Corned Beef Sandwiches.

Above the mantelpiece the old wooden school clock, with Roman numerals, pointed to 26 minutes past six. Crunching her way down Tennyson Place, in ankle deep snow, to the bus stop in Otley Road, she would stand outside the tiny post office, and await the 6.35 trolleybus to take her to the small munitions factory on the edge of town. Once there she would clock on, hang up her coat, go to her capstan lathe, switch on, and like all other mornings starting at 7 o’clock, would stand turning the star wheel with monotonous regularity until tea break at ten.

At lunchtime she would stretch her legs outside, and briefly gulp some acrid air belching from the foundry across the yard, before entering the works canteen to sit in a segregated area away from the management, to eat her corned beef sandwiches. Corned beef that’s all they ever seemed to eat. Corned beef ash, corned beef fritters, fried corned beef; corned beef grilled, and corned beef stew. And so it went on. They ate that much of it she thought that if anybody whistled they would probably set off at a gallop.

Yet, even after so many years of virtual ostracism from the family, she could not help thinking on occasion, how matters could have been so different. This life, with its deprivations and labour, was far removed from her upbringing. Anything and anybody she had known as a child she no longer knew, they had all turned their backs on her. She tried to relax. It was no use getting her self into a state. It served no purpose.

Ted made a pot of tea and got some sliced bread out of the cold pantry, put it on a fork and sat by the fire toasting it. He managed to find some margarine, scraped it off the wrapper and melted it on to the toast. They were supposed to cut down on bread because of the wheat shortages. ‘Save bread and you save lives – serve potatoes and you serve your country.’

There was very little food after the weekend. Even when Mr Piffin contributed his rations very little usually survived. It all disappeared in ravenous hunger, borne of a cold and pervasive desperation that sometimes just simply eradicated all humour and rattled their bare bones. There were times when he looked at the pigeons, and thought they got better fed than they did.

He switched on the large, wooden, wireless, its valves hissing. It lit the dark corner of the living room.

Out of the back window, in the white, lonely dawn of the Home Service, snow swirled and danced on the rooftops. Misty green trees held singing, red-breasted robins. Snow covered the flat, dark stone 'midding’s' of outside toilets and coalholes. The clock ticked.

Ted stood and drank his hot tea, and thought of Reginald Blashford-Snell, the Fifth Duke of Richmond, his uncle. Seldom did a day go by when he didn’t think of the man. Every moment of suffering in this darkened corner reinforced his will that somehow he would get back what was rightfully his.

He hunted around in the pantry and found a bit of cheese and some piccalilli. He made himself a small sandwich for the lunch break. He wrapped it in the grease - proof paper from the bread, and shoved it into his old school tuck box.

Outside, the street was covered in ice. Powdery snow blew along the surface, whipped by a cold north – westerly wind. Around the metal, unlit gas lamps, the tall, frosty hedgerows cracked with the ice.

He grew up knowing only Roger Cowling and his sister Lydia. They were the children of the only doctor for miles, and lived at the posh end of the street. It was on his mother’s insistence that he must not play with the rougher elements. The children of Artisans were ruled out, as were any child from the working classes. She would therefore insist on escorting him to the doctor’s house where he would play in the upstairs room designated for the children, an austere room with very few decorations and all too similar to the servant quarters downstairs.

They became his closest friends through no other means than the simple fact that there was nobody else to play with. During his pubescent years he fell in love with Lydia, summoning a passion she was not at all interested in, particularly from somebody on such a poor income. She would often laugh at his somewhat feeble attempts to kiss her. This filled him with a craving to do better.

Somehow the desire by his mother to bring him up correctly and well versed in literary and educational matters, had in effect alienated him in the discourse of being able to conduct himself in matters of the heart.

He had oft times discussed a career with his mother, who dreaded the thought of him doing a job, particularly when considering her own experiences in that particular field. They would sit in the parlour.

‘I wonder who could help us?’
‘We don’t really know anyone mother, apart from your family, and they don’t really want to know us.’
She carried on crocheting. ‘Well the least we can do is try once more. I shall write to Lord Blashford – Snell I’m sure there is something he can do in that bank of his.’

‘Bank, Mama? Isn’t that a profession?’

‘It is a private bank Edward dear. They don’t pass money over the counter.’

And so it came about that in desperation she ventured to write to her relations once more, with a view to having Edward indentured within the family bank. This time they did get a reply, albeit from his secretary. It read, ‘Madam, I am informed by the Duke himself that he his not aware of your son’s existence as a member of this family.’ Edwards mother became a little distraught.

‘It is very stupid of him, and indeed of them all, to ignore your very existence when you may well become the Duke of Richmond. It just does not make sense.’

‘But Mama there must be at least twelve people before me.’

‘Well stranger things have happened. I don’t wish to be unchristian but in view of their attitude, I could almost wish those twelve people would die tomorrow.’

‘All except one Mama, you must be the Duchess of Richmond before I am Duke’ he kissed her forehead and gave her an embrace.

‘It will have to be a job instead of a career after all Mama.’
‘I’m afraid so Edward.’ And with that she began to whimper.
______________________________

‘I did not know at the time, and I was certainly not aware of it, but it would seem that on reflection my dear Mama had planted the seed that would lead to the greatest endeavour by any known criminal in history. In effect to commit the unthinkable of murdering, one by one, an entire dynasty.’

So it was that Mr Piffin, our lodger of 15years, did his best and managed to secure me a position as a general assistant in the drapery department of a rather prestigious store in the town, after all even the potential Duke of Richmond must eat.

