Made in Myrtle Street (Prequel) (14 page)

I have been helping Mam as much as I can and she has shown me how to make jam tarts. I made some toast with dripping for our dinner before but our Sadie wouldn’t eat it because it had too much salt on. Our Edward ate hers as well.

I did the front door steps yesterday because the donkey stone man had been round but our Ben came home after playing football and made a right mess of them. I told him that he can do them next time and he went and stoned all down the front pavement so Mam told him he hadn’t got to touch them again. He just did it on purpose to get out of it.

I am trying hard at school, Dad, and my best ever class is English and then Geography. I don’t like Arithmetic much but when I told Mam that the times tables were boring and I couldn’t remember them she made me sit down for a whole hour after Sunday School and keep saying them to her. By the time that I went out to play Edith Hardcastle had picked every single daisy in the street and made a daisy chain for round her neck and there was none left for me. That makes times tables even worse.

Love

Laura

Ps if you come home you could mend the grid because the postman fell down it last week (I think that these ps’s are a good idea because I always think of something else to say after I have finished.)

PS2 I don’t think that we will be attacked like the man in the shop because on my birth certificate it says that I was made in Myrtle Street.

Chapter 7

Battle of Krithia Vineyard

The battles of May and June had taken a heavy toll on the 42nd Division, not only because of the casualties but also because of the mental and physical strain on those that were left. The haunted, empty faces of the soldiers, sitting up during the night and smoking, were those of men nearing breaking point. They all struggled with the realization that their lives were thought to be so cheap.

The British governing classes seemed to be locked into the economic and military system that had been put into place for ruling their empire. The soldiers like Edward were just numbers that were totalled up at the end of the day; an assessment of the resources available to be thrown into the next battle. If you didn’t acknowledge your name in the evening roll call you were deducted from the total – dead, wounded or missing. The forms were filled in and the payroll records adjusted.

Edward knew that it wasn’t just a class problem because they sent their own sons into the mayhem and they themselves became victims of the ritualized slaughter. Perhaps it was the remoteness from the action that prevented the decision makers from really thinking about how to fight a modern war with death dealing weapons like the machine guns. He felt, like all his pals, a growing and burning resentment about the price that they were paying in pursuit of this global game. A game about which they understood so little and in which they were the pawns that were sacrificed for some small strategic gain.

The morale of the soldiers in the trenches was reaching breaking point and it was decided that the battalions in the Division should be given a break from the front line. In the second week of July, the 1/8 Lancashire Fusiliers were taken over on trawlers from ‘V’ beach to the island of Imbros where they spent a welcome four days encamped at the Kephalos Rest Camp.

Given the opportunity to choose, they would probably not have elected to spend their days on Imbros in further, seemingly irrelevant, training. The high command had, however, deemed this to be an appropriate way to relieve the stress of the suffering soldiers.

‘Digging bloody trenches,’ Liam grumbled as they made their way to the bar after another tedious day of instruction. ‘We’ve been living in sodding trenches for the last three months. What do we want to know about digging trenches for? We’d be better off having lectures on how to turn Big Charlie into a giant fly paper.’

‘Hey. Don’t start getting plans like that for me,’ Big Charlie said, suddenly alarmed by the prospect of being enlisted into such a sticky and unpleasant role. He knew from bitter experience that Liam’s spontaneous ideas often led to hurried actions that were later much regretted.

‘It did seem a waste of time, all that trench stuff,’ agreed Edward. ‘But that bit about the tunnelling under the Turkish lines could be a good idea.’

The atmosphere in the bar was heavy with cigarette smoke, barely disturbed by the slowly turning fan. Loud laughter from the officers’ table in the corner rose stridently over the hubbub of chatter from the soldiers crowded round the bar. A drunkenly barking voice, nauseatingly familiar, silenced the bar.

‘It’s the rabble from Salford come to join us,’ Fforbes-Fosdyke shouted. ‘I hope that the steward has enough barrels of beer in.’ His fellow officers smiled weakly whilst he appeared to find the remark hilarious. ‘Hey, bogman,’ he bellowed addressing himself directly to Liam. ‘Fetch us another bottle of whisky. I know that’s one thing you’re good at.’ His sweating red face erupted into a cloud of flying spittle as he laughed uproariously at his belittling humour.

