Made in Myrtle Street (Prequel)

by B A Lightfoot

  His war was over and now he belonged nowhere.

  ‘Well, yer should at least leave them cigs alone; they’ll make yer throat a lot worse,’ Amy counselled.

  ‘They make it feel a bit easier, but thanks for caring,’ Edward smiled. He didn’t really know how to respond to her rough edged, frank charm.

  ‘Right. I’ll be off. Don’t finish up like that miserable old divil next door to us.’ She waved and disappeared up the street.

  That afternoon, whilst the sirens on the ships in the Docks heralded the onset of peace and people danced in the street, Edward, working tirelessly with a cigarette dangling from his lips, painted the living room and the scullery stark, ascetic, purging white.

  Chapter 19

  April 1919 Salford

  Edward stared at the dying embers in the grate. It would be out soon if he didn’t move. This was a job that he had taken responsibility for, looking after the fire, but sometimes his mind drifted away. He got out of his chair, took some pieces of wood from the bag that his eldest brother, Jim, had sent and placed them carefully on the glowing cinders. There was an almost hypnotic fascination in watching the fire. It had comforting warmth. Coke gave a range of interesting blues and yellows as it burnt. Coal, when you could get it, and wood produced dancing, ever changing vistas of flames that drew you into their centre and painted flickering, shadowy shapes around the room.

  The fire orchestrated groups of ethereal, wraith-like people that darted round the white walls; the carters and drovers in the early morning mists of the cattle markets; the dockworkers standing around the railings on Cross Lane corner in the late afternoons of winter; the weary soldiers, rifles at the ready, trudging across the barren, devastated fields of France bathed in the orange-red glow of the inferno of the bombardment; men being ripped apart by high explosive shrapnel shells or mown down by machine gun bullets; Big Charlie, his guts spilling out of his body and his life blood soaking away into the French soil, his face contorted by the pain as he struggled to make his belated avowal of his love for his wife; and Liam, the man at whose side he had walked for so many years and with whom he had shared those troubles and triumphs that are the quirky province of male pals, might also be lying under the cold, French soil.

  He had been round to see Dorothy, just after he got back, to explain what a special and quietly heroic man Big Charlie had been, but he got no answer. The neighbours had said that she had moved a month before. Perhaps it was as well. He couldn’t share her grief – she had lost a husband, a lover and a breadwinner out of her sadly incomplete marriage and he had lost a friend with whom he had stood shoulder to shoulder and peered into the depths of hell.

  He hadn’t spoken about Liam other than to shrug his shoulders and grunt in reply when anybody enquired about him, and he never asked if there was any news. He knew that he should go and see Bridget but he couldn’t formulate the words to explain how he had witnessed his friend’s mind being torn apart by the polar forces of her purity and the corrosive evil of the war. He knew that his bumbling explanations would sound like a shameful admission of the guilt that he felt for his own complicity in Liam’s degeneration.

  The uncertain fate of Liam was a cancer that he could neither face nor resolve but whose eternal contemplation, sat in his chair in his Salford home with the lives of his family flitting around him, gave a discernible shape to the nightmare of industrial scale killing over the four years that had now become his life.

  Young Laura came in and put her arm round his shoulders. She bent her head so that it rested against his. The shadows flickering on the wall became him and his childhood friends playing football in Turner Street. The girl from a few doors down, coming back from an errand for her Mam, had joined them but wouldn’t take her turn at goalkeeper because she’d get into trouble if she tore her skirt. He turned and buried his face in the coal tar clean fragrance of his daughter’s red hair. Young Laura was so much like her mother.

  ‘Hello Pippin. Are you alright?’

  ‘Yes thanks, I’m ok.’ She answered him briefly but in a way that left an unspoken question hanging in the air.

  ‘How come you’re not playing out? I thought that you were playing school with Sadie and Mary.’

  ‘They’re fed up of that now. They’ve gone to play with next door’s puppy and our Ben has gone to the coal yard to help the man clean out the stable. Uncle Jim gives him a penny for every bag of horse manure that he takes up.’

