I Came Out Sideways

by George Porter

  “Go on son, have a bash.”

  He was beaming at me - almost willing me to endorse my lie that my ability in such matters was on a par with my elder sibling. So a bash I had.

  “Three shillings.”

  He looked at me with an amused glint in his eye.

  “No, I’m afraid that’s not right, but if you carry on like that if we take you on you will certainly increase our profits.”

  Then came the clincher - the third lie. The lie that got me the job and shamed me at the expense of being assessed as fit for employment by Scott’s Bakery.

  “What are you - red or blue? Liverpool or Everton?”

  “Blue sir - Everton.”

  I swallowed hard and tried to look relaxed about the remark, trusting that if I was believed the interview would come to a successful conclusion and I would be accepted into the grocery trade. But this was a merely preliminary question, generalising my inquisitor’s overall interest in my football-supporting allegiance.

  “Who’s your favourite player?”

  Davey Hickson was berated and scorned by every Liverpool supporter as the lowest form of animal ever to have set foot on a football pitch, and who would be capable of breaking his own granny’s legs if he were to intercept her in the penalty area. The great irony is that - not much later in his career - he was transferred to Liverpool from Everton, and the famous Kop choir changed its tuneful venom about him being born in a chimney-stack in Ellesmere Port into songs of unrestrained praise.

  “Davey Hickson sir.”

  (Verily I say unto thee, that this day ... before the cock crow twice thou shalt deny me thrice

  Gospel according to St Mark 14.30)

  There! I’d said it. Surely I was home and dry. He nearly fell off his seat, and I felt bilious.

  “Good lad! He’s the man to stop Liddell’s prancing isn’t he? Doesn’t get a look in when Davey’s on his case. You’ve got the job and you can start on Monday in our shop in South Road.”

  Consider speech.

  Every uttered word was born and weaned

  To clarify thoughts inherent yet unspeakable

  Thoughts of truth.

  Yet substitute word with well-found word

  And lies are brought into the world

  Chapter 9

  “Our Loss is Russia’s Gain”

  So there I was, making an entrance on a cheery bright Monday morning into the world of tinned salmon and crusty cobs. I couldn’t wait for payday.

  “You’re Georgie Porter aren’t you? We know you, don’t we? You used to come telling us to mend our broken biscuits, didn’t you? We know your mother, don’t we? Your brother is Michael isn’t he?”

  Two harpiesque ladies gazed out from the counter at me as I sauntered into our local Scott’s branch trying to look nonchalant. They were both wearing conspiratorial smiles that cracke their war-paint, which might well have been mortared on with a small trowel. The scarlet lipstick coating on the lips of one of them had invaded her upper front teeth, and the other older lady had gone to futile lengths in an attempt to avoid her lipstick running into the fissures around her lips.

  “Oo ‘eez a nice lad, isn’t ’ee Mabel?”

  “Ye ’ee is that Edna, isn’ ’ee? I remember ’im in short pants, don’t I? Old Jack used to see ‘im over the road, didn’ ’ee?”

  These people conversed in questions. Mabel, the older of the two with corrugated bright orange hair, was in charge. She told me she was the manageress and I was to help her in the shop. She smiled benignly down at me from over a bacon slicer with a great big wheel and a handle on it that turned the blade, her double chin highlighted by the glare reflected onto her face from the big shiny wheel.

  “I’ve been given me orders from ’ead office, ’aven’t I luv? I was told you are not to use the till until I am sure you can add up, wasn’t I luv? You can’t use the bacon slicer either, can you luv? But I’ve been told you can slice the corned beef with a knife, ’aven’t I luv? And you ’ave got to be careful of the trap door, ’aven’t you luv?”

  Was this a wind up, or was there really a trap door? Indeed there was. It was located behind the cake and biscuit counter, and some steep wooden steps led down to a basement where stock was held and all the necessary devices for making tea and coffee for the staff. It looked quite cosy from above.

  I survived just one day at that branch of Scott’s. I hadn’t even served a customer. I had just put on my new white nylon overall and had done what I thought was a reasonable job mopping the floor. I continued the process behind the counter, mopping and walking backwards along the floor. The inevitable outcome did not dawn on me for what must have been two or three seconds when I found myself on the floor of the basement alongside a large wooden tray of squashed custard tarts which had broken my fall. Two alarmed and very concerned ladies were peering down at me. Concerned not for me, however.

