‘I love you, Jimmy Constantine,’ howls their neighbour. ‘I love you, you beautiful fucking dago.’
‘What about that, eh?’ says Dad, twisting his head round to look up at Ben. ‘What a beauty, eh?’
‘What?’ says Ben slowly, like someone waking up. ‘What?’
‘I thought you’d enjoy it more,’ says Dad sadly later, on the bus home.
‘It was wonderful, Dad,’ says Ben.
t + 20: 1964
Alec
It’s almost gone one before Alec can get out of his overalls, shimmy into his suit, and be off at a run: out the loading bay entrance round the side of the Gazette and up Marshall Street to the Hare & Hounds. As ever, after the metallic close-up clatter of the machines, the air on the street seems soft and expansive. The traffic noise comes and goes in gentle waves, as if all the gearshifts and revving buses have melted together into soft surges. The sky is very high, the breeze when he rounds the corner by the milk bar seems to be telling him how big the world is. How much bigger than the Gazette’s little composition room. Quick glance at himself in the window to set himself to rights, pat the hair, straighten the tie; then into the saloon bar, not the public. They’re already there, with a fag lit each but empty hands otherwise, laid on the table as if to emphasise their lack of a drink. True, it’s for him to buy today, tradition says so, but still: what a pair of skinflints.
‘Mr Hobson!’ says Alec, bearing down, hand out.
‘Ah,’ says Hobson, ‘here we are, then. Clive, this is Alec Torrance I was telling you about. Alec, this here is Clive Burnham from the Times chapel.’
Hobson has been very good to Alec since his dad died and he and his mum lost the house. He helped out with the apprenticeship; when that was done, he spoke up for him at the Gazette; now here he is again, doing his best to sort him out a route to the Fleet Street shifts that pay better than anything on a local paper. Replacement dad stuff, in short, and all in the name of something-or-other that passed between Hobson and his actual dad, way back before the war, as mysterious from the outside as all work friendships are, based as they are on the alchemy of rubbing along with someone day after day. But whatever it was, it was enough to have Hobson keeping an eye out for Ray Torrance’s boy these last eight years. He’s a creaky, rusty, angular old thing, with a mess of white hair and a suit of undertaker black, lightly snowed with dandruff on the shoulders. First name Hrothgar, astonishingly enough. H-r-o-t-h-g-a-r, Alec’s mind’s fingers spell out on his mind’s keys, just as they now automatically letterise every unusual proper name he comes across. Mrs Ermintrude Miggs (61). The defendant, Dafydd Clewson. Employed at the firm of Silverstein and Rule, Manor Road, Hockley-in-the-Hole. Every one its own different little cascade of brass. He looks like a Hrothgar too, does Hobson. Like one of those minor people in Dickens you see leaning out of the smudgy shadows in the old illustrations. Half smudge himself. But Burnham’s the one Alec needs to please. He’s a different proposition altogether. Smooth, with a bit of weight on him, packed into one of those silvery Italian-style suits, and a face as tanned as someone fresh back from the seaside.
‘What’ll you have, gents?’ he says.
‘Just a small whisky for me, I thank you,’ creaks Hobson.
‘Pint and a chaser,’ says Burnham, not bothering with the pleases and thank yous. ‘Scotch egg if they’ve got one.’ He looks a bit bored; glances round the bar like he’s seen better; stifles a yawn.
‘Sandwich, Mr Hobson?’ says Alec. ‘I’m getting one for myself.’
‘No, no, that’s fine,’ says Hobson. ‘I’m not on this afternoon, I’ll get something at home, after.’
Alec fetches the round on a tray. Pint of mild for him, and that had better be all, he thinks; there’s the afternoon to concentrate through. Not to mention now.
‘Well, sit down, sit down,’ says Hobson. ‘Now, I’m putting you two together because Alec is a good lad, very accurate, and he won’t let you down neither. His family’s old LTS – in the print back to time imm-em-orial.’
‘Yeah, you said,’ says Burnham.
