Time and Chance
By Richard F. Challis
Time and Chance
By Richard F. Challis
Copyright Richard F. Challis 1988
Published at Smashwords
Published by Steve Challis
Copyright: Richard F. Challis 1988
ISBN 978-0-9871585-1-2
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Cover picture: Fragley Canal Junction near Walsall
Also published by Steve Challis on Smashwords:
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The Old Firm by Richard F. Challis
A Bad Boy by Steve Challis
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TIME AND CHANCE
By R. F. Challis.
("I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill, but time and chance happeneth to them all." Ecclesiastes.)
FOREWORD
My first job, at the age of nine, was "footing the ladder." My father was a painter and decorator - or desecrator as he preferred to say - and when he was working up a ladder it was often necessary to have someone standing on the lowest rung, both to stop the foot of the ladder kicking outwards and to prevent traffic from running into it. This was a useful job, but boring and not well paid. I do not recall that I ever made more than sixpence at it.
My father's position, at the top of the ladder, was literally and metaphorically superior. There was more responsibility, more interest and more pay, for the man at the top. Of course, it was more dangerous, but I found that I have a good head for heights.
This then, is an account of a career which may be said to have started one cold Saturday morning in the High Street of Brownhills Staffordshire, when I decided that the bottom rung of the ladder was not very attractive.
There was never any clear idea in my youthful mind about the sort of job I would like when I grew up, though I can recall an impression that teaching would be worth doing.
This perhaps stemmed from an admiration for my first headmasters, Mr. Cooper at Brownhills Central School, where I was a "mixed infant" and Mr. Thompson at Ogley Hay Junior Boys' School. The transfer from the one school to the other followed a reorganisation, and created a conflict of loyalties. I had just learned to chant the traditional war cry:
Ogley bulldogs, fastened in a pen,
Can't get out for Central men! –
When I became an Ogley bulldog.
At home, the phrase "Mr. Thompson says so" was heard from me, as the final authority on every topic, with a regularity which amused older members of the family. Another factor which may have influenced me was that Mrs. Wilson, a family friend, used to call me "the professor" not from any manifestation of infant genius, but because I had acquired spectacles before I was two, and used to sit around looking owlishly wise.
From the age of nine, until I left school at fifteen, I helped my father during holidays, at weekends, and sometimes in the evenings after school. He was a master-painter, and during the wretched years of the Thirties, was glad of the free help he could get from any of his five sons, old enough to push a handcart or wield a brush. I say "free help" though at times we got an hourly rate. I started at a halfpenny an hour and by the time I had graduated to three ha'pence an hour, I could paint, brush-grain and paperhang competently. My father and I made a good team. Normally the wallpaper would have been edged the previous night by scissors or trimmer and often the paste was mixed overnight, though the advent of cold-water pastes made this unnecessary.
Once at the job my father would do some quick measuring while I set up the pasteboard and trestles. I digress here, to say that occasionally we transported these on bicycles. Anyone who has cycled with a trestle slung around his neck, with a six-foot pasteboard resting on the handlebar and tucked under one arm, and with a bucket swinging from the other side of the handlebar, has lived dangerously. Then my father would match and tear off the full lengths, turning them over with a quick flip so that they were ready for pasting. I pasted, my father hung the lengths and I brushed out air bubbles, cut the tops and bottoms of the lengths and brushed them down firmly. On a straight wall I had difficulty in keeping up with him, but once he reached windows or corners and had to start intricate cutting, I could relax.
There is far more art in pasting than might be supposed. If the paper is thin and is pasted too long before hanging, dreadful things will happen. The length of paper, which is always folded after being pasted, so that it can be carried, will start to dry and may not unfold when being hung. A paperhanger slides and pushes the length into position. An over-soaked paper may disintegrate on the wall under these operations. A thick paper, over-pasted and left too long will stretch, and then shrink on drying, leaving gaps between the lengths.
Frequently we would work late to finish a room, and towards ten o'clock (closing time at the pubs), my father would achieve an inspired frenzy. There would seem three -of him, frantically flinging paper in all directions. With luck, the difficult part would be completed in time for him to dash off for his drink, while I finished off, reversed any lengths he had hung upside down in his desperate haste, and tidied the room.
My father never pretended that he liked being a painter, and although he was the third generation of a Bury St. Edmunds family business, it died with him and his brother. Inevitably, painters find themselves working in cellars on glorious summer days, and on exposed gable-ends in the depths of winter. It is a messy, smelly, uncertain way of earning a living, and my father never made any attempt to persuade me to join him.
