by June Gadsby
‘Aye, she has an’ all, but she’s not been well and I’m worried in case she’s passed out or something.’
The woman looked hard at Billy, who swayed before her and returned her gaze with a glassy-eyed look that shocked her.
‘Billy Flynn, have you been drinkin’, eh?’
Billy steadied himself by bracing his legs and leaning one hand up against the doorjamb. He swiped the back of the other hand across his mouth, which felt kind of numb and useless, so he figured he might be dribbling down his chin.
‘Aye,’ he said. ‘And I’m heartily ashamed of meself, but there was a fella up at the Venerable Bede th’night buying drinks for them as couldn’t go on the march and I was so damned angry at being turned down...!’ He turned back to the door and continued to hit it with his fist.
‘Didn’t they accept you for the march, then, Billy?’ Mrs Turnbull asked sympathetically. ‘They were supposed to be marching down to London in their hundreds.’
‘Just two hundred,’ Billy said, surprised at the way his words sort of ached inside his head; the unaccustomed alcohol was turning his brain into tapioca. ‘I missed it by one, but they wouldn’t let me sign on. Is that mad or what? I’m a lot younger and fitter than most of them that are going.’
‘So you decided to get drunk and now you’re keeping the whole street awake with your shenanigans.’ Mrs Turnbull shook her head at him. ‘I hope it’s not a case of ‘like mother like son’, Billy. You know where it leads, eh? There’s no excuse for you to go down that road. You’ve got more sense than that.’
‘Don’t worry about me on that score, Mrs Turnbull,’ Billy said, belching loudly and apologizing. ‘I don’t even like the taste of the stuff. I was just so bliddy mad, and now I can’t even get in me own house.’
‘I thought you always kept a spare key under the doormat?’
‘I do, but it’s not there. I’ve looked.’
‘Howay, Billy,’ Mrs Turnbull beckoned to him and dodged back into her own passageway. He heard her scrabbling behind the door then she appeared with a front door key and held it out to him. ‘I’ve had that spare since the day you was born. As luck would have it, yer ma nivvor changed the lock after yer da stormed off.’
‘Thanks, Mrs Turnbull.’
The key was a bit stiff because it had rusted up over the years, but with some persuasion, it finally turned in the lock and the door swung open with a loud complaining creak. He tumbled inside, his legs too wobbly from the large double whisky he had consumed, and he cursed the young man who, despite being unemployed, could still afford to buy it.
‘Never again,’ he muttered to himself as he felt his way along the narrow passageway, thinking how odd it was that his mother didn’t have at least one low gaslight on, for she hated the dark and they could still manage a sixpence for the meter now and then. ‘Mam? It’s me, Billy. Are you all right?’
There was a damp chill in the house and a musty odour, though it was cleaner than it had been. When Billy had been paid off from Palmer’s, he spent some time doing the housework, but he hadn’t mentioned it to anybody in case they thought he was a cissy. Not even to Bridget. Not that she would have pulled his leg over it. She would have volunteered her services, more like, and she had enough on her plate looking after Laura. She also looked after the old man downstairs who owned the cobbler’s shop and cleaned his place for him. The cobbler was one of the few people who still had work. Him, and one or two railway men.
Billy loved going into the cobbler’s. He loved the smell of the leather and the old man, Mr Roberts, enjoyed teaching him the trade. Now, Billy could add shoe mending and shoe-making to his list of abilities. He made a pair of soft leather slippers for his mother only last week and she cried as he slipped them on her cold feet and told him he was a good boy.
‘Mam?’ Billy found the matches and struck a light, then turned up the wick in the mantle at the top of the stairs, putting the flame to the gas that hissed out of it until it plopped into light.
Nothing. Silence. He couldn’t even hear a snore coming from Maggie’s room. When she was on the gin she could snore as loud as any beer-bellied man, but as he said to Mrs Turnbull, his mother had stopped drinking. It happened overnight, like someone had switched her off. Now, she just sat around, staring into space, silent and miserable.
Her door was ajar. He could see that as he crept towards it, following his own long shadow until he stood just inside the room, willing his eyes to get accustomed to the combination of light and dark.
