AN EXCERPT from ALL THINGS BETRAY THEE
CHAPTER THREE
A brisk northwest breeze carried sounds of the Mersey across the Wirral peninsula like a passage from the Bible, reminding us to pray for sailors in peril on the sea and not to forget the widows and orphans left behind by those drowned at sea. The psalm of foghorns, ships' whistles and the dirge-like clank of the middle ground buoy which marked the western end of the Pluckington Bank, were my lullaby. Another poignant memory of that tear-stained face of England ten years after the slaughter was over, was the hush that settled over the crowd at the cenotaph on Armistice Day, November 11, a few seconds before eleven o'clock. Clutching my mother's hand, I would squeeze tightly when the gun on the old fort at Seacombe went off. Peering up curiously into her face I wondered about the tears on her cheeks as the plaintive notes of the Last Post echoed across the cobbles. At that time of my life, I knew nothing of my Uncle Tom who had been killed in France a few weeks before the end of the war.
A few days later a knock on the front door brought my mother out of the kitchen wiping flour off her hands and telling me to stay back while she undid the bolt. From the safety of her protective skirt, I peered up and saw framed by the doorway a tall, scarecrow of a man dressed in the tattered remnants of an army uniform.
Peter Wright -
a Liverpool Sailor
