As it turned out, this would be a spectacular session, even for Harry, and one that would have extraordinary consequences. As he’d walked up Constance Street he’d bumped into Ted Jarrett, a greengrocer with whom Harry had enjoyed many a convivial evening in Cundy’s. Ted was struggling to push a sack barrow piled with hessian bags full of potatoes.
‘All right, Ted? Got any spuds?’ said Harry with a wink.
‘I’ll be all right once I get going,’ Ted replied.
‘Where you off to?’
‘The Vic dock.’
‘Oh, me an’ all.’
‘Ship’s order of spuds didn’t turn up, apparently, so they’ve ordered loads from grocers. Ted Erdmann’s already been and come back.’
‘Oh yes?’ said Harry. ‘What’s the ship?’
Ted pulled a docket from inside his jacket and held it at arm’s length, alternatively widening and narrowing his eyes.
‘Haven’t got me bleedin’ glasses,’ he muttered, before adding, ‘SS Aquitania.’
‘That’s where I’m going an’ all!’ said Harry. ‘She sails today and the boys in the stores were talking about a little drink-up before they go.’
‘I’ll need a bleedin’ drink betimes I’ve wheeled this bugger up there.’
‘I’m on orders from Nell, though – can’t be late back.’
The two men made their way slowly to the Silvertown dock gate.
‘You know what my Nell said to me the other day?’ said Harry as they approached the gate, heaving their barrows awkwardly over ruts and cobbles. ‘She said, “You know how the wheel on your cart goes squeak … squeak … squeak?” and I said yeah, and she says, “How about making it go squeaksqueaksqueaksqueak?”’
Harry was on nodding terms with the attendants at the gate; Ted showed them his docket and they were waved through, wheeling their barrows along the busy quayside as men darted to and fro, sacks over their backs, between the ships and the warehouses while overhead huge wooden crates swung through the air on the giant hydraulic cranes. Harry loved the bustle of the docks, he found the energy of the place nourishing. He fed off the urgency and the impatience, the feeling that he was part of the process yet disconnected from it. Most of all he liked the idea that the whole world was in this patch of water not far from his home. Ships, cargoes, sailors: they all made for this small corner east of London.
Harry and Ted found the Aquitania and wheeled their barrows up the gangway, something that was quite a challenge for Ted in particular. At the top, Harry turned and looked out across Silvertown. The Tate refinery chimney rose highest, but there were countless others all expelling pennants of smoke and steam that curved into the air.
‘Look at that, Ted,’ he said, taking in the panorama. ‘Makes you think we’re at the centre of the world here, on our little island.’
When he was high up on a ship like this he always tried to work out which rooftop belonged to 15 Constance Street, but could never be sure.
‘Some sight though, ain’t it?’ he said, leaning against the deck rail.
‘Not the prettiest view in the world, Harry, but yes, it’s a sight all right.’
Harry delivered his linen, Ted his potatoes, and the galley staff, having finished for the day, squeezed around their little mess table and plonked bottles of rum on its surface. Tin cups were distributed and filled with healthy measures, Harry and Ted clanged cups, raised them in toast and put them to their lips.
One of the last things Harry remembered was telling the story of Nell’s triumph in dispersing the gang of vandals who were trashing the Eid bakery. The galley lads, all New Zealanders, poured out another measure and proposed a toast to the women of London. Harry corrected them. ‘The women of the east end of London,’ he specified.
He woke to find Ted asleep on his shoulder and his drinking cronies in various stages of slumber, from foghorn snoring to shallow breathing. It wasn’t the breathing sounds that bothered him, though; it was the familiar throb from the engines and the clinking of crockery in the cupboards, signifying that the ship was under way.
‘Ohhh, sodding hell,’ he said out loud through the early makings of a stinking hangover. ‘She’ll go spare.’
Ted woke up.
‘Huh, whassa … mmm … what?’ His eyes opened, blinked a couple of times, and then opened wide.
‘Oh Christ, Harry, we’re still on the bleedin’ ship.’
