I Came Out Sideways

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I Came Out Sideways Page 11

by George Porter


  “Dinna ya think that I’ll tak any nonsense fra yoo, sonny. Ya here ta work an’ work ya shall. We dinna tak noo slackers here. If ya wanna play fitba’ ya canna no’ do it in the firrms time. Noo get properly dressed an’ report to Mr Reilly, and he’ll show ya what ya job’s goin’ ta be. Remember, noo nonsense, or it’s ya cards ye’ll be gettin’.”

  Cards again. What they meant by this I had no idea. Patrick Reilly grinned over at me and nodded in the direction of his domain, conveniently close to the bacon slicer. He had a quiff and a DA (duck’s arse) combed into the back of his jet-black greased hair. Beneath his white overall he wore light blue drainpipe trousers and black thick crepe-soled suede shoes with shiny buckles on them. He manifested a slight squint which gave him a quizzical air. He was a Ted.

  “Are yew still kicking dem over da bar den Georgie?”

  The penny dropped. He once played football for St Edmund’s Catholic school, and I had played against them alongside gangly Nobby Thomas and the diminutive Biddy Marsh, a label which was acquired because of his small stature, the periodic infestation which arose in his head and the subsequent cranium-soaking in liquid paraffin received by anyone who had been in close contact with him. This rather extreme treatment would have been held against him, save for the fact that he could cross a ball into a goalmouth with pinpoint accuracy and was blessed with a sunny countenance. Fatty Cowan, who was unable to kick a football in a straight line, had a penchant for threatening anyone six inches shorter than himself. He was once invited by me to a physical confrontation at the back of the Odeon in response to his baiting of Biddy Marsh and his infested head. The incident petered out before any blood was spilt. A crowd of interested observers, who had been made aware of the event on the grapevine hours previously and who had gathered in a circle around the combatants, made so much noise that the surrounding neighbourhood was alerted that a fight was in progress. An old lady accompanied by a walking stick appeared on the scene, dispersing the onlookers with it just after I had given Cowan a right jab and he had grabbed me around the throat in an attempt to strangle me.

  Reilly had a point. I always managed to kick more over the bar than under it, despite all of Algy’s constructive advice.

  “Yer need ta keep yer ’ead over da ball more, kick it wid da top of yer foot, and don’t lean back. Den yewl score a bag full.”

  I assumed that being placed in the immediate vicinity of the bacon slicer was a form of promotion, but Patrick doubted this.

  “Old Jock won’t let anyone wirk it - it’s ’is pride and joy. He polishes de arse off of it, so he does. Customers ’av complained dat der bacon smells of Brasso.”

  Even so, I was allowed to serve some customers who had basic requirements. This was a big step up in my involvement with the grocery trade, although matters did not seem so rosy by the end of my first day. The slicing of the corned beef was a case in point. My first effort at surgically carving half a pound of corned beef was returned later in the day by the mother of the little girl who had been sent to buy it.

  “This looks like it has been sliced by a gibbon ... who on earth would consider serving this mess up?”

  The question was addressed to Patrick in a cut-glass Liverpool quasi-upper-class accent which was the preserve of some of the Blundellsands pseudo-urbane. He shrugged his shoulders and nodded towards the manager. A woman like this once referred to me as an urchin. Not knowing what an urchin was at the time, I took it as a compliment to me and Albert in respect of our quest to release ants from their prisons under the flagstones using ice-lolly sticks. She happened to be the wife of the manager of the Raven, a pub in South Road. Her son Peter lost his cub cap on a visit to Chester Zoo, where it was inadvertently dropped into the bear pit and he cried all the way home, even through the Mersey Tunnel in the charabanc where it was forbidden to make a noise because the driver could be disturbed and we would all crash and die. I claimed innocence in regard to this misdemeanour, but I was blamed nonetheless, which resulted in another doorstep confrontation for my mother to contend with.

