The Bucket

by Allan Ahlberg

  An Elemental Childhood

  I lower my bucket down into the well and draw up … water. Water was thicker in my childhood, time has diluted it. It came in coils and cables out of the mouths of drinking fountains and flooded, leaf-clogged gutterings. Small boys could pee with it halfway up a wall. It was like barley sugar or rope. Sometimes when it rained, it fell in soft fat lumps, impacting on the park pond (while we took shelter in the sheds), pockmarking its surface but not breaking it. The skin on the water, like the skin on a grape; a matchstick float could lie on top of it and would require some powerful fishy force to drag it under. Insects, water boatmen and such, bounced on or tiptoed over it as though it were a trampoline; flat pebbles skimmed it. Sometimes the raindrops were so fine, gravity could not draw them down. They hung suspended around the yellowish, greenish street lamps in glowing spheres, like jellyfish.

  Water fought a battle with the earth – or dirt, as I more familiarly regarded it – for the possession of my small body. My fingernails were full of it. It was tattooed into my elbows and scabby knees, silted up between my toes. Mum scrubbed away at me, sluiced me down, corkscrewed my ears with a twist of towel, licked her hankie and wiped my face like cleaning a window. The dirt returned. Dirt was my friend. I played with it, rolled in it sometimes, like a dog. I ate it even, once in a while, when a biscuit or boiled sweet ended up on the ground and no adult was there to talk me out of picking it up.

  And now there’s air in my bucket. It too has weight. Coming down off the Rounds Green Hills or from Dudley Castle, you’d hold your nose and dive back in. An atmosphere, a soup, cooked up to the town’s own recipe. Oldbury was a place you could walk around with your eyes shut and know where you were. British Industrial Plastics, Guest, Keen and Nettlefolds, The Brades, each had its own aroma. There was a glue factory that boiled up bones. The canals – Oldbury was a sort of Venice – were green and scummy. Marlholes bubbled away like New Zealand geysers and glowed in the dark. The smells were sulphurous, hot-metalled, lead-filled, but also, surely, medicinal. Microbes and germs had as tough a time as we did in those days, in that inoculated air.

  Finally, there was fire. Fire was a fascination when I was seven or eight. I was a moth to it. Matches were treasure. We traded for them, begged them, stole them. Any form of fire would do, any sort of fuel. We cooked and ate potatoes; burnt black, half-raw, delicious. There was the smell of singed teddies, the whooshing disappearance altogether of a celluloid frog, burning rubber. Best of all, most memorably of all, there was fire in a can.

  A fire can was a serious delight to me: portable fire! To make one you needed a can, a hammer, a six-inch nail and wire for the handle. Hammer some holes into the can, fill it up with paper, twigs, rabbit-hutch straw, firewood splinters, bits of coal. Set it alight and … swing. The rush of air was like a bellows. Sometimes a well-made can glowed red hot and melted. Sparks flew and boys set light to themselves; eyebrows and even eyes were lost.

  And so it was. Our fires sent ashes and soot high up into the air, rain washed it all back down, brown rivulets on windowpanes and pavements, the earth soaked it up. The sun shone forth (as best it could) and dried things out, steam and dust motes rising. A circular engine, a swirl of ancient molecules round and round, the whole town in a permanent smoky flux, like a Turner painting. And me – who else? – slap bang, stage front in the middle of it.

  Ends

  What puts an end to childhood, of course, is time and, in my case also, football. The ref blew his whistle, you might say, and something else kicked off.

  The power of any particular memory is, I have found (or seem to remember), in inverse proportion to the amount of detail it contains. There’s a lot of detail in this book, it’s crammed with it, but the memories that matter most are the ones I’ve had to stretch for, that shimmer on the edge of things: pillowcase, green light under the table, Dad’s dancing overalls. And once you arrive at a certain age, the memories of that age come thick and fast and fully clothed. You have no need of a bucket to draw them up, it’s all on tap.