‘You prob’ly remember, his dad Ray used to do little articles in the Journal? Chess problems, cycling notes? Funny stuff.’
‘Sorry, no, doesn’t ring a bell. I’m not LTS myself – I’m national.’ The London and provincial compositors had merged the year before, and in theory it was all one union now, but the distinction had been in place since Queen Victoria was young, and it hadn’t worn away yet, specially at the London end.
‘So how’d you come up, then, Mr Burnham?’ asks Alec politely.
‘Birmingham Post. Anyway, doesn’t matter. What matters is, son – and I’m sure you’re doing a nice job down here, don’t get me wrong – what matters is, you’re on a weekly here, and the pace you’re used to will be nice and slow. Stuff up, and there’s time to fix it, right?’
‘I don’t “stuff up”,’ says Alec. Hobson gives him a look.
‘You don’t know that,’ says Burnham. ‘You can’t know that till you’ve been there. Till it’s half an hour after press time, and you’ve got nasty little NATSOPAs breathing down your neck waiting at the presses, and the management muttering about overtime and losing some of the run: and then the stone sub says, ooh dear, page two doesn’t add up at all, thanks to this piece from our own correspondent in Fuck-Off-tania, which is full of exciting details about the Fuck-Off-tanian situation which no one has ever heard of, and you certainly haven’t, and which is one hundred and five words too long. Shorten it, will you? Take out one hundred and five words exactly, without turning the Fuck-Off-tanian report into gobbledegook. And for this task, you do not have time immemorial. You have no time at all. Or a minute and a half. Whichever is shorter. How would you do at that, d’you think?’
Burnham’s teeth when he grins are small and regular, like little squares of Formica.
‘I think I could do that,’ Alec says. ‘I think I might like that. Actually.’
‘Is that right?’
‘Well, we aren’t all asleep, you know, “down here”. There isn’t, like, a belt of sleeping sickness you run into soon as you come across Waterloo Bridge.’
‘Is that right. Is he always this mouthy?’ Burnham asks Hobson.
‘Alec is not shy about having an opinion,’ says Hobson. ‘But he is pretty calm, on the whole, if you don’t wind him up deliberate.’
Burnham laughs. ‘How else am I going to find out what he’s like under pressure? Look, you know how many people are after shifts on the Street. They’re gold dust. They’re the jackpot. And you know how much it matters that we get to give ’em out, not management. I don’t need a hothead.’
‘I’m not a hothead,’ says Alec.
‘No? Took me, what, thirty seconds to get a rise out of you.’
‘I think,’ says Hobson, ‘I think – that you should get Clive here another drink.’
Alec shuttles to the bar and back, reminding himself of how much he needs the shifts, and when he gets back Hobson has somehow made Burnham laugh, and is laughing himself, in a series of rubbery gurgles that sound like a hot-water bottle being folded and unfolded.
‘What’s up?’ he says.
‘Nothing,’ says Burnham, and offers Alec a filter-tip from his shiny packet. Which is probably a good sign. He has a shiny lighter too. Hobson, though, turns one down, and says he’s off to the gents. They watch him go, limping away with his scarecrow gait.
‘He’s a bit of a character, isn’t he?’ says Burnham. ‘Does he always dress like that – you know, like he’s just embalmed someone?’
‘Pretty much,’ says Alec. He clamps his mouth shut again.
Burnham sighs.
‘We’ve started off on the wrong foot, haven’t we? Look, I’m not taking the piss here. The old git speaks very highly of you, and it’s nice, yeah, that you’re loyal to him, too; does you credit. But this is a big step up, and I’m trying to work out whether you’re up to it. As it happens, it might be quite useful to
have someone in the composing room who’s got a bit of a gob on them. Someone who’ll push back, speak up, help draw the lines that have to be drawn. We’ve got management trying to take liberties one side, and the buggers in the machine room with their elbows out on the other, all the bloody time. But it needs a cool head, not a hot one – not someone whose mouth runs away with ’em. I dunno if you read up on that Royal Commission stuff ? Said we were overmanned and riding for a fall, basically. Hasn’t happened yet; there’s more people in the print than ever. But it bears watching; it’s ticklish. So you tell me what it is about you that’s nice and calm and steady, means I could rest easy?’
