When William Met Edith

When Sean Edwards, William Owen and George Pickup arrived in France in the autumn of 1917, they were met by a gruff sergeant, who gave his personalised life-expectancy predictions to all the young men that joined his platoon. He delighted in watched their bum-fluffed faces drop as they realised how ephemeral their lives had become. In civilian life he'd spent much of his time at the race track, obsessively studying the form of the horses and calculating the odds that would give him the highest possible return on his stake money. He'd been very successful at this and it seemed only natural to utilise his unerring eye for winners and losers on the battlefields of France. As the war dragged on his predictions became frighteningly accurate and, by the time George, William and Sean arrived, the sergeant was able to predict, sometimes to the exact minute, when the new arrivals would be turned to mincemeat by German gunfire.

“Two weeks,” he say to Sean upon his arrival.

            “Sarge?”

            “Lanky streak of piss like you. I’ll give you two weeks.”

            Sean Edwards was brought up on the cobbled streets of Warrington in a world of alcohol, violence and religion. His mother had a capacity for gin that was at odds with her slender frame and demure manner, whilst his father, in stark contrast, was a teetotaller with a religious zeal that bordered on the pyschotic. His neighbours called him ‘The Bible Basher’, and with good reason. Behind closed doors he used his fists to hammer home Christ’s teachings to his sozzled wife and terrified son in order that they might be granted eternal salvation in the kingdom of heaven. He was a lunatic, driven insane by poverty and religious obsession. At the tender age of sixteen Sean saw the war in France as his only escape from the madness he was trapped in and so, in the late spring of 1917, he enlisted into the army and was never seen by his family again.  

            The men in Sean’s platoon nicknamed him Tiny because he stood head and shoulders above the rest of them and so presented an obvious target to even the most cross-eyed of German snipers. But, as luck would have it, the sergeant's prediction about Sean’s imminent demise was embarrassingly inaccurate although, ironically, he was dead right about the two weeks.

            Fourteen days later the three friends found themselves detailed to repair and deepen a low-lying trench their platoon was manning. To avoid being caught by the occasional bursts of machine-gun fire and the ever attentive sniper the men had to stoop down whenever they went from one place to the next. This made their task all the more difficult and uncomfortable. It had rained almost every day since their arrival at the Front, miserable, driving, bitterly cold rain that turned the churned up soil into slimy mud that poured into their trenches and made moving around almost impossible. Duckboards had been laid out but they only lasted a few days before they sank into the mud. Everything sank into the mud: weapons, helmets, men, horses, even tanks, or so they’d been told. The mud was everywhere. It was in their hair, caked on their uniforms. It clogged up their rifles so they wouldn’t fire. It was in their food, even the water they drank tasted of it.

            “Bloody bastard,” said Sean, as he hoofed another shovelful of the sticky mud over his shoulder. “I hate this place. Officers, sergeants. They're all the bleeding same.”

            The three men had been given this odious task by the platoon sergeant as a punishment for not saying the word sir enough when they were questioned by their Commanding Officer during a routine kit inspection.

            “I hate that bloody sergeant and I wish he were dead,” said Sean, burying the blade of his shovel into the wet earth.

            The words tripped easily off Sean’s tongue and although he didn’t know it when he said them, they were about to become prophetically true. A few minutes later the sergeant came to check on their progress and as he stepped into the trench the blade of Sean’s shovel accidentally caught him on the shin bone. The sharp knock inflicted by the shovel's blade caused the sergeant to cry out in pain, thereby giving away his position to Corporal Klaus Weber, one of the many crack German snipers concealed two hundred yards away in the wreckage of no-man’s-land. This unfortunate accident, in itself, should not have presented a problem, but the sharp pain that careered up the sergeant's leg made his body stand involuntarily upright. At this point a well-aimed bullet from Corporal Weber's Mauser K98 penetrated his skull. The three men digging the trench were at first oblivious to what had just occurred and they just stared with curiosity at the sergeant, their minds attempting to fathom out what was so different about what was so familiar only moments earlier. The penny finally dropped when they noticed the small hole that had appeared in the sergeant's forehead. His eyes were wide open and unblinking and the three friends were rigid with fright, as he stood over them, his eyes staring at some non-existent point on the horizon before his dead body slumped forward into the trench like a sack of potatoes. They cowered, gazing in horror at the large hole where the back of the sergeant’s head should have been and then the air around them exploded with the sound of gunfire. 

