The Old Firm
Richard F. Challis
The Old Firm
Copyright Richard F. Challis
ISBN: 978-0-9871585-3-6
Published by Steve Challis
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Cover Page: Black Country by Constantin Émile Meunier.
Other Books published by Steve Challis on Smashwords
When Angles Travel by Richard F. Challis
Time and Chance by Richard F. Challis
A Bad Boy by Steve Challis
Ali the Peacemaker by Steve Challis
Index
Chapter 4 The Melody Lingers On
Chapter 5 Roland to the Rescue
Chapter 6 A Buff Funeral - Nemo Mortalium
Chapter 8 The Barmy Boy and our Dumb Friends
Chapter 9 The Borough Surveyor at Home
Chapter 10 Bink Backs a Winner
Chapter 11 To Market, To Market
Chapter 12 Alfred Barber and the Old Firm
Chapter 13 The Course of True Love
Chapter 16 Sidney and Miss Macaulay
Chapter 17 The King and Mrs. Charlesworth
Chapter 18 An Agreement Among Gentlemen
Chapter 19 Necessity - the Mother of Adversity
Chapter 20 George acquires a Retainer
Chapter 21 Frank Helps the Barmy Boy.
Chapter 24 The Army Hut in Bricklin Street
Chapter 25 "With Friends like these…….”
Chapter 27 The Old Firm's Beano
Disclaimer
The Old Firm is a work of fiction. Some of the characters in it are fictitious and any resemblance between these characters and any person, living or dead is coincidence. There are also some real people in the story. Roland Charlesworth is the author, Richard Challis. Mrs. and Mr. Charlesworth are closely based on the author’s parents. Roland’s brother Frank is loosely based one of the author’s nine siblings.
Harry Genders who appears once in the story as a carpenter and champion racing cyclist is Harry Genders (W. H. Genders) the carpenter and multiple national cycling champion and Olympic cycling competitor.
Roland’s part Airedale Terrier Jock in the story is the Author’s dog, Jock.
The incidents in the story actually happened although the order and timing of some of the incidents has been changed.
The Old Firm
CHAPTER ONE The Barmy Boy.
The signboard on the front of the house read, in cream, brown and gold:
GEORGE CHARLESWORTH
DECORATOR
It was partially obscured by frost, now thawing in the early rays of the Autumn sun. George and his men were in the yard at the rear of the house, assembling materials from the Paint Shed, and tackle from a lean-to behind it.
It was 1935 but despite the Depression George always managed to find work somewhere, though the size of his team fluctuated from ten or more, down to a low point of himself and a boy. The boy was usually Norman, generally referred to as the Barmy Boy, because of his habit of ending statements with, "I aren’t barmy, y'know! ". He was seventeen and had a wild look, partly due to the fact that he had a glass eye.
George's two sons were watching the men during the few minutes before they left for school - Roland at ten, with the experienced eye of a fellow professional who could paint and brush-grain with the best of them. At a penny an hour, he was very good value during school holidays. When extra busy, his father had been known to make sympathetic enquires about his health and suggest a day off from school. Since George's idea of appropriate therapy was to set him to work, first-coating the ceilings and walls of a new house, Roland usually denied the charge of illness, even though the prospect of earning almost a shilling was tempting. He had just sat for a scholarship to Lichfield Grammar School and had already decided that he was not going to be a painter, so he did not intend to neglect school-work. Not that his father would have wanted him to. George had a conscience - like a docile, sleepy chameleon perhaps, but alive nevertheless. Frank, now six, was at Henley Junior Boys School, after nearly two years as a Central Mixed Infant. He was too young to help the painters yet, and an amiable vagueness which enabled him to muddle the simplest of tasks, suggested already that he would never rival Roland's competence. But Frank, also, was quite sure he wasn't going to be a painter when he grew up. For that matter, their father didn't want to be a painter, and quoting from The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, he would say, "If they'd make me Archbishop of Canterbury, I'd chuck down my bloody brush this minute!" In early manhood George had joined a Young Men's Bible Class, emerging from it a convinced agnostic, so he should have refused the Archbishopric on principle but fortunately the offer was never made.
He was a brisk, sturdy man, in his mid-fortes, with greying hair and very blue eyes. He was not given to introspection, but when disillusioned or disappointed - perhaps a horse carrying his money had failed to exert itself - he would speak feelingly of the rustic life and quote from Kipling's "Glory of the Garden.” After which, he would spend a convivial evening with the Buffs or at one or more of the twenty or thirty clubs and pubs from which he obtained work occasionally, but companionship always.
ii
The Barmy Boy came racing into the yard, crouched over the handlebars of his bike. He heeled over in a tight turn and braked dramatically to a halt.
“I’m late, ‘Uncle’”, he announced. “‘ad to get me own grub an’ pack for meself as well. Me Dad’s bin up all night, ill, an’ me mum slept in late, after”
“Nothing serious?’ asked George.
“Just ‘is guts upset,” said the Barmy Boy. “’E reckoned it was some tinned salmon Mum give ‘im for ‘is tea but she went mad wen ‘e said that, an’ after a bit ‘e said as it was probably somethink ‘e’d picked up at work an’ then she carried on about that, an’ says ‘e can sleep downstairs on the sofa for a week until she’s sure ‘e’s got rid of it”.
The Barmy Boy’s father had died many years ago but he gave his step-father the courtesy title ‘Dad’.
If it had been the salmon, you’d all have been ill?” suggested George.
“Mum doesn’t like salmon,” said the Barmy Boy, “An’ I wasn’t going to eat any. I’d seen it hanging around in the pantry for a week. I aren’t barmy y’know! Even the cat ‘ad more sense than to touch it!”
