My Fault

by Billy Childish

  I pull out my pass and march in, one of thousands, a whole cavalcade of bicycles and cloth caps. That certainly knocked those old lags for a six, seeing me rolling up in a limo like that, bright as nine-pence. And them peddling in on their bone-shakers, heads bowed, spitting, to see how gaily the young come to take the sucker punch.

  I show my pass, I queue up at the window. Then it’s my turn, we traipse through under the arch and into the sunlight, ships’ figureheads beheaded, grinning . . . a tit . . . Old Roman Nose, gaily coloured . . . Railway lines criss-crossing, a multitude skipping across the tracks . . . A thousand caps, hands in pockets, dark shouldered, a countenance of gloom . . . Everyone disperses to their own little corner, their own little tea hut, branching out like the finger of a hand.

  We pick our way between the cranes lining the dockside, perched on stilts, beaked heads, reflected in the basins: three of them, over a thousand fathoms deep. Frigates, mine sweepers, a baby aircraft-carrier and the jellyfish. They used to hook those poor fellows out with a piece of bent wire and a string. A pile of them drying out on the quayside, kind of sad, they were alive but hard to understand.

  Then the dry-docks and the nuclear sitting in the mud, right there in old Chatham, smack bang on the river, part of it. After that it’s the Channel and then the German sea beyond. That’s the romance of a place like that, a place of beginnings and ends.

  From the dockyards of Wales and the south coast. That’s where my grandfathers came from, voyaging round the shores, from port to port . . . ’til finally, coming to rest here at Chatham. The dockyard’s what drew them. From pub to pub, from Luton end, way up past Rochester, to the bridge . . . And then some more . . . Curling round the banks of the old Medway, an artery to the world.

  That makes you think, a basin that deep and still. Three of them in all, one thousand fathoms deep maybe, some said more. Built by human hand, lags of another generation.

  They’ve closed the yards down now, turned them into a museum. That’s when you know a town’s on the skids, when the factory gate closes and they open up for the tourists. An amusement arcade for the unemployed, that’s what it will come to, along with the rest of the world. Ker-chop! Right through the head! The end of an era. The most secure jobs in the country: Ker-chop! Poof! Gone up in smoke! The dockyard? It is no more . . . The little jellyfish? The homely work sheds? No more! And those dunderheads used to warn me against jacking it all in, and now it’s them that’s gone, and I’m still here, ticking in my corner. If only they could see me now, they’d be smirking on the other side of their faces, they’d stamp their feet most probably. The laziest of them all, nothing but a pen-pusher! With the cheek, the audacity to still be alive, to have opinions, to think, to write it down even, humph! I ask you!

  Even in 1976, stonemasonry was a dying craft, a trade of yesteryear. Like most things there was only the nostalgia aspect of it left, and even that can’t compete with the television. Who, nowadays, has got the wherewithal to traipse round ogling at piles of old rubble? Tombstones mostly, ruins for dreamers, monuments to a God who next to everybody’s forgotten.

  I mulled that one over whilst trying to fit on my father’s collar. That celluloid job certainly brought the colour to your cheeks, like some kind of garrotte. I wrestled with it for half an hour, trying to jam the stud in — another anachronism fit only for the scrap heap! I busted two nails before I finally got it clipped on. My mother kisses me goodbye and wishes me luck. She’s always done that, kissed me goodbye and willed me to do my best. I’m not sure it’s always been for the best, but somehow I’ve come to rely on it.

  I walked down to the old Hook and Hatchet and had a swift half before jumping on the number forty-two, and even then I was half an hour early. I sat in the waiting room staring at the paint work.

  On account of stonemasonry being a craft for stiffs, it turns out I’m the only applicant, everyone else is in for bricklaying . . . I checked my tie and had a catlick in the bog before going in . . . The dust in that place was incredible. I had to repeat ‘stonemason’ four or five times before the penny dropped, then the little panel of old men quit pulling faces at each other, cleaned out their ears, re-polished their eye-pieces, nodded and looked confused. ‘Stony-what?’ The one at the end dropped his ear trumpet in the confusion. It must have been the dust, little particles of it, a kind of cloud, from the forms. A few moths, a mouse maybe, right at the back, under a ton of cobwebs.

