If Only They Could Talk

by Ian Walker

  “You’re playing with the big boys now,” he said to me. “So you’d better get your act together, otherwise you’ll be out on your ear. Just remember that I will be watching your every move, Goodyear.”

  I didn’t want to give him any excuse to reprimand me, but my situation wasn’t helped by the poor performance of my region.

  Then in November 1967, Phil called me in to give me a stage one written warning. He’d obviously had second thoughts about giving me three months to turn things around. It was either that or ‘Barry the Hatchet’ had persuaded him to speed matters up. In all probability it was the latter and my fears were confirmed when I discovered that he was sitting next to my boss as I entered the room.

  Phil told me that he would give me another two months to improve my region’s performance. If it didn’t improve, they would have to give me a stage two written warning. One more warning after that would mean dismissal. I could tell that Barry absolutely loved it. For him it was the revenge he had long been waiting for.

  I really hated work, everything about it, the people, the products and the culture. I considered resigning, but the only thing that stopped me was the thought that it would hand Barry victory on a plate.

  Things didn’t improve and by the middle of December 1967 I was already preparing myself for a second written warning the following month.

  December 21st was the day of the office Christmas party. I wasn’t looking forward to it especially since Barry was going to be there. But as a senior manager I was expected to attend.

  The party itself was held off-site and therefore was one of the few work events at which we were allowed to drink, so naturally I took full advantage of this. All the staff were there along with their wives and girlfriends. Of course I didn’t have either and so I went by myself. Janice, my secre­tary, was also there on her own and I made the mistake of making a drunken pass at her.

  She was seventeen years younger than me with greasy long hair and glasses. She was not my type at all, but I had my beer goggles on and they clouded my judgement. I can’t remember what I said to her, but I do remember her slap­ping me across the face and running out of the room.

  “Shit,” I thought to myself. “That was not a good idea.”

  I decided to leave and went to get my coat from the cloakroom. While I was in there I heard the door closing and looked up to see a woman standing next to it. It was Brenda Matthews, Barry’s wife, who I recognised from the annual staff trips and parties back at Goodyear’s. Even in my drunken state I could tell that she was at least as inebri­ated as I was.

  “Your secretary might not want to have a bit of fun, but that doesn’t apply to everyone,” she said to me.

  Brenda had a bit of a reputation for getting drunk and propositioning men. If I’d been sober I’d have run a mile. But I wasn’t, so I didn’t. Pretty soon we were snogging in between the coats and jackets. To make matters worse I’d unbuttoned her blouse and my hand was inside her bra.

  It was stupid of course. Anybody could have come into the room at any time. Eventually somebody did, and that somebody was Barry.

  He stared at us for a few seconds as Brenda started to button up her blouse. Then the insults started.

  “You pathetic excuse for a man. You never could control your drinking or keep your dick in your trousers, could you?”

  “That’s good coming from you,” I replied. “I seem to remember that you were shagging one of the members of your staff whilst you were working for me.”

  It was a really cheap shot. I’d only said it so that Brenda would know what he’d been up to.

  I could see the anger in his face. He stepped up to me and spat out the words,

  “I’m not surprised your wife married you, I heard she liked cunt and there’s no bigger cunt than you. No wonder everybody called you Little Dick.”

  If I’d been able to think about it, he was contradicting himself really badly. After all, I couldn’t be both a cunt and a little dick. But I wasn’t thinking, so that was the point at which I punched him. I’d never hit anybody before and was really surprised by the amount of blood that came out of his nose.

  All this noise had drawn the attention of others and it was one of my team who came up to me and said, “I think you’d better go home, guv. Come on, I’ll get you a cab.” With that I left, whilst Brenda was trying to stem the bleed­ing from her husband’s nose with his hanky.

  When I woke up the next morning I knew straightaway my career with Sheffield Brewery was over. After thinking about it for a few minutes, I decided to go in and face the music rather than prolong the agony.

  It didn’t take long. Phil told me that I had two choices. Either I could resign and they would give me a reference or they would sack me, in which case they wouldn’t. So I resigned. The only satisfaction I got was that Barry looked really rough, and he still had dried blood underneath his nose from where I’d punched him the night before.

  Later I heard that he and Brenda had a massive row over Christmas and then an even bigger one three months later. They divorced shortly after that. It seemed that Barry had been having numerous affairs in addition to the one that I knew about. Mind you, his wife Brenda wasn’t exactly faithful either, so in many ways they deserved each other.

  Christmas 1967 was the worst I’d ever had, in complete con­trast to that of the previous year and those of my childhood.

  It was incredible to think that in the space of twelve months I’d gone from being a successful business owner with a beautiful girlfriend to an unemployed nobody with no prospects and no partner.

  It was three days before Christmas, but it wasn’t going to be celebrated in my house. I’d burnt the Christmas tree, all the decorations and my Christmas cards in the back garden.

  I was all alone once more and I decided there and then never to celebrate Christmas again.

  Chapter 26

  Nigel put the clock on the auction pile and returned to the kitchen for his lunch.

