Last Walk of an Unknown Hero
“Here Is the Six o’clock News.” The words reverberated in his
brain and the picture of the Houses of Parliament beside the Thames appeared,
just before the newsreader gave a thin smile into the camera.
He sat upright in his chair as he heard
the broadcast, a habit from whenever authority spoke, a half empty bottle in
his hand. The thoughts that kept him awake or had awakened him from sleep these
past few days, still hung on his body like a dull, dense mist. The news
programmes had never affected him that much, until now. The house, the goods,
and everything he'd laboured for seemed to strangle him now with the weight of
a millstone. The pain of failure worse than any physical injury he'd ever
suffered. Drink had never played much of a part in his life before, army
discipline saw to that. But he'd heard it said beer could drown the hurt inside his gut
and deaden the endless question.
“Why?”
The voice inside the box faded into
drunken stupor as his frame slumped back down into the crumpled cushions
beneath him.
“The Prime Minister has insisted that the “Working Age Directive” is necessary to allow young people
who are out of work, to find work.” The last
three words were emphasized. “Members of the
House recognise the need to introduce compulsory retirement at 55...”
He could barely register the words as they
moved through the darkening haze, enveloping his thoughts. He wrapped his
fingers around the neck of the bottle again and lifted it towards his mouth,
closed his eyes and poured the stale liquid down his throat. The TV panel began
to discuss the pros and cons of a decision to regulate working ages so that
teens, and those in their early twenties, could be employed. Through half
closed eyes, he could just see that his room was a mess and, for the first time
in his life, he couldn't have cared less.
“Bastards.”
All through his national service, tidiness had
been a habit. All through his working life, attention to detail had been his
trade mark. He flung the bottle across the room, hitting the wall and smashing into
a thousand pieces, leaving a stain that crept like cancer across the carpet.
Eventually, sleep came to rescue him from the living nightmare, but not the one
in his dream, which one had reoccurred over the last few weeks, ever since the
newspapers began to carry editorials about the government plans to reorganize
labour.
London's
burning...all of it.
In the midst of a crimson sky, the horizon
was being obliterated by black smoke as the voluminous flames rose from the
dome of St Paul's Cathedral. It seemed as if the devil's fingers had wrapped
themselves around the stars and snuffed out the light from the moon. Dawn had
not even broken yet, so flames appeared to rise up from the depths of Hell
itself. Sirens split the morning wide open as engines sped to points all around
the capital, too many to cover, the crews prioritizing their targets as
the riots spread from location to location. Red flashing lights atop the
stationary wagons mirrored the frenetic activity of the operators on the
ground, as flumes of water were sprayed madly upwards towards the burning
embers of Downing Street. The political
and financial centres of the world's economic hub were collapsing It was
useless, every rooftop had buckled, metal frames were melting and burning
pieces of paper were falling to earth.
The fires spread. The whole of the city
must have been alight by now and what would have been dawn on any other day was
now as dark as midnight. Across the city the fires rampaged, jumping from
street to street and catching hold of any piece of timber not battened down.
The gale-force winds twisted the smoke into huge pillars of black, acrid poison
that lifted anything in its path aside and hurled it into oblivion. Even
girders were wrenched from the debris of the collapsed houses. In a final
assault on everything that had been built through the centuries, London, the city
of his birth, the city of the proud and skilled craftsman, was being dismantled
by accountants, solicitors, career politicians and the local people, and
reduced to rubble. It was like a nightmare from the war.
Last Day..
His door opened. He stood motionless for a
moment, his small wiry frame hadn't changed much since the army days. But, an “old man”
all of a sudden, he stepped out into the street and
took a look along the road, his eyes straining now to recognise the long blurred
memories of a distant childhood. Growing up amongst the entryways and alleyways
of a once-friendly community, he struggled to retain a glimpse of the faces from a past
long gone. There were no tears, just an empty stare from eyes that had lost all
spark of energy, all sense of life. In one last farewell to happier times his
hands moved up to the green army beret on his head, a habit he'd kept from the
war, smartness, tidiness, a sense of pride:
That’s what he conveyed. In a rote
action he tilted it to one side and smoothed it over his forehead, allowing himself
one last look, then took his first step to his last walk. Newspaper pages,
crumpled with yesterday's tragedies, blew like tumble weeds along the avenue
between the terraced houses, now littered with broken glass and decorated with boarded-up doorways.
Even the graffiti painted on the grime covered walls wasn't there for any
artistic statement, but a comment on the decline of a once-proud nation. Weeds grew
up through the pavement and fought for territory with the mattresses and old
cookers rotting and rusting in front of doors dangling on just a hinge, barely
upright.