He doesn’t know what he could offer.
‘That … I need the shifts? I mean, really need them?’
‘Nah,’ said Burnham. ‘That won’t do it. Look at you: you’re young. Put the extra four quid in your pocket and you’ll, what, piss it away on nights out. Wine, women and song. Collecting god-awful jazz with no tune. Something like that.’
Alec looks at Burnham, and he sees someone asking him to translate into banter everything in his life that’s hardest. But perhaps it has to be done.
‘No,’ he says. ‘I mean, I’m married?’
‘Well, you would know best,’ Burnham says. ‘Are you or aren’t you?’
‘Fuck off, all right: I’m married. Gotta little boy, and another baby on the way, and I could really use the extra, ’cause we’re living with my Sandra’s mum, and my mum’s in the flat with us too.’
‘Oh, right,’ says Burnham warily, looking slightly startled by this deviation from men’s talk. ‘I see. And it’s all getting a bit tense?’
‘You could say.’
This is where he should insert a joke of his own. He should say something on the lines of: by now, the international crisis in Fuck-Off-tania has nothing on us. That would please Burnham. That would be handing him his own joke back with a cherry or a ribbon on top, and everyone likes that. Mothers-in-law, newly-weds, trying to snatch a chance to have sex when three people aren’t listening – it’s all the stuff of comedy, isn’t it? But comedy doesn’t cover the bone-deep, unwavering dislike Sandra’s mother has for him and everything to do with him. Banter isn’t the right style for the way his own mother is shrinking, is reducing, the longer they stay in the flat, as if she isn’t sure she’s even entitled to the two-foot space she sits in at the end of the couch. Sandra’s mum wouldn’t have anything from the old place in her precious living space: not the furniture, not the shelves his dad had made, not the books. It all had to go, or nearly all. There’s one cardboard box of the books, down in the damp under the stairs into the area. When he looked in it, there was black mould growing on the covers. Socialism and Fungus by Walter Fungus. Walter Citrine, really. C-i-t-r-i-n-e.
‘Okey-doke,’ says Burnham. ‘I believe I have got the picture.’ He pauses; stares at his fag-end; raises his eyebrows, still at the cigarette, in an expression of pained delicacy. ‘And you wanna get out from under? Get a place of your own, right?’
Come on, thinks Alec.
‘Yeah. That’s right. There’s a house up the hill’s coming free next month, and the collector says we could have it. We need three bedrooms, you see, really, if we’re not going to … well: if we’re gonna be comfortable.’
Burnham brightens.
‘You don’t wanna do that,’ he says, energy back in his voice.
‘What?’ says Alec.
‘You don’t wanna do that. Renting’s a mug’s game,’ Burnham explains, back on safe saloon-bar ground. ‘You wanna think a bit bigger than that, and buy something. And – no offence – not round here, if you take my advice. All this Victorian shit? Leaks, tiny rooms, terrible repair, the coloureds coming in. You wanna get out of London, somewhere new, somewhere clean. Us, for example, we got a semi in Welwyn. Brand new, no cobwebs in the corners, bit of garden, green space for the kids, gravel drive to park the motor. And I get to work on the train quicker than you could get there from here, I should think. And it’s ours.’
‘That sounds great,’ says Alec stiffly. ‘Really nice. But, you know, I’m born and bred in the Smoke. I think I’ll prob’ly stick to the old place all the same.’
‘Don’t know what you’re missing,’ says Burnham.
‘Chance to support Luton Town and own a hedge, by the sound of it,’ he says, unable to help himself.
‘Cheeky little bugger,’ Burnham says, without heat. ‘Cheeky. Little. Bugger. Wasn’t wrong about that, was I? Mouth in gear, brain not engaged. Suit yourself, then.’
Fuck, fuck, fuck, thinks Alec.
‘Look, Clive—’
‘Mr Burnham to you.’
