If Only They Could Talk Read online

  “Ah, but how would you recognise them?” Ralph contin­ued. “If someone came up to you in the George Stephenson who you’ve never met before and said that they used to live in the same street as your uncle back in the 1940s, how would you know if they are genuine or not?”

  Before Nigel had the chance to answer, the Jaguar arrived in the car park of the George Stephenson and the four of them got out. The pub looked pretty garish in its red and yellow livery and was plastered with boards advertising the pub’s various offers, such as two-for-one Tuesdays and free-bottle-of-wine Wednesdays. It hadn’t been chosen for its décor. It had been chosen because it was next door to their uncle’s house.

  As it turned out Nigel needn’t have worried about inter­lopers, as there were only eighteen people in the small func­tion room they’d hired for the wake and that included the four of them. He recognised the other fourteen, as all of them had been at the crematorium.

  The four members of the family helped themselves to tea and coffee and then started to chat to the assembled guests. Most of them were really old and had known their uncle, either from his time as a schoolmaster or from the days before the brewery had closed. As well as Beaky, Pansy, Alf, Jim and Eileen there were also a couple of former Goodyear brewery tenants and a local farmer. He’d known their uncle because he used to buy spent grains from him to feed to his pigs.

  There was also John Blenkin, their uncle’s next-door neighbour and one of the few friends he’d had in recent times. John was joint executor of their uncle’s will along with their uncle’s solicitor. In addition he was the person who’d raised the alarm that led to their uncle’s body being discovered.

  On seeing Nigel and Emma, John walked over to have a word with the two of them.

  “Please accept my condolences,” he said. “He had a long life, but death is never a pleasant experience for the family, all the same.”

  “That’s true,” said Nigel. “Even though we rarely saw our uncle in the past few years, we all have happy memories of him from when we were children.”

  Nigel was not being completely truthful of course, but saw no point in besmirching his uncle’s memory now that he was dead.

  “I have to say that you have been very good,” said Emma, “arranging the funeral and dealing with his solicitor.”

  “Unfortunately it’s a poor turnout,” John replied. “But I suppose you have to bear in mind that your uncle was 92 when he died and most of his friends and former work colleagues are now dead themselves. Anyway talking about the legal side of things I’ve got a copy of his will for both of you.”

  “Oh, I thought his will would be read out by his solicitor after his funeral,” said Emma.

  “That sort of thing only happens in films,” replied John whilst opening the folder he had brought with him. “No, with most estates a copy of the will is merely sent to the beneficiaries by the solicitor handling probate.”

  With that John produced two photocopied pieces of paper from the folder he was carrying and handed one to Nigel and one to Emma.

  “As you can see,” John went on. “Your uncle’s will is very straightforward. He leaves everything to the two of you as his only living relatives.”

  “We never discussed his will with him,” said Nigel. “Neither of us ever presumed that he would leave his entire estate to us. However, we did realise that he didn’t have any other relatives.”

  “Well, it’s not all good news I’m afraid,” John went on. “I have to tell you that Miles was not a wealthy man when he died. In fact he barely had enough money in his bank account to cover his funeral costs. That is why we are having finger buffet number one, the cheapest they do here. Mind you, given the poor turnout I’m glad we didn’t have more money to spend.”

  “You surprise me,” said Nigel. “After all, our family used to be quite wealthy back in the 1960s when we owned a brewery and 35 pubs. The whole lot must have been sold for a tidy sum when Sheffield Brewery bought it back in 1967.”

  “He should have sold it earlier,” said John. “It was one of Miles’s biggest regrets that he didn’t sell it in 1961 when he had the opportunity. The brewery was haemorrhaging money in its final years. In the end he sold it for a knock­down price following pressure from the bank, which was threatening to call in the receivers. Your uncle was a proud man and very few people know the full story.”

  “Really?” said Nigel whilst remembering that Alf Parkes had told them a very similar story half an hour earlier. Then he said, “Still, I guess his house must be worth quite a bit?”

