by David Nobbs
‘Aye…well…’ said Ezra. ‘It were the exact moment, does tha see? Fleetwood-Smith dropped one short.’
‘Hutton, coolest man on t’ ground, cut it to t’ fence,’ said Ezra’s father, and immediately wished he hadn’t.
‘I’ll drop thee both one short before I’m through,’ said Ada. ‘I’ll give thee both Fleetwood-Smith.’
‘I’m saying nowt,’ said Her Mother.
‘Shut up, Mother,’ said Ada. ‘Tha’s getting on me nerves.’
‘I haven’t said owt,’ said Her Mother.
Henry’s sobs were merely exhausted remnants now.
‘This is what happens when men are left to look after things,’ said Ezra’s mother.
‘It’s sport,’ said Ada. ‘They’re sport mad, men. I’d abolish sport, if it was me.’
‘Aye, but be fair, mother,’ said Ezra. ‘It was the greatest moment in English cricket history, ruined.’
‘Good,’ said Ada.
The fish and chips were getting cold, so they ate them straight from the newspapers. It was a subdued meal.
As he reached the end of his fish and chips, Ezra’s father began to read the newspaper in which his had been wrapped.
‘United have signed a new winger,’ he said, and immediately wished he hadn’t.
Ezra promised treats. But it takes a lot of atonement to make up to a child for one hurtful moment. The hurting is spontaneous, the atonement calculated. Henry sensed the difference, and never felt quite the same about his father again.
The first of Ezra’s treats was not a success. It consisted of a visit to Blonk Lane to watch Thurmarsh United versus New Brighton in the Third Division North.
Henry enjoyed the tram ride, past the long, black corrugated-iron sheds of the great steelworks, up out of the Rundle Valley, and down the long hill into Thurmarsh Town Centre. A second, noisier, smokier tram, a football special, took them past the soot-black Gothic town hall, ringed by sandbags. The fear of war was everywhere. Men were digging a slit trench beside the old men’s shelter in the Alderman Chandler Memorial Park.
There was a lingering smell of sweet baking and golden roasting around the biscuit factory. Then they were in the low, bleak eastern suburbs. They walked up Blonk Lane towards the stadium, in a tide of cheery, beery, flat-capped men. Newspaper vendors and hard-faced men with spare season tickets shouted, and Henry was frightened. When he had to leave his father to go through the turnstile of the juveniles’ entrance, he screamed, and his father took him away. A great roar announced a Thurmarsh goal as they waited for the tram back. When they got home, the clothes horse was in front of the range, and the house was filled with the nourishing smell of steaming pants and singlets. There was brawn for tea, and Ada rebuked her husband, saying, ‘He’s nobbut three. Tha should have had more sense, tha great lummock.’
‘I’m saying nowt,’ said Her Mother.
Sunday dawned bright, if breezy.
‘There’ll be a hundred thousand gassed in t’ streets on first day of hostilities,’ said Her Mother cheerfully.
Ezra took Henry into Derbyshire, for a treat, to help him recover from his treat. Ada did not accompany them, on account of her legs being a liability, and Her Mother was not invited.
A Sheffield Corporation tram, with dark blue and cream livery, took them to Sheffield. Even on Sunday, the industrial mist hung, dimming the sun.
‘A mucky picture, set in a golden frame,’ said Ezra proudly.
A gleaming cream bus took them out of the mucky picture and up into the golden frame. Hikers and cyclists abounded. The atmosphere was cautiously frenzied. They didn’t know how many more summers there would be, and this one was almost over.
Henry sat rapt with wonder, wrapped in excitement, as the womb-bus rose warmly through the leafy, stone suburbs and out into the high country. There were stone walls and fields and then miles of lifeless swaying grass. Groups of hikers descended outside square stone pubs, and briefly a cold wind blew into the bus.
Soon came the moment that Henry had begun to dread. Out of the womb into a wide and empty world.
They walked for a few minutes, and then came to a place where the land fell away abruptly, and the view over the valleys and hills of the Peak District was splendid, but too large for a child’s eye.
‘Right, then,’ said Ezra. ‘We’ve got us brawn to contend with.’
Far below, a toy train came out of a tunnel, and its white smoke filled Henry with longings – to be on that train, to be that smoke, to be other than he was.
They sat in a hollow with their backs against a rock, and ate their brawn butties.
