A Story from a Yard

[Mick Bonwick]

Brenda had seen that spare room of Uncle Bert’s. She remembered that when she was small she had gone in there looking for some wool Aunt Ethel had asked her to fetch, not realising which door she was supposed to have gone through. The smell was a bit funny and there was dust on everything. There were books and magazines and boxes and string and paper, bags and bottles and things poking out from under other things all over the room. She couldn’t remember seeing the far wall so there was no knowing how small or large the room was. Mum’s idea of sleeping in this room was, to Brenda’s mind, not one of her best. She quite fancied working in the pub; after all she was 18 now, wasn’t she? Still, if it was a choice between sleeping in that room or walking home in the dark, even in the summer, she supposed it would have to do. Uncle Bert might have to have some help cleaning it out, though.

[Mick Bonwick]

As a pub landlord, Eric had seen quite a lot of life. He couldn’t think of many of the things that he had seen that Brenda ought to be seeing, not at her age. One of them was Bert’s spare room! Some of those magazines were not to be seen by young people of an impressionable age or nervous disposition. The last time he had visited Bert, to help unload the wet tarpaulin from Ernie’s truck, the old chap had asked him if he could spare a moment to explain something to him that he had seen in a foreign magazine. Thinking it would be something to do with mechanical wizardry (a passion of Eric’s) he readily agreed, and now blushed every time he remembered the incident. Magazines like that could only come from the continent, he was sure, so how on earth did Bert get hold of so many? There was a pile of them in that room! The only pile not covered in dust.

[Mick Bonwick]

There could only be one solution to the Bert/Brenda/Room problem, thought Eric. That front room upstairs could easily be sorted out for Brenda to use. It needed some curtains so passing people couldn’t peer in, and a rug to keep the cold floor away from the toes, and it would be usable. And the mattress could be turned over to hide some of the lumps and maybe stop the springs squeaking. He’d go up after closing time and check it for draughts, though, just to be certain. The wind and rain really did beat at that window during the winter, but that was a few months away yet and Brenda only needed somewhere temporary. Or so Bert had said. Brenda was due to come and have a chat tomorrow about the work to be done, so he’d be able to decide what to do then. Time to check the cellar now, that could all wait.

[Mick Bonwick]

Ernie drove into the pub driveway and managed to stop the old truck without sliding across the gravel into the fence, like he had done last week. Not being sure whether it was the brakes or the gravel that were at fault, he was careful to make sure it didn’t happen again. Dents in the truck were OK, but holes in the fence tended to irritate the railway folks. His passenger said her thanks and tottered to the pub door. Ernie couldn’t understand why women had to wear such impractical shoes. How on earth would this girl get up and down a ladder with those high heels on? She hadn’t looked comfortable standing at the bus stop, and when he’d stopped and told her there weren’t any buses yet, it seemed to him that she was about to burst into tears. He’d asked where she was going and when she told him about hoping to work in the pub in the village along the main road, he’d offered her a lift, as long as she didn’t mind the mess around her feet. It was only chocolate wrappers and old cigarette packets, but it was quite a deep pile.

 

[Mick Bonwick]

The knocking at the door turned out to be a rather pretty young Brenda. Eric thought it was going to be Ernie, having just seen his old truck turning in from the road. It was immediately apparent that Brenda had arrived in Ernie’s truck and Eric wondered how she could have got into the front seat with all that rubbish on the floor. Still, here she was and here he was, so he invited her into the kitchen and they sat and had a cup of tea, talking about what the work would entail and how she thought she would go about it. Then she had asked about the hours and expressed concern about getting home after closing time. Eric was quick to make the offer of the front room and Brenda was just as quick to accept, and he wondered why she had made no mention of Bert’s spare room. Not for him to worry about that, though, and it looked as if he now had a barmaid who would attract a few more customers once word got around. And he’d make sure it did!

[Mick Bonwick]

Percy recalled that it was only a week ago that he had first set eyes on Brenda, Well, Brenda’s ankles, anyway. Actually, it was her knees, but he wasn’t sure he should be thinking along those lines, not with her only being 18. Still, he wasn’t much older than that himself, so maybe it was alright. When he’d knocked on the pub door there had been no answer, and he’d been tempted to just drive off to his next delivery and come back tomorrow, but the landlord had complained last week that he’d been late with his delivery. Maybe it was a better idea to knock again, just in case he hadn’t been heard. So he did. Still no answer. He then thought he should go in and leave the bread inside the hallway, and call out to see if there was anybody around, and that was what he did but there was no response. But he did hear sounds coming from down the hall, so he went to the bar room door and looked in, to be met with the sight of a pair of legs up a ladder.

