by Ted Lewis
“Nothing, Mother, nothing.”
“I’ll tell you later,” my father said, as though what he had to tell her was too disgusting to reveal in the bright light of the dining room, as if it was only suitable for the dark of the bedroom, like his own body when he got undressed after the light was out and even then turned away from my mother when he took his underpants off.
I stood up.
“Well,” I said, “enjoy the post mortem. Goodnight, Uncle Eddie.”
“Goodnight, Victor,” he said, winking at me.
There was silence as I left the room. I went upstairs and got into bed and tried to sleep. But the moonlight was now even brighter and it seemed to clarify my mental images of the evening’s events, which were far too lively to make sleep come easily. I lay on my back and listened to the muffled hum of conversation from downstairs and looked out of the window at the moon that had made Jackson’s bum glow so brilliantly in Plaskett’s coalyard.
Clacker threw down his hammer and sat on the side of his wagon and lit up. Jackson and I were in the wagon behind him, but we were only half finished with our load. It was the hottest morning yet. The way the sunlight fell on your body had the feeling of standing just that little bit too close to an electric fire, but in this case there was no way of moving out of range. It was a uniform heat which built in discomfort as the minutes passed. The stone was scorching underfoot and the sides of the wagons were almost too hot to lay a hand on and I wondered how Clacker was managing to bear resting his backside on his wagon’s edge. It was even hot enough for Jackson to have abandoned his knife-edged over¬alls.
Jackson decided that the wagon was finished and stepped out on to the platform and lay down on the lip. His eyes were glassy and sweat coursed down his face from the inner rim of his cap but there was a line of motionless sweat on his top lip that seemed lodged on his whiskers like beads of brilliantine. His shape and position reminded me of a baby seal I’d once seen in a documentary on Alaskan seal hunters, lolling half on his side and half on his back after having received the first few blows, dazedly, uncomprehendingly, waiting for the coup de grâce.
I threw a couple of flints into the barrow.
“Grafting this morning, aren’t we?” Clacker said.
“Somebody has to,” I said, giving Jackson a look.
“That’s what I always say,” said Clacker.
I threw another flint out of the barrow and went and sat down near Jackson.
“What’s up with your mate?” Clacker said. “Pacing him too hard, are you?”
“I’m shagged out,” Jackson said.
“Oh yes?” said Clacker.
“God aye,” said Jackson. “Had a good night, didn’t we, Victor?”
I shrugged.
“Yeah we met these two lassies and we fucked ’em, didn’t we, Victor.”
I made a gesture that could have indicated either a yes or a no.
Clacker threw back his head and laughed. When he’d finished laughing he said:
“You fucked two lassies? You two?”
“Yeah, it was smart, wasn’t it, Victor?”
“It was all right,” I said.
Clacker shook his head.
My father’s car rolled up the slope. This was the first time I’d seen him since the previous evening. When Jackson turned and saw the car he leapt up off the platform’s lip and almost stood to attention. My father got out of the car and walked over to the platform’s edge, taking care not to look at me.
“Nowt to do, then?” he said to Jackson.
“Done that wagon, sir,” Jackson said, just as if he was back at school and in the presence of the Headmaster.
“Well you’d better look again. I’m paying you to do the job properly, not piss about on the surface and if you want me to think in terms of keeping you on you’ll have to do better than this.”
“Yes sir,” Jackson said. He scrambled back into the wagon and began laying about him with the hammer.
“And you,” my father said without looking at me.
I got up as slowly as I could get away with and began to get down into the wagon but before I had properly stepped off the platform my father took hold of my arm and urged me along the platform’s edge to Clacker’s wagon. We stopped but he still kept his grip on my arm.
“Now look,” he said. “And you, Jackson.” Jackson stopped working and craned his neck and peered into Clacker’s wagon. “Now look, that’s the way a wagon should look when it’s done.”
I looked into the wagon but I was out of focus with embarrassment. I felt like a child who’d been dragged out to the front of the class as an example of the poorest and been shown an example of the best. The continuation of my father’s grip made it all the worse, as if without the grip I was too stupid to support myself. I caught a glance of Clacker’s grinning face. He was thoroughly enjoying the situation.
“Do you see?” my father said, as if the prospect was beyond my comprehension. “That’s how a wagon that’s properly turned over should look.”
I shook my arm free and brushed my sleeve where my father had been holding me. My father shot me a glance.
“Well, it’s not as if I’m making a career of it,” I said, quoting Clacker. Clacker’s grin disappeared and his face became still and impassive.
I began to get down into the wagon but my father said:
“I haven’t finished with you yet.”
I stood still and looked at him.
“Your mother’s just been on the phone. Fred Metcalf’s been up to the house because he found three of his geese dead when he went to see them this morning.”
“So?” I said.
“They’d been strangled. Some bugger was in our orchard last night and they strangled three of Fred’s geese.”
“What for?” I said, knowing precisely what for; Billy must have thought they belonged to us.
