My Fault

by Billy Childish

  ‘Jack?’

  How does he know my name? I look over my shoulder, but I’m the only one standing here.

  ‘Hop in, son!’

  I climb in beside him and we drive out into the pea soup. The man thinks my name’s Jack, but it isn’t. There’s been a mistake, it’s Salvador. We head over the bridge out through Strood, and then into the open country. I take in his profile, sideways glances, trees rushing past.

  He turns to me, ‘You alright Jack?’ I grin. ‘We’ll soon be there . . . you’ll be with Frank up in the car park, I’ll drop you off. What do you do?’

  ‘Stonemason’s apprentice.’ He whistles and shakes his head. ‘Na, not much call for it . . . not up here! not these days! You’ll see.’ He shakes his head, that’s twice he’s done that. ‘Stonemason!’ He makes a little explosion with his mouth and whistles. ‘Well, well, well.’ He re-shakes. ‘Not much call for it!’

  I get the message. I study my flask, red chequered, outlined in black, a criss-cross effect. We pass a sign: Upnor . . . We’re going pretty fast, I can’t read it, I saw the first letters a ‘W’ or a ‘Q’, then nothing. I was engrossed.

  ‘This is it, just up on your left. I’ll drop you off, you just follow the track . . . Stonemason!’ He restates it. ‘Well, if that doesn’t take the biscuit!’ He nods to himself in full agreement.

  ‘Here, did you see the box last night? Swearing? I’ve never heard the like! And they call it music! Here it is . . . Frank will be over there, on the far side.’

  I walk out into the mist and the van pulls away. I see an oak tree and then a little figure whistling by the bushes, draping its hand through the nettles. He clasps hold of the stems, swathing his whole arm about in a great clump of stingers, up to his elbow. Then he pulls his hand out and looks at it, close up. He scrutinises the purple veins, old, sinuous, and the little white stings. Bumps, hundreds of them, one on top of the other, all over his mitt . . .

  ‘There you are!’ He holds it out for me to take a look. ‘There you are! See?’

  I look at this old man’s claw, he opens and shuts his fingers for me, flexing all the joints.

  ‘Ah yes, that’s the stuff . . . that’s better! Now I can’t even feel it. . . it’s gone . . . total control returned! Look, I can move every joint! Doctors? Doctors? Who needs ’em? I’ve mended it myself, perfect! And I’ve been to a good few in my life time, but no more, never! I’d rather die at home in bed! Oh . . . Jesus Christ, my leg, oh, oh, oh . . . bugger me!’

  He hobbles off through the bushes; I have to follow after him. ‘So you’re the new boy are you? Bricky?’

  ‘Stonemason.’

  He looks over his shoulder. ‘Oh, you don’t get many of them these days. There ain’t no call for ’em, there’s none over here you know, not for years! It don’t look like you’re gonna learn much does it? Oh, bugger my leg! Pardon my French. What did you say your name was?’

  ‘Salvador.’

  ‘That’s it, Salvador, I knew it was, I remembered . . . This is the hut.’ He pulls up short in front of an old corrugated lean-to . . . ‘Look out for Ivor, a bald bloke, he’s the charge hand . . . He’s alright, but best to introduce yourself, he likes to know who’s who.’

  I nod and memorise it, Ivor, the charge hand. And then we enter.

  There was a lot of hot air blowing between the old lags in the tea hut that morning. We approached it. We crossed the car park, walked down the lane, in through the front gate, then over on the left, a kind of pre-fab.

  ‘It’s a pretty good set-up we’ve got here, son.’ That’s the one called Frank talking, the one with the hand in the stingers. He taps the side of his nose. ‘Remote is the word for it!’ He retapped his nose for emphasis. ‘Out of sight, out of mind!’ He winks, that makes him grin, moulded, plastic tombs. ‘Keep yourself to yourself . . . just as long as you’re not caught slacking, taking the piss like, you’re in for life!’ His whole face shines with pleasure at that sentence, at his ‘in for life!’ His wrinkles beam in a grin of sunny contentment. Then he turns grey again, the whiskers standing out in the furrows.

  ‘Morning tea break,’ he explains and nods over his shoulder. . . ‘Morning tea break in there.’ He strokes his hooter, two more hairs, right on the end. He hunches his shoulders and blows on his claw. ‘Look, it’s closing again!’ He slaps it hard, two, three times. ‘Come on!’

  He pushes open the door and hobbles in, I’m left out there, standing in the blizzard. He pokes his head back round the door.

