An East End Farewell

by Yvette Venables

  ‘Yes, there certainly is,’ he said, turning back towards me. ‘Sadly my brother died this morning and I was hoping you could conduct his funeral.’

  I nearly fainted.

  ‘Of course, we’ll be happy to sort it out for you.’

  Not another word was mentioned about the shop and, after we had completed the arrangements for his brother, he stood up to leave.

  ‘Before you go, would you mind if I asked you a question that has been puzzling my uncle and I for a number of years?’ I said.

  ‘Of course, what is it?’

  ‘We could never work out why this new shop was built, and at no cost to ourselves.’

  ‘Ahhh,’ he said. ‘I can easily answer that for you, as I vividly recall the meeting we had. When the papers came in front of the board for the old premises to be demolished and a request had been made for a new one to be built, all of the councillors had no hesitation in agreeing to pass it. You see, over the years most of us and our families have had dealings with either you, your uncle, and even your grandfather before that, so we decided unanimously that these premises would be built under the auspices of “service to the community”. Now does that answer your question?’

  ‘Absolutely,’ I said, smiling, shaking his hand. ‘Thank you very much.’

  ‘No, thank you, young Cribb, thank you!’ he said.

  When he was gone I sat there. ‘Services to the community’ – so that was their reason for building it. I can’t tell you how proud that made me feel.

  The awful thing was, after I found out this wonderful piece of news I went straight in to see Uncle. I sat there excitedly telling him what had happened, and what the councillor had told me, but he had no idea what I was talking about; he just sat staring out of the window. That for me was the most heartbreaking part; he would never know why the new premises had been built. It would have filled him with joy to have known that.

  For over a year I visited him weekly, even though he had reached the stage where he didn’t even recognise me. It was shocking to see this once strong, quick-minded, exceptional man deteriorate in the way he did. The last time I saw him I was telling him about a funeral I had just conducted. Although he didn’t respond, I knew he was listening.

  ‘Would you like to organise another funeral, Uncle?’ I asked, softly putting my hand on top of his.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, looking at me as a little spark came into his eyes.

  I reached into my bag and pulled out an order form and pen and handed it to him. ‘Here we are then,’ I said.

  He took it from me and scribbled over the page and then handed it back. ‘There you go, boy, all done!’ he said, smiling.

  That was the last time I saw him. He died the next day, peacefully in his sleep. He was 86 years old.

  My beloved mentor was gone.

  I now had to arrange his funeral and I knew exactly what I had to do. Under normal circumstances only one undertaker is used, but in this instance I would be using two. I contacted Mr Tadman and Mr Rivett and asked them if they would conduct the funeral. They were the same undertakers Uncle had used for his own father’s funeral, although it was now run by their sons. I was following in the family tradition.

  Bill Whitehorn, our carpenter at that time, made the coffin. I polished it, then fitted the mouldings and handles. He had kept a specific set of handles for as long as I could remember, and occasionally would take them out to polish them, saying, ‘Now don’t forget, boy, these are to go on my coffin when the times comes.’

  The funeral itself was very simple; he wouldn’t have wanted anything else. We left from Bert’s house in Leyton. Mr Tadman and Mr Rivett walked together at the head.

  The service was held in Old St Luke’s Church, in the presence of around 200 people. We had two services conducted by our old friends, Anglican Vicar Father Goose and Catholic Priest Father Hall. We used the two different denominations, as Uncle Tom had known these two men for many, many years, and liked and respected them both.

  He was laid to rest with his father and mother in the East London Cemetery. For all of his cantankerous ways, I loved and missed him more than I could ever say.

  17

  They’re Back

  1984 (age 56)

  We’d just sat down to one of my favourite dinners: calves’ liver, bacon, mashed potatoes, onions and peas, topped off with a lovely thick gravy.

  What more could a man ask for?

  Then Graham pipes up: ‘Please come and look at the carriage, Dad.’

  ‘Look,’ I sighed. ‘How many times do I have to tell you, I don’t want to get involved with the carriages and horses!’ I was getting fed up with his constant nagging over the previous few weeks, about a carriage he’d seen in a barn.

