At fourteen years, Laurence stood head and shoulders above his peers. Tall enough for his Eric-Clapton-style bushy curls to brush against the lintel across the worn, wooden swing doors to the Bird in Hand on Bromsgrove street. He stood in the autumn drizzle for a long time, plucking up the courage to enter, knowing his father would be there, sat at the bar, drinking the tar black ale favoured by railwaymen.
On payday, the men of the tracks would pour through the corrugated tin gates at the foot of the embankment running alongside the narrow lane at the rear of the Edwardian terraces of Clive Street, in a grey-faced snake of weary bodies, wrapped in sweat stained, stone-blackened overalls, knotted scarves, and Dai-caps. As one, they would make their way to the Bird in Hand, drawn not by its reputation as the best pub in Grangetown, but by its proximity to their work gates.
“Walking time’s not drinking time,” they’d say.
On the opposite corner to the pub, a few trackmen loitered under a bus-shelter illuminated by a triangle of light from the slightly ajar door of Stan Pearce’s bookies, listening to a commentary being broadcast through a crackling speaker above the teller’s window.
But most would take their seats in the Bird, one shilling pints already on the long dark-wood bar, crib boards and card decks distributed amongst the round, copper-topped tables, and Molly Slater waiting in the snug with an offer somebody would not refuse.
The lights went out in the police station on the corner of Clive and Bromsgrove streets, signalling as clear a coast as he was going to get, so Laurence braced himself, and stepped over the barrel broken paving slabs, into the shallow, dimly lit alcove shrouding the door, pushed hard, and stumbled into a different world.
Cigarette smoke and the head-filling aroma of warm beer enveloped him. Tired voices of tantalisingly inaudible conversations flitted between the thud of darts striking the board, the occasional cheer, and the background rhythm of Cilla Black on the Home Service coming from a radio high above the bar. He scanned the lined faces, half hidden behind dimpled pots, until his eyes rested on his father’s. He was perched atop a leatherette covered stool, close to the end of the bar, a pint and cigarette in one hand and a folded copy of the Football Echo in the other.
Striding as confidently as his years would allow, Laurence cut through the throng of hard-muscled trackmen until he stood before him.
“Dad,” he said, conscious his voice sounded immature next to the rasping baritones around him. “Sorry to interrupt your leisure time.”
“Laurence,” his father answered without looking, his hard Cardiff vowels sounding like they’d been squeezed through a cheese grater. “This isn’t leisure, son. It’s a necessity.”
“Mum sent me,” Laurence felt a quaver enter his voice.
“What does SHE want?”
“It’s Uncle Johnny,” Laurence stammered. “He’s dead.”
His father lifted his big, angular, but expressionless face. “Call the bloody doctor then. There’s a box on the corner.”
“The thing is,” Laurence tensed as he said his prepared words. “He’s at our house. In your bed.”
The bar silenced, and Laurence’s dad stood slowly, his eyes never leaving Laurence’s face, a confluence of conflicts playing across his own face.
After a moment’s pause, he said, “I told him he could only sleep there ‘til five. Looks like I’m going to have to move him myself.”
He marched out of the bar, with Laurence right behind him, weaving through the crowd of sagely nodding heads. Nothing would be said, of course, because trackmen never gossiped, but Laurence’s father would stoop a little more, the dim light in his grey-blue eyes would all but extinguish, and his hard, calloused hands would not touch Laurence, his mother, or any of them ever again.
Interesting twist, even more so because had the news not been given to him in front of others, he most certainly would have used his hands in anger. However it was necessary to keep his dignity in the face of others ‘knowing’ what happened.
Thanks, Beryl. The “handy” bit and its curtailment was most certainly in my mind when I wrote the story. Working men in the sixties sometimes expressed their frustrations with their fists. Dismissing it as “that’s the way it was” doesn’t work for me. Some still bear the scars, both literally and figuratively. We’ve moved on to a certain extent these days, thankfully, and while it still happens, it’s now frowned upon and illegal. There’s no excuse for abuse.