“I’ve put the enamel and stuff we need for today in the car,” said George. “I’ll just have a word with the others and then we’ll go.”
Six of the men had already gone direct to the main job at Wednesbury – twenty pairs of houses being built on a reclaimed slag-heap. The whole team should have been there, but George had exhausted the painter's repertoire of delaying tactics and had to clear up three small jobs or lose them.
He and the Barmy Boy set off for 'The Shrubbery,' in the newly-acquired car - a battered old Overland Whippet. ("It goes if you whip it," said George.) The Shrubbery, the residence of Dr. and Mrs. Shaw, was in a quiet street in the select part of Walsall, safely distant from the stink of tanneries or the clatter of commerce. The house, already large, had been extended by the addition of an extra bedroom and a second bathroom, over the garage. Three weeks earlier, George and one of his men had worked on the bedroom and bathroom for a couple of days and then rejoined the main gang at Wednesbury. After making and breaking several promises, George was back, following a request from Dr. Shaw to provide him with the name of a painter who would be willing to take over from where George had left off.
"I'm going to leave you for a couple of hours," said George, after they had transferred the enamel and other supplies from the Whippet to the bedroom. "I must get round the, other jobs and see they're all right, but I'll be back by dinnertime or just after."
"Right you are, 'Uncle'," said the Barmy Boy. A long time ago someone had started calling George 'Uncle George' and now he was always 'Uncle' or ‘Nuncle’ to the men. Similarly, his business was referred to as 'The Old Firm', after a bookmaker at the local racecourse.
"Make a start on the bathroom while I'm none," continued George. "Take your time with the enamelling. You know what they say - treat it as if it was a guinea a drop. Brush it out well or it'll run and that's a bloody terrible sight. And make sure it's solid, so don't add any more thinners unless it seems to be brushing out ropey."
"Don't yer worrit yerself, 'Uncle'. I've used white enamel before. Don't yer remember?"
"Well I have - plenty of times," returned George, "and I'm still capable of making a mess of it."
"Any road, what the 'ell do they want two bathrooms for?" asked the Barmy Boy. "There's bags of time to ‘ave baths, even if they wants one every week - unless they all wants it Saturday night. 'Tisn't as if they was miners. Anyway, I knowed a family of miners once, an' all they'd got was a tin bath - an' that leaked, so they 'ad to be bloody quick in and out. But they allus looked clean to me."
"It doesn't work like that," said George, leaving. "The cleaner your job, the more baths you need. Don't ask me why - but that's the way it is.'
ii
After his circuit of the jobs where his men were working, George called in at his home.
“Im not stopping - just picking up something and then I'm on my way, back to the 'Shrubbery'," shouted George, when his wife appeared at the door.
"I've been trying to get you," said Mrs. Charlesworth. "I rang two of the jobs, but you'd left, so I guessed you were either coming here or going straight back to the 'Shrubbery'."
"Why, what's up? I left Norman hard at it."
"I don't know," said his wife, "but an hour ago I had Mrs. Shaw on the 'phone after you. She said you're to go there immediately, because Norman's drunk."
"Drunk?" exclaimed George. "He can't be. There's no drink on the place and he doesn't have enough money to go to a pub with his sandwiches. Wait a minute — she isn't suggesting he's stolen their drink is she?"
"I don't know, but I think you'd better get there as quick as you can, because she was talking about getting the police. She said he'd been singing rowdy songs."
"He often does that," said George. "It means he's happy, I believe. It's a bloody horrible noise, I'll admit and I've told him not to, in private houses. Maybe that's all it is. Anyway, I'm off. Give her a ring, will you, and say I'm on my way."
George kept his foot down on the accelerator and the Whippet responded valiantly, even touching fifty on the downhill stretch from Rushall, and delivering George at The Shrubbery in a record twelve minutes.
"I'm sorry if my man's been annoying you with his singing," he began, when Mrs. Shaw let him in.
"It's not just singing," she said. "He's drunk. He came out once and he was reeling all over the place. I was terrified. I phoned my husband and he's coming back as soon as he's finished his calls."
"Well, where's Norman now?" asked George. "It seems quiet enough to me."
"He's sleeping it off," said Mrs. Shaw. "When he went back in the bathroom, I managed to turn the key in the lock. Luckily it was on the outside as the bathroom's not yet in use."
"There's something wrong," said George. "We never take drink on to jobs - and anyway he doesn't have that sort of money."
He ran up the carpeted staircase, followed more slowly by Mrs. Shaw. Unlocking the door of the new bathroom, George opened it and was assailed by an overpowering reek of enamel. The Barmy Boy was lying on the floor, snoring loudly.
"You see:" said Mrs. Shaw.
"He's not drunk, he's unconscious," said George, angrily.
Unceremoniously he dragged the Barmy Boy by the ankles into the new bedroom and flung open the windows.
"Open all the windows and doors you can," he ordered. "Get some fresh air moving through the place. The fumes from the enamel have knocked him out."
George loosened the Barmy Boy's clothing, turned his head to one side and inserted under it a pillow he had grabbed from the bed in an adjacent bedroom.
"You'd better ring for a doctor," he said, when Mrs. Shaw returned."
Dr. Shaw should be back any minute," she said. "He'd only two more calls when I spoke to him."
"Yes, of course," said George, "I was forgetting about him."
The Barmy Boy's stertorous breathing had subsided.
He muttered disconnected words, then added clearly, "I aren't barmy, y'know!"
"I think he's coming round," said George. "A drink of cold milk might help, if you've got some."
Meekly she left to do George's bidding. The drink was brought upstairs by Dr. Shaw who had just arrived back.
"Let me have a look at him a moment, will you, Mr. Charlesworth," said Dr. Shaw.
