Made in Myrtle Street (Prequel) (2 page)

A loud rapping on the front door thwarted his confession. Young Edward came charging through from the back yard, disturbing the sleeping cat into a spiky spitting bundle. He raced for the front door with Pippin hanging on to the back of his jumper. ‘I want to get it,’ she yelled. ‘It’ll be Amy calling for me to play out.’

‘No it won’t. It’ll be Jimmy Horrocks coming to lend me his Dad’s pump.’

Edward nudged his chair closer to the table as they battled past him to the front door. A gust of warm autumn wind swept over him and he waved a bacon sandwich to acknowledge Maggie Ellis from two doors down as she shouted from the street. Her mother had had a fall and could your Laura come and see what she could do for her. He relayed the message through to his wife then repeated her response to Maggie.

Edward looked around the small room that was the focus of their family life as he ate his sumptuous breakfast. The net curtains at the window created a heightening background to the rich green of the long, aspidistra leaves. The plant stood on a crocheted cover on the tall oak table with the barley twist legs. He enjoyed running his finger down the curving pattern that had been crafted by his father and thinking about the man that he had barely known, the Dad who had appeared so briefly in his life before he had died when Edward was only two.

The table where he now sat was pushed up against the wall between the front door and the door that led into the scullery. The flowers that he had bought for Laura two days before stood in a plain glass vase on the table in front of him. They were already beginning to fade. Laura swept past him wiping her hands on her pinafore. ‘I’ll be back in a minute, love. She must have had one of her turns again,’ she said quietly, gazing resolutely ahead of her.

He had never been away for so long before. The two week annual camp was always a bit of a wrench but this would now be for much longer. He blotted up the remnants of the yoke with the last crust of the bread. Their living room was small but it was functional and cheerful. It was a room full of vigour and life, of argument and upset, of inquiry and discussion. Sometimes, with the noise of a young family, it felt oppressively small and he would escape into the backyard, the street or even the cellar. At others, it was filled with the glowing warmth and security of loving relationships.

Edward felt especially pleased with the decorating that he had only recently completed. His older sister, Sarah, was the cook for a family that owned a wholesale stationery business in Manchester. Their home, a large house in Seedley, had recently had the hall redecorated. When there had been some rolls of anaglypta left over, the owner, Mr Muir, had kindly agreed to Sarah taking them for her brother for ‘just a small, nominal charge.’ Edward had been thrilled and had covered the lower half of the walls with it. A rich brown paint bought from the Paint and Varnish Company on Cross Lane had given it a warm finish. The same source had supplied the cream gloss for the upper half and the distemper for the ceiling. He had toyed, for a while, with the idea of stippling the somewhat plain cream top section with the brown paint, but Laura had said that it would be far too flamboyant. He had settled, instead, for nailing up some pictures along with a framed sampler that her Grandma had made. It was getting a bit discoloured now but you could still clearly see the white rose stitched proudly over the title ‘The Almonds of Morley.’

A big cupboard was built into one of the alcoves that flanked the cast iron fireplace with its heavy wooden mantle. Underneath the cupboard there were three large drawers with shell patterned brass handles. The top drawer was crammed full of freshly ironed clothes, mostly children’s, whilst the middle one was filled with towels, tablecloths, spare curtains, crocheted mats and tea towels. The bottom drawer had a varied collection of Edward’s tools including his multi-sized shoe last, screwdrivers, hammers, an axe, various tins containing a range of tacks, nails and screws, a set of chisels, a rusting rip saw and a broken-toothed cross cut saw. A variety of part-used paint cans that he had meant to sort out filled the space in the left of the drawer.

In front of the fireplace the varnished wooden floor was covered by a colourful rag rug that Laura’s mother had made. He took his plate into the scullery, came back into the living room and relaxed into the comfortable warmth of the rocking chair that had once been his Dad’s. He closed his eyes, rested back onto the crocheted antimacassar and enjoyed the solace of the traces of ancient pipe smoke.

