But then life became a nightmare. Ann and our baby journeyed to Wrexham to move into our town house in Wrexham Fechan. The long journey by coach was almost unendurable for her with turbulent weather conditions all the way which made the roads virtually impassable. Added to that, Ann had not fully recovered from childbirth and had been suffering from fevers and fainting fits. However, she and Mary arrived safely in Wrexham but she then spent most of her time confined to bed in an attempt to recover. I was deeply concerned about her health although I tried to hide this from her.
Suddenly and tragically my brother, Henry died of unknown causes. He had been living at Plas Grono, the family home, and was only 26. He was buried in the Dissenters' Graveyard.
But the worst blow was yet to come. On the 17th November last year Ann died after weeks of decline and within only months of giving birth to Mary. I felt completely numb and mechanically arranged for her funeral and burial in this churchyard. She was a loyal and fervent churchgoer all her short life and I had to respect her last wishes.
The baby?
I know I am being unreasonable and Mary is only an innocent babe but I cannot even look at her. If Ann had not been pregnant she would still be alive now. I truly believe that. Therefore, I have sent her away to people who will surely look after her and love her in a way I never can. I don't want to see her again.
And me? My future?
I have decided to dedicate my life to my work, to the iron industry. Iron is strong, iron is reliable and there is so much scope for development. When I looked upon my wife's body in her ornate but flimsy oakwood coffin I resolved that, when I die, my coffin will be made of solid cast iron which would endure for eternity.
And this I swear before God in this holy place.
PART 3
My visit to St Giles' Church Easter 2016
Having heard that the old Grove Park Girls' Grammar School was probably going to be demolished I decided to walk up Chester Road to look at it again before it disappeared forever. I stood by the railings and was horrified by the boarded up windows and the dismal state of the formerly gracious historical buildings. I gazed at where the science block had once stood for it had been demolished already.
Memories flooded back.
Ghostly, jeering faces were suddenly resurrected in my imagination and I remembered the St David's annual Christmas visits to the church. I especially remembered the 1985 visit.
On a whim, I decided to retrace the route we had taken on that occasion. Glancing to my left, I realised that the police building was looking extremely dilapidated and I had heard that it was to be demolished soon too. Even the peregrine falcons had abandoned the building and had been relocated to the church. Feeling despondent, I made my way to the underpass and was not surprised to observe how rank it had become. At Lambpit Street I noted that the street and the old market were all gone or changed beyond recognition and the alterations had happened so gradually and surreptitiously, I had hardly noticed!
What else had gone or changed? Well, nearly everything. There were no posters advertising films because the Hippodrome had gone and a new cinema had been built at Eagles Meadow, itself a development which had wiped the old Beast Market off the face of the earth.
I meandered along to Hope Street and, of course, all the former shops had moved or gone or changed hands. For a moment, I felt an acute sense of disorientation but then I saw the church ahead and, gratefully, walked inside. The sense of permanence was overwhelming. I sat down in the same pew I had occupied with my form more than thirty years ago and began to look around. There on the wall in the same place was Ann Wilkinson's plaque. I had researched their history after that long ago visit to the church and I had discovered how tragic Ann and John's life together had been. After his wife's death, John Wilkinson had become the most famous of the iron masters and the most successful, but his private life thereafter had not been very happy. I discovered that he had wanted to be buried in an iron coffin and this last instruction had been followed to the letter.
Suddenly, thinking about John Wilkinson, I felt transported back to that Christmas service in the church over 30 years ago. Then the church had reminded me of another church I had been in only six months before when a crowded congregation had come to pay their respects to the person lying dead in a simple coffin, my father. The Christmas service in St Giles had broken my heart and torn my emotions to shreds as past Christmases with my father alive and smiling had ambushed my thoughts and resurrected loving memories. Only empathy with another person's misery, John Wilkinson's, had alleviated my sorrow.