            From that moment on George and William felt safe whenever they were around Sean. They regarded him as their lucky charm, staying as close to him as humanly possible without making themselves appear unmanly. They’d heard rumours about some of the Officer Corps’ unnatural sexual preferences and didn’t want their proximity to Sean to be misconstrued as something they might regret when they found themselves alone in the presence of an officer with an unhealthy interest in young men. They spent the rest of the war together and led a charmed life. Sean found it amazing that the three of them had lived through it all without so much as a scratch, whilst most of their comrades were either dead or wounded.

            Sean put his ability to survive down to one thing, and one thing only – blind luck. He’d been at the right place at the right time. Fortunately George and William had been there with him and so had been protected from harm by his invisible aura of invulnerability.

            But it was not to last. A few weeks after the Armistice, when the three men were ready for demobilisation to England an invisible enemy that had been ruthlessly wiping out troops on both sides finally caught up with them.

            It killed Sean Edwards without mercy or compassion, penetrating the cells that lined his upper air passages. There it reproduced and mutated, infecting other cells along his respiratory tract before spreading deep into his lungs. Antibodies were produced but the invader changed its chemical composition and began to affect his heart. Sean Edwards died of broncho-pneumonia two days before his eighteenth birthday.

            George and William were amongst the lucky ones that survived the ravages of the Spanish Flu and they returned to England in the February of 1919. In a rare moment of compassion, after they'd been handed their discharge papers, two military policemen drove them to the railway station where they gave them some cigarettes to share on their journey home.

            “See you, lads,” said one of the MPs. “Look after yourselves and stay out of trouble.”

            “What you going to do now, Bill?” George asked as the two men watched the vehicle drive off into the distance.

            “Haven’t got a clue,” said William, looking back at the dirty grey Railway station.

            When he enlisted into the 2^nd East Lancashire Regiment during a recruitment drive in Dublin his fiercely republican father immediately ostracised him from the family for collaborating with the British and ordered him never to darken the door of the Owen family again. With the war at an end William couldn’t go home even if he wanted to.

            “Why don’t you come home with me for a while,” said George. “You know, till you find your feet. There’s plenty of room. Mam and Dad won’t mind. There’s lots of things to do in Blackpool and to be honest I’d like the company.”

            “I don’t know, George,” said William.

            “My sister’ll be there.”

            “What’s she like?”

            “How should I know? I haven’t seen her for two years.”

            William looked down the empty road, nodded and sighed. “Ah, what the hell,” he said picking up his bags, “I've got sod all better to do.”

***

George and William arrived in Blackpool on a cold day in the February of 1919. As the train pulled into South Shore Station George's parents were waiting for him on the heaving platform, dressed in their Sunday best clothes and waving frantically to catch his attention. When he caught sight of them George opened his arms and his mother rushed forward, elbowing her way through the crowds, and threw herself at him. He embraced his mother, breathing in her sweet perfume, and kissed her on the cheek. He could feel her sobbing. “Thank God! Thank God!” she said, as he held her tightly in his arms. His Father, never being one to display his emotions in public, simply extended his hand and said, “Welcome home, son.”

            “Where's Edith?” asked George.

            “She's at home making sandwiches for us all,” said his mother.

            William tried to keep a polite distance away from the family reunion but George would have none of it.

            “Come on, Bill, don't be a gooseberry,” George said. “Mam, Dad, this is who I wrote to you about.”

            “Pleased to meet you, Mr and Mrs Pickup,” said William offering his hand.

            “Never mind all that,” said Mrs Pickup, wrapping her arms around him. “Call us Mam and Dad. George wrote a lot about you and Tiny, so while you're here you're to look upon us as family. Alright.”