  “Ees a bit shakey dis mornin’. I tink ’ee might ’a been ’avin a sniff of da barmaid’s apron.”

  “Well you can just take it back and slice me some more. I always thought that man was not quite right in the head.”

  She looked disdainfully sideways across at the dapper little manager who was vigorously rubbing the marble surface of his counter with a cloth, removing any invisible micro-organisms which might have been present, unaware of the outrageous lie which was being concocted by Patrick Reilly. Patrick skilfully sliced a neat bundle of corned beef for the lady and retrieved the lumps which I had prepared, deftly slipping them under the counter. She was pacified, probably because she noticed that the needle on the scales upon which the meat was weighed pointed nearer to a pound in weight rather than the half-pound that had been previously bought.

  “Well, I’m pleased to see that the staff here are a lot more professional than the management.”

  This remark was addressed piercingly in the direction of the management as she flounced out of the shop, at which point the management abruptly ceased his attack on microbes and jumped to attention, puzzled and somewhat distraught by this verbal attack from a customer of long standing and refinement. His wits returned only after she had left the premises.

  “I dinna ken what’s been goin’ on here, but I wouldnae be far off the mark tae think that you had somethin’ tae doo with this little ootburst of customer discontent, Mr Reilly. Just you be watchin’ yersel’ laddie, or its yer cards ye’ll be gettin’.”

  The Irish boy shrugged his shoulders, presenting an expression of feigned innocence and wide-eyed bewilderment.

  The repatriated slabs of corned beef were turned into the innards of several crusty rolls and consumed when the management went to the bank to deposit the takings. The round-faced girl became a willing party to this. I felt a little guilty about it all, but my new-found friend put my mind at ease somewhat with a shaky, but convincing argument in justification.

  “Sure, it would only ’ave gone in da bin, and if Jock ’ad found out its yer cards you’d ’ave been gettin’, an’ no mistake about dat. I’ll mention it when I go to confession.”

  The cards yet again. Anyway, I lumbered on under the tutelage of my genial colleague, albeit a supporter of Everton FC but nonetheless one like me who felt football was an important, if not the most important, component in the blending of life as we knew it. Under his instruction I became an expert corned beef slicer and quite well-informed in the variety and constituents of the various loaves and confectionery on sale, as well as an unofficial sampler of the merchandise. Things seemed to be blossoming in the bakery business, but the management was lulled into a false sense of security as I grew ever more confident of my position in the firm. Everything descends into a state of disorder eventually - that is the nature of things, although for me the descent is usually rapid and unexpected, as was the case with the Christmas display. The shock waves still reverberate.

  On a day during the first week of December I arrived to find the shop window festooned in tinsel, with a large pyramid of jars of mincemeat resting on a glass shelf with a row of Scott’s finest Christmas Yule Logs laid out beneath them in a straight line like guardsmen on parade, and on the floor of the display was a crate of eggs cushioned in straw and tinsel. This remarkable spectacle could only have been the work of one man - the resolute and shiny manager. When I entered the shop he was beaming. The dour countenance was replaced by a self-satisfied smile, which on another face could be wrongly interpreted as a lecher’s leer. His normally perfectly vertical shiny tie was askew, his normally perfectly groomed hair was uncombed, and his normally shiny shoes were scuffed.

  “And what d’ye thinks of yon display young man? Och I’ve been at it since the wee sma oors, but it was worth it, dinna ya ken?”

  I nodded my approval,
but inwardly recalled my own expertise at building walls from rubble, which I thought was much more creative than a load of jars piled on top of one another.

  “Well just you learn from this example, sonny, if ye want t’be in the grocery trade, ye’ve got to use the brain the good lord has given ye to attract the customers. Apply yersel an’ ye’ll gae a lang way. Fitba’ll get ye nowhere in this world. Noo let’s roll our sleevies up and start the day.”

