BUCKLES & BOWS PART 2: FUN WITH GRANNY B.

... another little bit of a longish life. Another true autobiographical episode.

BUCKLES & BOWS: PART 2. FUN WITH GRANNY B

In a bomb-damaged tomb in a derelict graveyard the boy lay curled, dozing. He was jerked rudely awake by a sudden blare of horn which tailed gradually to a low moan, rather like a lethargic owl. For a brief moment the boy was totally disorientated, surrounded as he was by broken slabs of stone and rubble. The second blast of the mill hooter anchored him: he remembered taking shelter here in the crypt – as he called it – to escape his tormentors. The third jolted him into hurrying to the mill gates to meet up with Auntie Florrie, and by the time the fourth and last blast had faded away, he had squeezed himself acrobatically through the rusty iron railings and set off through the [thankfully] boyless and cobbled streets towards the cotton mill exit.

The streets were all of a clatter from the iron-shod wooden soled clogs worn by the lines of mill girls streaming from all directions to clock in for the evening shift. The boy, still wary and watchful, tagged along, an oddity among the pinafores and shawls of the solemn girls. At the gates, the day shift women – and a very few men - were leaving, all shouts and banter and over-loud laughter because it was pay-day. It was not easy to spot his auntie because most of the women were dressed alike, apart from a few of the younger girls rebelling against the post-war thrift. His auntie was certainly not among the younger girls: indeed, to the boy, she seemed older than his Gran in Wales. He could not recall seeing even a wisp of a smile on her long grey mournful face. Poor company for the short journey home, but at least some protection from Ganner and his mates if they were still waiting for him on the route.

‘Hello, Auntie Florrie’ the boy greeted her as she shuffled morosely out of the gates. She acknowledged him with a grunt and a spare glance, and then nothing more on the walk home, which was silent but mercifully boy-free. On the first of the eight steps leading up to the front door of the large Victorian style terraced house a loose iron on Florrie’s left clog caught and almost tripped her. The boy reached out swiftly to steady her and received surprised - and surprising – thanks for his action. Florrie steadied herself and at the top of the steps reached into the letter-box for the key string, withdrew the key, opened the door and posted the key back again.

There was a clear view down the long hall to the large kitchen where sat the imposing figure of Granny B in her customary rocking chair. “Got your full bonus this week?” she shouted to Florrie, who was hanging up her shawl. Florrie nodded, “No snarls in the cotton, so I had a full run”’ “Good,” said Granny B with satisfaction. “And where the bloody hell have you been, you little bugger,” she added, “You should have been here an hour ago. She’s ..” with a nod towards the room where his heavily pregnant, and unwell, mother lay “… been mithering me – as if I could go looking!” She tutted loudly. The boy began to answer, “Well some boys were …” but was cut short by Granny B. “Never mind, I don’t want to hear. Just be quiet, will you, my head hurts.” ‘It’s all that hair that does it,’ thought the boy, watching her comb out her magnificent long black hair streaked with silver, and then retreated back to the room allocated to his family.

Yvette, his little half-sister, was awake and lifted her arms to be helped out of the cot. His mother was fast asleep in the bed. The boy put his fingers to his lips and gently lifted Yvette out of the cot. “You’ve got to be quiet,” he whispered, “Mam’s not well and Granny B’s not in a good mood. Sit here on the floor while I get you a Rusk.” Yvette made a little moue and sat obediently, but only until the boy’s back was turned as he reached on top of the oak sideboard to take down the tin of rusks. With a mischievous giggle Yvette clambered to her feet using the bedstead as a prop and stumbled unsteadily through the half-open door and into the hallway. ‘Oh no!’ thought the boy, and rushed after her. Yvette was waddling as fast as she could towards the kitchen, too fast for her precarious balance and she fell, hard, against the skirting board. She wailed. Loudly. Granny B screeched, “Look what the little bleeder’s done! He’s pushed poor little Yvette down …. Come here, love,” she called to Yvette.

