It was warmly snug in the confined close of the cab, with its light odour of engine oil and tobacco smoke from Ted’s pipe. He was set squarely before the big driving wheel, a figure the boys felt as safe with as if they were in their own little beds. Many lorries passed on their way south to London. Ted gave an occasional flick of his light to some mate of the road. It was thrilling, and quite amazing how all that heavy traffic sorted itself right on the seemingly narrow road.
They would be belting along when in the distance a pair of lights would show themselves. Drawing nearer brought a feeling of fear, it seemed the lights were set right for the lorry. Not so far now—it’s coming nearer, nearer! The boys’ hearts shut off, their eyes peeped, getting ready for the crash. Bouff!...
It’s past! We’ve missed! Go on, old heart, get cracking again. Those two lights were like some phantom-directed monster coming at you. You could not imagine a man behind them. And even if you did, something said: ‘It only needs him to go wrong for one minute in twelve hours, and it’s all over!’
In time the boys knew that every lorry would pass. They shut their eyes. There was a heavy harmony of sounds. They slept.
Corky felt himself awakened by some new movement. It was the swish-swish, swish-swish of the screen-wiper. And pinging somewhere above this sound was a light patter of raindrops on the cab roof.
“What time is it, Ted?”
“Getting on for three,” answered Ted. “I think we’re in for a storm.”
“Ginger,” whispered Corky, “it’s raining.”
“Stick your head out of a side window and you’ll get your share of it,” said Ginger, turning to sleep again.
A sudden sultriness fell, and it became stuffy and oppressive in the cab. The storm broke with a huge gash of lightning, fierce and held for moments, along the sky over the road ahead. After it came a splitting roar of thunder. Then the rain fell. It dashed, splashed, peppered, and rapped against the windscreen. Now could be heard the persistent huzz of the heavy wheels along rainswept macadam roads; occasionally drowned in the roar of the exhaust on a level clear patch of road as Ted pressed down to open throttle.
Ginger was awake now, but had not spoken. All three were quiet. Ted appeared to be tense, and listening hard. After a time he asked:
“Can either of you feel anything over that side?”
“The wheels are still going round, if that’s what you mean,” said Ginger.
“I can hear a bit of a bump,” said Corky. “I can just make it out over the noise when I listen. Is that what you mean, Ted? Listen—thub, thub, thub.”
“Holy smoke, that’s done it,” Ted groaned, pressing reluctantly on the foot-brake. “I’ll have to chance it here.”
“Chance what?”
“Changing the spare wheel,” said Ted. “I’ll let the storm blow over a trifle first.” He settled back and watched out at the beating rain. “It’s a risky piece of work in the dark, any tinkering about with a lorry on the main road. One young driver I knew, he was little more than a kid, once got out to fix his tail light. He was the luckiest man alive that he should be going round the cab for a screwdriver when he saw the lorry coming. It smashed right into the tail of his truck—at the spot where he’d been standing a second before.”
“How did that come about?”
“Well, a driver don’t keep on the look out for dark objects on the road—he’s enough to do keeping dodging the things he can see.” Ted switched the headlight on and off to signal on a lorry coming up behind. “I only hope the cover isn’t burnt away——” He gave a shrug. “Looks a bit better now, I’ll get out to it.”
“Let’s see what we can do,” said Corky.
The faulty tyre being on the near side, the boys were at it first.
“Hy! take your hand away!” cried Ted.
Corky brought back the fingers that were about to feel the tyre.
“Why, you gom——” said Ted. “Can’t you smell it? You’ll burn your blinking fingers off!”
“Sorry, Ted. How comes it to be hot?”
“Friction. Twin tyres, the flat cover rubs against the other. They’re spinning round, under a load of ten tons, and crashing along the road the rubber soon gets hot. I once had a big load of silk burnt to a cinder, the lorry and all, through the same thing. The petrol tank exploded.”
Ted flashed his torch under the big mudguard. The inside tyre was smouldering.
“Ooh, what a night for a puncture! Get back in the cab, you boys, before you’re soaked sopping through.”
“Not blooming likely,” said Ginger.