CHAPTER ONE
In 1939 Green Lane, Walsall, was a slum area. There were rows of grubby, neglected houses, one or two of which had been turned into shops, a few pubs, and a doss-house, "The Working Man's Home", outside which the residents would sit when they were not allowed inside; spitting copiously.
The nearest shop to the factory was known as "Dirty Gertie's", or just "Gertie's". Often anyone called "Slim" is a fat man, and "Curly" is bald, but "Dirty Gertie" was dirty, by any standards. She was probably in her late fifties. She seemed to be wearing all the cardigans she had ever owned, topped by a few rotting shawls. She was torpid and had a bloated, expressionless face. Her complexion was sallow, under the dirt of ages, grimed in, for ever. Since I never saw her outside the shop, it must remain a matter for conjecture whether it was the shop that smelt so bad, or Gertie, or both.
The general effect was of very rancid cheese, but with strong overtones of bugs, mice, and cats living, dying and decomposing.
Gertie sold cigarettes, tobacco, sweets, and a range of foodstuffs including cold meats, bacon and bread. There is something seriously wrong with the germ theory of food-poisoning; her customers appeared to thrive, and came back for more. During the war, popular brands of cigarettes were informally rationed. As I was not a smoker, my immediate boss, George Freeman, got me to buy a daily packet for him, to supplement his own, so I was a regular customer, but only for cigarettes.
Dirty Gertie had an equally dirty daughter - equally that is, in the sense that each washed neither herself nor her clothes, but since she was a generation younger than her mother, Ella did not look quite so bad. She was almost a midget and thick-rather than fat, like a diminutive female weight-lifter. Her eyes were large, dark and outlined in dirt. She may have been about thirty but had the child-look of the midget, so it was difficult to tell. Her teeth were white and good, though overlarge, and she used to flash them and her eyes at me in bewitching smiles. Of course, since I was just a teenager, she was merely keeping in practice, or exercising a simple reflex. There was never any risk of Dirty Gertie as my mother-in-law and her dirty daughter as a wife.
A few yards from Gertie’s was the entrance to the offices, marked by a brass plate, polished almost to illegibility by the office-cleaners, who never missed the plate, whatever else might be omitted. It read:
JOB WHEWAY & SON,LTD.
Hame & Chain Works
Established 1790
Registered Office
I entered the main doors one bright November morning in 1939 as the "new blood" that the Managing Director, W.R. Wheway, had said they needed. Eventually I would be a Department Manager, “like Mr. Powell here, who joined us at your age," he had said at the interview, indicating an ancient, rubicund gnome at his side. I was certain that I didn't want to be like Mr.Powell, but I needed a job, and there were still over a million "on the dole" despite the fact that World War 2 had started a couple of months previously. I was fifteen and now had the "School Certificate". The scholarship I held required me to remain at Lichfield Grammar School until sixteen, but because of the war, this clause was not being enforced. As the fifth in a family of ten I was lucky to have had the chance to stay at school past the normal age of fourteen. Another Departmental Manager had been called in to the interview, for my inspection. This was Harry Froggatt, who entered carrying a pen laterally between his teeth. When he took it out he had a cheerful smile and was a brisk man of forty. Maybe I could be like him instead.
Now, a fortnight later, I was an employee of the firm, and I spent my first morning perched on one of the high stools at the counting-house desk which ran the width of the General Office and accommodated Mr.Powell; another elderly Departmental Manager, Henry Joynes; as well as Mrs. Cope, and Harry Froggatt at whose side I sat. My first job each morning was to bring twenty-two massive day-books from the fireproof' safe at the end of the office and place them by Harry Froggatt, Mr.Powell and Mr. Joynes. These ledgers were the largest I have ever seen and weighed about fifteen ponds each; three, or a maximum of four at a time were a load. In these ledgers details were entered in longhand of each day's transactions. They were one of many indications that Wheway's were behind the times. The only gesture towards modernisation was a special typewriter, integral with a modified desk, so that it was possible to type into these giant books.
But the normal routine was that at the end of the day, I helped Harry Froggatt to check all the invoices the girls had typed; then we copied them longhand into the daybooks. All that was missing from this Dickensian scene was a quill pen. In the mornings I helped Harry write out the day's orders into three ledgers I collected daily from the Production Manager's office. It was necessary to "edit" the orders, since customers rarely used our catalogue numbers and descriptions. This called for experience and an ability to read a distant customer's mind. Before I left Wheway's nine years later, the ledgers had been replaced by a modern system introduced by Mr. Baker, an accountant from another company in which Wheway's had an interest. After this morning task I worked each day from about ten o'clock until late afternoon in the Warehouse, Packing-room and Despatch deck, with Mr. Freeman, one of the Company's three "outside" salesmen, no longer required "on the road".. Increasingly the factory capacity was being switched to a variety of war needs. The saddlers' ironmongery that could still be produced, went first to overseas customers and only then to the home market. At that stage, England was still trying to maintain its export trade to help pay for the war.