  Football: it was the extended orderliness of it, I think, that did away with my childhood. Its all-encompassingness. The gathering together of a team to play another team, the distribution of positions – how many centre forwards could one team possibly have? – the boots, the ball, the dubbin. And the leaving of the house, the demarcation of the pitch – coats for goals, trees, paths and shrubberies for touchlines – getting lost in a tribal ebb and flow in an ever-darkening park for hours and hours, till the bell rang and the keeper on his bike obliged us to leave.

  So leave we did, and more than the park and the pitch were left behind, I’d say. Of course, you’re right – you mostly are – we were still children and it was still childhood. But there again somehow mysteriously … not. The crossing of that line between the little kids and the kids, it happens to us all, and always when we are not looking. A chalk line in the playground rubbed out by running feet. A curtain coming down behind us. When I was five, could I remember being four or three? When three, remember two or one? When one …? The fugitive pictures fade. Goodbye, Teddy, toy soldiers, clothes-horse-in-the-kitchen den. Goodbye, goodbye. I’m off to kick a ball.

  In the poem which followsfn1 I should point out (for the purposes of the present book) that Albert Park was not Albert Park. There was (is) no Albert Park. It was West Smethwick Park. There was no boy named Tommy Gray either, or Briggs. Rhythm and rhyme had a hand in team selection. For that matter, alliteration – Rover, Rex and Roy – was influential, not to say decisive, in the naming of the dogs.

  THE MATCH (c. 1950)

  The match was played in Albert Park

  From half-past four till after dark

  By two opposing tribes of boys

  Who specialized in mud and noise;

  Scratches got from climbing trees

  Runny noses, scabby knees

  Hair shaved halfway up the head

  And names like Horace, Archie, Ted.

  The match was played come rain or shine

  By boys who you could not confine

  Whose common goals all unconcealed

  Were played out on the football field.

  Off from school in all directions

  Sparks of boys with bright complexions

  Rushing home with one idea

  To grab their boots … and disappear.

  But Mother in the doorway leaning

  Brings to this scene a different meaning

  The jobs and duties of a son

  Yes, there are errands to be run.

  Take this wool to Mrs Draper

  Stop at Pollock’s for a paper

  Mind this baby, beat this rug

  Give your poor old mum a hug.

  Eat this apple, eat this cake

  Eat these dumplings, carrots, steak!

  Bread ’n’ drippin’, bread ’n’ jam

  Mind the traffic, so long, scram.

  Picture this, you’re gazing down

  Upon that smoky factory town.

  Weaves of streets spread out, converge

  And from the houses boys emerge.

  Specks of boys, a broad selection

  Heading off in one direction

  Pulled by some magnetic itch

  Up to the park, on to the pitch.

  Boys in boots and boys in wellies

  Skinny boys and boys with bellies

  Tiny boys with untied laces

  Brainy boys with violin cases.

  The match was played to certain rules

  By boys from certain streets and schools

  Who since their babyhood had known

  Which patch of earth to call their own.

  The pitch, meanwhile, you’d have to say

  Was nothing, just a place to play.

  No nets, no posts, no lines, alas

  The only thing it had was grass.

  Each team would somehow pick itself

  No boys were left upon the shelf

  No su
bstitutions, sulks or shame

  If you showed up, you got a game.

  Not 2·3·5 or 4·2·4

  But 2·8·12 or even more.

  Six centre forwards, five right wings

  Was just the normal run of things.

  Lined up then in such formations

  Careless of life’s complications

  Deaf to birdsong, blind to flowers

  Prepared to chase a ball for hours,

  A swarm of boys who heart and soul

  Must make a bee-line for the goal.

  A kind of ordered anarchy

  (There was, of course, no referee).

  They ran and shouted, ran and shot

  (At passing they were not so hot)

  Pulled a sock up, rolled a sleeve

  And scored more goals than you’d believe.

  Slid and tackled, leapt and fell

  Dodged and dribbled, dived as well

  Headed, shouldered, elbowed, kneed

  And, half-time in the bushes, peed.

