If I Don’t Write It Nobody Else Will

I greeted this suggestion in a lukewarm fashion. I’d often chided Vernon because he worked somewhere in an office. Polished shoes, collar and tie—that wasn’t my idea of a workman. I wanted to work in overalls, sweep the streets, the chimneys, clean windows, anything as long as I could come home weary and dirty with a good day’s work behind me. But the Post Office—I would go to work clean and tidy and come home in the same state, and I didn’t consider selling stamps a proper job. However, my attitude changed when my father came home with a bit of newspaper he’d picked up on the tram and he smoothed it out to show me an advertisement urging school leavers to apply to the Post Office for positions of telegraph boys. My face lit up. The main argument in favour of the Post Office to Dad was a job for life, but for me, I was already sold on a uniform with a stiff peaked cap, a black belt and a pouch—all this and a bicycle too. Excitedly, I sent in two applications, both of which were ignored. Bitterly, I thought, ‘It’s typical of the Post Office—neither of them have been delivered.’

Meanwhile, not far from the top of Featherstall Road was Emmanuel Whittaker’s Timber Merchant’s, and I have no idea how it happened or who did what but all I know is that on Monday next I was to start work as a timber merchant. I had no inkling of what I was expected to do, but no doubt they’d tell me when I arrived.

So it was with outward calm and inward trepidation that I made my way up Featherstall Road, thrilled by my overalls washed many, many times to a faded blue, bought possibly from a sale at a second-hand or even a pawn shop. Had my overalls been new I would have looked like a raw beginner, if only I was old enough to shave. I crossed Featherstall Road at the exact spot where seven years ago I had attempted a career as a car number collector. There were other people making their way to work, some of them overalled like me; women were bound for offices or shops, and there was a man at the tram stop, in bowler hat, collar and tie, eyeing me as if he was superior. I tried to spit in order to make a point, but it wasn’t too successful: it didn’t go anywhere but just dribbled down my chin. I brushed it away, too late, and he was sniggering when he boarded the tram. Rounding the corner of Featherstall Road, I stopped suddenly as if I’d just walked into a brick wall. There on the other side of Oldham Road was the formidable office building of Emmanuel Whittaker’s, and to the right the heavy iron entrance gates to a yard which housed countless orderly stacks of wood, some covered by huge tarpaulins. A daunting prospect loomed before me and it took all my willpower to approach this man’s world.

Undecided, I was standing outside the gates, all courage gone, when two or three young bucks and one older, laughing at some joke or other, walked through the gates. The older one stopped and looked at me, and said, ‘Hurry up, lad, or you’ll be late.’ All fears dispelled, I joined him and we walked in together.

My benefactor turned out to be my number one. He was on the cross-cutting bench. The wood on rollers moved towards him, he pulled the large circular saw through them, and then he pushed them along his bench to me. I hoisted these three-foot-long battens on to a large leather pad on my shoulder and carried them through to another shed, where two elderly men were nailing battens together to make crates, which would then be lorried down to the cotton mills to hold the cops—a cop being a cone of cotton thread wound on to a spindle. These two men rarely spoke—they couldn’t, as I never saw either of them without a mouth full of nails—but by golly they could knock up a crate in the time it took me to bring another batch of battens. So for the next few loads I was striding out as if I was dropping back in a marathon and as the pile of battens began to get larger I was falling behind. Sweat was rolling down everywhere when my mate switched off his cross-cutting saw, helped to load me up and said, ‘Now take it easy, otherwise by dinnertime we’ll be having a whip-round for your parents.’ It was kindly meant, but I was determined to earn my wages. However, when I got home that night I fell asleep in the middle of my baked beans on toast.

A few days later I learned a little dodge, which was the beginning of my indoctrination into the shady world of the working man. Rather than being sent to an early grave with a pile of battens on my leather pad, I was assigned to another job. This entailed going round the carpenters’ shop to take their orders for dinner, which was usually a hot meat pie with a dollop of mash on top. My mouth watered at the thought of it but as it was sixpence it was out of my price range, and in any case I lived close enough to go home for midday meals.

As I wrote down their orders I also collected the money, and this is where my trade union education began. When I returned from the shop at dinnertime with an armful of sustenance I was met at the gates by my new mate on the cross-cutter.