Two of the salesmen, Mr. Freeman and Mr. Beebee, lived locally, the third was an Irishman from Belfast. George Freeman had Northern England and Scotland as his territory,
Garnett Beebee covered Southern England; Harry Gault, all Ireland. Harry Gault was an elderly, taciturn man, who did not seem to me very Irish, until one day when I heard him lose his temper with someone and shout: "Ye're no good to the factory - at all, at all, at all!" He now worked as a progress-chaser, doing the best he could for his Irish customers.
Garnett Beebee was placed in Production as an assistant to the Factory Manager, George Keeling. Garnett was not the typical sales "rep" or "traveller". He was a member of the Plymouth Brethren and apart from impressive positive virtues, he eschewed the obvious vices, including drinking, smoking and swearing. He was a quietly decent man of thirty, who did not attempt to thrust his views on his colleagues, though he was said to engage in open-air preaching at weekends. He was tall and good-looking but by one of life's little ironies had a nose that was always red and inflamed. Garnett was a useful counterpoise for me, in adolescence, to some of the exotic characters in the factory.
Years later, when I met Garnett at an Earls Court trade show, he said: "I was rather wild yesterday, Richard!"
"Oh yes! What did you do? "cosh" an old lady?" I asked.
‘No , I went to the pictures; the first time for thirty years. The last one I saw was an early silent film of Chaplin's. Yesterday's was wide-screen Cinerama, with sound and colour!"
"Well, you've not missed much, in between," I said.
The third salesman, George Freeman, was now in charge of the warehouse and Packing-room, except for Irish and Export orders. I was introduced to him on my first day by Harry Froggatt, who said: "It's not George Formby -just his double!" George grinned in embarrassment at this gauche introduction. "Mr. Freeman", as he remained to me until his death, was a double of George Formby, and later, when we were on friendly terms, told me that once, he was halted at traffic-lights in Lancashire just as a factory shift had ended. One of the factory girls shouted: "It's George Formby". She and her friends surrounded the car, clamouring for autographs and kisses, until eventually convinced that he was not George Formby.
He loved being "on the road" and lived for the day, which never came, when he would be back on his territory. He was forty-one and had joined up when sixteen, at the start of the first World War, by falsifying his age. He served through the war in the trenches of the Western Front, where he was slightly gassed. Like most survivors of that war, he talked more of it than of the war in which we were then engaged. He was a considerate man, and it always puzzled me to hear him telling how, on occasions, he and his comrades disposed of captured Germans. One anecdote related to the over-running of some German trenches, and the dialogue went:
George: "Anyone down there?"
Reply: "Kamerad!"
George: "How many?"
Reply: "Three."
George: (pulling the pin of a grenade and throwing it down) "Then share this between you!"
Another incident was of disposing of captured Germans when escorting them back from the fighting in a convenient bend of the trenches. Later, when I read the literature of that war, I understood. Mr. Freeman was a survivor of the Somme and other scenes of carnage.
Mr. Freeman and I worked from a high-top desk at the end of the Warehouse, adjacent to the General Office. There was little clerical work, the desk was a place to keep the current order-sheets, and a base for forays into the Warehouse and beyond. Our job was to assemble, pack and despatch orders to customers in England and Scotland; Frank Etheredge, from a desk within shouting distance handled the Irish orders; old ', Mr. Webster, round the corner, dealt with the export trade.
All of us were mainly involved with orders from saddlers and harness-makers, for the firm's traditional products, based on the horse. These included hames, bits, spurs, buckles, spring-hooks, dees and rings, and chains of various sorts - backbends, bellybands, tugs, check-chains, leading-rein chains and so on. More recently, Wheway's had become involved in chain and components for industrial uses, particularly electrically welded steel chain for chain blocks and lifting tackle. Curiously, although the draught-horse was rapidly disappearing, Wheway's made little effort to promote industrial products.
The three salesmen had not called on industrial customers, who were a part-time responsibility of one of the Directors. The firm was not alone in its refusal to face facts, however; Poland had just discovered that cavalry is no match for tanks.
Increasingly now, there were war contracts for mysterious items and anonymous chain, as well as for identifiable products like non-skid chains for vehicles in the deserts of North Africa, flail-chains to be fitted to tanks, so that they could clear a path through minefields, bomb-release catches and so on.