  “There’s one problem with that,” added John. “Your uncle didn’t own his house. He’d been living there as a tenant since 1967. The house is owned by Sizzling Steak Shacks and they’ve been waiting to get their hands on it for years. It seems they want to knock it down in order to build a Barmy Barn, which I’m told is a children’s indoor play area. I believe they also intend to use the garden for extra car parking. They already have planning consent and want to start demolition in a couple of weeks’ time. I’m afraid you will need to clear out your uncle’s stuff by then.”

  Nigel and Emma remained quiet. They were both too shocked by the news they had just heard to say anything.

  Chapter 2

  Once they had recovered from the shock of discovering that the value of their uncle’s estate was virtually zero, Nigel and Emma had to decide what to do. In the end it was Nigel and Molly who volunteered to clear out Miles’s house. Emma and Ralph couldn’t do it as they lived three hours away and both of them had work commitments. So it was either going to be Nigel and Molly who took on the task, or they would have to pay a house clearance company to do it.

  There were other reasons why they had volunteered. Since the value of their uncle’s estate was almost nothing it meant that they, along with Emma and Ralph, would have to pay if they used a house clearance company. Also they felt they owed it to their uncle to go through his things carefully to see if there were any family mementos worth keeping. Finally, there was the fact that they only lived a short drive away and being retired, had the time to do the job.

  So, the following Monday the two of them got up early, put on old clothes and drove to Chesterfield.

  “You know I worked out that it’s been fourteen years since I last visited this house,” said Nigel as they approached the suburb where their uncle had lived. “And on that occa­sion it was only for half an hour. When I was young I used to visit every week. We’d come with Mum and Dad every Sunday and listen to the radio whilst the grownups all had a sherry. It was one of those old radios with valves in it. The last time I came here he’d still got it, although I think it had stopped working years ago. At 12.30 on the dot we’d all troop next door to the George Stephenson for Sunday lunch. I guess it was one of the perks of owning a brewery and a string of pubs.”

  Soon afterwards they arrived at their uncle’s house. Nigel had driven past it the previous week when the two of them had been to the George Stephenson. But on that occasion he hadn’t noticed what a poor state it was in, with peel­ing paintwork and a hedge that looked as if it hadn’t been trimmed in years.

  “The garden’s in a right old state,” said Nigel. “Uncle Miles used to love his garden, but it looks as if he neglected it in recent years, probably because he suffered from arthri­tis. I always wondered why he didn’t pay somebody to look after it for him. I guess we know the reason now. He almost certainly couldn’t afford to.”

  “Well there’s no point in worrying about it now,” said Molly. “It will be covered in tarmac and marked out into parking bays in a few weeks’ time.”

  John had given Nigel the front door key at the funeral so he and Molly could let themselves in.

  “It’s just as I remember it,” announced Nigel as the two of them wandered into the living room. “In fact I don’t think it has changed at all in the sixty odd years I’ve been coming here.”

  “By the looks of it your uncle didn’t throw anything away for sixty years eith
er,” added Molly who was casting an eye around the room.

  Every space seemed to be taken up with items that had ceased to be of use years ago. These included an old record player, the radio, which Nigel had referred to a few minutes earlier, and an old black and white TV. Even if it was still in working order it couldn’t be used any more. It was an old 405 lines model and the service had been discontinued in 1985. In recent years it had been used as a stand for the modern flat screen TV that stood on top of it.

  “This job is going to be bigger than we thought,” Molly added.

  She pointed at the sideboard before continuing, “And that’s just based on what I can see. God knows what’s stored in all those drawers and we’ve got another seven rooms plus the attic, shed and garage to tackle.”

  With that she suggested that they start after having a cup of tea. Molly had brought tea and milk from home and so she went to find the kettle.

  “Good grief, has nobody been in this house since your uncle died?” she shouted from the kitchen. “Only I’ve just looked in the fridge and wished I hadn’t.”