‘I hate brawn,’ said Ezra. ‘I hate gravy, too. I like me food dry. It’s more than me life’s worth to tell her that. In life, Henry, tha has to eat a lot of gravy that tha doesn’t want. There’s going to be a war. That’s what Reg Hammond reckons, any road. The world is changing. Think on, though, our Henry, before tha blames us for bringing thee into t’ world. Remember this. Tha’s English. Tha’s Yorkshire. Tha could have been born Nepalese or Belgian or owt. Thank me for that, at least.’
Henry was puzzled. His father had never talked to him like that before. And he was a sensitive child, aware of the fear and unease around him, although he knew nothing about Hitler, and cared even less about the Sudetenland than all the hikers and cyclists.
‘It’s not going to be easy, lad,’ said his father. ‘But tha’ll frame. Thy little mind’s never still. Tha’s got brains.’
Ezra handed Henry a last corner of brawn sandwich.
‘Brains and brawn,’ he said. ‘Tha’ll do. Tha’ll do.’
They walked on, away from that hollow, which could have become a womb, given half a chance.
They walked along a track, across a featureless expanse of sheep-cropped, wind-stunted coarse grass. And Henry, sensitive, brainy young Henry, believed that he understood. His father was abandoning him, to fend for himself in the world. His father had encouraged him, told him that he could do it. His father, who had so recently told him to bugger off, was going home without him.
He clung to his father. He screamed. He yelled. His father had to pick him up and carry him, frail father struggling with podgy prodigy.
‘Nay, lad. Nay,’ said his father, disappointed that this day too was going to end in tears, totally unaware of what was going on in the little boy’s brain. ‘Ee, Henry, tha’s not nesh, is tha? Does tha know what “nesh” means? “Nesh” means feeling t’ cold, like cissy. We don’t want t’ lads at school calling us nesh, do we?’
He put Henry down, and they walked towards the road, hand in hand. Henry clutched his father’s hand and whimpered. He was still whimpering when the bus arrived, and Ezra had to sit him on his knee throughout the journey home.
He didn’t take Henry on any more treats.
The following Friday the headline in the Daily Express read ‘Peace’. In smaller print were the words: ‘The Daily Express declares that Britain will not be involved in a European war this year, or next year either.’ Neville Chamberlain flew back from Munich and said: ‘You may sleep quietly – it is peace for our time.’ Her Mother said: ‘I knew there’d be no war. All that worriting about nowt. It just goes to show. Tha can’t believe all tha reads in t’ papers. It were just a scare to take folks’ minds off unemployment. Hitler? All it needed were a strong man to stand up to him. He’s shot his bolt, he has.’
Henry’s world began to expand. It was a world of parallel, cobbled, back-to-back cul-de-sacs called Paradise Yard, Back Paradise Yard, Paradise Lane, Back Paradise Lane, Paradise Hill, Back Paradise Hill, Paradise Court, Back Paradise Court, Paradise Green and Back Paradise Green. All these cul-de-sacs rose gently from the main road to end in a brick wall, beyond which lay the stagnant, smelly waters of the Rundle and Gadd Navigation.
A narrow footpath, with posts to prevent cycling, ran between the cul-de-sacs and the brick wall. A gate in the brick wall led onto the towpath, which crossed to the other side of the canal on a brid
ge behind Paradise Court. Beyond the canal, and below it, were the less stagnant but equally smelly waters of the River Rundle, even in those days a Mecca for lovers of the polluted. Beyond the river was the railway, and beyond that, marching in rows all over the hills, were the semi-detached houses that had been built between the wars.
The canal and the river were out-of-bounds to Henry, for safety reasons, and he went there whenever he could.
It was a lively world, Henry’s little womb-world to the south of the Thurmarsh-to-Rawlaston road. The cul-de-sacs were full of children. Barges and narrow boats chugged frequently along the canal. Trains roared regularly along the railway line. Dogs from the semis cavorted on the waste ground between the river and the canal. Thirty years later, when Henry came back, the trams were gone, the main road was clogged, the canal barely used, the railway derelict, whole streets razed to the ground and empty. But in his youth, before the planners got to work, it was all busy and bustling.
One Sunday morning, in 1939 – it was September 3rd, as it chanced – Henry slipped off along the cul-de-sac, through the gate onto the towpath, across the Rundle and Gadd Navigation, over the waste ground, and onto the wide footbridge over the Rundle.