[Mick Bonwick]

Eric finally made it to the top of the cellar steps. He was sure the cellar got deeper every day, it certainly got harder and harder to climb up the steep steps as time went by. Still, it could become a barmaid’s duty, couldn’t it? The cause of his hurried or, rather, laboured exit from the cellar was the knocking on the door. He hadn’t realised what the time was and, looking at his watch, discovered that the bread delivery was due. He thought to himself that it must have been Percy knocking and there he was peering round the bar room door, tray of bread in his arms. He heard a squeal from the bar and remembered that Brenda was putting up the new ornaments above the piano, so she would probably be showing a bit of leg. Lucky Percy, poor Brenda. What a way to start a new job.

[Oldddudders]

Brenda's legs and the cellar hatch have scope for some interesting episodes to follow, I'm sure. That said, the demise of steam pretty much preceded the min-skirt era, so her honour may not be at too much risk. 

 

A colleague had worked part-time in a pub, a couple of decades later. Tall, and with very substantial legs, her distaste for underwear in warm weather must have given the landlord something to think about on occasions....

[Mick Bonwick]

I like the idea of substantial legs.

 

Rest assured that Brenda has not yet heard of mini-skirts and, during the timeframe of this account, neither had I.

[Mick Bonwick]

Arthur had just told Jack about the pile of logs behind the buffer stop. Jack had nearly thrown his mug of tea across the yard. Jack in a bad mood was not a pretty sight. Actually, Jack in any sort of mood was not a pretty sight! Arthur knew the news would not be taken very well, because it would mean something was going to have to be done. And he knew who was going to have to do most, if not all, of it. He longed for the day when a new boy arrived, because then he would be able to pass on orders the way Jack always seemed to. Anyway, there was more work than one person could do in the hours they had been given to clear that pile, so there was no choice but to finish the tea quickly and make a start. Jack wondered where the cleared logs could be put; there wasn’t much room in that corner of the yard. Arthur suggested putting them under the tree by the gate, but Jack pointed out how far each one would have to be carried, so that idea was relegated to the ‘useless’ pile.

[Mick Bonwick]

Brenda was cold. There was a draught coming in through the gap around the window frame, and even the newspaper Eric had used to try and block it up wasn’t really helping much. If it was this cold now, what was it going to be like when winter came? It was apparently not possible to have a fire in the fireplace because this was now a smokeless zone and that meant they couldn’t burn coal. How silly was that? What about the trains? They made terrible clouds of smoke when they were leaving a station. Back at home she was always having to run outside and get the washing in when a train was due to leave. Mum had often moaned at Dad about not moving away from the railway, but he was adamant that he needed to be near his work. A tear came to her eye, as it always did when she remembered her Dad. It was she who had opened the door when the railway policeman had come to tell them the sad news. Dad had been running alongside a wagon that had been shunted into the top siding at the village station at the end of the line, when he tripped over his shunting pole and fell under the wheel.

[Stubby47]

Oh, this has gone very dark.

 

And I'm still trying to work out where 'the yard' is ?

 

[Mick Bonwick]

1 hour ago, Stubby47 said:

 

And I'm still trying to work out where 'the yard' is ?

 

 

The very first sentence in the very first post ought to give you a clue.

[Mick Bonwick]

Eric looked over the fence at those two supposed workers in the yard. They seemed to be drinking tea much faster than usual, and Jack was much more active than he’d seen him in months. Years, actually. Poor Arthur seemed quite perturbed about something and was waving his arms about and pointing from the tree to the log pile behind the buffer stop. He went across the drive to try and determine what it was all about. When they saw him coming the activity died down and they sidled over to the fence. They related the story about the tractor, storm damage and log pile and Eric’s eyes lit up. He very quickly came to a mutually agreeable arrangement with them and went off to telephone Bert and ask him to help move some logs from the yard, through the gap in the fence and round to the coal hole. Brenda shall have her fire after all.

[Mick Bonwick]

Damned telephone. Why he ever agreed to have it installed, Bert could not imagine. Every time it rang it meant something was wrong or he had more work to do. Or both. Now he was expected to cart logs about as well as the other tasks he’d been given. This was too much for somebody like Bert, always seeking the easy ways of life. Well, they could all go to wherever nuisances went, and he was going to the spare room to catch up on a bit of reading. There were still lots of those foreign magazines he hadn’t read yet, and he was sure that the big pile in the far corner was the one with the double sized centre pages. He’d have to move the boxes on the bed to get to them, but that shouldn’t take too much effort. He was sure they were the empty ones that used to have the Enid Blyton books in them.

[Mick Bonwick]

Samuel Johnstone wasn’t the suspicious type, but there was something a little unusual about the way the log pile at the end of the old siding had been cleared so quickly. He had called the hut to check that all would be ready when the farm’s machinery arrived later that day, expecting to have to issue a stern reminder, but learned instead that everything he had said needed to be done had actually been done. The answer to the question about the new location of the logs had been very evasive though, so something was afoot (and that’s not 12”!)