The crowd in the bar, suddenly tense, turned to look at Liam whose face was white and taut with anger. He muttered something inaudible but didn’t move.

‘Come on, you miserable little Irishman,’ the drink crazed Major shouted. ‘A bottle of whisky over here and be quick about it.’ Liam’s fists clenched and hate burned in his eyes but he didn’t move.

‘What’s the matter, you pathetic paddy? Don’t you understand the King’s English? Obey an order when you’re given one by a superior officer… else you and that good-for-nothing Irish tart that you’re married to will be back where you belong… cutting peat.’

Big Charlie hmmphed loudly. ‘I’ll just go and squash the little runt,’ he said, stepping forward.

‘Leave it, Charlie’ Liam instructed, restraining him. ‘That way you’ll just finish up on a charge.’

‘It’d be worth it,’ Big Charlie growled. ‘The little fat sod deserves a good thumping.’

‘It’s ok. I’ll sort it.’ Liam swallowed hard then moved across the room, pausing to speak to a small group amongst the soldiers thronging round the bar drinking from pint pots. Edward and Big Charlie followed closely, concerned about their friend’s intentions. The men huddled round and one of them reached into his pocket, extracted a canvas wallet and passed a small packet discreetly to Liam.

After a brief conversation with the barman, Liam carried the bottle of whisky over to the officers’ table where the gloating Major cackled with delight, bouncing in his chair with the thrill of his power. His fellow officers, relieved at this peaceful resolution of a potentially nasty situation, guffawed and snorted their approval.

‘Hope that you gentlemen enjoy your drink,’ Liam said placidly, before adding in an affected broad Irish accent, ‘It was actually my Granda’ that came over in the potato famine … sir. Although I do believe that your family have done quite well out of starving Irish folk since then.’

The officers laughed uncomfortably at this riposte but the Major, bulging eyes swivelling as he struggled to grasp the significance of the comment, spluttered feebly and poured a large whisky.

***

‘Well, all I can say is that that was getting a bit personal. He seems to have some vendetta going against you.’ Edward drew on his cigarette and looked at the flies going round the paraffin lamp. They were lying on their beds in the dormitory tent having decided to forego the beers that they had planned. The bar had still been buzzing with appreciation for Liam when they had turned and walked out. ‘I mean, bringing your Brig into it like that,’ he continued. ‘He was really out of order with that.’

‘He needs a big fist shoving down his throat,’ Big Charlie suggested, waving his own threateningly in front of him to demonstrate his intention. ‘That’d shut his stupid mouth up for a bit.’

‘You can’t shut somebody like that up unless you shoot him,’ Liam observed bitterly. ‘He’s been raised as a spoilt little brat and he still thinks that everybody is there at his beck and call.’

‘Perhaps some Turk or German will do us all a favour then and snuff out the miserable little bugger.’

‘They’ll never get near enough to him to do that,’ Edward said. ‘If there is any action going, he’s never to be seen.’

‘They’d just have to go three miles behind our lines and look for the nearest bar,’ Liam observed curtly, inhaling deeply on his Woodbine and sending circles of smoke curling up towards the canvas apex.

‘He was right out of order saying things about Brig,’ Big Charlie said, rolling over in his bed and thumping the floor. ‘The dirty little, snot-faced pervert.’

‘Leave it, Charlie,’ Liam chided. ‘Thumping him will sort nothing out. He’ll like as not be a bit out of sorts for the next few days anyway.’

‘Would that by any chance have anything to do with the packet that you had off the fella in the bar?’ Edward enquired.

‘Aye, it might just have been,’ Liam agreed, permitting himself a weak smile.

‘What was it? Hopefully arsenic. That would be a lot more painful than just shooting him,’ Edward said.

‘Not quite that bad. That was Billy Carter I was talking to. Used to work with the mules at Clifton Colliery. He’s with the Transport Company now. I borrowed one of those powders that they give the horses when they are bound up. Slipped it in the whisky bottle.’

‘But that means all the officers will have the runs,’ Edward said, now feeling slightly alarmed.

‘It won’t be too bad. The barman said that, apart from Major Gobshite, they are mostly drinking beer with just the occasional chaser.’