‘Mam?’ He called out to Maggie in a voice with a tremor in it, for he could see her form outlined on the bed and a deep-seated fear started up in him. It worked its way from the soles of his feet to his scalp, and as he scrabbled again for the matches and felt for the light, he could hear the blood singing in his ears.
Maggie was sprawled haphazardly across the bed, all her limbs at a bizarre angle. She was naked and looked indecent to her son’s eyes. Her head was turned towards him and she stared sightlessly at the wall behind him. Billy sank to his knees, gulped loudly, retched, and then spewed his guts up in the nearest corner.
A few minutes’ later things seemed clearer to him. He saw the empty gin bottle on the floor and a brown pill bottle, also empty, on the bedside cabinet. She hadn’t even left two Aspros for him to take to stop the pounding pain in his head.
‘Aw, Mam...Mam!’
He clattered back down the stairs and battered on Mrs Turnbull’s door. Then, leaving her to cover his mother’s nakedness and give her some dignity, he dashed up to the doctor’s and got the poor man out of bed, though there was nothing anybody could do, other than sign the death certificate.
#
By October of that year, life had changed radically for a lot of people in Jarrow, not least Billy. After his mother’s death, he moved in permanently with Bridget and slept in a folding bed in her living room for a while, until old Mr Roberts died, leaving Bridget the rest of the house and his cobbler’s shop to Billy, who couldn’t believe his luck.
The cobbler’s shop was full of tanned leather and dyes and heavy iron lasts and nails and studs that would keep Billy happily occupied for a very long time. He was happiest when he was working with his hands. So, between his work up at the allotments, where, like a lot of men in Jarrow, he grew his own vegetables, he carried on where old Mr Roberts left off. Nobody could afford new shoes these days, but there were still some who could manage a bob or two for repairs and Billy knew when to charge the full whack or put the amount owed on an imaginary slate. And as he worked, he played scratchy old records of brass band music on the old cobbler’s gramophone, knocking in studs in time with the rousing marches.
‘Eeh, yer a grand lad, Billy Flynn!’ Hardly a day went by without somebody voicing those words. Billy thought how proud his mam would be if she could look down on him now and see what her runt of a son was doing with his life.
Laura was still staying with Bridget. Her presence bothered him, though he kept it to himself. Her baby girl, when it was born, was very poorly. It had not survived more than a month and died from pneumonia and some other unpronounceable complication. Laura had rallied, somewhat, since her traumatic ordeal, but she was still very quiet and kept her distance, especially when he was around, which was often, even though he now had his own living quarters at the back of the shop.
He was aware of Laura’s mournful eyes following him about, but she would never look him fully in the face. Bridget said it was just Laura’s way. Coming from her background, it was only to be expected. The poor woman was ashamed and her family and friends had disowned her. However, Billy still made the effort to speak and be kind to her, hoping that one day she might see him for what he was and not the scruffy little ragamuffin he had been.
‘You try too hard, Billy,’ Bridget said to him one day after witnessing his frustration following one of Laura’s snubs.
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, Bridget,’ he said, trimming off the excess leather on
the sole of a boot he was repairing.
‘Yes, you do.’ Bridget responded, then quickly changed the subject and pointed to the boot on the last. ‘Who does that belong to?’
‘Nobody,’ Billy shrugged. ‘It’s just a pair of boots I found down at the rubbish tip. Somebody chucked them out, but the tops are good enough. I’ve repaired quite a few boots and shoes like that.’
‘What are you going to do with them? Set up a shoe shop? Nobody’s got money to buy shoes any more. Not even second hand ones.’
‘I know that, but I just thought...I thought...well...’
‘Billy Flynn, are you up to something?’
Billy responded to her question with one of his enigmatic grins. ‘Aye,’ he said, but that’s all he told her.
#
On the 5th October 1936 the people of Jarrow gathered around the two-hundred strong men who were to take the petition of 11,000 names some 300 miles to London so that Parliament, and the people of the south of England, would know that the men of Jarrow were serious and worthy of employment. Speeches were made in grand old rousing style, banners were waved as if victory over the Depression was already theirs. Billy watched from the side lines, feeling his heart lift with hope and inspiration instilled by the fervour of the masses.