Four boys were standing on the bridge, four boys near to his own age, four boys from Paradise Lane, four boys who often played together, four boys with whom Henry had often longed to play, four boys by whom Henry had never been accepted. Tommy Marsden, Martin Hammond, Billy Erpingham and Chalky White, who was the only West Indian for miles around in those days.
Henry approached them diffidently, trying to pluck up his courage, a timid, brainy little boy. His podgy white knees stood out like headlights between his long, thick socks and his drooping, baggy shorts, proclaiming their owner’s lack of physical strength and presence.
‘Can I play?’ he asked pathetically, although pathos had no power to touch the hearts of the four-year-old gang of four. Only Tommy Marsden could answer his question, because Tommy Marsden, black-haired, gaps in his teeth, dirt on his cheeks, rips in his shorts, paint on his jersey, scabs on his knees, was their leader. Tommy Marsden watched him like a hungry crow. Whim, not compassion, would decide his answer.
If Tommy Marsden was a crow, Martin Hammond was an owl. A solemn, intense, little old man with yellowing shorts. Chalky White smiled his gleaming, beaming, more-the-merrier smile. I forget what Billy Erpingham did.
‘Can I play?’ repeated Henry.
‘All right,’ said Tommy Marsden, generous only in order to prove that generosity was his to give.
Many years later, Martin Hammond wrote: ‘I don’t think there was a single one of us, however small, however deplorably apolitical the home environment that helped to shape us, who was not aware that an event of cataclysmic importance was casting its shadow over our little world and over the great world beyond our little world. I remember we played some kind of game on that fateful morning. I forget the rules. They don’t matter. What matters is that we felt a compulsion to play a game, a clean game, a game with rules, because we knew, with the untainted instincts of youth, that the world was embarking on an adventure which was definitely not a game, and that for many years to come there would be no rules,’ which was pitching it a bit strong, because Martin had been four at the time, and the clean game of his recollection consisted of racing dried-up dog turds along the sulphurous river.
If those scruffy youths had ever heard of Christopher Robin and Poohsticks, they might have called their game Pooh-Dried-Up-Dog-Jobs. But they hadn’t. So they didn’t.
Why did they use dog turds? Because it was exciting: some sink, others disintegrate, the element of chance is high. Because human beings are disgusting until lucky enough, in some cases, to be taught not to be. Because there were no trees in their environment, and therefore no sticks. Because, ultimately, as always, they were there.
The line up on the footbridge was Martin Hammond (Labrador), Tommy Marsden (Alsatian), Billy Erpingham (I forget), Chalky White (Cocker Spaniel) and Henry Pratt (Whippet).
Tommy Marsden lowered his left arm. Five tiny turds fell through the air. Henry’s dropped into a dark corner under the bridge. He leant over to watch its early progress. Maybe he leant too far in his excitement. Maybe Tommy Marsden pushed him. He followed the dog turds into the filthy water.
He went into the Rundle head first. It was not the last river into which he would fall, but it was definitely the least prepossessing.
The foul waters met over his head. He took a great gulp of untreated sewage and chemical waste. He was choking, bursting, dying. Tommy Marsden’s frail craft brushed his cheek. He struggled upwards, broke surface for a second, then sank again.
Then hands were underneath him, he was being lifted out of the water.
He was on the bank, upside down, gasping, heaving, retching, too concerned with survival yet to wail.
Slowly he recovered. The other four children had disappeared, as children will, given the slightest opportunity.
His two rescuers took him home. They were Fred Shilton, the lock-keeper, and Sid Lowson, that adequate domino substitute, suddenly proving less peripheral than expected.
His mouth tasted foul, his left knee was bleeding, his clothes were dripping, he was filthy and soaking and cold, he was crying from delayed shock, but he was alive.
The two men led him across the waste ground, over the canal, along the towpath, through the gate, and down the footpath until they came to Paradise Lane.
Neville Chamberlain’s voice could be heard from the proliferating wirelesses: ‘… no such undertaking has been received…cannot believe there is anything more or anything different I could have…no chance of expecting that this man will ever give up…know that you will all play your part with calmness and courage.’
Fred Shilton knocked on the door of number 23.
‘Now, may God bless you all. May He defend the right. It is the evil things that we shall be fighting against.…’
The door opened. Her Mother stood before them.
‘There’s been a bit of a to-do,’ said Fred Shilton.
