The band suddenly stops and the dancers return
slowly to their seats. The sound of
conversation
wells up from the area around the bar.
I
look sideways at Hal; he's chewing
his lower
lip in contemplation.
'I don’t know whether you recall the
excitement
in the street when the men came to
build
the air-raid shelters?' He looks at
me quizzically.
'They arrive with horses and carts
carrying
bricks and building materials. After
the
workmen have knocked-off for the day,
us
kids get amongst the bricks and sand
and
build our own little houses. I remember
this
particularly well, because I try to
carry
a heap of bricks. I'm being very busy
and
industrious. A brick falls on my toe,
and
I'm in agony. The other kids are laughing
their heads off. I can still think
back to
the pain from that toe. Afterwards
I can’t
understand why the toe- nail is going
another
colour.'
I mention the now blue The Red Brick pub at the bottom of our street, but I am
interupted as woman on another table
waves
to Hal.
'How's Cathy?' she shouts.
'Fine,' Hal calls back to her, 'I'll
tell
her you were asking after her!'
Hal sniffs and turns his face away
from
her. 'Friend of Cath's, I don't like
her
myself. Too fond of the ale and a good
time.
I've heard she's at it with another
guy.'
'I know I’m always talking about time,'
frowns Hal, 'but time seems expandable
when
you’re a kid.' He smiles and takes
up the
story once more.
'The nail goes blue for a year and
then
black for a year, and the process of
falling
off takes another year – or so it seems.
In reality, the whole process probably
only
takes two to three weeks!' He looks
down
at his foot as if to recall the pain
of his
damaged toenail.'
'When the shelters are built, we feel
safe.
When the air-raid sirens go off after
that,
we head for the shelter. Mam and Dad
gather
all the family together and it doesn’t
matter
what you're wearing at the time. The
priority
is – get in the shelter quick! Of course,
there's a blackout. You can’t see your
hand
in front of you – unless it's a full
moon.
One night we all rush out in a panic
- we're
all fleeing – the whole street's fleeing
for the protection of the shelters.
I run
full tilt into the lamppost that stands
outside
Betty Hengler’s house. I run full smack
into
it – full in the face.' Hal rubs his
forehead
ruefully. 'I am picked up, carried
into the
shelter, and put in a bunk. D'yuh remember
those smelly bunks? There's me, Betty
Hengler
and our Georgie gets put in the bunk.
The
grown ups in the shelter start singing.
Someone
has a mouth organ or a squeezebox.
It's a
great singsong. If anyone's brought
some
beer, they all got the ale down. Mr
Hengler,
who's a coalman, is very good. Maybe
it's
for a selfish reason – I don’t know,
but
he never forgets to bring a bucket.
The bucket's
put outside around the side of the
shelter.
Anyone, who wants a pee, gives a polite
little
cough and a nod to someone who's by
the entranceway
– to indicate that they won’t be a
minute.
Out they go to use the bucket. The
flash
of exploding bombs intermittently illuminates
the darkness. Silver rivers of tracer-bullets
flow upward into the sky. It's just
like
Guy Fawkes' night!
Us kids can hear the grown-ups peeing
into
the bucket. D'yuh know the sound when
liquid
is poured into a bucket – there’s a
hollowing
sound and it’s almost musical? As it
fills
up, the tone changes. We enjoy the
sound
of the pee going in the bucket – and
d'yuh
know, it gets that way, we look forward
to
it. They try to cover up the noise
of it
by whistling or singing – but we can
always
hear it. I always feel like telling
them:
'You’re wasting your time – we know
you’ve
been peeing in the bucket!'
If there's any drink going, then maybe
one
or two of the women would go, but most
of
them stay with the children all night.
They
don’t seem to have to go.
Waking up in an air-raid shelter is
a great
novelty. You get dressed and walk out
of
the door straight into the street.
When you
go back in the house, you often find
the
water is off. Something's been hit
and you've
got to go down to the bottom of the
street.
You've got to go to the standpipe and
wait
in a big long queue to fill a kettle
with
water. You take it home so Mam can
make a
cup of tea.
After the war's over, the air-raid
shelters
are abandoned and just stand unused
in the
street. They soon lose their aura of
importance
and protectability. We kids use them
as play
areas. When it's getting late and we
want
a pee, we know there's a danger our
Mam will
keep us in if we go into the house
– well
sometimes we nip into the shelter and
have
a pee there. Because of this, the shelters
become stinky places.