  ‘Come on in then, if you’re coming!’

  I pick up my duffel and scamper in behind him. Frank first, then me in tow. We peer through the steam, there’s five or six of them, talking, discussing, objecting, heads in their morning papers. Ivor seemed to be in charge of the tea urn.

  ‘I’m Ivor,’ he tells me. ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘His name’s Paul . . .’ Frank speaks for me.

  ‘Salvador,’ I say.

  ‘Salvador?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Well, I’m the charge hand, you can call me Ivor. They told me you was coming . . . Everybody, this here’s Salvador!’

  The herd grunt at me, mouthfuls of tea, half-eaten biscuits. They look up, and they look back, lapfuls of newsprint. Old faces, prunes mostly, the forgotten and the dying . . . Upnor, right on the other side, a marsh at the back of beyond.

  The one without teeth peers at me through his specks and dunks his biscuit. He sits watching it, blinking, like a pussy cat in front of a mouse hole . . . A minute passes, he checks his wrist watch and pulls it out. He manoeuvres his gob, folds his lips back and sucks on his nose. It wobbles, swinging to and fro. First go he misses: the sodden biscuit, steaming, waving around like a banner. Then he brings up his other hand and guides it in, most of it. ‘Fuck mine, that’s hot!’ He looks round and tells everybody, but they don’t even look up.

  ‘That’s Fred,’ says Frank. ‘Fred, this is Salvador.’

  I say hello. Fred’s lips pinch together and his eyes roll round inside his specks. He pouts and rubs away the juice from his chin. He opens and shuts his biscuit shoot. No teeth, just gums, then his tongue, and then the liquid, yellowish, and the dangly bit at the back. Finally, he gets it all down and wipes his mush on his sleeve.

  ‘Bleeding lovely!’

  He adjusts his cap and puckers his lips into a great wedge under his nose.

  ‘Lovely! Mmmm . . . nothing like a brew and a dunk! I’m Fred . . . Paul?’

  ‘Salvador.’

  ‘Salvador? You said his name was Paul.’

  ‘No, I said his name was Salvador. I should know because I’m the one that went and picked him up at the car park. Wasn’t I, Salvador?’

  I nod quickly.

  ‘What do you do, son?’

  ‘He’s an apprentice.’

  ‘Apprentice what? Car-fitter?’

  ‘Ha bloody ha! Stonemason, ain’t yer Salvador. . . stonemason.’ ‘We don’t have no stonemasons here, son!’

  I kind of smile, I do my best, I’ve always been told to be polite. I try it, I give him a little grimace.

  ‘No, I told him, not for . . . what?’

  ‘Years?’

  ‘Yeah, must be years.’

  ‘Decades more like!’

  ‘That’s what I said to him, I said Paul . . .’

  ‘Salvador.’

  ‘Alright, I know, it’s you confusing me. I said, Salvador, you ain’t gonna learn much, we haven’t got any, we don’t need any and we haven’t had one in years!’

  ‘Decades more like!’

  ‘So what did they send him here for, then?’

  ‘How do you expect him to know? They don’t know their arse from their elbow — you order spaghetti, they’ll give you bandages!’ ‘Well, I can tell you this much, he ain’t gonna learn much about masonry here. You done any bricking son? Brickwork? He can learn some of that.’

  The one in the corner looks up, dusts his fingers, and brushes his lap.’Why d
on’t you let him sit down and give him a mug of tea, it’s not the bloody Spanish Inquisition! Did you bring your mug son?’

  I hold out my palms and give him a blank one.

  ‘Never mind, we’ve got a spare somewhere, it’s a bit chipped, but you don’t mind, do you? You can bring your own in tomorrow.’ He places it down before me . . . blue, with a floral effect, two chips out of it, and no handle. ‘There you go, beggars can’t be choosers. Oops sorry!’ He spills some of it over the Formica.

  The one called Fred puts his paper down, adjusts his glasses, and pulls his cap down hard over his dome. ‘Well, I can’t sit about here all day gassing, there’s work to be done . . .’ He stands and looks round. ‘Well, isn’t there work to be done?’

  No one budges, they make a great show of poring over their newspapers . . .

  ‘Ivor, you’re the gaffer, well, tell them there’s work to be done.’

  The one called Frank, he breaks the silence. ‘It’s twenty past Fred, twenty past. We starts at half past every day, it’s twenty past now . . .’

  ‘Well, not by my watch, it ain’t!’

  ‘The boy’s got a watch, ask him.’