He said, ‘Did you get any change from the shop?’

I said, ‘Yes, eight pence.’

Quickly looking over his shoulder to see if we were being observed, he folded my hand over the coins and hissed, ‘Stick it in your pocket, lad.’

Perplexed, I looked at him. ‘It doesn’t belong to me,’ I said guilelessly.

He shook his head sadly. ‘Listen, lad,’ he said. ‘You’re not the first to collect dinner money and you’re not the first to get change from the shop but you will definitely be the first to hand over the money to that lot.’ He jerked his thumb to the joiner’s shop. I was about to object when he carried on, ‘Some of the lads who collected dinner money before you are still working here.’ I still couldn’t get my head round the gist of his words. This must have been obvious from the blank look I gave him, for he sighed, ‘If you start giving change back to them you’ll be putting a noose round the heads of all the dinner lads before you.’

‘But it would be dishonest.’

‘Go ahead, then: sell your mates down the river. I give up.’ And shaking his head, he strode away.

It didn’t take me long to decide which path to go down and that night I went home eight pence richer, which was almost ten bob a week, but some of the blinkers had been taken from my eyes. I realised now that the working class I’d been so proud to join was not as far along the road to Jerusalem as I’d first imagined and secretly, and a little shamefaced, I accepted my corruption as my entrance fee to the world.

A few months later I found myself in a different location, opposite the cross-cutter. My new assignment was on a machine called the fore-cutter. The cross-cutter was a much older, capable and efficient man in a boiler suit and a very old trilby, sides pulled down to protect his head and neck from flying wood shavings and splinters. His job was to feed a dirty long plank of wood into the fore-cutter, where it would slowly move through the blades and emerge at the other end planed and shiny. It was up to me to take it off the rollers and stack it with the others in time for the next twelve-footer. It sounds simple enough but the storm of wood shavings and chippings flying from the machine was much greater in volume than it was at the front end so an old hat was found for me. Nowadays one would certainly wear gloves to protect the hands from splinters and goggles to protect the eyes, but in the early thirties at Emmanuel Whittaker’s these had never even been considered. Every fifteen minutes or so the machinist would switch off to allow me to sweep the shavings through a square, two-foot opening in the floor, and at the break I would go down the ladder to spread the sawdust and chippings more evenly. When I got to the bottom of the ladder I was up to my waist in sweet-smelling wood, so it was a slow job to spread the load.

As I write this, it suddenly occurs to me what a fire hazard the sawdust and chippings must have been, but then I doubt that safety regulations were prevalent in those days. Come to think of it, I can remember at least three comrades with missing fingers.

Again I was moved to a different job. Whether I was up- or downgraded I’ve no idea, because my wage was the same. I was now a painter, but not exactly in the Van Gogh school. In fact I wasn’t really a painter at all: my task was to prime the wooden window frames with a pink primer. At least my assignments seemed to be getting less onerous. Was the management experimenting, trying to find a job that would suit me, or, more likely, trying to find me a job I could do?

I threw myself into my new work. Proudly I returned home every night with my overalls stiff with almost as much paint as I applied to the window frames. After a couple of weeks I knew I had found my niche. No chance of losing fingers, no chance of a hernia from carrying more than my strength—it was going to be a pushover. But little did I know that splashing about with paint was a boobytrap. First I went down with painter’s colic. This was not life threatening, but unfortunately the colic mushroomed into something more serious: exactly half of my face broke out in eczema, from the middle of my forehead, down the bridge of my nose and under my chin, while the other half of my face was completely unblemished.

Mother took me by tram to the skin hospital in Manchester. A middle-aged lady doctor treated the suppurating side of my face and my whole head was bandaged, with two holes cut into the bandage for my eyes and a slit for my mouth. Every Tuesday for months we made the journey, as in Son of the Invisible Man, to see the doctor, who would unwind the sticky bandage, view the affected area and shake her head in defeat. The eczema hadn’t spread—it was down exactly half my face—but neither had it improved. She applied more lotions, bandaged me up again and told my mother that I would have to be admitted to the hospital. She should take me home now as there was no bed available and as soon as there was a vacancy the hospital would let us know. It shouldn’t be too long a wait but if we had not heard we should report as usual to the outpatients’ clinic on the following Tuesday.