After the ALL CLEAR, if it's been a
daylight
raid, we go looking for shrapnel, which
is
very exciting. Sometimes you pick up
a piece
of shrapnel at the top of Claudia Street
and Leta Street after they get hit.
You go
rummaging around. You find a bit of
shrapnel
– Ah! There’s a piece! – you say, and
you
pick it up, and then drop it quickly
because
it's still red hot, though it's a long
time
after it's fallen. Then there's all
those
notices, y’know – 'Careless talk costs
lives!'
'Save waste paper!' 'Save scrap metal!'
We
take tin cans and old newspapers to
school
for the war effort
Both our Walter and our Bob are called
up
for the navy. They get draughted into
the
Royal Navy. We hear Walter is in a
ship that
bombards Sicily, and our Bob is a stoker
or something on board an aircraft carrier
that fighting against the Japs in the
Pacific.
Walter meets Al Jolson while he's in
New
York. Bob’s ship is hit badly, and
there's
lots of bodies lying around. People
don’t
recognise shell shock in those days.
Nowadays
you get counselling for that sort of
thing.
In those days, you just have to get
on with
it. With Bob, those things are buried
deep
inside him. But as you and I know they
come
to the surface some time later and
affect
him deeply – but I wont go on about
that
now.’
There's a sudden deafening boom. A
mistake
with the amplification system’s volume
control
unleashes a cacophony of jangling noise.
An exaggerated tapping of the microphone
follows, as the old man tests the equipment.
We're interrupted by the strident voice
of
the bingo caller, ‘Eyes down ladies
and gentlemen
for a full house!’ Although we've purchased
bingo cards earlier and we strike off
our
numbers diligently, our luck is out.
‘The time comes for us to leave Gwladys
Street
School and go to Priory Road School,
or to
give its proper name - Stanley Park
Secondary
Modern. It's then I begin to feel aware
of
myself. It's a mixed school. I start
to look
at myself in the mirror and I don't
like
what I see. When I look at the other
kids
I know, such as Roy Lello, I see a
kid who's
quite handsome. Jud Evans is quite
a good-looking
boy too. He's regular features and
nice dark
hair. I look at them, I look in the
mirror,
and what do I see? Oh! I don’t know
what
I look like! Something under par anyway.
I have irregular teeth, squinty kind
of eyes,
hair all over the place. Scruffy as
hell.
Dozy as hell. Thick as hell. The more
I see
the more I try to hide. Then we have
to go
to Priory Road.
Soon after we start there,
we have to sit some exams, to see were
we
fitted into the scheme of things. There
again,
I wasn’t very pleased with myself –
I did
very poorly. I'm put into some kind
of class
where nowadays they put kids they call
‘divvies’.
So I'm in the divvies class when I
began
to notice girls. The girls never took
any
notice of me of course. Sometimes the
girls
used to flit around certain of the
boys –
and one of the boys they used to flit
around
is Ronnie Smith from Winslow Street.
He's
taller than I am. He has sort of aquiline
features, he's wide eyed, and he's
intelligent
looking. He's a good head of hair and
all
the rest of it. I don't like him. I
should
have liked him I suppose because everybody
else did.’ ‘I don't like him,’ I interjected,
‘I thought he's a snide!’
‘I started to come on a bit as the
years
went by’, continues Hal, ‘I'm noticing
girls
more. Becoming aware. I'm aware of
Betty
Hengler for instance. Betty took a
shine
to me. I thought then that she's a
fatty,
but if someone takes notice of you
like Betty
used to take notice of me – I'm quite
grateful
for it. In the petty squabbles that
used
to take place in the street, Betty
used to
protect me. She have a fierce temper
and
with all this weight behind her. My
God!
There's no one who could get the better
of
her. Everybody is frightened of Betty
Hengler.
Everybody! As you know Jud, when we
called
at her daughter’s house in Eton Street
not
long ago, I told you Betty Hengler's
dead
and you were genuinely shocked.’
‘I was shocked,’ I mutter as I absent-mindedly
pick at a beer-mat with my thumbnail,
‘I
just cant get used to the idea of our
contemporaries
dying and leaving us, it seems somehow
a
bit mean of them to slip away and leave
us
to carry on alone.’