  ‘A-ha . . . here we are . . . Stonemason! Application form B1226 thereof! Yes . . . yes, this must be the fellow . . . Are you sure?’

  He spoke with his eyebrows, then he blows at it, a great cloud, little flakes, mice sized bite marks . . . it rises into the air like confetti.

  I’m joking now, making light of a solemn moment — the beginning of my life as a grown-up. That’s why I joke and kid you about, a little tease, pulling your pigtails. Forgive me? I say this because you have to believe me, at least on this score. That’s the way I am.

  32. STONEMASONS OF YESTERYEAR

  Bill Cubitt was the only mason left in the whole yard, and by all accounts he was on his last legs. A snout away from death, an old one always hanging, a wisp of smoke finding his watering eye. A hint of blue, glittery, a little tear, he back-hands it, a path-way through the grime. He rubs his hands together, massive fingers, flattening out towards the ends, the nails shattered. He picks at something, but delicately, artistically.

  ‘We’re craftsmen and don’t let anybody tell you different! You are an apprentice stonemason: be proud of that title. We are stonemasons and we are craftsmen! Carving stones is not a trade but a craft!’

  He wheezes his words, gulping at the air. Sixty-five? Sixty-five going on seventy, he rolls himself another snout and lights up.

  ‘If you don’t have respect for yourself, no one else is going to have respect for you!’ He stands and brushes the loose baccy from his lap.

  ‘Between you and me, it’s a dying art . . . But keep your nose clean, and who knows?’

  He lays his index up against his great hooter, blistered, a million dots, more like holes when you stood close up. He stares out at me through his little china blues. Yellow whites, with little strings of red. Then he winks it, the flesh comes together, and there you have it — a wink! That makes me flinch, I jump back involuntarily. I stand on something and nearly slip. I nod and say yes, and fall over it, something white, powdery and hard. He grabs hold of my arm and steadies me.

  ‘Mind out or you’ll wind up in the oggin on your first day! That’d be some christening, wouldn’t it? Mind where you’re treading, this is a work area, not a playground!’ He amuses himself, he looks round for confirmation. ‘Now look what you tripped on, Portland Stone that is. The mason’s bread and butter! Portland,’ he repeats it. He taps his ash at it. ‘Portland!’

  I look down at it, at the ‘Portland’, and try saying it for myself: ‘Portland.’

  ‘That’s it, now you’re talking. We’ll make a mason out of you yet!’

  He grins at me. I can’t help myself, I smile back and have to stare down at the stone.

  ‘You see them little shells? Shale!’

  I see them, little lines of them, a couple of solitary fellows, and a big one, thumb nail sized.

  ‘A real bastard! The bane of the stonemason! You’ll learn about him soon enough, he’ll blunt your chisels for you, don’t you worry, shale? Bah!’

  I feel it with my fingertips, hard, shell-like, sitting just up out of the face. Smooth rock, then a lump, a little depression either side, and there it is, triumphant, prehistoric. The bane of the stonemason: a cute shell.

  On my first day, we were working out on the Bull’s Nose (September, Chatham Dockyard, 1976) where the cambers connect the inner basins to the tidal river. There’s a pair of them cambers, so they have the appearance of a bull’s nose, if seen by a passing crow or any other kind of sea fowl.

  It was quite a hike to get out there, a couple of miles at least from our works depot.
Bill puffing away on his bike, and me trotting along behind him, lugging the tool boxes. He looks back over his shoulder. ‘Come on! Not much further!’

  He steers with one hand and rolls up a snout with the other. He did some famous zig-zags across those tracks, a real cowboy. Cranes trundling past on rails, and then you had to keep a weather eye for the quay, on one side of the basin. On the other side, the river, broad, expanding to her estuary.

  We had the whole show to ourselves — the little ships, their comings and goings, and all sorts of sea birds. A family of cormorants, sleek, oiled, a thousand commotions. And a crane lashed to a barge chained at anchor, dipping in and hauling out great jawfuls of black mud. Keeping the navigation channels open.

  Apart from losing a handle off one of his suitcases, we make it without mishap. Bill drops his bike and takes a quick breather. He parks his arse on a block of granite, pulls out his handkerchief and wipes his brow, he’s fagged . . .