Most of the orders for saddlers-ironmongery had to be assembled from batches put through from the Works for inspection, sorting and packing by the Warehouse "girls". Inevitably there were shortages and if we could make up a reasonable consignment we would send it, marking the missing items "to follow". When a customer urgently wanted specific items, we "progressed" them ourselves. This was often an absorbing piece of detective work.
The Welding-shop claimed to have sent a batch of one and a quarter inch gear buckles to the Barrels. The Barrels had barrelled them, (to clean them up for black-Japanning). The Blacking-shop had not seen them. The answer was that Mr. Gault had illicitly moved them to the Tinning-shop, because one of his customers in Limerick wanted tinned gear buckles. Or the Blacking-shop remembered blacking them, but the girls in the Warehouse had not received them. Mr. Webster had waylaid them and was having them surreptitiously bundled on the Export-counter.
There was an art in "order picking" and at first I was not good at it, because I did not know the girls. After I had done my best with an order, Mr. Freeman would have a last try and come back with several items, which hurt my pride. I had made the mistake of accepting "No" as an answer.
“Mrs. Bradford, do you have five gross of two-inch snap-hooks?"
Mrs. Bradford, a mournful elderly lady, would purse her lips and slowly, despairingly, shake her head. I soon discovered that this meant nothing, except that she had had a hard life. I would sit and chat with her and after P, few minutes she would perk up and find the snap-hooks. Nellie Gardner would say "No" on principle. She was an embittered spinster in her forties, whose conversation quickly arrived, from any starting point, at the disgusting nature of men.
"They're all the same - all after the one thing," was the charge. Unfortunately they were not after it from Nellie. She had a fear of dentists and had avoided them for decades. Her front teeth, barring one eye-tooth, had, decayed or broken off and the gums had closed over the roots.
Mrs. Draycotton would say "No" because she knew that Mr. Webster also wanted some and she was his sister-in-law, Mrs. Draycotton was elderly and very deaf. I could make her hear by getting close and putting power behind my voice. Ernie, Mr. Webster's assistant, said once teat she could hear anything she wanted to hear, so I set up an experiment which convinced him he was wrong. Coming alongside, I said in a normal voice: "Is that your half-crown on the floor, Mrs. Draycotton?" She remained oblivious. Only I called her Mrs. Draycotton. To everyone else, she was "Fy" (for Sophia), but I was rather formally polite in those days and it seemed to go over well with elderly ladies. I recall that when I was twelve, an old lady asked me how old I thought she was. Almost without a pause, I said "forty-eight". She was in her early sixties and was delighted. Subsequently I have admired the precision of my answer. Fifty-five would not have been a significant reduction, and forty would have sounded like ridicule or clumsy flattery. My tact earned me a copy of an unreadable book by a crank religious sect, which should have been a lesson to me. More alarmingly, she wanted to adopt me, but for some unaccountable reason my parents did not close with the offer.
Maud's first response to a request for buckles, dees or rings was vaguely negative. She was a timid, elderly, spinster and needed time for a definite yes or no. She quite liked me, because I was the "spitting, image" of Father Somebody. This was something I had to accept. When it was not Father Somebody I resembled, it was the Reverend Someone. No one has said it in recent years, so presumably I have outgrown it.
Edna would say "yes" and give you the wrong size. She was an attractive eighteen-year old, who had suffered from consumption, though this was not apparent. She was cheerful, good-looking and nicely shaped. One or two of us used to hang around her unprofitably at times, confirming Nellie's jaundiced view of men.
CHAPTER TWO
Job Wheway & Son, Ltd., employed about two hundred, many of whom were related to one another and were second, third or fourth generation employees. Eileen in the Spring Hook Shop collected work from her Aunt Ada, and took it to her grandmother, and soon there was Eileen's young sister Ada, working for Mr. Kirby in the Hame Department.
Sidney Benjamin Wheway, now retired, was in his late seventies and came for a few hours, twice weekly. Until he became too infirm, he would walk around the Works and retrieve any stray dees or links from the floor near the welding machines.
"They cost me money" he would say reprovingly to the operator. One day someone scattered a few rings, as bait, when S.B, was sighted. They were black hot - no longer visibly hot, but more unpleasant, since metal at that heat sticks to the flesh. It worked, and thereafter the old man would point out the stray rings with his walking stick and make the operator pick them up, thus illustrating the old theory that Management uses its brains and Labour its hands.
He knew the names and family histories of his workers and felt a paternal concern for them. When a warehouseman was once caught swindling the firm by signing for more racking-cases than had been delivered and splitting- the difference with the supplier, old S.B. merely said: "His father used to steal from us, too" - and transferred him to another department. But the supplier never sold another case to the firm.