  “I told ’im Edna, I told ’im didn’t I? Didn’t I tell ’im to be careful of the trap door? Yo ’eard me didn’t you Edna, you ’eard me tel l’im, didn’t you? I’m not taking the blame for this, am I?”

  “Oh yes Mabel, oh yes, I ’eard you, didn’t I? ’Ee was walking backwards, wasn’t ’ee? Look at all those custard tarts everywhere; what are we going to do with them? There’ll ’ave to be a stock check, won’t there? I used to see ’im walking backwards when ’ee was little, didn’t I?”

  Up to this juncture, neither of them had enquired about my wellbeing. I attempted to struggle to my feet with one hand embedded in the remains of a custard tart and my new nylon overall spattered with custard and flakes of pastry adhered to it, and slipped on another, exacerbating the situation by grabbing at a table leg and tipping a plate of Swiss rolls into the quagmire.

  “Look what ’ees done now Mabel, can you see what ’ees done now? ’Ees tipped our lunch over, hasn’t ’ee? What are we going to do Mabel, what are we going to do?”

  “We’d better phone ’ead office, ’adn’t we? Are you alright Georgie luv? You aven’t broke your arm again ’av you luv? Your mother’ll go mad if you ’av, won’t she luv?”

  How did this person know that I had broken my arm on several occasions? Also, a question which had been at the back of my mind for some time suddenly came to the fore. How did my mother know that I had been into this shop many times while keeping my sunny side up suggesting that broken biscuits should be mended? The answer was gawping down on me from above, hands on ample hips, shamelessly displaying a pair of voluminous navy-blue bloomers, elasticated just above her knees. This was a garment I thought only Martha wore.

  A customer appeared in the middle of this mayhem and was ushered brusquely out of the door, which was hastily shut and the closed sign was put up. I heard one half of a stilted conversation being conducted on the telephone.

  “It wasn’t our fault, was it? ....we can’t keep ’im ’ere, can we? ... ’eel kill ’imself, won’t ’ee? ... what about all those custard tarts? ... right ... .right... right ... right ... well, ’ee can start there tomorrow, can’t ’ee? ... don’t tell them what happened though, or they won’t take ’im, will they? ...’Ee’s Michael’s brother, isn’t ’ee?”

  The solution to the ladies’ dilemma was solved by moving me to another branch without a trap door and swapping the tray of damaged custard tarts for another when the delivery van arrived. So we cleared the mess up, dumped it all back in the big wooden tray, and calmed our nerves by having a brew-up and a bun. I was then sent home and told to report the following day to the Mount Pleasant branch about half a mile away. And so I did.

  ***

  At the second posting, things seemed to be swimming along nicely. I was a very willing worker when it came to sweeping up, mopping the street in the front of the shop, making coffee, pulling down the sunblind with a long pole and helping the man delivering supplies
from the van. Things started to go a bit wobbly after about two weeks when I was given the responsibility of writing the day’s special offers in whitewash on the shop window, a job usually performed by the manager, a completely hairless red-faced man with a wide girth and a special interest in pork pies and his young female assistant, who I had seen in the past loitering near the Lion and Unicorn with Joey Dewsbury, a warrior to be avoided. He seemed to be lulled into a false sense of confidence in my ability to perform tasks of a higher level of responsibility than merely mopping up, although I had not yet served a customer.

  “Eeyar Georgie son, ’ere’s a job for yer. Yer’ve seen me do it, ’ave a go yerself.”

  He gave me a piece of paper with the offers written on it and a pint-sized pot of whitewash with a small paintbrush, pointing me to a section of the window inside the shop where he wanted his prices displayed. Then he went over to his bacon slicer and busied himself slicing off some rashers. As he did this I noticed him winking at his deputy who was in charge of the bread and buns, a buxom girl with a beehive hairdo who wore a black bra under her white nylon overall, accentuating her attributes, with a pair of hoops dangling from her ear lobes. Now came a challenge. I had seen him do it, and I knew what was required. My handwriting did leave a lot to be desired when the job was finished and streams of whitewash dribbled down the window. Nonetheless, he seemed to be satisfied with my work and nodded his approval, grinning over his bacon slicer. The beehive was tittering.