  As the day wore on, a clutch of regular customers came into the shop for their bread and cakes, tinned salmon and slices of bacon. A few passers-by glanced fleetingly at the bold Christmas display in the window. Just before lunch, however, a punter had been hooked. Bullet-proof stockings, tweed suit, felt hat with a pheasant’s feather in it, and a face that would stop a clock, according to Patrick. What followed is ingrained in my mind - I still have flashbacks. She marched in on her sturdy tightly laced brown brogue shoes with the air of a brigadier and confronted me.

  “I would like two jars of your mincemeat please, and a tin of your sockeye salmon.”

  And then I did it. During my short career in the grocery trade I admit to a few minor misfortunes, but this one was an out-and-out calamity. The manager smiled and nodded to me with his eyebrows raised in a confirmatory gesture signifying he was spot-on in his previous conversation with me. The smile then vanished and transformed into an expression of shocked anguish when I walked over to his display and removed two jars of mincemeat from the side of his magnificent pyramid. The resultant collapse of it into the Yule logs was disaster enough, but the ultimate catastrophe arose not because most of the mincemeat and the Yule logs fell into the crate of eggs, but because the jars of mincemeat had cracked the shop window on the way down. This re-vamped display created a great deal more outside interest than had been the case earlier in the day when it had been regulated by methodical and painstaking design. Patrick and the round-faced girl were ecstatic.

  The outcome of this unintended act of sabotage is a blur. All I can remember is a very angry Scotsman.

  “On yer way, sonny, on yer way the noo! Dinna ye bother clearing up, ye’ll noo doubt bring tha bloody shop doon if ye try. I’ll have yer carrds awaitin’ ye in the mornin’. A bloody disaster, that’s wha’ it is, a bloody tragedy.”

  More cards. This time, I thought, I shall get to know what they are. And yet, it didn’t happen. It would seem that for Thomas Scott, in some circumstances, the quality of mercy was not strained and the cards, once more, were not put on the table.

  I arrived next morning subdued and sheepish, having noticed the sticking plaster over the six-inch crack in the glass and the non-existent display with tinsel hanging forlornly in the gap where the provisions had been so meticulously exhibited. As I entered, Patrick walked over to me with an expression of reverence bordering on admiration. I looked past him in the direction of the bacon slicer, expecting to see the dark countenance of the manager glowering at me with good reason, but he was nowhere to be seen.

  “Hey der Georgie boy! Sure dat was a fine performance you gave us all yesterday. Auld Jock was boilin’ over, so he was.”

  “Where is he?”

  “He was told to take da day off, so he was. Dey didn’t want a burst blood vessel makin’ more of a mess. Dey told him his display was a danger to da public, so you are in da clear, so you are. Dey has made me da manager for da day so you’ve done me a big favour, so you have.

  He was beaming with pride at his temporary promotion, preening his slick DA with a small comb. The round-faced girl was gazing across at him with uninhibited approbation, spellbound by his sudden elevation to the management of her for the day. He cast a sideways glance over to her, and then turned his asymmetrical eyes back to me and winked.

  “Just nip into da back Judy, and make Georgie and me a brew. Den you can look after da shop while we talk business.”

  ‘Talking business’ entailed a conversation about Davey Hickson’s inconceivable recent traitorous transfer from Everton to Liverpool FC, the inexplicable concepts relating to the off-side rule, the knockers on Judy, and the fact that I was to continue my stampede through the branches of the home of good bread with yet a further relocation to the Crown Buildings shop. So after a final cupcake we said our goodbyes, and the next morning I hopped on a bus to my new workplace.

  ***

  The Crown Buildings shop was one of the jewels set in the crown of the empire of dough presided over by Thomas Scott, being situated in an area which was busy, and yet emitted a flavour closely associated with village life of a time gone by. Many of the customers were residents of the nearby ancient recusant village of Little Crosby, surrounded by the rich soil of the area in which only three or four years previously I had been pea and potato picking for pennies and cavorting in the nearby Sniggery Woods with a bamboo bow and arrows.