            “Alright,” said William, treating his surrogate Mother to a warm smile.

            “What a lovely smile you've got,” she said. “You'll have our Edith swooning like a schoolgirl when she sees you.”

            And Edith did swoon when she saw the handsome young soldier who spoke with a soft Irish lilt. She stood as close to him as she could, without making it look obvious, as they were eating the sandwiches she had prepared.

             Mr Pickup took a swig of tea and then slammed the cup on the table. “Bloody Hell, this calls for a real celebration,” he said, “tell you what Vera, me and these boys’re going down the pub.”

            Mrs Pickup rolled her eyes. “You’ll not be long now, will you? I don’t want you rolling home drunk at all hours.”

            “As if I would,” said Mr Pickup.

            “As if . . .” his wife echoed.

            Mr Pickup took his son and William to the Halfway House. It was his local and he was well known by the landlord as being a good customer. The landlord poured three pints and told Mr Pickup that they were on the house. George lifted his pint and said, “A toast. To Tiny. May we never forget him.”

            It was the first pint of many.

            William was tired after the long journey to Blackpool and only wanted to have a couple of pints and leave it at that, but he hadn’t counted on Mr Pickup’s persuasiveness and by closing time his vision was blurred, his speech incoherent and he could hardly stand up.

            “We’d better get you home, me lad,” said Mr Pickup, taking hold of William’s arm just as he was about to slide off the bar. “Come on George, give us a hand.”

            George and his father carried a near comatose William home and, quietly as they could (but not quietly enough), put him to bed in the spare room.

            “You bad buggers haven’t got that poor boy drunk, have you?” whispered Mrs Pickup as her husband climbed into bed.

            “Can’t take his drink,” said Mr Pickup, “but he’s a good lad all the same.”

            When William woke up the next morning his head felt like someone had been hitting it repeatedly all night long with a club. He felt sick and his mouth was as dry as a camel’s arse. He had no idea where he was at first but as the haze cleared and his memory started to return he realised that he must be in George's house. He carefully put his hands under the bedcovers and felt around and then thanked God that he hadn't pissed the bed. He looked around the room. There was an old dressing table with a mirror directly in front of him and his clothes were folded neatly over a chair in the far corner. Had he done that? He couldn't remember. The last thing he could recall was Mr Pickup buying him another drink at around eight the previous evening. Everything after that was a complete blank.

            His hazy recollections of the night before were interrupted by a soft tapping on the door, followed by a light, feminine voice. “Are you decent?” the voice said.

            He looked down at the covers to make sure nothing that shouldn't be sticking out wasn't sticking out. “Err, yeah,” he replied. “You can come in if you like.”

            He caught a whiff of perfume before Edith entered the room. “I've brought you some tea up,” she said smiling at him.

            “Thanks,” he said, taking the steaming mug of tea from Edith's tiny hands. “You don't know how much I need this.”

            “You're welcome,” she said shyly. “Oh, by the way, my name's Edith.”

            As she left the room, Edith closed the door and leant back on it. She could feel her heart pounding in her chest, her breathing was hard and fast and she felt hot and light-headed. She brought her hand up to her breast and let out a long, barely audible sigh.

            William found work as a projectionist at the Old Coliseum Picture Theatre and on the day he received his first pay packet he asked Edith if she would go out walking with him. Mr and Mrs Pickup were delighted with William’s interest in their daughter. They’d liked him from the moment they’d first set eyes on him and when he finally plucked up the courage to ask for Edith’s hand in marriage he was already regarded as a member of the Pickup family. 

            William and Edith were married a year after he became a permanent member of the Pickup household. After the wedding they went to the Tower Ballroom where the orchestra, boasting an illuminated tap drum with effects, led by J. Woolf Gagg, performed an evening’s programme of three waltzes, three lancers, a foxtrot, a two-step and three novelty dances. The newly married couple swirled around the dance floor like they were supported on air and by the end of the night they were so exhausted they collapsed on the bed in their hotel room, wrapped in each other’s arms. Sex was the farthest thing from their minds that night and the next day they caught a train to Morecambe where they spent their short honeymoon in a small hotel. William didn't much like the place, there wasn't much to occupy his mind, but he was with Edith and that more than compensated for the lack of excitement. And when they finally consummated the marriage Edith didn't, as her mother had suggested, lie back and think of England. She thought, instead, of her husband's warmth and the pitter-patter of tiny feet.

