‘Why was I never told about all this before?’ Callum eventually asked.
‘There was only Paddy and your… mother, apart, that is, from my Harry and Agnes who were in on the secret. Oh, and Bramwell – Mr Amstruthers – of course. Even your biological father was never told about the adoption but I don’t suppose that he would have been too bothered. That might seem hurtful but, from what I have heard since, you were probably not the only one that he fathered. His family seem to consider it their prerogative. Why you were never told is because your mother had insisted on that.’
‘She probably knew what you would be like, Nellie,’ Agnes said. ‘You would never have been happy to stand by and let her get on with it if it hadn’t been set in tablets of stone. Personally, I think that she has done a good job without any interference. Callum here has turned into a fine man and I would be more than happy to see him marry my niece.’
‘Ladies, please,’ Mr Amstruthers soothed. ‘This is a matter of some delicacy and inevitably there will be raw feelings exposed. Feelings that, for various reasons, had been quietly hidden away. It had been our hope, Mr Murphy, that when the time came for this to be explained to you, it might have been sufficient to indicate that you had been adopted. However, it had been drawn to our attention that you may have already known the identity of the said Ellen Connolly.’
‘Well, we thought that we did,’ Callum said. ‘It seems that we might have been wrong.’
‘Ah, indeed,’ the carefully courteous solicitor agreed. ‘That does, indeed, seem to have been the case. However, we were not to know this. We were initially given some information by your fiancée’s Aunt that various persons had been making inquiries as to the identity of the singer known as the Salford Canary. Perhaps you might prefer to explain it for yourself,’ he said, turning to Agnes.
‘Oh, yes, of course,’ Agnes said, gathering her thoughts. ‘Well, it seemed a bit odd when, some time ago, Jean began taking a sudden interest in my career and asking about people that I had known. I’m terribly sorry, my dear, if I appeared a little evasive but, as you might now realise, I did know about Callum. In fact, I will confess that I did occasionally employ a little subterfuge in order to glean small amounts of information about him that I could pass back to Nellie. In the absence of a formal understanding of the relationship, that is all she had to keep her going; little titbits that could be gained from wherever.’
‘Is that how we came to be standing behind him in the queue for the concert at Salford Central?’ Jean asked.
Agnes flushed slightly. ‘Well, yes, it was. I was hoping that I might engage him in some casual conversation to learn a little about how he was going on. In the end, my efforts were not needed as you managed to do a more than adequate job in that direction. And speaking of concerts, you will not believe who I bumped into recently, my dear. I was at the Free Trade Hall for the Hallé, just enjoying some small refreshment with the Bishop, and my heart sank when I saw her approaching.’
‘Saw who approaching, Aunt Agnes?’ Jean asked.
‘You know, that pianist woman who would always cut us dead.’
‘You mean Lily Harcourt,’ Nellie said impatiently.
‘What, Lily Frobisher from Howard Street?’ Bridget asked. ‘I hear that Eppie fellow, sorry, Henry Molineaux has been visiting a few times recently.’
‘Well, exactly,’ Agnes said. ‘That is who she was with. Arm-in-arm they were. And would you believe it? She came across and started talking as if we were old friends. Henry explained that they had got back together as a result of his two cleaning girls. They had been asking him a lot of questions about the woman they called the Salford Canary. One day, they told him that they had met Lily Frobisher and he remembered what a wonderful companion she had been. He decided that he had wasted enough of his life and sent her a letter.’
‘And not before time, as well,’ Nellie said. ‘Wasting his life feeling sorry for himself. What good did he think that was going to do him?’
‘Oh, yes, and another thing. Henry remembered Mr Murphy, the one there,’ Agnes said, indicating Liam, ‘showing a picture of Nellie in her younger days and making inquiries about her. He said that the distress quite ruined one of his musical soirees.’
‘Henry always made a drama out of everything,’ Nellie snorted.
‘Mr Molineaux is a man who, I believe, gave up much for his chosen career,’ Mr Amstruthers said. ‘Sufficient for me to say that I instigated some inquiries as to the identities of these cleaning girls.’
‘And you found another connection with us,’ Bridget said.
‘Ah, yes, indeed. It all seemed to point to the possibility that the family were pursuing their own investigation and had somehow established the identity of Mr Callum’s biological mother.’
‘So we decided to make a clean breast of it. That is why we are all here.’ Nellie said.