  “No, I should have warned you that nobody has been here since his body was discovered,” Nigel shouted back. “I guess that clearing out the fridge isn’t top of anybody’s priority list when you’ve just discovered a corpse.”

  Nigel’s uncle had died of a heart attack just before Christmas. He’d collapsed on the kitchen floor after open­ing a can of beans.

  On Boxing Day, John from next door had returned after spending Christmas at his daughter’s and had noticed that the curtains were still drawn. He’d immediately raised the alarm by contacting the police who’d broken in and discov­ered their uncle’s body.

  They had replaced the door lock in order to make the house secure. But nobody had cleared up the mess and three weeks later the open can of beans was still exactly where Miles had put it on the kitchen worktop. The only differ­ence was that in the intervening weeks, it had grown a coat of green mould. Not only that but the fridge was now full of rotten food and rancid milk. It was enough to make even people with the strongest of stomachs retch.

  “I think the first job we should do is to clear out the kitchen,” said Molly before adding that tea would have to wait a little longer.

  Nigel nodded in agreement, even though he was not looking forward to this job at all. Molly had brought sev­eral black bin liners and numerous cardboard boxes with her and the two of them started clearing out the fridge. It was not a pleasant task, but pretty soon the worst of it was behind them and after Molly had cleaned the inside with a disinfectant spray they were able to put their own milk into it.

  “Before we continue I’m going to have a quick look upstairs,” Nigel announced and promptly headed for the three upstairs bedrooms.

  The largest of these was obviously the one that his uncle had been using since it was the only one that contained a made up bed. It was quite a large room with a couple of chests of drawers, a row of built-in wardrobes and a bedside cabinet with an old fashioned wind-up alarm clock on it. The electric fire in the corner looked as if it had come from the ark and probably should have been condemned as a fire hazard years ago.

  A few minutes later Nigel was back downstairs in the kitchen carrying a moth-eaten teddy bear with him.

  “Hey look what I’ve found,” he said. “This is Edward, Uncle Miles’s old teddy. I found him in his bedside cabinet. This brings back memories; I remember him telling me that he was given it as a boy and then he lost him for fifty years. It’s amazing when you think about it. Where did he go? How did he find him again? I guess we’ll never know now.”

  “He looks well loved,” replied Molly. “He’s definitely been through the wars. Just imagine what stories he could tell us if only he could talk?”

  *******

  “It’s your turn Miles,” said Mother as the whole family sat in front of the fire on Christmas Day.

  It had been the words I’d been waiting to hear for over two hours and I immediately squeezed the gift that was neatly wrapped in festive paper.

  “It’s soft,” I said. “Is it a new jumper?”

  “’Of course it’s not,” said my brother Rupert whilst looking at the ceiling in disbelief. “It’s the wrong shape for a start. Anyway you didn’t put a jumper on your list for Father Christmas did you? Go on, open it.”

  The year was 1933. It was a family tradition to open our presents one by one after checking that Father Christmas hadn’t forgotten to visit the Goodyear family the previous night. I woke up at 6.30 in the morning but had to wait until after 8.30 before the other members of my family had finally risen from their beds. It was only then that we could unwrap all the presents that were under the Christmas tree.

  There was my mother Emily and my father Thomas. Father was also known as ‘The Major’ by many of his friends and all the staff at the brewery, even though he had left the army in 1919. My parents had met during the Great War after Father was wounded as he led the charge into no-man’s land during the Battle of Amiens in 1918. He was sent to Striding Hall just outside Chesterfield, which had been requisitioned as a hospital for officers. It was there that he met my mother who was the daughter of a local vicar. He was 25 and she was a volunteer nurse and only seven­teen years old at the time. He’d fallen for her hook, line and sinker, although it was another four years before she finally agreed to marry him.

  After the army, Father had gone to work in the family brewery, firstly in charge of the tied pubs, then as Managing Director taking over from his father who’d moved to the role of Chairman. It was a role in which he could enjoy his retirement whilst at the same time keeping a watchful eye on the family business. Rupert was born in 1924 and I followed three years later. Finally our sister Rebecca was born in 1930.