Kneeling beside the recumbent Barmy Boy, the doctor held his wrist loosely to check his pulse, touched his forehead, raised the eyelid covering the Barmy Boy's glass eye, lowered it hastily and tried the other.
"Yes," he announced, "he'll be all right in a few minutes.
The milk you asked for is probably as good as anything. Later on, perhaps, a couple of aspirin tablets - he could well have a headache. He may want to stay at home for a day, but that's about all. Nothing serious."
"I'd like you to confirm that there's no smell of drink on his breath," said George, formally.
"No, no, it's nothing of that sort," answered the doctor.
"Just the effects of paint fumes as you guessed, Mr. Charlesworth.
One of the hazards of your trade, I suppose, like Painter's Colic, which as you know, is often chronic lead-poisoning."
"Your wife said he was drunk," pointed out George, refusing to be sidetracked.
"An understandable mistake," said Dr. Shaw. "Very alarming for a lady, alone in a house with a strange workman, I'm sure you'll agree."
The strange workman now attempted to sit up and was transferred to a chair, where he sat sipping milk and cursing vaguely as he tried to collect his wits. Meanwhile, George put the brushes in water, poured the unused enamel back into the gallon can, added a dash of sub-turps and resealed it with the lid. George and Dr. Shaw then assisted the Barmy Boy down the stairs and into the Whippet.
"Mr. Charlesworth," said Dr. Shaw as George started the engine, "we've been very patient, waiting for you to complete the Job here. I trust there's going to be no further delay."
"I really couldn't say," replied George. "I'm more concerned at present about my man. I'd like to point out, Doctor, that your wife's action in locking the door on Norman, was about the worst thing she could possibly have done. He could have died in there if I hadn't got back when I did. I'll give you a ring in a day or two and let you know how he is!"
George drove away and Dr. Shaw returned thoughtfully to his home.
"I'm O.K. y'know, 'Uncle'," said the Barmy Boy, somewhat faintly. "Got a bit of a skullache, that's all. But I'll be back finishing that bloody bathroom tomorrow, you see!"
"You won't," returned George. "You'll be at home with your feet up, taking it easy. If you're better the next day, you can join the rest of us at Wednesbury."
"Well what about the Shaws' ‘ouse?"
"The Shrubbery can wait," said George. "Just for a bit longer, they'll all have to go on sharing the same bath."
CHAPTER TWO Bink at the Wakes.
A raw November morning. Bink Allen and Bert Perry were already at the Railway Hotel, setting up tressels and planks which had been taken there during the weekend. It was only a hundred yards from George's home, so he and the Barmy Boy were walking there, carrying buckets of whitewash and distemper brushes. Because it was a Monday morning, George's overalls were clean, white and freshly ironed. They were the traditional attire of a painter; bib-and-brace overalls with wide front pouch for holding a papering brush - and a matching white jacket. The Barmy Boys blue overalls were more suitable for an inexperienced and messy worker. The four men were needed today, so that the main bar would be available for opening time in the evening, then Bink and Bert could be left to complete the job by the end of the week.
Smoke from countless cigarettes and pipes had mellowed the ceiling of the bar from the original white, to restful shades of yellow, mahogany and dark brown, in a mysterious pattern, suggesting that a great work of art might lie concealed beneath the nicotine and tar. The top half of the walls in the bar had been papered with a heavy, embossed paper which needed sticking back, where it had started to peel, and then distempering. The lower half was panelled in oak and merely required varnishing.
Opening off the bar were various rooms - Snugs, Ladies-Rooms, the Saloon-Bar and so on. While George, Bink and Bert were at work in the bar, the Barmy Boy was painting the Snug. Loud conversation was necessary, over the smack of seven-inch distemper brushes, energetically wielded, which suited them, as they were all noisy men.
Bink, nearing forty, was a swarthy man with a torso like a gorilla's and a face to match. He had a bad limp because one leg was three inches shorter than the other, but he was swift and nimble. At each step with the longer leg he gave a sort of curtsey, which kept his spine and body straight. A local boot maker had once supplied him with a boot on a three-inch base, but after a week Bink had thrown it away. Every muscle in his body, from ankle to neck, had ached.
"Cripple me - that damn thing.' he said in disgust. Bert Perry was, in his own estimate, a wag. He was a spidery fellow in his late twenties, with a perpetual grin on his face.
"Shall you be taking us to the Wakes, ‘Nuncle’?" he shouted.
“I expect I'll be taking the boys, Saturday," said George.
"The missus won't go; the weather's always wrong for her.
Either you can't see a hand in front of you for the fog, or it's chucking it down with rain."
"You want to take the lads to the boxing-booth, 'Uncle," said Bink, who, despite his leg, claimed to have been a fighter in his younger days. "It's the one Tommy Farr used to fight in."
"They all are, as far as I can gather," said George. "He must have been a busy bloke."
George had already planned to go. He was keen on boxing and often, with his two sons, went to the boxing at the Butts Inn Walsall on Sunday mornings. George sat at the ringside. For fourpence each, the boys were accommodated in a rear balcony, too remote from the ring for them to watch Sonny Lee of Leeds or any other of the local heroes, so they clambered in the roof trusses or fought each other.
"You'll be laving a go for the five quid, won't you, Bink?" asked Bert.
"I'm not that hard up," said Bink. "I've fought for fifty quid purses in me time."
"Was that before the h'accident to your leg or after?" enquired Bert innocently. By Bink's own account at various times, he had been everywhere and done everything. Sometimes he'd got his short leg at the Battle of the Somme, sometimes he'd had it from birth.
ii
Saturday was a typical Wakes day; early fog had turned to drizzle. George's two sons were waiting outside the boxing booth because he had promised to take them to the first show of the evening, after which they would go home leaving George free for the normal Saturday night round of his favourite pubs and clubs. Roland, the older boy, was preoccupied because in addition to all his own money, he had lost several shillings belonging to his father, on pinball machines and other gambling games. Frank was quiet because he had -just come off the Chair o-Plane ride and was feeling sick.
