Made in Myrtle Street (Prequel) (23 page)

‘Well, she wouldn’t have been chasing after you, mate. She used to call you Aniseed Balls because there was only your mangy dog that would come sniffing round you.’

Edward was beginning to feel a little alarmed by the way the conversation was turning. ‘How come you knew her, Charlie?’ he asked in a placatory tone, ‘She lived up our end, so where did you bump into her?’

‘Her old man worked at our place,’ Big Charlie said, re-emerging from his greatcoat. ‘He had a smashing pair of workboots that I used to borrow after we’d finished work on a Saturday morning.’

‘Why?’ Edward queried, ‘You never worked in the afternoons.

‘No. But her Dad was our rugby coach and I wasn’t going to play in my bare feet, was I?’

Edward decided on a change of tactic and turned to Liam whose smile had now slightly faded. ‘Where had you been anyway?’ he asked.

‘What? With the blessed Beattie?’

‘No. Just now. When you got back on the train with that silly smile on your face.’

Liam detected another opportunity appearing. ‘I’d just been down the station to the pissoir.’

‘So that was enough to put that big, daft grin on your face?’

‘I’d been waiting two hours so I was getting anxious.’ Having regained the initiative, Liam was enjoying the manipulative twists that the conversation was now offering.

‘So what has that got to do with having your wicked way with Beattie Brown, then?’ Edward demanded.

‘It was this beautiful, young French lady who had been lusting after me and she couldn’t keep her hands off me.’

‘Oh yes. Pull the other one. What did she do, drag you into the waiting room and ravish you on the floor?’

‘Well, not quite,’ Liam laughed. ‘She grabbed me when I came out of the privvy. She was shouting something about ‘Bag-a-Dad’ and calling me ‘Victoire’. She must have mistaken me for somebody else but she wouldn’t stop kissing me so I wasn’t complaining.’

‘She’s done a good job, I’d say. She has certainly perked you up a bit. I was beginning to get a bit worried about you.’

‘I know. I’m sorry mate. I know I’ve been a miserable sod lately. I just felt so guilty about Lizzie. I couldn’t stop thinking that it was my fault, not being there to do my bit,’ Liam said, settling himself back in the seat next to Edward and suddenly becoming more serious.

‘But you couldn’t have done anything about it, could you? It was the scarlet fever that took her and you couldn’t help that.’

 ‘Aye. Maybe. But I could have perhaps got a few bob from somewhere and got the doctor out again. He might have done something.’

‘There’s nothing much they can do, though, with scarlet fever,’ Edward reasoned with his troubled friend. ‘There are a lot of kids who die with it.’

‘Aye. Because our lasses are struggling to bring up the kids with next to nothing. I reckon they’ve a better chance if they belong to the posh people like those your Sarah worked for up Pendleton.’

‘You might be right. But it’s not your fault. We’re doing a job that we have to do. Let’s just hope that it’s over soon.’

‘Yeah. Let’s hope.’ Liam looked wistful and the pain showed in his distant eyes. Suddenly, he cheered himself up a little. ‘Well, we’re half way back now, so that’s something. That mamselle’s kiss made me think about our Brig. We’ve become so hardened by all this lot, Eddie, we forget what a nice kiss from the missus can do for you. You know what I mean, mate. From someone who really cares. It’s something special, isn’t it, their gentleness, the way they smooth the edges off you? You come in from work, all rough-arsed and hairy, and smelling like a mad dog, she gives you a kiss and, wham, you’re in a different world.’

‘I suppose with being out here we’ve shut it all out. It’s how we survive. If you didn’t, you’d go mad because you can’t do anything about it.’

‘Aye. You’re right. There’s not much room for love and kindness in a place where we’re shooting the bloody heads off each other,’ reflected Liam. ‘I was just so wrapped up in my own misery I wasn’t thinking about Brig and how she’s coping. It must have been a bloody nightmare for her seeing that coffin go down and me nowhere in sight.’

‘But she knows what the score is, mate. She knew that you was in Egypt and had no chance of being there.’

‘No. I know. There’s not an ounce of spite in her. When I go home she’ll give me a kiss and treat me like a hero. There won’t be a second of blaming me for what happened to Lizzie. She’ll hurt for ever because of it but she’ll just say ‘It’s God’s will’ and get on with it.’