***

And that is the story of how my grandparents met, fell in love and got married. Well, maybe. As far as I know none of what I wrote about them actually happened. I have no idea what my grandfather did during and immediately after the First World War so I made it all up. He rarely spoke of his experiences in the two world wars he was involved in, especially the First. The trauma of it all silenced a great number of the veterans who were unfortunate enough to have suffered through it. I knew he came from Dublin and I knew one of his friends died from the Spanish Flu shortly after the war ended, but that’s about it. And my grandma was actually from Burnley but as I know next to nothing about Burnley I changed the location to Blackpool where I grew up. But that’s just the way of true stories. They are unreliable and so you can tailor them to whatever you need them to say. My grandparent’s life together may or may not have started the way I described it, but it’s my story and I’m sticking to it. I do know one thing though and that is they fell in love with each other almost immediately and they loved each other for the rest of their lives. And that’s good enough for me.

Batman's Autograph

The Tivoli cinema stood in the centre of town, tucked away in a v-shaped block that also played host to Yates’s Wine Lodge. Mum had taken me to see Summer Holiday there a couple of years earlier. She was a big fan of Cliff Richard, much preferring his bland wholesome style of rock’n’roll to the hip-swinging pelvic gyrations of  a certain Mr Presley and therefore she was, despite her protests to the contrary, a bit of a square on the quiet.

            The entrance to the cinema was hidden inside a covered shopping precinct within the block. Dimly lit and stinking of piss, it was the first stop for all the drunks that spewed out of the Wine Lodge in the early hours of the morning.

            I was twelve when I saw Batman – The Movie at the Tivoli on a cold Saturday afternoon in the January of 1967. The seats were uncomfortable, the heating was non-existent and the place was a dump, but it was closer to where I lived and cheaper than the Odeon. 

            When I was seven, Granddad gave me a small collection of Detective Comics that he’d been given by a friend of his where he worked. His friend had told him that his own son had left home and had grown out of them. And so that evening instead of the usual dirty old sweet, granddad gave me something altogether more exciting; he introduced me to Batman.

            I can still remember the first time I handled those comics – the feel and smell of the pulp paper on which they were produced, the brightly coloured artwork within their shiny covers, the brilliantly drawn panels of fast-moving action and the excitingly dynamic storylines. It must have seemed such a small thing for to him to do at the time, handing over a few unwanted second-hand comics to his grandson, but that one tiny, unsentimental act would set me off on a path that would turn me into a life-long lover (and collector) of comics. Even now, I can’t understand anyone growing out of something so wonderful.

            In 1966 Batman arrived onto the TV screens of Britain, and every Saturday and Sunday evening the youth of the nation would be transfixed, watching Adam West and Burt Ward playing the Caped Crusader and his young sidekick Robin.

Before Adam West took on the dual role of Bruce Wayne/Batman, Lewis Wilson and Robert Lowery were the first two actors to play the Caped Crusader in the Saturday morning movie serials Batman (1943) and Batman and Robin (1949). I remember watching these in the Odeon in Blackpool in throughout 1966 – they had been re-released to cash-in on Adam West’s incarnation.

I loved the TV series – it was campy and fun and the Batman comics at the time began to reflect the crazy air of the show. It worked primarily because Adam West, a gifted comic actor with a great sense of timing, played the whole thing straight and the jokes were pitched in such a way that adult audiences got them, whilst their children saw only the excitement, especially in the ZAP! POW! WHAM! OOF! fight scenes. There’s a great line in the first episode of the series. Batman and Robin dressed in their lurid costumes are walking through a groovy 1960s nightclub in their search for the Riddler’s lair. The barman asks Batman if he would like him to turn the lights on. “No,” replies Batman, “We don’t want to draw attention to ourselves.”

