If Only They Could Talk

by Ian Walker

  However, I wasn’t quite finished and so I continued. “You know, if things had turned out differently you could have been my grandson or at the very least my step-grandson. You could have been part of the Goodyear family and for that reason I want to give you something.”

  With that I disappeared back inside the house and reap­peared holding the brass plaque that had originally been on the wall outside the brewery offices.

  “Thank you very much,” he said. “I will always treasure it and I promise that I will fix it to the wall outside the new brewery.”

  “And I promise that I will phone your grandmother tomorrow,” I replied and with that we said goodbye and he left.

  Alex’s visit had brought back all sorts of memories. My life had not gone as I had wanted, of that I had no doubt. Later that evening as I put my head down on my pillow I decided that there were three major events that had changed my life.

  The first was when Rupert had died. If he hadn’t decided to charge a German pillbox carrying only a wooden gun, he may well have come back alive. He should have run the company not me. He may well have made a better fist of it than I did and, as a result, we may never have lost control of the business.

  Of course I will never know the answer to that question and, anyway, what Rupert did or didn’t do was outside of my control. There was absolutely no point in beating myself up about it.

  Another major turning point was that night out with Sprout in 1965 when he told me about lager, but also told me about venture capital. He was trying to advise me to start brewing lager, which was a good idea. But at the same time, he told me how he was going to raise finance in order to grow his business. He never advised me to do the same. That was my idea and it turned out to be a big mistake.

  But the biggest mistake of my life was getting married to Sarah. I was dazzled by her good looks. I should never have been so shallow. If I had my time over again I would never choose to go out with her. I’d opt for somebody with similar interests to myself, somebody I could discuss things with, and someone I’d be happy with right into old age. But of course nobody ever gets a second chance at life.

  With that I turned my bedroom light off and went to sleep.

  When I awoke the next morning, I was feeling odd. I had a pain in my arm, which I took to be caused by sleeping in strange position, so I decided to ignore it.

  I got out of bed and ran myself a bath. After washing, shaving and cleaning my teeth I got dressed and went downstairs for my breakfast.

  I had decided to have beans on toast and so I opened a can of beans and put them on the worktop whilst I went to get a small pan.

  It was at this moment that I felt an almighty pain in my chest. I closed my eyes and doubled up in agony as I fell to the floor. When I finally opened them again I was surprised to see that I was no longer in my kitchen. Instead, I’d been transported to the living room of our old house. Not the house as it is nowadays, but the way it had been back in the 1930s. It was Christmas Day and Rupert was playing with his train set, my sister was playing with her doll and my father was sitting in front of the fire smoking his pipe whilst listening to the radio. At that moment my mother walked into the room carrying the Escalado box under her arm. She looked at me and said,

  “Hello Miles, where have you been? I haven’t seen you in ages.”

  She then added, “Tell me Miles, have you been a good boy this year?”

  “Yes Mother,” I replied. “I’ve been really good.”

  Everything was just as I remembered it from my boy­hood, the best, most perfect Christmas ever.

  I blinked and in the time it took to close and reopen my eyes I had been transported to the roof of the bike shed at school. I was looking down on the playground of the girls’ high school next door. Sarah was there dressed in her gym kit, her long legs going all the way up to her navy blue knickers. She looked so beautiful, no wonder I used to refer to her as Venus in pumps.

  Then I noticed that instead of being surrounded by her classmates she had Sprout, Herman and Carrot standing next to her. They were all smiling up at me and beckoning me to join them.

  Sarah blew me a kiss before saying, “Aren’t you coming to join us, Miles?”

  She took off her beret with a flourish before adding, “You know that I forgive you, don’t you Miles?”

  With that I climbed down the wall into the playground below and ran over to join her.

  I shouted out as I ran towards her, “Wait for me Sarah. I’m coming. I am so very sorry, I love you and I never want to be apart from you again.”

  Epilogue

  Bamford’s Auction Rooms, Rowsley, Derbyshire, Thursday May 7th 2020

  “Now we move on to Lot 132,” the auctioneer announced. “This is the first of several lots that form part of the estate of the late Mr Miles Goodyear of Chesterfield. It is a mixed lot comprising a Hornby O gauge railway, a Merrythought teddy bear, an assortment of vintage marbles and the Pip, Squeak and Wilfred annual for 1934. I have a couple of com­missioned bids on this one and I have to start the bidding at £220.

  230

  240

  250

  260

  270 and I’m out.”

  There was a couple of seconds of silence before he contin­ued, “If there are no further bids I will sell for £270.”

  Bang, his gavel went down. A dealer from Uttoxeter bought the lot.

  “Lot 133 is a 1930s uniform for Chesterfield Grammar School, complete with matching cap and tie. You also get a beret from St Helena’s school thrown in as part of the lot. Who would like to start me off at £30?”

  Silence.

  “£20 then.”

  Still silence.

  “£10 then, come on it’s got to be worth that at least.”

  Finally, there was a bid.

  “Thank you,

  12

  14

  16

  18

  20,” bang. The winning bidder was from Chesterfield Museum.