Liam watched Nellie’s face as she repeatedly sucked in her lips, uncomfortable with the emotional stress and the insightful revelations of her friend. She glanced occasionally at Jean, a gleam of respect and admiration in her eye after the spirited response of the normally placid, well-mannered young lady. He could see now the fading remnants of a great beauty. Lines had been etched into the once lustrous skin, her hair had greyed and she had put on weight. But the haughty pitch of the head, the finely sculpted features, the elegant neck, were only camouflaged to the unknowing eye.
Callum held Jean’s hand and they looked at each other, seeking the mutual reassurance and affirmation that their marital plans remained intact. She was clearly determined that their futures lay together whatever the status of their relationship.
‘No, actually, I had no idea, no idea at all,’ Callum said quietly. He looked at Nellie for the first time since the disclosure of their relationship. ‘You are the director of the bank?’
‘Aye, I am.’
‘I didn’t want any favourable treatment. I wanted to convince Jean’s family that I was worthy of her.’
‘Well, you can rest assured, lad that you didn’t get any. Just the opposite. I kept a tight watch on it because I was determined that you didn’t get any silver spoon treatment. You have a substantial trust fund coming to you next year and I wanted to be sure that you got a proper set of values before that. Your real father was intelligent and charming but a waster. It was not his fault; that is how they have always been brought up.’
Agnes glanced across the table at Callum, now looking battered by the impact of all the new information. ‘All this must have come as a terrible shock to both of you and I am sorry that it has not been possible to explain everything at an earlier stage,’ she told him. ‘I must confess to being somewhat surprised by the unfortunate misunderstandings. Despite my art being of a more generally serious nature, Nellie did tend to mix in the highest social circles. My amorous encounters, such as they were, tended to be far removed from the playboys of the aristocracy. Why, then, you should ever have imagined that I was Nellie is completely beyond me,’ Agnes sniffed.
‘Well, I suppose that I might have had something to do with that,’ Liam said hesitantly. ‘That picture that you mentioned. Brig thought that… well, we both thought that it looked like me with some… you know, with another woman. Others thought that too. It was a bit scary; I just couldn’t remember anything about it. I thought that this bullet in the head, you know, maybe my brain had gone. I couldn’t explain it to Brig.’
‘It was alright, love,’ Bridget said. ‘I knew that you had no idea. Your tongue is never normally far behind your brain but you were lost for an explanation on that one. It was the girls who took it upon themselves to find out about it. Our son’s girlfriend, Amy, has a soft spot for Li and she and her best friend were the ones who found out that the woman was this Salford Canary and that her real name was Ellen Connolly.’
‘And that the man was my eldest brother, Patrick,’ Liam added.
‘This is all very curious. May I ask where the picture came from?’ Mr Amstruth
ers enquired.
‘I can tell you that,’ Bridget said. ‘I remember it very clearly. Liam found it in the inside pocket of a very smart suit that Nellie had given to him. We presumed that it had belonged to your husband, Harry.’
Nellie stared down into her lap, rubbing the palms of her hands on the knees of her dress. ‘It’s not been easy all these years. You’ve turned into a fine young man, son. No airs and graces, but your father would have been proud of you.’
Chapter 32
Clinging to the stone, feeling its rough coldness against his cheek, Liam gripped it with both hands, rolling his forehead against the curvature of the top. A cold wind blew across from the canal and sent a scattering of dried brown leaves scurrying across the lumpy clay. The green baize that was laid over the surrounding planks was stained with the wet clay from the feet of the mourners – gone now to share memories over a ham salad. He stared down into the dark hole at the ritual pieces of earth that had been thrown in. Dust to dust. He clung to the stone for support and strength; it was a barrier that stopped his life breaths from flowing out of him and down into that still space. But the hollowness inside his body remained. He couldn’t let the diggers shovel the clay back into the hole when they returned. They wouldn’t understand the reverential respect that should be accorded to this special man. They would smoke and complain about their cold hands; joke about going home and putting them on the wife’s tits for a warm; maybe even throw their dimps down the hole. This was a giant of a man who now lay there, by the cruellest twist of fate, with his newly born, newly died grandson at his feet. He must be revered, respected, understood as being above all others. Would there now always be a silent void in Liam’s life, never to be filled? Would he go in The Railway and stand alone, wait an eternal wait?