  “Well done, son. Dat’ll make ’em stop and ’ave a look. Now go and put da kettle on and ’ave a brew. A good job well done.”

  I went into the back room to put the kettle on and instantly heard the titter from the beehive develop into a high-pitched cackle and the manager telling her to be quiet. When I returned from my break, fully sated from three of Scott’s fine crusty rolls and a jam doughnut, I noticed a group of old ladies outside the shop pointing at my painted sign, cackling to one another. The jaunty delivery man, of a similar stature and gait to Norman Wisdom and who had retrieved the relics of the custard tarts from the South Road calamity, bounced onto the scene with his tray of fresh produce balanced on one hand above his head, paused, and looked in the direction of the gawping group of women. Immediately his pockmarked pasty face creased into a jovial grin.

  “Eye-eye Jimmy, I see you’ve caught ’im then. Ripe one ’ee is, isn’t ’ee. Daft little bugger fell down da trap door in South Road. ’Ee walked backwards down it. I would have thought ’ee’d ’ave no trouble writing back to front, seeings he walks backwards. Dey told me dey used to see ’im walking backwards on ’is way to school. ’Ee’s Michael’s brudder.”

  The beehive was now bent double screeching with laughter, with a fist over her mouth and the other hand supporting her weight on the counter. She had two rivers of black mascara running down her face, and her beehive hairdo was vibrating. I hadn’t realised that I needed to write the details back to front in the window, or they wouldn’t be legible from the outside. The pork pie gourmet grinned at me.

  “Dat was a good one ’ey Georgie, dat was a good one was’n it? I didn’t know you’d fell down da trap door in South Road though. Dose wimmin der, dey must still be laffin der ’eads off. I hope your Michael doesn’t know about it yet, cos I’d love to see ’is face when ’ee finds out.”

  The day proceeded with the jovial manager grinning at me, and the beehive occasionally breaking into a splutter. However, his joviality was soon to disappear due to an incident involving a delivery bicycle, the groceries contained therein, and my insatiable appetite for a game of football, which was to mark my demise as a figure of fun and remove the garish grin from his sunny tomato-like countenance. It also marked a new chapter in my whistle-stop excursion through the grocery trade.

  The following day was a Saturday and I had been selected to play in a five-a-side tournament that morning. I had assumed, wrongly, that I was not working. Seeing that there were only six potential players available and two of them were goalkeepers, the selection procedure was not a prerequisite, save for the arguments over who would play centre forward. It came as something of a blow when I was told that I was supposed to take the delivery bike out and drop off groceries to several customers in the area. This blow was softened slightly when I realised that I could exploit the use of the bike to ride to the playing field and then deliver the groceries afterwards and no-one would be any the wiser. Also, one of the drop-offs was to be the home of Mrs Moran, the mother of celebrated local hero Ronnie Moran, the famous Liverpool full back. So, not only would I be able to ride the delivery bike to the ground, but I might even get a glimpse of Billy Liddell’s friend’s mother.

  The plan worked like clockwork. I loaded up and cycled off in plenty of time for the ten-thirty kick-off. After parking the bike under a tree and getting my boots on, I was soon in the thick of it, playing a blinder with only the occasional toe-ender. I even scored a goal. I remember it well. It was a toe-ender that went wrong but ended up right. The sunshine then turned to showers. On returning to my bike, I found it lying in a large puddle on its side - sans groceries and minus its bell and pump.

  On my cautious return to the shop, the jolly red face had turned ashen. The grin was replaced by a threatening glower.

  “Where ’av you been, you little bugger? I’ve ’ad three customers in ’ere raising da bloody roof! Mrs Moran says we can stuff it, she’s going to da Maypole instead from now on.”

  I tried to explain the difficulty I had experienced as a result of my double-booking, but he just wouldn’t pay attention. The clincher came when I tried tactfully to inform him of the robbery of the groceries, the bell and the pump.

  “Bugger off home now, and when you come back Monday morning, you can ’av yer cards.”