The boy was stunned. He stared back at Granny B, who looked more like a witch than ever with her hair still loose to her waist and her prominent hooked nose. ‘She must have seen what happened!’ he thought. ‘She must know I didn’t push!’ He knew she didn’t like him – she called him ‘another man’s brat’ when she was rowing with Rob – but he didn’t think she would actually lie about him. Yvette, by now, was clinging to the boy and sobbing, which made Granny B even angrier. “I’m going to tell her dad,” – not ‘your dad’, the boy noticed – “as soon as he gets in. Fact I can hear him now. You’ll catch it. See if you don’t.” “But I didn’t do anything!” protested the boy, “She just fell. On her own.” “Oh you cheeky little lying bugger,’ shouted Granny B, “Rob .. Rob” she said to her son, who had staggered in through the kitchen door, “You’ll have to do something about this cheeky bastard you’ve brought in my house!”

Rob slumped into the armchair. “Gimme a minute, will you. It’s a bloody madhouse here!” he snarled. “I’ll have a cuppa first. Get me one, Flo,” he ordered. The ever taciturn Florrie brought and poured him a cup, while Granny B explained that ‘that boy’ had pushed over poor little Yvette and she had seen the whole thing and ‘that boy’ had had the damned cheek to call her a liar. Rob glared at the boy and fumbled and slopped his cup of tea, which confirmed what the boy already knew. He was drunk again. “Know what this means, don’t you?” Rob snapped, sliding his thick leather belt from its loops, “Into the yard with you, and bend over the coal bunker. Get that jumper off as well.” The boy freed himself from Yvette’s clinging arms, who cried even louder and slid to the floor against the wall, and crept wet-eyed through the kitchen door into the tiny flagged backyard.

The little lean-to coal bunker, right next to the outside lav, had a tar-covered sloping hinged roof. The boy stripped off his jumper, leant forward onto the rough gritty tar, with each hand grasping a corner, just as Rob had instructed. He shivered slightly in the afternoon chill and waited. Rob would finish his cup of tea to ‘give you time to think about what you’d done.’ He waited and hated. Hated Rob, hated Rob’s family [except Uncle Tom], hated school and hated this bloody, bloody place.

A clatter and a curse heralded Rob’s descent down the kitchen steps to the yard. From bad to worse. The boy knew that Rob would be even more furious since he would never admit to being drunk, merely ‘a bit tiddly.’ The boy tensed, nerves on edge, as the footsteps approached. Rob slurred, “I’m really gonna learn you this time. You’re Mam’s not around to coddle you. Yeah, this’ll learn you to cheek Granny B.” The boy’s back muscles, already taut, tightened further in preparation for the familiar burning sting of leather.

Oh the agony of that first blow. The nearest thing to the excruciating pain in his back was when a lighted match had stuck to his thumb. The boy was mute with shock. The second stroke, in almost exactly the same spot, was worse, and the boy felt a spatter of liquid spray over his shoulder onto his cheek and lips. He shouted, “No, no, please, please.” “I’ll please you, okay,” sneered Rob, “I’ve told you before … take your punishment without skriking.” And the third stroke landed. More scorching agony, more blood scattered across the boy’s back and neck and face. Desperately, the boy began to push himself up from the bunker, but Rob instantly grabbed the back of his neck and ground the boy’s face into the rough tar paper. The force of the impact burst his nose and more blood flowed from his nostrils. Rob bent low next to the boy’s ear, his breath stinking of stale beer, and said very slowly and with obvious relish, “You’ve just earned yourself another two stripes.” The next time the belt buckle seared his skin the boy in extreme despair just screamed and screamed as loud and as long as he could ….