“How the bloody hell should I know? Some bugger did, that’s all. Only your mother said you came home back way last night and I wondered if maybe you’d seen anybody hanging about?”
I shook my head, hoping I looked as though I couldn’t imagine who had strangled three of Fred’s geese. My father gave me a long look.
“Is that all?” I said.
“That’s all.”
I got down into the wagon. My father said to Clacker:
“We’ve got a lot of extra loads coming up for steelworks over the next few days.”
Clacker didn’t say anything.
“I was thinking instead of having breakfast and dinner up at canteen it’d save us some time if you and these two had your breaks down here.”
Clacker still didn’t say anything. His expression was as close as it had been when I’d quoted him a few minutes earlier.
“It’d save us ten minutes either way,” said my father. “Two journeys, that’s forty minutes, nearly three-quarters of an hour. Get an extra two wagons out that way.”
Clacker shrugged.
“It makes no odds to me,” he said.
“Right. We’ll start this morning.” My father turned to me. “You be timekeeper. Your first break’s at half-past nine till ten to. Then one at twenty to two.”
I looked at my watch. It was quarter-past nine. “I’ll go and tell Frank what’s happening,” my father said and walked off to the kilns.
“Hell,” said Jackson, “he’s mad with us, in’t he?”
I shook my head.
“You’re all right,” I said. “It’s me he’s getting at.”
“Do you reckon he’ll keep me on?”
“Don’t worry. I’ve told you, you’ll be all right.”
We carried on working the wagon even though there was nothing left to do to it. Eventually my father came back from the kilns, stood and
watched us for a few minutes, then got in his car and drove off. When he reached the bottom of the ramp and turned on to the road Jackson and I stopped working. Clacker sneered at us and shook his head then he got out of his wagon and walked over to the bush where his bike was parked. He undid the straps of his saddle-bag and took out some snares and then disappeared over the edge of the flint tip.
A few minutes later Gil’s lorry came lurching up the slope. After Jackson and I had unfastened the tailboard and the load had been shot into the wagon Gil said:
“Where’s Clacker?”
“Setting snares in the wheatfield,” I said.
“Only I’ve brought his mug down,” Gil said, reaching into his cab. “Give it him, will you?”
I took the mug and Gil got back in his cab and drove off. Jackson and I drifted to the edge of the flint tip and looked down into the shimmering wheatfield. There was no sign of Clacker. Then he bobbed up from the wheat, like a swimmer coming up for air. When he saw that we were looking at him he stared back for a while, then he made his way back to the edge of the field and climbed up the flint tip. When he got to the top I said:
“Gil brought this down for you.”
Clacker took the mug from me without pausing on his way back to the wagons and as he walked he said:
“Breakfast time, is it?”
I looked at my watch.
“In about five minutes.”
“Then why the fuck aren’t you in this fucking wagon?” he said, rounding on us as we trailed after him. Jackson and I stopped in our tracks.
“We were just—” Jackson began but Clacker cut him off.
“You were just,” Clacker said. “You were just.”
He turned his back on us and picked up his hammer and got down into the fresh wagon, making it impossible for Jackson and me to get down into the half-empty wagon with Clacker because the load was too small for all of us to work.
“I’ll go and empty the barrow,” Jackson said.
I nodded and began to pick flints up off the platform. Jack¬son emptied the barrow and brought it back and carefully placed it adjacent to Clacker’s wagon. I threw the flints I’d collected into the barrow. I looked at my watch. It was almost half past. I cleared my throat.
“It’s half past,” I said.
Clacker took no notice and carried on working.
“It’s breakfast time,” I said.
Again Clacker ignored me. I looked at Jackson and shrugged. We walked over to the bush and picked up our breakfasts and went over to the kiln chute and clambered down it and walked round the bottom of the kiln to the tiny shed that served as the kiln canteen. The two older kiln men had already got their mugs filled and they were dis¬appearing round the corner of the kiln to some private spot of their own. Inside the hut the Webster brothers and Duggie Forder were filling their mugs from the tea urn. Jack¬son took his plastic cup out of his lunch tin and waited for the other three to come out of the hut before going in and getting his tea. The trio lumbered past grinning their stupid grins and went round the back of the shed, between the platform’s slope and the wheatfield.
Jackson came out of the hut and said:
“Where shall we have our breakfasts?”
“We can’t have it in there,” I said, looking into the hut. “It’s like an oven.”
“Where’d the others go?”
“Round the back.”
Jackson walked to the corner of the hut and peered round.
“Come on, Victor,” he said. “Let’s sit here.”
I followed Jackson round the back. On the right was the slope of the platform, and on the left was the wheatfield, divided by a tractor track leading away in perspective to the station house and the road. In the space immediately behind the hut were four upturned panniers, and the Webster brothers and Duggie Forder were sitting on the ground lean¬ing against the sloping side of one of the panniers. Jackson sat down on the floor and propped himself up like the other three but I straddled the pannier furthest away from the lot of them. For a while there was silence while everyone, myself included, tore into their food. After a while Clacker appeared and sat down on the remaining pannier. I took out my book and started to read.