George turned up with Bink Allen, Bert Perry and the Barmy Boy. George had popped in to the Railway Tavern for a quick one and then moved on to the Alderton Working Men's Club, with three others who thought they were on the way to the Wakes. Bink was already drinking at the Alderton and joined the group. Two became involved in a darts game and were left behind when the others moved on. Brief stops were made at the Station Hotel, the Sankey Club and the Warreners Arms. George, Bink, Bert and the Barmy Boy were the final members of a constantly fluctuating group.
Inside the booth the bright lights over the ring showed the two boxers through a haze of cigarette smoke. The outer darkness was pierced haphazardly by glowing cigarettes and briefly flaring matches.
The two booth-boxers had just concluded an exhibition bout in which sound and fury had thinly hidden a mutual agreement not to get hurt. Some catcalls had been mixed with the faint applause but the audience was in a good mood. The display was just a warm-up for the real business - a challenge to anyone in the audience to take on either of the fighters. If the challenger was still on his feet after three rounds he had won five pounds. This was more than a week's wage - enough to tempt some young hopeful into the ring.
The boxer would treat his opponent gently for a round and a half, so that the bout was not over too quickly. Just as the challenger was deciding that he was on to easy money the Professional would knock him down and the local boy generally stayed down. If he was greedy and got up, to fight for the prize-money, the boxer had the whole of the third round to convince him that it was not worth it.
After issuing the challenge, the M.C. slowly revolved to inspect the audience as he waited with outstretched arm for the first challenge of the evening. After a few moments the voice of Bert the wag was heard, "Bink, here - 'e's your man:"
The M.C. correctly guessed that this was a piece of private leg-pulling, and waited. But Bink, pot-valiant and stupid, stood up. His powerful torso and black-jowled face made him look a nasty customer. He was not young but he'd do for the first bout.
"Make way for the sportsman over there!" shouted the M.C., and Bink climbed over the legs of the audience and into the ring. Then the M.C. and the boxer realised that Rink was lame.
The attempt to persuade him to withdraw produced only bluster and a demand for the five pounds. So, stripped to the waist but wearing his long trousers, Bink faced up to the young boxer in crimson shorts and white shoes. Boxing gloves had been neatly laced on Bink's fists and a Second provided for him.
During the first round the boxer danced around Bink, putting on a fine show of activity, peppering his face with light flurries and allowing Bink to connect occasionally. In the second round Bink decided to go for a knockout and limped nimbly across the ring with the idea of pinning his opponent against the ropes. Failing to hit him on the jaw, he then tried to stamp on his foot and to hit him in the eye with extended thumb - useful tricks he had employed in brawls. The boxer easily avoided both manoeuvres and hit Bink a painful blow on the side of the face, with the wrist part of his glove, rasping Rink's face with the laces.
"Listen you stupid bastard," said the boxer, turning Bink on to the ropes. "I've been told to leave you alone, because you're a cripple, so you're getting the five pounds. But try any tricks on me and I'll bloody well kill you.'
So Bink won the prize-money; and until it faded he exhibited with pride a red abrasion across his face, where, he said, the boxer had fouled him.
"I told him, "Son, if you want to get out of this ring alive - don't try anything like that again.
"Bink's going to be insufferable now," said George.
"He always was," returned Bert, unanswerably.
"Any road," said the Barmy Boy, "I just got five bob out of 'im on the strength of it, so I reckon it's worth it. I aren't barmy y'know!"
CHAPTER THREE The Better the Day.
The Barmy Boy was a braggart, particularly over his cycling. Every month or so, he had to bike to Chester to weed and tidy his father's grave and put flowers on it, for his mother. It was Monday, and over the morning mug of tea he was telling the men on the building site at Wednesbury about the previous day's trip to Chester. One of the carpenters, a bald man of fifty, was encouraging the Barmy Boy with questions, after which he scribbled a few figures on a piece of scrap wood and commented, "That was a pretty good time for the trip - you averaged fifty-eight miles an hour."
After thinking about it, the Barmy Boy said, "Well one of the clocks might of bin slow - an' I 'ad the wind with me."
"Both ways!" remarked the carpenter, returning to work.
"Of course, you know who that was?" asked George.
"Wouldn't know 'im from Adam," said the boy.
"That's Harry Genders. I've worked on jobs with Harry before. He was a racing cyclist - held a lot of records, and raced in the Olympic Games, once."
"So what!" returned the Barmy Boy. "They used to lave somebody with a red flag walking in front of them then." "That was cars," said George, scathingly.
"Any road, you'm pulling me leg," said the boy. "I aren't barmy, y’know.'
The Barmy Boy's times for his rides to Chester and back improved and once showed an average speed of seventy-six m.p.h., but then George chanced to see him one Sunday when he was supposed to be putting flowers on his father's grave in Chester.
"I don't go to Chester," he said, grinning. "I just chuck the flowers over the 'edge an' see some of me mates in Walsall. I aren't barmy, y1knowl"
A few weeks later, George wanted him for a Sunday job, painting a butcher's shop at Aldridge, but he said that he had to go to Chester.
"Look, son," said George, "all you've got to do is chuck the flowers over the hedge as usual, and join me at Aldridge, instead of wasting time in Walsall."
"It's no good, 'Uncle'," said the lad, "Mum's got suspicious, an' I've got to take a photo of the grave, with the flowers on it. She isn't barmy, y'know!"
