Road to the Dales

by Gervase Phinn

  ‘How could you see me in the dark?’ I argued.

  ‘Out or I’m stopping the film,’ he threatened.

  This was guaranteed to rally support for him from all the children in the cinema, for the last thing they wanted was an interruption to Flash Gordon. There was no camaraderie there. They all started the chant, ‘Out! Out! Out!’

  I stamped for the exit unaccompanied by my valued friends, who I imagined would come to my support or at the very least leave with me in protest. I learnt early on that friends will only go so far.

  I told my father when I got home. ‘It’s not fair,’ I grumbled.

  ‘Life’s not fair,’ he replied.

  ‘Are you going to see the manager and tell him?’ I asked.

  ‘Tell him?’

  ‘Tell him it wasn’t me and get my money back.’

  It was one of the few occasions when I remember getting angry with my father. He threw his head back and laughed. ‘I’ve got better things to do on a Saturday morning than traipse down to the cinema. Put it down to experience.’

  The following week, masked by Jimmy and Terry, I managed to evade the manager’s eagle-eyed scrutiny of the children filing past him but gave him an evil look as I passed.

  In the late 1940s the Ealing Studios produced a series of films, such as Passport to Pimlico and Kind Hearts and Coronets, which became massively popular. They were typified by their restrained humour and gentle tolerance. Then there was a series of films centred on the good-hearted but accident-prone Norman Wisdom, the gormless George Formby, and the ‘Lancashire lass with the big voice and large heart’, Gracie Fields, which depicted the working class in an affectionate but patronizing manner. None of these interested me. They left little to the imagination. I loved films, particularly the flamboyant and daring adventures that came across the Atlantic. ‘Movies,’ said Alfred Hitchcock, ‘are just like real life with all the dull parts taken out.’ This is what made the films so interesting. There was Gregory Peck as the noble and heroic Captain Horatio Hornblower, in the sprawling swashbuckler adapted from the C. S. Forester books, who sails on a secret mission to deliver weapons to the treacherous and bloodthirsty Spanish rebel, El Supremo. There was Errol Flynn as the notorious Captain Blood and Margaret Lockwood as the scheming Lady Barbara Skelton, the wicked lady of the title who takes to highway robbery, prissy Cary Grant as the stiff-upper-lipped British officer, and Frank Sinatra, wonderfully miscast as the Spanish guerrilla fighter who, with a band of motley freedom fighters, drags a massive cannon across Spain in 1810 to blow up the French stronghold. Then there were Janet Leigh and Tony Curtis in The Black Shield of Falworth, complete with Ye Merrie Olde Englande backdrop and ridiculous Brooklyn accents, intent on saving Henry IV from a fate worse than death. My favourite was The Adventures of Robin Hood, in which the flamboyant Errol Flynn has a splendid showdown with the villainous Basil Rathbone’s Sir Guy of Gisbourne. It was all stirring stuff, where goodness, honesty, integrity and compassion were rewarded in the end and evil got its just desserts.

  It was to the Tivoli Cinema that I took Brenda. She was my very first date. I was fifteen and I met her through my friend Peter. He was ‘walking out’ with a strikingly pretty dark-haired girl called Lynne, and she had this friend, a small, round-faced strawberry blonde called Brenda. I agreed to meet Brenda in the Ring o’ Bells Café in Rotherham town centre, next to the parish church, and go to the cinema.

  I spent a good hour getting ready, scrubbing my face until it shone, covering up the two angry red spots with some of my mother’s flesh-coloured face powder, brushing my teeth violently, slicking my hair with Brylcreem, splashing my brother’s after-shave liberally over my face and body, changing my shirt umpteen times, squeezing into tight drainpipe trousers and polishing my winkle-pickers to a high shine. When I looked in the bathroom mirror I thought I looked quite presentable.

  Brenda sat in the corner of the café, dressed in a shocking pink knitted cardigan and wearing sensible brown sandals and white ankle socks.

  ‘Hello,’ I said brightly.

  ‘Hello,’ she replied. There was no trace of a smile.

  ‘Want a drink?’ I asked.

  ‘Milkshake,’ she said. ‘Strawberry. Large one.’

  This is going to be an expensive evening, I thought to myself, mentally counting the money in my pocket.

  ‘I thought we’d go to the pictures,’ I told her as she took a gulp of the milkshake, leaving a pink moustache above her lips.

