If Only They Could Talk Page 4

  Despite the fact that many of us knew what his nickname was, none of us felt brave enough to put our hands up. None of us that was except for a small kid with glasses who sat in the front row of the class. He obviously didn’t realise that he was being led into a trap and instead thought that it was some kind of general knowledge test. He raised his hand and said, “Sir, I know what it is.”

  The rest of us felt relieved and sat back waiting for the entertainment to begin.

  “And may I ask how you know?” asked Mr Duggins.

  “I overheard some transitus boys talking about it, sir,” said the boy.

  Transitus was the name given to boys in the fifth year. Boys in the prep school were known as first formers. Boys in the first year at senior school were called second formers and so on until you reached the fifth year, which was called transitus. It was a sort of halfway house between the lower school and the sixth form.

  “So go ahead boy, we are all waiting, pray enlighten us,” Mr Duggins went on.

  “It’s Dildo sir, Dildo Duggins,” replied the boy.

  I really felt for him and at that point every part of me wanted to scream ‘No,’ but like everybody else I just sup­pressed a smirk and waited for the inevitable. It was quite obvious that he didn’t know what a dildo was. In fact, I hadn’t known what one was either until Rupert explained it to me whilst telling me about the masters’ nicknames.

  “It’s what ladies use to pleasure themselves with,” he’d informed me.

  “What? Like bath salts?” I’d replied. “Only Mother says that there’s no greater pleasure in life than relaxing in a warm bath full of bath salts.”

  “No, it’s nothing like bath salts,” he’d said before explain­ing in great detail what a dildo was.

  Unfortunately for the little lad who’d put his hand up, he didn’t have the benefit of an older brother to tell him things like that. He probably thought that Mr Duggins’s nickname was just a play on the name Bilbo Baggins from The Hobbit. Which, of course, it was, albeit a rather rude version of Tolkien’s famous character.

  Mr Duggins walked over to the boy and grabbed him by the ear.

  “And that’s the last time you will ever call me that,” he said whilst twisting his ear, as if he was uncorking a bottle of wine. The boy yelped in pain and got out of his chair due to the force of Mr Duggins’s twisting action.

  “What’s your name boy?” asked Mr Duggins.

  “Stanley, I mean Worthington sir,” said the terrified boy.

  “Well, Worthington,” said Mr Duggins. “You will write out fifty times, ‘I must always show respect to the masters in the school and must always refer to them as sir.’ Do I make myself clear?”

  “Yes sir,” replied Worthington.

  “And when you have finished that you can then write out fifty times, ‘I must not listen in on other people’s con­versations,’” Mr Duggins went on. “Do you understand me boy?”

  “Yes sir,” said Worthington who couldn’t stop trembling.

  “Right,” said Mr Duggins. “Let’s get on with the register.”

  Mr Duggins opened the large book that was on his desk in front of him and started to read.

  “Arnold,” said Mr Duggins.

  “Sir,” came the reply.

  “Ashcroft.”

  “Sir.”

  “Baker.”

  “Sir.”

  “Bateman.”

  “Sir.”

  “Blubberwick, sorry Blatherwick.”

  Blatherwick was a large fat boy and Mr Duggins’s delib­erate error resulted in the whole class erupting in laughter. Now there were two boys in my class who had acquired nicknames, ‘Sprout’ and ‘Blubber’.

  “Sir,” mumbled Blatherwick.

  Mr Duggins continued,

  “Butcher.”

  “Sir.”

  “Chamberlain.”

  Before Chamberlain even had the chance to reply Mr Duggins was onto him in a flash.

  “Tell me Chamberlain, are you related to the Prime Minister?”

  “No sir,” replied Chamberlain.

  “I didn’t think so,” said Mr Duggins. “You’re far more likely to be related to a chamber pot than to the Mr Chamberlain who lives in Number 10 Downing Street.”

  Once again this caused howls of laughter from the boys, much to the embarrassment of Chamberlain who, from that moment on, was always referred to as ‘Piss Pot’.