So George had to tackle the butcher's shop unaided. He disliked Sunday work, because it interfered with his social round of the local clubs, but the shop had to be finished by Monday evening, ready for business as usual on Tuesday morning.
He had planned to do the job himself with the Barmy Boy's help, because the price wouldn't stand Sunday rates for one of his men. At the last moment he tried to enlist the help of Walter or Bink but both had made other arrangements for the Sunday.
As usual, the butcher's shop was thick with grease, which had to be shifted, with broadknife, caustic-soda and turps, before he could start first-coating the ceiling, walls and woodwork. By dinner-time, George's hands were cracked and painful from the combined effects of the caustic-soda and turps, but the clean-up was completed. After a bite of food, he could start painting. Suddenly, the Barmy Boy appeared.
"All right, 'Uncle', you can stop worriting - I'm 'ere."
"I thought you were supposed to be in Chester, taking pictures of your Dad's grave?" said George.
The Barmy Boy winked his good eye. "The snaps won't turn out," he said. "They'll be fogged. Light must of got into the camera, some'ow. I aren't barmy, y’know!"
"Get yourself some brushes," said George. "I've done the hard part on my own. I must be barmy!"
CHAPTER FOUR Walter - The Melody Lingers On.
i
For the past few weeks Walter had not been singing at his work. He was a member of the Church choir, with a pleasant tenor voice, often used for solos. He was a competent painter but singing was what he did well and enjoyed.
When George's men were working, Walter's voice would frequently be heard in 'Just a Song at Twilight', 'Bless this House' or some other popular ballad. Occasionally he would get catcalls and barking from his mates, but more commonly they would enjoy his efforts and join in the chorus. Now, despite requests to "give us a tune" he was silent.
"What's up, Walter?" shouted Bink.
"He's in love," said Bert. "He'll be going off 'is grub next!"
If Walter was in love it was not with his wife. He was thirty and had been married for ten years. His wife was a few years older. She had selected him because her two younger sisters were married and she felt humiliated by her solitary state. But she had conveniently forgotten this and would wonder aloud, in the presence of their eight-year-old daughter, what she had seen in him.
Walter was afraid of his wife and was happiest at work. If they were painting outsides, he would lead the chaffing which greeted passing girls.
"'Allo, my dear; Can anybody come?" he would shout. Or, "Does yer mother know yer out?". Often the girls would respond to this traditional banter.
"Cheeky! 'Ow did you get loose?"
On his own, Walter lacked the courage to speak and would look hungrily at the girls.
Not that his wife failed to do her duty by him. She was strong on duty, to God and even to Walter. Every month or so she would allow his tentative approach and do her duty, without pretending to enjoy it, like an Early Christian martyr. But Walter was becoming discouraged and bothering her less as time went on.
He had an allotment to cultivate as well as the back-garden of their home. The house was meticulously tidy and Walter was kept busy on constant improvements. He was a supporter of the local football team and on Saturday afternoons was allowed to go and see Walsall defeated. In the summer he played cricket instead.
This had been his life since marriage and usually he was able to "count his blessings" as his wife advised. A few months ago he had met Sheila. She worked at a Grocery Warehouse, sorting and packing, but once a month, on Saturday afternoons, she was one of three who earned some overtime by cleaning the offices.
George had secured the job of painting the exterior of the Warehouse, and at the last moment the Manager decided on a quick coat of varnish for the offices. Walter was doing this on his own that Saturday afternoon. George and the rest of the men had already finished outside and removed their tackle.
Thinking he was alone, Walter had just sung 'I Passed by Your Window' when he became aware of sound from the next room.
He opened the door to investigate. Sheila was on her knees, washing the lino with broad sweeps of a floorcloth. She was wearing a sack around her waist as an apron and had rolled up the sleeves of her blouse so that she could plunge the floorcloth into the bucket of soapy water.
Walter grinned down at her and Sheila smiled up at him.
She had a heart-shaped face, dimples and curly hair – looking to Walter as he would expect Shirley Temple to look, when she'd grown up. Because of her posture, the neck of her blouse gave Walter an entrancing glimpse of small but shapely breasts.
She stood up and said, "I think you sing lovely!"
They had talked for half-an-hour. She was seventeen - young enough to think boys of her own age "boring" and to be impressed by Walter as a man of standing, who sang solos in the Church and had a motorbike. Then Sheila realised that the other girls were leaving. Walter had persuaded her to wait while he finished so that he could give her a lift home on the pillion.
ii
Other meetings had followed. By using his Saturday afternoons, Walter had been able to take her rides to Sutton Park, to Cannock Chase, even to Bridgnorth. Walter had spoken only of friendship, but at their third meeting, when they were seated by the motorbike in a secluded part of Sutton Park, it had been clear even to Walter's timorous soul, that she expected to be kissed.
Her kisses were quite unlike the brusque contacts between Walter and his wife. Sheila's moral standards seemed to have been formed entirely by the romantic films. Kissing was in order and was therefore an accomplishment she had acquired with a clear conscience. So she kissed Walter with a passion and sophistication which belied her essential innocence and inexperience.
And Walter was carried away. Caution and fear told him to keep his head and stay out of trouble. But one afternoon while kissing Sheila who lay with closed eyes, in his arms, a gust of the first real passion he had known in his life overwhelmed him. He had not dared to tell her that he was married.
She now decided, by a circular process of reasoning, that because they were lovers they were engaged, and because they were engaged their love-making was excusable - something all engaged couples did.
A month ago she had told him that she had "missed", and was pregnant. Walter had sung no more since that day. When eventually he had admitted that he was married, she had said that he must get a divorce "quickly". Walter had not the faintest idea how anyone set about getting a divorce; he had no money - and anyway, his wife wouldn't let him. He begged her to give him a few days to sort things out, and swore her to secrecy. At their next meeting she said that she had told her mother.