This humiliation continued for two dispiriting years. From my position the future looked unpromising. Then one day after having served in the department for two miserable years my routine was interrupted by the arrival of the police.

Mama, who had broken her glasses and had been unable to afford the repair, had been knocked down by a tram in the town centre and was fatally injured.

I sat by her bed at home; they’re being no point in taking her to the local infirmary. Her last wish was to be buried at Richmond in the family vault and with that wish made, she promptly succumbed to death.

I wrote to the Duke to ask for my mother’s wish to be buried near her parents. His reply was the curtest possible refusal. Standing by the tiny grave in the hideous suburban cemetery near where we lived, I vowed that I would do everything in my power to avenge the wrongs her family had done her. It was I knew, no more than a piece of bravado, but it seemed destined that from small acorns, great oak trees would grow.

On looking at the family tree once more, I cut the chart in such a way, so that it contained only the living members. I looked at the chart and thought what could I do to hurt them? What could I take from them? Then it occurred to me that the only thing I could take was perhaps their lives. I then had a fantasy that the entire family was wiped out at a family reunion by my unseen hand. I even speculated as to how I might contrive it. But they were other more urgent problems now, and I placed to one side my thoughts on such matters for the time been.

The predicament I had now was how to survive on 25 shillings per week. Mama’s tiny income had been part of an annuity and had died with her. The house was far too large and with the departure of Mr Piffin I was at a loss as to what to do next. It was then that I was invited by the dear doctor to take lodgings with them, a request I could hardly refuse considering it would mean seeing Lydia every day.

‘Edward I’m so glad you accepted. It was my idea’ gushed Lydia on my first morning. I presented her with a marvellous box of chocolates to which her reply was that I should not have bothered, what with my poor income. It was then that there was the toot of a car outside the drawing room window, and Lydia casting aside my gift, rushed from the room with shouts that she would see me at supper.

I was subjected to numerous taunts and teasing over the next two years all of which added to my misery.

At Brown’s department store my work went on. Over the ensuing years I was firstly promoted to Laces and Ribbons, at thirty shillings a week, later, fabrics at thirty-two and six, and finally ladies underwear at thirty-five. It was then I decided that if I was to be a draper then I was not going to be a draper in such a small town, and I subsequently transferred my employment to their larger store in the City of Bradford.

It was a bustling place of textiles, and not too badly damaged after the war, so that trade and industry were developing quite rapidly when I arrived. There I was placed on counter sales in the drapery department. It was a very prestige’s store and my wages were much improved and for the enormous weekly wage of two pounds I was most grateful.

Quite naturally I moved from the doctor’s house, and my beloved Lydia, into number 22 Western Road in the borough of Manningham. A rather salubrious outskirt of large detached houses, mostly belonging to mill owners. I managed in all of that to rent a modest garden flat in the rear of one of the many Victorian houses. It was indeed a quiet backwater of leafy avenues, lined with numerous oak trees and it was from there that my luck was to change.

Nearly every lunchtime I went to the local library to read the papers and see how my inheritance was proceeding. Looking down the deaths column on some days I was greeted with good news, whereby when I got home I would cross one name off the family tree. Sometimes the births column brought bad news. The birth of twin sons to the Duke was a terrible blow. Fortunately an epidemic of diphtheria restored the status quo almost immediately and even brought me a bonus, in the shape of the Duchess.

My love for Lydia was unquenched despite the miles that separated us, and when I was invited to a Ball at the house, I unhesitatingly accepted. I had toyed with the idea for some time of proposing to her and asking for her hand in marriage. I saw the occasion as a means to express my feelings to her, and having managed at last, to get her alone, I went down on one knee as she laid on the chaise lounge scoffing chocolates. I asked her in a trembling voice, if she would marry me.

‘Of course not Edward, and do get up! You do look silly playing the lover like that.’ I lost my temper.

‘Oh! I look silly do I?’ and with that I grabbed hold of her and kissed her full on the lips. ‘Do I still look silly?’ we kissed more. ‘Now will you marry me?’

‘No, because I’ve just said I will marry Lionel.’

‘You can’t marry him he’s not a gentleman!’

‘Listen who’s talking…one whose mother cleaned the boots of her lodger.’

‘That’s extremely unfair. Mama was very poor and needed to…’

‘ Yes but Lionel is going to be rich one day quite soon.’

I retorted ‘ But one day I might be the Duke.’

‘And pigs might fly.’she replied.

‘You see Mama is the daughter of the Duke of…’

‘Not that old rubbish once more, and anyway when you are a Duke you must come and look me up.’ She yawned, ‘anyway I’m going to marry Lionel and now I’m off to bed.’ She left the room.

It seemed that not only had the Blashford- Snell’s affected my mother’s life they were now also standing between everything that I wanted also. The more I thought of these people, who I knew by name more so then anyone else, the more I realised what creatures of monstrous arrogance and cruelty they were, whose only function in the world was to deprive me of my birthrights.

It was then that I decided to pay a visit to Richmond Castle to see for myself what Mama had talked about many times.

They had by now, allowed for a period during the summer months, for members of the general public to visit certain parts of the castle, for the extortionate entrance fee of sixpence, which I duly paid. I wanted to view the target at which I was determined to aim. I did more than anything, at that moment, hold the desire to smell and feel my future environment.

There was at that time eight people between the dukedom and myself, all equally out of reach. It seemed rather odd to think in terms of killing them, because quite frankly I felt I knew them well, but needs must I suppose, and I soon cast any thoughts of compassion out of the window.

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