  “This soup’s good,” he said to Molly in between mouthfuls.

  “I’m glad you like it,” she replied. “I made it from leftover chicken and vegetables.”

  “The roll’s not bad either,” he added.

  When they’d finished Nigel turned to Molly and said, “Only one more room to go. Are you ready?”

  Molly nodded and the two of them got up and went into the living room.

  There was already a substantial pile of items in front of the fireplace waiting to be taken to the auction house. In addition, there were the old and new TVs, an old fashioned record player, a really old radio, a standard lamp and a Persian rug. Finally, there was the furniture, which com­prised a three-piece suite, a coffee table, a magazine rack, a sideboard and a bookcase.

  Nigel decided to tackle the bookcase first. Most of the books were in between being antique, which would be of interest to the auction house, and modern, which could be taken to the hospice shop. As a result, they weren’t likely to be of interest to either of them.

  That was why most of the books ended up in a black bin bag destined for the recycling centre. Some of them looked like old school books and Nigel took a couple down to have a look. One was titled The Love Poems of Catullus. The other one was The Works of Pliny the Elder. Nigel opened it and saw that it had a library sticker inside that said ‘Ex Libris Chesterfield School’.

  Nigel turned to Molly and said, “Hey, it looks as if my uncle nicked most of these books from the Grammar School library.”

  *******

  I didn’t do much at all during the next couple of years except to feel sorry for myself. It was pathetic really when you think about it. I thought that the world was against me, a feeling that got worse when I received the previous year’s accounts for Sheffield Brewery. I shouldn’t have been sent them as I had left the month before. But it seemed that nobody had told the person who distributed them.

  In common with all the other breweries, the Sheffield Brewery year ran from October to September
and it was their practice to send the accounts out to everyone at direc­tor level as soon as they were available. I was nominally a director, which was why I was sent a copy of the 1966–7 accounts early in January 1968.

  A letter accompanied the accounts from the Chairman, Andrew Walsh, entitled ‘Another great year for Sheffield Brewery’. I should have thrown them straight in the bin but something made me look at them, and there in the notes to the profit and loss accounts was a payment of £12,500 to WRD. The payment was down under ‘consultancy fee’, but I knew straightaway what it was. Sheffield Brewery and WRD had plotted against me. They had agreed to split the difference between the price that Sheffield had offered in 1961 and the price they had offered in 1967. WRD had only invested £250,000 in the brewery for twelve months and yet they had come away with £312,500. Contrast that with my family who had invested four generations of hard toil and yet only came away with five and half grand.

  This was the final straw. I very rarely went out of the house except to buy food. I’d lost my company car when I’d lost my job, but I still had the old Austin 10. I’d kept it for Sarah to drive when I’d been given my first company car and since her death it had just remained in the garage.

  It only needed a good service and a new battery, but I couldn’t be bothered to take it to the local garage, so I just used to get the bus into town instead.

  I was drinking too much and not keeping the house or myself as clean as I should have done.

  Rebecca was getting more and more concerned about me, claiming that I wasn’t eating as well as I should. So in early December 1969, she invited me to have Sunday lunch with her, Herman, Nigel and Emma.

  I smartened myself up and even shaved especially for the occasion. The meal was good, the best I’d had that year and when we’d finished Rebecca turned to Herman and said to him, “Well, are you going to tell him or am I?”

  “Tell me what?” I asked.

  “Guess who I bumped into the other day?” said Herman.

  “I’ve absolutely no idea,” I replied.

  “Philip Blatherwick,” he went on.

  “What old Blubber from school?”

  “The very same, and guess what, he’s back at the Grammar School again.”

  “Well, I knew he was thick, but I didn’t think he’d still be a pupil aged 42.”

  “Very funny,” replied Herman. “No, he’s gone back as head of languages. I bumped into him in town the other day. We talked about our school days and he asked after you. Anyway, eventually he told me that poor old Hugh Janus has had a stroke, which has forced him to retire. He’s having great difficulty in finding a new Latin master and asked me if you would be interested.”

  I’d never considered a career in teaching and so what Herman was telling me came as a complete surprise.

  “But I don’t have a teaching qualification,” I said.

  “But you do have a Master’s Degree in Latin from Oxford, so you’re more than qualified. Besides which he’s desperate, so will you think about it?”

  I told him that I certainly would and he gave me Blubber’s telephone number and told me to ring it.

  If the truth were told, the prospect of me starting work again hadn’t come a moment too soon. I knew I had to get my life in order. Furthermore, the money from the sale of the brewery had nearly run out.

  I may have known Philip Blatherwick for over thirty years, but we’d never really been friends. That didn’t stop me from being extremely nervous when I phoned him up. However, it turned out that I needn’t have worried, as he was very pleased to hear from me.

  He invited me for an interview later that week. At least I thought it was for an interview, but in reality he offered me the job as soon as I walked through the door. Herman was totally correct when he’d told me that he was desperate.

  I agreed to start in January at the beginning of the new term. It was a two term contract to see if I liked it or not and also to discover how suitable I was. Little did I think at the time that I would still be there some 21 years later.