"What did she say?" asked Walter, with fear clutching at his heart.
"Well, she cried a lot, but she says she'll stand by me.
She's going to tell Dad when I'm not there."
iii
So Walter was not singing and not responding to the quips of his mates. When he arrived home that day, his wife told him that a man had been to see him and was coming back later.
She did not know what it was about and seemed slightly affronted that the man had insisted that he wanted to speak to them together.
Though feeling sick with fear, Walter managed to eat enough of his meal to avoid comment, and went outside. His wife heard the roar of his motorbike as he drove away, and said to her daughter, "Now where on earth's your Dad gone at this time of night? He might at least have said! He'd better be back before that man comes!"
In the past few days, Walter had been able to think of only one escape from his trouble, and with Sheila's father on his way round, he'd no time left. He had decided to drown himself in Norton Pool, like a baker's assistant who'd got a girl into trouble a few years back. He got no further than the Railway Bridge on the Chester Road, because the rear tyre burst.
He was a mile from home and three from Norton Pool, so he turned the motorbike round and started to push. He didn't have to drown himself tonight. Tomorrow would do just as well, in fact now he'd made up his mind, any day would do. With any luck, Sheila's dad would have come and gone again, without saying anything. Or else he wasn't coming back again tonight, anyway - it was a fairish way from where she lived.
"And where might you have been?" enquired his wife acidly, when eventually he had nerved himself to enter.
"I just wanted to try the bike, 'cos the engine's been acting up, but I got a puncture on the Chester Road and I 'ad to push it all the way back."
"Well you might at least have told me," said his wife. "I felt a right fool when that man came back. He's left his card now - he's an Insurance Agent."
When Walter saw Sheila on Saturday, in the Khardoma Inn Walsall, she told him that her pregnancy was a false alarm - she was "all right now!" Her mother had said nothing to her father and did not intend to.
"Least said, soonest mended," she commented and made Sheila promise never to see Walter again after today. She need not have worried. Walter had been so badly frightened that if he had ever caught sight of Sheila again, he would have taken to his heels. On Monday, his voice was uplifted in song again.
CHAPTER FIVE Roland to the Rescue.
"'Uncle' - there's a fox in the chicken-run." shouted Bink Allen, limping swiftly into the house, where George was awaiting the arrival of his men. George rushed out, followed by the two boys, who had been getting ready for school. Bink stood looking out of the window, grinning, and in reply to Mrs. Charlesworth's query about the fox, he pointed to the calendar. It was the first of April. George had worked it out by the time he reached the fowl-pen, but on his return Bink silently handed him the calendar.
"Wait a minute:" exclaimed George, "Norman will be here any time." Taking a large envelope, he sealed the calendar into it and wrote "Mr. Gilbert Robbins" across the front.
"Just pop up to the Railway Tavern on your bike and give that to Gil, will you?" he asked, when the Barmy Boy arrived. "Wait for the answer." The boy nodded and cycled off, his glass eye glittering in the April sunshine. He was back before George and Bink had assembled the materials for the day's work.
"Thanks a lot, 'Uncle'.," he said, joining them in the paint shed at the rear of the house. "I've just 'ad me first drink of the day, thanks to you. I aren't barmy, y1know! Gil says 'e'll see yer tonight."
George was a member of all the clubs within a three-mile radius of his home, and well-known at all the pubs, too. He said that the contacts he made got him a lot of work. Certainly he knew better than anyone, which clubs were putting out tenders, and which of the club's committee members had to be 'squared' so that he would get the job. His wife was quite sure that this was an excuse for haunting the pubs and clubs, and said that he spent more than he earned. Actually, George was not a heavy drinker; he had halves when the others were drinking pints.
Gil Robbins was resident barman at the Railway Tavern. The landlady was a widow and found it useful to have him on the premises at night. But the Railway Tavern did not see George that evening. He was in hospital with concussion. A bag containing a gallon can of paint, balanced on the petrol-tank of his motor bike, jammed the steering and threw him on to his head. There were no complications, but he would be in hospital for a few days.
His wife caught a bus into Walsall next day and visited him.
"You know that tin of paint in the bag," he said in a low voice. "Well, the ambulance blokes handed it over to the police. I'd just collected it from Tom Hastilow's place'"
Mrs. Charlesworth nodded. Tom Hastilow worked for the local council and was a source of cheap paint and brushes, which he was able to steal without difficulty as he was Storekeeper.
"Any copper who looks at that paint might be smart enough to know it's not a brand you can get in the shops," said George. "I want you to send Roland to collect it from the Police Station, after school tomorrow. The quicker it's out of their hands the better. He can tell them the men need it to finish the job. You'd better warn him about it, so he doesn't open his mouth too wide."
Next day at the hospital, George greeted his wife with "Well?" as she sat by his bed.
"Yes, he got it from the Police Station all right," she said.
"He just had to sign for it." She appeared to be choosing her words carefully. "I'm afraid you're not going to be pleased about this," she continued. "Roland went and left it on the bus, on the way home."
George's jaw dropped. "That's bloody wonderful," he said,
"All it wants now is for somebody to hand it in at the same Police Station, and you'll be visiting me in prison, next week:"
"I've been thinking about it," said his wife. "If somebody finds the paint they may just stick to it, and that's that. If they're honest they'll give it to the conductor, or if he finds it, he'll hand it in to their own Lost Property place, at the bus station, and there's nothing to link it to the paint Roland collected. If you want, I could phone the bus station, to see if it's been handed in?"
"No! For Christ sake!" said George. "Let it go, and let's hope you're right."