“We’d rather not, if you don’t mind, Ted,” said Corky. “We’d much sooner give you a hand with it. We like mucking in.”
“Hear, hear,” sang Ginger. “We ain’t fair weather friends, me old china——”
“Thanks. Cut the cackle, move back—let the dog see the rabbit,” said Ted. “Corky, you bring the wheelbrace from under the seat. You bring the jack, Ginger, while I get the spare wheel. I hate this kind of job like the devil holy water—but it’s got to be done, so here goes!”
The boys found the tools, Ginger staggering under the heavy jack.
“Here, can the pair of you hold this brace while I jump on it,” called Ted. That was how the nuts had to be unfastened, by Ted stamping his full weight on the wheelbrace while the boys held it.
Then he squirmed underneath the axle to set the jack in a good position. Suddenly he let out a wild roar:
“Get away! Get away!”
“What’s up,” asked the startled Ginger, hopping on the footpath. “What are you getting aeriated about, Ted?”
Ted watched a big lorry whizz by, and gave a long sigh from where he was on the ground.
“I told you about the young driver who repaired his rear light on the main road, didn’t I? Well, Ginger, I spotted you standing dead behind my tail light, and then caught sight of that truck coming along. If I hadn’t just shouted there’d been nothing left of the three of us!”
“’S all right, Ted,” Corky put in. “They’d have seen that head of Ginger’s. It looks like the Aurora Borealis in the dark!”
“Haul away at that jack—before my language turns bad.”
“Naughty, naughty, Edward,” mocked Ginger.
They manoeuvred the jack until it took hold of the weight, then Ted said: “Let me take over,” and he did a bit of grunting as the lorry made a squeaky lifting.
“It’s amazing to me,” remarked Corky, “how one man with his own strength and a nobbly little gadget can lift ten ton——”
“It’s sometimes amazing how he can’t,” said Ted drily, “but let’s not talk about it just now.”
The bad wheel was removed. Ted found a long ugly nail through the cover. The most ticklish part was getting the new wheel to fit on the bolts. It was very heavy—“Well nigh two hundredweight,” gasped Ted—he had to raise it with two levers underneath and shove at it with his forehead.
Rain was coming down all over the place. Ted mumbled angrily when it made swift unexpected drippings from the sheeting, to trickle coldly between his collar and skin and scurry down his back. He frequently told the boys to shelter inside the cab. They refused. It wasn’t only principle; in some peculiar way a pleasure came from being rained on. Corky occasionally turned his face upwards, to the dark peppered wetness, and stuck his tongue out—to catch raindrops.
Ginger was crooning:
“Every time it rains, it rains...
Pennies from Heaven.”
—His song was cut short by a lorry drawing to a standstill on the far side of the road, a little way up. A figure darted out and across to them.
“Howgo, Ted!” he cried.
“Whatho, Bill, how’s it going?”
“Oh, I’m just getting along. What has tha’ got there—a blow out?”
“Yeh. Six inch nail. This bloomin’ wheel’s being awkward.”
“He’d have been in a rough spot without us two helping him,” said Ginge
r.”
“They’re a couple of Jonahs, that’s what they are, Bill. Especially young redhead.”
“Oh, you do know they’re here!” said Bill. “I thought they was a couple of scarecrows left their posts for the night.”
“We’ve got our feelings,” said Ginger. “And come to that, mate, you ain’t no Apollo yourself!”
“Mind yourselves out of the way,” said Bill, good-naturedly. “They’d larn you Cockney kids better manners if you lived in Wigan.”
“I wondered where you came from,” said Ginger. “I thought you was a foreigner of one kind or another.”
“Mind yourself, Ted——” Bill got down to the giant wheel. With a nifty twist of the levers and a tup of his head he manipulated it on at the first go. Then he deftly turned the nuts on, and gave them a first tightening. “Let the jack down,” he said. Then holding the brace handle, he hopped nimbly on the arm of it, and got the nuts dead tight.
He rose, stuck out his chest and remarked:
“You southerners are good on the old gab, but when you want a job doing gradely it takes a chap from the North.”