  They all turn to me, they look me up and down, sticking their pugs right in my vision. What I’m supposed to do is look at my watch and spill my tea, that’s the idea. I’m supposed to turn my wrist and pour the hot tea in my lap.

  ‘Twenty past,’ I say. I look them straight back. ‘Twenty past eight.’

  There’s silence, the moment passes and the one called Fred sits down.

  The big story is on the front cover, that’s what the discussion’s all about. Fred jabs at it, podgy fingers, ten of them all the same length. Brown, nicotine stained. And Frank’s claw, he holds it in his lap, and massages it. It flexes and unflexes, gripping and relaxing, gripping and relaxing.

  ‘Well, there ain’t no need for any of it, is there? Who’d pay to go and see that? I ask you! Would you? Because I wouldn’t, I can tell you that much!’

  ‘Well, someone’s paying for it! It says here that they got forty thousand pounds, forty thousand!’

  ‘Yeah, and I’d like to meet the silly bugger who gave it to them. It’s a bloody disgrace, in your own living room!’

  ‘Lucky for me I ain’t got kids, but still, in front of my wife, six o’clock, it’s bang out of order!’

  Frank lays off for a minute, looks to the one they call Fred and arches his eyebrow at him, questioningly. Fred fiddles with his gums, re-fixes his glasses and pulls his cap further down over his eyes.

  ‘Fucking disgusting!’

  ‘But this idiot in here, it says he kicked his TV set in, two hundred quid’s worth! It says it here in black and white. Here, take a look for yourself, read it! What do you make of that? Two hundred quid’s worth of television, it’s a bloody joke! The man’s an idiot!’

  ‘I’d of just switched it off.’

  ‘Exactly!’

  ‘Two hundred quid!’

  ‘Two hundred!’

  ‘Fuck mine!’

  ‘Did you see it, Ron? Ron!’

  The one called Ron hadn’t seen it.

  ‘No, worst luck!’

  That was a joke. That made them all cackle, brilliant! They were in stitches . . . I smiled, but no one looked in my direction. I look down at my lap and sip on my brew, super-sweet, condensed milk. Gluey with leaves in it, a little pool of them at the bottom. It made you suck your teeth that stuff — liquid iron. ‘You like that, don’t you son!’

  That’s Frank speaking at me.

  ‘That’s condensed milk, that is!’ I smile weakly. ‘Did you see the telly?’ I shake my head. ‘It’s in all the papers! They only do it for the publicity you know, they ain’t stupid.’

  ‘Stupid fuckers!’

  ‘They ain’t stupid!’ repeats Frank. ‘The stupid one is the idiot who kicked in his own TV screen, now that’s what I call stupid!’ There’s a general mooing of agreement, and they all lift their cups and sup as one.

  ‘Here, you know the glass, the bit inside?’

  ‘The tube?’

  ‘Yeah, the tube. Well, that bit, the tube-thingy, if that gets busted, it explodes like, and sends out millions of splinters for miles around.’ Fred shows us how small between his great brown fingers. ‘Minute,’ he carries on . . . ‘tiny . . .’

  ‘Implodes,’ says Ivor. ‘They don’t explode, they implode, it’s a vacuum.’

  ‘Do what?’

  ‘They don’t explode, they implode, there’s a vacuum inside a television, and a vacuum implodes, inwards!’

  ‘So what’s the fucking difference?’

  ‘The difference is, is that it goes inwards, like in space . . . that’s the difference.’

  ‘Well, that’s exactly what I said, wasn’t it, Frank?’

  Frank smiles at me, he shines his falsies, immaculate, gleaming in his wrecked mug. ‘The boy likes his tea. Condensed milk that is, son, like we used to drink in the war.’

  I take another swig, bitter-sweet, clinging. I swallow through the scum and give him a half smile, timidly, over the tea leaves.

  ‘A lovely brew that, boy! Naffi tea, just like in the army . . .’

  ‘Naffi tea, my arse! Naffi tea was piss!’

  ‘Army tea!’ continues the one they called Frank, the one with the deepest wrinkles.

  ‘Naffi tea, Berlin 1945, I was there, he wasn’t!’

  He nods in Fred’s direction and leans in confiding with me, a loud whisper. ‘Still sucking on his mother’s tit, he was!’

  ‘I bloody heard that, Frank bloody Bonnington! The only reason I wasn’t there was ’cos I was invalided out at Normandy, and you bloody know it!’