‘Aye. I know,’ said Her Mother. ‘Hitler has not responded to our ultimatum. We’re at war with Nazi Germany.’
‘No,’ said Sid Lowson. ‘Your Henry’s fallen in the Rundle.’
3 War
‘I’VE DECIDED TO volunteer,’ said Ezra.
‘Volunteer?’ said Ada.
‘Volunteer,’ said Ezra.
‘Don’t look at me,’ said Her Mother.
Henry sat on the floor and looked from one face to another, forgetting his game, in which an empty tin of Parkinson’s Old-Fashioned Humbugs, brought by Uncle Teddy and Auntie Doris on a rare visit, had represented a Thurmarsh Corporation tram. He sensed that this was important.
‘Volunteer?’ repeated Ada incredulously.
‘Aye…well…’ said Ezra. ‘Let’s face it, mother. It isn’t a reserved occupation, isn’t penknives.’
The month was May, the year 1940. Hitler had not invaded Thurmarsh. The Paradise cul-de-sacs had suffered only two casualties during the Phoney War. They were Archie Halliday and his goldfish. Archie Halliday had been knocked down by a car which hadn’t seen him in the blackout. His goldfish had frozen to death during the long, hard winter.
‘I’ve got to serve my country,’ said Ezra. ‘We all have. Think on, mother. What would tha reckon to me if I let t’ others do all t’ fighting?’
‘There’s ways to serve thy country baht volunteering,’ said Ada.
‘I know. I’ve tried ’em,’ said Ezra
‘I’m saying nowt,’ said Her Mother.
Henry’s life had hardly been affected by the war. He had his Mickey Mouse gas-mask, which he liked. A white circle had been painted on the wall of number 1 Paradise Lane. Ezra had explained that the letters inside the circle were an S and a P. They indicated that number 1 Paradise Lane, had the stirrup pump for the street.
‘Look at him,’ said Ada, pursing her lips. ‘Is he fighting
material? If Hitler’s crack Panzer divisions see a scranny feller like him coming towards them, will they panic?’
‘All right,’ said Ezra. ‘They may fail me, but I can try.’
‘Pigs may fly,’ said Ada.
The Phoney War was coming to an end. Hitler had invaded the Low Countries. Holland had fallen. Belgium was fighting for her life.
‘I thought tha liked being an air raid warden,’ said Ada. ‘Tha looks just grand wi’ t’ helmet and navy blue pullover wi’ yellow stripe.’
‘Navy blue suits him,’ said Her Mother. ‘I’ve allus said that.’
Ezra stood up, drew himself up to his full five foot three, and glared down at the two large women in his life. Henry clutched his empty tin of Parkinson’s Old-Fashioned Humbugs tightly. A railway engine whistled furiously, and a dog barked.
‘I’m talking about resisting t’ evil territorial demands of t’ fascist dictator, not helmets,’ said Ezra. ‘I’m talking about survival of human freedom, not navy blue pullovers wi’ yellow stripes. They don’t want us part-timers any more any road, now they’ve got their paid officials. They complain we can’t work eight-hour shifts because of us jobs. They say it upsets their rostering. Thus is the common man’s idealistic spirit constantly thwarted by petty officialdom. That’s what Reg Hammond says, any road.’
‘Reg Hammond!’ said Ada, as if that explained everything. ‘Reg Hammond! He’s allus got plenty to say for hisself. Is he volunteering?’
‘He can’t,’ said Ezra. ‘He’s in a reserved occupation.’
‘Nobody can make thy mind up for thee,’ said Her Mother. ‘That’s what my Herbert used to say, any road.’
Henry couldn’t sleep. Sleep was funny. There wasn’t any way of making yourself fall asleep, so when you couldn’t sleep you couldn’t understand how you ever could.
It was a hot night in August. The Battle of Britain was in full cry. Germany had occupied the Channel Isles. The invasion of mainland Britain was expected at any moment. Her Mother said parachutists had landed at Rotherham. In the morning, Ezra would join the war. They hadn’t failed him. They had failed Sid Lowson, who looked twice as fit as Ezra, but they hadn’t failed Ezra. This surprised Ada, but not Henry. It was common knowledge that his father had strangled a parrot. Henry was still rather vague about the war, but he knew that the object of it was to kill Germans, and supposed that his father must be going to take a pretty exalted role in the strangling section of the British army.