‘We start organising ourselves, d'yuh
remember?
coughs Hal. ‘We joined the Lifeboys.
There
were you, our Billie, Georgie, Roy
Lello,
Brian Blackler, Alan Unwin, Alan Lee
and
me. Unfortunately, the Carrols couldn’t
join
because they were Catholics. We sort
of looked
down on them a bit because they were
Catholics.
They have these strange beliefs and
if you
went to St Francis de Sales church
with them,
you see these horrible statues and
pictures
of a man with a beard with all his
chest
opened so his heart's exposed. It's
all very
frightening and the whole atmosphere
is spooky.
It's a bit like you think about vampires
nowadays. It's all mystic. The other
strange
thing is that all Catholics have different
sorts of eyes to us. Catholics have
Catholic
eyes!
We were taught a bit of discipline
in the
Lifeboys. The taught us to march and
keep
ourselves tidy and clean. We practised
signalling
with flags – semaphore they called
it, and
we have cute little uniforms with a
blue
jersey and a sailor hat.
A couple of years later we progressed
up
to the Boys Brigade. It's a quasi-military
organisation. You swore allegiance
to the
king etc. The idea is that you discipline
your body with exercise and cleanliness
and
have a good moral outlook. They taught
you
Christianity with church parades and
bible
classes, all to help you to grow into
an
upright citizen. Upon reflection, it
didn’t
do us any harm and undoubtedly did
us a lot
of good. It did teach us a lot of things
that became useful later in life. Speaking
for myself though, I came to reject
the Christian
attitude eventually, although I understood
some of the rules were there to help
us to
get along. The military aspect of it
– the
marching, the drilling, the discipline,
the
physical exercise, the holidays, and
the
comradeship – it all helped to mould
our
characters – what else did we have?
Not much
– we only have the street.
As we grew, we formed into gangs. We
started
having raiding parties against the
Neston
Street gang. I'm always fearful of
the Neston
Street bucks. We heard stories that
if they
caught you; they ripped your balls
off. I'm
always attached to these appendages,
always
have been, I even am now. So you have
to
make sure if you were going on a raid
to
Neston Street, you always got behind
Ray
Trafford. He's about the biggest on
our side.
From the safety of Raymond Trafford’s
back,
you could shout all the obscenities
you wanted
at them, but whenever you did, you
would
think, I hope to God they never see
me when
I’m on my own without Raymond Trafford!'
*[1]
...................................................................
The organist and drummer have begun
to increase
the tempo. Middle aged couples prance
around
the small dance-floor or sway uneasily
from
leg to leg. There's a hum of conversation
and much clinking of glasses coming
from
the busy bar area.
‘Another pint Jud? Go one, you’re not
driving!’
I sit and look down on the dance floor
as
Hal threads his way through the tables
and
slowly mounts the steps that lead away
to
the service area that fringes the dance
area.
My eyes do a slow pan of the figures
that
sit at the surrounding tables. Soundless
elderly couples sit staring at the
now empty
dance-floor. A few are seated in parties
of three or more. Dotted around, are
tables
with two female occupants. Most are
deep
in conversation, their eyes roaming
restlessly.
Widows looking for a replacement mate?
Perhaps
it's simply boredom with the topic
of discussion?
Some glance in my direction. I don’t
flatter
myself. An unattached male stranger
in a
place with a predominantly regular
membership
inevitably attracts attention. When
their
glances are not reciprocated, their
swivelling
eyes fix on other reference points.
Do I
really care for the ghosts that inhabit
the
Deleted Items folder I call my childhood?
Maybe they are only symbols of a simple
and
serene remembrance? Perhaps I only
use the
lives of my street contemporaries to
exemplify
my idyllic reconstruction of a lonely
childhood?
Would I really like to be transported
back
to those mean streets? Would I really
want
to meet them again? Perhaps they're
better
left as wraith-like doorkeepers - guardians
at the portals whereby my past is retrieved.
I know I can never recapture those
experiences
of the forties and fifties. Gentle
forgetfulness
will lean more heavily on the delete
button
as the years go by. Sometimes I wonder
if
I actually experienced the reality
of the
world of the street at all. Perhaps
I constructed
an interpretation of events and time?