  Our job is to re-bed the granite blocks that bed the counterweights for the cambers. That’s why there was a whole army working out there, removing and re-fixing. The fizz of welding torches, power hammers . . . The big problem, it seems, is that it won’t fit anymore, the camber. After a million calculations, a thousand fine adjustments, still the little baby won’t sit back into her cot. The consensus of opinion is that it is all our fault. Another two sixteenths of a milli-inch needs to be sanded from the surface of the granite block. Bill lifts his left buttock and farts. It’s no kind of work for a man with his artistic flair. Exacting enough to be sure, but work for a skilled labourer, not for an artisan, not for a man of Bill’s calibre, a man of yesteryear educated exclusively in marble. He spits his dog-end out, goes to his baccy tin and starts rolling another. ‘I need it for me concentration, to help me to think.’

  He puffs out a lungful and coughs. He drags it up from deep down and spits a dockyard oyster . . . Sits for a moment contented, then pops his eyes and spouts red, a great jet of it, a beautiful plume of scarlet . . . rich, deep, liquid. It goes up, arching against the blue of the sky. A look of surprise flashes across his face, then up it goes! The sun catching it for a split second, just as it reaches its apex. For a few breathless seconds it hangs in mid-air, then the wind catches it and it spatters down in black clots in the dust...

  ‘Me nose,’ he explains, and puts a rag to it, ‘a safety valve, de quack tells me . . . high blood pressure.’ He tilts his head back . . . ‘Dat’s it,’ he tells me, ‘dat’s stemmed de fucker!’

  From that first day it was obvious that the yard couldn’t find work for a fossil of Bill’s age. I began to get the drift, to comprehend the full weight of the situation. They were basically pulling jobs out of thin air, keeping him hanging on just for the hell of it, to avoid paying him off. Skipping the golden handshake. It would be cheaper to see Bill peg out and pushing up daisies than to retire him, and the yard knew it. As far as their cheque book saw it, Bill could go stick his artistic inclinations, and learn a bit of plastering! The sooner he pegged out, the better it suited them!

  I started unpacking the tool boxes, then Bill looks up. ‘Don’t go rushing into things, son! We’ll brew up first, have a snout, ’n’ ponder it over.’

  He dabs at his neb, red, swollen . . . He studies the cloth, a beautiful rose . . . a little string of snot. He re-wipes and pockets the package.

  After tea Bill sets me to carving a perfect cube out of a lump of old rock. He has to check my angles for me, biting into his snout. He brandishes his set square and steel ruler, and squints at it. The game is, that if you can pass a cigarette paper between the edge of the ruler and the face of the stone at any one point, then it’s fucked! My heart wasn’t really in it from the outset, the little pieces of shale didn’t like me, splintery . . . You catch a crab with your chisel and whoops! a dirty great hole appears. Yawning caverns, and you have to start out all over again, re-working the whole surface. Starting with the most vicious claw chisel, right down to the smoothest sand stone. That made me sigh — the cube business didn’t grab me one bit.

  As it was, old Bill couldn’t have been more sympathetic; he takes one look at the overcast sky and decides then and there to take the rest of the day off.

  ‘It’ll be raining by three, there’s no point getting our hands dirty now. You mark my words, we’re in for a deluge!’

  With that he adjusts his cap, puts on his bicycle clips and cycles off. We don’t see hide nor hair of him for the next three days. Each morning, I come into the tea hut and there’s his empty seat, and not a word of his whereabouts. He shows up on the fourth day to check my angles for me, then he’s off again for another fortnight.

  ‘It’s his blood pressure . . .’ the supervisor explains to me. ‘He might come in tomorrow.’

  Then his old dear calls in to say he’s had a heart attack . . . He’s suffering mysterious dizzy spells! And then there’s the nose bleeds! I’d seen those for myself, that much was true, I can vouch for him there . . . His wife phones in, ‘He’s sick but not so sick. He’s poorly, but he could pull through, it’s too early to say. We’ll have to keep our fingers crossed for tomorrow’.

  The yard does its best to keep me busy, they send me out labouring with the brickies. I grab my sarnies and jump on the ferry for St Mary’s Island, but the crew down tools and the captain refuses to set sail. It seems that the union won’t allow me to lift so much as a single brick! It would set a dangerous precedent. Why, before you know it, they’ll have any old scab working for half the rate! They put their boot down . . . It was fine by me, I was in full agreement, nowhere in my contract did it state that I was to lay bricks. And besides, I was apprenticed as a stonemason, and what about the insurance angle? You only have to have half a brain to see the consequences, to understand the further ramifications, the subtler nuances.