  Mr Duggins read on, “Chippendale.”

  “Sir.”

  “Clarke.”

  “Sir.”

  “Clarke, I presume that everybody calls you Nobby,” said Mr Duggins. “Am I correct?”

  “No sir,” Clarke replied.

  “But that can’t be right,” Mr Duggins continued. “Every Clarke since time immemorial has been called Nobby, even the girls. You must be called Nobby.”

  “No sir, I don’t have a nickname,” he replied.

  “Everybody has a nickname boy,” stated Mr Duggins. “And if it’s not Nobby, then I can only assume that it must be Fanny.”

  Which was why thousands of Clarkes all over the world may have had the nickname Nobby, but the one in our class was always called Fanny.

  Mr Duggins then resumed the roll call.

  “Davis.”

  “Sir.”

  “Duncan.”

  “Sir.”

  “Friedrich.”

  “Sir.”

  Mr Duggins paused and then said, “Friedrich, what kind of a name is that boy?”

  “It’s my family name sir,” Friedrich replied.

  “And are all your family fifth columnists?”

  “No sir, we are all loyal British subjects sir.”

  “So how come you’ve got the name Friedrich then?” Mr Duggins went on. “Where were you born lad?”

  “In Chesterfield sir,” replied Friedrich.

  “And where was your father born?” added Mr Duggins, unwilling to let the subject drop.

  “He was born in Chesterfield as well sir.”

  “And your grandfather?” said Mr Duggins who now resembled a dog with a bone.

  “He was born in Grindelwald, sir.”

  “I thought so,” said Mr Duggins. “You’re a bloody Hun, a Bosch, a Kraut, a Jerry, you’re a pint-sized Nazi.”

  Friedrich was not going to take this insult lying down and replied, “Grindelwald isn’t in Germany, sir. It’s in Switzerland. My grandfather repairs watches for a living in our family jewellery shop, sir. He’s not a storm trooper.”

  Mr Duggins merely brought Lord Kitchener down with a whack on his desk in the face of such insolence and said, “It may not be in Germany right now, but given that Mr Hitler has already annexed Austria, I wouldn’t bet against it being part of the Third Reich by the end of the year. In which case I would suggest that you persuade your father and grandfather to change your family name from Friedrich to Frederick.”

  Friedrich may have got the message across that his family originally came from Switzerland, but that didn’t stop him from subsequently being known as Herman, as in Herman the German.

  By this stage I was becoming increasingly nervous, wor­ried that I too would be singled out by Mr Duggins. I didn’t have long to wait, as he was only two names away from me in the register.

  Mr Duggins continued,

  “Frith.”

  “Sir.”

  “Gleason.”

  “Sir.”

  “Goodyear.“

  “Sir,” I replied in as strong a voice as I could muster.

  There was a horrible pause.

  “Oh no,” I thought to myself. For a moment I thought I’d got away with it.

  “Goodyear,” repeated Mr Duggins. “Doesn’t your family make that crap beer?”

  I wasn’t going to meekly roll over and let Mr Duggins insult my family’s business, but at the same time I didn’t want to antagonise him. After his war of words with Herman I feared that I might feel the backlash.

  Our advertising slogan
at the time was ‘Goodyear’s excel­lent beers’ so I merely said “Goodyear’s excellent beers sir.”

  “Goodyear’s crap beers more like,” he repeated. “Because that’s where you end up after drinking it, in the crapper. I got a dickey tummy after a couple of pints of Goodyear’s Pride in the Fox and Hounds last Friday. Serves me right though, I knew I should have gone to the Red Lion for a pint of Brimington Bitter.”

  And that was it. He continued with the register and I felt as if I had won a moral victory. It was short-lived however, as all my classmates started calling me Crapper.

  Mind you, those of us who’d been given nicknames con­sidered them to be a badge of honour and Sprout, Herman and I became good friends.