  ‘Why don’t you help your Mam then?’ Edward asked.

  ‘Mam’s gone to do her cleaning job and she asked me to look after the girls,’ Laura answered. ‘Dad, you said that when you came home you would take me to see that big Hall on the other side of Ordsall Park.’

  ‘Aye, well. We’ll have to see when I feel up to it,’ Edward answered evasively.

  ‘Why don’t we go today? It’s a nice day and the sunshine will do you good,’ Laura persisted. ‘You hardly ever go out now and you’re not going to get better sitting in front of the fire.’ Like Mother, like daughter Edward thought wryly.

  ‘I know that, Darling,’ Edward said defensively. ‘I just need to wait for my breathing to get a bit better.’

  ‘Mrs Willoughby says that a breath of fresh air and a drop of cold water never did anybody any harm,’ Laura countered. ‘So do you want me to brew you a mug of tea, then?’

  ‘Aye, that’s not a bad idea love. Pour the kettle when it’s just boiled, won’t you.’

  ‘Yes Dad. I am twelve in only five weeks, you know, so I do know how to brew tea,’ she said, pursing her lips slightly.

  ‘And anyway,’ she added as she disappeared into the scullery, ‘Amy said that I should tell you that the rest of your soldiers are due back in Salford tonight.’

  ‘What’s that? What did Amy say?’ The casually delivered piece of news had hit Edward like a bullet shot and he felt shocked and stunned yet, at the same time, stimulated.

  ‘She said something about the rest of your Battalion coming back tonight and she knows that her Dad isn’t because he’s dead,’ his daughter answered with unsentimental detachment.

  Edward had never known Amy’s Dad very well and he already knew that he was dead but he, nevertheless, felt almost violated by the casual delivery of the news. ‘Oh dear. That’s an awful shock for her. Tell her that I’m very sorry to hear that. She must be really upset.’

  ‘She’s alright. She said that she’ll get over it if her Mam is allowed to keep her job now that the men are coming back. She said that at least it will stop him coming in and thumping her Mam when he’s been out for a drink.’

  ‘Ah. I see. I didn’t realise that he did that. It’s still going to be difficult for her without a Dad.’

  ‘She said that she would have adopted you as a Dad but you don’t seem to have been too perky lately,’ Laura said. ‘Do you want one of these angel buns that me Mam made?’

  ‘Yes please,’ Edward accepted, reflecting once again on the penetrating honesty of young children.

  After the evening meal was finished, throughout which he had sat silent and grim-faced, he went into the scullery and had a shave – he sometimes didn’t see the point in having one each morning. The family watched as he quietly got himself ready, polishing his shoes and oiling his hair. He went upstairs and put on a clean shirt and tie before taking his suit out of the wardrobe.

  Going back down, he adjusted his tie in the mirror and asked his wife to check him over. She affirmed that he looked very smart. ‘Are you alright, love?’ she asked, puzzled.

  ‘Aye. I’m fine thanks. I’ll just be having a bit of a walk.’

  He took his cap off the peg, in preference to the trilby, brushed it down and placed it carefully on his head. ‘I won’t be too long.’ He bent and kissed his wife briefly.

  ‘Be careful, love,’ she whispered to him. He gave an involuntary shudder. There was some resonance in her quiet supplication; it picked at disturbing memories. He walked slowly up Cross Lane, nodding at a few acqua
intances, and then along the Crescent. He stopped for a long time staring into the flowing waters of the river bearing its half-hidden burden of debris. He gripped the rounded tops of the railings tightly as he saw the torrential storm waters of Gallipoli tumbling the bodies of dead soldiers down Gully Ravine.

  He heard the faint strains of a military trumpet playing on W Beach, and the shouts of the transport men trying to drive their horses up to the front line. The increasing throb of the drum beat brought him slowly back to the Crescent and he realised that a band was approaching down Chapel Street. He joined the crowd gathered outside the Cathedral and tried to ignore the tightening pain in his chest.