            Saturday night’s episode would end on a cliffhanger, with our two heroes caught in some fiendishly devious deathtrap, while the villains would all inexplicably leave them to their respective fates, from which they would then perform an unbelievably amazing escape at the start of Sunday night’s episode.

            The movie was released on the 16^th December 1966 and with a bigger budget, it was able to feature the Bat-Boat and Bat-Copter, both of which appeared in a memorably hilarious scene featuring the Bat-Ladder, a rubber shark and a spray can of Bat-Shark repellent that the Caped Crusader just happened to be carrying in his utility belt. Audiences knew instinctively that Batman was climbing down the Bat-Ladder and not just some run-of-the-mill, bog standard ordinary ladder because attached to the bottom rung was a printed sign that read Bat-Ladder. As if all that wasn’t enough for Bat-fans around the world, the movie contained all four of the major villains from the series; Caesar Romero as The Joker, Burgess Meredith as The Penguin, Frank Gorshin as The Riddler and Lee Merriwether (replacing Julie Newmar) as Catwoman.

            I was in Bat-Heaven!

            In the June of 1967 an advertisement appeared in the Fylde Gazette announcing the arrival of Batman and Robin in Britain. Along with the Batmobile, Adam West and Burt Ward had arrived on our shores to promote the second series of Batman.

            Granddad pointed out the advert and my pupils dilated rapidly when I read that they would be signing autographs in Lewis’ Department Store in the town centre that very weekend. I immediately showed the advert to my mother, who told me that there was no way on earth she was going to traipse all the way into town when she didn’t need to do any shopping. She could see the desperation on my face and still she refused to take me, even after I had repeatedly asked her.

            Grandma and Granddad were both busy that weekend so there was no one who could take me. “I’ll go on my own, then,” I said defiantly.

            “You will not go on your own, Stephen!”

            That was her final word on the matter and I knew she was serious because she had called me Stephen – in italics.

            Batman and Robin were there for just one day and during the days leading up to the event my selfish mother dug her heels in and flatly ignored all my increasingly pathetic pleading.

            There was no one to accompany me into town and so there was nothing else for it; I had to defy my mother and go on my own without telling anyone.

            What could possibly go wrong?

            Lewis’s Department Store was hot and muggy and a crowd of people were clamouring and shoving their way forward, trying to get a glimpse of the Caped Crusader. I was rake thin, and so able to scramble between the legs of the awe inspired crowd and reach the front with no problem. I was dumbstruck when I reached my exalted position and when I held out my hand Adam West shook it and pressed a small scrap of paper into my sweaty palm. I carefully unfolded the white square and gazed in adoration at the autograph.

            I thought, Wow!

            Nothing else. 

            Just Wow!

            Then I was pushed and jostled back by the enthusiastic crowd.

            But the pushing and jostling didn't stop and an unexpected dig of someone's elbow in the small of my back sent me crashing to the floor. I slid along its polished surface until my head hit the side of a wooden shop display and I felt a sharp stab of pain in my neck. At first I thought nothing of it, but then I heard a woman's voice screaming hysterically. “Oh My God!” the woman screamed hysterically, “He's bleeding!”

            I instinctively brought my hand up to where the pain was. As I did this I felt something warm running over my fingers and down into the sleeve of my shirt. When I pulled my hand away it was covered in blood. Now I’m not good with blood, especially my own, and I tend to go into shock until someone qualified reassures me that I’m going to be all right and so therefore my head started to swim, a sudden dizziness overcame me and then I passed out.

            The next thing I knew I was on a stretcher being jogged up and down by a couple of blue-suited ambulance-men. We were in the basement car park of the store, heading for a waiting ambulance. Through watery vision I could see the Batmobile standing silently over on the far side of the dimly lit car park.

            "What do you think of that, then, kid?" one of the ambulance-men asked. "How would you like to go to the hospital in that?"

            Bugger the Batmobile, I thought, what's mum going to do when she finds out about this?

