Made in Myrtle Street (Prequel) (29 page)

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29 Myrtle Street

Cross Lane

Salford 5

Great Britain

19th May 1917

Dear Dad,

It was nice to see you home again on leave and I hope that you have got back safely. I have finished that book that you brought for my birthday. I’m ten now but I just feel the same as before. It was a really good book and it sounds very nice in Yorkshire. Mam said that it is God’s county and that’s where she was born. Perhaps when you have finished in France we could go for a holiday in Yorkshire because Mam would really like that.

They have cancelled the Whit Week Walks now from the Mission but Mam has made us some new clothes anyway so if we’re lucky we might still get a penny in our pockets from Uncle Jim. There are hardly any people left in the brass band that leads us because they are all in the army and the big drummer has come back with only one arm. I heard Mrs Willoughby telling Mrs Jones that he was slow enough at the best of times and if we were to go at only half the pace we would never get round.

Our Ben has asked me to tell you that he has just won his third class certificate for swimming at Regent Road Baths. Mam told him to write himself but he’s gone down to Ordsall Park playing football. He is going to do his second class in the summer holidays and, if he passes, he will win a free season at the baths.

I’m sorry that I haven’t finished your socks yet but it is hard to do knitting round four needles and Mam keeps making me undo it even for the tiniest little mistake. I don’t think that I will have enough of the green wool because it was only one of our Mary’s cardigans that I’ve undone. I might just put some stripes round the feet because we have a bonnet that she doesn’t need now. I might decide to keep them for me to wear in bed this winter because they might stop those horrible chilblains and I don’t mind just little mistakes.

Dad, you would have been alright if you had been injured because the King has just been to Salford and he went talking to the injured soldiers in Salford Royal. We went to watch on Chapel Street and there were loads of carriages and all the horses had been polished and plaited. The King waved to us but he was nothing special and he didn’t have his crown on. The Queen was very beautiful but she was waving at the Catholics outside the Cathedral so we didn’t see her properly. The policemen had to stop some men with buckets who were nearly having a fight. They were arguing about the horse muck that they wanted for their allotments and one nearly hit the other with his shovel. Mam said it is Lloyd George’s fault because there isn’t enough food to keep your family. We have meat coupons but there is never much in the butcher’s anyway. The police started the coupons to stop the big queues but the butcher runs out of stuff. Mam was telling Mrs Murphy that he favours those who favour him and she’d rather send our Eddie up to Rabbit Hills with his Uncle Jim.

Our Mary is starting school next year and I have been teaching her to read but she doesn’t like it very much. We played school with our Ben and our Sadie last week but then our Edward came in and said that he was the headmaster and he was going to cane them for being naughty children and they all finished up crying. Mam said that I should stop being so bossy but our Ben said that it was our Edward so she sent him up to the greengrocer’s where he works to see what they had that might be on the turn.

Love

Laura

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Gomiecourt

France

15
^th
July 1917

Darling Pippin,

It was lovely to see you all again when I was home. I was so surprised to see how much you had all changed. You are the image of your Mam when she was your age. Ask her about when she used to play football with the lads.

That must have been very special, going to see the King. It’s a shame that you didn’t get a proper look at the Queen as well. I’m told that she is very nice but I have never seen her.

Tell Ben that I am very proud of him for doing his swimming certificate. Don’t you go to the baths with him? I heard that they were talking about having mixed bathing for children. When I get out I will take you all swimming and playing football. Perhaps we might get the chance to go to Blackpool for a holiday. I was talking to another soldier the other day and he was saying that the sands there are lovely and they stretch for miles. It would be lovely to sit in a deckchair and get a nice jug of tea for the sands.

I am sorry that I seemed to be a bit strange when you talked about killing the Germans. I wasn’t annoyed with you. It’s just a bit upsetting because the ordinary German soldiers are just the same as us and lots of them are getting killed as well. They have wives and families at home and they would rather be there with them – just like we would. The fault is with the people at the top who are running things. They seem to lose their proper sense of values when they get power and it’s the rest of us that have to suffer for it. That’s why it’s good for you all to get a proper schooling and then you can make your way in life without being at the bidding of these people who’ve never done an honest day’s work in their lives.

Don’t worry about the socks, Darling. I don’t think that I would notice the little mistakes but your Mam would want you to get them right, which is good. If you would like to use them for yourself to stop the chilblains then that would make me very happy.

We went to help a local farmer last week for a few days. His daughter spoke a little English and she taught us a few words in French. They say ‘Bonjour’ for ‘Hello’ and ‘Merci’ for ‘Thank you.’ She was telling us that things are very difficult because when the Germans left they slaughtered their animals and burnt their crops and they had to hide anything of any value. Her Dad was trying to repair the roof where it had been damaged by the shelling so we gave him a hand. The girl cooked some nice meals with produce from the farm. It will be very hard for them when the war is finished because they have already lost so many of the young men from the village.

We see lots of interesting wildlife around here that we never see in Salford. There are some beautiful birds. They have one called a chaffinch that has lots of different colours on it and they come down in the trenches to see if we have any bits for them. We sometimes hear one called a nightingale that sits in the woods singing its head off. There is a big bird flying over us at the moment and I think that it might be called a buzzard. It is soaring in the air looking for any little animals on the ground that it can have for its dinner. Sometimes we see a family of foxes. The little ones wait near to where they live for their Dad to come home with something for them to eat. We’re just hoping that they will take a fancy to all these rats that are running around because we are fed up with them.

Look after yourself and take care of your Mam for me.