“Now, Clacker,” said the Webster brothers.
Clacker nodded to them and took a bite out of a great square piece of cheese. There was more silence. Eventually the Websters and Duggie Forder closed the lids of their tins.
“Come on, then, Duggie,” Willie said, “let’s be having a look at your mucky book, then.”
“In a minute,” said Duggie, with the air of a man who was in a position to dictate events.
“Come on, don’t fuck about,” Willie said.
Duggie took an already rolled-up cigarette out of his tobacco tin but before he could light up Willie had stretched across his brother and started to struggle with the top pocket of Duggie’s overalls, breaking Duggies cigarette in two. Duggie pushed Willie away and took the remains of his cigarette from his mouth.
“Now look what you’ve bloody done,” he said.
“Shouldn’t piss about then, should you?” said Willie. “Reckon I’m not off to show you now.”
“You what?”
“Oh, all right,” Duggie said, lighting what was left of his cigarette. “Here y’are.”
He unbuttoned the flap of his overall pocket and dragged out the magazine and flung it into Willie’s lap. Willie got up a bit and Tony crowded into him and Willie opened the book, a glossy one-and-sixpenny pin-up magazine.
“Christ, look at those tits,” Willie said, almost derisively. “They’re like footballs.”
Tony giggled and wriggled a bit closer to get a better view.
“Let’s all see, then,” Jackson said, getting up.
Willie looked at Jackson but Jackson was now on his feet. He walked over to the trio and stood to one side of them, bending over so he could see the pictures. Willie turned to another page.
“Hang on,” Jackson said, “I ain’t seen first one yet.”
Willie looked up into Jackson’s face. Jackson straightened up slightly but made no effort to move away. Willie shrugged and closed the magazine and folded his arms and looked at Jackson again. Eventually Jackson got the idea and straightened up and sauntered back to where he’d been sitting. He thrust his hands in his pockets and prodded a stone with his foot.
“Anyway,” he said, “we saw better’n that last night, didn’t we, Victor.”
I concentrated on my book and pretended I hadn’t heard him.
“You what?” Willie sneered.
“Last night,” Jackson said, leaning back against the pannier and folding his arms. “We saw better than that last night.”
“Yeah,” said Willie, turning back to the book.
“We did, didn’t we, Victor,” Jackson said indignantly. “You tell him. Christ, that Jean had bigger tits than that on her and they were real, not in a bloody book.”
The eyes of the trio were now on me.
“I expect so,” I said.
“Christ, you saw ’em, man,” Jackson said.
“It was dark,” I said, turning a page.
“You should have seen ’em,” Jackson said, turning back to the others. “They were out here.” He stretched his arms full length in front of him. “Whopping great Bristols, they were.”
The trio now seemed convinced as their interest had changed from the ribald to the serious.
“What lassies were these, then?” asked Willie.
“Two lassies we fucked last night.”
“You what?”
“Two Grimsby lassies what came over on bus last night.”
“And you fucked ’em.”
“’Course we did.”
“What, like you only met ’
em last night.”
“That’s right.”
“And they let you fuck ’em?”
“’Course.”
There was a silence while the trio laughed about it.
“You’re a bloody liar, mate,” Willie said at length.
“I’m bloody not,” Jackson said. “We had ’em in the coalyard.”
“You’re bloody lying.”
“I’m not, am I, Victor?”
I shook my head, wishing they’d all shut up.
“See,” said Jackson. “God, they were mucky buggers. My one had me cock out in pub, that’s how bad they were.”
“Bullshit.”
“It’s true. We took light bulbs out and there was nobody else in and she took my cock out. And I had her tits out an’ all. That’s how I know how big the buggers were. So now will you let us see your mucky book?”
There was more silence from the trio, if you can call heavy breathing silence. Clacker took a swig of his lemonade. Up to now he’d been looking at his racing paper but I knew he hadn’t missed any of the conversation.
“No,” said Willie. “I still say you’re bloody lying.”
“Calling gaffer’s lad a liar, are you, Willie?” Clacker said.
“You what?”
“Well, gaffer’s lad was there and he said it’s right so you must be calling him an’ all.”
The trio looked at me again. Clacker had put them in a difficult position. To call me a liar presented them with certain imagined consequences which could lead to their being directed down the road.
“Well,” Willie said, “maybe they did and maybe they didn’t. Maybe they thought they did.”
Clacker laughed.
“What, two young heroes like this, with their experi¬ence?” he said. “No, they’d know all right. You can see, can’t you, they’ve managed it hundreds of times. No doubt about it.”
“You’re only bloody jealous,” Jackson said. “You’re all pissed off because you’ve never met two lassies who let you fuck ’em same night.”