The Bucket

by Allan Ahlberg

  Mr Cotterill

  The man who cuts my hair

  He makes me sweat

  He takes his tea in a shaving mug

  And smokes a cigarette.

  He waves his clippers all about

  Talks football with the men

  Sat waiting – fags and overalls –

  In Cotterill’s smoking den.

  I kneel up in the chair

  He wraps me in a sheet

  And cuts off half my hair

  It gathers at his feet.

  He wears peculiar glasses

  A knitted Albion scarf

  His crazy clippers roaring in

  To clip the other half.

  I am a big boy now

  (My mother tells me so)

  But my head is getting smaller

  And my mouth’s a frightened ‘o’.

  I watch him in the mirror

  As his clippers take their toll

  His eyes swim out of focus

  Like blue fish in a bowl.

  The man who cuts my hair

  He makes me quake

  He drinks his tea with a slurping noise

  And eats a Jaffa Cake.

  I dream sometimes of haircuts

  I’m in a mighty chair

  In a forest full of scissors

  In a clearing full of hair.

  In a palace full of money

  In a garden full of clothes

  With a maid and one big barber …

  Who snips off my nose.

  Apples of Old

  They don’t make apples like they did when I was a boy. Or breakfasts, bacon still flinching from the slicer, spiteful eggs spitting in the pan. Bread does not arrive still hot on the doorstep with its curve of crust all ready to be torn off, inverted like a boat or barge and filled with butter. The butter, almost green at the edges, with a delicious hint of sourness in its taste. They don’t make butter like they did. Or beer.

  When I became a man and travelled, I’d seek out that taste of beer my father sometimes let me have: bitter, smelly, unpleasant really, but highly interesting when you are six or seven. On holidays I’d track down obscure CAMRA ales, ever hoping to be reacquainted with my father’s beer. For years I searched and supped until it dawned on me; the beer I sought was gone for good. Even if some cunning brewer brewed it up – hops, water, yeast – exactly as it was, I would not taste it. The taste was a contract, a particular deal between that beer and my mouth, my young six-year-old mouth, likewise gone for good.

  Yes, like passing trains, I guess, the world goes one way and we, though gazing backwards, go the other.

  Sunlight

  The ever-increasing variety of the town’s industries augurs well for the future prosperity of Oldbury. Besides the wide range of its hardware output, from edge-tools to bicycle frames, and of its chemicals, from alkali to phosphorus, it produces blue bricks and cardboard boxes, tar, jam, and pale ale, immense engine boilers and delicate surgical dressings, and a catalogue of other manufactures equally strange in their diversity to say nothing of the railway carriages and the canal barges by which they may be expeditiously carried away.

  Oldbury and Round About,

  Frederick William Hackwood (1915)

  The sun shone down on Oldbury

  When I was growing up

  Under the rusty Rounds Green Hills

  In a hot and sulphurous cup.

  Corrugated-iron roofs

  Corroded and oily ground

  Forty-five factory chimneys to count

  Without even turning round.

  Accles & Pollock, Danks’s

  Chance & Hunt, The Brades

  Used up the air of Oldbury

  As they followed their various trades.

  A layer of low commercial smoke

  A lid upon the town

  Shut out the feeble fabled sky

  Kept us from turning brown.

  Such little mushroomed kids we were

  Our knees so nearly white

  You’d spot us halfway up the street

  In the middle of the night.

  Yet everyone had his chimney

  Kindling, coal or coke

  Bonfires bloomed in gardens

  Lives went up in smoke.

  Dads cloth-capped and muffled

  Dads with dogs in the park

  Coughing their way to the factories

  Puffing their fags in the dark.

  A town of arsonists, you’d say

  Combusting our desires

  Even the mothers sooted their sheets

  With their very own wash-house fires.

  Then once a year in August

  We’d quit the town at a run

  And catch the train to the seaside

  And lie down and worship the sun.

