Please, Mister Postman

by Alan Johnson

  In the morning the van wouldn’t start (the hire car had, understandably, been returned) so Mike set out to walk to the station to catch the train to London. It was a cold and windy day, and he donned a hooded, fur-lined parka that Linda said made him look like an Eskimo. She was still cross with him for not taking the day off, but she conceded that attending the AA meeting was important. And the next day a proper clinical process would commence to rid Mike of the curse that threatened to destroy their lives. She kissed him goodbye.

  Mike rang home in the afternoon in a state of some distress. For a couple of weeks he’d been working alone in a vacant store that Henry’s had taken over as an outlet for discounted lines. He’d been drinking at lunchtime. After re-opening the shop he had fallen asleep behind the counter with his suit jacket hanging up beside him. Somebody had come in and stolen his wallet from the inside pocket. All his money and his return rail ticket had gone. Linda told him to ring the police straight away. He said he would. She checked that Tony would be calling for him after work, which he confirmed. ‘Ask him to give you a lift home after the AA meeting,’ Linda suggested, certain that Mike’s supportive friend would help.

  Mike said he’d do that. He would see her later, he said softly. He told her that he loved her.

  It was 6pm and Linda was cooking tea for the children when the phone rang. It was Tony, asking whether she knew where Mike was. He had gone to the shop as arranged but the door was locked and the shop was in darkness.

  Linda was overwhelmed by a sense of dread. ‘Go back! Go back! He must be waiting inside for you!’ she screamed. She told Tony about the theft and implored him to call the police if he couldn’t get into the shop.

  But by then it was too late. Michael Whitaker, the kindest, gentlest, most decent man I’d ever know, had locked the door of the shop from the inside, drunk a bottle of vodka, descended to the basement and hanged himself with a piece of electrical cord.

  The funeral was on Maundy Thursday. My six-year-old son Jamie was convinced that as Mike was thirty-four when he died, the same age as Jesus, he, too, would rise again on Easter Sunday.

  As I took Linda’s arm to lead her through the ordeal it was impossible for either of us not to feel the emotional echo of our mother’s funeral thirteen years before. I was trying now to fulfil the role that Linda had assumed then. Trying but failing.

  Linda was incredibly strong and determined to remain so for the sake of her five children. But she blamed herself for not having spotted the signs of alcoholism earlier; for not having done more to help her husband. Ted and Irene were adrift on the same sea of guilt that Linda was struggling to navigate. Irene’s hostility towards my sister was palpable. I did my best to protect her from it.

  Linda had been sent the ‘Serenity Prayer’ by somebody at Alcoholics Anonymous:

  God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,

  The courage to change the things I can,

  And wisdom to know the difference.

  She recited it to me in a rare moment we shared on our own in her house before going out to follow the hearse. I pointed out that Irene’s antipathy was something she couldn’t change and that I’d be right next to her throughout the day ready to fend off any verbal aggression. But Irene was far too dazed and upset to argue and there were, thankfully, no scenes, no confrontations.

  Andrew was there, no doubt reappraising, as I was, all those evenings the three of us had spent together at the Blue Anchor in Tring. Shocked and bewildered, we agreed that Mike never seemed to drink like an alcoholic. But how does an alcoholic drink? In much the same way as everybody else, we concluded. On the surface, at least.

  When we cleared Mike’s tools from his shed, lifted the hinged lids of bench seats, delved in the attic where he had soldered circuit boards and built speaker cabinets, we found more and more empty vodka bottles, along with a few full ones Linda had missed in her previous trawl.

  The family doctor disclosed that Mike had been to see her before Christmas about his alcohol problem and told Linda how depressed he had been. Anti-depressants had been prescribed after Mike spoke of feeling an urge to jump in front of a train on his way to work. The GP, bound by patient confidentiality, couldn’t have shared this information with Linda at the time, but learning it now just led her to castigate herself all the more for having been so completely unaware that Mike had sunk to this level of dependency.