They marched from the Town Hall to Christ Church, which was packed to capacity with well-wishers. Bishop Gordon of Jarrow gave a religious blessing, and at 10.15 a.m. amidst rousing cheers and the music of the local brass band, the marchers started out on their long and arduous journey.
Lead by the fiery, redheaded MP, Ellen Henderson, they marched in columns, three and four abreast, blue sashes across their proud chests, some wearing their cloth caps at a jaunty angle. One bunch of men had formed themselves into a band, playing rousing marching music on makeshift paper and comb instruments. One or two had real mouth organs and joined in. Others sang or whistled. People lined the streets of Jarrow, women and children mainly, cheering and waving their men off, their faces full of hope and enthusiasm for what they believed would come about because of these brave crusaders. Spirits, like hope, soared high.
Billy’s heart swelled with pride as he sat on a borrowed cart, which he had adapted to his own needs. He gripped the reins of the old carthorse until his hands became tight and sweaty. As if the horse shared his impatience, it tossed its big head with a steamy snort and swayed its flanks inside the shafts, giving off an odour that was more sweet than offensive as it hit the air in front of Billy’s nose.
‘Hey, Billy, lad, where d’ye think ye’re gannin’ wi’ that auld nag?’
As if it understood the insult, the horse snorted, tossed its head again and stamped a shaggy foot in a puddle, sending up a shower of muddy water as high as its quivering withers.
‘Watch your mouth, Alfie Lockhart,’ Billy called back. ‘Neddy here is very sensitive. I don’t want nobody hurting his feelings before we even set off.’
‘Set off?’
‘Aye, on our way to London.’
‘But Billy, son, you was turned down for the Crusade.’
‘Who’s talking about the Crusade?’ Billy pushed his cloth cap to the back of his head and stood up as proud and as tall as he could manage for a man of five feet four inches. ‘Maybe I’ll find me some work on the way. Nobody can stop me looking.’
‘Well, I’ll say this for ye, lad, ye’re a right tryer an’ no mistake.’
‘Aye,’ joined in another shipyard worker who was busily saying goodbye to his pregnant wife and five little ones. ‘He’s a bit too trying at times. Makes the rest of us look bone idle.’
Laughter rippled through the ranks of men filing past. They all knew Billy and there wasn’t one among them that could find it in his heart to resent what he had achieved in his nineteen short years. A lesser man would have been content to rest on his laurels and struggle to live on the meagre benefits doled out by the government. Not so Billy Flynn. He saw an opportunity and he took his chance, be it collecting rubbish, or working his socks off for anybody who would pay him for shifting anything from horse muck to builders’ rubble. He wasn’t the size of two pennorth of copper, but he had muscles on his wiry frame as strong as any knuckle fighter.
‘Gan on, Billy,’ cried out another voice he recognized. ‘Wot ye gonna do wi’ yersel’ if that old bag of bones lies down with its legs in the air, eh? Pull the cart yersel’ mebbe?’
‘Don’t you worry about Ned,’ Billy defended his equine companion. ‘He’s good for a few hundred miles. We’ll make it there and back, you’ll see.’
And because he didn’t want to be left out, Billy’s old dog, Patches, raised his head and gave a jealous howl.
There was more laughter, then one of the men looked down the street with big eyes and pointed.
‘Well, here comes another of your strays,’ he said, grinning and nudging his neighbour, and then there was a group of men smirking and whispering behind their hands.
Billy, one hand on Patches’ collar, looked over his shoulder to see what they were going on about. Bridget, a bulging bag clutched to her, was hurrying towards the cart, her bright red halo of hair and the rosy face lighting up the grey morning.
‘Bridget, what are you doing?’ he asked, aware of a curiously uplifting feeling in his gut just at the sight of her.
‘Somebody’s got to look after you,’ Bridget said, her face serious, but her eyes full of determination. ‘Move over, then. There’s room enough for the three of us up on that seat.’