He hadn’t believed it when Eddie had been taken into the Homestead. Had he become so ill without him noticing? He’d seen him almost every day before that and, admittedly, the cough had been bad. But this was the man who had dragged Liam down a muddy ditch, through gas and bullets, away from the field of fire. He was invincible. They had been friends for so long that he couldn’t remember when they had first met; he was stitched into every seam of his body. But within only weeks of his being taken into that place where they nursed sick soldiers, his cough had finally been soothed, even if only when his heart had stopped beating.
Liam clung to the stone, struggling with the impossibility of his friend lying under that gleaming oak panel; abandoned if he walked away; slowly absorbing into the Salford clay. Eddie had pulled him through that French ditch and given him back his life. Yet Liam had only managed a few cheering words as Eddie’s life had drained from his body. They had held each other when Big Charlie had died and Liam had sung his ullalulla, the lament that had guided the soul of their friend through the rocky slopes of the valley and hastened his quest for peace.
Liam clung to the stone; it had no warmth, no heartbeat; no history of shared anguish or of past triumphs. His whole being wanted to scream a cry that would echo around the cemetery and be heard on the ships passing down the canal. But his throat bore no sound save for a wretched sob.
Liam had stared in disbelief as Eddie had died. His lungs had stopped the desperate, rasping struggle and his body had become inert. He had wanted to push through the family and shake life back into the still frame, but Brig had held a restraining arm round his shoulder. What had happened then to all the memories of those shared experiences? Getting up in the middle of the night when they were lads to carry coffee for the drovers in the cattle market; fishing on the canal; flirting with the girls on Cross Lane; courting death at each other’s side on the beaches of Gallipoli and the muddy fields of France. Had they all evaporated with that last groaning breath?
Liam clung to the stone that soon would bear the legend, Edward Craigie, loving husband and much missed father – their own years of friendship relegated to obscurity. On the rugby field they had each sensed the other’s presence and positioning with unerring accuracy; in the trenches they had wordlessly shared their fears and thoughts; leaning on the rails at Trafford Road corner, they had entrusted each other with the inconsequential trivia of their lives and their more profound concerns for their families. Never once had Eddie given word to thoughts of the ditch and the green gas cloud that had belched out of the mud. No censure; no reprimand. For Liam, Eddie had been a mentor and guide, a support and moderator, a help through his bleakest and blackest times. Was that taut white flesh any semblance to the man who had held him when little Lizzie had died and whose grieving tears had blended with his own into the hot sands of the Egyptian desert?
In the cold wind he melded into the headstone, a sculpted expression of grief. A low wailing note began behind him, vibrant with pained words in his Grandma’s tongue. The sound rose, pleading for release from hurt, a prayer for the soul of his best friend now in flight. A great arm rested lightly on his shoulder, red hairs on the hand gleaming in the weak sun. ‘Could I leave my kinsman to cry alone for his cara cléibh,’ McGinty said, drawing Liam gently away from the headstone. They stood together, looking into the black crevasse as rain scattered the clay dedications. McGinty began to sing again, rich yet mournful notes that rose like soaring birds. Liam’s eyes dimmed as the tears flowed and the sounds formed slowly in his throat.
Made in Myrtle Street
by B A Lightfoot
‘Dear Dad,
Floppy is gone and I’ll never see him again, ever. We had him for Christmas and I didn’t know because Mam said we were having something that was a bit like chicken.’
Pippin’s distressed letter to her father, describing her Christmas dinner in 1916, reflected the difficulties of the families that were left at home when their men went off to war. She was 9 years old and they had just eaten her pet rabbit. The news, however, brought comfort to Edward who, along with his two lifelong pals, quick-witted, rugby loving Liam and the clumsy but compassionate Big Charlie, had just survived a horrific eight months in Gallipoli.
In Made in Myrtle Street, Pippin’s letters reflect the situation at home through the eyes of a young though maturing child. Edward’s replies are those of a caring father who finds it increasingly difficult to hide from his daughter the realities of the war.
Made in Myrtle Street follows the three friends as they endure, with humour and determination, the challenges of Egypt, Turkey and France. Their persecution by an alcoholic Major, and their discovery that he had traumatised two of their families before the war, provoked a distracting, and ultimately distressing, quest for retribution.
Rags, Bones and Donkey Stones (Sequel) Page 32