  ‘Once somebody has a strong inclination to commit suicide they usually carry it out,’ the doctor explained. ‘Mike’s method showed how determined he was. A cry for help would have been an overdose. Mike was well beyond that stage.’

  Judy and I shared Linda’s feelings of guilt. Surely we should have seen the signs, been more receptive and alert to his confidences? Judy felt that Linda should have told me as soon as the truth emerged but I disagreed. I understood why Mike would pledge Linda to silence, particularly as far as I was concerned. He was well aware of how much I looked up to him. It would have increased his feelings of shame and humiliation if he’d known I was party to his secret. He had only reluctantly agreed that his parents should be informed, and in the event that had, if anything, made a bad situation worse. In any case it was more characteristic of me than of Linda to keep my own counsel. How could I blame her for reacting as I would have reacted myself?

  At work I found it impossible even to touch upon what had happened to my brother-in-law. To have revealed that he’d committed suicide would have elicited well-intentioned questions, embarrassed solemnity. It was just too agonizingly personal to discuss. So I simply said that my sister had been widowed and gave as little supplementary information as I could get away with.

  The only person to whom I could talk about it, apart from Judy, was Ernie Sheers. Not Mick, or my other neighbours round the Green; not Joe Payne or Dave Stock, my fellow union officials; not even Andrew. But in Ernie I sensed an empathy, a genuine awareness of Mike’s vulnerability. He’d never met the man but it was in Ernie’s nature to engage with the human condition on a deeper level. I did not get from him those ‘Never mind, you have to be strong for your sister’s sake’ platitudes that perfectly decent people utter in such situations in order to move the conversation on to more comfortable terrain.

  I didn’t want comfort. I wanted discomfort. I needed someone to understand what a fine person Mike was, how tragic his descent into despair had been, how heroically he’d tried to slay his dragons and how desperately sad and lonely he must have been at the end. Ernie listened, really listened, as I tipped my misery all over him.

  My sister had been orphaned in her teens and widowed in her twenties. As she entered her thirties that September, six months after Mike’s death, I could see how determined she was to forge a new life. The last condition to which Linda was likely to succumb was self-pity. But it was hard for her to go on – so hard.

  It was as if a planet had disappeared from our solar system, leaving an immense black void where once there had been Michael Whitaker.

  Chapter 15

  AS WE ALL struggled in our different ways to adjust to the permanently altered shape of our lives, I took solace in the routine of my job and my union work. Although elections were held every year there was little prospect of me being challenged, let alone defeated, as branch chairman. I was attentive to the needs of my members. They could be exasperating, troublesome, apathetic and sometimes hostile but I considered myself to be the guardian of their rights under the union’s rules and I think they realized I was doing my best for them even if they never said as much. The role of a local union representative is a thankless one. Berated by the members for the employer’s actions and by the employer for the actions of the members, the most he or she can hope for from either side is a rarely expressed respect.

  I benefited from my members’ perception of me as someone who wasn’t interested in the perks of office. This stemmed from my refusal to accept any regular ‘facility time’, in other words to have part of my duty designated
as time off for union work.

  Such facilities were essential to maintaining good industrial relations. The head postmaster and his colleagues needed to talk to senior union officials on a regular basis to consult and agree on patterns of work, revised duties, promotions, disciplinary cases, the implementation of national agreements and to plan Christmas arrangements. Joe Payne, as branch secretary, had full-time release and was stationed in the union’s basement office.

  On the sorting-office floor, where the majority of our members worked, Dave Stock was assigned a duty with an easy first delivery and the remainder of his working hours were dedicated to union business. Thus he was on hand to resolve flashpoints, ensure that agreed arrangements were being followed and to act as a conduit between the postal executives (as the assistant inspectors were now called, having swapped their supervisors’ uniforms for lounge suits) and the workforce. There were also bits and pieces of facility time given to the health and safety rep and a few others.