Corky grinned up at him.
“Nice work, Bill.”
“A sheer fluke!” declared Ginger. “If you hadn’t got it on that first time, you’d have never done it.”
“Here, put these tools away,” said Ted. “You’ll talk till the cows come home.”
“Good lads,” murmured Bill, patting the two young backs affectionately. Here, have a Mother Addison’s cough drop apiece, and get you back in that cab. I’ll tell old Ted to get you a whacking hot drink down the road.” Bill gave a kindly push to the two boys into the cab.
“So long, Ted, and all the best,” he called, and was off to his lorry.
“Thanks. Good luck, mate,” Ted shouted after him. “I’ll do as much for you one day.”
He climbed up to his seat behind the wheel. Gazed pitifully at the two wet faces. Cocked an eye, and watched the dripping water from his cap-neb splash on to his knees.
“What a life!” he sighed. “Just for a bit of something in your stomach, and a shirt to your back!”
The three laughed at their own discomfiture. Ted started up.
“Off we go again,” chirped Ginger as they jerked into movement along the road leading north.
Ted stopped suddenly. The boys looked at him.
“Stay where you are this time, I won’t be a minute or two.”
“What’s up now?” asked Corky.
“My binding ropes,” said Ted. “This rain will tighten them up something shocking. You can’t get the knots undone. And sometimes they can make a mess of your load. If you’ve a job to do you might as well do it properly.”
He returned to his seat after a few minutes, more wet than smiling.
“I won’t say a word this time,” said Ginger.
“Don’t let yourselves drop off to sleep,” said Ted. “Or else you’ll catch your deaths of cold. I'll stop at the first place we come to and get you a hot drink.”
And patient Ted set off once more.
26 Meeting Lancashire
“‘Somebody go for Father Dan!’ they used
to say, when the pub was rocking, bottles
flying and windows smashing.”
AGAIN the warmth and the engine rhythm brought sleep and shafts of sweet forgetfulness, little smoky dreams, to the two rain-soaked boys in the cab.
“Ready, lads?” called out Ted, making a sudden turn. “Here we are. This is ‘Norman’s’.”
He hustled them out of the cab, the warm wet clothes clinging to them, “Let’s see what kind of dive this is,” he said. “I don’t ever remember having been in here.”
It was another dozy place, with a low fire burning, and over to this they went.
“Could we have three Oxo’s, Horlicks or coffees?” asked Ted.
The man behind the counter nodded, and soon produced three cups of something. They couldn’t quite make up their minds what it was, but it tasted hot.
Corky, who had been eyeing around the place, gave Ginger a nudge in the ribs and motioned to a picture on the wall. It was a boy’s face smiling out from a white police poster.
“Have you seen this boy?”
was printed below. The two boys went closer and read:
“George Hector Thwaites, aged 12, blue eyes, dark hair, mole on right cheek, 4ft. 10ins. Was wearing grey flannel jacket, brown corduroy trousers. Missing from home since the 10th June. If you have seen a boy that may be him, please give information at the nearest police station.”
There was a single line below this:
“Georgie love, please come home, Mum.”
Corky’s heart was suddenly caught by a tug of sadness. He looked at Ginger. Ginger pulled him over to the fire.
They stood looking into the grate. No need to talk, their thoughts were the same.
At home they’ll be worried crazy, thought Ginger—have I been kidnapped, murdered, run over or what; and my little brothers will be full of dreams about me. Here we are miles away from anywhere, out on the ways of the world ... I bet Uncle Dave hasn’t closed an eye tonight.
Aloud, but quietly, he said, “We could both give ourselves up to thinking about young George Hector, God help him, and his Mum and Dad too—but it ain’t no use. It’s too much.”
Corky gulped the hot stuff down him. He didn’t answer, but he knew what Ginger meant. There was so much to feel about in the world; it seemed as if he was swallowing himself, caging himself up, hardening something inside to a little strange ball. But he knew that, for the way he had set for himself, it had to be so.
“Feel a bit better now?” asked Ted. “Are your togs nearly dry?”
“Snug as a bug in a rug,” said Ginger.