  I didn’t quite know what he meant by this, but rather than ask him I sidled off out of the door, leaving the bike up against the window, a place I had been told never to leave it, but the excitement of the moment left me somewhat confused.

  Bright and early on the Monday morning I returned to the shop, still unaware of what was meant by giving me my cards. However, the conundrum was left unsolved, because the manager was standing at the door his face devoid of his usual grin, which was replaced by a sullen frown.

  “Don’t think yer cummin in ’ere, ’cos yer not. You are a friggin’ liability, dat’s what you are. Dey nearly gave me me cards, let alone yew. I don’t know why der doin’ it, but dey are keepin’ you on. Just ‘cos Scott’s sunshine bread shines out of yer brother’s arse, dey think yew must be worth another try. Get yer backside down to da Bridge Road branch now, and don’t stop off for a kick around on da way, ya daft bugger. And stay away from my shop!”

  ***

  The Bridge Road branch was not far from the dairy where my previous employer had misunderstood my genuine resolve to deliver his milk to the correct doorsteps on time, in the correct quantity, and without creating too much clatter. I was, therefore, just a little concerned that our paths might cross and my history relating to the dairy industry, especially the scandalous and totally unfounded slander regarding the six bottles of orange juice, would filter through to the grocery trade. However, I soon overcame this anxiety when I was welcomed as a sort of celebrity by the two assistants, one an Irish boy who I vaguely recognised, and the other a very bouncy girl with a round cheery face. My reputation for blunders had already been broadcast throughout the area by the Norman Wisdom clone, and these two assistants were eager to see what would happen next. They would not have too long to wait.

  This area was at the beginning of the more refined part of Waterloo bordering Blundellsands, in whose large and sumptuous houses some of the more affluent patricians of Liverpool society lived, many of the residents being local minor dignitaries and celebrities who stood, as far as possible, aloof from their close fellow citizens and to some extent from one another. Tranquil and grand it may have been, but
sterility seeped from the bricks and mortar which held it together - the very bricks and mortar bought by slave traders from the enormous profits of their transactions in human misery. The occasional relatively successful shopkeeper, upwardly mobile slum landlord, or prosperous fence undiscovered by the constabulary, was said to blend with the local society of gin and jags without concern for, or suspicion of, their mendacity.

  Also camouflaged from view, although not next to one another, were a convent and an unmarried mothers’ home, wherein Brides of Christ would pour out their spleen over the wretched shorn heads of these victims of a society which was firm in the concept that love outside marriage could never be accepted; indeed, the children of these unions were even deprived of the love of their mothers. I used to deliver milk to the unmarried mothers’ home not knowing what it was at the time, sometimes seeing a sad face through a window. I would occasionally catch a glimpse of the pious pinch-faced witches with their heads shielded by big headdresses with what appeared to be the wings of swans floating on the top of them - no doubt kept pristine and starched by their captives - with a mass of rosary beads swinging over their dry bosoms. Once when I was about six years old, I discovered in the road a chain of rosary beads with large ebony cross attached and took it home as a present for my mother, unknowingly provoking a major panic attack created by the distress and horror of having it in my possession. It was hastily wrapped in newspaper and put in the dustbin and I was made to swear that I had never seen it. Unfortunately, this promise was void because, unbeknown to my mother, Alfie Littlehales had tried it on and offered me a piece of liquorice in exchange for it, which I had gallantly refused in the certain knowledge that it would look far better around the neck of my mother than dangling from his scrawny shoulders, although the offer was refused primarily because of my dislike of liquorice.

  The manager of the Bridge Road branch was in keeping with the area. He was a sinewy Scotsman with an eye for exactitude, as could be deduced from the flawless display of products, the shiny floor, his shiny razor-sharp creased trousers, his shiny shoes, the sheen of which blended with the floor, and his black shiny hair parted in the middle with not a strand out of place. In the top pocket of his pristine white coat were inserted a row of coloured ballpoint pens. No pencil behind the ear for him. And he wore sock suspenders, a device attached to the legs above the calf, with the elasticated straps dangling from them intended to be fastened to socks, to aid them in an attempt to defy the force of gravity.