So with sister-in-law, Ada, for company, and ready to do duty as Godmother, off they trot to St. Silas’ church, where they fail to raise a clergyman. On to St. Jude’s in Eldon Street. Deserted. St. Thomas’s, then, in Carver Street- bit high church (a lot, in fact) but no matter, because there’s no one there, either.
Panic is starting to set in, now. Jane must be churched before returning home! Right! Up into Division Street, down through Barkers’ Pool, down Fargate, round Coles’ corner, across Church Street, to the ‘old church’-the Cathedral church of St. Peter & St. Paul. ‘Don’t you think it might be quicker on Leopold Street and down Church Street? Oh never mind that now. Just run!
Now Ada is carrying the bairn, at this point. She stumbles, and drops the little mite- on her head- in the gutter! What to do? Pick her up, dust her off, and keep running. She’s crying so she’s still alive, right?
At the old church, they find a young curate, or some such, and blurt out their story.
 |
| “Oops!” |
The young man calms Jane, and assures her he can and will baptise the child, and church the mother. Baptism first, but when we get to ‘I name this child…’ What is the name? Jane can’t remember the chosen name!
“Call ‘er owt! Call ‘er owt!”
“Freda’s a nice name,” suggests Ada.
“Oh no! I couldn’t go to ‘door and shout that in! Call ‘er owt! Call ‘er ‘Lizabeth! Call ‘er owt!” This is Jane’s account, verbatim. I heard it often, over a 30yr period, and it never varied by one syllable. She never once mentioned any follow-up inspection, or medical care for the dropped baby, either.
The young clergyman seizes on the name, Elizabeth, and so she is. On their arrival home, both missions accomplished, Charlie is sitting by the fire. He holds out his hands to take the child, saying as he does so-
“Come ‘ere, Vera”. That was the name! Too late. Jane takes a deep breath and-
“She’s not Vera”.
“Who is she, then?”
“Elizabeth!”
“That’s all right. That were my mother’s name”. Panic over. It is sadly interesting to note that, in 15yrs of marriage, and after four children, he had never before found occasion to mention his mother’s name.
 |
| “Call ‘er owt!” |
The name ‘Vera wasn’t wasted. The next child was a girl- Vera. I don’t know when she was born. I only know she was ‘a lovely girl’, and that she died at 10 or 12 yrs old, of diphtheria, I believe.
 |
| “Come ‘ere, Vera” |
The next child lived only a matter of days. Apart from the name ‘Nellie’, I have no information, other than this surreal and disturbing anecdote. From the moment the child was born (a home delivery, as usual) the house was infested with ‘black-clocks’, or rain beetles, until the moment, less than a week later, when the pathetic little corpse was taken from the house, and the black-clocks disappeared. A week’s rainfall would have explained it. There was none.
*
Charlie’s swagger stick is among my most prized possessions. In fact, it is a walking stick of ample length, and it has served me handsomely through two hip replacements. Jane’s wedding ring, too frail to wear on a finger, hangs round my daughter’s neck. I still use Charlie’s army issue styptic block- for staunching shaving cuts. It is now more than a century old, and at its present rate of wear it will last several centuries more. Until recently, it still sat in its original frail cardboard box.
I have his money belt, which I remember him wearing to carry funds, on family holidays. Up to the year he died,1958, he wore it. I’ve measured it several times, and I still can’t believe his 29” waist.
But the keepsake that makes me smile is the pair of cuff-links which he won, to loud applause from his children, on a fairground rifle range, just after being demobbed. Well he’d had a fair bit of practice just before, hadn’t he. He always referred to them as his ‘solid cold cuff-links’, an utterance which always raised a laugh among his children. I’m wearing them now, and they are the most amenable, user friendly cuff-links I ever had. They look like the fairground prize that they are, but when I tell people their provenance, they cannot argue with my assertion that they are the most valuable cuff-links in the world.
On the night Charlie lay dying, Jane woke me to come to him, because she and Betty were unsure. I gently raised him from the pillow; he opened his eyes, flickered them in recognition, and then he died in my arms.
I hadn’t even seen him so much as stripped to the waist before, never mind completely naked. I hadn’t realised his pyjamas were merely a holiday propriety, (it was years later that Jane happened to confide that in all their married life, neither of them had felt any need for nightwear), and even in the soft lamplight, the budding painter in me could only wonder at the spare but well muscled, perfect physique which many men 50 yrs his junior would have envied.
Charlie and Jane had always intended to be buried in the plot already occupied by their youngest son, Leslie. However, a year before Charlie died, they witnessed their first cremation service. As the coffin was serenely spirited away by the silently closing and re-opening of the curtains (now you see it, now you don’t, and no hint of fire), impressed by the tranquillity of it all, Jane murmured in Charlie’s ear-
“That’s what I want, and it’s what you’re ‘avin”.
“Oh” said Charlie, and in the fullness of time, that is what they had.