Raw Material (17 page)

‘Every country is the same,' I said, to see whether or not he had finished. ‘It's called modern civilization, in case you don't know.'

‘Civilization, my arse!' he cried, throwing his brush aside and reaching out to fill the kettle—or shutting off his monologue with acerbity when he wanted to clear his room and get down to work: ‘It's killed too many innocent people in the last fifty years for any intelligent man to think there's much good in it.'

Those were his final words—on that occasion. He certainly didn't seem like my father's brother, yet there was little doubt that he was.

49

A nest of brothers is a dangerous thing, whether or not they are different, especially to the man who spermed them out. Bert was the second eldest and, at seventeen, during a savage quarrel with his father, picked up a hobbing-iron from the floor of the upholstery shop and threw it with all his might towards the head he could no longer stand the sight of.

He missed—a failure he regretted for the rest of his life. Ashamed of the regret, whose twinges came sharply on him as soon as he saw his father's whitened face still intact, he rushed out of the house swearing never to come back.

After a few days on the streets there seemed nothing else to do but go for a soldier, which he did with the South Notts Hussars, who were being fitted up for service in the Boer War. When his mother got wind of his enlistment she wrote to the Army Office to say he was too young for active service, and had him called off the troopship at Southampton an hour before it left.

It was as well he didn't go, for the regiment supposedly disgraced itself in South Africa by refusing to charge at well-hidden and deadly Boer rifles, many troopers having already been killed and wounded because of the slovenly tactical arrangements of their officers. It was due to these casualties that Lord Roberts, one of the commanders in the war, was booed and hissed when he led a parade into Nottingham at the end of it.

Bert went home to an uneasy parental truce and got work with a firm of upholsterers. He enlisted as a cavalryman when the Great War began, and was on guard at a camp outside Boulogne when the horses broke loose one night during an air-raid. One of them kicked so violently that his arm was broken in three places, and he was stunned by agony, unable to get off the ground. An officer who saw him lying there shouted that he was trying to hide from the bombs, adding that if he didn't stand up like a man and go about his business he would have him court-martialled.

Bert's response was not clear enough to be heard through the noise of gunfire and bombs, and the officer thought he was being insolent instead of explanatory, so lifted his stick with the intention of hitting him if he didn't get back to work. Night, uneasy horses, loud bangs of anti-aircraft guns, and the sweat of fast-running panic created a permanent nightmare. To Bert war seemed to have spread over everything human and animal, even back to the dreamy recesses of his past life—which now seemed idyllic. It was as if it had gone for ever in the great rattle-bang of the midnight sky, and he blamed the young but bloodshot face fixed near by.

Rage overcame his pain and shot him to his feet, and he threatened to smash the officer with his one good fist if he didn't get out of the way. He was surprised at the effect of his action, but glad nevertheless, for the officer sidestepped him and walked quickly to another part of the camp in case his historical ability to restore order should be impaired at the present place before it had had time to go into action there. Bert never forgave him for thinking he was a coward, and for treating him, he said, as German officers were said to treat their own men.

In the darker moments of his subsequent life he was haunted by the encounter, which he worked into a well-endowed focus for his personal hatred. The officer fully intended to have him court-martialled for insubordination but desisted when told of the smashed arm, though he did not apologize or make any comment. Such was the way in which the ‘splendid material of the New Armies' was treated. For the first time men of self-respect were brought up against the brutal realities of what they had committed themselves to defend.

Perhaps the Great War conveniently used up Bert's excess of spirit, for when it finished he was content to work at his craft as upholsterer. He did not want to take over his father's business, though only he had the skill and perseverance to do so, but stayed the rest of his life at one firm. He was an elderly man when I knew him, a quiet person who had the reputation of keeping very much to himself. By then he was proud of the fact that he had been employed for so long at the same place, one of whose workshops had his own name over the door.

Yet he had more inner turmoil to contend with than his brothers, a restlessness that curbed any ambition, so that he needed all his energy to live a normal life. It was hard to imagine, seeing that bald, glint-eyed man sitting by the fire with a pipe between his teeth which he wouldn't always take out to talk in his clear and measured voice, that he'd joined the cavalry during two wars, and had been a daredevil in horsemanship.

His brothers testified to his prowess as a rider, saying that his absolute way with horses was due to human strength, animal sympathy, and a cunning that blended both. Frederick said he'd taken well to the military life from time to time, even describing him as something of a martinet, which may have been because he was the only one of the six sons to rebel against his father.

But there was something of the tethered horse in him too, of a man who knew how to tame a horse and who realized that he also had been broken in, and placed firmly under the domestic saddle. Perhaps life would have been insupportable if he hadn't, yet in an unguarded moment he allowed one to see his unsettled eyes wondering what he was doing in the imprisoning parlour where he sat and told his tale. He was the only one of my father's family who was connected in spirit to the Burtons, though as far as I know he never met any of them.

50

Edgar snubbed the roses of Picardy by surviving the Great War as a prisoner of the Germans, then went back to work for his father. He married some time during the twenties, but his wife left him after a few months. She accused him of leading her an unspeakable life, while he in his brooding silence could not begin to fathom what she meant.

My sister talked about life at the Sillitoes when I saw her in Nottingham City Hospital just before she died of cancer. She remembered further back than ever before, and recalled a visit to their shop when she was four or five. I must have been with her as well but, being barely two years of age, had no memory of it.

We spent much of the time playing on the stairs while sharp arguments went on in one of the rooms. The ground floor of the house consisted of the shop and work-alcoves. On the next floor was a large lounge and the living quarters, and the top storey was occupied by several bedrooms.

Perhaps they were talking about who should take over the business when the old man died, an honour which eventually fell to my father. It meant little that he could not read or write, because in those days there were many such men who nevertheless prospered. And he had been reasonably trained as an upholsterer, perhaps to make up for the early neglect.