Possibly,
a re-construction of the past is the
only
true form of consciousness that anybody
undergoes.
I conclude that this evening in the
British
Legion Club, this meeting with Harold,
has
some deeper purpose. Is it part of
a cathartic
process? Is this reunion another part
of
my gradual coming to terms with the
legacy
of a lonely childhood? Is it a way
of trying
to understand what my early loneliness
did
to me, and how it affected my relations
with
other people in later life? Some people
I
know spend their lives avoiding introspection.
Am I having a REVELATION here in the
Halton
Brook British Legion Club! I look around
again at the reassuring scenes of cheerful
normality. Suddenly the realisation
comes
of what it's all about.
It 's about my incipient life-long
isolation!
At last, I'm mature enough to face
up to
the stark fact, that in spite of all
my large
family, regardless of my many friends,
I
'm a very lonely man – I always have
been
and always will be.
Slightly surprised with the clarity
and
candour of this self-divulgement, I
pick
up my glass and drain it to the last
dregs.
Those Eton Street days are so far away
now.
Memory is so illusive. Hal’s fantastic
recall
is helping me to pin it all down –
to give
it more shape, more resonance. I feel
a kind
of emptiness in my chest and realised
it's
a form of yearning. It's something,
which
I've heard described as gut-wrenching.
It's
an indefinable yearning for things
gone by.
I can see my poor mother's face, the
brown
trusting eyes of my dear little dog
Blackie.
‘Oh God!’ I intone, ‘Get a bloody grip
of
yourself!’
I'm thankful for Hal’s speedy return.
‘You
were quick.’ I smile.
‘I'm a regular here Jud, and I always
make
a point of tipping the barmen.’ Hal
winks.
We sit and drink our beer silently
as the
band plays the last waltz and the staff
hurry
around clearing the empty glasses from
the
tables. ‘It might be cold on the way
back?’
I query.
‘No problem’, murmurs Hal. ‘By the
way,
talkin' about the cold, d'yuh remember
those
winter-warmers we used to make? We
get an
old tin can, pierce it with lots of
holes
to let the air through, put two holes
in
the rim and fix a wire through as a
handle.
When it's finished, we put some paper
and
wood and bits of coal in it, light
it and
whirl it round and round until it glows.
The trouble is, when you swing it upwards
sometimes the tin kinks and the wire
that
holds it slips a little and all the
hot coals
come showering down the back of your
neck!
It makes you dance, I can tell you!
I turn towards Hal and smile. 'I burnt
a
big hole in my coat once,' I say, 'my
Mam
went mad over it.'
'D'yuh remember how Stanley Park is
so very
important to us,' Hal asks, we play
there
a lot. If it's quiet you can hear the
birds
twittering and you know you're away
from
the sooty street. There's a lake with
rowing
boats. We congregate on the bridge
and scrabble
our way up onto the parapet to look
over
at the boats below. You can spit down
on
the people in the boats. There's no
chance
they can catch you, for you can be
miles
away by the time they've rowed to the
shore,
disembarked and given chase. I went
back
to the bridge after I had grown up
and I
could see the ridges in the sandstone
blocks
of the bridge have been worn away by
the
countless toes of children's shoes
over the
years.’
We walk on in silence.
‘Strangely enough, my Mam and Dad first
meet on Stanley Park bridge,’ I muse.
‘If
my dad had hired a rowing boat instead,
I
probably wouldn’t be here now!’
We pass a one storied building with
closed
green shutters. There's a whitewashed
terrace
with no porch. Red and pink geraniums
run
wild. Here is a small garden is a sloping
plinth of black and white diamond tiles.
Nothing stands on it. A battered cardboard
box and a broken-down gas stove are
sunk
in the grass.
‘We go to the park with a bottle or
a jam-jar
or whatever.' Hal says softly. 'We
catch
our jack-sharps[2] and take them home.
The
poor things don’t live long. It isn't
long
before their little bodies float motionless
on the top of the smelly water. Sometimes,
whilst paddling, we stand and stare
at the
little ripples. Sometimes you lose
your balance
and you go over. It isn't very deep
as you
know, but it frightens you. You go
home soaking
wet expecting sympathy. All you get
is a
clout over the ear from your Mam. You
have
all your clothes dragged off and you
get
put to bed. I don’t think you get washed
really. You just get dried with an
old towel.