John Wilkinson had survived and flourished. In time I had overcome my grief. But layer upon layer of things remembered live on and haunt the present and create an unsettling and inexplicable sensation of...timeshift.
By Anne Cook
Wrexham
Iron Mad Wilkinson of Wrexham
I'm known for my work with metal,
Copper and Iron too?
An industrial revolutionist?
Does that give you a clue?
My name is 'Iron Mad Wilkinson',
but some call me 'Iron Mad Jack'.
James Watts needed accurate cylinders
I'm an inventor, that problem I'll crack!
It requires the best Ironmaster,
the smartest engineer.
In Bersham I shall build it,
and finish in a year.
You see, Watts had built an engine,
powered most of all by steam.
But the cylinders inside it,
were far from a dream.
They needed to be perfect,
meticulous and deft.
And poor James Watts and Boulton,
were feeling quite bereft.
The challenge I shall rise to,
the problems I will mend
and solve all of the issues
for my new found friends.
Off I went to Bersham,
with all my trusty chaps
and built the perfect cylinder,
with no spaces, nor gaps.
So now their new steam engine,
can chug without a glitch.
And as a mad inventor,
it's made me jolly rich!
I've had a go at iron shoes,
but they were rather clumpy.
When it can't be made from iron,
I become rather grumpy!
I'm going to launch an iron boat,
carrying freight on canals.
But everyone thinks I'm crazy,
except my inventor pals!
Halfpennys for my workmen,
with my face on one side.
John Wilkinson the Ironmaster,
they say with great pride.
I've made some of leather,
copper and silver too.
And my one guinea notes,
well? I've only made a few.
So remember me in Wrexham
and generally in Wales.
In fond storytelling,
let me be in those tales.
'Iron Mad Wilkinson,
inventor of cannon and gun.
He brought prosperity and wealth
to the town ofWrexham!'
By Imelda Summerton
Cheshire
Ten Minutes
Bloody suicide! Or so his co-pilot, Dickie Medhurst, was shouting at him.
'We can make it,' David laughed, though he wasn't sure the old bus would hold up. The wings had more holes than a colander, the starboard engine was coughing blood and spitting flames. But, as they lurched down, out of the murky cloud, he gave Dickie a re-assuring thump on the shoulder.
'Green as grass', thought David. 'But keen as mustard'.
'Drop Zone in two minutes, Skipper.' Harry King, the navigator, crackled into his ear phones.
David eased the column forward, held the yoke steady against the shuddering vibration in the airframe, and began the descent down to nine hundred feet. Through the thi
ckest flak he'd ever seen. He could see the DZ now too. Flicked the warning light switch to amber, then glanced back over his right shoulder, as far as his harness would allow, peering through the pulpit door, down the ribbed green tunnel of the Dakota's fuselage. The loadies had seen the light. Good. Two of them, Ricketts and Rowbotham, were attaching their safety straps. A third, Harper, was helping the ALM, Corporal Nixon, with the door.
Everything ready. 'Two minutes. Then we'll get these panniers down to the lads on the ground'. He could see some of them. Tiny. But clear. Along the edge of a field. Waving like fury.
'Poor devils', he thought. 'Must be desperate. But at least we can get this little lot to them'. He gripped the yoke, tight, as the rear door came open and the normal, howling gale slammed into the old lady's innards, kicking her sideways. He looked past Dickie Medhurst to the damaged starboard engine. 'That's if the ruddy donk gets no worse'!
*
Tony Crane's No. 2 Platoon was strung out along the farm's drainage ditch. Arms waving like windmills and shouting useless warnings. Watching the supply plane coming in; still coming in, smoke pouring from its wing.
He'd dropped just to the west of Arnhem two days ago. Sunday afternoon. And they'd set about the task of marking out a Landing Zone for the first wave. Homing beacons too.