  Despite my position as one of the two principal branch officers, I wanted none of it. I did a normal range of duties with no time off because I preferred it that way. The members appreciated what they saw as my self-sacrifice but for me it was the best of both worlds. I was regularly dragged into disputes with which Dave was dealing about delivery of advertising circulars or supposed breaches of our many local agreements. I was considered to be an articulate advocate and I prided myself on having a talent for negotiation but I also loved to be out on delivery.

  I’d carry a little notebook in the inside pocket of my uniform jacket into which would go every request, complaint, comment, criticism or observation made to me by the many members who approached me during the course of my working day. I made a point of getting back to every person whose name was in my notebook with some kind of response, although sometimes by the time I did, whatever the problem was had blown over or they’d forgotten they’d even raised it with me in the first place. Once I was assailed by John Tobin, a garrulous Irish postman who worked permanently on Slough station (in those days, the vast majority of mail was transported by rail). At the station he virtually ran the show. He was better informed when it came to arrivals and departures than most of the station staff and he knew which trains had to be met for offloaded mail and which were to receive the barrowloads of sacks for outward dispatch.

  The problem with John was that very few people could understand what he was saying after he’d sunk a few pints of Guinness in the station bar. On this particular day I could make no sense at all of what John was asking me to do, although it was clear he was very passionate about it. In the end I just scratched some hieroglyphics in my notebook and told him not to worry, I’d sort it out. I made a mental note to ask Dave if he knew what the problem was at Slough station but I forgot. A week later, as I was walking across the sorting-office floor, John Tobin shouted my name. I looked over, expecting to be castigated for not resolving his problem, but instead he gave me a thumbs-up, beamed a smile and shouted, ‘Thank you very much, Alan.’ I never found out what it had all been about but from that day on he was one of my greatest supporters.

  Following QPR was never going to be rewarded by seasons of gold and glory. We Rangers fans had to be grateful for the few ups that struggled to balance the many downs: the odd promotion, a mid-table position here, a cup run there. The League Cup final victory in 1967 remained our proudest achievement until 1975–6, when my team finished our season at the top of the First Division. Not champions of the Third Division (South), not runners-up in Division 2 but at the very pinnacle of English football, poised to be crowned league champions.

  By now I was going to Loftus Road with my friend Fred Oakham, who lived on the Britwell and worked as a scene-shifter for the BBC at White City. I’d met Fred through Judy’s friendship with his wife, Barbara. During that glorious season the Rangers team was packed with internationals such as Phil Parkes, Dave Clement, Ian Gillard, Don Masson, Gerry Francis, Dave Thomas, Don Givens and, of course, Stan Bowles.

  I’d first seen Bowles on a wet Saturday at the fag end of an uneventful Second Division season in a meaningless match against Carlisle United. He’d been playing for the opposition. I was at Loftus Road with another postman and we agreed as we left the ground that Rangers ought to be signing the Carlisle player who’d caused us grief throughout the afternoon – the enigmatic Stanley.

  Within a couple of years he had become the toast of Shepherd’s Bush, the heir to the great Rodney and, according to some (not me) a better player, having proved himself at a higher level. He was certainly a genius of grace and flair on the ball, and the essential goal-scoring component of the smooth QPR engine that was driving us towards the championship.

  Since Christmas, Rangers had hit an incredible run of form that lasted through to our final game, a 2-0 home victory over Leeds United. It left us one point ahead (in the days when it was still just two points for a win). Only Liverpool, in second place with one game to play (away at Wolves), could catch us, and they would have to win because of our superior goal average. After our last match on that glorious Saturday, Loftus Road was jubilant. The players appeared in the directors’ box like the royal family at Buckingham Palace after a wedding.

  The good thing about going to football with Fred was that after the match we could walk across to the BBC social club and have a drink while we waited for the crowds to clear before heading home. The BBC social club was an egalitarian place where electricians mixed with newscasters, scene-shifters with Shakespearean actors, knights of the realm with lads from the Bush. You’d travel up in the lift with Tim Brooke-Taylor and come down with Dusty Springfield.