‘You know, I’m beginning to like that,’ Big Charlie said, calming down slightly as he warmed to Liam’s solution. ‘I’m beginning to like that a lot. With a bit of luck the little sod might just shit himself away to nothing. Yes, I like that. Here, have another Woodie you two.’

They lay quietly for a while listening to the hissing paraffin lamp, the chattering cicadas in the fields and the prattling soldiers in the bar. Occasional rumbling explosions reminded them of the hostilities on the mainland.

‘Big Charlie’s right in a way,’ Edward broke into the contemplative quiet. ‘You know, having a go at the likes of us is one thing but bringing our wives into it the way he just did is right out of line. Has he come across your Brig before or something? I mean, how does he know that she is Irish anyway?’

‘It goes back a long time,’ Liam said after a long pause. ‘When she was at home. There’s a lot of houses round Hulme and Salford that were owned by Gobshite’s Dad  and he used to send that little bastard out to collect the rent. One day, Brig came home during her dinner break at the mill because her Mam had been taken bad. She found that slimebag in the scullery groping her thirteen year old kid sister. Poor little sod was too terrified to scream, especially with her Mam ill upstairs in bed.’

‘That is evil’ Edward said. ‘What did Brig have to say about that?’

‘Well, you know what she was like when she was sixteen. Never a one for wasting words when action was possible. She fetched him one with a cast iron frying pan round the back of the head.’

‘Bloody good for her,’ Big Charlie enthused, emphasising his point by thumping the side of his bed which twanged loudly. ‘She always packed quite a punch, your Brig,’ he added ruefully, remembering his own encounters with the beautiful but intimidating girl.

‘It just seemed a good idea at the time but next day he sent his stooges down and they were put out on the street. Her dad was already dead so there they were, four kids with a sick mother sat out on the flagstones on a suitcase in the middle of winter. They spent the next five nights in next door’s coal shed. Her mam just got worse and died. They buried her in a paupers’ grave in Weaste cemetery. Brig found somewhere to stay in the cellar of a house that was rented by another Irish family. Trouble was, the drains used to flood and the crap would come up from the communal toilet. Her three year old sister got sick and died. Brig just didn’t know what to do but she found out where the Fforbes-Fosdykes lived in Prestwich and went round there and smashed his front windows. Some of the blokes who worked there grabbed her and took her inside to see the old man. She told him what had happened and he got the son in and flogged him in front of everybody. Bit humiliating, I suppose, for a twenty year old fella. Had to take it though when his old man is holding the purse strings. But it didn’t get her Mam and the little girl back. And she was still homeless.’

The three friends were silent for a moment before Edward spoke. ‘I knew Brig had had it tough, mate, but I didn’t realise how tough. He deserved that flogging. It should have been done in the middle of Cross Lane market.’

As the detail of Brig’s childhood ordeal had unfolded, Big Charlie had become less animated but smoked incessantly. He lay staring rigidly up at the roof of the tent. ‘Aye, it should. It didn’t change the slimy little bastard, though,’ he said finally.

***

The trenches in Krithia Nullah were suddenly bursting with activity. The Division had been strengthened with the arrival of 1500 men and 47 officers from England on the 23 July though these had not been enough to make up the losses that had already been suffered. The troops, along with large quantities of supplies and ammunition, had been brought in by British ships adapted to give protection against enemy torpedoes and artillery fire. The Turkish army had, at the same time and with greater effect, been building their own reserves with the introduction of new troops, guns and ammunition. They had continued to pound the British positions relentlessly and, in just one morning, seven hundred shells had hit ‘W’ Beach – now known as Lancashire Landings.

It was the 6 August and it was extremely hot. Sweat was running in rivulets down Edward’s back as he sat on the fire step next to Liam whilst they cleaned and checked their rifles. There was a dedication to the detail of the activity, screwing the corner of the cloth into a little spiral so they could pick out small particles of dust from every corner of the weapon. Their devoted attention, though, was cursory compared to the passionate care given by Big Charlie. He went into an almost trance-like state as he bent over the rifle, cleaning and polishing it with his special cloths. All the soldiers cared deeply for their rifles, not cynically as a weapon of destruction, but respectfully as a friend who saved their lives. For Big Charlie, though, his rifle was not just life preserving, it was life enhancing, and he loved it.