The working directors were his sons, "Master Willie" and "Master Sidney" to the old hands, but generally referred to as W.A. and Mr. Sidney. They were heavily built men in their forties. Although W.R. was the younger, he was Managing Director. It was said that Sidney had been Managing Director but had made the mistake of' going overseas on a business trip, and on his return found W.R. installed in his stead. W.R. was a Councillor, with an ambition which he achieved, to be Mayor of Walsall, as Job Wheway had been. Sidney's main outside interest appeared to be Masonic affairs. He was a pianist, and knowing from chance meetings at concerts that I was developing a taste for music, he sometimes discussed it with me.
There were sons who were expected to come into the business, but W.R.'s elder son was killed in a training accident with the Fleet Air Arm. Sidney's son Tim, prior to joining the R.A.F., was working in the Electric-Welding Shop.
Every week S.B. would get Mr. Webster to weigh him on the Packing Room scales, and these readings, recorded by Mr. Webster, showed as did his clothes, the steady loss of weight as he moved into extreme old age. At this time, a notice appeared saying that Mr. S.B. Wheway had decided to give a personal present to all workers now, rather than leaving a sum in his will. The amounts would be based on length of service, and Departmental Heads would be requesting and verifying this information.
The bequest became an all-absorbing issue, with constant speculation on the amount per year of service. Optimists talked of a month's pay for each year of service-, others calculated on the basis of a week's pay for every year. It had been indicated that newcomers would be given a nominal sum, so Ernie and I were interested spectators. Ernie, a strongly built man of exceptional height, had been in the waiting-room when I came for my first interview, and looking up at him respectfully, I thought: "If he's after this job, I shan't get it!"
He was applying for a job in the Warehouse, assisting .Mr. Webster. He was a bachelor of about thirty and his main passion in life was for his widowed mother. Though he tried to cover his affection for her with jocular remarks, it could not be hidden from anyone who watched his face.
"I wonder if my mother needs fresh glasses," he said once, "she reckons she could see three moons last night!"
He had a sardonic turn of humour and he cautioned the optimists against expecting too much.
""Don't order a grand-piano till you know how much you're getting," he advised. For two months the speculation raged, and Department Heads were besieged with questions such as: "What about the four years in the War? That shouldn't be counted against me!" Or: "I had to have a year off after I had our Beryl but I came back as quick as I could."
One morning, while working in the office with Harry Froggatt, I heard Mr. Sidney shouting in his father's ear: "I don't know what you want to give away all that money for!" The old man's booming voice replied, "Oh, well, they helped me earn it, you know!"
The announcement came finally - one shilling and sixpence for every year of service, but no less than ten shillings for any employee. Mr. Webster, with his fifty years of unbroken service would get considerably less than a week's pay. What had been intended as a kindly gesture had gone wrong, because great expectations had been aroused. It was as if Mark Antony, after inflaming the mob with the news that they were Caesar's heirs, had then gone on to say that the bequest was a souvenir drinking mug each.
The Staff - or those of them who wanted to improve their standing with the Directors - organised a collection for a presentation to S.B., to mark the occasion. The curious choice was a silver ear-trumpet, which as Ernie said, created the risk that the old man might hear what` his workers were calling him.
The Warehouse was the oldest part of the factory.
There was a basement, largely full of obsolete stock, including military bits and spurs made for the Boer War. They had been recorded and valued at each stocktaking since 1900. If cavalry ever made a come-back, the firm was ready. There was also an upper storey, one area of which was used by a few packers. The rest was a fascinating labyrinth of deserted rooms, containing infrequently required stock. When any of this was wanted, one of the girls from below would locate it and disinter it from its blanket of dust and cobwebs. Dependent upon several factors, such as the age and disposition of the girl, and the age and reputation of the man, the girl might, after the fashion of her sex, take another girl as escort. Eileen in the Spring Hook Shop showed a trusting readiness not to require an escort when I wanted her to locate stock for me in the upper Warehouse, which was either flattering or unflattering according to the point of view.
The Warehouse was separated from the modern part of' the factory by a cobbled road leading to a number of small forges, where special items were hand-forged on an anvil in the traditional manner. Where the cobbled road joined Longacre Street was the Time-Office, with the racks of cards to be punched by those "on the clock". The Timekeeper, Bert - a lugubrious man with a persistent ulcer - also controlled deliveries from suppliers and the movements of the firm's own transport. This consisted of a lorry, for deliveries to Birmingham, Cradley Heath and Stourport, and a horse-and-cart for Walsall deliveries. Bill Walters had inherited the job of carter from his father - too old now for the gymnastics involved in getting on to a moving, high-sided cart, by riding up on one of the spokes.