Love

Dad

Chapter 14

Frezenberg September 1917

Big Charlie had been persuaded to write a letter home to Dorothy and Edward had agreed to pen it for him. The mood of the soldiers, as well as the weather, had changed since they had moved North into Belgium. When they had marched into Ypres a few days before, they had been profoundly disturbed by the sight of the mutilated buildings that littered the streets with the debris of their downfall. Medieval structures stood roofless and gashed. Towers that had been built five hundred years before, when craftsmen devoted years of their lives to just one project, had been ripped apart as if by the hand of some petulant child sick of the sandcastle that he was building.

They had approached up the Menin Road, which was subject to almost round-the-clock enemy shell fire from the Germans and repairs by the British, and now they were in the front line at Frezenberg. Big Charlie had been prompted many times to try and put things right at home but he had firmly resisted. Now, suddenly appearing aware of his own mortality, he had decided that it should be done. The air of gloom, that had weighed so heavily on him since his April folly, had increased daily with the lack of any forgiving or loving words from his beloved Dot and now the scarred images of Ypres faced him with the cold and deadly reality of this war. There had just been another major action in the area, the third in as many years, and although thousands had died there had been no strategic advantage of any consequence gained by either side.

This whole battlefield area was pock marked with water and slime filled shell holes that claimed many victims from those who had the misfortune to slip off the duck boards. The front line trenches were a series of joined-up craters whose shape was changed constantly by the incessant barrage.

The three pals sat huddled over a makeshift table trying to think of the elusive words that might soften the implacable resistance that Dorothy had developed. The thunderous roar of high explosive, shrapnel-filled shells rocked the ground and shook their table. Big Charlie was avoiding the idea of anything that might sound personal or affectionate having convinced himself that there was no possibility of his wife harbouring any shred of feeling, other than loathing, towards him. He had dismissed ‘My Darling Dot’ as an opening line, feeling that ‘Dear Madam’ might be safer, but had settled in the end for ‘Dear Dorothy.’

He wanted to make his wife understand that he had reacted as a gallant yet outraged lover and that he still cared very deeply for her, but he dreaded inviting a sarcastic and scathing response. The three friends sat with their elbows resting on the table, their hands cupped round their chins, and stared distantly ahead waiting for inspiration to strike. They each had their view on how the wording of the letter should be approached, although Liam and Edward both agreed that it should have been done a long time ago.

They watched as stretcher bearers, mud-spattered, heavy eyed and grey faced, their heads bent forward with resigned weariness, trudged past them. The first of their charges had a large, bloody pad pressed to his shoulder and a cigarette propped in his mouth. The second had a large gash in his side and a ripped and bloody leg. His white face lacked evidence of life. The bearers probably knew that there was little hope but at least they would know where he was buried.

‘Why don’t you just tell her that you know that you’ve been a bloody fool, but this might be the last letter that you can send and you want her to know how sorry you are,’ proffered Liam. ‘Tell her there is a show coming off and you don’t want to risk getting killed without having got this sorted out between you.’

‘Aye, and if I didn’t oblige by getting my head blown off, she’d just turn round and say I’ve let her down again,’ replied the terminally gloomy Big Charlie.

‘Surely the best thing is just to tell her how much you love her and you can’t live without her,’ suggested Edward.

‘Hmhh. Maybe. But I haven’t said owt like that for ten years. She’d probably laugh herself silly.’

Eventually the letter evolved itself into a slightly pompous sounding apology that just avoided the distancing formality that Big Charlie preferred but it fell miserably short of the intimate plea for reconciliation that Liam had hoped for.

Big Charlie felt safer with the slightly legalistic sound of ‘righteous indignation’ and ‘personal feelings’ suggested by Edward but recoiled away from ‘deep felt and abiding love’ proposed by Liam. He thought that ‘the unfortunate victim’ was a safer way to refer to the Dapper Man, Sidney Snelgrove, than the ‘scheming little scumbag’ offered by Liam. He conceded that just putting ‘Yours truly, Charlie’, but without adding his surname and regimental number, as he was keen to do, could manage to give the letter a personal touch without risking the burning fury of his wife’s acerbic tongue.

Finally, the letter was sealed and given to the runner, accompanied by a threat from Big Charlie as to what he would do to him if he was careless enough to get himself killed whilst he had this important document in his safekeeping.

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Edward pursed his lips as he watched with morbid fascination the toe cap of a boot that was gradually emerging from the wall of the trench opposite. He adjusted his feet to avoid the muddy water that was beginning to creep over the lip of the flunk hole where he sat huddled at the side of Liam and screwed his eyes to focus through the rain onto the shiny, rounded leather. He had originally thought that it was another rock in the gradually eroding façade of the gleaming mud but now he could see the clean line where the sole met the upper.

The hissing rain had been falling incessantly through the night and was now stifling the morning light. Rivulets, carrying floundering insects, small twigs and dead leaves, were flowing down the sides of the trench, accumulating into a thick slurry at the bottom. Along some stretches of the trench the mud was already over the level of the duckboards making any form of movement hazardous. The leaden grey sky was discharging its excessive load with unrelenting vigour, splashing noisily into the deepening water in front of them. Thunder rolled around the neighbouring hills and vivid, jagged lightning flashes slashed into the ground in a mocking, storming response to the humbler efforts of the warring factions on the ground. A sharp dank death smell, pounded out of the earth by the hammering rain, was pocketed in the flunk holes.

Stretcher bearers clad in shiny oilskin capes struggled past, plodding mechanically through the mire with their groaning, often hopeless, burdens lying like a pile of sodden rags in their cradle. Runners, red and shiny with their exertions, occasionally splashed by on their way to the officers’ dugout further up the trench before returning, a few minutes later, to struggle their way back to Company headquarters. Their capacity for inventive cursing of the weather, the Germans and their own officers was an interesting, if fleeting, distraction. Distractions were always welcome in these numbing hours before the whistles would blow and they would be hurled into the oblivion of another attack.