Читать книгу Reluctant Hero - John Hickman - Страница 10

Bill did what was expected of him and left school at fourteen.

‘It’s all to do with combinations of seven, Son,’ Fred beamed. ‘At seven you’re a child. Fourteen is twice seven. Time to move on. Most men marry and have kids by twenty-one. That’s three times seven. You’re back’s buggered by fifty-six, that’s eight times seven. And you’ll be pushing up daisies by seventy.’

‘Ten times seven,’ laughed Bill.

Bill craved to be successful but didn’t know how. He wanted to belong, to fit in, but for him that became a worry. In his topsy-turvy way, he felt sure to remain in Notting Hill, meant he had to stagnate. And that he refused to do. His emerging competitive nature became stonewalled. He felt lost, up against formidable odds, while his parents worked as hard as ever to pay rent and provide food on their table.

‘What I can’t stomach, Mum, is hypocrisy, idleness or fraud,’ raged Bill.

‘No, Son. You tell them!’ You’re dumber than a bag of wet mice, she thought.

But Bill had decided he didn’t want to be part of life in Notting Hill. His problem was how to achieve it. If only it could be as easy as when Alice in Wonderland followed the rabbit. He was about to exercise an exceptional will to improve and get out of the slums, to find something better.

‘It’s not only the greyness and the drizzle of the weather depresses me, Dad.’

‘You can’t escape that, Son. Not even your Uncle Charlie does that by living in a posh suburb.’

‘It’s the greyness of the people, Dad. They look unwashed.’

‘Working class coarseness, yer mean. We’re not good enough for yer, Son?’

‘It’s not that. What’s happened to all the greenery and trees we only seem to see in picture books? Why in the parks are we forbidden to walk on the grass?’

A lack of answers and the deafening sound of silence, threatened to capsize Bill.

‘I’m dragging myself up by my bootstraps,’ announced Bill. That was how he liked to explain his slow progress. It was an exceptional attitude for a man so young.

He begged Uncle Charlie for an opportunity in his betting business but was turned down flat. ‘It’s a risky business, Bill. Up one day, down the next. I’ll be getting out soon myself, with a bit of luck before I lose everything. I’m doing you a favour, Son, I really am, by not taking you in.’

Bill was devastated. He’d thought fish might fly before his Uncle Charlie turned against him. A major escape door had closed in his face. Rejection by his uncle was a new experience for Bill and the hurt cut him deeply. *1st Footnote

Short on qualifications Bill decided to become an apprentice of something. He chose a manufacturing jeweller in Portobello Road. They used concepts of basic arithmetic. Unlikely to induce any awful recurring headaches, thought Bill.

‘Bill’s got it made, Girl.’

They were sure he had, until a critical day when Bill used cyanide to clean gold unsupervised. Without thought he placed his tobacco pipe down on the workbench. Its stem, the part he put into his mouth, had come into contact with the smallest trace of deadly poison and he almost died.

Bill came to, dizzy and disorientated. His mind clouded with half-forgotten names of long dead relatives. He’d been laid-out on the floor amid spinning rooms and nausea for several minutes. When he recovered, he was wiser and none the worse for the experience but hungry to learn.

There were clouded hints of self-improvement without support of his under-arm symbol—the bat. He continued to educate himself. The flame to learn burned brightly but only one flaw could be improved at a time. The opportunity of going back to full-time school was rarer than wedding tackle on an action man.

At sixteen Bill had health issues; awful abdominal pains. Doctors misdiagnosed he’d poisoned himself at work then realised he had appendicitis. An appendix operation was major surgery in 1939. Bill was lucky to survive.

After convalescence he reviewed his dental plan. He acquired false upper and lower dentures. It was a big improvement at meal times but when he whistled, it was never quite the same tune.

New teeth or not he felt cursed with a natural pessimism, which he blamed on being born in the slums. This became his Achilles heel. Disillusioned by what he perceived as dread came upon him in waves, similar to grief. He feared mediocrity, which threatened to overwhelm him. Scared of sliding into obscurity in Notting Hill, Bill couldn’t wait to plan his great escape. But how could he make it happen? As he pondered he became more aware of his every failure. He saw clear contrasts between the brightness of his dreams and the utter botch-up of their carry through. But this was to become an even greater recipe for deep despair.