I think if the same thing happened
these
days you'd get taken to hospital and
get
all kinds of jabs. No one bothers in
those
days.’
‘Time gentleman please!’ screams the
loudspeakers.
‘Can we have your glasses please!’
We hear
the murmuring of ‘G’night love!’ Sounds
of
chairs scraping and tables being dragged.
Together we walk slowly out of the
club
and into the cold night air. Hal sets
up
a brisk pace. ‘It won’t take us long
like
this.’ he pants. Quickly we retrace
our steps
in the orange coloured light of the
sodium
lamps that lines our homeward path.
‘ D'yuh recall how we used to stand
outside
the 'Colly'.[3] and the 'Queen’s' asking
people to take us in?’ continues my
companion,
‘I got accused of bunking in to the
Queens
once,’ pants Hal. His breath came out
in
clouds in the chilly air. 'One of us
pays
to get in legitimately, then sneaks
down
to open the safety doors to let us
all in.
I've picked up an old ticket off the
floor,
so when the man with the torch comes
up and
challenges me, he isn't able to prove
I haven't
bought it legally.
"I’ll get you - you little bastard!"
He grunts.' Hal laughs aloud at the
memory.
Those days, during the performance,
they
send some one around with a big flit
gun
and in this flit gun is a mixture of
paraffin
and DDT. This particular time he's
walking
down the slightly sloping aisle flitting
his gun to the left and then to the
right.
It's supposed to kill any bugs that
might
be floating in the air or lice and
fleas
crawling about on the patrons' bodies
I think.
There's a lot of tuberculosis and polio
going
around in those days. When he gets
up to
me, he looks at me and I just look
back at
him casually. Suddenly he gives me
a quick
burst of the flit gun right in my face!’
We come to a row of brightly-lit shops
and
stand for a moment looking in at the
magazines
in a newsagent's window. Hal stops
talking.
It all comes back to me. I can smell
again
the aroma of oranges in the local fleapit
The Coliseum at the Saturday Children's
Matinees.
Every week we kids watch third-rate
American
films that extol the Americans and
denigrate
the slitty-eyed, buck-toothed Japanese.
Incredibly,
the Japanese troops all appear to be
myopic,
for they all wore steel-rimmed spectacles.
I recall some of the weekly serials.
There's
Don Winslow of the US Navy and Hopalong
Cassidy.
One of the weekly shows
is a
fourth-rate movie from the late twenties
or early thirties called Queen of the Jungle. The scratched and flickering film stock tells
the tale of a little girl trapped alone
in
a balloon. It drifts to Africa were
she's
received as a goddess by the bulging-eyed
primitives who made her their queen.
This
is long before the days of racial discrimination
and PR – so there's much use of words
like
Bongo, bongo, Massah, and Bwana. We
kids
enjoyed it though, and screamed our
heads
off with cries of ‘Look behind you!
– BEHIND
YOU!’ Such a grand name- 'Coliseum',
for
such a decrepit pile! It's now The
Everton
Supporters Club and is used for playing
Bingo.
We stare at a book behind the steamy
glass
of the window. The Spice Girls. Hal
sniggers
and points.
'The British stars of the time we liked
the most,' he says, 'were Nat Jackley,
Ben
Rigley and Will Hay. After you’d paid
you
seven pence, you hand in your ticket
to a
girl who stands just inside the entrance
door. She tears your ticket in half
and threads
one half onto a needle and cotton.
The other
half she gives to you. Obviously, it's
for
checking purposes, to stop the staff
fiddling.
On Saturday afternoon matinees the
hero in
the weekly serial triumphs over the
baddies.
The kids stamp their feet and the roar
in
the picture house is deafening. They
throw
orange peel at you. You see it flashing
through
the light of the projector beam. Thinking
back now. The pictures play a very
important
part in our childhood.’
The trees are seething with amber shadows.
Hal strides ahead and I follow down
a leafy
walk planted with a tall double row
of dense
trees whose interlocking foliage form
a green,
dark tunnel of blackness. The air is
cold
and sharp. We drift along together
between
a twin phalanx of shiny-black stanchions.
The path conducts us onward to an open
space
with a broken-down van and an abandoned
super-market
trolley. With its front wheels removed,
the
van kneels in obeisance like a forsaken
camel.
