If Only They Could Talk Read online

  If Only They

  Could Talk

  Ian Walker

  Contents

  Title Page

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Epilogue

  Author’s Notes

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  “We have entrusted our brother Miles Goodyear to God’s mercy, and now we commit his body to be cremated: earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust: in sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life through our Lord Jesus Christ who will transform our frail bodies that they may be conformed to his glorious body, who died, was buried, and rose again for us. To him be glory for ever. Amen.”

  The service was nearly at an end and mindful that there was another cremation in ten minutes’ time the vicar continued:

  “Before we depart, the family has asked me to inform everybody that you are invited for drinks and a buffet at the George Stephenson on Newbold Road immediately after this service.”

  The George Stephenson was a large brick-built pub dating from the 1950s. It stood on a main thoroughfare less than a mile from Chesterfield town centre and had been named after ‘the father of the railways’ and inventor of the Geordie miner’s safety lamp.

  George Stephenson had resided in Chesterfield for the final years of his life. He was buried in the graveyard at Holy Trinity church, just down the road from the pub that now bore his name.

  “We will finish by singing one of Miles’s favourite hymns, ‘Praise My Soul the King of Heaven’,” the vicar continued.

  Mind you no one present could remember Miles ever going to church, let alone having a favourite hymn.

  Once the service was over the congregation filed out of the crematorium and gathered shivering by the flowers, which had been laid out at the back of the main building. It was early January and the temperature was close to freezing on a dull, overcast day, a fact that only served to add to the overall gloom of the occasion.

  “Well, it was a lovely service,” said Emma. “It’s just a pity that there weren’t more people here.”

  “He was 92 and it’s an unfortunate fact of life that most of his friends died years ago,” commented Nigel.

  Nigel and Emma were brother and sister, nephew and niece of the deceased and his closest living relatives. Although both of them had been born in Chesterfield, nei­ther of them lived locally anymore. Nigel was the nearest as he lived in Ashbourne along with his wife Molly and Bruce, their black Labrador.

  He was formerly the financial controller for Rolls Royce in Derby, joining straight from university. It was one of those good old-fashioned jobs for life, or so he thought until they offered him early retirement in 2018. Not that he’d been disappointed. It was manna from heaven where Nigel was concerned, as he’d worked for them for nearly forty years by then. So after receiving a six-figure severance payment he was able to start drawing his pension and spend more time pursuing his hobby restoring classic cars. In fact he’d just completed his latest project, a 1948 MG TC, which he’d discovered in a friend’s barn. It was in a truly dreadful state of repair and had taken eighteen months of painstaking work, but he’d finally got it back to its original showroom condition.

  Nigel loved his hobby and the same was true of Molly who nowadays enjoyed one of her own. She’d taken up making pottery after the hotel where she’d worked as a receptionist closed back in 2017. Fast forward three years and she now designs and makes her own range of vases, which she sells locally at various craft fairs.

  Nigel and Molly had been married for 35 years and although their interests didn’t overlap, they always made sure they supported each other’s pastimes. Molly attended classic car rallies and Nigel helped his wife at the monthly artisan market in Bakewell.

  The two of them may have retired, leaving them free to pursue other interests, but the same was not true for Nigel’s sister and her husband. Emma was four years younger than her brother and was employed as a school secretary at a large comprehensive in Guildford. She was married to Ralph, a consultant orthopaedic surgeon working at the Royal Surrey County Hospital. He had just turned sixty and was considering retiring himself in two to three years time. But in the meantime his work kept him busier than ever.

  Neither Emma nor Ralph had made any plans for their retirement. Work and children had taken up all their time for the past thirty years. But with the children now having fled the nest and retirement looming large for both of them, they knew they had to make some decisions pretty soon. Perhaps they’d travel. After all neither of them had taken a gap year when they were younger. They could always buy a campervan, just disappear and spend months travelling around Europe. Or if they were really adventurous they could go even further afield.

  But all that was for the future. Today was about family.

  In truth the turnout at the crematorium was pitiful. If they had known it was going to be so poor, Emma and Nigel would have insisted that their children attend in order to make up the numbers. But the fact was that their kids barely knew their great-uncle. They hadn’t seen him since the funeral of their grandmother back in 2006.

  Also Emma’s three all lived in London, Nigel’s son Jacob was in Devon and his daughter Flo in New Zealand. As a result it was always going to be difficult to persuade any of them to attend.

  Miles’s death had brought to an end a long family con­nection with Chesterfield. Emma and Nigel’s parents had also lived there until their deaths – their father from demen­tia in 2002, and their mother from cancer in 2006. Whilst they were alive, there was always a reason for the two of them to visit the town, and sometimes they would pop in to see their uncle. He was not the easiest of men to talk to. In fact both of them remember their mother referring to him as old misery guts.

  “We should have made more of an effort to see him over the years,” said Nigel. “Especially me. After all I only live forty minutes away.”