Megan jolted into consciousness, anxious but not knowing why. Then she heard with horror her son screaming from the backyard. Heavy and bloated with a difficult pregnancy she scrambled clumsily to a sitting position, her panic rising when she noticed the empty cot. Her son screaming and Yvette missing! She lumbered to the window overlooking the backyard and yanked back the heavy net curtain. The obscenity in the yard filled her first with fleeting disbelief followed swiftly by intense fury. Megan banged hard on the window and Rob stood still, the belt with the dripping buckle poised to strike again. The boy, meantime, had slid to his knees sobbing. Megan struggled frantically to raise the resistant sash window, and Rob shouted, “Get back to bed, woman, I’m dealing with this,” and then, to the boy, “Get back where you were, the lesson’s not done yet!”

The boy began slowly to rise, slipped, and tried again. Megan was shouting hysterically and then suddenly stopped, turned away from the window and made her way determinedly for the door. The boy, feeling totally defeated and lost, embraced the bunker roof like a lover, and laid his cheek gently against the tarmac and waited for the last promised stroke. Which did not come.

Later the boy would only remember the next few minutes as fragments of action, snatches of speech done and spoken in a mental fog. The backyard door slammed violently open and, with a blur of black dog barking frenziedly, his Uncle Tom rushing and shouting at Rob with rage and disgust, “What the hell do you’re think yer doing, you stupid pissed-up excuse for a man? I could hear the screams from the bottom of the street!” The boy saw Tom grab the belt from Rob and in the same movement backhand it across Rob’s face. “Like it, do you?” shouted Tom, “now piss off with your drunken mates, and don’t expect to get back in here this night.” “I can do what the hell I like with my son – keep out of it!” protested Rob. Megan had reached the yard steps by now. “He’s no son of yours, and never will be. He’ll never, ever bear your name, and unless this one,” she indicated her lump, “is a boy, I’ll never give you a son. I promise you that,” she added venomously. Black Bob, the dog, was alternately whimpering and licking the boy’s face and bloody back, and growling ferociously, lips curled and juddering at Rob, who was rapidly backing out of the yard. Tom slammed the door. And then the boy was wrapped in his mother’s warm arms, her tears on his cheeks and her sobs in his ears, “I’m sorry, so sorry, so sorry I wasn’t there when you needed me. Oh I’m sorry,” she wailed.

Tom took charge. To his mother, Granny B, who had watched all this without a trace of compassion or, indeed, any emotion, Tom ordered icily, “You’ve never been a good mam, and you’re a worse Gran, eh? Now you can get a proper stew on for us be time we get back here, else you won’t see owt of the inside of my pay-packet.” With no change of expression, Granny B shrugged, pushed herself upright from her leaning post against the door-frame and returned to the kitchen. To Megan he said, “I’ll take care of the lad, I’ve got some damn good liniment in the stables. If it can cure a horse, it’ll sort this out. Jesus!” he exclaimed, examining the lacerations on the boy’s back. “You just get back to bed – you need your rest. Florrie!” he shouted, and continued after Florrie’s impassive face appeared round the door jamb, “look after Megan, see her back to bed, with a hot drink, and take care of the little one ‘til we get back.” Florrie nodded, took Megan’s elbow and guided her with uncharacteristic care and patience up the steps and into the house.

Tom gently and carefully draped the boy’s jumper across his shoulders, wincing in sympathy with the child as rough wool snagged on raw wounds. Tenderly, for such a rough-hewn man, he wiped the boy’s bloody nose with his kerchief, took the boy’s hand and led him through the backdoor and into the back entry between the houses. “Show’s over,” Tom called to the neighbours who stood watching curiously at three or four of the back entrances, “You can get back to your teas.” The pair continued on past the pub and the little corner shop down the steep cobbled hill to the Co-op stables, where Tom worked delivering provisions to shops by horse and cart. They walked slowly, partly to avoid needless abrasion on the boy’s back, partly to favour Tom’s limp. Tom’s game leg was the subject of some speculation: the official story was that Tom had broken his leg in three places, and ruined a promising career as a jockey, after a bad fall in the first race at Chepstow. The other story was that Tom had become far too friendly with the owner’s wife, who had used a very heavy spade to make his point …