At home Lily and Fred never talked about what interested Bill. He became a loner. He took long walks unaccompanied and became an avid reader. Technology, high-class fashion magazines, diets and clothes fascinated Bill. That better educated people tried to lose weight intrigued him. His mum Lily could have benefited from losing a few stone although Bill never said anything to offend her. She was a rotund jolly woman with enormous breasts and a continuous sniff.

As a kid she’d pull Bill towards her to give him a big, big hug and he disappeared laughing in to the warmth and security of the giant folds of her bosom. A beautiful woman inside and out, all four foot nothing of her. Her warm green eyes danced with humour and when she let her hair down it was so long she could sit on it. But years of living in Notting Hill had taken their toll. Lily’s hair had turned prematurely grey and worn up in a bun, made her figure resemble a massive upside down light bulb. Lily often poked fun at her own appearance. ‘My problem was being born with duck’s disease.’

Another feature was her feet being too small, so tiny she often toppled over but when she did she blamed her bunions. Her enormous breasts might have contributed, but she never mentioned them. Her falls became legendary during Bill’s growing years but were never serious. No broken bones; only grazed dimpled knees, which were invisible to everyone except Fred.

Bill thought Lily could have given some of her bulk to Fred and then some, but neither Lily nor Fred ever pursued good health. Nobody did in Notting Hill. No one ever went to a gym unless they were athletic like boxers in a ring. And no one ever jogged or ran anywhere, not unless they were late for work or had a bus or train to catch. Lily walked to their local shops or caught a number 52 bus near the end of their street.

Fred cycled to work on an ordinary black-framed bike with a big basket on the front without a chain guard. He wore cycle leg clips to keep his uniform trousers from flapping into the well-greased chain. When he returned home Fred hoist his cross-bar up onto his shoulder and carried his bike of about eighty pounds weight up six flights of stairs to their little flat on the third floor.

‘That and a day’s work is exercise enough for me today,’ quipped Fred.

He stood his bike against a wall, often in their bedroom. If left downstairs in the passageway it would have been easy pickings from the street.

Fred smoked un-tipped Senior Service cigarettes when he could afford to buy them. Otherwise he rolled his own. Most people smoked but Lily didn’t. They were ordinary people Lily and Fred, and they drank and ate whatever they could afford.

Bill’s attempts at improvement were ridiculed whenever someone found out. To him those bloody goal posts were being moved only to make life more difficult for him. Dimly aware whenever he entered a room he made little more impression than a draft he soon became ultra depressed and moody.

Bill turned against the Church. ‘History is scattered with so called holy men who lived like lords, fat on the offerings of poor people. Through ignorance they bought blessings rather than bread for their children. That’s not true Christian conduct.’

Fred agreed with him. ‘If there is a God, He’s got a lot to answer for. I for one would like to sit in on His judgment, Girl.’

‘For hundreds of years the Church has held the pen,’ ranted Bill. ‘And what they wrote is supposed to be fact. I believe it’s mostly lies, written by dishonest men who suppressed the history they didn’t like and wrote what was more favourable to them.’

In September 1939 Britain declared war on Germany and along came the Second World War. Over one million men would serve in Germany’s air defences, with another million and a half providing ground defences.

Uncle Charlie shook his head in disbelief. ‘Goes to prove, if there is a God, He must have a weird sense of humour, I suppose.’

‘Personal tragedy has no time-table,’ sniffed Lily. ‘I wonder whatever will become of us all?’

Fred lit another cigarette. ‘It’s been proven throughout history, it’s not a real war unless someone’s making a good profit. I’ll bet this one will turn out to be a real doozy.’

*1st footnot. Uncle Charlie managed to leave the bookie business before he lost everything. He settled permanently in a leafy London suburb with his family. He kept his house and car and became employed as a factory supervisor and remained a staunch supporter and mentor of Bill until his death.