by Stella Duffy
Even so, he called the owners.
‘Look at this. A bell, for calling your maid. Imagine that. A maid.’
And the young woman said she wouldn’t mind if it was a bell for a night-nanny, she could imagine getting used to that.
And the young man shrugged and asked if they needed to get it taken out and could the apprentice do it and would it cost more or could he put the floorboard back safely and leave it there and just get on with the job?
There was a distinct tone in the bloke’s voice that the apprentice was wasting time when he could be waxing, varnishing, breathing in dust and fumes.
They left the room, shaking their heads over what had been and what was now, but only a little, they had too much what would be to worry about, and they left the apprentice to get on with it.
And then. Against his better judgment, because the apprentice knew he should never ring a bell he didn’t want answered – he rang the bell. Quietly, softly. And nothing happened, but a dull thud, not even a real tinkle, too much dust and rust in the mechanism, the spring too old to bounce back. Nothing happened. The apprentice dusted down the bell, vacuumed away a century of small things fallen between the cracks, rang the bell – again softly, again quietly – one more time, and then he replaced the floorboard. Hammered and nailed into place, smoothed, varnished, finished. As if it had never been done, never been rung.
That night the apprentice sat in the pub with his mates. They talked about football, rubbish. Telly, rubbish. Women, not rubbish, but not easy, definitely not easy. And work. Rubbish. The apprentice’s friends talked about this girl in the office, and that bloke who sent out the cabs, and the old girl in accounts and the old bloke in shipping and each one of them had horror stories of the Monday to Friday, Monday to Saturday for those like the apprentice, and each one of them laughed at his mates’ stories and told his own like it was high drama, and each one of them, having told the tale, moved on. Back to football, still rubbish. And because they had known each other since school, since before they were even teenagers, and because they met every Friday night and said the same things every Friday night, and because they knew how it was, at home, all the lads went easy on their mate the apprentice when it came time to buy his round. They liked him, he was a good bloke, things were bad now, had been bad for a while, things would get better eventually. And because they were his mates the apprentice let them go easy on him and didn’t make a fuss or insist on paying his way, he just went up to the bar and ordered the half dozen half pints.
He carried over four half pints, went back to the bar for the last two and a few bags of crisps. A gesture, and welcome. His hands full, he turned and bumped smack into an old man.
Shit. Sorry.
The apprentice swore first, the old man swore next, they said sorry at the same time. Smiled. The apprentice looked down and, where he expected beer on his shirt, lager on the old man’s jumper, where he had felt the swell of the half-pint glasses, had caught the sway of moving liquid, the old man was reaching out, almost touching the glasses, the crisps, just. And the beer did not spill. And his mates did not take the piss. And the crisps were eaten. It was a good night.
When last orders came around the apprentice got up to go. Those with their office jobs told him to sit back down again, but the apprentice was adamant. Saturday working was bad enough, with a hangover it was hell. He held up his hand, smiled round the table, and walked from the bar with shouts of loser ringing behind him. He heard it every Friday, had done since he started his apprenticeship. He was beginning to wonder if maybe they were right.
Late Friday night, winter, cold outside after the warmth of friends and fumes in the pub. The apprentice zipped up his jacket, pulled the collar up around his ears, started down the road on his walk home.
‘Lad. Wait up. Lad.’
He turned. The old man was standing in the doorway.
‘Do you mind? If I walk a way with you? I don’t like to walk on my own, winter, icy roads.’
The apprentice looked at the old man. He had to be eighty if he was a year, he wasn’t going to mug him, and if this was the way old blokes came on to young men these days, well, it wasn’t going to turn him gay either.
‘I’m turning right at the end of the High Street. Any good to you?’
‘Yes. Yes it is.’
The old man nodded and they walked together.
As they walked the old man asked the apprentice about himself. The apprentice told him about his work, the relentless days of it, how even though he felt he was doing good things for people, nice things, there was no shine to his days. The old man nodded, he too had once worked in that way. But he told the apprentice something else, something that made the apprentice laugh and shake his head and say I wish. I wish.
‘You don’t believe me? Look.’
They were almost at the end of the High Street, the apprentice was about to turn left, the old man right, and as they stood there, in the cold night, at the dark end of the long street, the old man reached into his pocket and pulled out a tin. It was a tobacco tin, the kind the apprentice’s grandfather used to keep his tobacco and rolling papers in. The apprentice smiled to see it and in the dark night he caught an image of his grandfather, long gone now, another man, like this one, whose work had made him happy.
The old man put arthritic fingers to the lid of the tin and pulled carefully, with a slight twisting motion, a twisting that the apprentice thought seemed odd for a rectangular tin, and yet the lid eased off anyway.
He held out the tin to the apprentice.
‘Do you know what this is?’
The sodium light washed everything out to yellows and greys, but even so, the apprentice thought he knew what he was looking at.
‘Gold leaf?’
The old man nodded.
