Made in Myrtle Street (Prequel)
Page 34
‘It would have saved us all a lot of grief if he had. The priest didn’t know all that of course, but I suppose he might have put two and two together. He told Brig that Dot had started to come to church again in the summer. She hadn’t been since her teens. She probably couldn’t cope with the guilt. He said that she was in high spirits. Talking about having been cleansed and the cross that she had had to bear for so many years had been lifted.’
‘She seemed to have had a real Hallelujah moment there,’ Edward said.
‘Aye. It must have been when she received the letter from Big Charlie. Trouble was that she then received another letter in November from the Army. It had taken them a bit to find her because she had moved a few times after that fracas with Big Charlie when he came home on leave.’
‘That must have been the letter about him being killed?’
‘Yes. I’m afraid so.’
‘Oh sod it. I was back then. I should have gone to find her. Trouble was, I could hardly force myself out through the front door.’
‘What could you have said, Eddie? She wanted the man who had finally freed her from her torment. Hearing about his heroics would have been about as much use as a sticking plaster for a severed arm.’
‘What a waste. Big Charlie worshipped Dot but he never understood how she really felt about him.’
‘Perhaps she has told him now,’ Liam said quietly.
Edward stared at the corner of the oily cloth protruding from beneath the corner of the stone vase. Pink petals fluttered around it and collected in its folds. ‘b.15th June 1885 d.24th December 1918.’ A clump of bluebells on the grave bowed their heads modestly. ‘It was Christmas Eve when she went. Big Charlie said that she hated Christmases on her own.’
Liam picked up a rose and held it to his lips as he rocked on his heels. Bugles sounded the last post at a distant grave. As the final soaring note faded Liam began to sing, quietly at first then reaching up in pleading supplication, a beautiful but tortured sound that plucked at chords deep within Edward’s body. A large black bird circled over them and cried its counterpoint whilst magpies on the ground chattered the chorus. There were no mountains in Weaste Cemetery to echo the ullalullah but in the rustling trees the souls of Salford wept for the spirit of another victim of that devastating war. A lament for Big Charlie’s Dot; now given her absolution.
Postscript
From the initial battalion strength of over 1500 men in September 1914, the 1/8 Battalion of the Lancashire Fusiliers had lost 561 officers and other ranks, killed, died of wounds or sickness, and missing, by the time that they returned to Salford in April 1919.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19