  ‘I’m telling the boy my war memories, not your fairy tales!’ He turns back to me . . . ‘Berlin 1945, you could stand your spoon up in it! You know, after the war, they had these German women out there, rebuilding all the roads. They didn’t use men, ’cos they was all dead. They used women, ’n’ big old things they were too, who could piss standing up, thirty yards into a milk bottle. Without spilling a drop!’

  ‘Bollocks!’

  ‘Thirty yards, without squatting, standing up they was. They pulled themselves out through the front of their boiler suits and pissed straight as an arrow!’

  ‘Bullshit!’

  ‘Every last droplet accounted for!’

  ‘Total bollocks!’ That was Fred, no teeth just the gums, the jaw shrunken up, the lips gathered up under his nose in a wedge, a real little pug. ‘Total bollocks! Don’t believe a word of it, he’s pulling your pisser!’

  Ivor shushes him, he waves his hands about, like a pair of old gloves.

  ‘Well, he’s talking out his arse, and he knows it! Naffi tea’s the same the world over, gnat’s piss! I know, I did my National Service, it’s the same the world over . . . Oi Ron, Ron! You did your national service, gnat’s piss, wasn’t it? Gnat’s piss!’

  Ron studies the racing form, he scratches at the end of his nose, and re-reads it with his fingers. Younger than the others, not so worn out, less dogmatic, the face less damaged. He clears his throat, folds it in his lap, rolls it thoughtfully, then places it down on the table. Removes his specks, finishes his tea, and stands.

  ‘Come on, Salvador, it’s half past, we’d best get out on site.’

  I look at Ron, then to the others, the faces in the tea hut. Ivor, the charge hand, nods at me to follow.

  ‘You go with Ron, on the walls.’

  I get it, I’m working with Ron on the walls. I get up and follow him out. The others, their eyes lift from their papers and watch us go, I look back then we’re off. I catch Ron at the door and follow him out. The heat is left behind, we walk into a wall of wet fog. Little shivers, crisp, damp, rising, disappearing . . . We follow the gravel path up by the tower.

  Ron hops onto the scaffold, follow the leader. I have to keep close or I’ll lose him. Mind your head and one, two, three, four, levels. Up the little ladder, to the next scaffold, the
n one more and we’re there, the top of the castle.

  One minute we’re in pea soup, the next, bright sunlight. We break through the clouds and everything goes golden. That makes me rub my peepers. We look out over the river, a great carpet of fog below us . . . cottonish, spreading out, covering the Medway, the whole river . . . Just odd cranes and spires jutting upwards, and us on top of everything, so to speak, sitting on our perch . . .

  ‘This is the inner wall . . . You see down there? Don’t look down there when the mist’s gone. Are you scared of heights? Don’t worry, you’ll get used to it, soon enough . . . just don’t look down, that’s the trick. If it bothers you, just keep your head up, otherwise!’

  As he says ‘otherwise!’ he makes his eyes slant sideways and downwards, his head tilts and his mouth comes open as well. I watch him, a curious effect, out of the blue like that, animated, almost theatrical.

  ‘You see where it’s bowed? We take all those stones out of there, like this . . . See, it’s soft . . . here she comes . . . that’s it! Then you carry them down there into the courtyard. But don’t look down. Then you lay them out on the grass in the same order as I take them out. If any of them get busted, you knock us up a new one, OK? Out of that stone over there, the pile by the wall . . . If any break up, you remake them, the same shape and everything . . . And don’t forget to number them . . . with this . . . all in a row, with this code, that’s the prefix and that’s the number, got it? And number the new ones as you make them, that’s if we bust any. You got all that? Good! Now, don’t forget, number the whole lot, and any new ones you make as well, don’t forget those, it’s easily done . . . Say if you don’t follow me, OK? Good! Right then, let’s get started!’ He looks at his watch. ‘It’ll be tea break in fifteen minutes.’

  That’s the way we worked, taking out the wall, the bowed bit, then laying the stones out on the little lawn. Numbering them, and if any got busted I had to make a new one. Then after we’ve taken the whole thing down. We put it all back up again, the whole lot stone by stone, with a plumbline, so as to take out the ‘bow’ that was the danger . . .

  In an old building like that? It could be risky, just leaving it to chance. ‘Maybe it will, maybe it won’t?’ — No! We took the whole thing down and started again from scratch. That’s the only way to treat ancient monuments: with respect! Gently does it, bit by bit, that’s how we worked. In between tea breaks, between the fog and the sky . . .