  The people lined up on either side of the road were mostly dressed like him in their suits and wearing flat caps. He recognised some of them as ex-army men although there were many older ones who were probably waiting to see returning sons. There were many wives and girlfriends amongst the agitated crowd and children ran excitedly along the road as the band approached.

  As the soldiers drew closer the watching groups pressed forward to be nearer to their loved ones. The band passed followed by the officers and the flag bearers. People cheered and shouted greetings to the returning heroes who half turned their heads and allowed themselves a brief smile. Many of the men bore the scars of the hard battles they had fought but they wore them with pride as they marched rhythmically along the cobbled sets in front of this admiring and cheering audience.

  Edward’s spirit was sinking fast. He had watched hundreds of weary men in tired uniforms march past and scrutinised the face of each. His worst fears were becoming reality. His gloom was approaching black despair when he saw the familiar face set resolutely to the front. The scar on the side of the head was still pronounced and the shoulders pulled back but the uniform bore the evidence of battle. The pocket on one side of his jerkin was rather clumsily stitched into place whilst the other was held in position by a German cap badge. Black patches on the back of the trousers just above the puttees bore witness to his habit of cleaning his still shiny toe caps there.

  He called his name. Liam turned and grinned when he saw Edward. ‘What happened to you?’ Edward bellowed. ‘I thought that you had copped one when nobody heard from you.’

  Liam pointed a finger at his own head and mouthed the words ‘Daft sod,’ to Edward.

  Edward smiled back and worked his way forward to get alongside Liam. He picked up the pace of the marching men and Liam, inclining his head slightly, asked ‘Are you alright, Eddie?’

  ‘I’m fine. What’s more to the point is how you are.’

  ‘I’m ok, thanks. Had a few weeks in hospital while they sorted out the bullet wound then I was great.’

  ‘But…you know….’ Edward said hesitantly, ‘How are you in yourself, with these worries that you had and all that?’

  Liam smiled. ‘I’m fine now, thanks mate. It was the ullalulla that started me off, you know, singing it for Big Charlie. About the soldier boy going off to war and dying in some foreign field. It’s the lament of the widow woman who cries in the night like a wailing wolf. She’s got no home because her man has died and she’s got no grave to weep over. Made me realise. All of us out there, you, me, Big Charlie, the German kids, we were all of us just the innocent victims. The bastards who start all these things, they’re nowhere to be seen.’

  ‘No. You’re right,’ Edward said, unconsciously matching his step to that of the marching men. ‘But there’s one thing that you can be sure of.’

  ‘What’s that?’ Liam queried.

  ‘Things will never be the same again. The working man has paid too high a price for that. We’ve all got to do our part to make sure of that.’

  A warm feeling of relief was beginning to surge up inside Edward. Deep caverns were opening up and light was flooding in. He wanted to shout to the crowd, to jump around and punch the air. He had somebody that he could share the pained silences with.

  ‘It’s good to see you back, mate. I’ll call round tomorrow,’ he told Liam and turned off down the side street. He had a lot to do, a job to get, a family to bring up and provide for.

  ***

  Edward bent forward and stifled the cough as he placed the rose at right angles to the shiny toecaps of his boots. He took out his handkerchief, blew his nose then folded his hands together across his front and bowed his head. Magpies bickered angrily with a seagull from the nearby docks until a yelping dog chased them off through the dandelion and daisy strewn field where the paupers were buried.

  Liam, standing on the other side of the grave, crouched down with his head held upright to prevent the headaches and placed his rose alongside the other. ‘What a waste,’ he muttered, taking an oily rag out of his pocket and placing it under the stone flower pot. Pink blossom petals, blown by the warm May breeze, scuttered over the grave and nestled into the folds of the cloth as he replaced the heavy pot. ‘Sorry, Dot. This is all we brought back of Big Charlie’s.’

  ‘Well, apart from he wanted you to know how much he loved you,’ Edward added hastily. ‘And to say, like, that he would have loved to have had a family with you.’

  ‘Aye, you know, kids and that.’

