Life Without Armour

by Alan Sillitoe

  In the shelter we propped each other up on the planks, most of the time in a half doze, stupefied by the smell of damp soil and the odour of combined breathing. Heavy sacking hung over the entrance to conceal the light of a tiny oil lamp whose paraffin fumes also thickened the atmosphere. By two in the morning the all-clear might sound, a welcome and more even wail than the alert, and we would go back into the house to have a few hours’ sleep before getting up for school.

  The only serious raid was in May 1941, when 200 people were killed. My father, at home that night, couldn’t resist going into the terrific anti-aircraft barrage to enjoy the glow in the sky from burning factories that had always refused him a job. Few bombs fell on our area, but the piercing whistle of one descending will remain: and all the time in our frail shelter, whenever German planes were overhead, the consciousness that the next second might be our last never quite gave way to dumb endurance. Even so, I did not regret having come back from Worksop to the more exciting life in Nottingham.

  Chapter Eleven

  The discharge stamp in the army paybooks of my cousins would have been that of a footprint on the final page, for they voted with their feet, and went back home to burn their uniforms in the bedroom grate. They became legendary in the family for blatant thievery. Without identity card or employment documents or ration coupons (and not even a gasmask, though they never gave that a thought) they had to exist on what could be acquired during the hours of darkness, when smokescreen and blackout, and often no moon either, helped them in depredations which must have serviced half the blackmarket business in Nottingham. They baffled the police for some time, but when they were caught, as related in the local newspaper, they served a year in jail, and on finishing that term were sent back to do further time in a military prison. A few weeks after resuming normal service they deserted again, and went on with what seemed to be their normal wartime occupation.

  They occasionally came to our house, and over breakfast related the highlights of rooftop escapes during their nightly adventures. My mother looked after their purloined goods one night, though my father did not care either for them or their exploits, and would not let her do so again.

  About this time I played with the idea of becoming a writer, though mainly a journalist, and chose a book on the subject from the library. I tried to learn Pitman’s shorthand out of a threepenny manual from the table in Frank Wore’s inexhaustible bookshop, but gave up after a while because it was too difficult to distinguish between the thin and thick symbols that had to be written at speed.

  My fingers were always itching to write, however, and I loved inks, paper, pens and notebooks. In a large limp-covered jotter I recorded details of my cousins’ way of life, thinking I might one day write something about them in a novel, noting their age, weight, height, colour of hair, where and when they had been born, what clothes they wore, as well as their address, when they had one. Then I inscribed sketches of their past lives and brief army careers, and entered accounts of their robberies and escapades which included, as far as I could ascertain, the date, time and location of particular shops and offices broken into.

  My mother found the book and, on glancing through it, rightly considered such material too incriminating to leave lying around. Protesting that I was going to write a novel, she ignored such a ludicrous boast and poked it into the flames, perhaps also thinking me stupid enough to use the data as the subject for an essay at school.

  The book on journalism told me that articles for newspapers had to be neatly typed on sheets of good paper, so it was discreetly proposed to my cousins that on next breaking into the appropriate premises they bring such a machine back for me, with the assurance that they would be paid for it on the instalment plan, or out of what money my journalistic enterprise might earn. They did not reject the idea, even laughing about it, and as good as promised they would get one for nothing. Perhaps my mother had mentioned my secret ambition, and they were amused, possibly flattered, at the notion of having their own biographer at some future date. I waited in hope, but the scheme was quietly forgotten, my mother no doubt realizing that it would be bad for everyone if the police saw reason to search our house and found one there.

  Either my parents were getting old enough to know better, or with adequate rations and money to pay for them there was less reason for antagonism. Perhaps the atmosphere of war sapped some of their bile. Peggy had become a second wage-earner, bringing home twelve shillings a week from a sweet factory up the road. She and I were more able to show our disapproval of any violent clash, though we could not yet muster the strength between us to stop the mayhem on the few occasions when it occurred.

  My parents had the cash to go now and again to the cinema, and spend Saturday night at the pub, and there was sufficient also for pennies to flow into my pocket, mostly for running errands or doing the weekend shopping. Arthur Shelton earned a few shillings delivering newspapers morning and evening, but I refused such jobs from a mixture of pride and inertia.

  The time was coming when it would be necessary to work full time anyway, though I could not prepare myself for it by imagining such a situation. School was the basic condition of life, home a place to stay while going there, and the prospect of labour in a factory something that could not be allowed to spoil my enjoyment of the present. By the age of thirteen I could swim well, walk any distance, go up trees like a monkey, and ride a borrowed bike for a few yards without holding the handlebars, much I suppose like most other boys, and not a few girls, in the area I came from.

  It gave some satisfaction to hear on the wireless, on 22 June 1941, that the German Army had invaded Russia. Spreading a map so as to follow the campaign as closely as possible, it was easy to see that Great Britain now had a much better chance of surviving the war. The national anthem of our Soviet ally was added to those played every week in a fifteen-minute programme on the BBC. I listened to every one, and having memorized the verses of Rouget de Lisle’s ‘Marseillaise’ from a French grammar, could fit the words to the tune.