  He was getting on my nerves.

  ‘I just think it’ll be good for the business to reintroduce the horses. You know they haven’t been used since you were a boy and I’ve a feeling it’s going to take off again,’ he said, pushing another forkful of mash into his mouth.

  ‘Here we go . . . so now you’re the H.G. Wells of undertaking, are you? Look, will you just forget it; I don’t want to know!’ I shouted.

  Chronic indigestion was just around the corner.

  I had slowly but surely turned into Uncle Tom.

  After he’d left, Joan walked back in from the kitchen and sat down opposite me. ‘Why don’t you just go and look at the carriage? He’s taken a lot of time searching for one he thinks would be right. I feel a bit sorry for him, doing all that work and all you keep doing is giving him knock-backs. He looked deflated when he left.’

  ‘Look, Joan, it’s not as if I’ve led him up the garden path. I told him I wasn’t interested even before he started looking, so that’s his bloody fault! You know what he’s like, always thinking up ‘harebrained’ schemes. He’s always been the same; he’ll never change,’ I answered.

  ‘You just won’t give in, will you? Just go with him, have a look, then tell him it’s not the right carriage or something. Just let him see you’ve shown a bit of interest, otherwise it’ll put him off suggesting anything else in the future, and you’ve got a short memory when it suits you!’ she said angrily, heading back to the kitchen.

  ‘Hang on . . . what’s that supposed to mean?’ I asked.

  She stopped and turned. ‘Well, how many times did you come home complaining to me about how frustrated you got with Tom not wanting to listen to any of your ideas. You’re doing exactly the same thing to Graham but you can’t see it.’

  Ding-ding, end of Round 1. Hit with a killer blow – and not below the belt.

  What she was saying was absolutely right, annoying but true.

  ‘Alright, alright, I’ve got your point; I’ll talk to him tomorrow.’

  ‘Thank the Lord for that!’ she said, disappearing into the kitchen.

  The next week, there we were, heading off to a farm in the sticks to look at the carriage. When we arrived, Graham went off and had a chat with the farmer, who pointed us in the direction of the barn. It was ramshackle; in fact, it should’ve been condemned. Graham pushed the creaking double doors open, and inside it looked like a scene from Dickens. The sun shone through the gaps in the roof and walls, there were cobwebs everywhere and, tucked away in the corner surrounded by bales of straw, was the carriage. You could hardly see it for dust and birds’ muck.

  ‘I don’t believe this! This hasn’t seen the light of day since Queen Victoria came to the throne. I thought you said you’d seen it,’ I said, walking up to it.

  ‘Well, no . . . I haven’t actually seen it, Dad. Someone told me about it in the pub,’ he replied, making sure not to catch my eye as he walked around to the other side.

  ‘YOU HAVEN’T SEEN IT? I’ve come all this way to look at something you haven’t even seen yourself! Don’t you think I’ve got nothing else to do, boy?’ I yelled.

  ‘Everything all right in ’ere,’ the farmer asked, looking around the door.

  ‘Yes, yes, everything�
�s fine. We’re just discussing the carriage,’ I lied.

  ‘Oh, rightyho then, I’ll leave you to it,’ he said, pulling the doors closed behind him.

  I lowered my voice. ‘I only came because your mother was making me feel guilty, telling me you’d done a lot of work searching for the bloody thing, and now you tell me you heard about it in the pub!’

  ‘Sorry, Dad. Mum must have misunderstood me,’ he said, as he opened the carriage door and looked in.

  ‘Misunderstood, my arse! It’s obviously a get-up between the two of you,’ I hissed.

  By that time he was walking round the back, rubbing some of the dust and muck off.

  ‘Well, it’s London built,’ I said.

  ‘How do you know that?’ he asked, as his head shot around the side gawping at me.

  ‘By the style,’ I answered. ‘But there’s no point in you looking around there. Here’s where you need to look, to see if it’s any good.’ With that I bent down, wet my finger and started to rub along the wheel hub and there, to my surprise, it read ‘Dottridges Bros’ who were one of the finest carriage-makers of their time. It did put a smile on my face when I saw it.