  “Look, he never wanted to see us,” replied Emma. “We never even got a card from him at Christmas, so I wouldn’t get too upset about it if I were you. Mum was the only one of us that he was ever close to and since she died we hav­en’t heard a thing from him. Mum told me he got really depressed following Aunty Sarah’s death and the closure of the brewery back in the 1960s. She said he never fully got over his double loss.”

  “It’s amazing. I’d forgotten all about Aunty Sarah,” said Nigel. “Mind you, I never really knew her being as I was only three when she passed away and you weren’t even born. Aunty Sarah would only have been 33 when she died. I remember now that Mum always said Uncle Miles was totally devastated by her death. That’s probably why he was so miserable and never remarried.”

  As they were talking, an elderly gentleman wearing the customary dark suit and black tie wandered over and inter­rupted their conversation.

  “It’s Mr Nigel, isn’t it?” he asked.

  “Good grief, it’s a long time since anyone called
me that,” Nigel replied. “I’m afraid you’re going to have to remind me.”

  “Alf Parkes,” said the man. “I used to be chief clerk at the brewery back in the 1960s.”

  Goodyear’s of Chesterfield had been one of three brew­eries in the town and the last one to close after it was taken over by Sheffield Brewery in 1967. Emma and Nigel’s mother had been a Goodyear and they had both been allowed to visit the family business on special occasions when they were young. These were mainly for events such as the com­pany Christmas party and the annual summer outing.

  They were always referred to as Mr Nigel and Miss Emma by the brewery staff. This was a common practice amongst employees of family run companies throughout England in the twentieth century. With so many members of the same family involved in a business, it would have been confusing to refer to them all by their surname. And since it was con­sidered too familiar to use their Christian names alone, the tradition was to call them Mr or Miss followed by their first name instead.

  Mind you, Emma and Nigel’s surname wasn’t Goodyear. It was Friedrich. Goodyear had been their mother’s maiden name. Additionally, there were no other children from the owning family at that time, but this made no difference to the brewery employees. The two of them were part of the Goodyear dynasty, and therefore would always be known as Mr Nigel and Miss Emma.

  “Mr Parkes,” said Nigel. “I remember you. You always used to lead the singing on the bus back from the seaside during the staff summer outing.”

  “They were happy days Mr Nigel,” said Parkes. “It was the worst day of my life, the day your uncle sold the brewery. My father and grandfather had both worked for Goodyear’s and all of a sudden I had to find myself another job. Eventually I got one as steward of Chesterfield Miners Welfare Club, but it was never the same.”

  “Well, it was really good of you to come, Mr Parkes,” said Nigel.

  “I never held it against your uncle,” Parkes continued. “He didn’t want to sell the business. The banks forced him to. Bloody banks, they never did anything for anybody. Look at the mess they’ve got the country into nowadays. Mind you, it would never have happened if your grand­father had still been alive. He would have known how to save the brewery. Of course some of us could have trans­ferred to work in Sheffield. But that was twelve miles away. At Goodyear’s I could walk to work in the mornings and stagger back home again in the evenings after a few pints in the brewery cellars. In the end very few members of staff decided to transfer and most of those who did, didn’t like working there. By the end of 1968 there wasn’t a single one of them left.

  “Of course there aren’t many of us old employees who are still alive nowadays. There’s Jim Stuart over there who used to work on the drays and next to him is Eileen Greenbank who used to work in the empties store. They’re the only ones of your uncle’s old workforce who are here. Bill Steadman, who used to work in the brewhouse is still going, although he uses a Zimmer frame these days and doesn’t get out much. I see him every now and again when I take a few bottles of beer around to his house and we talk about the old times. It allows his wife to go and do a bit of shopping and stops him from getting under her feet for a few hours.”

  “That’s very good of you, Mr Parkes,” said Emma. “Tell me, are you going to join us at the George Stephenson?”

  “Oh yes, I’ll be there,” said Parkes. “I wouldn’t miss my last opportunity to drink to the memory of Mr Miles. Mind you the beer they serve these days is bloody awful. It’s a bit like drinking someone’s dirty bathwater after they’ve been farting in it. Of course it was your family that built the George Stephenson, you know. It used to be one of your pubs.”

  “Of course it was. I’d forgotten that,” said Nigel.

  “Yes, it was your family’s flagship outlet when it opened in 1954,” continued Parkes, “two bars, a restaurant and six letting bedrooms. It was billed as a new beginning for the brewery. A move away from male boozers towards the type of pub you could take your wife to. Or somebody else’s wife for that matter, bearing in mind the letting bedrooms.”

  He chuckled a little, obviously amused by his own joke before continuing.

  “Look at it now, it’s owned by Sizzling Steak Shacks. You can’t even go in there without someone saying, ‘Are you dining with us tonight sir?’