There'd been the lunatics to contend with, of course. Somehow they'd escaped from the local asylum and a few of them were still wandering around when the Horsas and huge Hamilcars had come in. Many of the gliders had landed just fine. Bang on! But there were others? 'Christ, what a mess'.
And the Second Lift, yesterday. By then, Jerry had moved up so many anti-aircraft guns that they'd picked off the gliders like flies. Things weren't going right. He could feel it in his water. All those briefings. The whole operation seemed to have ground to a halt, their positions surrounded, and the plan to turn the Germans' flank, to capture the Arnhem bridges now all stood on its head. Everything running low. Already.
So today they'd managed to set out the giant 'V' that would guide in the desperately needed supplies. Only now, that had turned sour too. Planes scattered all over the show. And the Jerry guns, the sky full of flak. Black with the stuff. The explosions. Some planes already shot down. This one coming in. Closer now. The smoke. Every signaler trying to warn them. Warn them.
*
'I could shut it down', thought David Lord. 'Feather it. Shut it down'.
Like Satan, tempting him.
'If I shut it down, we can't make the run. If we can't make the run'?
'Couldn't we shut it down, Skipper?' shouted Dickie Medhurst, but Lord ignored him, leveled out at nine hundred feet, hardly able to believe that the flak was even worse than before. And he felt the next prang through his fingers. Starboard wing again. Jolted upwards. The engine suddenly an inferno. The ammonia stink of coolant dragging him back to his days as a chemist, polluting the kite's normal smells of hot oil, metal - and the sickly rubber of his whiff mask. He flipped the thing towards his mouth, pressed a finger to the mike button.
'Approaching Drop Zone,' he relayed. 'Alec. Harry. Get ready to go aft and help the loadies, please.'
Then he stretched out to the warning light switch, hesitated.
'Not too late', he thought. 'Still time to pull out. Still time to jump'.
But, when the yellow marker panels along the Drop Zone's nearest edge - the bottom of the 'V' - appeared below, his gloved finger instinctively moved the switch to green. He looked back again, saw the navigator, Harry King, and the wireless operator, Alec Ballantyne, climbing from their positions and swaying down the decking to where the squaddie despatchers were unfastening the shackles holding down the first crate, the first pair of canister tubes.
'Skipper?' shouted Medhurst. He looked like he was about to bag up.
'That's all we need', thought David. 'Puke all over the place'.
'Easy, lad,' he said. 'They don't call me Lucky Lummy Lord for nothing.'
True enough. He'd survived D-Day, got the Duchess home from Normandy on a wing and a prayer. And yesterday, tugging for the gliders in the Second Lift. But this was bad. The flames even worse now. And, at this altitude, not a cat in hell's chance of quenching it.
'But at least we can pick a spot to bail out', he thought, breathing a sigh of relief when the final edge of the marker panels came into sight through the window. The end of the Drop Zone. Job done. The switch flicked to red.
He was about to press the mike button again, get them all ready to jump. But then there was Harry King in the ear phones again.
'Skipper, we've still got two crates left!'
*
Tony couldn't work out how the plane was still in the air. The whole near-side of the thing was ablaze, great clouds of filthy black smoke. But it had flown all the way across the Drop Zone, dropping one canister after another, pale blue parachutes billowing.
'Food', he thought. 'We don't need the damned food! Just get to hell out of there'.
It seemed that every Jerry gun in the whole damned place was now trying to bring the Dakota down. Despite the smoke, he could see the triple white stripes under each wing and its tail, the lettering along the plane's fuselage: YS-DM.
'Haven't they got the message yet?' Tony's Platoon Sergeant came hobbling, frantic, along the trench line, using an old broom for a crutch. 'For God's sake, are they blind?'
The signalers were working like fury, one of them with a portable Aldis lamp, the other with semaphore flags - they'd given up on the useless wireless set long since. But it wasn't helping. And Tony cursed the Germans, hated them in that moment more than any time since he'd joined up. He'd enlisted two years ago. Ended up in the Paras. Two bob a day more than the Poor Bloody Infantry. But he looked down at his sniper rifle. Still barely fired a shot in anger.