D'yuh remember Nitty Carruthers?’ Hal
winks
suddenly.
I smile. I'm amazed at the memories
this
man has stored away in his head. ‘Yes,
of
course.’ I reply, dancing slightly
to my
left, deftly avoiding some dog-shit,
‘she's
the one that's always kept back by
the Nit
Nurse.’
‘Yes,’ replies my old friend with a
throaty
chuckle, ‘she fascinates us in school
with
her continual scratching. Her hands
slip
under her desk and you’d hear her elastic
twanging – God knows what she's doing.
She
always got a cold. You sit and watch
fascinated
as a drop forms on her nose – caught
in a
shaft of sunlight through the school
window
– it's more brilliant than any diamond
you've
ever seen. The drop descends by degrees.
As you watch you see it getting longer
and
longer. The longer it gets the tenser
you
become. Then with a sudden sniff, it
goes
back to whence it came. Soon the performance
begins all over again.’
We round a corner and our nostrils
are assailed
by a pungent vegetable smell. Discarded
rows
of dead grass lie where the mowing-machine
has formatted them on an open green.
Hal spits reflectively into the gutter.
‘I once went into Mathew’s Newsagents
in
later years.' He says. 'I see Nitty
there
and she has grown into a rather beautiful
woman. She's in tears for as always,
her
life is blighted. She's on the verge
of a
nervous breakdown and said she's thinking
of killing herself. She has man-trouble.
She's already in the shop before I
arrived
– crying to Mr Matthew’s. When she
see me
– I don’t know how old I am then –
twenty-one
or twenty-two I suppose, she appealed
to
me for help. What is she going to do?
She
couldn’t stand much more. She's thinking
of putting her head in the gas oven
and committing
suicide. I stayed with her for quite
a bit
outside the shop. It made me late for
work.
I couldn’t do anything anyway. What
could
I do? I knew it's hopeless to try.
When I
eventually got to work, I'm late. I
worked
at Napier's on the East Lancashire
Road.
They used to close the gates after
a certain
time in those days. I lost a day’s
work.
I don’t know if you wanted to hear
about
Nitty Carruthers, but this is the last
time
I ever see her.
It's when I'm at Stanley Park Secondary
Modern – I suppose it's the onset of
puberty,
I become much more aware of girls.
I'm not
really worthy to have much to do with
girls,
because in my own mind I'm a scruff.
Big
teeth, tatty head, there's nothing
I can
do with my hair. I put loads of water
on
it and plaster it down, but it's still
wild.
It's as if I have a kind of a point
on my
head! It doesn’t matter what I try,
if I
attempt to comb my hair like Ronnie
Smith’s
with waves and all that, it just springs
back the way it is before. It just
falls
down all the time. So, it doesn’t matter
what I do, I still think of myself
as short,
ugly and thick. As I say, I'm not really
worthy to talk to them and they really
don't
want to talk to me. I want to talk
to them
though. I can’t really get near to
them.
So what I do is to walk near to them
and
brush up against them – not in a rude
way
– I mean maybe my shoulder brushes
against
their's. I get a little charge from
doing
this. It's my awakening. I remain full
of
self-doubt – full of unworthiness.
I consider
girls to be angels. They are creatures
just
like us – but they are not like us.
Each
day my awareness grows and each day
my unworthiness
increases.
For some boys it's so natural to approach
girls and start to talk to them, but
if I
have to speak to one of these creatures
my
face goes red and I go hot and even
get pins
and needles in my head. If the girls
look
at me and notice my discomfiture! My
God!
This makes me worse!'
You are obviously enjoying recalling
all
your ghosts.' I observe, 'your face
has become
sad, but I can tell that it is an enjoyable,
sweet sadness.'
'Yup,' says Hal,' Mam is getting older
now.
Mam has Georgie and me late on in her
childbearing
life. When she's tired and she goes
down
the cellar after a shovel full of coal,
I
go through agonies worrying about her.
I
promise myself that when I grow up,
she will
never go down the coal cellar again.
No woman
should have to do this. There's no
light.
We don't have electricity in the house.
The
only light down there is from a few
pinpricks
of light that filter down from the
ill-fitting
coal-grid above.
I always think back to this – my wife
will
tell you. There’s no woman ever labours
for
me. I put women on a pedestal and make
sure
they don’t suffer bringing up their
families.
