Made in Myrtle Street (Prequel) (24 page)

Dad, why are you fighting against the Germans in this war? Teacher said that it started because some Prince from Austria got shot but why did you get dragged into it? She said that we are peacemakers because we run the most powerful Empire in the World so why don’t you just go with your army and tell the Austrians and the others to stop arguing like Mam does with us kids? Mam tells our Edward to keep his nose out of it when other lads are fighting at school because it is nothing to do with him.

Mam is looking after Edith Hardcastle’s little brother because Mrs Hardcastle has got to go to work now making big guns in Trafford Park. I heard her telling Mam that some of the girls at work write their names and addresses on the guns to see if any soldiers will send them a letter. Mam told Mrs Hardcastle that she had better not try it because she has enough worries as it is without adding to them and that she’d never been right since she’d had the telegram about Mr Hardcastle.

There is a man comes down our street every Sunday after Sunday School sitting on a bogey because he has got no legs. He sits in the middle of the road singing and then takes his cap round hoping for some money. Mam always gives him a cup of tea and a piece of cake and says ‘There but for the Grace of God. It could be your Dad.’ But it couldn’t because he is the Dad of one of the kids at the Mission and he said that they’ve got no money because he can’t get a job now.

If you do come home, don’t bring any of those lice because they sound horrid.

Love

Laura

***

Erondelle

France

6
^th
March 1917

Dear Pippin,

I’m glad that you liked your present from Egypt. The Arabs make some beautiful jewellery and I wasn’t sure which to choose. You can wear it as a special treat for me when I do come home. It’s a very complicated situation with this war, Darling, but I’m sure that people in the Government are trying very hard to sort it out. You will just have to believe that we are fighting because we want to make sure that our wives and children can be safe in their homes and because we want our country to be free. I am sorry that it is causing so much upset and difficulty. I just hope that it will be over before too long and then we can all come home.

I haven’t seen any of these giant slugs yet but I have been told about them. They are called tanks and they have soldiers inside them so that they can’t be shot at. They seem like a good idea but they have been having problems with them because they keep getting stuck in the mud. The weather here has been awful. We have had a lot of snow and it is bitterly cold. We complained about it being so hot in Egypt but I know which we would prefer.

Mam tells me that you are still doing well at school, particularly in English and Geography. She said that you keep checking in the atlas to see where I have been. You keep working hard, Darling, because your schooling is very important. We want a better future for all our children – both girls and boys. If you have a good education people can’t take advantage of you as easily and you have more confidence. You want to be able to make something of yourself when you grow up. One day you might become a teacher and we will be really proud of you.

Hopefully, at least, when all this is over we won’t have the same problems in Britain that they will have in France. All around here the villages have been virtually destroyed and people have to move in with others in the houses that are still standing. A lot of families are struggling because their men are away in the army and their houses have been hit by shells. They try to keep everything going as normal if they can. The baker still makes the bread if he can get to an oven and the little bars open and the old men sit outside having a coffee.

We are staying in a barn on a farm at the moment. The sappers have built us a special bath that can be used by 60 men in an hour. It’s worse than being the last in line for a bath at home but at least that is your own family. They said that they are building quite a lot of these units because some of the soldiers here in France haven’t had a bath for months. In the village the army have fitted out a cinematograph unit like one that I took your Mam to see once up Cross Lane. You would be amazed if you could see it. They have brought some films over from England and we saw our planes shooting down the German airships. We watched a few minutes of Manchester United playing when we went last night. We got very excited when Billy Meredith scored a goal.

Perhaps you and your Mam could knit me some more socks. Our feet are freezing all the time. I have cut finger holes in my old ones to use them for mittens.

Take care of yourself my little one.

Love

Dad

***

During the second half of March 1917, the men of the 1/8 Lancashire Fusiliers helped the Royal Engineers to patch up the small French communities and their heavily scarred countryside. They repaired roads and cleared them of debris; they repaired bridges and made houses habitable. Their hearts went out to the devastated families that were struggling to survive in the midst of this mad, destructive warfare, the innocent civilian bystanders who were trying desperately to keep some sanity as the shells thudded into their homes blowing their animals, their livelihoods and their loved ones to smithereens.

The continuing bad weather, however, began to take its toll on the horses. They struggled to acclimatize after spending so long in Egypt and many of them developed bronchial infections and died. The conditions also took their toll on the soldiers’ equipment with the boots becoming a particular problem for the men working outside all day. They had been issued just before the Battalion had left Egypt but they fell apart in days when exposed to the bleak, wintry weather in France.

On the 5th April they arrived in Peronne where the Divisional Headquarters was to be established. Virtually every building in the town had been destroyed or badly damaged. The municipal building – L’Hotel de Ville – had survived with its ground floor almost intact, protected by the sturdy, arched colonnade that ran along its front. The five Grecian style columns rose aloofly out of piles of broken masonry and splintered timbers – sad relics of the first floor and roof. Above the colonnade, the departing Germans had fixed a sign with the mocking message ‘Nicht ärgern, nur wundern’ – ‘Don’t be angry, just be amazed.’ Despite its attractions, it was immediately declared out of bounds by the suspicious officers. They knew that, as the most usable building in the town, it might have been packed with high explosive by the departing Germans.

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.