He was a gentle, gentlemanly old man, who now worked around the factory as a cleaner. His son, Bill, in his forties, was an alcoholic. As I was in charge of the "Town-orders", I knew him well and felt sorry for him. His compulsive drinking kept him short of money, so he sold some of the firm's products to help out. About twice a week he would come and mutter to me, pulling at his lip with a trembling hand: "Dicks, that bloody 'orse of mine's broke 'is tugs again! Give us a pair o' tugs, will you?"
I would find him a pair of tug chains and he would sell them for beer money. Once I saw the tug chains I had given bill that morning, on the packing-counter of a small local customer I had to visit that same afternoon. For variety, the horse would sometimes break its backband chain, girth chain or driving-rein chain, but was sensible enough not to break hames - proper stock control existed in the Hame Department and I could not have obtained them. 1 had not the heart to refuse Bill. He was a desperately unhappy man. As he talked, his eyes - bloodshot and prominent - kept up a rapid scanning movement as though the trapped spirit within, hoped for escape from the devil that possessed him. He died later by his own hand.
Percy Noakes drove the lorry, and for some forgotten reason, I once accompanied him to Cradley Heath, where I saw women - Amazons, rather - making chain over an open, bellows-blown fire, with hammer and anvil. Some also used a foot-operated trip-hammer, called an "Oliver", for heavy chain. There is a fascination about the hand-forging of welded chain. The latest link, having been heated and shaped, is again heated, and withdrawn from the fire when at the right point of red-white heat. It is then given one firm blow, where the unjoined ends of the link overlap, after which, with multiple light taps of the hammer, the welded area is shaped and smoothed, giving point and illustration to the old proverb: "Strike while the iron's hot - you may polish it up at your leisure."
Most orders were despatched by rail and each afternoon one or two railway vehicles collected a few tons of assorted bags, casks, cases and loose chain. It was a grievance of old Mr. Webster that the carters would refuse any more traffic, when they had reached their official maximum and he had to leave consignments until the following day, or attempt to obtain a "special". Throughout his youth, manhood, and into old age, Mr. Webster had stood each day at the door of the despatch-deck, to watch the departure of the drays. The Carter would take hold of the bridle of the leading horse and cry: "Gehup! hup! hup!" The horses would lunge forward, their hooves skidding and striking sparks as they attempted to get a three-ton load rolling.
"Two horses, for that bit o' stiff!" he said. "I remember when there was three Hallway Companies in the town, all fighting for the business. They took real loads, then!" Now the horses were being replaced by Scammel Lorries, and the old man watched them go, on icy days, in the hope that they would fail to pull away.
All Mr. Webster's working life had been spent in this same Packing-room and Despatch-Deck which were virtually unchanged, as were the means of handling loads. The handling equipment consisted of three sack-trucks, five and a half pairs of bag hooks and a number of short lengths of timber for use as scotches. The roof over the Despatch-Deck was too low for overhead lifting-tackle and so everything - hundredweight bags or five hundredweight cases -had to be "mauled" out, as Mr. Webster expressed it.
Over the years he had been rather badly mauled himself; he had injured his back several times, he was bandy, and having ruptured himself twice, went about elaborately trussed.
Yet he was happy. His age now excused him from the heavy work and he padded around on flat feet, packing his "shippers". There was so little space in the Packing-Room that he had become expert at using every available inch. He would pack a large case in front of the sink in the corner and anyone going to wash his hands had to kneel on the case. He would pack all round the scales, so that there was barely room to run on with a loaded sack-truck and off again after weighing. When these possibilities had been exhausted he worked upwards, packing his cases three high and earning the curses of those of us who had to lend a hand, when they were being despatched.
He would come out of the office, after Mr. Powell had sorted the post.
"Ernie! We've got shipping instructions for Western Wholesale - fourteen cases and the boat closes Friday. You and Frank get 'em out and mark 'em up, will you?" Mr. Webster would then retreat to his desk in the corner to make out the dock notes in his spidery writing. He was quite steady when driving a nail into a case but as soon as he took up a pen his hand developed an alarming tremor.
Meanwhile Ernie and Frank were trying to find the cases. "Here's one - bottom of these three. This looks like another - middle of the three by the door. There's four by the office. Do you suppose he's packed any out in the street?" After further searching they would locate all but one case and then appeal to Mr. Webster.
"It's in front of the lavatory door. You've been climbing over it for a fortnight and now you can't find it!" Cackling happily, he would carry on writing while Ernie departed to stencil shipping-marks and numbers on the consignment.