I’ve made sure that I’ve taken more
than
the greater weight of bringing up my
children.
Hal and I walk on bathed in the yellow
light
of the street lamps. The night's grown
a
little colder, but the midges are still
active
in the wooded areas.
I've had a good night. My nostalgia-hunger's
been assuaged. I'm thinking about how
this
time with Hal has helped both of us
see and
understand a little more about who
we are
and where we have come from. It's refreshing
and important to clarify the significant
connections that underpin our individual
short lives. It's good to re-examine
the
connections between us and other people
-
between private moments and shared
experiences.
Hal and I share similar feelings about
people,
places, music, and even objects. It's
sometimes
difficult to make sense of these concealed
undercurrents, this hidden matrix.
The invisible
warp and weft, that transforms us,
binds
us, and changes the very world we live
in.
I think of the way Hal and I once threw
bottles into the water off the Isle
of Man
boat with messages inside. It was strange
how fate led me to Walney Island in
Barrow
in Furness.
'Do you remember when we were thirteen
and
we go on that trip to the Isle of Man
from
Liverpool with the Boys' Brigade?'
I ask
Hal. 'It's to a summer camp. Halfway
across
the Irish Sea I throw a bottle overboard
with a childish message inside. The
bottle
IS washed up on Walney Island where
a Barrow
youngster who gets in touch with me
after
finding the message picks it up. I
do a schoolboy's
plan drawing of Walney similar to a
kid imagining
Treasure Island. The hand of fate is
to play
its part with that floating bottle
nearly
forty years later.
In 1985, after buying and running a
hotel
in Turkey then returning to Britain
without
a job, a friend of mine in the village
called
Jane Livesey is looking through the job advertisements
in a national newspaper. She sees that
someone
is needed as a sales manager on Walney Island.
Noting the Walney Island address, her
mind
goes back to what I had told her about
the
bottle episode, she slips the advert
under
my door in Sidney Avenue. I promptly
apply
for the job and got the position.
I work there for three years and a
half years
— at the West Shore Park mobile home
development.
Eventually I am made general manager,
supervising
300 homes on the 11-acre site.
The strange thing is that it's the
mention
of Walney Island that attracts me.
Amazingly,
Earnse Bay beach where West Shore Park
now
stands, was the very place where the
young
lad found my bottle. I can't remember
the
lad's name after all this time, but
I would
dearly like to know if he remembers
the incident
all those years ago. If he can be traced,
we could have a nice reunion.
Not long before I leave the park I
wink
at a beautiful woman as I'm walking
around
the estate with a prospective customer.
The
lady that I wink at, a resident on
the park,
later becomes my third wife.
Hindsight's a great retrospective tidier
and organiser of the forking paths
that punctuate
our crazy journey along the byways
of our
transient human existence. If only
we can
make sense of the sidetracks and doubling-back
- the sudden veering off. If only we
knew
what the underworld of our hidden lives
revealed
- what strange causal factors are at
play
- what tangential touchings there are
- the
origins of the secretive chains?
Why do we meet this particular person
at
this particular time? Are we the toys
of
the gods, as the Ancient Greeks believed?
Do some omnipotent beings look down
from
partings in the clouds above and play
with
us like toys on strings? Perhaps, as
Omar
Khayyam suggests in his great Rubiat,
God
plays Chinese chequers on some vast
infinite
board with us for pawns?
If only we can expose the concealed
framework
and wiring of our brief moments in
time.
Life would be complete - be fully rationalised.
Perhaps we could understand its mystery.
I look at the clouds of suicidal moths
whirring
round the orange sodium-lamps I consider
their brief unconscious lives. I glance
at
Hal’s striding figure. It's only when
one
looks backward and sees how quickly
the last
fifty years have fled, one realises
the brevity
of life and the nearness of death.
I feel good about Hal and our lifelong
friendship.
In the far distance, I hear the familiar
sound of a foghorn coming from the
River
Mersey. It evokes warm memories of
the dear
friends of my childhood. Clare and
my two
baby sons will be snug in bed by now.
My
mind is at peace. All is well.
© George Evans 1999.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Raymond Trafford. Became a policeman.
[2] Jack Sharps. Small freshwater fish.
[3] The Colly. The Coliseum picture house.Now the Everton Supporters Club
The End
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