"There's something else," said his wife, with a smile of maternal pride. "There's a letter this morning about the exam Roland took in February. He's passed, so he'll be getting a scholarship to Lichfield Grammar School. Isn't that good?"
"Wonderful," agreed George. "After a performance like yesterday, he obviously needs an education - if he's got to live by his wits - he'll starve."
CHAPTER SIX A Buff Funeral - Nemo Mortalium.
George had left school at the age of eleven. A growing awareness of the inadequacies of his education caused him, in early manhood, to join a Young Man's Bible Class in the hope of supplementing his brief schooling. He was not in search of spiritual enlightenment - it had never occurred to him to question the simple beliefs implanted in him when he was too young to defend himself. But the Superintendent's reluctance to let sleeping Gods lie, brought the issue into the pitiless light of reason and after heated arguments George left with a staunch unbelief which never failed him in the trials and tribulations of a long life.
There had been no one to guide his subsequent studies and he had committed to memory an indigestible mass of extracts from Shakespeare, Kipling, Burns, Robert W. Service, Ella Wheeler Wilcox and other luminaries of English literature. These extracts had remained with him and he inflicted them on his family and friends at the slightest provocation. He had joined the Buffs - the Royal Antediluvian Order of Buffaloes - at this time and they provided him with the tolerant, slightly inebriated audience every reciter needs. The Buffs were used to hearing George quarrelling angrily with himself, as both Brutus and Cassius, in the quarrel scene from Julius Caesar. Then there were the famous soliloquies and speeches, including "All the world's a stage", "To be or not to be", "Once more into the breach" and "Our revels now are ended", which George, after a few drinks, usually amended from "signifying nothing" to "signifying sweet f.a." - an alteration which might well have appealed to the Bard himself.
George was an enthusiastic Buff. He rarely missed meetings of the Henley Lodge and was frequently a delegate to other lodges in South Staffordshire, or even to the Grand Lodge of England.
Hanging in the front room of his home was the framed certificate of membership, which Roland had read often enough to be able to quote from it that Queen Elizabeth had given them the motto:
Nemo mortalium omnibus horis sapit, "which being freely translated means: 'No man is at all hours wise'." Roland and Frank knew that the small case contained their father's Buff regalia, because in the absence of their parents they had worn it – a beautiful blue and gold sash and collaret, a heavy embossed apron, gauntlets, and medals referred to as 'jewels.'
Today, George had taken his regalia with him, as he was representing his lodge at the funeral of a fellow-Buff. It would not be a full Buff funeral where, by courtesy of the officiating clergyman, a Buff read their own service at the graveside - the family did not want one.
George was wearing his best suit and bowler hat, so he was using the bus, rather than his motor-bike. On the way, he stopped at Higgins, the butcher at Aldridge, whose shop he and the Barmy Boy had painted. George always presented bills in person - most people found it easy to ignore a bill arriving by post, but were not so brave, face to face. But Jack Higgins said, as soon as he had glanced at the bill, "George, I'd like to pay you, but I can't. I haven't got it. Times are hard.'
George felt like saying, "Then why the bloody-hell did you get me to paint your shop, if you've got no money?" - but this Higgins was a bull of a bloke who had achieved local fame by throwing a Government Inspector into the pond on the Green opposite. So George said, "Yes, it's hard for all of us. When did you think of paying?"
"Well, George," said Higgins. "I think you might be in for quite a wait! Why don't you take it in joints of meat?
You're a family man; you must be spending a few quid a week on meat. I'd give you the best cuts and a good price."
I d better speak to the missus first," said George, evasively.
"After all, if I do that, it's got to come out of her house-keeping. But I've got to rush now; I'm on the way to a funeral."
"All right, George," said Higgins, picking up a cleaver and starting to demolish a carcase, "I'll leave it with you!"
"The cheeky bastard!" thought George, angrily. "I'll have to watch I don't paint an undertaker's, if I've got to take payment in kind!"
Nearing Walsall and glancing absently through the window of the bus, George suddenly realised that he was passing the Aldridge Road Church and that there was a line of parked cars, including a hearse.
"Christ, I'm late." he said aloud, and went clattering down the stairs of the double-decker, hitting the signal bell on the way. The driver ignored it; they had already passed the stop by the Church, but fortunately the traffic-lights at the Goodwood Road intersection were at red, so George was able to alight and walk the few hundred yards back to the Church. George didn't carry a watch - he could never remember to wind the thing and there was always a clock somewhere.
In the vestibule, George donned his regalia and entered the Church Just as the bearers were carrying out the coffin. It was taken to the graveside on a bier, and lowered into the grave on the ropes already positioned on the ground by the open grave.
While the clergyman was intoning the burial rites, George noticed that he was attracting covert glances from some of the mourners, though they shouldn't have been surprised to see a Buff there. He seemed to be the only one, but of course, if you worked for someone else, it wasn't that easy to get time off in the afternoon.
Then he heard the clergyman committing the remains of "our beloved sister, in the sure and certain hope of a joyful resurrection." Waiting until the funeral-party was moving away,
George looked at the cards on the wreaths. "For Our Dear Mother", "A Loving Granny" and so on.
"Christ! The wrong funeral!" Quickly, he removed his regalia and packed it back in its case. At the front of the Church, George inspected the board, giving details of services. St. Mark's Church. Wrong church! One of the mourners, a man of his own age, came over to George.
"Can we give you a lift back to the house?" he asked.
"No, thanks - got to get back to work," said George. "Just to pay my last respects!" To forestall questions, he hurried off in the opposite direction to which the cars were pointing.
"That wasn't very clever," muttered George. “Oh, well, nemo mortalium!
CHAPTER SEVEN The 'Nothing Job.'