About this time, Mr. Webster fell ill. He lived less than half-a-mile from the factory and each Saturday morning, Ernie went across to take the old man's sick-pay and to make official enquiries about his health. This was not easy, as Mrs. Webster was deaf and the old man himself, very crafty. Every week he enacted a moving, sickbed scene for Ernie's benefit. One day Ernie returned to report that Mr. Webster was at his last gasp. The old man had whispered a few painful words and shaken him by the hand! This seemed conclusive, for he was not given to shaking hands. Normally Mr. Webster approached obliquely and commenced in silence to knead or manipulate his victim's elbow, like a bonesetter chancing on an interesting deformity. The alternative, reserved for the Warehouse girls, was a slow pinch, administered to the buttock adjacent to the old man. So Mr. Webster's handclasp was taken to be his farewell to this life. Unexpectedly, however, Ernie had to return to the old map's home later that morning and found him getting in a load of coal. Despite this, and making due allowance for his artfulness, it seemed that he was failing. Ernie supposed that it would mean another collection. Running a two-inch remnant of pocket-comb through his wiry hair, he said:
"I never knew a place like this. Every week there's a collection for a wreath for someone, even if' they only worked here for a couple of weeks, twenty years ago. I bet if the Devil died they'd send flowers from here. Come to think of it, it'd only be right - he founded the firm!"
Old Mother Mailey was self-appointed collector. She had been born a stone's throw from the factory, was three times married and claimed relationship with everyone.
"I'm kin to ‘im!" was her standard claim as she started her rounds with a sheet of paper and a pencil. In return for a threepenny donation, she was usually able to supply a few harrowing details from the deathbed.
"Coughed up both 'is lungs, in a bucket o' blood," she would report.
It was Ernie who referred to her as Old Mother Mailey. To her face she was Mrs. Lawson, although Mr. Lawson had gone to his long home some five years since and had been succeeded by Mr. Mailey, now also deceased. She was almost seventy, very bent, thin and toothless. Singing reedily, she slopped around in shoes so down at heel and turned over, that Ernie remarked that if she didn't get them mended, she would soon be walking on the sides of her knees. Her main job was to sew up, with string and a large canvas-needle, the bags of buckles, as they were filled. This fitted her for a part in the funeral ceremony Ernie devised for Mr. Webster. Ernie had suggested that it would be a fitting end to the old man's labours, if he were sewn up in hessian by Mrs. Lawson, nailed into the largest size export case, and were taken - after a proper consignment-note had been made out - by Railway dray to the cemetery and trundled to the graveside on a sack-truck.
So we were not surprised to see Mrs. Lawson bearing down on us, carrying the symbols of her office - a sheet of foolscap and a pencil.
"Mr. Webster?" asked Ernie.
"Not 'im," said the old lady contemptuously. "There ain't much wrong with 'im if you believe me! 'E'll be back before he runs out of sick-benefit. No, it's Nellie's Uncle Jack - dropped dead Friday. I reckon there'll be a post-mortem. 'E worked in the Casting Shop afore the War."
"Which war was that?" asked Ernie, gravely.
Mrs. Lawson tittered. "Now don't be like that, Ernie!
You'll want a wreath from 'ere, when your time comes, won't you?"
"Not particularly," said Ernie, producing his threepence, "I'll have a drink now, instead."
The new part of the factory, beyond the Timekeeper's office, included the Raw-Material Store; the Bending Shop, where coils of wire were converted into chain for degreasing and welding; the Welding Shop, where chain and other products were machine-welded by electricity; the Press Shop and the Tool Room.
Here, I made the acquaintance of George Williams, a fitter in charge of a number of welding-machines. He appeared to have plenty of time to waste, which proved, he said, that he was a good mechanic, and his bench attracted kindred spirits who sorted out all the serious issues of the day - sport, crime, sex, politics and the conduct of the War. Order-chasing gave me an excuse to join the group sometimes, and - fresh from school - I found the talk fascinatingly revolting. At school we had used plenty of bad language, but really, we knew little of the world and its ways, but here were men - and even the boys seemed worldly-wise and grown-up. Sometimes George would recollect that I was young and green, and would make a conscientious effort to educate and improve me.
"Talking of women," George would begin.
"Who the hell was saying anything about women?" asked Bill, another fitter.
"Shut up and listen and learn something. I LIKE talking about women, and Richard can learn the easy way, if he listens to me. What I was going to say, when this ignorant, ill-bred bugger interrupted me, was that women are all the same, really. If you work to the rules you can do what you like with them."
"Not all of them," I said, with the dogmatic certainty of the theorist.
"Well, I've not met one different, yet. It doesn't matter if they're like some of the bags we've got here, or married women, or religious - they'll all fall. And you don't need good looks. Now, I'm ugly, aren't I?" "Yes, BLOODY ugly," said Bill.
