Life Without Armour (8 page)

They occasionally came to our house, and over breakfast related the highlights of rooftop escapes during their nightly adventures. My mother looked after their purloined goods one night, though my father did not care either for them or their exploits, and would not let her do so again.

About this time I played with the idea of becoming a writer, though mainly a journalist, and chose a book on the subject from the library. I tried to learn Pitman's shorthand out of a threepenny manual from the table in Frank Wore's inexhaustible bookshop, but gave up after a while because it was too difficult to distinguish between the thin and thick symbols that had to be written at speed.

My fingers were always itching to write, however, and I loved inks, paper, pens and notebooks. In a large limp-covered jotter I recorded details of my cousins' way of life, thinking I might one day write something about them in a novel, noting their age, weight, height, colour of hair, where and when they had been born, what clothes they wore, as well as their address, when they had one. Then I inscribed sketches of their past lives and brief army careers, and entered accounts of their robberies and escapades which included, as far as I could ascertain, the date, time and location of particular shops and offices broken into.

My mother found the book and, on glancing through it, rightly considered such material too incriminating to leave lying around. Protesting that I was going to write a novel, she ignored such a ludicrous boast and poked it into the flames, perhaps also thinking me stupid enough to use the data as the subject for an essay at school.

The book on journalism told me that articles for newspapers had to be neatly typed on sheets of good paper, so it was discreetly proposed to my cousins that on next breaking into the appropriate premises they bring such a machine back for me, with the assurance that they would be paid for it on the instalment plan, or out of what money my journalistic enterprise might earn. They did not reject the idea, even laughing about it, and as good as promised they would get one for nothing. Perhaps my mother had mentioned my secret ambition, and they were amused, possibly flattered, at the notion of having their own biographer at some future date. I waited in hope, but the scheme was quietly forgotten, my mother no doubt realizing that it would be bad for everyone if the police saw reason to search our house and found one there.

Either my parents were getting old enough to know better, or with adequate rations and money to pay for them there was less reason for antagonism. Perhaps the atmosphere of war sapped some of their bile. Peggy had become a second wage-earner, bringing home twelve shillings a week from a sweet factory up the road. She and I were more able to show our disapproval of any violent clash, though we could not yet muster the strength between us to stop the mayhem on the few occasions when it occurred.

My parents had the cash to go now and again to the cinema, and spend Saturday night at the pub, and there was sufficient also for pennies to flow into my pocket, mostly for running errands or doing the weekend shopping. Arthur Shelton earned a few shillings delivering newspapers morning and evening, but I refused such jobs from a mixture of pride and inertia.

The time was coming when it would be necessary to work full time anyway, though I could not prepare myself for it by imagining such a situation. School was the basic condition of life, home a place to stay while going there, and the prospect of labour in a factory something that could not be allowed to spoil my enjoyment of the present. By the age of thirteen I could swim well, walk any distance, go up trees like a monkey, and ride a borrowed bike for a few yards without holding the handlebars, much I suppose like most other boys, and not a few girls, in the area I came from.

It gave some satisfaction to hear on the wireless, on 22 June 1941, that the German Army had invaded Russia. Spreading a map so as to follow the campaign as closely as possible, it was easy to see that Great Britain now had a much better chance of surviving the war. The national anthem of our Soviet ally was added to those played every week in a fifteen-minute programme on the BBC. I listened to every one, and having memorized the verses of Rouget de Lisle's ‘Marseillaise' from a French grammar, could fit the words to the tune.

The German advance in Russia was rapid, and dreadful things were happening, though we were not to know the full horror till the war was nearly over. It was obvious that the greater the distance the German Army went through the network of towns and cities the more certain were they to lose, as had Napoleon over a hundred years before, but such vigorously gritty place-names on the map as Novograd Volynsk, Riga, Byelaya Tserkov, Vorishilovgrad and Dniepropetrovsk were a pleasure to hunt for, pencil and rubber in frequent use as the line shifted east across the map.

The accumulation of books no longer inflamed my father. Being in work, they didn't seem a waste of money, especially since during the war there wasn't much else you could buy. I even persuaded him to get me the six volumes of
Practical Knowledge for All
, for thirty-six shillings to be paid for by instalments, though he failed to meet the last few, and I settled the debt on starting work. The books covered every subject, but I concentrated most on surveying, geography, French and, later, aviation, losing myself night after night in this detached treasure-house of information.

At school I wrote an essay on the possible strategic aims of the German offensive in the direction of Rostov-on-Don, explaining how the push must then continue south-east towards the Caucasus so as to gain control of oil wells at Grozny and Mozdok – both places shown on the map – which were needed for their industries and war effort.

Such comments had obviously been heard on the wireless but, written several times in rough form, then copied in my best hand into a clean exercise book, I showed the essay to Percy Rowe, hoping perhaps for a word of praise. After looking at it, he told me to stand before the class and read it – an embarrassing performance. Perhaps he was impressed, because the following week he lent me G.D.H. Cole's
Post War Europe
, a book too long and closely written for me to take in.

Sorting more assiduously through Frank Wore's basement, I formed an obsessive liking for Baedeker's little red guidebooks, and volumes of the
Guides Bleus
series. These increased my geographical knowledge, as well as French, and delighted me with their coloured maps. In the street plans of German cities one could pick out industrial areas said to be targets of the RAF, but those often dilapidated publications from a not too bygone age, with their descriptions of places in countries of western and southern Europe, also indicated a stable and desirable world beyond the one in which I was all too firmly fixed.