There was a small man-sized door set into the massive wooden gates of the stables. This was secured by a steel padlock, which Tom opened with one from the large ring of keys hooked onto his belt. The door swung easily inward on well-oiled hinges and the rich aroma of the stables hit them immediately. The boy sighed with satisfaction and a kind of relief – the smell was so like home, so like his valleys. Tom reached round the door and switched on the bank of lights, prompting a ragged chorus of snuffs and muted whinnies from the rows of stalls. Hoisting a large bale of hay effortlessly onto his shoulders, Tom led the boy into one of the stalls which was dominated by an enormous shire horse. ”Tell Montgomery your troubles, he’ll listen. “He’s a good listener – he has to listen to me all day – while I go and find that there liniment” The boy settled himself on the bale and lifted his head, almost colliding with Montgomery’s massive face now mere inches from his own. The great shire’s lips quivered and he huffed a cloying breath into the boy’s face. The boy, fearless with animals, patted the horse on his cheek and gently stroked carefully down the length of his nose. Montgomery whickered softly and huffed again, the boy happily breathing in the sweet scent of half-digested hay.

The boy crossed in front of Montgomery to the next stall to give the complaining Macarthur – almost a twin – some attention. A pat and a brief hug settled the great beast, and the boy returned to his seat on the bail. He could hear his Uncle Tom filling one of the metal pails, presumably water to wash his back. The boy shuddered in anticipation. Across the way from the stall, the two Suffolk Punches, smaller but no less majestic than the two shires, stirred restively. ‘I’ll see to them after …’ thought the boy, and leant forward to ease the throbbing ache in his stiffening wounds. Tom returned with the bucket, a torn piece of old cotton shirt and a large brown bottle. “Right, son,” he said, with a slight quaver in his voice, “now I won’t kid yer … this’ll hurt, and it’ll sting like old buggery. Do you think you can bear it?” The boy swallowed hard and nodded shortly. Tom soaked the rag in the water and began to ease the jumper from the boy’s back, his concern showing in a grimace each time the boy made a small cry or a sharp intake of breath. At last the damage was clear, and the boy felt some ease as the cold water cleansed his ripped back. Tom muttered, “The bastard … the nasty drunken vicious bastard!” as he bathed. “Now, here’s the really nasty bit …” he said, and the boy shouted out loud, “Owww!” as his back seemed to catch afire and burn, burn, burn. The torment went on and on but suddenly ceased, to be replaced by a cool numbness, and the boy sagged forward, elbows on knees and head in hands, gratefully and gave a single sob. He looked up at an anxious Uncle Tom and gave him a weak and watery smile. “Thanks,” the boy said, “that’s a lot better now.” Tom stroked the top of the boy’s head lovingly. “I’ve got a reward for a brave boy,” he said, and reached up into Montgomery’s manger and withdrew a king-sized cigar tin.

When Tom opened the tin, the boy was astounded to see a large number of pound notes carefully curled into rolls and arranged side by side in the tin. He hadn’t seen that much money at one time in his life! Tom gripped the boy’s arm firmly, and turned the boy’s face towards his own. “This my secret,” Tom whispered, “ours now, see. But this is what I’m gonna do. Listen, don’t tell your mam just yet, leave that to me nearer the time. I’m gonna use some of this to buy your train tickets to Wales this summer, how about that?” The boy sat open-mouthed for a second, then with a delighted cry he leapt up and hugged his lovely, lovely Uncle Tom. Near to tears he mumbled into Tom’s chest, “That’s the best thing, ever. And I will, I will keep it a secret!” “Right,” said Uncle Tom, gruffly, unwilling to show how moved he was, “Let’s tidy up now and go home for that stew. Hang up the tack by the buckle – though I suppose you’ve had enough of buckles today!”

“Yes!” said the boy, “More than enough of buckles,” then remembering the morning and June Savage’s hair bow, “and of bows…”