‘Don’t worry, Ted,’ said Harry, pinching the top of his nose with forefinger and thumb, ‘they’ll put us off at Tilbury when the pilot’s done.’
A door opened, a blond head poked in, pulled a face and said in a West of Ireland accent, ‘Jaysus, lads, the bang o’drink off ye.’ It was the purser, who, when he saw Harry and Ted, pulled another face.
‘Harry? Is that you?’
‘Don’t mind us, Ciaran, just put us on the pilot tug at Tilbury,’ he said, his mouth dry and filled with the unmistakable taste of stale alcohol.
‘Tilbury? Jesus, Harry, we’re way past Tilbury. That was an hour ago.’
‘What? Ciaran, I’m really not in the mood, but you’d better be having me on.’
‘No, Harry, we’re well under way. You’re stuck with us now, boy, whether you like it or not.’
‘Stuck with you? How do you mean?’
‘We’re not stopping now until we get to the Dardanelles.’
Harry and Ted looked at each other, and then back at Ciaran, mouths agape.
‘The Dardadardadarda … Dardanelles?’ gibbered Ted.
The Aquitania was an ocean liner, barely three years old, designed for transatlantic runs. On the outbreak of war she was pressed into service as a merchant ship with guns attached, but was now a troop ship. The ornate, moulded ceiling of the ballroom, where previously men in tuxedos would dance with women in swishing, glittering dresses, now looked down on a mess hall packed with khaki uniforms.
Deep in the bowels of the ship Harry and Ted were trying to come to terms with their situation while also trying to cope with with startling hangovers. Neither of them spoke for a while, the shock of realisation combining with the after-effects of the rum to induce a slack-jawed stupor in both men.
The galley crew began to stir, waking one by one and each making the surprised observation that Harry and Ted were still with them.
‘Yep, we’re still with you,’ said Harry. ‘Looks like we will be for a while an’ all.’
The greengrocer and the laundryman from Silvertown were going to war, by accident and with absolutely rotten hangovers.
They were gone for eight months, all told. Harry never told the full story of his wartime adventure, but two things were certain: they were put to work in the galley and there was a calamitous incident with a cauldron of hot soup. One day Harry was deep in the bowels of the ship carrying a large vat of boiling broth when the ship was struck by a torpedo. Fortunately the damage wasn’t severe: if the ship had gone down the chances are that, being right down in the bowels of the vessel, Harry would have gone down with it. As it was, the jolt of the explosion, which resounded through the ship with a deep boom, caused him to drop the soup and coat his left leg in bubbling hot liquid. Even through his trousers the pain was excruciating. Two of the other galley hands helped him to his bunk and went for help, leaving Harry almost weeping with pain.
After what seemed like an age, Ciaran the purser arrived.
‘How’re ya, Harry?’ he said as he put his head around the cabin door. He saw the state of him and added, ‘Jaysus!’
‘Bloody rotten, that’s how I am,’ cried Harry.
‘The ship’s surgeon’s here to see you, mate.’
The surgeon pushed past, put on half-moon glasses and wordlessly looked at Harry’s leg. He unrolled a leather case, pulled out a pair of scissors and cut Harry’s soaked trouser leg away to reveal an awful burn concentrated on his thigh. It was already beginning to blister. He touched the burn in a couple of places, at which Harry reached new heights of volume and pitch, and nodded to hi
mself.
‘Now,’ said the surgeon, brusquely, ‘I’m going to come back and dress it, but if there’s any sign of infection I need to know. Straight away. I don’t need to remind you but effectively we’re in a tin can in the middle of a vast expanse of water and I’m a busy man. There can be no prevarication, nor can there be lead-swinging. Don’t waste my time, and by that I mean don’t call me unnecessarily and don’t create extra work for me by withholding things from me until it’s too late, is that clear?’
‘Yes, doc,’ said Harry. ‘I think so.’
Harry lay in his bunk for three days, sleeping fitfully, being brought tea, water and meals by Ted and the others, but in constant pain. Eventually Ted went for the surgeon, who arrived, knelt next to Harry, peeled back the dressing and looked at the wound. Harry watched him intently and was sure he saw the faint signs of a grimace. He replaced the dressing, nodded at Harry and left the room, closing the door behind him.