  With muddy shorts and muddy faces

  Bloody knees and busted laces

  Ruddy cheeks and plastered hair

  And voices buffeting the air.

  Voices flung above the trees

  Heard half a mile away with ease,

  For every throw in, every kick

  Required an inquest double quick.

  A shouting match, all fuss and fury

  (Prosecutors, judges, jury)

  A match of mouths set to repeat

  The main and muddier match of feet.

  Thus hot and bothered, loud and nifty

  That’s how we played in 1950

  A maze of moves, a fugue of noise

  From forty little boiling boys.

  Yet there was talent, don’t forget

  Grace and courage too, you bet

  Boys like Briggs or Tommy Gray

  Who were, quite simply, born to play.

  You could have stuck them on the moon

  They would have started scoring soon

  No swanky kit, uncoached, unheeded

  A pumped-up ball was all they needed.

  Around the fringes of the match

  Spectators to this hectic patch

  Younger sisters, older brothers

  Tied-up dogs and irate mothers.

  A mother come to claim her twins

  (Required to play those violins).

  A little sister, Annabelle

  Bribed with a lolly not to tell.

  Dogs named Rover, Rex or Roy

  Each watching one particular boy.

  A pup mad keen to chase the ball

  The older dogs had seen it all.

  The match was played till after dark

  (Till gates were closed on Albert Park)

  By shadowy boys whose shapes dissolved

  Into the earth as it revolved.

  Ghostly boys who flitted by

  Like bats across the evening sky,

  A final fling, a final call

  Pursuing the invisible ball.

  The match was played, the match is over

  For Horace, Annabelle and Rover.

  A multitude of feet retrace

  The steps that brought them to this place.

  For gangs of neighbours, brothers, friends

  A slow walk home is how it ends,

  Into a kitchen’s steamy muddle

  To get a shouting at … or cuddle.

  See it now, you’re looking down

  Upon that lamp-lit factory town.

  It’s late (it’s night) for Rex or Ted

  And everybody’s gone to bed.

  Under the rooftops slicked with rain

  The match is being played again

  By two opposing well-scrubbed teams

  Who race and holler in their dreams.

  I’m in my shed; early morning, late September. Once in a while an apple thuds down on to the roof. Pigeons land and walk about; I hear their scratchy feet. The book is finished, if not quite finished off. It shouldn’t take long, though it could in theory take forever. There’s probably a Borges story on the subject. The man who wrote a book, and who went through it at the end giving it a scrub, tidying it up, adding and subtracting. And then continued, correcting the corrections, the corrections, the corrections. This is how a book was made many years ago. The materials used were … and the materials not used?

  There’s a man on West Bromwich market

  At certain times of the year

  With a hat made out of feathers

  And a stall that you can hear.

  Day-old Chicks: for instance, I more or less promised right at the beginning ‘day-old chicks’. So where are they? The rag-and-bone man used to give them away in exchange for a sufficient quantity of stuff. (Also – just remembered – paper windmills!) And we kept hens. I collected the eggs, helped my mother to boil the potato peelings, mix the mash. My mother, on one occasion to my absolute horror, put a dying day-old chick in the oven. But, as I quickly realized, only to revive it. My way in, however, my preferred approach to the chicks, was that stall on West Bromwich market, that noisy stall:

  I hear it in the street outside

  And slip my mother’s hand

  And dodge along the gangways

  To muscle in and stand

  On tip toe; I can just see in

  The stall’s like a giant tray

  With sawdust, little drinking troughs

  And a lamp as bright as day.

  Yes. Then I got stuck. It took me a time to realize it wasn’t, in this instance, the chicks I was really interested in, or the stall, it was The Market. The cathedral-like, Bingley Hall-like space; an enormous, roofed-in world to run around in, free of my mother’s hand. It’s more than likely, by the way, that I made up the hat.