‘Mr Burnham. Sorry. Look, I swear, I am not normally hard to get along with. The baby’s colicky, you see, and we’re not getting a lot of sleep. I’m sure you remember that, right?’
‘Yeah, yeah. You know what I do when one of ours is poorly? Leave the wife to sort it, and go and sleep in the spare room. Pity you haven’t got one, isn’t it?’
‘Touché,’ says Alec.
‘“Too-shay”?’ mocks Burnham. The Formica teeth are back. ‘“Too-shay”?’
‘My dad liked The Three Musketeers.’
‘Did he. Yeah, I bet he did. Ooh, you’d fit right in at the Times – the stuff we have to set sometimes.’
Burnham grimaces at him, considering.
‘Ah, fuck it,’ he says. ‘All right, we’ll give it a go. Step by step, mind you. We’ll try you for a shift or two, and if it goes all right, all well and good; and if you point your mouth where it doesn’t belong, you’ll be back here in the arse-end of South London before you can say too-shay. All right?’
‘Yes, Mr Burnham,’ says Alec. ‘Thank you.’
‘And you can forget about the foreign news and all of that. You’ll not be let near the pages that change at the last minute; not for years. The way it works is, you start off on the Court Circular, the law reports, the classifieds, the letters. “The bride was resplendent in a whoopsie of cerise taffeta” style of thing. But even there, you got to keep your cool, you really do. Bastards to the left, bastards to the right; it’s not a peaceful spot, is what I’m saying. And you need to be able to handle that.’
‘I can handle that.’
‘You better not make me regret this, d’Artagnan.’
‘No, Mr Burnham. All for one and one for all, Mr Burnham.’
‘First shift next Thursday, then,’ says Burnham. He raises his voice. ‘You can come on back now, Mr Hobson.’
Hobson sidles arthritically round the bar from the corner where he’s been tactfully hiding.
‘All set, are we?’ he says.
‘We are,’ says Burnham. ‘And now I shall be getting back to civilisation. Thanks for the drinks; thanks for the pointer to your mouthy little so-and-so here.’
He drains his glass, picks up a pork-pie hat from the bench, and is gone.
‘Very good, Alec,’ says Hobson. ‘That’s excellent. A bit … bumpier than I had anticipated, but excellent all the same. A very good result. I’m pleased for you.’
‘Well, I owe it to you, Mr Hobson,’ says Alec. ‘I know that. You’ve been fantastic, all down the line, and I’ll not forget it. And now I better get moving, too. I’m back on in ten minutes. Shall I leave it with you, to tell the Gazette you’ll be bringing on someone else?’
‘Yes, yes,’ says Hobson. ‘But Alec? Sit down a second, would you. There’s something I just wanted to say.’
‘What?’ says Alec, thinking that there might be, who knows, a message from his dad for this moment, or something.
Well,’ says Hobson, ‘well.’ He steeples his long white fingers just in front of his face, tucks his thumbs under his lantern jaw, and uses the innermost two fingers to tap his nose. ‘What I wanted to say, is.’
‘Yes?’ says Alec.
‘What I wanted to say is, look: you’ve got a future ahead of you in the print, and that’s grand. That will see you and Sandra right. And I
done my best to help. But you’re a bright boy. And I just wanted to say, so I had at least come out and said it, at least once – is this what you really want?’
‘What I want?’ repeats Alec, baffled, his mind already half heading back down Marshall Street.
‘I should have said this long ago, I know. And it would be … dicey to make a change now, I see that. But you are still young. And what I find myself thinking is, the machines aren’t.’
‘Sorry, you’ve lost me,’ says Alec, glancing at his watch and thinking: can he be pissed? Not on one whisky, surely.
‘The Linotype. It hasn’t changed, my whole life. It’s old. It’s ancient. And you’re going to sit down in front of it, and then you might spend your whole life sitting there, like I have.’
‘Not a bad life,’ says Alec, as gently as he can.