When my mother told me what the situation was, I was horrified and waves of panic swept over me. For me it was a terrible week: I dreaded the days that followed and prayed that I would not be admitted. Every Tuesday for the past few months as we’d sat on the long benches in the outpatients’, sometimes waiting for ages for our call, I had looked round me to see some terrible skin afflictions. One or two of these poor wretches were in dressing gowns, inpatients obviously, and some of those sights were horrendous. After a time I refused to look and just stared at the floor until my call came. At least I went home every night, but now the thought of lying alongside these nightmares in a hospital ward gave me the shivers.

Next Tuesday came and I was sitting opposite the lady doctor, listening as she told my mother that there still wasn’t a bed vacant, and my spirits rose a little. Then she began to unwind the bandages and my self-pity evaporated somewhat; after all, this wonderful lady had to deal with skin diseases all the time and most likely much worse than mine. When the unveiling was complete, a cool breeze caressed my face and there was silence for a moment or two. Then the doctor beckoned Mother across and together they stared at me in amazement. The doctor nodded and said calmly, ‘This is what I have been hoping for. It’s the shock—it must have been.’ She repeated herself: ‘The shock of having to be admitted to the hospital is the trick,’ and as I looked into the mirror I understood. There was not a blemish on my face; a pink tinge where the eczema had been but that was all. I was cured. No more eczema, no more bandages and certainly no more Emmanuel Whittaker’s.

Once again Auntie Emmy came up trumps when she asked me if I would like to spend a week’s holiday in New Brighton. She said it was Uncle Joe’s idea, but I had a shrewd suspicion that she was being diplomatic. As far as I was concerned I couldn’t wait to pack my swimming costume and a towel, a Just William book to read in bed and, naturally, a pullover.

So I went with Uncle Joe and Auntie Emmy to New Brighton, a place not renowned for its amusements, its main attractions being an open-air swimming pool with diving boards and a shopping arcade. In fact we spent every day at this manufactured oasis, except when it rained, which it did for a large chunk of our holiday, which we spent in bus shelters and shop doorways. Umbrellas were an unnecessary expense, affordable only by bank managers, local officials and the well-off. On sunny days Uncle Joe and Auntie Emmy lounged on deck chairs by the pool, and I sat on the grass beside them, ostensibly reading my book but all the time watching furtively the goings-on around me. We made an ideal holiday trio. Auntie Emmy sucked Mint Imperials from the bag on her lap, listening to the beat of a popular tune blaring from hidden loudspeakers, while Uncle Joe, knotted white hankie on his head, scanned any discarded newspaper he’d managed to scavenge on his way from the digs. As he was fair-complexioned, his only concession to sunbathing was to undo the top button of his shirt. But nobody went to New Brighton for a tan: although the sun was out it wasn’t strong enough to cast a shadow.

People were splashing about in the pool but as yet no one had used the diving boards. I was a useful swimmer but my greater joy was high diving. As a young hopeful I had learned to dive from the lock gates on the Manchester Ship Canal and I had since improved from the top board at Robin Hill Baths, a few hundred yards from my home in Leslie Street. Now in New Brighton I eyed the top board by the pool. It was higher than anything I’d ever come across before, but I could manage a swallow dive, which was the nearest thing to flying, upwards and outwards, arms stretched out like wings and brought together for the final plunge: it was exhilarating, spectacular and fairly simple.

I stood up and announced that I was going for a swim, and Auntie Emmy said, ‘All right then.’

Walking down to the pool, I was conscious of my thin, white, emaciated body. I was fifteen years old, midway between the roundness of childhood and the chunky hardness of an adult, and I was fed up with the old gibe of many, who should know better, whenever I dived in the water at Robin Hall Baths: ‘Who’s thrown a pair of braces in?’