  After that, the department leave me to amuse myself. I borrow a bike and go off on little excursions round the sea wall. Out on the waste ground, peaceful . . . just a few seagulls and these discarded stones, regular monoliths.

  I pack a flask, sandwiches and a little bag of tools, and set myself up amongst the undergrowth. I take it easy, plenty of tea-breaks, educating myself at my own leisure, no set squares, no rulers . . . just a chip here and a chip there. Red Cloud, The Reclining Admiral, Van Gogh without a moustache. I stand back, I screw up my nose. I stare through half-closed eyes and jam my tongue into my cheek. I chew on it, wagging my head from side to side, making sure, checking the effect. I stand in, readjust, bring up the claw, then the mallet, and whoops, off comes his moustache! A piece of shale, I should think, more like a whole bed of it. I look at it with my fingers, little pieces. I feel him . . . Hmm . . . That’s artistic expression, The stone speaking for itself. Who am I to argue?

  I just get myself set up pretty comfy out there, becoming one of the forgotten, when the yard sends word that Bill’s on the mend

  ‘He’ll definitely be in tomorrow, or if not tomorrow then Thursday . . . If he feels up to it, that is.’

  As it is, he shows up the following Monday. There’s a lot of ifs and buts, then here he is! He jogs into the tea-room; we hear him coming, little wheezes, the shuffling of the pedals. He drops it, then the door opens and in comes his cap, he flings it down on the table.

  ‘Phew, I’m shagged! Give us a mug of that brew, Charlie!’

  The other grey heads come over and slap his back. They compliment him on how young he’s looking, on what a fine pallor he has . . . Charlie puts down Bill’s char in front of him. Bill lifts it to his lips, he sticks his nose into it and breathes through the steam clouds, and sucks it down in one gulp. A purse of his lips and he drains the lot. . . sieving the leaves.

  ‘Ah, that’s it! that’s better!’

  He smacks his lips and sits back, a little fart of hello and he settles himself in. A sigh and a belch: Bill Cubitt.

  After tea break, we cycle out round the sea wall to take a gander at my carvings. Bill points at everything, he gives me a ru
nning commentary.

  ‘That’s where the Dutch landed . . . And that, over there, was the site of the plague hospital!’ He lets go with both hands . . . he almost topples . . . ‘This wheel’s buckled,’ he tells me.

  I watch him go from side to side . . . and his arse showing, both cheeks. We dump our bikes by the creek and walk over to my camp. I lead the way through the nettles, I take him the long way round just in case we’re being followed. After about ten minutes we come to the clearing. Bill sits himself down, clears some space and parks his arse. He goes for the baccy, then out comes his flask. He pours me a glug and laces them both with a fist of rum. ‘Here, this’ll thicken your toenails!’

  He opens his lunch box and offers me a biscuit, plain digestives, I think. He breaks one over the packet. A little ritual, the scattering of the crumbs, they come to rest. He shakes it. . . little taps with his forefinger and in it goes. He dips it, and then up to his open trap: the dunking of the digestive! He swallows and narrows his eyes, then picks at something right at the back of his gob. He inserts his index and fishes about in there, he extracts it and studies the end, red and slimy, a fat knuckle. He looks up.

  ‘Na!’ he says, shaking his head. ‘Na, we cut in marble! Michelangelo, now that’s carving! And what’s it carved in? — Marble! That’s right, marble . . . That’s what we always carved in, forty years back, going on fifty, in fact . . . You know the Engineer’s barracks? The statue of Kitchener? The frieze of the unknown warrior? Marble! That was my apprenticeship, when masonry was still a respectable craft, when you could still hold your head up in a crowd . . . You had a trade under your belt, not just some run of the mill trade, either. Artistry! We weren’t treated like second rate labourers in those days, gawd no . . . certainly not! We was skilled craftsmen, artisans in fact, and paid an artisans wage, and that wasn’t threepence ha’penny, I might add!’ He looked at me with his eyebrows. ‘Now, when I started work in the Engineers barracks, I was thirteen. We didn’t piddle around breaking rocks in those days, no, we carved in marble!’