  And come back burnt to a cinder

  As red as a post-office brick

  Back to our blanket of Oldbury smoke

  And under it, quiet and quick.

  It was our town, all said and done

  Our home through thick and thin

  The sun shone down on Oldbury, yes

  But we wouldn’t let it in.

  Treading the Boilers

  Some memories I have of the most convincing kind that are not my own. I’m in a rowing boat on a river with my mother and father. A tiny little boy. The rowing boat, as we prepare to disembark, tips up. All of us then in the water. ‘Save Allan!’ my mother cries. ‘Save him! Save him!’ (i.e. not her). My father – an excellent swimmer, who as a boy had dived for pennies thrown by sailors off Tynemouth docks – saves us both. But it’s my mother’s memory not mine I’m remembering, and my father’s, diving for pennies, told to me when I was little, less little, and eventually not so little at all. Memories I’ve adopted, memories tailored for me by my parents, like a suit of clothes. Bespoke.

  Or I’m on my tricycle in the yard behind our house in Birchfield Lane. An air-raid shelter has been dismantled (or bombed) and lies half-buried in a hole or crater. So down I tumble. I scrape my knees, lose a tooth, get a nasty cut from a jutting edge of corrugated iron. But again it’s my mother and others, aunties and such, who store the memory up and read it back to me in later times, rehearse me in it until I’m word perfect. Though in this case there is corroboration of a sort: a small white scar on the inside of my wrist that did not finally fade till I was forty.

  And then there was Treading the Boilers. I cherished this memory so much that in the finish I worked it up and put it into a story.

  On Monday morning in assembly Mr Reynolds talked to the whole school about boys playing on bomb sites, boys trespassing in Messrs Danks’s factory yard and storage areas, nits, Jesus and the Coronation Cup.

  A boy named Horace Crumpton had fallen and dislocated his shoulder while fooling around in a derelict house. Mr Reynolds felt sure we could learn a lesson from him. Horace took a bow, embarrassed and pleased with himself, arm in a sling. Other boys, so far unidentified, had been chased out of Danks’s on Saturday night by the watchman. It was Amos and his lot treading the boilers again, but Mr Reynolds was not to know this. He was sick and tired of getting phone calls to his home, he said, and promised retribution.

  And then, a day or so later …

  Patrick, it turned out, had been one of the gang of boys – organized by Amos – who under the cover of fog and darkness had last night revisited Danks’s. Treading the boilers involved a dozen or so boys getting inside a boiler and walking in unison, causing it to roll. For some boys, notably Amos, this was an addictive experience. Danks’s manufactured boilers of all sizes, used in ships and so on. They stored them in a nearby field. The story goes that the first time boys ever worked this trick, the watchman had a heart attack. There was this huge red-oxidized cylinder rolling off all by itself in the moonlight.fn1

  In the moonlight, yes – all by itself. What a scene! I can picture it – hologram it – even now. Danks’s was there, and Danks’s boilers in a fenced-off field, and the gang
of boys inside the boiler, they were there. And I … was not there. Not me. Never. It was Donald – Donald, my cousin. He was there. Yet somehow down the years I have been pulled into Donald’s memory, or insinuated my way into it, absorbing all the while its atmosphere, its romance. I remember it now better than Donald himself. The factory-lit sky, the moon, half in, half out of the clouds, so that the watchman’s revelation has a sudden, illuminated, religious almost, quality to it. The watchman’s wavering torch, his croaky voice, the wet grass, the running off and scrambling under a gap in the fence, gasping at last, breath smoking in the air, a congregation of little boys gathering to rehearse their memories, no doubt, beneath a street lamp. It is a memory. Oh yes, it is a memory all right, and – sorry, Don – it’s mine.

  Child Watching

  I am on a stage in a great big hall, called Bingley Hall. A big boy in a beard is lifting me on to a table. I am wearing a sort of blanket nightshirt with coloured stripes. It hangs down to my ankles. My face and hands and feet are painted brown with some cocoa-smelling stuff. My real clothes, socks and shoes, are backstage in the cloakroom. My brand-new blazer is there. It is a green one with brass buttons.