The two friends settled back into their own thoughts. Liam’s brief experience with the French girl on the station platform had triggered memories of home for both of them. Edward wondered how Laura and the kids were really coping. Liam’s assertion was true. You did miss that tenderness that seemed so alien in this masculine world of bravado and butchery. Laura’s letters were always reassuring about how they were managing and cheerfully encouraging about the children. She told him little stories about what they were doing and how they were developing but she never dwelt on the problems. He knew that she was tough and resourceful and that she would manage somehow. He felt sorry for young Edward, growing up without a father. He’d had to do the same thing, but when he was young he’d always had his older brothers there as breadwinners and to give a guiding hand or a sharp cuff round the ear. Young Edward would just be celebrating his twelfth birthday yet already he was the man of the house and his part time job as an errand boy was proving an invaluable support.

Edward stared at the carriage windows, now blinding white with the driving snow outside. What sort of a show was this going to be that they were heading towards? They had heard all sorts of stories about what was happening in France and Belgium. They knew about the horrific casualties on both sides and the stalemate that seemed to have developed after the mayhem on the Somme in the summer of 1916. After becoming acclimatized to the heat of Egypt, the weather that they were now passing through was bitingly cold. Memories of the Gallipoli winter, and the thought that this campaign could be even worse, depressed him.

The large bundle in the corner stirred. ‘What were you just saying about bagging Beattie Brown’s Dad?’ queried Big Charlie.

‘Oh it was nowt,’ rejoined Liam, ‘We were just philosophising, that’s all.’

‘That’s a bit bloody daft in this weather.’ Big Charlie retreated into his greatcoat.

Liam turned to Edward, smiling, and said quietly ‘It wasn’t what you think, you know.’

Edward looked puzzled. ‘What wasn’t what I think, then?’

‘You know. The beautiful, busty Beattie. It all started quite – well, fairly – innocently. That Martha Jarvis – the girl from the tripe shop on Ellor Street – kept asking me to go for a walk round The Crescent. Well, I thought, I’m going to look a right Mary Ann here, you know, with the kissing and all that. You didn’t get to learn much about that at our school, did you?’

‘No. It certainly wasn’t included in any lessons. The nearest we got to sex education was Miss Brown playing ‘Sweet Lass from Richmond Hill.’ The rest of the time it was ‘Hearts of Oak’ and all that stuff.’

‘Well, anyway. I had heard that Beattie was a bit generous in that direction so I thought, her being older and that, she might be willing to give a bit of kissing practice to a needy person. Rather make a fool of myself with Beattie and have done with it than with Martha Jarvis.’

‘Right. Did it work?’

‘Oh aye. She was very helpful. She sat me on Nitty Norah’s junk stall in the market and kissed me so hard I thought my eyes would pop out. They nearly did after the next kiss. She undid her cardigan right down the front.’

Edward was aghast. ‘What, in the middle of the market?’

‘Oh aye. It was closed though by then. Next thing, she’s dragging my kex off.’

It was worse. ‘She what …? You didn’t er …? you didn’t … you know? Did you?’

‘Aye. I did. I grabbed my toffee apple and bloody scarpered.’

***

The march from the station at Pont Remy, near Abbeville, was through deep, icy slush with freezing sleet driving into their faces. The howling wind explored every opportunity to push frozen fingers down their collars and up their sleeves. The horses at the rear of the line skidded clumsily as their minders tried to calm them and encourage them forward. They whinnied loudly in complaint at the conditions and grew more fractious as the forlorn column of Salford soldiers progressed slowly up the French road.

These horses, like the men, had spent months in the blistering heat of the Egyptian deserts and were now traumatized by the dramatic change in the weather. The minders had worked with the same team of animals for a long time and, to them, they were like close friends. They hated having to subject the horses to such stressful conditions but all they could do was to cajole them and hope that they would not stray off the road and go down a ditch.

Eventually, the Battalion arrived at the village of Erondelle where they were split into groups and directed to the different buildings where they were to be billeted. Edward, Liam and Big Charlie were relieved to find that they were to stay in a fairly substantial barn. They had been sleeping in bivouacs since they had enlisted so this accommodation felt quite palatial. The straw was comfortable and infinitely more preferable than the icy mud outside.