  ‘What do you think?’ Graham asked. He was getting excited.

  ‘Let’s get it outside in the daylight and have a proper look,’ I said.

  The farmer then arranged for a couple of his hands to pull it into the yard. He suggested we went inside for a cup of tea while they cleaned it up a bit.

  After enjoying a nice pot of tea and some freshly baked cake we went outside to inspect the carriage. Well, it was a sight for sore eyes; it looked so much like our old carriage it brought an unexpected lump to my throat.

  ‘Mmm, interesting. Needs a respray and quite a bit of restoring, but I think it may work. How much do you want for it?’ I said, turning towards the farmer.

  ‘£2,800,’ he replied. ‘That’s a fine carriage, that is. You won’t find many of them around these days.’

  ‘Just a minute,’ I said. ‘I want a quick word with my son.’ I then walked away with Graham, who looked like a Cheshire cat, and in a low voice I said, ‘Look, this was your mad idea. If we get this you’ll have to get it all sorted – the harness, horses, everything – don’t expect me to be running around doing it.’

  ‘I’ll do it all, Dad. I promise you won’t have to do anything,’ he replied. He was thirty-two and he looked like he wanted to jump up and down like a kid. I had a flashback of Horace feeding Gracie the senna pods. I wanted to laugh, but couldn’t with the farmer looking.

  We walked back over. ‘Right.’ I said, ‘£2,000 for cash. I’m not into negotiating. You take it or leave it. It needs a lot of work done, which isn’t going to come cheap, so that’s the deal.’

  I was expecting him to ‘hum and haw’ but he didn’t. He just spat on his palm – and I mean spat on his palm, not that make-out spitting – held his hand out, and said, ‘You’ve got yourself a carriage.’

  I turned to Graham. ‘Well, shake the farmer’s hand, Graham; it was your idea, after all.’

  He hesitantly held out his hand, and the farmer took it in a vice-like grip, pumping it up and down, saying, ‘Pleasure doin’ business with you gentlemen.’

  Have you ever seen someone trying to smile but wearing a look of disgust at the same time? Well, that’s how Graham looked.

  As we were leaving, he found an old water butt, plunged his hand into it and started scrubbing with his handkerchief. I had to walk off I was laughing so much.

  The carriage was collected the next day and, luckily enough, my son John had room to store it in his garage while we decided how this new-fangled scheme was going to work, or should I say until Graham had decided.

  It had been sitting in the garage around a month and nothing seemed to be happening, so it was time to have a word with H.G. Wells.

  ‘I want to know what’s going on with the carriage. It’s been weeks since you carted me halfway round the country to spend £2,000 on that thing, and now it’s sitting in John’s doing nothing,’ I said impatiently.

  ‘I know, I know, I’m still trying to get a contact for the horses. I’ve got some information on a breeder but I’m having trouble tracking down his phone number,’ he explained.

  ‘I told you before, you’re wasting your time looking for that breed. I bet they all died out when everybody changed over to cars forty years ago.’

  ‘No, they haven’t! I’m onto it and should know something soon,’ he said.

  Well, that was that – until a few weeks later when he came rushing in all excited again.

  Now this was to start a course of events which you just won’t believe . . .

  ‘I’ve found someone!’ he shouted. ‘It’s not the original man I was trying to find but through a fluke. Our neighbours’ mother is visiting from Holland and she knows someone there who has three Friesians for sale,’ he said breathlessly.

  ‘So, what do you want me to do about it?’ I asked.

  ‘We’ve got to go over and see them now before she sells them to someone else,’ he explained.

  ‘Go over to Holland! Are you winding me up? This was your bloody idea, why have I got to troop over there too?’

  ‘I just thought that you’d want to see them. After all, you are the expert on these horses, Dad.’ He grinned.

  I sighed. Although he was a pain in the arse, he certainly knew how to butter me up. ‘When you planning on going, then?’

  ‘This weekend. We can get the ferry over to the Hook of Holland and then hire a car to the woman’s farm. John can come too,’ he said, looking very pleased with himself.