  Later that day I told Rupert what Mr Duggins had said. He merely laughed and eventually started calling me Crapper as well. Personally I’d have expected more sup­port from my brother, especially since he was a Goodyear himself. Later on I discovered that he’d been given the nickname ‘Blimp’ after the barrage balloon made by the Goodyear rubber company. Of course that had absolutely no connection with our family firm. I thought he’d got off lightly when you compared it with my nickname.

  Three years later Mr Duggins was killed at El Alamein. He’d lied about his age in order to join the Desert Rats. Not in the normal way of course, Mr Duggins had said he was younger than he really was.

  Even though he may have gone, his nicknames lived on long after his death at the hands of the bloody Hun.

  Chapter 4

  “How are you getting on up there?”

  “Fine,” Nigel shouted back. “There are lots of old clothes and I’ve earmarked most of them for the charity shop. Mind you I feel like an intruder, what with having to go through the drawers containing his underpants, vests and socks.”

  “Unfortunately it is one of those jobs that has to be done though,” replied Molly, before adding, “Do you want to come down for lunch as I’ve made you a sandwich?”

  A few seconds later she heard the sound of Nigel’s foot­steps coming down the stairs.

  “What do you think of this?” he said holding up the school blazer. “It’s too old to take to the charity shop and besides which the Grammar School closed down years ago. Do you think the auction house would be interested in it?”

  “It must be eighty years old at least,” Molly replied. “I’d take it if I were you. After all the worst they can do is to refuse it and sometimes I’m absolutely astounded by what sells for good money on Flog It.”

  Since his retirement Nigel had joined Molly in watching quite a lot of daytime TV with Flog It being one of their favourite programmes.

  “Anyway,” she continued. “Here’s your sandwich and I’ve also made you another cup of tea.”

  Nigel noticed that the kitchen was looking far brighter than it did a few hours earlier. Molly had certainly done a thorough job with her cloth and anti-bacterial spray.

  Of course it was only pride that had made her do it. After all, the house was going to be demolished in a few days’ time, so it didn’t really matter if it was tidy or not.

  However, Molly was the type of person who would tell her husband to put on a clean pair of underpants just in case he was involved in a car accident. It wouldn’t save his life, but at least the staff at the hospital would know that he came from a good home. Similarly, when they came to demolish Uncle Miles’s house the demolition crew would know that he came from a good family.

  “Look what I’ve found,” she said holding out a small album that looked as if it were either an autograph book or a small stamp album.

  Nigel opened it only to discover that it wasn’t either. What it actually contained was a complete set of mint Goodyear’s bottled beer labels, probably dating from the 1940s.

  “Good grief,” said Nigel. “Where did you discover this?”

  “It was just lying in one of the kitchen drawers beneath a load of tea towels.”

  “I never realised that we produced so many different beers,” added Nigel as he thumbed through the album. “And I’d totally forgotten that we used to bottle soft drinks as well.”

  In total, the album contained 22 different labels, from Goodyear’s Pride and Bottoms Up Bitter through to Goodyear’s Lemonade and Chesterfield Cream Soda. It was a window on the past, a glimpse of a world that had long since disappeared. A world in which every town in England had their local favourites, favourites that nowadays have been replaced by major national and international brands.

  “This might be the one thing I keep,” Nigel continued.

  “I’d think long and hard about that,” replied Molly. “What would you do with it other than transfer it from a drawer in Uncle Miles’s house to a drawer in ours? Don’t you think you’d be better off taking something more prac­tical? Something that we can use every day?”

  “I suppose you’re right,” he replied. “Although I would like an item that will remind me both of my uncle and of my family’s heritage.”

  “Shall we put it with the items that we are taking to the auction?” asked Molly.

  Nigel thought about it for a second and then he finally replied with a nod.

  *******

  The war years were not great times for the brewery. For a start many of the men who formed the bedrock of our consumers joined the forces and moved away, either to fight abroad or to military bases elsewhere in the UK. Consequently, demand for our beers fell substantially.