  Among Fred’s gang from the props department was a quiet but very funny guy called John Sullivan. It must have been around this time that he capitalized on his proximity to this mix of artists and artisans to hand a script for a comedy programme to a television producer from light entertainment. The script was for Citizen Smith, whose main character, Wolfie Smith, was a would-be Marxist urban guerrilla living in a bedsit in Tooting. Within months John had stopped shifting scenery and was on his way to becoming one of the most successful comedy scriptwriters in the country. Only Fools and Horses will secure his place in British cultural history, but had it not been for his determination and a good pinch of luck he could so easily have been another of Thomas Gray’s flowers wasting its sweetness on the desert air.

  John hailed from Balham in south London so I doubt he was a Rangers supporter, but that Saturday evening at the BBC, everybody seemed to be celebrating with us.

  I was on a late turn three days later, on the Tuesday evening that Wolves played Liverpool in the final match of the 1975–76 season. One of the PHGs had brought a radio into work and a little huddle of Rangers supporters gathered round it to listen to the match commentary. When I left the sorting office to do the final collection in the town centre Wolves were one up and QPR were champions. By the time I got back Liverpool had won, they were champions and we were runners-up.

  I am, in all probability, destined never to see my team crowned as top-division champions. But for three days in May 1976, I got to taste what it would be like.

  While I enjoyed union work, the rural tranquillity of Littleworth Common provided a welcome break from all the blood and thunder. I had about 140 addresses on my delivery, strung out around three square miles of lush countryside, which I covered in my red Austin van. (By this time Austins had replaced the Morris Minors. It was sad to see them go but, on the plus side, there were no more problems with postmen locking themselves out of their vans.) On my way to Burnham I’d pop into Oxford Avenue to pick up any Littleworth Common parcels. I’d then deviate from the official Post Office route to call at the newsagent’s at the bottom of Burnham High Street.

  The only way Littleworth Common residents could have a newspaper delivered in the morning was via their postman. The newsagent slipped us £1.50 a week to drop off papers to sixty of his customers. In addition to those, over the years Ear,
Nose and Throat had picked up about fifteen of their own private clients who didn’t have an account with the newsagent.

  For ‘the fifteen’ we had to buy the papers requested, fit them into the stack already prepared in delivery order by the newsagent and, on Saturday mornings, call at each house to recoup our money. None of this or the many other services we provided were sanctioned by the Post Office. We picked up sacks of coal from the merchant on the High Street and delivered them to the out-of-the way homes of elderly residents who’d asked for our help; we distributed potatoes from a market garden and the occasional sack of manure from farmer to gardener.

  At one remote dwelling I used to feed the cat when the family who lived there were away on holiday. They would leave cat food, a tin-opener and a fork in an outside store cupboard. At 7am, in the pitch dark in winter, I’d be wielding the tin-opener and dishing up a cat’s breakfast. My precise instructions were to tap the plate with the fork while calling ‘Kitty, Kitty, Kitty’ into the dewy morning air. Kitty would appear from the surrounding woodland or through the catflap from the comfort of the house, gazing up at me imperiously as if dismissing an over-zealous servant.

  On the odd occasion we’d give a customer a lift into Burnham, seating him or her precariously in the back of the van with the parcels and the potatoes. It’s said that when the writer and bon vivant Jeffrey Bernard exiled himself to the Devon countryside for a few years, he’d send a letter to himself every day so that when the postman called to deliver it he could hitch a lift to the pub. Rural transport for the price of a stamp.

  When I began delivering to Littleworth Common in 1976 there was a working blacksmith’s at the end of Common Lane, a short walk from the Blackwood Arms, where the thirsty smith would down a lunchtime pint. On the late turn, trailing round with just a handful of letters, I often imagined stationing myself at the Blackwood Arms or the Jolly Woodman nearby, where I could distribute mail to many of my customers and save the Post Office some petrol.