  My next manager seemed to be a cut above all the others I had met on my swift journey through the establishment. He had what was - I became aware of later in life - a laconic attitude to his position and was epigrammatic but nevertheless courteous in his short but to-the-point conversations with everyone. He had an air of Gotch about him, minus the baggy trousers and Hitleresque hairstyle. He wore wire-rimmed spectacles perched on the end of his nose, and looked imperiously over them at me as I sauntered into the shop spot on time.

  “Good morning. I see you are here on time. Good start. Clean the front and pull the sunblind down.”

  And that was it. No lecture, no indication that he had reason to believe I was a destructive liability. No pens in top pocket. A stern exterior but indifferent to lesser beings, indicating by his language and demeanour that as long as I left him alone, he would leave me alone.

  His assistant was another Irishman, smaller and older than Patrick and with an air of gentle resignation in his manner. He smiled a pleasant greeting to me as he entered, and when he nodded a lock of hair fell down his forehead, giving him foppish appearance. He spoke with a soft Dublin burr complimenting his benign appearance.

  “Well hallo Georgie boy, sure it is a pleasure to meet you. Your reputation goes before you, so it does. I saw young Pat last night, and he says you have the makings of a fine footballer if you can just keep your head over the ball. The shop window incident is the talk of the town. Come on in now and we’ll get to show you what to do. I’ve been given my instructions to stick to you like a limpet. Sure, I’ll be happy for some pleasant company.”

  He turned his head slightly, casting a glance in the direction of a female assistant who was glowering at him across the floor. She was a buxom lady with bleached hair, whose white coat strained to contain her upper attributes, bursting at the buttons. A splash of scarlet camouflaged the outline of her lips and she was perilously balanced on a pair of red high-heeled shoes. She winked at me.

  “You just be careful, Georgie boy, or she’ll have her wicked way with you. The van man is petrified of her, so he is.”

  And true enough, when the Norman Wisdom clone appeared with the day’s confectionery balanced on his palm above his head, his demeanour was subdued and watchful. The jaunty gait had been substituted by a more moderate approach as he sidled into the shop without his manic grin and devoid of his wounding repartee. He edged into the stock room, avoiding eye contact with anyone. Because he’d avoided eye contact, he was unaware that the high heels had clattered their way into the same room seconds before he entered the shop. The discussion which spilled out into the shop was priceless.

  “Now Rosie, I’ve told yer before, don’t do dat! I’ll drop da bleedin’ tray. What’ll your Billy say if he finds out? ’Ees a big bugger is your Billy, and yer know ’ees already warned me, and I wasn’t even doin’ nowt.”

  “Well den, if ’ee thinks yer doin’ sumthin’, yer might as well do it den. Eeyar, take a look at dose - dey’ll get yer goin’ won’t dey?”

  There was a sound of scuffling and the
n a scarlet-faced van man shot out of the room, dropped the paperwork on the counter and made a bee-line for the pavement.

  “I’m not coming back ‘ere until she goes! She’s a bloody nymphomaniac, dat’s what she is. Someone else can collect the empty trays.”

  The enigmatic expression on the face of the manager remained intact as he peered over his spectacles as a tottering apparition emerged from the back room, tossing her peroxide curls and buttoning up her white coat with difficulty. The outline of her scarlet mouth seemed to have extended to her ears.

  “Might I remind you that this is a bread shop and not a knocking shop? Also, your shoes are not in keeping with the environment in which we operate.”

  She shrugged, he said no more. He was adept at mincing beef, but never his words.

  A week passed and nothing untoward happened as my time in the grocery trade was drawing to a close. Excitement and trepidation jostled in my head as the time for my enlistment drew closer. Then, just two weeks before I was due to hand in my notice, the culmination of all my mishaps seemed to pale into insignificance. I was called to the bacon slicer - for some reason all the managers seemed to base themselves at the bacon slicer.

  “Do you think you can do something responsible?”

  It was a rhetorical question.

  “Take this to the bank and don’t be too long.”

 

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