  “Lot number 134 is a 1932 Marconi Radio with a chrome-rimmed speaker and crescent tuning panel together with a 1953 Bush TV and a 1954 Pye Black Box Record player along with the original receipt for £17, 18 shillings and six pence. There has been a lot of interest in this and I have to start the bidding at £320.

  340

  360

  380

  400

  Are you out, sir?

  Yes, then it’s with me at £400,” bang. The lot was won by a commissioned bid from a shop specialising in vintage radios in Guildford.

  “Lot 135 is the first of several breweriana lots. It is an acid-etched Edwardian mirror with Goodyear’s Fine Chesterfield Beers written on it, a lovely example. I have to start the bidding at £180.

  200

  220

  240

  260

  280

  300

  320 and the book is out.

  Are there any more bids in the room?

  Well done, you’ve bought it, sir,” bang.

  The winning bidder was Alex Hopkinson and he was really glad to have bought the mirror. He continued to buy all the other Goodyear’s Brewery lots spending over £1,500 in total. It was only three months since the relaunch of Goodyear’s Brewery and it had exceeded all his projections. So much so in fact that he was beginning to regret only buying a 25-barrel plant. By the way things were going, it looked as if they would shortly be brewing at full capacity. In fact, he had already ordered two more fermenting vessels in order to help keep up with demand.

  Unlike most microbreweries, Goodyear’s of Chesterfield had a history and that history was something that Alex was keen to exploit. This was why he’d been at the auction hoping to purchase all the old memorabilia, including all the old awards, the advertising signs, old bottle labels and pub signs. In fact, the only lot that he didn’t buy was the Sheffield Brewery Clock, which was bought by a collector from Rotherham.

  Alex left the auction after the last breweriana lot and made his way to the f
ront desk of the auction house in order to pay for the lots he’d just won. In the meantime, the auc­tion continued.

  “Lot 146 is a canteen of silver cutlery hallmarked Sheffield 1952 together with a boxed set of silver fish knives and forks hallmarked Sheffield 1950.

  What am I bid for this lot?

  Start me at £100.

  Thank you.

  120 on the internet

  140

  160 on the internet.

  Any more bids?

  No? In that case I sell to the internet,” bang.

  The winning bid was made by an artist based in Barlow, near Chesterfield, who specialised in making sculptures out of old knives and forks. He was too busy to attend the auction in person and so had been bidding on the internet instead.

  “Lot number 147 is a really nice example of an art deco statue of a nude.

  I’ve got a bid on the book for this lot and I start at £160.”

  Silence.

  “If there are no further bids in the room or on the inter­net, I will sell to the maiden commissioned bid of £160,” bang.

  A collector from Leeds bought this lot. He was a busi­nessman who was working in Amsterdam on the day of the auction and so had left his bid with the auctioneer instead.

  “Lot 148 consists of a silver photograph frame, hall­marked Chester for 1870 and containing a photograph of a Victorian family. Let’s start the bidding at £50.

  £50 surely.

  Silence.

  No, well £40 then.

  Thank you.

  45

  50

  55

  60

  65

  If you are all finished then,” bang.

  The photo frame was sold to a lady from Youlgrave who wanted it for a picture of her cat. She didn’t need the pic­ture of Benjamin Goodyear and his family. In fact, nei­ther she nor anybody else knew that it was a picture of the Goodyear’s Brewery founder and so she merely threw it in the bin as soon as she got home.

  “Lot 149 is a large collection of pre-decimalisation coins. Also three ten shilling notes and two £1 notes.

  Let’s say £20.

  £20 for the old coins.

  22 on the internet

  24

  26 on the internet

  28

  30 on the internet

  32

  The internet is out so I sell to the room,” bang.

  The winning bid came from a gentleman who ran a shop selling old coins and banknotes in Buxton.

  “Lot 150 consists of a silver hipflask hallmarked Birmingham for 1915, and a silver tankard engraved with the words R and G supermarkets, hallmarked for Sheffield in 1962.

  What will you start me for this lot?

  £200

  Silence.

  £100 then

  Still silence.

  £50

  Thank you, sir.

  60

  70

  80

  Silence.

  It’s still cheap, but if there are no further bids I give you fair warning and I sell for £80,” bang.

  This lot sold to a silversmith from Sheffield who would melt them down for their metal.

  “Lot 151 is a large hibiscus patterned Moorcroft fruit bowl together with two small candlesticks also decorated with the hibiscus pattern.

  I have two commissioned bids on this lot and also a phone line booked and I start the bidding at £250.

  260

  270

  280 and I’m out.

  290 on the telephone.

  Silence.

  I sell to the telephone then,” bang.

  The winning bidder came from the owner of an antique shop in Tetbury, Gloucestershire.

  The lots kept on coming thick and fast. Colin Potter bought the Chesterfield School glass tankard for only £10. He’d wanted it as he’d smashed his own a few years earlier. The clock that Major Goodyear had received on his retire­ment in 1958 was sold for £40 to a dealer from Matlock. Different antique shop owners bought the Persian rug, stan­dard lamp, Pearson’s pottery vase, RAF cap badge, Royal Doulton plates and the copper charger. The various prints and paintings were bundled together into three lots and were bought by three different dealers. However, one of the paintings had been singled out to be sold in a lot by itself.