  The German advance in Russia was rapid, and dreadful things were happening, though we were not to know the full horror till the war was nearly over. It was obvious that the greater the distance the German Army went through the network of towns and cities the more certain were they to lose, as had Napoleon over a hundred years before, but such vigorously gritty place-names on the map as Novograd Volynsk, Riga, Byelaya Tserkov, Vorishilovgrad and Dniepropetrovsk were a pleasure to hunt for, pencil and rubber in frequent use as the line shifted east across the map.

  The accumulation of books no longer inflamed my father. Being in work, they didn’t seem a waste of money, especially since during the war there wasn’t much else you could buy. I even persuaded him to get me the six volumes of Practical Knowledge for All, for thirty-six shillings to be paid for by instalments, though he failed to meet the last few, and I settled the debt on starting work. The books covered every subject, but I concentrated most on surveying, geography, French and, later, aviation, losing myself night after night in this detached treasure-house of information.

  At school I wrote an essay on the possible strategic aims of the German offensive in the direction of Rostov-on-Don, explaining how the push must then continue south-east towards the Caucasus so as to gain control of oil wells at Grozny and Mozdok – both places shown on the map – which were needed for their industries and war effort.

  Such comments had obviously been heard on the wireless but, written several times in rough form, then copied in my best hand into a clean exercise book, I showed the essay to Percy Rowe, hoping perhaps for a word of praise. After looking at it, he told me to stand before the class and read it – an embarrassing performance. Perhaps he was impressed, because the following week he lent me G.D.H. Cole’s Post War Europe, a book too long and closely written for me to take in.

  Sorting more assiduously through Frank Wore’s basement, I formed an obsessive liking for Baedeker’s little red guidebooks, and volumes of the Guid
es Bleus series. These increased my geographical knowledge, as well as French, and delighted me with their coloured maps. In the street plans of German cities one could pick out industrial areas said to be targets of the RAF, but those often dilapidated publications from a not too bygone age, with their descriptions of places in countries of western and southern Europe, also indicated a stable and desirable world beyond the one in which I was all too firmly fixed.

  From the library I took what books there were about travelling in Russia, though their topographical information was too often unsatisfactory. In a collection of Russian folk tales I liked one which told of the Devil, suitably disguised, who came to a village and said to the assembled people that whatever ground any of them could walk around in a day they would own. In the burning month of August those who decide to get as much free land as possible set off into the blue for a dozen or so versts before turning ninety degrees to continue the square. All fall dead or exhausted by the afternoon, and accomplish nothing. The only person to end with a piece of land was a Jewish man, who walked a few hundred yards one way and completed the square in an hour or so which, I thought, on finishing the story, and realizing what an intelligent person he was, is exactly what I would have done.

  Other books taken from the library were those of the ‘Ten Pounds’ series: France on Ten Pounds, Italy on Ten Pounds etc, indicating that after the war, whenever that would be, it might be possible to visit such countries on what could be saved out of my wages.

  On Saturday afternoon, either before or after the usual browse at Frank Wore’s, I would call at a travel agency up an alley in the middle of town and beg, buy or talk the elderly and now underemployed clerk into parting with travel brochures on France, Belgium and Switzerland. Most contained maps, plans and pictures, as well as interesting advertisements for spas and hotels. This did not go on too long, because after a while he had nothing left to give me.

  My test results were consistently high through the last two years at school. At the final assembly before leaving, held as usual in the large gymnasium, the headmaster called me on to the stage, and gave me a black leatherbound copy of the Holy Bible. Taking it home, I noted the label inside which said that it had been awarded to me for ‘proficiency in Biblical knowledge’.

  Such a reason puzzled me but, glad to have the Book, it has been read many times, more often perhaps than any other, and is still within arm’s reach on my desk fifty years later.

  Chapter Twelve

  The clock had stopped. ‘They’re making all these precision objects for shells and what-not,’ I thought, ‘and they can’t even get a clock on the wall that works.’ I was wrong. The passage of time in the classroom had been rapid compared to this.

  No sooner was my foot in the door that first day than a man came to me and said I was now a member of the Transport and General Workers Union, and that threepence a week would be stopped out of my pay. I didn’t want to belong to a union, was my response, further informing him that he should, in the current exhortation to the unwanted, go and get dive-bombed, because he would get no money out of me. There seemed something ignominious in belonging to an organization of which so many others were members, indicating that I was a follower of Marx (Groucho) from a reasonably early age, but the convenor, if that’s what he was, laughed and said I had no option, because it was the law these days. The stoppage was automatic, and no one could avoid it.

  My father, who worked in another shop, or department, came to see how I was getting on and, finding nothing to pick fault with, went back to his work. My job was ‘burring’ hundreds of brass shellcaps with a sharp chisel. When segments were milled out of them, burrs were left which had to be prised away from the edges by hand, leaving all parts of the object smooth. They covered the surface of a large low table, and I tackled the task as if invading and subduing a hostile country, clearing a way here, a route there, until the two avenues into the mass of resistance met, and my pincer columns succeeded in their fell design. Having mopped up those pieces which had been surrounded, another clear road was driven towards the enemy capital, subsidiary columns put out on the way should relieving forces seek to thwart my plan of attack.