His eldest brother, James, had inherited most of their father’s woodworking tools after he had followed him into his trade as a wood turner, but Edward was proud of the wooden mallet, pliers, awl, two old chisels, a spokeshave, two moulding planes and a sharpening stone that had been passed on to him. His Dad was thirty nine when he had died and it had left a void in his life that, despite their best efforts, his older brothers were unable to fill. He missed the guiding hand, the strong supportive presence, the special bond that counterpoints the mother’s unquestioning love. On the other hand, when he saw some of his mates’ fathers after they had had an excess of alcohol, he was grateful that he didn’t have to contend with that darker side. Even now, as an adult, he felt a thrill when he used his Dad’s tools and held the handles that his master craftsman father had held. He oiled and sharpened the blades with the same reverential care that he knew his Dad would have used. For a while he was the son of the father and the father was embodied in the son.

Pippin pushed the dummy back into the mouth of the protesting baby, Mary, who was demanding attention with reddening fury from a chair against the wall. The ungrateful baby, fists clenched and arms flailing, spat it out again. ‘I haven’t got all day to be standing here pushing this back in,’ Pippin said, putting her hands on her hips and unconsciously mimicking the scolding tone of her mother. ‘Mam has just gone an errand so you will have to wait for a minute.’ She had wood shavings from the rabbit hutch still nestling in her red hair.

The baby, having woken to the stimulating smell of cooking bacon, was not to be appeased. Pippin picked up a wooden sheep from the pile of toys that was carefully stacked in front of the drawers. It had moving legs but the unfortunate, cross-eyed appearance of a bemused, white dog. ‘Mary had a little lamb, its feet were white as snow,’ she chanted, waving the tormented looking sheep in front of little Mary. The baby continued crying but Edward declined his eldest daughter’s invitation to nurse the unhappy infant, unwilling to risk the unblemished appearance of his new, khaki trousers.

He had made most of the toys that were in the stack though the dolls had been his wife’s creations. The sheep had been one of his earlier efforts and was showing clear signs of abuse and neglect. He felt rather more proud of the fortress that he had created two years ago as a Christmas present for young Edward. The wood had been salvaged from the scrap bin at the sawmill where he worked and the lead soldiers had been made by his brother James using strips of lead flashing thrown away by roofers repairing a property near his home.

Jim had made the moulds from Plaster of Paris, building them up in two sections with grease proof paper in between. Edward remembered how even he had been excited when Jim had taken the molten lead out of the oven in his black-leaded range and poured it into the plaster cast moulds. Then he had been as thrilled as any schoolboy would have been when they were broken open to reveal the shiny lead soldiers.

‘Dad. When you’re away can I shift that wood out of the shed so that I can put my bike in there?’ his son shouted, intruding into his reverie.

***

Edward had said his goodbyes to his widowed mother and his brothers the day before. She had told him to make sure that he got plenty of potatoes down him and not have too much of that foreign muck that they all eat over there. To send him on his way, his Mam had sat him down at the table and given him a large plate of hotpot, cooked with a thick, shortcrust pastry top, followed by his favourite custard tart.

As he had left, she had told him to watch his bowels and, in a rare show of emotion, had given him a big hug and a kiss on his cheek.

Edward now bent his head tentatively towards his wife’s face but the hurt in her grey eyes made him hesitate and he turned, instead, and kissed the forehead of the sleeping baby that she was holding. Laura was embracing the child protectively against her breast but her gaze held Edward’s steadily in wordless communion. They heard the clatter of a horse-drawn cart passing down the cobbled street outside. There was no thudding rumble in the note from the wheels. It would be the coalman returning empty to the yard at the top of the street.

‘Laura. That money in my wage packet. I need to tell you. They paid us off. I have no job to come back to.’

She placed her hand on his shoulder and kissed him gently on the cheek. ‘I know. We’ll manage. Something will turn up.’

‘I’m sorry love. You just seemed so pleased with the extra pay that I couldn’t bring myself to tell you. How did you know, anyway?’

‘Brig told me. You must have mentioned it to Liam.’

‘It’s not right really. The Corporation are keeping the jobs open for their lads but all the private firms round here seem to be laying their people off.’

‘Maybe it is safer to have the money in your pocket now. A job to come back to won’t help the families of those who don’t come back.’