‘I was a gilder by trade, for sixty years, more. I can teach you – if you like? It’s slow learning, takes time, but they’ll notice your work all right, I can promise you that. Look.’
And the old man carefully pulled a fine sheet of gold from the tin, he held it up to the streetlight and then, turning to the apprentice, he winked.
‘Over here I think.’
The apprentice followed the old man towards a parking meter.
‘These’ll all be gone soon.’
‘They’re replacing them with ones you pay for on your mobile.’
‘Fine if you have a mobile.’
The apprentice shrugged. ‘Or a car.’
The old man pulled a little vial of oil from his pocket, and another of gum, he smeared both on the meter, working it with his index finger. He then held the gold leaf out to the timer on the parking meter, sizing it up, and with fingers that moved carefully and deliberately despite their twisted joints, he placed the gold on the parking meter, stretching and smoothing it out, sliding his thumb along the metal and making the gold one with the meter until he had completely covered the face of the parking meter.
‘There,’ he said. ‘Now the time can’t tick away.’
The apprentice stared at the meter. It was clean and sharp and bright, it was warm with a red gold that held light even as it reflected it.
‘Yes,’ he nodded, ‘please. Teach me how to do that.’
The old man staggered then, gasping for breath, he reached out to grab the apprentice’s arm.
‘Are you ok?’
‘Just a little faint, that’s all. Not as young as I used to be, the blood doesn’t flow as well as it did.’
The apprentice offered to walk the old man home, and the old man offered to take the apprentice on.
In the morning the apprentice walked the long way to work, so he could go past the parking meter. And it had not been a dream and the meter was shining. In the thin winter sunlight it was the warmest thing on the street.
And so the apprentice began his second apprenticeship. While he still worked six days a week for his carpenter boss, he now worked two evenings a week and every second Sunday with the gilder. He starte
d with oil gilding and slowly, carefully, built up to water gilding. He started with alloys of copper or brass or zinc and then, eventually, because he was a quick student and because he worked hard, the old man gave him his first sheet of twenty-four carat gold to work with. He worked it well.
Time spent with the old man was a pleasure, and the apprentice found that because he looked forward to his Tuesday and Thursday evenings, to his Sunday mornings, his other days became more pleasurable too. He started to add effects to the work he did as a carpenter, offering a small flourish of gilt here, a touch of gold there, and when they were brave enough to say yes, the clients liked what he gave them, liked that he left his mark. But even though he worked all the spare hours he could with the old man, as the days of his first apprenticeship began to draw to a close, he never could make his own gilding look as rich, as deep, as the old man’s. The apprentice’s gold was always lighter, yellower. The old man’s gold glowed warm, shot through with a deep richness that was almost red. And the apprentice wanted to know how to do that.
He asked the old man.
The old man frowned, ran a hand over his face, nodded, smiled.
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I think it’s time.’
He told the apprentice about the first gold mines in Egypt and Nubia, about the uses of gold in medicine and science, gold for food and gold for the gods, of the gold waiting in the vast oceans, and then, when he had told him the first seventy-eight secrets of gold, he told him the seventy-ninth.
And when he had told him the seventy-ninth secret, he showed him how to do it. The apprentice watched, amazed, excited, understanding, quiet. When he had given it all up, the old man thanked the apprentice, and said he really needed to sleep, he was tired, it was time.
As he stood at the door, ready to leave, the apprentice asked the old man, ‘Why me? Why did you decide to share the secret with me?’
The old man smiled and said, ‘You called me.’
‘I did?’
‘You rang the bell.’
And the apprentice felt again the rusty spring mechanism beneath his fingers, the dust covering the old servants’ bell.
‘You rang the bell and that night, in the pub, you said sorry to an old bloke who bumped into you.’
The apprentice looked at his mentor and friend, saw the man’s pale face, even his lips now drained of blood.
‘You bumped into me on purpose?’
‘You looked like you needed a hand.’ The old man closed his eyes, ‘You should go now lad, I’m very tired.’
The apprentice helped the old man to his chair, looked around the workroom for what he knew would be the last time, took in the gilt-backed chair, the gilt-edged books, the gold-tipped pencils and pens, the gold-backed mirror, all the things the old man had shown him how to make lovely, make shine, and he saw they were all a deeper gold now, a redder gold.
He wished the old man good night and he thanked him. But the old man was already gone.
All that was very many years ago, and the apprentice is an old man himself now, his hands are arthritic and he must work even more carefully, deliberately. His unhappy father and tired mother are dust, the brother and sisters all grown up. There is a wife, and children too, a wife who wears a ring of warm red gold. They found each other late in life and took a chance on pleasure. He likes to say the children – the same age as his little brother’s grandchildren – keep him young. He likes to say it, but it isn’t true.
The apprentice has his own lads working for him, girls too – times have changed, but techniques haven’t. He shows them the tricks of the trade, the dovetail joints and mitre cuts, the sanding and polishing, smoothing and finishing. Sometimes he teaches gilding too. But only if they are hungry for the difference, for the shine.