However Edgar wanted it for himself, and talked him out of it with little difficulty, since my father was particularly softhearted where family affairs were concerned.

But Edgar lost control of the flourishing business in less than half a year because of his drinking. The shop—as my sister put it—had to be sold under him, and he then took up odd-jobbing and journeying in the upholstery trade. This might have given him a fair living, but he needed the oblivion or good-feeling of being drunk, and boozed all that he earned.

In our part of the family he was known as ‘Eddie the Tramp', and now and again would come and bed down with us a few nights. As we were often destitute he must really have been at the end of his tether, though maybe it was the company of a brother and a few children he wanted, rather than the cups of tea and pieces of bread he'd get by way of food.

On each occasion he probably hoped to stay longer than he did, but my parents never managed his company for more than one night, suddenly deciding he drank too much, or stank too much, or said too little, or took up too much space in the small room, or stared at them when in fact he was only looking emptily at the wall. And then there'd be shouting, and he'd snatch at his cap and bag of tools, and be out of the door before either my sister or I knew what was going on.

He once spent Christmas with us when he hadn't slept in a bed for months, and smelled like it. My father gave him his spare shirt, and my mother sent him to the public baths before they closed, telling him not to call in any pub on the way back or there'd be no hot dinner for him.

We children were excited that Uncle Eddie was going to stay at such a time, because nobody had done that before. In spite of his greasy raincoat, and cap the colour of ancient nicotine, and the fact that he'd come to us like a broken-down tramp, he had money on him, and the sum he mentioned so far exceeded the amount of my father's dole that we hoped he'd bring us comics and toffees on his way back from the baths. Being a gentle and quiet-spoken person who looked at us with respect, almost as if he were afraid of us, there was a chance he wouldn't forget. We also admired him because he'd got a trade, though at the same time it didn't seem much good to him.

He returned with two quart bottles of beer, plus sweets and comics, and a piece of meat wrapped in newspaper. His dark hair was neatly combed under his cap, and he'd had a shave at the barber's, a sprucing up which turned him back into a passably handsome youngish man of forty.

That night he slept on the sofa, and a bit of fire glowed in the grate for him. The next day there was cheerful talk of staying for good and paying a small amount for his board and lodging. He would have regular meals and be provided with a clean shirt every week, while the money he contributed would help us.

In the afternoon my sister and I sat at the table with pencil and paper, and Eddie amused us by drawing pictures of German soldiers, complete with the traditional helmets and rifle. A frosty wind was blowing up the valley of the Leen, but the house was warm and for us four children it was a good place to be.

But on Boxing Day some inexplicable quarrel erupted between the two brothers, and my father threw him out. Both my parents were glad to be rid of him, as if he'd been with us six months, though my sister and I were in tears because we knew he had nowhere to go in the bitter cold.

So he lived alone, and never washed or changed, in order perhaps that the sharp and pungent smell would give him a clearer sense of his own identity, and at the same time protect him from those who did not need him. During the Second World War, when money was easier to come by and he took his earnings into the noisy pubs—the Albany, the Eight Bells, or the Trip to Jerusalem, built snug against the sandstone sides of the Castle—he was a somewhat lugubrious free-spender, treating and tipping as if he thought it unlucky to get change from notes or silver, though nobody could seem as down on his luck when it was all gone and he was walking around the pubs and cinemas for more seating to mend or recondition.

His reputation for skill was well known on the circuit he had built up, and he could have jobs for the asking, though those who employed him were careful not to hand out any payment before he had finished. On moneyless nights he would occasionally receive a pint at the bar from some generous American soldier, who clearly saw a free-born Englishman down on his luck—odd gifts which Edgar gratefully accepted, for he too would treat soldiers when he had money.

I often earned good cash on piece-work, so when we met I'd give him a few bob if he was broke, which I usually knew him to be by the depressed look of his lips. Sometimes I was mistaken, and if he had money he would take nothing, and even with delicate frankness ask if I needed anything.

I last saw him on the top deck of a bus going from Radford into the middle of Nottingham. When we got off at Chapel Bar I gave him a copy of my first book of poems, called
Without Beer or Bread
, and he smiled at the title as he put it into his mackintosh pocket. I was about to go when, from an inside waistcoat, he brought an old fob-timepiece which he wanted me to have in exchange for the poems.

‘I can't take your watch.'

He smiled, the few teeth left in his mouth gone rotten. ‘It's only gold-plated zinc. It was with me at Gommecourt, and in Germany. Went all the time I was under fire. Would you believe it? Hasn't gone for years now.'

I looked at its clean Roman numerals on a round white face, a plain style I'd always liked, its two hands stopped at four o'clock. ‘I often meant to get it going,' he said, ‘but the pawnshop was closer than the watchmaker! They'd let me have a few bob on it but I'd allus redeem it before the time ran out.'

‘Let me give you some money for it,' I offered, knowing this wouldn't insult him if he was broke, and that he'd be offended if I didn't take the watch. He tapped his pocket with my book in it: ‘Exchange is no robbery. Buy a chain for it, and get it ticking. I'd like to think the old thing's going to go again some time.'

A year later I had it mended, and bought a chain from a Polish watchmaker at the top of Drury Lane in Nottingham. I still wear it, and it keeps fair time. I never knew why Edgar's soul had been so much battered, and at times I disliked his better-off brothers intensely for not helping him more. They hadn't been exactly generous, and my father was all but ignored by them during his hard-up days. Only at Christmas did they give us a few toys left from the previous year. None of them came to my father's funeral, though an announcement had been put in the newspaper to give the date. Yet they had helped Edgar from time to time, and he usually sold or pawned the clothes they gave, spending the money on drink. So they got fed up and didn't bother with him.