However, on this day, instead of diving off the side of the pool I made my way up the ladders to the highest board. On looking down, I had qualms as I saw the little figures below staring up at me, Auntie Emmy, shading her eyes from the sun, on her feet now. For a wild moment I thought of abandoning my madcap desire to show off, but then the thought of making my way down the ladders again was too shameful. I walked to the edge of the board, controlling my breathing, I stared outward and the next moment I was floating down almost in slow motion, and when I brought my arms forward for the entry I looked along my body, I could see my legs and feet together and I plunged into the water. It was the most exciting dive I’d ever attempted, and when I heaved myself out of the pool I noticed that all the noise and shrieks from the bathers had ceased and they only had eyes for me: it was my moment of glory.

When I got back to Auntie Emmy she was wiping her eyes, as she’d been crying. ‘Who learnt you to do that?’ she said.

I was shivering so much that my shrug went unnoticed and as I towelled myself Uncle Joe remarked wryly, ‘I can think of better ways to commit suicide.’

But the main memory of New Brighton eddies around my mind for one other landmark. On the day following my historic dive, a new entertainment visited the pool: eight beautiful girls, all blonde, same height—they might well have been octuplets. They were sponsored by a newspaper and announced as the Daily Mirror Eight. They danced to recorded music, perfectly synchronised. They were fantastic and I was mesmerised. Fifteen years old, and innocent, I was vaguely aware of the difference between men and women—this was made obvious when I watched them in their bathing costumes—but women had aroused no strange feelings in me until I saw the Daily Mirror Eight. Auntie Emmy said they were going back to the digs and I said I wouldn’t be long. In fact five minutes later I followed them, and as I walked through the streets in a haze of wonder a coach drew up alongside and, would you believe it, out stepped the first of the Daily Mirror Eight, the other seven close behind, making their way into a hotel. Not one of them noticed me, mouth agape, eyes shining with adulation. I hadn’t expected them to look my way, and if they had I would only have blushed. I was in love with all eight of them and that was enough for me. What a wonderful place to live in!

Oldham was the major cotton town in Lancashire in my opinion. Others will undoubtedly disagree. Cotton towns all had one thing in common: they were tired, and weary, and it would take another few years to fill the gaps left by the bloodbath of the Great War. Oldham Town Hall was a quiet, austere Victorian building, with heavy, stone pillars at the front, and except for the dirty, smoked brickwork it could have been reminiscent of the Parthenon in Ancient Greece; in fact most town halls in northern towns seemed to have been constructed from the same blueprint. Across the wide roadway from the town hall in Oldham was the Cenotaph, an evergreen memorial to the young Oldham lads who would never again walk up West Street or Barker Street for a Saturday night out in the Tommyfield market; and overlooking the Cenotaph, St Mary’s Parish Church.

It is poignant to bring to mind Armistice Day, the eleventh day of the eleventh month. Each year when the church clock struck the eleventh hour all traffic stopped, trams ground to a halt, horses pulling carts were reined to a standstill, and cyclists dismounted and stood to attention by their bikes. Every pedestrian remained where he or she was; men removed their hats and women bowed their heads. The silence was almost tangible. Then after two minutes a soldier on the roof over the church doors, head and shoulders visible above the black stone battlement, put a bugle to his lips and the melancholy, evocative strains of the ‘Last Post’ pierced the veil of silence. Not until the last note had faded away did the town re-activate itself.

Alongside the church was the commercial heart of Oldham: dress shops, chemists, solicitors, Burton’s fifty-shilling tailors, Woolworth’s, Whitehead’s Café and, squeezed in the middle of all this affluence, a brave little greengrocer’s shop. It really was tiny, just one room crowded with a counter, a tap without a basin and no space for a lavatory, the nearest being the public toilets at the top of West Street—quite a distance for a weak bladder.

The over-worked proprietor was Sam Hellingoe, a round, darkvisaged man, not tall but compact. Alone he collected fruit and vegetables from the market in Manchester, laid out his daily purchases on a bench in front of the shop, and then hurried inside round the counter to serve his customers. If there weren’t any he swept the floor, polished the apples or wiped the counter as if it made any difference. He was always busy, but sadly his age was beginning to slow him down and reluctantly he decided to take on the expense of an assistant. This was a momentous decision because money was tight, so his assistant would have to be willing, able and above all thick enough to toil every day except Sunday for a pittance—and that is how I came to work there.