 “I think I’d better be getting down there”, he thought to himself, “and see what is really going on.” He put on his hat and strode outside to the new Land Rover that he had been given to try out. It should really have been delivered to the Engineer’s Department up in town, but his son-in-law knew somebody who knew somebody and there’d been a mix-up in the paperwork.

[Mick Bonwick]

After their brief conversation with Eric, Jack and Arthur set to with a previously unknown burst of energetic activity. There was a certain sum of money available to those who succeeded in transporting the pile of logs that was on the loading ramp through the gap in the fence and around to the side of the pub, where the coal cellar was. Eric had said that Bert would be along soon and he would help them to clear it up quicker, but they decided that two shares would be more each than three shares, so why wait any longer? Eric had gone across the drive to talk to the bread delivery chap, so he would be too busy talking to see what was going on, and Bert didn’t live all that far away, so he would probably be arriving soon. And the sooner it was finished the sooner the next cup of tea would be available.

[Mick Bonwick]

Bert was lying on his spare bedroom floor with a magazine in his hand, breathing heavily. He had been trying desperately to wriggle free of the pile of boxes of books that had fallen on him when he slipped while reaching across the bed. He was sure those boxes were empty but, no, they had books in them and were therefore very heavy. He’d managed to reach the magazine that was on top of the pile behind the bed, but had slipped, grabbed the edge of the mattress to steady himself, and the whole thing had slid across the bedstead and fallen on his legs. Things were going to get serious very soon, because he needed to answer a call of nature and, even more important, it was soon going to be time for his lunchtime pint. How was he going to sort this out?

[Mick Bonwick]

Ernie sat at the wheel of his truck, wondering what to do about Bert’s absence. He’d spoken to him on the phone just a short while ago and they’d agreed to meet at the pub for a drink, although he did mumble something about moving logs. Ernie hadn’t quite caught what he said, but it sounded as if he was a bit annoyed at something. Nonetheless, it should only have taken him a few minutes to walk from home to the pub, and it wasn’t like Bert to miss his lunchtime pint. He’d also said something about finding a magazine, which was a bit mysterious. It wasn’t like Bert to be reading in the middle of the day – he usually did that at night, so he could concentrate on the words properly, or so he said. He peered through the gate into the railway yard and saw a shiny new Land Rover parked under the tree. Not where he would have parked, that’s for sure. That tree shed branches like nobody’s business, especially when it was windy. Still, nothing to do with him.

 

[Mick Bonwick]

Samuel Johnstone was not surprised to see Erasmus Hecklethorpe standing by the loading ramp. Here was the one man in the area who would know all about the history of the yard. The land had been part of the farm before the railways came, and he knew that the Hecklethorpe family had always had an interest in how the land was used, or ‘abused’ as he had heard them describe it. Samuel walked across the yard, nodding curtly to Arthur and Jack (he’d come back and have a word with that pair in a moment), and approached Erasmus with a smile. As he was about to greet the farmer he noticed that the pub landlord was outside the front door, talking to that young lad who had just started driving the baker’s van. He needed to speak to the landlord today, to find out how that fence had been damaged. Someone was going to have to pay for repairs. He asked Erasmus how the loading ramp had become disused, and learned that it all came about because of an accident about 15 years ago when the yard shunter had tripped while applying the brakes on a wagon that had been rather energetically shunted by a young driver from the town. The yard was known for its uneven surface, mostly created by the moles, and was usually treated with significant respect by both drivers and shunters for that very reason. It was agreed locally that the siding would not be used again as a mark of respect, and that was why it had become so neglected.

 

[Mick Bonwick]

What was the Reverend Golightly doing sneaking out of the back door of The Cherry Tree at 7 o'clock in the morning, and whose was the rather scruffy A30 parked on the verge just down the lane?

[Stubby47]

[Mick Bonwick]

The Bishop put down the telephone and frowned at nothing in particular. There was something worrying about the reports he’d been getting recently about the alleged antics of one of his clergy. It was always possible, in this day and age, that somebody would have a grudge against you and then make it public in a mischievous way, but that didn’t normally generate stories from multiple sources. No, he couldn’t ignore it, this warranted action; he’d have to do some investigating, and that meant going out to visit. To make sure that there was nothing about his actions that would cause suspicion, he’d visit everybody. Yes, that would be the right way to go about this.

 

[Mick Bonwick]

An Austin A30 (not looking its best, it has to be said) was proceeding, in a jaunty fashion, out of town and off into the countryside. The driver was puffing away at a Woodbine and smiling secretively, occasionally flicking the ash out of the window and checking the rear view mirror. The mirror wasn’t, however, positioned to allow the driver to see out of the back window, but rather to allow the driver to check the facial reflection for imperfections. Make-up was a critical part of this driver’s life, because it enabled the portrayal of many different characters and characteristics without having to do too much in the way of real acting. Yes, this driver was (and may well still be) an Actress.

[Ruffnut Thorston]

Oh oh....An Actress and a Bishop involved?