“Snugger than the other beggar,” grinned Corky.
“For goodness’ sake keep yourselves warm,” said Ted anxiously as they got back in the lorry. “Keep close to each other. Sleep away. We’ll make Manchester by seven.”
“What'll we do when we get there?” Ginger asked sleepily.
“There’s half this load for delivery there—at Trafford Park,” explained Ted, “and then we go on to Liverpool with the other lot.”
The boys nodded comfortably, the night and the rain were around, and the long hard road ahead.
Trafford Park was reached, and turned out to be not the least like the boys had in mind.
“What place did you say this was?” asked Corky. “I never saw so many factories and foundries in all my life.”
“Where’s the park?” asked Ginger. “Coo, what a take in! Not a bloomin’ blade of grass to be seen!”
“What are all the people running about for? They’re like ants!”
“That’s the next to the last buzzer just gone,” said Ted. “They’ve two minutes to get inside. You’ve got to bear in mind there’s more’n twenty thousand hands work in that place.”
“They seem to like it, or at least not to mind,” said Corky. “But it’s got me a bit frightened to see ‘em all dash inside, in one mad rush like that. Yes, a bit scared down in my stomach, that’s what it makes me feel.”
Ted was driving on.
“There’s no end to the work places and workers along here,” said Ginger. “Watch ‘em get off that bus. Blimey, they ain’t civilized.”
Ted now drew to a halt outside the factory where his load was to be delivered.
“Mob law,” grunted Corky. “You’d think their very lives depended on it.”
“They do,” said Ted grimly. “You get there when the gates are shut and you’ve got to go home for the day!”
Ginger put his face in his hands. “Give me a nudge, Corky, when they’ve all gone in, then I’ll open my eyes. I’d hate to see ‘em eat each other!”
“Don’t go making your minds up about other folks and their jobs,” said Ted. “People are always doing that sort of thing, and they’re very seldom right in their judgments. See all that crush going through the ga
tes—they feel safe once inside. They’re set down to the one job they know and have a feel for—most of ‘em anyway—and when evening comes they’ll have done an honest day’s work—and earned a fair day’s pay, we hope! And another thing, practically every stitch you wear, every bite you eat, is manufactured in some factory or other, don’t forget.”
“Hy, watch the gates shut——”
“Cor, ain’t they making a scramble now! Ah, they’ve all just managed to get inside.”
“No, they ain’t. Look at this poor beggar coming along—he’s late, missed his day’s work.”
“It’s stopped his galloping,” remarked Ginger. “He’s lighting up his pipe. Give him chance to think a bit.”
“Pair of heartless rascals you are,” said Ted, “that fellow might have twenty children.”
“More fool him,” said Ginger.
“Can’t afford to lose his day’s wages,” went on Ted.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry for him, Ted,” said Ginger. “Honest I am. I sometimes get that way, let everything roll off my tongue. Say a prayer for him, Corky.”
“I will,” said Corky, “just for God to cheer him up. Because He can’t get him in—it’s too late for that.”
“Who said He couldn’t?” asked Ginger. He turned to Ted. “What’s against him driving in with us, Ted? He could crouch down in the cab, couldn’t he? Shall I whistle him?”
“Yes, you cunning little blighter. You’re more artful than a wagon-load of monkeys.”
Ginger directed a whistle, sort of out of the corner of his mouth it was, that arrowed across to the man’s ear. Corky gave frantic gestures for the man to come quietly, but Ginger called to him: “Hy, mate, is this Smith & Brabbins?”
The man came over to the lorry. “What did you say?” he asked.
“Never mind what we said,” whispered Ginger. “You nip round the cab and in at the other door.”
Ted nodded, reassuringly to the man’s questioning look. “Get in quick, we’re driving inside the gates. Keep down.”
The man caught on to the idea. He took a short glance to where the gate-keeper was, made sure he wasn’t seen, and popped into the cab as nice as you like. The boys covered him with Ted’s overcoat and casually rested their elbows on him. Ted gave a couple of tonks to the horn. The gates were opened for him. The lorry drove in.
Pony Boy Page 18