  In a couple of hours the table was empty (I had the job to myself) till someone came along with more boxes, which they did very soon, to reoccupy my beloved tableland with their barbaric forces. Such ‘piece work’ was paid for at so much a hundred, and the more I did the more I earned, but they had to be neatly done, or the examiners would send them back.

  My father got up every morning at half past six, and fifteen minutes later called me out of the bed which I shared with my two brothers. After he had lit the fire and the kettle had boiled, I would bump sleepily down the stairs. My mother never rose with him, for it was the time of day when he was, to put it mildly, volatile. After a breakfast of tea and bread-and-jam, while listening to the news, we went down the street in silence, clocking-in just before half past seven.

  In my pocket was a cheese or potted meat sandwich to eat in the few minute tea-break at ten. I went home for a hot dinner at half past twelve, varying the moment of my exit so as not to walk up the street with my father. An hour later I was back, working without a break till half past five.

  My first wages came to one pound twelve shillings and sixpence, by today’s values about twenty-five pounds, but in those times a reasonable amount for a youth of fourteen to earn. On Friday night the wage packet was put unopened into my mother’s hand, and she gave back half a crown for spending money (about two pounds fifty pence) which may not sound much but it would buy a couple of paperbacks and two seats at the cinema. My sweet coupons went to Pearl and Brian, confectionery not essential to my wants.

  The work was neither arduous nor unpleasant, though a few days had to pass before I became used to the stunning noise from scores of machines and the rhythmic slapping of powerbelts overhead. After a few weeks on ‘burring’, at which job one sat down, I was put to operating a drill, before which it was necessary to stand. Having a machine of my own gave a sense of responsibility, though I was slightly nervous of its power and possibly malicious temperament.

  A small piece of steel had to be fixed in a jig, the whole thing held firmly against the lower base, and the spinning point of the drill brought slowly down by the handle to make several holes in the metal at places indicated. The operation was straightforward, but for a while it was difficult to grip the jig with sufficient strength, and several times the whole unit would break loose and spin violently, wounding my flesh if a hand didn’t get out of the way quickly enough. The thing to do then was switch off the motor and start again, the white liquid of disinfectant suds soaking the reddening bandage around my finger. On one occasion the drill broke, but the toolsetter was tolerant, and put in a new one without comment.

  Such work, soon accustomed to, developed strong hands, but the money rate for the job was so low, or I was slow and a bit too wary, that my wages declined during the next few weeks to little more than a pound every Friday. On asking the foreman to find me another job, or put the rate up, he said it was impossible to do either, adding that the youth who had been on it before had made it pay, and that anyway, somebody had to do the work, so I had better go back and get on with it.

  For a while I managed to increase the speed till my wages edged towards what they had been at first. What I wanted, I protested, was a more positive form of war work, not drilling an obscure part of the common bicycle day in and day out, which comment, among others equally unreasonable, exasperated the foreman even more.

  Bernard Clifford was also dissatisfied with his work and pay. By now I wanted to find a job elsewhere, but to do so one had to apply, under wartime regulations, to the Ministry of Labour office for a release form. Some boys had already filled them in, and had their applications to leave turned down. It all depended, Bernard told me, on the reasons you gave for wanting to go. There was space on the back of the form to state them, but the process was also helped if you could get the
foreman to say, in the appropriate place on the form, that he was willing to let you go.

  After organizing a virtual sit-down strike of myself and half a dozen others, the foreman felt more than able to do this. Taking up all the space allowed, I wrote several succinct sentences, in ink instead of pencil, and signed it. A fortnight later the chief penpusher must have pulled his finger out sufficiently to send a release certificate authorizing me to go my way, and thus ended my one and only stint at the Raleigh, the foreman as glad as I was that it had not lasted longer than ten weeks.

  Whatever place I had gone to at the age of fourteen would not have tolerated me for long, and the Raleigh, having provided my baptism of fire in the industrial world, was a good preparation for accepting the fact that a living had to be earned, and that I had no right to expect that it would be easy.

  Aware of my father’s commendable maxim ‘no work, no food’ (and he should know, I thought) I was re-employed almost immediately by A. B. Toone and Company. One factory was much like another, yet all were different in the goods they made and the individuals who worked there. Conditions seemed easier at Toone’s, however, for the shift didn’t start till eight o’clock, and ended at five, though I did the same number of hours because the place stayed open on Saturday morning.

  About a hundred people were kept busy in a five-storey red-bricked mill which stood between two streets of small houses, manufacturing plywood for Mosquito bombers and invasion barges. My work at first was to stand at the end of a tablesaw in the Cellar Department and, when Sam England the operator trimmed off a board, pick up the strips and put them on to a pile. After sufficient pieces had accumulated I bundled, tied and carried them upstairs to be taken away on a lorry at the end of the day.