‘She’ll soon change her mind when yer horse farts in her face,’ said one of the older men and there was more helpless laughter, but Bridget took no notice of them or their ribald comments as she settled herself on the other side of Patches. Billy passed her portmanteau bag back into the cart, which was got up like a wagon in the wild west with a canvas tarpaulin stretched over wooden struts that he fashioned himself out of pit props.
‘I suppose there’s no use arguing with you, is there,’ he said to Bridget, who shook her head determinedly.
‘Not a bit.’
‘I didn’t think there would be.’
‘Go on then. Let’s be off before we get left behind.’
Billy had no intention of being left behind. In fact, he wanted to be in front all the way. He knew the route and the first stop on the march was to be in Chester-le-Street. They were taking the journey in stages and the first leg of the march was twelve miles. Ellen Henderson had organized things well and she was planning on marching with the men, which was cause for comment from some, since she had banned other women from marching.
A second-hand bus had been acquired to transport cooking equipment and it also carried ground sheets, which would be used for the outside rests. This, and an outside guard, was sent out ahead of the main crusader group and Billy made sure that he was sandwiched somewhere in between, for he was determined to be of use, even if the feisty little MP didn’t want him there.
Bridget sat up front, proud as a peacock and twice as sassy, her arm about the neck of the old dog, who gave her a surreptitious lick from time to time, letting her know that he approved of her presence. Billy kept looking at her out of the corner of his eye and wishing he could change places with Patches. It would have been warmer, he told himself. And a cuddle from time to time, even from his lovely Bridget, wouldn’t go amiss.
He always thought of her as “his lovely Bridget”, because that’s what she was. A sister, a friend, a rock to which he could cling. Bridget never changed, nor would he want her to.
They had been on the road for more than an hour when Billy came out of his reverie and thought to ask Bridget what was happening to Laura. For some reason, Laura had completely faded from his mind, so content he was to be doing what he was doing, and sitting in companionable silence with the person he had admired and loved all his life.
‘She’s fine, Billy,’ Bridget told him, not even looking at him, but fixing her gaze on the road ahead, which glistened in the morning light like a ribbon of shiny
oil. ‘Don’t you worry yourself about her. She told me to come with you.’
‘She did?’
‘Aye. She was quite insistent upon it. I think she was scared you’d lose your way or something.’
Billy gave a short laugh. ‘She must be feeling better,’ he said. ‘I’m glad about that. But will she be all right? You know...on her own?’
He thought he heard Bridget heave a sigh and gave her a sharp glance, but there was no change in her expression.
‘She’s all right, Billy,’ Bridget said. ‘In fact, she said she would enjoy being on her own for a while. It’ll give her time to get her head put straight. Anyway, it’s time you stopped worrying about Laura Caldwell. She’s a grown woman, or haven’t you noticed, Billy Big Boots!’
Bridget always called him that daft old nickname when she wanted to tease him. Coming from her he sort of liked it.
They reached Chester-le-Street long before the marchers arrived. Billy set up his wagon on the outskirts of the town on a scrap of spare ground where there was a patch of green grass to bed down the horse. Bridget hadn’t asked him any questions on the way, which was unusual since her curiosity and enquiring mind always got the better of her. But when he pulled his signboard out from under the tarpaulin she stood back, hands on hips, and gave a click of her tongue.
‘I knew you were up to something, Billy,’ she said, nodding her head and making sparks fly as the beam from Billy’s old oil lamp reflected from it. ‘Here, give it to me. Look, you’ve spelt cobbler with only one “b”, ye silly sod.’
Billy’s pride slipped an inch or two, but he wasn’t one to dwell on failure.
‘Never mind,’ he said, with a shrug; ‘Some of the lads out there probably can’t read, but they’ll soon find out what I do.’
He looked again at his notice, which proclaimed him to be “Billy Flynn, Mobile Cobler – special rates to all crusaders”. He carefully drew in the missing “b” and regarded it afresh with satisfaction. Then, as Bridget sorted out the kitchen stuff she had brought along with her so they could have a bite of supper, he got out some loose planks of wood and assembled them into a workshop. He had brought all old Mr Roberts’s repair equipment; lasts, studs, nails, hammers and cutting blades, together with a selection of leather pieces, dyes, polishes; boots made and half-made, new and second-hand in varying sizes.