He looked at Ted. They heard the surgeon talking to Ciaran in a low voice, then the door opened again and the surgeon returned.
‘Mister Greenwood,’ he said, ‘I have some bad news for you. The burn has become infected and I’m afraid we are going to have to take your leg off. I’m very sorry. Ashore we’d have more options, but here I’m afraid we don’t have the luxury of wait-and-see. I’m concerned gangrene may set in.’
The blood drained from Harry’s face.
‘I can’t do it straight away, but I’ll be sending for you in a day or so. It’s a serious operation, of course, but we will keep the pain and discomfort to a minimum.’
Then, with a curt nod, he was gone.
Ted and Harry looked at each other and for a moment neither said a word. Ted eventually broke the silence.
‘Bugger me,’ he said.
Nobody is entirely sure what happened next. They agree that Harry had no intention of giving up fifty per cent of his lower limbs and that before the surgeon could flaunt his hacksaw in earnest Harry and Ted had – literally – jumped ship. The stories just differ on where this occurred, as it seems Harry was never very forthcoming on what happened next. One version has it that after the torpedo strike the ship headed for the nearest land and anchored in a bay to inspect and repair the damage. Harry and Ted went over the side, swam to the shore and, when they asked where they were, discovered it was the Falkland Islands. They spent time there while Harry’s leg was treated and waited for a ship going back to England.
The other version has it that the ship was on its way to the Falklands from the Dardanelles when Harry and Ted jumped ship and swam ashore, finding themselves at Marseille. From there they set off walking through France, being arrested as deserters several times. At one point some soldiers from New Zealand took pity on them and lent them uniforms, and eventually they made it back to England. It was strange that as garrulous a storyteller as Harry Greenwood never revealed the detail of how he jumped ship to save his leg, or at least, if he did, that the full story was never handed down and is now lost for ever. Equally it’s possible that if he did walk up through France he might have seen some dreadful things, been caught up in some terrifying situations and, like many men of the First World War, locked it away in a corner of his mind, never to be consciously relived.
Chapter Twenty
But what of Nell in the meantime? When darkness had fallen on the day when Harry left for the docks, she’d rolled her eyes. As the evening progressed she grew angry. When she woke the next morning and found he still hadn’t returned she was worried. He may have been on some almighty sessions in his time, but he always came home.
Silvertown was still a dangerous place. Accidents were common, especially in the docks. The heavy machinery, the swinging cranes, the constant movement of people, crates, lorries, carts and ships meant that barely a week went by without some kind of accident among the anarchy of the wharves, gangways and cobbled quaysides.
The next day she tried to carry on as normal, telling the girls their father would be home soon and hoping she was right. Among the noise of the street she tuned her ear to hear the distant approaching squeak of the barrow, but it didn’t come. Then, in mid-afternoon, a man wearing a Port of London Authority uniform came to the house and Nell felt her stomach fall right through the floor into the marshy mud of Silvertown.
The man from the PLA was quick to reassure her.
‘He’s fine, love. Absolutely fine. He’s on a ship, him and …’ He opened out the piece of paper he had with him. ‘… Edward Jarrett – they’re both fine. Something must have held them up on board, don’t know what, but somehow the ship sailed with them on it.’
Nell went through every emotion from relief to anger and back again in the time it took her to draw breath.
‘Well, that’s something, I suppose,’ she said. ‘I was thinking all sorts. Where’s this ship going? They normally put him off at Tilbury.’
Normally, she thought. As if getting so pissed with the sailors that a ship would set off with him on it, insensible, was normal.
‘It’s a troop ship, so I’m afraid I can’t tell you where it’s going,’ he replied. ‘You know, with the war and everything,’ he added.
Nellie’s mind raced. She was relieved he hadn’t come to harm in the docks – that was one thing. She was furious that he’d done exactly what he’d said he wouldn’t and got drunk with the sailors – that was another thing, let alone missing Tilbury and heading for God knows where. A troop ship could only mean danger. They wouldn’t, after all, be taking a shipload of soldiers on a Pacific cruise. The sea was a dangerous place at the best of times, but especially now, with German gunboats and submarines out there.