One day he will share the trick that the old man showed him. He will whisper the method for making gold richer, redder; the passing of real gold, true red gold, from hand to object, from lifeline to piece, real gold made precious by his almost-touching of it, made precious by his blood in it, his life in it.
It is tiring, literally pouring himself, his life, his life blood, into everything he does. But he does love the job.
Uncertainties and Small Surprises
‘THERE ARE UNCERTAINTIES,’ he says, leaning over her in the near empty carriage, ‘Uncertainties and small surprises to be had in an underground journey.’
He sits beside her. She smiles politely, buries her head deeper in her old copy of Time Out. Reads the letters page. Twice. It does no good. He starts again, smiling now.
‘Take for example, the Northern Line train travelling south.’
She begins to wish she hadn’t. The two city gentlemen, misplaced in the far corner of a late night tube, shuffle their newspapers, glare at her and at the chattering man for disturbing them, say nothing. This man has a point to make, about trains and other matters. He goes on to make it.
‘The notice board says ‘see front of train’. The train, of course, says nothing. It is not after all, Thomas the Tank Engine. It does not have the luxury of a voice over by Ringo Starr. Anyway, you decide to take your fate into your own hands. You board the train intending to travel to Victoria to meet your mother at the coach station and …’ here he places his hand on hers for emphasis, her arm stiffens, she waits for his hand to move away. It goes nowhere. His grip is tight. He cares about his subject. The train takes a corner a little too quickly and he lurches once more into his discussion.
‘And this is the good bit – it doesn’t matter which line the train takes. Charing Cross or City Branch. It simply doesn’t matter. You will not know what to do until you pass through the ghost of Mornington Crescent. Or not. Of course it is quicker to go to Euston on the Bank Line. You need only to cross the platform there. A few steps to the train you want. And those Victoria Line trains are so very regular.’
Far more regular than the beating of her heart which has gathered momentum in pace with his speech and is now racing at a speed of knots, charged up with adrenaline. Fearful adrenaline. And, if she is honest, which she always is, a tiny breath of excitement too.
Her arm loses its tension and she nods as if giving him permission to continue. He smiles.
‘And that is where the small surprise lies. If you have plenty of time and can enjoy the fretful unease of at least six people in the carriage when they realise they are on the wrong side of the Northern Line – you can have a pleasant and enjoyable five minutes in what is usually described as one of the most nightmare of underground journeys. You don’t know what’s coming but it doesn’t matter. You will arrive at the same destination no matter what route you take. How often can you say that in life, eh? Of course, it only works if you’re not in a hurry.’
She makes a leap of judgement and from observing becomes participant.
‘Are you often not in a hurry?’
He looks at her, startled that she has joined him. This is new and unexpected. A small surprise.
‘Well, no. Almost never. Still, I imagine it’s good when it happens.’
She nods, folds the magazine in half and puts it back in her bag.
‘Oh, it’s always good when it happens.’
He moves his hand from her arm. He is not used to conversation. Does not invite conversation. He sits beside her and shuffles in his seat, his back sweaty against the dark stained covers. Dirty tunnel wind whips across his face and he looks at her, sideways through the cultivated lank fringe that flops over his left eye.
‘I’m sorry. I don’t think I understand. When what happens?’
‘A surprise.’
The train slows. they have been though Euston, Kings Cross, the Angel. The men with neatly folded newspapers have left them alone, plunging into the dark routes home, excuses close at hand. This is Old Street. She stands. Now she leans over him.
‘This is my stop. Do you want to come?’
The train has shuddered itself into the station, the doors open.
‘It’s an uncertaint
y, isn’t it? Do you want to come?’
She is more insistent. She likes this. Likes to lean over him. She can smell his hair, could kiss his forehead if the train jolted her forward only two centimetres. ‘Quickly. Yes or no?’
Three lads roll into the carriage. They are drunk and loud. Louts. Young men frighten him. Even though he is a young man himself. There are no uncertainties with young men. He prefers to be surprised. Young men frighten her too. In packs. She knows how to take care of the singular. She puts her hand on his. ‘Coming?’
He stands and they jump from the train as the doors begin to slam shut. She leads him quickly up stairs and through the empty passages and on to the escalator. They emerge into the open den entrance hall, rabbit warren alleyways leading out in circles to dark midnight. It was the last train south. He will not get home now. She runs up the escalator two moving steps at a time, he is out of breath trying to keep up. Her boots are DM’s, shiny black patent leather. Small. She is small. Even in the running and out of breath, he acknowledges she would look silly with bigger feet. Like Minnie Mouse. This girl is small. He senses she is no mouse. This is an adventure. He is running up the steps like a man in a movie. He is tall and striding and she will take him home and make love to him and feed him and he will sleep in her caress and wake in a London that is not rain swept and winter dirty. He sees all this as they pass one after the other through the same ticket barrier. He looks over her little, narrow shoulders and sees all of this. He is seeing things.