  All three of us were born in September, which later on gave rise to the joke between my brother, my sister and I that Mother and Father only had sex once a year on Christmas Day. If that was the case then Father was due to get his present that very evening and it wasn’t the type that came gift-wrapped.

  We lived in a fine Georgian house close to the centre of town within easy walking distance of the brewery and opposite the Market Place Station. We were also very close to the Star Inn, which was not one of our pubs, much to Father’s consternation. Instead, it belonged to our great rivals Brimington Brewery. We could clearly see their advertising slogan from our upstairs front windows. It said ‘Drink Brimington Bitter; a beer fit for heroes’.

  The slogan had been devised during the Great War and Father said they had only put it there to wind him up. He’d been awarded the Distinguished Service Order for lead­ing the charge at Amiens, which was why he believed the sign had been put up in full view of his bedroom window. Brimington wanted to say that he drank their beer.

  “Beer not fit to wash your socks in, is what it should say,” was one of the kinder comments he used to make about it.

  The house had five bedrooms plus another one in the attic, which was home to Evans, our maid.

  Every Christmas, Father would decorate the house so that it resembled a scene from a Dickens novel. We had a huge Christmas tree in the front room and crêpe paper streamers hung between the corners of the ceiling, meeting in the middle where they were tied to the chandelier. We had candles on the mantelpiece and a holly wreath on the front door. In addition there was always mistletoe hang­ing from the light fitting in the hallway. People entering the house wouldn’t even notice it until they discovered my mother or father giving them a sloppy wet kiss underneath it.

  Christmas was one of the best times in the Goodyear household. We’d have special things to eat, things we never saw at any other time of the year, like dates, mince pies and sugared almonds. We’d have crackers with bad jokes in them that always made us laugh even though they were pathetic. Best of all though were the presents. I really enjoyed the presents and couldn’t wait to discover what Father Christmas had brought me that year.

  I tore the paper from
my gift and to my delight, I discov­ered that my main present was a teddy bear that growled when I tilted it.

  “You must have been a very good boy this year for Father Christmas to bring you such a wonderful teddy,” said Mother. “What are you going to call him?”

  “Edward,” I replied. “I will call him Edward.”

  My two other presents were the Pip, Squeak and Wilfred Annual for 1934 and a bag of marbles. My sister got a doll and a cradle to put it in. However, it was my brother who got the best present of all, a Hornby clockwork train set, com­plete with a model station and signals that really worked. I was over the moon because Rupert allowed me to be the signalman whilst he played the part of the engine driver.

  It kept the two of us occupied all morning whilst our sister played with her new doll. Meanwhile Mother was busy cook­ing Christmas lunch. This was a job Evans usually did. But she had gone to stay with her parents in Derby for Christmas. So Mother had taken up the mantle instead, frantically chop­ping vegetables and stuffing the bird as Father smoked his pipe and listened to the BBC on the radio.

  Then there was a knock on the door, which told us that my grandparents had arrived. Mother and Father had invited them to join us for Christmas dinner and they arrived carrying yet more presents for us to open.

  The meal itself was a veritable feast, with a massive goose that Father had bought from Kirk’s butchers. We also had pigs in blankets, stuffing and bread sauce, as well as parsnips, carrots and Brussels sprouts. It was followed by Christmas pudding soaked in brandy, which Father set fire to after he had closed the curtains and switched off all the lights. It was the only part of the meal that Mother allowed him to help her with, although she soon began to regret her decision when Father realised that he’d used too much brandy. This caused the flames to burn far fiercer than he had anticipated, setting fire to one of the lower hanging streamers as a result.

  Rupert, Rebecca and I all thought that it was highly amusing as we watched our father frantically trying to blow the flames out. Fortunately there was no damage done and a few moments later we were all tucking into the pudding, which was accompanied by a thick yellow custard.