  ‘Alright, get it organised, we’ll go and take a look. Might as well now we’ve got the carriage stuck there doing nothing.’

  We left in the early hours of Friday morning. We drove to Harwich and picked up the ferry. It was a diabolical crossing – the sea was rough and none of us were particularly good sailors, so we were all the worse for wear when we got there. Having docked, we left the ship, happy to find our land legs again, although still feeling very delicate.

  We hired a car and set off. The weather was awful, teeming rain with a hurricane blowing. As well as not being good sailors, we were not particularly good map-readers either, and I can’t tell you how many times we got lost. All we seemed to do was stop at petrol stations, asking for directions.

  We drove for ages and it rained continually. I was not happy. What with the sea crossing and now this, I just hoped these horses were going to be worth the trip.

  After nearly four hours we at last arrived at the farm, which was in the North of Holland in a place called Friesland. It is the only one of the twelve provinces of the Netherlands to have its own language, and where the breed of horses we were looking for originated from. Even though the weather didn’t do it any favours, the farm didn’t look much. It was very small and not the sort of place you would associate with a top breeder of horses. Something didn’t seem right. I looked at Graham; he wouldn’t look at me, as he was pretending to concentrate on the road. As we pulled up outside the farmhouse, I was even more concerned. It looked in a state of disrepair.

  We all got out of the car and walked to the door. Graham knocked and it was opened by a lady in her mid-forties. She was very attractive, but looked as if she’d been experiencing tough times and didn’t have the time or inclination to take care of herself anymore. She was puzzled when she saw us, and very politely said something I assume was in Frisian, the local language, but to be honest it was all double-Dutch to us.

  Graham then said, ‘Good afternoon, Madam, my name is Graham Harris. This is my father, Stan, and brother, John, and we have come from England to look at the horses you have for sale.’

  ‘Horses?’ she said in English. ‘I haven’t got any horses!’

  With that, I shot a look at Graham, and, joking aside, I thought he was going to pass out. I saw him physically sway.

  ‘No, Madam. You definitely have three Friesian horses for sale,’ he sa
id, speaking very slowly, as if she was simple or it would somehow make a difference to her answer.

  ‘I am sorry, but I definitely haven’t,’ she said smiling.

  ‘But you must have . . .’

  ‘Are you not listening to the lady, Graham? She says she hasn’t got any horses, and I think she’d know, don’t you?’ I said.

  ‘But I don’t understand.’ Graham’s voice was now quite pathetic. ‘We’ve come all this way, as I was told that you had three horses for sale.’

  ‘You’d better come in,’ she said, leading us into a very cosy living room, with a roaring log fire.

  ‘Let me make you a cup of tea and get you something to eat and we can sort out where the confusion has come from.’

  Off she went into her kitchen. I was sitting by the fireplace opposite Graham. I was still staring at him, but the little sod wouldn’t look at me. He was fascinated by a pattern in the carpet.

  John knew better. As I’ve previously mentioned, he’d learnt from a very young age to keep quiet and well out of it when his brother had dug himself into a hole. This was his brother’s problem, not his, so he just sat there looking at the both of us.

  Whilst we drank tea and ate a snack she had kindly made for us, she explained that she had kept horses in the past but after her husband had died a few years previously finances were tight, so she unfortunately had to sell them. How Graham had got news that she had horses for sale puzzled her.

  We’d had the journey from hell and nothing to show for it, and now we had to turn round and go all the way back empty-handed.

  ‘Just a minute. I think I may be able to help you,’ she said, getting up.

  Graham’s head shot up so quickly I thought his neck was going to snap when she said this.

  With that, she called someone on the phone and started writing down notes whilst talking in Frisian, so we had no idea what she was on about. When she hung up she turned to us smiling. ‘That was a friend of mine who has contacts. He said that there’s a farm around an hour from here, which does have a few Friesians, which he believes are for sale. He has given me the directions, so if you like you could try there. Hopefully something will come of it. I hate to think of you having a wasted journey.’