by Ian Walker
Or the time when we were returning to college one night after a drinking session and found an abandoned handbag in the street. In our drunken state, we decided to hang it from the statue of William Herbert outside the Bodleian Library. We then put Howard’s university scarf on his head so that it looked like he was wearing a headscarf.
We thought that it was highly amusing. However, the university authorities didn’t share our sense of humour and tried to discover who had done it. Fortunately, it had been the early hours of the morning and nobody had seen us. It was also fortunate that we had chosen Howard’s scarf as Mother had sewn my name into mine, which would rather have given the game away.
In July 1952, I returned to Oxford to get my degree. I’d passed with a 2:2, which was a little disappointing. I’d probably have gotten a 2:1 if I’d never met Howard but that’s how it goes.
Both my parents were as proud as punch as they sat in the audience at the Sheldonian Theatre watching the university’s Vice Chancellor present me with my degree. My mother was not at all well, but she still insisted on coming. It was the last event she ever attended.
“You must get it framed and put it on your office wall,” she said to me after the ceremony.
I had already started as Tied Trade Director at the brewery by then and so that was precisely what I did.
Chapter 11
“That’s one case done,” said Nigel as the last document was removed from the first case.
All the paperwork from the case had been put into a black bag destined for the recycling centre, which included their uncle’s degree certificate. Nigel and Molly had a brief discussion about whether the frame was worth keeping before it too was unceremoniously placed in the bin liner.
“Let’s break for a cup of tea before we continue,” said Molly.
Nigel didn’t need asking twice and the two of them went downstairs to the kitchen.
“You know, I can’t help feeling guilty about all of this,” said Nigel as he dunked his digestive biscuit into his tea. “Uncle Miles must have studied really hard for four years to get his degree and we’ve just thrown his certificate into the bin like yesterday’s newspaper.”
“I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again. We just haven’t got the space for all your uncle’s stuff. If we took that degree certificate home with us, all we would do is to put it into a drawer and it would never see the light of day again until we died. At which point Jacob and Flo would throw it away. I know it might seem harsh, but your uncle is dead now. Having a degree certificate isn’t going to help him anymore.”
Nigel knew she was right, but it didn’t help him to feel any less guilty about the whole situation.
It was now nearly twelve noon and they wanted to try and finish the second bedroom before lunch. So the two of them drank their tea before heading back upstairs again.
“I wonder what we’ll find in the second suitcase?” asked Nigel as he pulled it out of the wardrobe.
He didn’t have to wait long before he found out. The case contained all manner of things from their uncle and aunt’s wedding. There were photos, cards, telegrams and even a piece of wedding cake.
*******
Mother died three months after I graduated and three weeks after my 25th birthday. She’d been suffering from stomach cancer and there was nothing the doctors could do for her.
She was only 51. I’d thought that she would always be there for me, but suddenly she was no more. Father was devastated. He’d nursed her by himself through her final weeks at home.
“She looked after me back in 1918 and now it’s my turn to do the same for her,” he told me. “She needs me and I will never let her down.”
Because Father had to stay at home to look after my mother, the day-to-day running of the brewery was down to me. I had only just started as Tied Trade Director, but now I found myself doing the Managing Director and Chairman’s roles as well. It was a tough introduction to my new working life, but one that I was happy to take on as it freed up Father to look after my mother.
Truth be told, the brewery virtually ran itself. Most of our employees had been with the firm for years and were usually the sons and grandsons of former employees. None of them had to be told what to do and they just kept on doing their jobs without the need to be supervised, consuming vast volumes of beer at the same time.
I also had Rebecca to help me as she had decided not to go to university and had started working in the brewery offices when she left school in 1949. It seemed that Father had a different set of standards when it came to girls.
She was a quick learner and by 1952 she had progressed to the role of Office Manager. Being the boss’s daughter may have played a small part in her promotion. Still I was a fine one to talk after going straight into the business as Tied Trade Director, with my only previous experience being my holiday jobs.
Mother’s funeral took place at Old Brampton church, the same church where her father had been the vicar during the First World War. It was only a small church and there were so many people that a great number of them had to stand in the rain outside and listen to the service. As well as her friends and family most of the brewery employees were in attendance including Bill Jones, who’d sobered up as a mark of respect for her. Also present was Joseph Maynard along with his wife and daughter. The Maynards owned Brimington Brewery, our biggest competitor, and were distant relations of ours.
Her coffin was brought to the church on the back of a horse-drawn dray. The undertakers had arranged it specially, using two of their horses and one of our old drays that had been taken out of service in 1930. Since then it had been standing in the reception area of our offices, where it served as a constant reminder of our long history.
It was a nice touch, as was the fact that Father and I were two of the pallbearers. I’d promised myself that I wouldn’t cry, but I couldn’t stop the tears from running down my face as I entered the church. Then I looked over and saw Father brushing one away as well.
The service itself was very fitting. It was not a solemn affair, as the vicar made it a celebration of her life by telling a few light-hearted stories from her past. When it was over we laid her to rest in the churchyard, alongside her mother and father, within sight of the vicarage where she grew up.