  In addition, many members of our workforce were drafted into the army leaving us short of men. Production and warehousing were particularly badly affected, making it extremely difficult for us to produce and distribute our beers.

  If this wasn’t bad enough, there was also a shortage of malt and hops, as agricultural land was needed for the pro­duction of food rather than beer. This improved a little after the government realised that beer was good for morale. Or to be strictly accurate, they realised that a shortage of beer was bad for morale.

  However, we still ran out of beer on many occasions, which literally caused riots, especially in some of the pit vil­lages of North Derbyshire. On one occasion, a pub that had been out of beer for three days finally got a delivery from us. Of course this didn’t mean that the pub could start selling the beer straight away, as it still had to undergo its second­ary fermentation in the cellar. But try telling that to the angry mob that gathered outside as news got around that the pub now had a full cellar.

  They didn’t understand about cask conditioning. All they wanted was a pint or twelve and in their anger they set fire to the cellar flaps. The situation was starting to get out of hand until the police arrived to restore order.

  Personally the hardship caused by war only affected me in two ways. Firstly we had to let Evans go. She left us and went to work in one of the town’s factories that made ban­dages for the army.

  As a result, my brother, sister and I were all given tasks around the house and Mother took on cooking duties. Our main task was doing the washing up after the evening meal. Rupert would wash the dishes, I would dry them and Rebecca would put them away. I have to admit that I was quite a clumsy boy and after my first attempt our kitchen resembled a Greek restaurant, because the floor was covered in broken crockery.

  Mother was very good about it, telling me not to worry as she could always go to Swallows department store in Packer’s Row and buy some new plates. Father was less understand­ing though and threatened to make me clean the toilets and replace all the coal in the coalscuttles instead. Our house had seven fireplaces and the cellar was dark and full of cob­webs. So as you can imagine, this was not a job I relished and consequently I made sure I was more careful in future. Next time I dried the dishes, I didn’t drop a single plate, which was precisely what my father had hoped to achieve by his threat.

  The other way in which the war affected me was that I was roped in to help in the brewery as soon as I turned thirteen. Not permanently of course, just helping out when I wasn’t at school.


  Rupert was already working there. He’d started during the summer holidays following his fourteenth birthday and the original plan was for me to do the same. But the labour shortage caused by the war forced my father to bring this plan forward and as a result I started in September of 1940.

  At the time, the Grammar School was the only school in Chesterfield that had half days on Wednesdays and Saturdays, rather than a full day on Wednesday and a day off on Saturday. Most of the boys in the school were like Sprout and Herman, sons of shopkeepers. Consequently, the school hours mirrored the opening hours of Chesterfield shops, which were closed on Wednesday afternoons.

  As a result, I worked in the brewery on my afternoons off during term time and then Monday to Friday during the holidays.

  On my first day I arrived from my morning classes and went straight to my father’s office. It was very impressive with its mahogany desk, its leather chairs and numerous items on the walls, most of them advertising Goodyear’s beers.

  Behind my father’s desk was a large ornate mirror etched with the words ‘Goodyear’s fine Chesterfield Beers’. On another wall were several framed certificates won by the company at various brewing exhibitions dating all the way back to 1883. Some of them were from foreign exhibitions held in places such as Berlin and Strasbourg. There was even one that had been awarded in Cape Town in 1892.

  Finally there were numerous signs, many of which had been painted by the company signwriter. Some of them were pub signs with names such as Valiant Soldier and Furness Inn. Others were advertising signs, some on wood and others in enamel saying things like Goodyear’s Excellent Beers, or Goodyear’s Pride – Makes you proud to come from Chesterfield.

  Father was busy so he merely handed me over to Mr North, the bottling foreman, and told him to sort out a pair of overalls for me. He also gave him instructions that he was to treat me in exactly the same way that he would treat any other new employee.

  “He’s not to be given any special treatment just because he’s the boss’s son,” Father told him as he marched me towards the men’s locker room.