  ‘OK,’ she said.

  ‘Do you like films?’ I asked.

  ‘Depends.’

  ‘It’s science fiction.’

  ‘I don’t like science fiction,’ she told me.

  ‘Do you want to go somewhere else?’

  She sighed. ‘No.’ She drained the glass. ‘Have we time for another milkshake?’

  ‘No,’ I said.

  That was pretty much the extent of the conversation until we arrived at the cinema to join the queue for the film.

  ‘So what do you like doing?’ I asked her.

  ‘Knitting.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘I’ve knitted this cardigan. Do you like it?’

  ‘Yes,’ I lied. It was a horrendous pink affair. She stood out like a huge shapeless ball of candyfloss.

  ‘Don’t your feet hurt in those shoes?’ she asked.

  ‘No.’

  ‘I’ll knit you a scarf if you want.’

  ‘Great,’ I mouthed. This girl, I thought to myself, has the personality of petrified wood.

  In the cinema there was a row of double seats at the back. The arm rests had been removed so couples could snuggle up to watch the film and more likely have a good snog when the lights went out. Brenda, armed with a large carton of popcorn and a bag of liquorice allsorts which I had bought for her, headed for the rear seats.

  ‘I like it down the front,’ I said, striding down the aisle before she could argue.

  Brenda sat through the first part of The Amazing Colossal Man munching away merrily. The film was a version (and a very poor one at that) of the King Kong classic but set in the atomic age. The eponymous hero was a colonel who had been exposed to a massive dose of radiation during a nuclear bomb test and had mutated into a fearsome giant.

  In those days girls were inclined to scream and boys to whoop really loudly when anything frightening appeared on the screen. If there was a romantic part, particularly one involving kissing, there would be great jeers, howls and smooching noises from the audience and some brave boy would shout out, ‘Gerrem off!’

  Brenda sat there motionless, her eyes glued to the screen, posting popcorn into her mouth. She crunched away noisily. When she had consumed the contents of the carton she started on the liquorice allsorts. Just as the monster appeared on the screen Brenda suddenly thrust her face forward and planted her lips on mine. This occurred a few times before the lights came up. It was a quick, unexpected, jerky, liquorice-popcorn tasting experience and not particularly pleasant.

  ‘Are we having chips?’ she asked, as I walked her home. I noticed that her teeth were black from chewing the liquorice allsorts.

  ‘If you want,’ I sighed.

  ‘I like scraps,’ said Brenda.

  Scraps were the bits of fried batter which came away from the fish and they were given away free. I asked for two-pennyworth of chips and scraps.

  ‘Do you like scraps?’ asked Brenda.

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘What fish are we having?’

  ‘Fish?’ I repeated.

  ‘I like haddock.’

  ‘I’m not that hungry,’ I told her, thinking of the dwindling resources I had in my pocket.

  ‘You can have a bit of my haddock if you want,’ she said. ‘I’m not that bothered,’ I replied.

  ‘Are we having mushy peas?’

  I sighed again. ‘I suppose so.’

  I said goodbye to Brenda at the gate of her house. I saw the curtains move inside and a face appear at the window.
Her parents had no need to worry, I thought to myself. There was no way I was going to try anything on. I kept a good distance because I didn’t want to be pounced on again.

  ‘’Bye,’ I said.

  ‘I’ll start on your scarf,’ she told me.

  ‘Great.’

  ‘What film are we going to see next week?’ she asked.

  ‘I’ll let you know.’

  She puckered her lips.

  ‘’Bye,’ I said walking off, touching the few odd coppers left in my pocket.

  That was my first fleeting romance. It was a ‘brief encounter’, for I found that scraps were the only thing Brenda and I had in common.

  22

  In the 1950s Rotherham town centre was a colourful, bustling place with a wide range of shops: butchers, bakers, confectioners, herbalists, opticians, greengrocers, jewellers, haberdashers, grocers, chemists, cobblers, outfitters, sweet shops, bookshops, shoe shops, sports shops, toy shops, nearly every conceivable retail outlet. Blue and white double-decker buses could be seen everywhere, and trolley-buses with electric overhead cables that sparked in the rain like fireworks trundled down the main streets. Today the centre of the town is a rather sad and sorry place, like an old dowager who has fallen on hard times, still a place with character and history but rather faded and neglected. Many of those varied and individual shops of the 1950s – Mason’s jewellers, the great stores of Muntus and Speed’s, Waddington’s men’s outfitters, Tattersall’s fruiterers, Glover’s fishmonger’s, Cooper’s toy shop, Danny Williams sports – have disappeared, as people prefer to visit the vast nearby Meadow-hall complex or one of the superstores that have sprung up near the town, where they can buy every conceivable product in comfort under the one roof, in the warmth and out of the rain. Something special has been lost, I feel.