And that was it, apart from the wake. We used the Station Hotel because none of our pubs were big enough to cater for all the people who wanted to pay their respects. My wonderful mother was gone forever, which left my grandmother, my father, my sister and myself as the only remaining members of the Goodyear family. In the space of eight years, our number had been reduced from seven down to four.
A week later, Father asked me if I was going to marry Sarah, as I’d been going out with her for seven years by then and we weren’t even engaged. I told him that I’d been waiting for the right moment, as I wasn’t going to ask her whilst I was doing my National Service or whilst I was at university. Even now that I’d started in a proper job I wanted to concentrate on learning the ropes, rather than have my mind distracted by thoughts of getting married.
Father looked at me and said, “Miles, you need to have a long hard think about the type of girl you want to marry. There are plenty more fish in the sea, you know. Perhaps Sarah isn’t the right one for you.”
He told me that he’d been talking to Joe Maynard after the funeral. His daughter, Elizabeth, was an only child and eventually she would inherit the brewery and its 47 tied houses. He then went on to say that things would only get tougher for small brewers like us. But that combined with Brimington we would have 82 pubs, making us a much greater force in the local beer market. Also we could close one of the breweries, which would make us more efficient and therefore more profitable.
“Let me get this right, Father,” I said to him. “You want me to marry Elizabeth Maynard just so that our two businesses can be combined? This is England not India. We don’t do arranged marriages here.”
“Believe that and you w
ill believe anything,” Father replied. “The Royal family have been doing it for centuries for a start. Anyway, you could do far worse, she has good childbearing hips and would make a fine mother. I’m sure you’d have many sons together, sons who could carry on the family business.”
With neither Rebecca nor myself married or even engaged, Father was clearly quite worried about the future of both the family and the brewery.
“Good childbearing hips,” I replied. “What you really mean is that she’s got a fat arse. Anyway, she looks like a horse.”
‘You don’t look at the mantelpiece whilst you’re stoking the fire, son,” was his reply.
This really shocked me, as we’d never had a conversation like this before. It certainly wouldn’t have happened if my mother had still been alive.
“All I’m saying is give it some thought,” Father continued. “If you want I can set up a date for you. You can come back here if you like. I’ll make sure that Granny and I go out for the evening. It’ll be far more comfortable than the hop store or the back of your car.”
I didn’t know what shocked me the most. The fact that my father was trying to arrange for me to have sex with Elizabeth Maynard, or the fact that he knew where Sarah and I did our courting.
“Don’t look so surprised,” he continued. “It never fails to amaze me how each generation thinks they invented sex. Where do you think your mother and I did our courting? Also Bill Jones wasn’t always so pissed that he couldn’t stay awake, and you’ve forgotten that Derek Middleton from Striding Hall and I go shooting together.”
For a second, I pictured a drunken Bill Jones spying on Sarah and I as we rolled around in the hop store, she topless and me with my trousers around my ankles. It wasn’t a pleasant thought and I soon shook it out of my head.
“Sarah is my girlfriend,” I replied. “She’s the one I’m going to marry and that’s the end of the matter.”
With that I left the room, although if I’m truthful I did give the matter a fleeting thought. After all, even though Elizabeth wasn’t the prettiest girl in town, her father did own Brimington Brewery. Perhaps she’d turn out to be every red-blooded male’s fantasy, a girl whose father owned a brewery and who shagged on the first date.
It was only a brief thought though, probably brought on because I was still a virgin aged nearly 25. However, it did help to crystallise my thoughts and two days later I asked Sarah to marry me.
It was in the front room of her parents’ house and I got down on one knee just like the old romantic that I was. She didn’t reply straight away and for a brief moment I was reminded of when I’d asked her to dance at the dance practice back in December 1944.
Finally she said, “Of course I will Miles,” much to my relief. Then I had to go and ask her father’s permission, which was pretty nerve-wracking even though he was one of the nicest, mildest mannered men I’d ever met.
My father was obviously disappointed, but congratulated us both nonetheless. My sister seemed to be even more excited than the two of us. Sarah had said that she could be one of the bridesmaids and she was keen to find out what dress she would be wearing.
The following day I met up with Sarah and both of us went to see Herman to choose our engagement ring. It was a foregone conclusion that we were going to buy it from his shop as he was my friend. Besides which he had promised me mates’ rates, which meant a 10% discount.
The ring that Sarah chose was very expensive, far more expensive than I had anticipated.
“There’s no point in buying a cheap ring,” she said to me, as we were looking through Herman’s stock. “It would send out all the wrong messages about how well we were doing and our place in society.”
I’d never taken Sarah for a snob before, but then again we’d never discussed anything as important as getting married and spending the rest of our lives together. She came from a good middle-class family. Her father was the manager of Williams Deacon’s Bank in the centre of town. They lived on New Queen Street. Okay, it was a terraced house, but it was a large terraced house in a good part of town. The people who lived there were all professionals. In fact, Mr Lock who lived next door was a director of Eyres, the furniture store in the centre of town.