'Think they'll get out OK, Sarge?'
'Those Fly Boys will be having cold beer in their nice comfy mess before you know it,' said the Sergeant, though his voice was trembling with rage. 'If we can just get them to see the ruddy signals.'
*
The prayer went round and round in David Lord's head.
Hail Mary. Hail Mary, full of grace. The Lord is with thee.
He pulled the whiff mask across once more.
'We go again!' he relayed, struggling to keep his voice level, confident. 'Repeat. We go again.'
Nothing came back. He glanced at Dickie Medhurst's stricken face. Disbelief. And a tear running down the boy's cheek.
'The quicker we make the second run,' David shouted, 'the quicker we get to jump.'
The weight on his shoulders was physical, pressed him down into the seat. They called him The Old Man because, compared to the rest of them, that was exactly what he was. A month short of thirty-one. And every intention of celebrating the birthday.
He fought with the yoke and column, the rudder pedals, slowly bringing the Duchess on her slow turn to port, and he was gratified to find Medhurst at his own set of controls, helping to ease the old crate around.
*
The men of No.2 Platoon were out of their ditches. Still waving.'They can't be?' Tony shouted. But they were. They were going around again. That starboard wing raised up like a bloody burning beacon. 'Jump, you silly buggers. Jump.' Yet, at the same time, his brain was sending out different messages entirely.
'Go on, you beauties. You can make it'!And there were tears running down his face. He hardly dared look at the others.
The Dakota completed the turn, leveled out. Lower than before. Four more canisters came tumbling down. One. Two. Three. Four.
'Jump now'! Tony's brain screamed. 'Jump'!
'That bugger's lining himself up for a VC if anybody ever did!' A Jock's voice behind him. A posh Jock, and Tony turned around ready to give the bugger a mouthful. But the Scotsman was frowning, incredulity painted into every crease of his face, so Tony changed his mind. In any case, it probably wasn't a good career move to shout abuse at the commander of the 1st Airborne Division.
> *
Hail Mary. Hail Mary, full of grace. The Lord is with thee.
'All gone, Skipper.' Harry was behind him, in the cockpit doorway, hand on the shoulder of David's flying suit, bellowing into his ear over the roar of engine and flame, and the shuddering screams of the stricken, grinding airframe.
'Then go and get the loadies into their 'chutes, Harry.'
'How long'? he wondered. It was a miracle the tank hadn't blown. How was that possible? Yet they couldn't have long. He fingered the mike button. Less than five hundred feet on the altimeter. But the only chance?
'We're going to jump, boys,' David told them all. 'Get ready.'
He looked once more at young Dickie Medhurst, winked at him. 'Go on, Dickie. I'll be right behind you.' The boy smiled back, began to unfasten his harness. 'OK,' David shouted into the mike. 'Bail out! Bail out! For God's sake, bail out!'
*
General Urquhart rubbed a hand across his cheek. 'Why don't they jump?' he said.
Tony Crane wasn't sure whether he was supposed to answer. But he watched the canister 'chutes open and, as though that was a signal too, the fuel tank on the stricken starboard wing exploded. A shower of flaming shards. A heat blast, which reached even Tony, there on the ground. The Dakota lurched to the left. Just once. A single figure somersaulted from the rear door as the wing fell away. Burning. Falling. Burning. And the plane's remaining wing reared up. Its nose dived, the fuselage tipping sideways so that Tony thought he could see inside the cockpit, the pilot still at his controls.
Maybe? he thought. A stupid spark of hope, which turned first into a Catherine Wheel of despair as the loose wing struck the farmland and spun, over and over. Then, second, into a fire ball of grief when the rest of the Dakota slammed into the farmland and came apart in a bomb-burst fury that assaulted Tony's ears like all the demons of hell.