            With the siren wailing, the ambulance sped through the busy streets until it reached the ugly sprawling mass of red bricks and concrete that was Victoria Hospital. The vehicle screeched to a halt and the doors flew open. Strapped to a stretcher trolley, I was hurtled down long corridors and round sharp, blind corners, faster than a speeding bullet.

            In an examination room a white-coated, kindly-faced doctor poked, prodded and scrutinised me. I was surrounded by space age looking equipment that appeared to have been borrowed from the set of Star Trek.

            "Stitches," I heard the doctor say, softly. "Have you informed the parents?"

            "The mother’s on her way."

            "Now then, son," the doctor said, turning to me, "you're going to need a few stitches, and because you're twelve you're old enough to have them put in without a general anaesthetic."

            All the moisture in my mouth suddenly evaporated and a wave of self-pity swept over me. I looked at the doctor with a mixture of terror and confusion in my eyes.

            "Now, don't be alarmed. You're a big lad now. We're going to give you a local anaesthetic. That just deadens the area where you've been hurt. Trust me, you won’t feel a thing. We can give you a general anaesthetic that will knock you out if you like, but it’s not advisable. Anyway, only sissies and girls have general anaesthetic. You don't want all your friends at school thinking you're a sissy, do you?"

            Yes! Yes! I thought. I do! I do! I do want them to think I'm a sissy!

            "Honestly, the stitches won’t hurt. You'll just feel a tingling sensation at first and after that you won’t feel a thing."

            He lied. There may not have been any physical pain – but psychologically it was agony. At that moment I didn't see the kindly-faced, soft spoken doctor. I saw a maniac and all I could think of as the needle wove its way in and out of my skin was: You fucking liar. You fucking fucking liar!

            Mum arrived a few minutes after I’d been sewn up and found me looking sorry for myself in the recovery room. My obvious discomfort had no effect on her mood whatsoever because she had traipsed all the way into town without needing to go shopping – and she was furious.

            "What did I say to you?" she thundered.

            I had to think of something fast and it had to be plausible. "Err . . . I came into town with . . . err . . . Pete Webster and his mum and . . . err . . . we got separated  . . .err . . . and err . . .I fell over and . . . err . . . cut my neck open."

            The doctor gave me a scornful look, but he didn't say anything.

            "Serves you bloody right, then," Mum said, as she grabbed hold of my ear and dragged me out of the recovery room.

            When we got home we had jam sandwiches for tea and, as I stuffed one into my mouth, I reached forward and pressed the large bakelite button on the television and waited for the old black and white, tube driven monster to warm up.    

            I was just in time. It was a new adventure. A new story. A different villain, and I remember thinking, just before the doorbell rang, I hope The Joker's in it this week.

            As the sound and picture merged and the fuzziness disappeared, and the familiar Na-Na-Na-Na-Na-Na-Na-Na  Na-Na-Na-Na-Na-Na-Na-Na signature tune began to fill the room, I heard my mother call to me from the hallway. “Stephen!” she yelled, “me and Mrs Webster would like a word with you about what happened this afternoon!”

          Did my mother ground me for the rest of my natural life? Did more lies save me when Mrs Webster told my mother what really happened that afternoon? Could this be a ghastly end for me?

            Tune in tomorrow – same Bat-time, same Bat-channel!

I was devastated when I heard the news that Adam West, the Caped Crusader himself, had died. The 1966 series of Batman was, and still is, one of my favourite TV shows. On my birthday last year I treated myself to the complete remastered series on Blu-Ray and have watched it frequently since then. Adam West was a master of comic timing who reached a new generation of fans with his hilarious Mayor Adam West in Family Guy, not forgetting the animated film Return of the Caped Crusaders, where he was reunited with Burt Ward and Julie Newmar. He will return again soon in his final performance as the Caped Crusader in Batman vs Two-Face, which will also feature William Shatner as Harvey Dent. This post is a remastered version of a previous post from about four years ago and will serve, hopefully as a tribute to the cultural icon and absolute legend, Adam West.

            For a generation of kids who grew up in the 1960s he will always be their Batman.

            May his Bat-Signal shine on forever.