However, it was becoming increasingly obvious to me that Sarah realised she would get a leg-up socially by marrying me. After all, my family were business owners rather than managers. We lived in a large detached Georgian house with servants’ quarters, even though nowadays we didn’t have any servants living in them. To be perfectly honest, I didn’t care whether Sarah was a social climber or not. She was beautiful and I loved her. That was all I cared about.
I was planning on spending about a month’s salary on the ring but in the end it cost me nearly three times that amount, even with the discount. It was a two-carat diamond solitaire and it did look spectacular. That said I was feeling decidedly impoverished by the time we left the shop.
Sarah’s parents were overjoyed when Father offered to pay half the wedding costs and a date was set for April 18th the following year. The service was booked in the Crooked Spire with a reception in a marquee at the brewery.
The big debate was over where we were going to live once we were married. Sarah wanted us to buy a house, whereas I thought that we would be better off renting to start off. Father, however, had other ideas saying that it was ridiculous having a massive house in the centre of Chesterfield with just him, Granny and Rebecca living in it and that we ought to move in with him instead. He added that Granny was now in her eighties and probably wouldn’t be around for much longer. Rebecca was 22 and would undoubtedly be getting married herself in the near future, which meant that he’d be there all by himself. This ignored the fact that Granny was as fit as a flea and Rebecca didn’t have a boyfriend, even though there were plenty who would have liked to have taken on that role.
Needless to say, Sarah wasn’t too keen on the idea of moving in with my relatives, but in the end we came to a compromise. Father offered to refurbish the entire top floor of the house, in order to create a separate one-bedroomed flat for us. This comprised Evans’s old room, a bathroom and a storage room. However, this would only be a temporary solution, as Sarah and I would then start looking for a suitable plot on which we could build our dream property.
Sarah liked the idea of designing her own house and so she reluctantly agreed to this proposal.
It was raining on the day of the wedding, which should have told me something. As a result, all the photographs had to be taken in the brewery, apart from a couple that were taken in the porch of the Crooked Spire. Sprout was my best man and Herman was an usher. Many of my old friends were there including Frank and Richard, my old RAF buddies, and Howard from university. There were also a few of my old classmates from the Grammar School, including Frith, Bateman and Stanley Worthington, the lad who’d told Mr Duggins what his nickname was.
Altogether, it was a gathering of the great and the good or, more accurately, the debauched and the disreputable. Either way, they were all my friends and I was pleased that they had all accepted our invitation to join us on our happy day.
Rebecca and Lydia were Sarah’s bridesmaids, with Lydia looking decidedly odd in a blue satin dress with white lilies embroidered around the neck. Rebecca looked far more at ease though and it was she who caught Sarah’s bouquet when she threw it over her shoulder.
Sprout’s speech went down well with the guests. He said that he hoped our marriage would be as happy as his and Georgina’s was.
Marriage had been the best thing that had ever happened to Sprout and he loved being a father. Carrot had given birth to two sons, Richard now aged three and Gordon aged eighteen months. They were like two peas in a pod, which was pretty apt given their parent’s nicknames.
Sprout went on to tell the tale of how, as naughty schoolboys, we were standing on the roof of the school bike shed when I first caught sight of Sarah. Even at that early stage I’d said she was the girl I wa
s going to marry. He recounted with mirth that my plan was nearly scuppered later that same day, when my first encounter with Sarah had resulted in her hitting me in the balls.
That line got the biggest laugh of the day. He also said that our first date had been at the school Christmas dance and that we’d been in love ever since.
For a moment I thought he was going to mention the visit to the Eros Centre in Lüneburg, but fortunately for me he didn’t. He ended by saying that the only person who was more pleased about the wedding than the two of us was Derek Middleton of Striding Hall. He was looking forward to being able to get out of his drive once more, as an Austin 10 with its windows misted up would no longer block it.
I could see that Sarah was starting to go extremely red by this stage but she was also laughing, so I knew that everything was okay. He then proposed a toast to the bridesmaids. Pretty soon after that the reception was over apart from a dance in the evening to which all our employees were invited. Father had arranged for two hogsheads of Goodyear’s Pride to be put on stillage for them at the back of the marquee.
It was a hell of a lot of beer, 864 pints to be exact. However, he’d underestimated the capacity of his workforce and the beer was all gone by 9.30, so he had to bring in some emergency bottles in order to prevent a riot. I don’t think that Sarah’s mother and father could quite believe it. The most they ever got through at the bank’s annual Christmas party was a single bottle of sherry.
Many of the guests had bought us gifts for the new flat. Father had bought us a TV and Sarah’s parents had commissioned a wardrobe with our initials carved on the front. Sprout and Carrot had bought us a Charlotte Rhead jug, which Sprout had filled with French Letters. He said that I was going to need plenty of them from now on.
Herman had bought us a set of silver fish knives and forks, which I’d noticed had been in the sale when we’d been in his shop buying the wedding ring. We got a full canteen of cutlery from Granny. The brewery workers had all clubbed together and they’d asked the local Pearson’s Pottery to make us a personalised vase. It said, ‘Miles and Sarah April 18th 1953. From all the staff at Goodyear’s Brewery.’