Since he was eight, Roland had been helping his father, during school holidays and sometimes at weekends. At first he helped push the handcart and tidied up after the men, but quickly graduated to painting skirtings and picture-rails before they were fixed. Then he was promoted to priming skirtings in new houses, which he detested because they were usually spattered with plaster, and had splinters and nails on which the paintbrush rasped horribly, setting his teeth on edge.
George said that Roland got more paint on himself than on the woodwork and thought he could be used as a mobile colour-card, as the old clothes he kept for painting contained abundant traces of all the colours he had used. But Roland, now ten, could paint, brush-grain and even paperhang on straightforward jobs. As a matter of fact, his brush-graining was superior to his father's, once he had learned to avoid the extremes of too much linseed-oil, which caused the brushwork to run, and too much turps, which made it dry too fast, leaving it muddy and uneven.
Knots held a fascination for George and were his undoing. With his graining-brush he would leave huge whorls and simulate knots in centre-panels of doors and other inappropriate places.
By hard work and skill he would produce the effect of wood that would not have been used, even on a dog-kennel. Roland had realised that the objective was to imitate the grain of oak and he produced neat and effective work.
At first, Roland received a halfpenny an hour from his father, then a penny, and had just been awarded a further rise to three ha'pence an hour, which meant that in the holidays he could earn five or six shillings a week.
Occasionally too, George would pass on to him what he called a 'nothing job' - one where George could not have charged enough to justify moving his tackle just for a few hours work.
A 'nothing job' recently, at the home of a friend of George, had involved Roland in four visits on his bike to Pelsall, to prime, buff, grain and varnish a cupboard. At the end of this, George's crony had made hard work of giving Roland half-a-crown, which was supposed to cover materials too.
Now George had passed on another 'nothing job.' In the High Street was a shoe-shop kept by a bachelor of forty and his doting mother. Mrs. Humphrey wanted her son's workshop whitewashed as a surprise for him, while he was away from home for a few days. The workshop was a shed behind the shop, equipped with a workbench, a small anvil, a vice and a powered polishing machine. It was littered with the dust and rubbish of years; old shoes, leather off-cuts, shoe-boxes, string - the workshop of a man who could work best in a pigsty. Roland realised that while the whitewashing might take two or three hours, the clearing up before he could start would take several times as long.
But on his second day the job was complete. It was not the best whitewashing he had done, but by contrast with the former state it was startlingly clean, and he was satisfied that as his father always said, "A blind man would be glad to see it."
In the rubbish which had covered everything, he had found a heart-shaped locket on a broken silver chain. It was smooth with age and tarnished from neglect. Roland opened it and saw two portraits, faded by years in silver, of a girl whose piled up hair showed a slender neck, and of a soldier. He put it in his pocket with the intention of giving it to Mrs. Humphrey but forgot it, because he was cogitating over the problem of how much to charge. It was no use saying, "I leave it to you."
People insisted on a price. If it hadn't been for the mess, five shillings would have been reasonable.
Mrs. Humphrey was enthusiastically uncritical of his work, so looking up at her through his whitewash-speckled glasses, he said, "Ten shillings, if you think that's all right."
"Oh no!" said the old lady. "I wouldn't dream of paying you ten shillings for that:" Then,with a smile, she handed him a pound note.
Roland went jubilantly home but after tea remembered the locket and returned to the shop.
“Mrs. Humphrey," he said, "I forgot to tell you that I found this, when I was clearing up." The old lady took the locket, opened it and looked at it for what seemed a long time. Indicating the oval picture of the girl, she said, "That was me, a long time ago. Would you have recognised me?"
"Oh yes," said Roland. "You haven't changed much, really!" She laughed at this reply and then said, "That was my husband. He was a fine man:"
"Yes, I can see," said Roland. “Was he? he hesitated.
"Yes, he was killed in the war, but not the war you think."
"The Boer War?" hazarded Roland. This was a lucky shot, since the only other British war he had heard of was the Crimean and that would have ruined his reputation for tact.
"Yes, it was," said Mrs. Humphrey. “I’d lost this, years ago and I even advertised for it because I thought the chain must have gone while I was out. It grieved me to have lost it after so long, but now you've found it!" She produced something from her handbag and offered it in her closed hand.
"Guess what it is and you shall have it, for finding my locket:"
"Half-a-crown?" said Roland, then - afraid that he had overshot, which would have been embarrassing for her, he hastily amended it to, "A shilling", then realising that this was ridiculous, he lost his head and said, "A peppermint."
The old lady laughed until she had to wipe her eyes, and then gave him a pound note and a kiss.
"Tell your father from me," she said, "that you're going to be a diplomat - not a painter!" Roland passed on the message, though omitting any mention of the kiss, when he told his parents about the locket.
"Well, two pounds for whitewashing a shed, doesn't sound like a 'nothing job' to me," said his father. "You seem to have done a damn-sight better than I have today." He handed to his wife the bag he had brought in with him. It contained a shoulder of mutton - the first instalment for his work at Higgins the Butcher's.
CHAPTER EIGHT The Barmy Boy and our Dumb Friends.
The Barmy Boy had brought an air-pistol to work. "Got it off the brother of one of me mates, for an old 'Diana' rifle and five bob," he announced. "'Cos a rifle's bigger than a pistol, 'e thought it was worth more. But this is a Webley it costs over a quid. 'is dad’ll ‘ave a fit when 'e finds out - it was 'is birthday present last week:"
"What are you proposing to kill with it?" asked George, examining the pistol.
“Well I got a starling yesterday," said the Barmy Boy.
"Sitting on top of the wireless aerial. Dropped on the roof of the shed with a 'ell of a crash. Mum was putting out the washing, and she says, ‘0oh! You cruel little sod! What did you lave to do that for?' And I says, 'It never felt a thing - I shot it through the head'"