From the library I took what books there were about travelling in Russia, though their topographical information was too often unsatisfactory. In a collection of Russian folk tales I liked one which told of the Devil, suitably disguised, who came to a village and said to the assembled people that whatever ground any of them could walk around in a day they would own. In the burning month of August those who decide to get as much free land as possible set off into the blue for a dozen or so versts before turning ninety degrees to continue the square. All fall dead or exhausted by the afternoon, and accomplish nothing. The only person to end with a piece of land was a Jewish man, who walked a few hundred yards one way and completed the square in an hour or so which, I thought, on finishing the story, and realizing what an intelligent person he was, is exactly what I would have done.

Other books taken from the library were those of the ‘Ten Pounds' series:
France on Ten Pounds, Italy on Ten Pounds
etc, indicating that after the war, whenever that would be, it might be possible to visit such countries on what could be saved out of my wages.

On Saturday afternoon, either before or after the usual browse at Frank Wore's, I would call at a travel agency up an alley in the middle of town and beg, buy or talk the elderly and now underemployed clerk into parting with travel brochures on France, Belgium and Switzerland. Most contained maps, plans and pictures, as well as interesting advertisements for spas and hotels. This did not go on too long, because after a while he had nothing left to give me.

My test results were consistently high through the last two years at school. At the final assembly before leaving, held as usual in the large gymnasium, the headmaster called me on to the stage, and gave me a black leatherbound copy of the Holy Bible. Taking it home, I noted the label inside which said that it had been awarded to me for ‘proficiency in Biblical knowledge'.

Such a reason puzzled me but, glad to have the Book, it has been read many times, more often perhaps than any other, and is still within arm's reach on my desk fifty years later.

Chapter Twelve

The clock had stopped. ‘They're making all these precision objects for shells and what-not,' I thought, ‘and they can't even get a clock on the wall that works.' I was wrong. The passage of time in the classroom had been rapid compared to this.

No sooner was my foot in the door that first day than a man came to me and said I was now a member of the Transport and General Workers Union, and that threepence a week would be stopped out of my pay. I didn't want to belong to a union, was my response, further informing him that he should, in the current exhortation to the unwanted, go and get dive-bombed, because he would get no money out of me. There seemed something ignominious in belonging to an organization of which so many others were members, indicating that I was a follower of Marx (Groucho) from a reasonably early age, but the convenor, if that's what he was, laughed and said I had no option, because it was the law these days. The stoppage was automatic, and no one could avoid it.

My father, who worked in another shop, or department, came to see how I was getting on and, finding nothing to pick fault with, went back to his work. My job was ‘burring' hundreds of brass shellcaps with a sharp chisel. When segments were milled out of them, burrs were left which had to be prised away from the edges by hand, leaving all parts of the object smooth. They covered the surface of a large low table, and I tackled the task as if invading and subduing a hostile country, clearing a way here, a route there, until the two avenues into the mass of resistance met, and my pincer columns succeeded in their fell design. Having mopped up those pieces which had been surrounded, another clear road was driven towards the enemy capital, subsidiary columns put out on the way should relieving forces seek to thwart my plan of attack.

In a couple of hours the table was empty (I had the job to myself) till someone came along with more boxes, which they did very soon, to reoccupy my beloved tableland with their barbaric forces. Such ‘piece work' was paid for at so much a hundred, and the more I did the more I earned, but they had to be neatly done, or the examiners would send them back.

My father got up every morning at half past six, and fifteen minutes later called me out of the bed which I shared with my two brothers. After he had lit the fire and the kettle had boiled, I would bump sleepily down the stairs. My mother never rose with him, for it was the time of day when he was, to put it mildly, volatile. After a breakfast of tea and bread-and-jam, while listening to the news, we went down the street in silence, clocking-in just before half past seven.

In my pocket was a cheese or potted meat sandwich to eat in the few minute tea-break at ten. I went home for a hot dinner at half past twelve, varying the moment of my exit so as not to walk up the street with my father. An hour later I was back, working without a break till half past five.

My first wages came to one pound twelve shillings and sixpence, by today's values about twenty-five pounds, but in those times a reasonable amount for a youth of fourteen to earn. On Friday night the wage packet was put unopened into my mother's hand, and she gave back half a crown for spending money (about two pounds fifty pence) which may not sound much but it would buy a couple of paperbacks and two seats at the cinema. My sweet coupons went to Pearl and Brian, confectionery not essential to my wants.

The work was neither arduous nor unpleasant, though a few days had to pass before I became used to the stunning noise from scores of machines and the rhythmic slapping of powerbelts overhead. After a few weeks on ‘burring', at which job one sat down, I was put to operating a drill, before which it was necessary to stand. Having a machine of my own gave a sense of responsibility, though I was slightly nervous of its power and possibly malicious temperament.

A small piece of steel had to be fixed in a jig, the whole thing held firmly against the lower base, and the spinning point of the drill brought slowly down by the handle to make several holes in the metal at places indicated. The operation was straightforward, but for a while it was difficult to grip the jig with sufficient strength, and several times the whole unit would break loose and spin violently, wounding my flesh if a hand didn't get out of the way quickly enough. The thing to do then was switch off the motor and start again, the white liquid of disinfectant suds soaking the reddening bandage around my finger. On one occasion the drill broke, but the toolsetter was tolerant, and put in a new one without comment.

Such work, soon accustomed to, developed strong hands, but the money rate for the job was so low, or I was slow and a bit too wary, that my wages declined during the next few weeks to little more than a pound every Friday. On asking the foreman to find me another job, or put the rate up, he said it was impossible to do either, adding that the youth who had been on it before had made it pay, and that anyway, somebody had to do the work, so I had better go back and get on with it.

For a while I managed to increase the speed till my wages edged towards what they had been at first. What I wanted, I protested, was a more positive form of war work, not drilling an obscure part of the common bicycle day in and day out, which comment, among others equally unreasonable, exasperated the foreman even more.