  A steam valve whistle ripped into the silence of the cemetery, startling a family of crows out of a tree. Cawing noisily, they flew over the head of the two friends before the gentle breeze regained its domain. Edward knelt down, sniffing as he awkwardly arranged the bunch of flowers in the stone vase that he and Liam had bought between them.

  ‘Poor sod,’ Liam said sadly. ‘She had nobody left. At least she’s been laid in here with her mother.’

  A cloud of pink petals swirled round the gravestone and edged into the turnups of their trousers. Liam moved the drooping flowers to reveal the inscription on the side of the vase. ‘Dorothy Jackson,’ he read. ‘b.15th June 1885 d.24th December 1918. Wife of Charles k.i.a. Reunited.’

  ‘Perhaps we should have put a bit more on about Big Charlie. Like about him being brave and big hearted.’

  ‘It’s only a flower pot, Eddie, not an urn. He wouldn’t have wanted that anyway.’

  A rhythmic clopping of hooves heralded the parade of another family’s misery. The horse drawn hearse was preceded by a tall, sombre, grey-faced man wearing a long black frock coat and a tall shiny top hat. The cortege emerged through the main gates of the cemetery and proceeded up the wide drive towards the chapel. The four horses, plumes of black feathers bobbing on their restless heads, were barely troubled by the glass enclosed carriage that they pulled behind them. The coffin, draped with a Union Jack, was piled high with elaborate wreaths and bouquets and a double line of smartly uniformed Lancashire Fusiliers marched at half pace behind. The sobbing family followed in a black curtained carriage and a long tail of dark mourners trailed gloomily in the rear.

  ‘That’ll be the young captain who was in the Reporter last week,’ Edward said. ‘Died of injuries that he came home with.’

  ‘A lot more to see him off than would have been at Dot’s,’ Liam observed drily.

  ‘I should have made more of an effort to see her when I came home,’ Edward said. ‘Poor Dot. She must have had nobody to turn to – nobody to even say goodbye to. She must have been pretty desperate.’

  ‘She just needed to be back with Big Charlie.’

  ‘That’s as maybe, but I’m just surprised to realise that she was so dependent on him.’

  ‘Eddie. There was a letter that she’d had from Big Charlie. I should have told you about it before.’

  ‘Oh Christ. Where did that come from? What did he say?’ Edward groaned. ‘She must have misinterpreted something that he said.’

  ‘When the neighbour smelled the gas coming from Dot’s house she ran to get the priest. She was a bit scared. The priest let himself in by the back door. He turned the gas off but it was too late. He said that it was a bit odd; Dot had got together all Big Charlie’s clothes and put them on. Everything. Work jacket, shirts, waistcoat, trousers. Even down to his vest a
nd drawers. He said that you could hardly see her in there. You know, she was only like a tuppenny rabbit to start with. And she was still clinging to this letter.’

  ‘Poor thing. She must have been reading it when she died.’

  ‘Aye, that’s right. The priest brought it round to Brig because he knew that she was a friend. Bit ironic, really, because she didn’t even know that Dot was living only half a mile away on Cow Lane. She had enough problems of her own, though, worrying about me. The priest had sent for the police and he thought it best if the letter didn’t get into their hands.’

  ‘Phew. Sounds a bit incriminating. Not what you would expect from Big Charlie.’

  ‘No. But it was loaded. He told her in the letter that he had killed the man who had blighted her life for so many years. It was Big Charlie who shot Major Gobshite, you know, that Fforbes-Fosdyke bastard.’

  ‘Oh God. I knew that he had a grudge but I didn’t imagine that it was that bad. There must have been some serious history there.’

  ‘Aye, Big Charlie told me about it when we got back from Imbros. You know, when I told you about Brig’s problems with the fat slug. Apparently Dot was fifteen at the time. There was only her and her Dad and he was seriously ill upstairs. They hadn’t got the money for the rent when Gobshite came round and she asked if she could leave it for a week. He said that he had a better idea. He raped her in the living room. She was frightened of screaming for her Dad in case it killed him if he tried to come down.’

  ‘He was an evil sod. He should have been put down at birth.’