  Some Saturdays I was taken by my parents into Rotherham to help with the shopping, get kitted out with new clothes and have the dreaded haircut. Dad often called in at the Masons Arms on Wellgate ‘just for a half ’ on the way into town, agreeing to meet us when all the shopping had been done, and he would help us carry it back. I often wished I could go into the pub with Dad. It was an intriguing, noisy, bustling world, thick with tobacco smoke, where men argued and laughed and told jokes, played darts and sat at sticky tables playing dominoes. There seemed to be a glow of contentment inside the doors.

  ‘Not for you, young man,’ Dad would tell me. ‘Wait until you’re older. You help your mother with the shopping and I’ll see you later.’

  Our neighbour, Mrs Evans, had her shopping delivered from Beaumont and Stevenson’s, ‘quality grocers’, but we never did. It was much more interesting to take a trip into town, walking from shop to shop, meeting people and on occasions ending the visit with a coffee and a cake in Davy’s Café. On my sortie into Rotherham with my parents I should have much preferred staying with my father in the pub, where a row of men propped up the bar talking and laughing and putting the world to rights, but I had to go with my mother into the town centre.

  Like many people at that time, my mother shopped for her groceries at the Co-op because she could get her ‘divvy’. The idea of the Co-operative Society was that customers should share some of the profits, and for a small initial payment (I have an idea it was two shillings and sixpence) you became a member and were given a dividend number. I guess many people my age can still recall their Co-op divvy number. Mum’s was 29305. As my mother queued, waiting to be served, I was intrigued by the method of payment for goods. The shop assistant placed the money in a small metal cylinder which was attached to an overhead wire, and with a sharp pull on a lever, the missile would shoot off at high speed to a cashier who would deal with the purchase. After a short time the cylinder would shoot back on the wire with the customer’s change and a receipt inside.

  We would invariably call into Boots the Chemist, where patent medicines were dispensed. My mother, ever health-conscious, purchased jars of cod liver oil and malt, a brown, viscous, not unpleasant-tasting concoction, and a strange mixture called Fennings, guaranteed to ward off colds, influenza, coughs and other chesty ailments. There was also a small library in Boots and we rarely left without a purchase. Then on to Schonhut’s, the high-class butcher’s, housed in a mock Tudor building, for the Sunday joint of beef or, for a change, a cut of pork. The butcher, a broad-shouldered, big-chested man with great beefy arms and wearing an immense apron, was a frightening figure who wielded a giant cleaver over a blood-stained block of wood. His red cheeks shone as if they had been scrubbed. I remember my father telling me that during the First World War with the prevalent anti-German hysteria a mob had attacked Schonhut’s, smashing the windows and making off with the meat and the pork sausages, until the police arrived in force. I remember thinking that the looters would not have dared try that on if this giant had been behind the counter. Next stop was Stanilands or Graftons for the bread, and if I was lucky, a doughnut or a custard cream, Stockdales for the fruit and finally W. Muntus and Co., the large department store, a rabbit warren of a place, where my clothes were purchased. We would then meet my father outside F. W. Woolworth on College Street. The bulk of the shopping was passed over and my mother would leave us to buy the last few items and later to meet us outside Davy’s Café, while I went with Dad for the dreaded haircut.

  On Saturday mornings there would be a row of men and glum little boys waiting for their haircuts. Reg, the barber, was a small bald-headed man with a fleshy face, a red nose the shape of a turnip and fat white hands. He was irritatingly jaunty and garrulous, and what was more annoying was that he was inordinately slow. It wasn’t that he spent a long time on the job in hand – namely cutting people’s hair – it was because he never stopped talking. There were long pauses between cutting the hair or shaving a customer when he would discuss national and local events. The barber’s was an exclusively masculine world where the topics of conversation centred largely around football and work.