  The big boy in the beard is listening. God is speaking to him. His loud voice fills the hall. It will be my turn soon. I must remember what to say. And speak up. The big boy in the beard is staring at me now. A drip of sweat is shining on his nose. He has a knife.

  Forty years later, another hall. I’m standing at the back watching an infant assembly. Jessica’s class is performing a series of short scenes and tableaux on the subject of ‘Time’. Jessica has a major role as the little old lady. I am, of course, transfixed, though not so much that I cannot see this open goal before me; a poem on a plate. Other parents are snapping away with their cameras. I scribble some notes and hurry home to my shed.

  THE INFANTS DO AN ASSEMBLY ABOUT TIME

  The infants

  Do an assembly

  About Time.

  It has the past,

  The present

  And the future in it;

  The seasons,

  A digital watch,

  And a six-year-old

  Little old lady.

  She gets her six-year-old

  Family up

  And directs them

  Through the twenty-four hours

  Of the day:

  Out of bed

  And – shortly after –

  Back into it.

  (Life does not stand still

  In infant assemblies.)

  The whole thing

  Lasts for fifteen minutes.

  Next week (space permitting):

  Space.fn1

  And the question is, when did I leave the stage and join the audience? I was for a time in my twenties and early thirties a teacher. I remember a boy in my first class, Glen Brakes his name was. A mild, no-trouble-to-anybody sort of boy. On one occasion, and before he got to know me, my gaze fell on him in the classroom. He had acquired a feather and was dreamily stroking his own nose and mouth with it, and inside his ear. Glen had a pleasant face. He resembled Stan Laurel (of Laurel and Hardy). Well, Laurel and Hardy both would have admired Glen’s subsequent bit of mime when caught in the teacher’s (unintended) searchlight glare. He juggled with the feather, gazed at it in disbelief. Is this a feather that I see before me? Who’s put this feather, forced this feather into my unwilling hand? When I have work to do.

  Sometimes at playtime through the staff-room window I would see a little infant haring by, take a tumble. He or she, briefly shocked, would scramble up and look around. A lower lip would tremble, a frown. Then came the fork in the road. If the fall had gone unnoticed, the child would, like as not, dust himself down and go haring off again. But if the dinner lady, say, or teacher on duty witnessed the event and caught his eye … Then, of course, the warmth of her sympathy, like a poultice with a bee sting, would draw his hot tears out.

  There again, teachers for the most part mostly observe children, wouldn’t you say? In my case I did not start watching them with any serious intent until Jessica was born.

  Bingley Hall is very big and full of people. They stretch away into the darkness. My Sunday School is there, and all the other Sunday Schools, and Sunday School teachers, and the mums and dads, and the aunties and uncles, grandmas and grandpas. We are doing a pageant. Oh yes, and there’s a balcony full of people. It is very hot in Bingley Hall. My cocoa colouring is getting streaky. It rubs off on to my stripy shirt, though I am lying on the table as still as ever I can. Hot lights shine down on to the stage. God has nearly finished, I think. I listen out for my cue.

  A couple of years ago in the town where I now live, on the main shopping street, I saw a woman with two boys. The boys were five, perhaps, and three. They were identically dressed in what appeared to be home-made one-piece garments, like workmen’s overalls, with three-quarter-length trouser legs and straps over the shoulders. The material was striped and stiff; there was a good deal of orange in it. They looked like a pair of little walking deckchairs.

  I was hypnotized by them, stepped into a doorway to see them pass and watched them out of sight. And it occurred to me later, suppose someone had been watching me; the trouble I might have been in. The end of a career. Thirty years ago you could watch children, talk to them even on occasion, in public places. For instance, recollect – as I am sure you can – the volcanic, all-encompassing turmoil and distress in the tiny heart of a tiny person in Sainsbury’s, say. Witness the brick-red face, hair damply plastered to the head, flailing arms and legs. Who would not wish to comfort someone in a state like that? Crouch down, lean in, offer distractions, sympathize. But it is almost, well almost almost, too risky now. These days I mostly share my sociable remarks with dogs. Dogs you can talk to, and the owners, of course, invariably appreciate it.