"Remind me to give you a kick of the crutch, when I've finished, will you?" requested George.
"Ugly or not," he continued, "I've had every woman I've wanted, so far. And when they've experienced the George Williams technique I can't get rid of them!" George stroked his moustache and continued: "There was a widow I used to service when I was about your age, Richard, and she used to have a glass of beer waiting for me and she'd slip a couple of packets of fags into my pocket before I left. And the virgins fall easiest of all. They're curious, see!”
"Yes?" I said.
"Tell you what I'll do for you! You see all these maidens on my machines? For ten bob, I'll fix you up with anyone you fancy - or two for fifteen shillings! How's that for a bargain!"
"All right," I said, "providing I can have the use of your house."
"What! Turn my house into a knocking-shop? You take her under the Railway Bridge, like anybody else!"
"Anyway, I don't want the sort of girl who'll do it for ten bob, `I added.
"You needn't worry, the money is for me. She'll let you just to oblige me. All the other blokes have spare-time jobs, so I don't see why I shouldn't do a bit of pimping. What about it, Richard? A real birthday for you!"
"Whose birthday?" enquired a new arrival at the bench, an elderly man with a face like a stoat's - "it's my old Dutch's as well. She asked me in bed what I was going to give her. I said: 'turn over, old lady, I'll soon give you your present!'"
It was from George, too, that I learned that "foreigners" were nothing to do with the export trade. They were the wide range of items made illicitly by the mechanics, with the Company's materials, on the Company's machines and in the Company's time. Some ingenuity was needed to smuggle them out, and so anything which fitted into a pocket was preferred. A popular and useful novelty during these years was a cigarette lighter made from the case of a spent rifle bullet.
George and I exchanged a few letters after I left. I must have asked about the “foreigners" and suggested a garage in pocket-size sections, because he replied:
"Your letter came at an awkward moment. We had a lot of work on - a sword for Bob, a pair of dividers for Jimmy Smith, two gross of springs and clips for my greenhouse, table fittings for Mr. Larkin, so you can see the old firm is working to capacity. The idea of a garage in pocket-size sections is no good - Wheway's steel is so inferior."
CHAPTER THREE
After four months with Wheway's I was required, on my sixteenth birthday, to sign articles of apprenticeship, binding me to remain with the Company until I was twenty-one. I had no misgivings about this; I was earning money and finding life vastly interesting. From school I had graduated to the world of men and liked it.
In the Deed, I bound myself, with the consent of my father, ("hereinafter called the Father") to serve Job Wheway and Son, Ltd., ("hereinafter called the Company), diligently and faithfully" and to the best of my "power and skill." I undertook "to keep the Company's secrets and to obey all lawful commands of the Company or its representatives." A list of conditions and prohibitions followed, and to close any possible loophole, the final promise was "to behave towards the Company at all times, and in all things, as a good and faithful apprentice ought."
The Company for its part, "covenanted to teach and instruct" me "in the art of a Departmental Manager," to pay, me on a specified scale and to discharge me for "any breach or non-observance of any of the covenants, or for gross misconduct," (which George Williams defined as "interfering with the Managing Director's secretary, a hundred and forty four times - in office hours.")
I also celebrated my sixteenth birthday by climbing the 110 foot high factory stack which was about to be demolished. It was a relic of the days when the factory generated its own power. The steeplejacks had erected scaffolding on the outside and there were five platforms connected by ladders. Each ladder was roped to the platform it reached. The platforms framed the exterior of the stack at about twenty foot intervals and were three feet wide. To get a safe climbing angle, the ladders formed a zig-zag up the vertical face of the stack, so that the climber never faced the stack - it was alternately on his right side, and his left side. The steeplejacks intended to demolish inwards, so that the bricks and rubble would fall safely down the interior of the stack, as if it were consuming itself.
As a piece of youthful bravado, I said on impulse to the Electrician's Mate: "How about climbing the stack? They're starting to knock it down tomorrow." He agreed, and neither could then withdraw. I led the way after we had eaten our lunchtime sandwiches. The site was deserted; the steeplejacks had departed for a few days, after completing the scaffolding.
Since it was my idea, I took the lead for the ascent. As a matter of fact, past experience had taught me that it is dangerous to follow anyone up a ladder; you may be struck by falling tools, paint-kettles or bodies.
We paused on the first platform to look around and joke. From then on we were strangely silent. It is probably no more dangerous to fall a hundred feet than thirty feet, but the extra elevation turns the stomach to water and the knees to rubber. On the top platform I was able to lean over the rim of the stack and spit down the interior, but the Electrician's Mate remained frozen to the top of the ladder and did not stand on the summit. We descended without incident.