  Even as a child I was fascinated by other people’s language. Reg had a rich repertoire of sayings which peppered his conversation. Of the goalkeeper at Rotherham United he once remarked, ‘He’s about as much use as a poultice on a wooden leg’; of a recently deceased neighbour, ‘Well, that’s another page turned in the great book of life’; of the meanness of a customer, ‘He could peel an orange in his pocket’; of the boy who broke wind, ‘Close t’back door’; of the woman of ample proportions who served in the hardware shop and was noted for wearing a low-cut dress beneath her overall, ‘Her suet dumplings are boiling over.’

  My father was first in the barber’s chair, this large swivelling throne of a thing with a simulated brown leather covering and an adjustable footrest, and he remained there while Reg snipped a bit off the back and trimmed the wisps of hair that were combed across his otherwise bald pate. He then scraped the back of his neck with a cut-throat razor, trimmed the moustache and eyebrows and removed any stray hairs in the ears.

  ‘Now then, young fella-mi-lad,’ the barber would say when it came to my turn, ‘let’s be having you.’

  He placed a plank across the arms of the chair, lifted me on to it, wrapped a large sheet around me which smelt of shaving soap and a sickly sweet cologne and asked, ‘How do you want it?’ Before I could tell him I just wanted a trim or ‘a tidy-up’, he turned to my father and asked, ‘Short back and sides and good bit off t’top?’

  ‘That’s fine,’ said Dad.

  ‘Could I have it a bit longer this time?’ I would ask plaintively. I hated going to school on the Monday with a head like a coconut and everyone asking the same inane question: ‘’Ave you ’ad your ’air cut?’

  ‘No problem, young fella-mi-lad,’ Reg would say, but would then proceed to scalp me.

  I just wanted this prolonged and painful experience to be over as soon as possible, so when he started on the interrogation I would answer the questions he fired at me in monosyllables.

  ‘How’s school then?’ he’d ask.

  ‘OK.’r />
  ‘Behaving yourself, are you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you play football?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Cricketer then, are you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What do you play?’

  ‘Nothing.

  ‘Been on holiday?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You’re a right little chatterbox, you, aren’t you?’

  ‘No.’

  Sometimes he would ask an embarrassing question with a sort of snigger, such as, ‘Got a girlfriend yet, then?’ I wouldn’t even deign to answer and would shake my head. The only occasion I said anything above the one-word answer was when I saw him reach for the electric clippers, which buzzed like a frantic bee. I would then mention the spot on the back of my neck, touching it with my finger to indicate the location, and ask him to be careful. My request would come to nothing, for invariably he would slice off the top of the spot, whistling as he did so. I would yelp and wonder if he had done it on purpose because I’d been less than friendly when he interrogated me. Then the barber would reach for a strand of cotton wool, dip it into some liquid and press it on my neck. The stinging sensation was indescribable and there would be a sharp intake of my breath. This was followed by some word of wisdom from Sweeney Todd, such as, ‘Wait till you’re shaving, young fella-mi-lad, you’ll get used to a few cuts.’ This produced a few laughs from the customers, which made me colour up with anger and embarrassment. The final part of the ordeal was to have talcum powder puffed on to my neck, followed by a vigorous brushing down.

  On one occasion a Teddy Boy was sitting on the bench when we entered the shop. He was leaning back casually, legs apart, chewing. The other customers stared at him as if he were an exotic specimen in a museum case, but he was unconcerned. The style of hair and dress that he affected said to the customers that he was an idler, a troublemaker, a ne’er-do-well. But I was irresistibly drawn towards this character, whose sophistication elevated him above the conventional teenagers of the time. I was full of admiration for someone who had the courage to walk around the town in his powder blue suit, string tie, crêpesoled shoes, yellow socks and with this wonderful coiffure. He sported a hairdo that was a work of art. His shiny, black, heavily brilliantined hair was slicked back on both sides, rising from his forehead in one smooth wave and tapering at the nape of his neck. I knew there was no way that Reg was going to give him ‘a short back and sides’ and ‘a good bit off t’top’. When he asked the barber to be careful of his DA and leave his sideburns alone, being an inquisitive child and seeing Reg’s lips purse with disapproval, I asked my father later what a DA was, but he was evasive. It was a friend at school who told me it stood for ‘duck’s arse’ – the shape of his hair at the back.