  Meanwhile, back at Bingley Hall, high drama. God finally shuts up. The big boy in the beard says something. I sit up on the table and shout my lines. An organ plays. There is an organ in Bingley Hall. It is so big and loud you can feel it (hear it!) through the soles of your feet. The pageant now is nearly over. We all come back on stage, hundreds of us, for a final song. ‘Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam’, it might have been. Everybody claps. The clapping is louder even than the organ.

  Now we are all backstage having our faces wiped clean of the cocoa stuff. I am getting dressed when suddenly dread fills me up. I cannot find my blazer. My brand-new, bought-specially-for-the-occasion blazer. It has gone. Some sinner has pinched it! Tears flood up into my eyes. I loved my lovely day-old blazer. The shine of its buttons, the green of its cloth, the brand-new smell of it. And what will I tell my mother? What will I tell her? She’ll murder me for sure.

  It was a bad end to the day, a disastrous end. Oh yes, God saved me, Isaac, from my father Abraham’s knife – though it was cardboard – but he never saved my blazer, did he? No, too busy shouting his head off up in Bingley Hall.

  The Boat

  My mum came back from Birmingham

  Removed her hat and coat

  Kicked off her shoes and sighed and said

  ‘I nearly bought you a boat.’

  I knew this boat, I’d seen it

  In a shop on Colmore Row

  A clockwork tin-toy steamer

  Plus box: Chad Valley & Co.

  I knew this boat, its painted tin

  Its funnel with a key

  Its painted passengers, its flags

  It was the boat for me.

  So all I heard was boat and bought

  (The clock in the kitchen stopped)

  I never heard the nearly

  Until the penny dropped.

  Mum made herself a cup of tea

  And buttered me a scone

  And spoke of Auntie Elsie’s legs

  And switched the wireless on.

  Some other boats I know I had

  A paddle boat, a yacht

  An Airfix model landing craft

  All mo
re or less forgot –

  Like paper boats in the gutter

  Soon swirling down the drain –

  Only that steadfast nearly boat

  Sails in my memory, plain.

  The prettiest, shiniest never gift

  Just destined to become

  The present most treasured from the past

  From my old mum. Thanks, Mum.

  Dad’s Army

  My dad makes little soldiers

  In moulds with molten lead

  With caps and guns and bayonets

  And paints them green and red

  And blue and black and silver

  They line up in a row

  With hair and eyes and eyebrows

  Each one of them just so.

  My dad works as a labourer

  His hands are seamed with grime

  And cracked and cut and calloused

  And no amount of time

  Spent scrubbing in the wash house

  Or soaking in the sink

  Can shift that dirt away

  Though the water’s black as ink.

  The bosses in Dad’s factory

  Don’t notice him, I’ll bet

  No suit – no tie – no title

  He’s easy to forget.

  But back at home it’s different

  Who’s bothered with a suit?

  For me, I love Dad’s army

  And the soldiers – they salute.

  Territory

  We alight at Oldbury, in Worcestershire, a place of smother amid smother, and, on leaving the station, can count seventy-nine furnace and factory chimneys without turning round, all of which pour forth their cloudy contributions, varied by the blue and yellow smoke of copper works, while noises resound afar.

  All Round the Wrekin, Walter White (1860)

  Oldbury was the town I grew up in, but the bit of Oldbury I really grew up in was Rood End, and the bit of Rood End I really grew up in – the territory of my childhood – was The Park, The Allotments and The Cemetery. The cemetery backed on to the park, and the park and the cemetery backed on to the allotments, and the allotments backed on to them. It was The World.