That afternoon she gathered the girls around her and told them what had happened and that she wasn’t sure when exactly their father was coming home. But he was coming home, she reassured them, there was no doubt about that. There were tears, the girls hugged each other and nearly set Nell off too, but she was determined to stay strong for them, and not to show she was just as frightened and upset as they were. A wail from upstairs suggested Charlie understood too. As she put her arms round her girls and listened to the baby crying, Nell, just for a moment, feared for the future.
It was the middle of January 1916 by the time Harry got home to Silvertown, a full eight months after he’d left. He’d cabled ahead to Nell that he was coming but wasn’t sure exactly when he’d arrive. He’d managed to write a couple of letters but, given he’d been on the move the whole time, hadn’t heard a thing from Constance Street since he walked off that warm May morning, what now seemed like a lifetime ago.
However much adventure he’d had in the intervening months, and however enviously he used to watch the ships leave the dock and imagine the worlds they were going to see, he had ached in his heart for his wife and his children. He had missed the girls, and he’d missed Ivy’s and Kit’s birthdays – clinking tin cups with a big, hairy New Zealand stoker in the windowless, fetid galley of a ship somewhere in the Atlantic was far from being an acceptable substitute. He’d just missed Nell’s birthday by a couple of days, and his boy Charlie was almost exactly a year old now – he’d missed most of his young life.
The train pulled out of Liverpool Street; the last stage of a bizarre, accidental roundabout odyssey. Eventually the chimneys of Silvertown came into view, the funnels of the docks. Everything went dark as the train entered the Silvertown tunnel, the dim bulb illuminating his reflection in the window. A wiser man looked back at him, he hoped. He’d not taken a drink in two months now, which had been hard, very hard, but he felt better for it and it was a course of action that he hoped would prevent a repeat of his recent escapade. Ted was still in town – he’d reckoned he needed a couple of stiffeners before facing his wife – and so Harry was alone in the carriage for this final leg of the journey. A duffel bag was at his feet with the few possessions he’d brought back with him, and in his hand was the slouch hat he’d been given as part of the uniform lent to him by the obliging men of
the 14th South Otago in southern France on his way back. He’d had a photograph taken wearing it, pinned up on one side in the New Zealand and Australian fashion, and included it with one of his letters. He’d been drunk when he sent it and had scribbled on the back, ‘If you see this young gentleman around the town, treat him well.’ In hindsight, possibly a little flippant for the circumstances. He’d dumped the uniform when he’d reached Boulogne – there was a delousing station there for troops returning on leave – but kept the hat to give to Charlie as a souvenir.
The train emerged from the tunnel into bright January sunlight. The chimneys belched, the factories clanked, furnaces roared, the ships on the river sounded their horns: Harry had never thought he’d miss the din of Silvertown, but now it was like a symphony to his ears. As the train pulled in to Silvertown station, he picked up his duffel bag, clutched the hat in his left hand, opened the carriage door and stepped down onto the platform. A handful of other passengers disembarked and headed quickly for the exit as it was a cold January day, but Harry stood for a moment, his breath clouding, looking at the familiar sights that he’d left what seemed like a lifetime ago. He caught himself smiling, then tempered it to a pout as his emotions conflicted. He was glad to be home, excited at the thought of seeing his family again, but felt a wave of guilt wash over him. He’d been hideously irresponsible and he knew it. Getting hammered was one thing, but getting so hammered you embark on an eight-month tour around the fiercest war in the history of humankind, well, that was something quite outrageous. Even for Harry. The train hissed, and whumped, and hissed again, the iron wheels moaning into motion and the engine picking up pace as it pulled out of the station and made for its final stop at North Woolwich. He looked towards Cundy’s and Constance Street beyond and prepared himself for a homecoming reception the tone of which he couldn’t possibly predict.
‘Harry?’
Constance Street Page 10