmarried mothers, Prince Charming had stood trembling and waving his sword ineffectively at the restless audience. In a nervously high pitched voice he had pleaded with the crowd to remember that it was only a story and that it wasn’t real life but that had proved to be the breaking point for one old man who had then jumped up, brandishing his stick fiercely at the now quaking Prince Charming. ‘Don’t you come here telling us that rubbish, you raving Jessie,’ he had shouted. ‘It is real life. Why do you think we’ve finished up in here? It’s because people like you have put us in here.’

  A portly Alderman in an expensive overcoat, who had unenthusiastically attended the pantomime only in order to show the concern that the city fathers felt for the welfare of their more unfortunate citizens, had then stood up and pushed the old man forcibly back into his seat. The old man’s wife, furious at this rough response to her husband’s rightful protest, responded with a surprisingly heavy blow to the Alderman’s nose. This had provoked a screaming reaction from the Alderman’s wife who, forgetting her carefully cultivated status and her Cashmere coat, had grabbed at the old woman’s hair and threatened to punch her eyes out. Her attack on one of their number had proved too much for some of the inmates in the adjoining seats who jumped up and tried to pull her off. The wardens, however, worried about this assault on their VIP guests and the implications that this might have for their future employment, had then reacted with a much too heavy response and within minutes the room was in chaos.

  Inmates, sensing an opportunity to vent some of their suppressed anger at the inequitable lot that life had handed them, turned on the shrieking Prince Charming, intent on stripping him of some of the ill-gotten benefits that his high status had clearly conferred on him. Two old crones, having been deprived of the comforts of a male companion for some years, took the opportunity that fate had so generously presented them with, of a further exploration of the desperately struggling Prince Charming. Some of the other inmates had rushed over to the assistance of Cinders who was by now screaming and weeping with genuine fear. Moved by her awful distress many had joined the unmarried mothers and berated the ugly sisters who, sensing that their reception was less than warm and that their continuing presence might put themselves in serious danger, had picked up their skirts and fled through the nearest door. Those of the audience who were able, persuaded that their moment of destiny had come, had taken up the pursuit, ragged clothes streaming out behind them, bony fists waving their walking sticks and the swords stolen from Prince Charming’s courtiers.

  After a frantic dash down the road, during which they had caused a horse to bolt leaving behind a very surprised coalman, the ugly sisters had sought refuge in the gent’s toilet at the corner of Trafford Road. The noise of the pursuit had brought the customers pouring out of the Ship Hotel and the word had quickly spread round that this was some upper class scoundrel who had put his servant girl ‘up the chuff’ and had thrown her out onto the streets. Outraged by this, and fortified by the strong ale from the Ship, the worthy dockworkers had joined in the protest. When, eventually, the police had arrived to deal with the three hundred strong mob that was blocking the road and they had discovered that the two terrified women were actually men, the rumours were greatly embellished. After much licking of pencils and taking down of notes, the police had finally arrested the ugly sisters ‘just to be on the safe side, like.’

  Big Charlie listened with wonderment at these revelations of his wife’s involvement at the centre of a riot. He’d heard her singing in the cellar as she pounded the washing in the dolly tub, and he had to admit that she had a fair voice. But it appeared that Dorothy had confided in the woman next door that she nurtured a secret plan. She wanted to be a great singer so that when her Charlie came home, she could take him to a concert and surprise him with a dazzling performance. She reasoned that, when he saw how the audience applauded her and enraptured men stood and cheered and shouted for more, then Charlie would see
her in a new light. He would see that there was more to her than just a sloven in a pinny who did all his fetching and carrying and who mithered him when he came home because she wanted some company. She would still be his Dot but she would be somebody special and that might put a bit more spark in his fire, a bit more oil in his can, so to speak, and, hopefully that could resolve this problem of her not having any family.

  Big Charlie winced with shining embarrassment at the revelation that his less than masterful performances in the marital bed had clearly been opened up for speculative assessment by the gossiping wives of the neighbourhood. When Dot had learned, just two weeks after his Prince Charming humiliation, that Sidney Snelgrove had suffered another misfortune when his mother had thrown him out because of his funny ways, she saw this as an opportunity to further her plan. Despite some strange traits in his character, he did have a talent for the piano and for interpreting and presenting a song. There was much that could be learnt from him and the chance for more frequent rehearsals could not be ignored. She offered Sidney the use of the spare room for a modest rent and on the strict understanding that she would need it just as soon as she and Charlie started their family.

  Big Charlie ‘Hmmmphed’ a few times and drank several mouthfuls of beer. His mind struggled to form a link between the slightly frumpy wife that he was familiar with and the glamorous Miss Dolly de Vine that his neighbours were describing. He pointed out, however, that it was obvious to him that there was a lot more to it than they thought because he had seen with his own eyes how they were gazing longingly at each other and singing ‘I Love You as I’ve Never Loved Before.’ It was Big Charlie’s opinion that what you had witnessed with your own eyes couldn’t be argued with and he would bet that he had been made the laughing stock of the whole area by their antics.