  “No I’m bloody well not, I came in for a pint of mild and a game of darts. Not that they sell mild or have a dartboard anymore. It’s all lager and two for one steaks these days cooked in a bloody microwave. I asked for a medium rare sirloin in one of their pubs once and do you know what the man behind the bar said to me?”

  “No, what did he say?” said Nigel pretending to be interested.

  “He said, ‘I’m awfully sorry sir but we’ve just sold the last medium rare sirloin. I can offer you a medium one instead though.’

  “What do you think of that? Nothing in that bloody pub is cooked to order. It’s all prepared in a bloody big factory in Scunthorpe and then reheated by some spotty youngster on the minimum wage. I’ll never ask for a sizzling steak in one of their pubs again. Your uncle would turn in his grave.”

  Nigel considered saying that their uncle didn’t actually have a grave to turn in and was probably sizzling himself at that precise moment. But then he had second thoughts, deciding it wasn’t appropriate to be making jokes at a funeral. Instead he just said,

  “Well, it’s been really nice talking to you, Mr Parkes. Hopefully I’ll catch up with you again later, but Emma and I really need to get to the George Stephenson in order to greet our guests.”

  With that Nigel, Molly, Emma and Ralph went over towards the stretched black Jaguar that had brought them to the crematorium and which was now going to take them to the George Stephenson.

  However, just as they were getting in Nigel apologised to the others. He had spotted a couple of his former teachers from his days at the Grammar School and wandered over to talk to them. They were both in their eighties and had been colleagues of his uncle’s after he got a teaching job there following the closure of the brewery. Nigel had been a pupil at the time, which is how he came to recognise them.

  Nigel had never been taught by his uncle, but Beaky King had taught him history. Nigel remembered him as a stern man who wouldn’t take any nonsense from his pupils. Pansy Potter had been the art master back then and Nigel had also been in his class in years one and two. Old Pansy had been the exact opposite of Mr King. He was a man with his head in the clouds who let his pupils run rings around him.

  “Mr King, Mr Potter,” said Nigel. Then seeing that they didn’t recognise him continued by saying. “It’s Nigel Friedrich, Miles’s nephew.”

  Suddenly the penny dropped. “Young Friedrich, I haven’t seen you since you left school,” said Mr King before adding. “That would be in 1977 wouldn’t it?”

  “1976,” replied Nigel.

  “And what are you doing these days?” asked Mr King.

  “Well, I was the financial controller for Rolls Royce in Derby until two years ago. But I was offered the chance of early retirement and jumped at the opportunity.”

  “There’s nothing that makes you feel older than seeing the boys you once taught getting old themselves and retir­ing,” Mr Potter replied.

  “I’m sorry about your uncle,” said Mr King. “He had a good innings but he was unlucky in love. I asked him once why he never remarried and he told me that he’d been let down by women on too many occasions. He said that he was happy with just his garden and the odd pint in the Nags Head. He told me that his dick had got him into all kinds of trouble over the years and that he’d learnt his lesson and was going to keep it in his trousers from now on.”

  This statement by his old history master came as a bit of a shock for Nigel who had never thought of his uncle as a ladies’ man before. However, he soon composed himself and asked them if they were coming to the George Stephenson. When they confirmed that they were, Nigel said he hoped to speak to them both again later.


  With that he rejoined the others who were waiting for him in the stretched Jaguar. A few seconds later the chauf­feur pulled out of the crematorium gates bound for the George Stephenson.

  “Who were those two men you were talking to?” Molly asked him as they were heading towards Newbold.

  “Beaky King, my old history master, and Pansy Potter who taught me art.”

  “So did you have nicknames for all your teachers when you were at school?” she asked.

  “Most of them. Beaky got his nickname because of his initials. His real name is Brian King, so his initials are BK, which is where Beaky comes from. Mr Potter got his nick­name from a character in the Beano.

  Mind you, the talk amongst some of the boys was that he was called Pansy for another reason. But I’ll not go into that now.”

  Molly wasn’t too impressed by Nigel’s schoolboy reminis­cences, so instead she decided to change the subject.

  “I think we’ve over-catered,” she announced. “There couldn’t have been more than twenty people at the cre­matorium and I doubt if they will all come to the George Stephenson.”

  She was referring to the fact that when the pub manager had asked her how many he had to cater for, she’d told him that they were expecting between 35 and 40 guests. It now seemed that there would be less than half that number and consequently most of the buffet would be wasted.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” added Ralph. “Perhaps we’ll get some professional mourners attending.”

  “Pardon?” said Molly.

  “Professional mourners,” he repeated, “people who scour the papers for details of funerals that are going to take place. Then they go along for the free food even though they’d never met the deceased.”

  “Do people really do such things?” enquired Molly.

  “Of course they do,” Ralph replied. “Some of them even do research into the person who’s died so that they can join in conversations about them.”

  “Well, I think that’s awful,” said Nigel. “If we get any of them today I will personally throw them out.”