HEART OF THE COUNTRY
SHORT STORY COLLECTION
BY NICK ARMBRISTER
GRIM TOWN OF NO HOPE
“Come on you little beggars! Move the coal. I’m not paying you for nothing. Now move!” shouted the old man, with real anger in his voice. He was thirty years old but looked twice that.
A group of scallywags, barely into their teens, glared at the old man with defiant resentful eyes. None of them dared answer back or to call the man a name. He would beat them to an inch of their petty puny worthless working class lives. Grumbling amongst themselves, with aching muscles, they moved the coal sacks.
“I’ll beat you with my bare hands if you drop a single piece of coal! Get a move on!” screamed the man, still angry. Was he always like that?
From lower down the sloping cobbled street, a group of people heard the shouts. They looked up the road and saw the lads, along with their master. He was a ruthless bastard. He didn’t care what the spectators or his lads thought of him.
The eight lads all had down cast eyes; they hated their boss and their job of moving coal. Yet they were aware that six years on their ages would have meant war time service. The prospect of fighting the Nazis or Japs was worse than the job they did. This labouring job made them strong, gave them defiance and pain tolerance from the hard work and beatings. A wartime death held no glory for them. They just got on with it.
He, their master or “The Bastard” as they called him behind his back, was unfit for war duty. An early TB infection from the 1920s nearly killed him. He was still a strong man and a tough guy. No one had ever broken him and he took whatever life threw at him, on the nose. He was a real man. His working class clothes were the uniform of his generation – cloth cap, worn out white shirt, black jacket and trousers and hob nailed boots. His lads were smaller mirror images of him, an unbroken path from generation to generation. It was men like these that allowed us to win the war.
Air raid alerts had once been a problem. Nazi bombers had appeared regularly in the day. This meant leaving the valuable coal where you stood and legging it for cover; be it a shelter or a ditch. Quite a lot of coal went missing by the time they returned, when the all clear sounded. Now the war was over, the lads spent twelve hours a day moving coal sacks from open ground on Glodwick Lows to the depot. All by hand. It made them tough, bitter, angry, resentful and like their master. Real men. As hard as old Victorian terrace houses and cobbled streets. As hard as England.
Many of the lads had lost family members in the war. Some of tem were the sole bread winners, busting their guts for a measly six pence a day, on the coal run. Digging it up, filling the sacks, carrying it to the depot. Day in and day out. When they were older, they would each be a hard drinker just like Him, their boss. “The Bastard.” Till then, they silently cursed and got on with their work.
Till one day, an official government photographer took their picture. They weren’t happy! “The Bastard” didn’t care one way or another and the lads got a two minute rest break. He captured them for posterity in an old acetate photograph. Then the shouts came again, “Come on you little bastards! Move the coal. I’m not paying you to stand there!”
“Come on you little beggars! Move the coal. I’m not paying you for nothing. Now move!” shouted the old man, with real anger in his voice. He was thirty years old but looked twice that.
A group of scallywags, barely into their teens, glared at the old man with defiant resentful eyes. None of them dared answer back or to call the man a name. He would beat them to an inch of their petty puny worthless working class lives. Grumbling amongst themselves, with aching muscles, they moved the coal sacks.
“I’ll beat you with my bare hands if you drop a single piece of coal! Get a move on!” screamed the man, still angry. Was he always like that?
From lower down the sloping cobbled street, a group of people heard the shouts. They looked up the road and saw the lads, along with their master. He was a ruthless bastard. He didn’t care what the spectators or his lads thought of him.
The eight lads all had down cast eyes; they hated their boss and their job of moving coal. Yet they were aware that six years on their ages would have meant war time service. The prospect of fighting the Nazis or Japs was worse than the job they did. This labouring job made them strong, gave them defiance and pain tolerance from the hard work and beatings. A wartime death held no glory for them. They just got on with it.
He, their master or “The Bastard” as they called him behind his back, was unfit for war duty. An early TB infection from the 1920s nearly killed him. He was still a strong man and a tough guy. No one had ever broken him and he took whatever life threw at him, on the nose. He was a real man. His working class clothes were the uniform of his generation – cloth cap, worn out white shirt, black jacket and trousers and hob nailed boots. His lads were smaller mirror images of him, an unbroken path from generation to generation. It was men like these that allowed us to win the war.
Air raid alerts had once been a problem. Nazi bombers had appeared regularly in the day. This meant leaving the valuable coal where you stood and legging it for cover; be it a shelter or a ditch. Quite a lot of coal went missing by the time they returned, when the all clear sounded. Now the war was over, the lads spent twelve hours a day moving coal sacks from open ground on Glodwick Lows to the depot. All by hand. It made them tough, bitter, angry, resentful and like their master. Real men. As hard as old Victorian terrace houses and cobbled streets. As hard as England.
Many of the lads had lost family members in the war. Some of tem were the sole bread winners, busting their guts for a measly six pence a day, on the coal run. Digging it up, filling the sacks, carrying it to the depot. Day in and day out. When they were older, they would each be a hard drinker just like Him, their boss. “The Bastard.” Till then, they silently cursed and got on with their work.
Till one day, an official government photographer took their picture. They weren’t happy! “The Bastard” didn’t care one way or another and the lads got a two minute rest break. He captured them for posterity in an old acetate photograph. Then the shouts came again, “Come on you little bastards! Move the coal. I’m not paying you to stand there!”
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