  Finally, the auctioneer arrived at this lot, the last one con­taining items from Miles’s house.

  “Now on to Lot number 159.

  The one you’ve all been waiting for.

  It’s a 1955 oil on canvas painting of Chesterfield Marketplace by L.S. Lowry. This painting comes with the original receipt for £50 signed by the artist. No doubt, we will exceed that amount today.

  I have sixteen commissioned bids for this lot, including bids from some of the most prestigious art galleries in the world. There are eleven telephone bidders from as far afield as New York, Johannesburg and Sydney and I also have numerous internet bidders.

  You can ignore the guide price on this one, as I have to start the bidding at £3 million.

  Do I see 3.1?”

  The end

  Author’s Notes

  There were originally three breweries in Chesterfield, which were Chesterfield Brewery, Brampton Brewery and Scarsdale Brewery. Of these, Scarsdale was the smallest with only 35 tied pubs and ten off-licenses. It was also the one that my father worked for, starting as a junior clerk in 1940 when he was fourteen years old.

  My father used to tell many stories about his days at the brewery and many of the events in this book are based on his reminiscences. For example, the incident of the men setting fire to the cellar flaps during the war actually happened. The pub involved was the Walton Hotel on St Augustines Road, Chesterfield. The hotel has since been demolished.

  Another thing he told me was that on his first day at work the ladies in the bottling hall stripped him naked and stamped his private parts with the brewery stamp.

  Scarsdale Brewery started to go downhill when Major Gerald Birkin took over the running of the family busi­ness from his father shortly after the end of World War II. It was never intended that Major Birkin would inherit the brewery, but just as in this story, his elder brother had been killed whilst attacking a German pillbox armed only with a wooden gun.

  Major Birkin ran the brewery along with his two sisters, but he was not a businessman and eventually he sold out to Whitbread’s in 1959. They immediately closed the brew­ery, followed by the offices two years later. My father was one of only two Scarsdale employees who transferred to Whitbread’s offices in Sheffield.

  When my aunt died in 2016 aged 95 it fell to my wife and I to clear out her house. My uncle had died many years before and the two of them had never had any children. Following his death she never remarried and the house was full of things we had to sort out. Just like in the story we divided everything into three piles, things that we would take to auction, things that we would give to charity and things that were destined for the recycling centre.

  We had some difficult decisions to make as a lot of the items had obviously been of great sentimental value to my aunt, but meant nothing to us. Lots of her photos were quite old and since my father had died ten years earlier there was nobody left alive who could tell us who was in most of them.

  In fact the photograph described in the story is based on one I discovered whilst clearing out my aunt’s house. It is extremely old and the family in the photo must be related to me. But since there is nobody to tell me who they are, I guess I will never know for certain.

  During the clearance my wife and I light-heatedly won­dered what we would do if we discovered a genuine Lowry painting on the wall. My thinking behind this was influ­enced by the fact that several years earlier, my father had told me how the artist had once given a painting to Derek Coleman, the manager of the Civic Theatre in Chesterfield. At the time, Lowry was an unknown painter who was exhibiting in the theatre’s bar. Derek thought that the pic­ture was amateurish and gave it away.

  In 2
011, a Lowry painting, The Football Match, sold for £5.6 million at auction.

  I would like to thank Chesterfield Museum for allowing me to listen to the tapes they have of my father recalling his days at Scarsdale Brewery. It was where many of the snippets in this book came from and was the first time I’d heard his voice since his death in 2006. It brought back some tremendous memories, especially those of the stories he used tell me when I was young.

  About the Author

  Ian Walker was born in Chesterfield in 1956. His father was the chief clerk for a brewery in the town and his mother was a ballet teacher.

  He went to Chesterfield School before gaining a place at Leicester University where he studied Chemistry and Maths.

  After graduating he got a job working in the laboratory at Truman’s Brewery in Brick Lane, London. The following year he transferred to Watney’s Brewery in Mortlake, where he moved into the sales department eighteen months later.

  A variety of sales roles followed until he eventually ended up as Regional Sales Director for Scottish and Newcastle based in Bristol.

  All this came to an end in 2006 when, aged just fifty, he suffered a stroke and had to give up work. After twelve months of physiotherapy he felt sufficiently recovered to buy a pub in the North York Moors along with his wife Euníce.

  In the eight years that they owned the pub, they achieved listings in both The Good Beer Guide and The Good Pub Guide. They were also in The Times list of the top fifty places to eat in the British countryside.

  In 2016, he decided to retire and moved back to Chesterfield where he hadn’t lived for forty years. He now lives just around the corner from the house where he grew up along with his wife and Purrdey, the cat.

  He has two grownup sons from a previous marriage.

  If only they could talk is his first novel.

  Copyright

  Published by Clink Street Publishing 2020

  Copyright © 2020

  First edition.