Edward suddenly sensed the deep dread that had gripped his wife. It had locked her into this silent world of fear where even the odd word spoken might betray thoughts that were too awful to air. She had seen more clearly than he had that this wasn’t a rugby match with its bruising physical contact but limited dangers; it wasn’t the pantomime heroics on the practise fields of the Prestatyn army camp. This was a real war, raw and brutalising. They would be facing an army of professional soldiers that had rampaged ruthlessly through Europe and men would be killed and maimed. The camaraderie and bravado of the pub, the rush of the preparations, had dominated the last few weeks and obscured the realities of the combat. He had dwelt on domestic arrangements – she had sensed sacrifice and feared for his life. He had dreamt of a heroic, vanquishing, Comic Cuts adventure whilst his wife was seeing his battered and lifeless body; unreachable and beyond her care.

The constricting tightness in his throat and chest crushed the words of his farewell. The kiss would be the final act of parting. Edward touched his lips into the fiery orb of her hair and deferred the moment.

He tousled the hair of young Edward who was gazing up at him, proud of the Dad who was going off to beat the Germans. He felt a twinge of guilt as he thought of the extra burden that was going to fall on the boy. ‘Look after your Mam whilst I’m away, young fella’ he said and smiled as he saw the shoulders bracing back in an odd contrast to the loud sniff and the quivering lip.

He bent down and kissed the upturned face of seven year old Laura who was getting to be more and more like the gentle but mischievous girl that her mother had been when he first knew her in Turner Street. ‘Bye Pippin’ he murmured. She reached up, touching his face for reassurance. Next to her was her younger brother Benjamin who, at only five years old, was finding it hard to be the brave soldier that his Dad was telling him to be. Finally, there was a hug and a squeeze for Sadie. She had been named Sarah after her Aunt but they had adapted it to Sadie because they liked it and it avoided any confusion. Sadie was crying because she didn’t understand what was happening and anyway she was only three and her Dad was going off somewhere and her Mam was hanging on to him.

He pressed his face again into the soft, coppery red hair of his wife. After twenty years of sharing their lives as children and then adults, they were to be separated and it would probably be for some months. He was trying desperately to be calm and strong. It had been very difficult, telling her that he was going to fight in another country, even though she had been so supportive. Since then, the preparations for his departure had been hectic, almost exciting, but it was this inevitable final moment of farewells that he had been dreading.

A shaft of sunlight was coming through the freshly cleaned windows and it hung like a burnished frame around her head. He kissed her lips briefly as though extra seconds might expose more hurt. The thoughts that flooded around in his brain seemed to falter in his unresponsive throat and he clung to her in a silent intimacy of unspoken need. No words seemed adequate to express the tumult of emotions that flooded through his body. He told her not to worry and that he would be back soon. She whispered to him as she turned to kiss his cheek. Her tear stayed on his skin like a cold breath of air.

With a heavy heart he slung his kitbag on his back, went through the front door and down the cream-stoned steps into the bright sunlight.  He barely heard his children’s ‘Bye Dad’ because of his thudding heart and the echoing response from his studded boots on the stone paving flags. Numbed and confused, he walked the few yards down Myrtle Street and past the house of his in-laws. Laura’s whispered ‘Keep safe, Love’ ran round his head like a mantra. She had spoken it so quietly. He felt as though he had heard her heart praying.

He kept telling himself that it would be just like going to summer camp but maybe for a bit longer.

On the corner he hesitated for a moment then turned. He needed the detail of the already familiar image fixed in his mind. The red brick walls, neat painted window sills and carefully stoned steps were strong and ordered. A warm, comfortable backcloth. Neighbours stood on their steps to see him off. The coalman, unhitching his horse at the top of the street, waved to him. Laura was at their front door. Her arms were locked around the baby. Long black dress with a white pinafore. A housemaid in a drama. Her glowing red hair framed her white face. The children were clustered round her legs. He waved briefly but they were frozen into this brief pastiche.

It was only a hundred yards walk to the left over the railway bridge and up Cross Lane to the Drill Hall but Edward opted instead to turn right, walk past the theatre and down to the crossroads. The concerns oppressed him – would Laura be able to manage on his 1/7d a day for the next few months; would she get a bit behind with the rent and be kicked out of the house? He would try to save something out of the one shilling that was paid directly to him so that he could sort things out when he got back and perhaps have a bit over for Christmas.