‘Not at all! No! But heavens, lad, you’ve got a very good mind, you’ve got your father’s mind, near as I can see, and you could do anything you put your mind to, pretty much; you could do something new.’
Alec struggles with exasperation. Six years an apprentice, four on the Gazette, a decade getting deeper and deeper committed, and now’s the moment the silly old sod chooses? All Alec hears, in Hobson’s ‘could’, is an appeal to an imaginary world in which none of the last ten years have happened; in which there is no Sandra, no little Gary, no decisions already taken, no paths already followed, no necessity tightening and narrowing. No need to buy groceries. What’s that, that other life Hobson is invoking? A figment, a theory, a phantom, for which you’d have to throw away everything real. Silly old sod. But he won’t, he won’t, snap at him today – not when he’s so much reason to be grateful.
‘I’m fine,’ he says. ‘You know I love it.’
And he does. When he’s back at the Gazette he switches on, and while the red bulb glows and the lead in the machine heats back to the melting point, he sorts through the copy: magistrate’s court reports, then small ads. ‘All right, Len,’ he says to the other compositor, already rattling away. ‘Didja get it, then?’ Len asks. ‘Yep.’ ‘Nice one,’ says Len peaceably. Alec waits, knowing that he’s just on the cusp of concentration, of the state he’s going to be in all afternoon long, where the minutes are crammed and stretched but the hours slip by, and for once, because of what Hobson said, he notices himself sitting there and waiting. He looks at the machine deliberately, and the bulk of it before him is as big as a grand piano stood on end, only not made of sleek and glossy wood but all of greased and intricate metal, exhaling fumes. And it delights him, with its thousand visible parts interlocked, and its multitude of pulses attending on his fingers, and its seat in front which amounts to, yes, an industrial throne. He is enthroned. (Green bulb.) He’s king of the machine. His vision narrows down to the copy clip, and the keyboard with its ninety keys in grimy black and blue and white. Each key he presses releases a brass letter-mould from the registers above, where they wait in columns long as piano wires. Click, rattle, and the brass matrix chinks into place on a steel rail in front of him at eye level. But there’s a short but definite physical delay before the matrix arrives, so by the time it arrives he’s long pressed the next key and started the next one on its rattling descent. When he gets a good speed up – left hand spidering away over the lower-case, right hand punching out the capitals, both scampering into the centre to hit punctuation and figures – the machine delivers him the moulds in appreciable arrears, still jingling down in reliable right order, but two or three characters or so behind his racing fingers. Which means he can’t check where he’s got to by looking at the brass row building up, if he’s got any pace at all; he has to hold it in his mind, he has to mark his place in the copy by moving his attention along it like a pointer, o-n-e l-e-t-t-e-r a-t a t-i-m-e. At the end of the line, which is the width of a column, he cocks an ear for the end of the jingling metal snowfall, and soon as it stops presses the line-end trigger that sets the rest of the machine into treadling, reciprocating motion. A bar shunts the row of matrices away left in tight order. The first elevator lifts them to be injected with liquid lead (hiss), pulls them out (clunk). The second elevator lifts them way up to the summit of the machine and threads them to a continuous screw running its width that carries each just as far and no further than its register of origin, where it drops back to the top of the column ready for reuse (jangle). But he’s not paying attention to that, having long since typed the next line, then the one after that: not paying attention, that is, except to the complex invariable symphony of noises the machine makes when going at full tilt, the click-rattle-chink-chunk-scree-hiss-whirr-treadle-jangle it lays down constantly, in rhythms far more overlaid and syncopated than can be set down in linear order. A womb of mechanical noise, to be monitored with some spare fraction of a busy mind, because a variation or blockage in it could be a sign that Mama Linotype is about to squirt molten metal at your legs. That apart, his mind moves on with his fingers as they dance on ETAOIN SHRDLU, the first and commonest letters on the keyboard; and at his left, hot enough to smell, pristine, new-minted, brighter than the brightest silver, there build up in stacked lines of metal all the words that a moment before were only blurry typescript or pen and ink – until Alec, king and alchemist, transformed them.
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