During the next few days the Royal Engineers came and erected a large communal bath. The facility was a novelty for the Lancashire men whose bathing opportunities had been very restricted for the last two years and it was enjoyed with loud enthusiasm. A catering unit was established in the village and the improved rations made the appalling weather more tolerable.

The issue of steel helmets brought a mixed response from the soldiers whose experience, up to that point, had been limited to cloth hats. Liam, grumbling about wearing tin hats in freezing weather, stuffed it immediately with straw to improve the insulation. The respirators that they were given left many of them puzzled until it was explained that both sides were using gas, the effects of which were, at best, extremely uncomfortable and, at worst, lethal. When they were issued with short Lee Enfield rifles to replace the older, long rifles that they had used for so long the men were fascinated and keen to try them. Liam was quick to point out that they had been designed with him in mind but that Big Charlie should tuck his into his belt like a pistol ‘to save him looking totally stupid.’

The addition of a number of motorized vehicles and some heavy trench mortars to the Division helped the transformation into a newer, better equipped fighting force. They were being made ready to face an enemy even more formidable than the Turkish soldiers that they had confronted in Gallipoli and Egypt. There could be no doubting the awesome, destructive power of the German army. The evidence was everywhere. As they progressed through the villages towards the front line, the Lancashire men were sickened and disgusted by the wanton destruction that had been wreaked by the Germans upon the French countryside and its inhabitants as they had retreated back to the Hindenburg Line.

Not satisfied with the enormous damage that had already been done by the heavy artillery fire from both sides – the roads and fields blown into a lunar landscape and the woods reduced to a few leafless, charred stumps – they had strived to make the countryside as useless as possible to the advancing Allies. They had destroyed orchards and crops in the ground, felled trees that lined the roads, booby-trapped buildings to make them unusable and had blown up bridges to make them impassable.

The most sickening, and most puzzling, sight for the Salford lads was the pointless desecration of the cemeteries. Smashed gravestones stood like broken teeth though a large marble cross had been allowed to survive. The broken remains of worthy peasants, who had died in peace but had now been exhumed by war, lay scattered and anonymous. The men had seen many dead soldiers over the past two years but seeing body parts of long-dead locals sticking out of destroyed graves filled them with shock and disgust. Liam, the death of his daughter Lizzie still fresh in his mind, collapsed to the floor weeping. Edward muttered a confused prayer to himself whilst Big Charlie, the pain flickering across his ruddy features, bent over Liam and scooped him up. He carried him from the cemetery like a loving father carrying an injured son.

***

29 Myrtle Street

Cross Lane

Salford 5

Great Britain

22 February 1917

Dear Dad,

Thank you for your Christmas letter and the bracelet that you sent me from Egypt. I can’t believe that it is real gold and I don’t think that I should wear it if it is very valuable. Mam said that perhaps I should save it until I am a bit older else people will think our rich uncle has died. I asked her who was the rich uncle and where did he live so that perhaps we could go and see him. Our Ben thought that he might have some cows. But it turned out that it was just one of those figure-of-speech things that grown ups use. Perhaps Mam just doesn’t want to go and see him because we would all need new clothes.

I think that those flying machines do sound a bit scary. It’s no wonder that the Arabs run away from them. One might fall out of the sky on top of you and then the Arabs would be laughing because they had been sensible.

Our teacher was telling us that they are making some things that look like massive iron slugs now and that they are sending them to France to help in the war. I hope that they work and that you can come home then. It has been freezing cold this winter because of the war. Our Edward and our Ben go out collecting coal from the railway sidings and sometimes we get coke from the gas works. They brought a back door home last week but Mam made them take it back. She said the people couldn’t have finished with it if it was still hanging up on the hinges.

Our Sadie didn’t pull Santa’s beard again and she got a nice doll so she was very pleased. But I was more pleased because I got a set of pencils and a pad full of clean sheets of drawing paper which I don’t like to use because it spoils them. They are nice and thick and they are a lovely white colour. I think that new paper always smells special. Our Ben got some lead soldiers that Uncle Jim had made for him and he keeps dreaming that they have come to life and are waiting at the bottom of the stairs for him to play with.