  Chapter 27

  “There’s not much call for books written in Latin these days,” said Nigel.

  “I don’t think there’s ever been much call for Latin text­books,” replied Molly, “and certainly not in charity shops.”

  Neither of them really liked throwing books away, but in reality they had very little choice.

  “I think you were being a little harsh on your uncle by claiming that he’d pinched them from the school library. After all, he was a teacher at the school so they were proba­bly given to him.”

  It didn’t take them long to finish clearing the bookcase and afterwards they decided to tackle the sideboard. This contained yet more bottles of spirits.

  “Your uncle was quite a drinker, wasn’t he?” said Molly.

  “Not really,” replied Nigel. “Most of these bottles are very old and hardly anything has been drunk from them. If he’d really been a serious drinker then surely he would have fin­ished them all off.”

  “Point taken,” replied Molly.

  *******

  My New Year’s resolution was to give up drinking, well to give up drinking spirits anyway. If I was going to make a success of my new teaching career, I couldn’t turn up reek­ing of alcohol every morning. That said I still intended to allow myself the odd pint of bitter at the weekend and the occasional glass of wine with my meal. But whisky and brandy were definitely out from now on.

  The Grammar School had changed substantially since I’d been a pupil there. Firstly, it was no longer officially called Chesterfield Grammar School. It was now simply known as Chesterfield School. Mind you that didn’t stop everybody from still referring to it as the Grammar School.

  Secondly, it had moved to a purpose-built modern campus on the outskirts of town three years previously. The old school had been close to the town centre and had been cramped and lacking in modern facilities. The new school was brimming with teaching aids and facilities such as a language labora­tory, even though I never used it to teach Latin. It also had a state-of-the-art science block, a running track and an indoor swimming pool. Mind you, it still had links with its past as it had two courts for playing fives, an obscure game invented at Eton College back in 1877. There was also a memorial room, which contained the names of all the old boys who’d given their lives during both world wars. Rupert’s name was on the World War II plaque, as was Mr Duggins’s.

  The new school had its drawbacks of course. For the boys, it was the fact that it was no longer next door to the girl’s high school and for me, it was because it was no longer within walking distance of my house. As a result, I finally got the old Austin 10 going again.

  It may have been thirty years old by then, but it still worked and made me stand out from all the other masters with their Ford Escorts and Vauxhall Vivas. I’d forgotten what a good car it was and was pleased to be reunited with it again. It seemed to be improving with age and was far better at starting now that it was kept in a garage.

  The final thing that was different about the school was that all the staff had changed, which was only to be expected being as though over thirty years had elapsed since I first started there as a pupil. Well, I say all the staff, but the one exception was Ratty Owen who looked as if he was 105 but in reality was only in his sixties.

  One thing that hadn’t altered about the school, however, was that it was an all-male affair with 800 boys and 55 mas­ters. Personally, it suited me that way as it meant there were no females to distract me. Well, not unless you included the school secretary and the dinner ladies, none of whom were likely to set my pulse racing. Furthermore, I’d decided that at 42 I no longer wanted a partner. I was perfectly satisfied with my bachelor life as it meant I could do what I wanted when I wanted. I was happy on my own, or at least that’s what I told myself.

  Many of the other masters at the school were single like myself. A group of us used to go to the pub on Fridays after school and five us would go ab
road together during the summer holidays, visiting places like the Italian lakes, Salzburg and the Rhine Valley.

  Of all the masters at the school, Brian King and Colin Potter became my closest friends. They were both ten years younger than me, but that didn’t really matter. Neither did the fact that Colin was a homosexual. He never tried it on with me, so his sexuality was never an issue.

  “It’s legal now,” joked Brian. “But I’ll be buggered if I’m going to hang around once it becomes compulsory.”

  I took to teaching like a duck to water and nobody was more surprised by this than me. Finally I had discovered my true vocation in life and as a result I was relatively happy once more.

  Keeping discipline was never an issue for me. To be fair, most of the boys came from good middle-class backgrounds and were intelligent. Furthermore, those who chose to study Latin were hardly likely to be troublemakers.

  Shortly after I started, I overheard a group of them talking in the quadrangle. They hadn’t noticed I was there.

  “What have you got next?” asked one of the boys.

  “Double Latin with old Crapper,” came the reply. “Do you know what my mother told me about him? She said that he used to be a millionaire once upon a time. But that he blew all his fortune, which is why he now teaches here.”

  I immediately walked up to him and grabbed him by the ear.

  “You refer to me either as Mr Goodyear or as sir. Do I make myself clear?” I said whilst twisting his ear and caus­ing him to yelp in pain

  “What’s your name boy?” I asked.

  “Hopkinson sir,” said the terrified boy.

  “Well Hopkinson,” I replied. “You will write out fifty times ‘I must always show respect to the masters in this school’.”

  It had taken me thirty years, but I’d finally turned into Mr Duggins. He must have been smiling down on me from above, not least because, thirty years on, pupils at the school were still calling me by the nickname he’d given me back in 1939.