  Snail Hunt: This is the fourth shed I have owned in my working life. Like all the others, it is lined out with pinboard, allowing me to pin things up (photographs, letters, work), encircle myself in a paper castle. There’s a newspaper cutting: How I Found Bliss in My Shed at 6.05am; a photograph of my dad, uncharacteristically in a suit and tie at a wedding. And a letter from Jessica, where, aged five or so, she proceeds to reinvent herself, enlarging her family and putting me to work in a shop.

  No, on closer reading, it’s worse than that. I’m merely the addressee. Her father is the shopman. I’ve been written out.

  At what age, how early, do we begin to reinvent ourselves, rearrange the story, take it over? I met a small child recently, named Norah. She was fifteen months old. Her first word to me, indeed almost her only word, was ‘up’. She liked our house, which is tall and thin. ‘Up!’ she would say, and point. And up we’d go. She, with increasing skill, stair by stair. Me, hovering. In one of the bedrooms there was a free-standing mirror. Norah and I played with the mirror. We kissed ourselves in it and laughed at the absurdity of kissing ourselves. Norah held her soft toy, a giraffe, up to the mirror, and the giraffe kissed itself. Norah laughed again. It was a play, a play to be repeated (and revised) as often as she wished, of kissing toys and things alive in mirrors.

  Jessica’s letter, now twenty-seven years old, is faded, yellowed, but also, more recently along its bottom edge, nibbled at. It took me a time to notice what was happening and work out the cause. It was snails, tiny snails that got in under the door, scaled the walls and ate my papers.

  Snails are slow eaters who hide out in the daytime, though left alone for long enough this particular tribe would surely have grazed their way across the walls, the shelves, the desk. This book itself, this earliest handwritten draft (do they like ink?) presently beneath my hand, would eventually in time have been chomped up and turned into snail. Snails are cunning creatures. There again, deceiving a grown man is one thing, but ‘when you are little you see the little’. They’d never have got away with it when I was four.

  The Warmth of the Bed: I will end (I seem to have been promising this for a while) with a couple of late additions an
d a dedication. I have a picture in my head: me with my mum and dad at the table, Dad peeling an apple. He uses his pocket knife and completes the process in one continuous spiralling curl of green. (It’s always a green apple.) That’s the challenge, of course, to remove the peel, all of it, unbroken. Then we eat the apple. Then we eat the peel. Two different tastes and textures for the price of one, distinguished and revealed by my clever dad. He takes an apple in his ‘cracked and cut and calloused’ hand and turns it into a conjuring trick.

  And the second scene: The Warmth of the Bed. With this one, it’s pretty well all there in the title. Jumping into my parents’ bed just after the last of them – my mother, usually – has left it. The hugeness of the bed, weight of blanket and quilt, surrounding sea of chilly lino. The afterglow of somebody else’s body, the after-shape of it … dinted. (In his master’s steps he trod, where the snow lay dinted.) A warm impression, encoded on my skin, perhaps; a brief remembrance of living heat. Like climbing into a hot pie.

  Dedication: I propose to make a bit of a display here and, to this end, have commissioned artwork from Jessica. Here it is:

  Two mothers, two fathers and me like a parcel or a baton (or a hot potato!) passed between them. There are mysteries at the bottom of the world for all of us. In such a context, four parents is hardly more remarkable than two. In any case, at this great distance I love them all. My stoical mother, who ran the home, paid the insurance, cleaned the houses, scrubbed the floors. My half-visible, selfless dad, a working man, who all his life got up and went to work. My other mother, unmarried, too young to be a mother, really; my other father … unknown.

  And yet I fancy I look a bit like him. I bet I do – or her. And which one of them was it put a pen in my hand (a pencil behind my ear), or passed on – one touch – my phenomenal football skills? Where did my whistling come from? It took four finishers to finish me off, stitch in my nose and mouth, position my eyes, tie my ribbon. I have no wish – though this must sound complaisant – ever to complain at all, about the outcome.