Mr Hellingoe, was forever in a flat cap and brown dustcoat—as a matter of fact in all my time in his establishment I never saw him take his cap off, not even to scratch his head—and like a dutiful assistant I followed suit in a flat cap, brown dustcoat and, hallelujah, my first pair of long trousers. Beneath my overalls at Emmanuel Whittaker’s I had still been in the short pants from my schooldays, but now I wore a pair of Vernon’s cast-offs, a bit long in the leg with a shiny backside, but I didn’t care: they were the bridge into manhood.

Each morning I met Mr Hellingoe on the Croft, where his small van was parked. We never exchanged ‘Good mornings’, we just nodded, and he squeezed himself into the driving seat, putting the gear shift into neutral before letting off the brake. Then I moved round the back of the van and when he gave me the thumbs up I began to push. It was hard work, but I’d only about a hundred yards to go to the top of West Street, where I gave him an extra running shove to set him off and the van slowly trundled down the hill. I watched it disappear like a very old tortoise on ice. It was all downhill to Manchester and that was his destination. Eight miles is a heck of a long way to freewheel, but I did say money was tight; after all, he had to pay me fifteen shillings a week—I had Tuesday afternoons off but worked until nine in the evenings on Saturdays—and petrol wasn’t cheap.

As time went on, I grew accustomed to the work. Mr Hellingoe was away for longer periods and I became self-assured, looking after the shop on my own, weighing out potatoes, carrots and Brussels sprouts with fallible dexterity on the old scales, popping the goods in a paper bag, and then ‘ting ting’ on the till, ‘There you are, missus, three pence change,’ or whatever. One day, however, I overstepped myself. An old lady clutching a shiny purse was feeling the fruit, squeezing the bananas, smelling the cabbages. I watched her covertly as she turned her attention to a box of apples and suspiciously I wandered casually from behind the counter. If anybody was going to walk off with a Cox’s pippin without paying it would be me, and why not? My wages weren’t princely and to make up the deficit I ate more of the stock than my Friday night’s wages were worth. Underneath the counter was a huge rubbish box. Overripe or beginning-to-smell fruit and vegetables found a quick exit into it, but amongst all this detritus there was quite a hefty amount of healthy apple cores, pears, some with only one bite out of them and banana skins, because while in charge of the shop I ate fruit by the sackful, but if a customer came in, wallop, the half-eaten fruit would find its way under the counter. But that’s between you and me.

Getting back to the old lady, who was now outside the shop, eyeing the rabbits hanging there: having selected one, she brought it in and dumped it on the counter.

‘How much?’ she said, and I told her, and here’s where I overstepped the mark.

Having watched Mr Hellingoe deftly skinning them, I blurted out, ‘Would you like it skinned?’

She looked at me doubtfully and said, ‘Can you manage?’

I winked at her and began the process. It was just like undressing a baby and she watched, probably marvelling at my dexterity—that is, until I came to the last bit. The rabbit was now stark naked and all I had to do was pull the last of the fur over its head.

‘There you are, madam,’ I said triumphantly, but when I jerked the fur over the rabbit’s head I was horrified to see that the fur must have torn because there was still some left on his head like a crew cut.

‘I’m not having that,’ she said and stormed out in high dudgeon.

What was I to do with the naked rabbit? I couldn’t chuck the whole thing in the rubbish box: Mr Hellingoe would know how many rabbits had been hanging outside. Then a smart wheeze crossed my mind. I still had the fur and all I had to do was to dress the rabbit again. The back legs were easy and I’d just got one of the forepaws clothed when Mr Hellingoe returned and I was caught literally red-handed. But instead of hitting the roof, he just smiled and said, ‘Take that home to your mother. You can have it for your Sunday dinner.’

I was overjoyed and at the same time ashamed of the amount of fruit I’d got through illegally, and I made up my mind that anything I took from the stock I’d replace with money in the till. At that moment I would willingly have pushed Mr Hellingoe all the way to Manchester and, if it would have saved him petrol money, all the way uphill back to Oldham.

When I went home that night I was awash with good thoughts—and wide open for the sucker punch. It wasn’t long in coming. I arrived home and casually tossed my wage packet on the table; then while Mother checked the contents, I pulled the rabbit from behind my back like Houdini at his best and said, ‘Voilà’.