He turned left. Either direction would
take him to his work place; it was a habit he'd followed since joining the firm
as a youth. The wind, normally chilled this time of year, smelled of decaying
history. He hunched his shoulders a little higher and turned the coat lapels up
to offer some protection against the cold. A working man's steps took him
briskly past his youth. The places where he and his pals had sat in the gutter
pulling at the pebbles torn loose from the road were freshly tarmacked over,
and cars parked at the kerbside meant street football had died many years
before. Here were the stadiums where the ball had sailed into the top corner of
an imaginary net on an imaginary football ground, the shot taken by a real boy.
But youth had gone now, replaced by empty houses and broken dreams. Ahead, he saw
the shelter where he'd caught the bus every morning of his working life,
remembering that it was more than a stop off. It had been a meeting point of
mates and colleagues all employed in a skilled profession, the manufacture of
engines that ran the economic growth of post-war England. No more, though. The “old man”
recognised few of the faces now, his mates had been replaced by shadows of
teenage snarls, cigarettes hanging from their mouths and gadgets blasting out
the latest praise of thuggery and violence. With their hands in their pockets
and hoods pulled over their heads, he didn't recognise their world, the world
of “gimme.”
His arrival was invisible, no one nodded a welcome. He
was just an “old man”
in their world, in their eyes. As the bus approached,
time stood still for all of them, grotesque statues of indifference and
indolence, working only to fuel their weekend beer habit, only as a condition
of keeping their benefit money. Ever since that announcement on the television
he felt forced into the ignominy of joining them.
As the wooden doors swung open into the
workshop, he realised he loved it here, always had. Walking through those doors meant he
was somebody; he was a skilled man amongst other skilled men. The clean lines
of the bays, the quiet lull that preceded the day's activity, came always with
the promise of machines stirring to life. Those sounds, that energy had kept
him going through the birth of his sons and the death of his wife. Still, the
thought of that death bit deep into his soul, six months of hell in an empty
house, his sons too far away to help, not that he'd have asked for it anyway.
“Frank.” The
call of his name brought him back.
He turned. The
foreman was at his side, a small, slightly stooped man, just a little older
than himself.
“Frank, go up to the office, they
need to talk to you.”
He’d heard the words many times over the years, but they’d been delivered with
a smile, some young management recruit would have screwed up a time sheet, or a
drawing of a machine cast and needed an expert to help sort it out. Not this
time. This time his foreman couldn’t bring himself to look into his eyes.
He barely heard the words, even though
he'd not yet fired up his machine. This time though, he knew it was something
entirely different.
“Mr. Davies to the manager's office.” The secretary's voice cut through the air from speakers above his
head and echoed around the factory walls. Fleetingly the image of that same
secretary came to him. When she walked past the bays he'd never disrespected
her, never whistled or made lewd remarks like some of the men. She could have
been the same age as some of their daughters. Yet here she was announcing his
demise to the whole factory.
As he walked past the numbered work bays
the familiar sounds of his engineering life began to mix together and shatter
the numbed silence. The siren for the start of the day came like the air raid
sirens he’s heard on
duty in 1940. But this wasn’t 1940. This
was 1968. Like a highly-orchestrated symphony the high
pitched squeal of turning machines and deep gashing growl of planes gouging
slots into metal beds was music most familiar. He grimaced as the sparks flew
from grinding machines being worked to within thousandths of an inch. For all
his working years, from apprentice to skilled man, he'd loved the sight and
sound of this walk through the factory. For all these years it had defined him,
meant he was somebody. But not today. Today, nobody caught his eye, nobody
stopped him for a chat or shouted his name above the din, and everybody knew
where he was going. The metal stairs up to the Floor Manager's office
resonated to the sound of his steel capped shoes and the metal door to the
office opened with the same strained stiffness it always had, it just hadn't
bothered him before.
“Frank, come in, sit down.” The manager's familiar voice greeted him.
“I'll stand,” he
replied, more forcefully than he'd ever dared speak to authority before.
“I understand. The words were
wrapped in a sigh. “Frank. You know we'd keep you if we could; keeping skilled men is
what we're all about.”
“Let's get on with it. When do I
finish?”
“We have to give you a fortnight’s notice Frank. We'll take care of
all the details....”
The haze came down
again, the words lost as he turned and walked back down the steps to the shop
floor. The union steward stepped between him and the door and tried to
intervene, but he'd never had much to do with unions and brushed passed him.
That was it, the end of a life of service.
Anger passed fleetingly across his drawn forehead, not settling long enough to
leave an imprint though, his army training had taught him not to show emotion
in front of men. All his life he'd
struggled against the threat of poverty, not then, nor now would he let it beat
him. He lifted his head and stepped back onto the shop floor, back into the world
that was most familiar to him. He was a Labour man since he'd cast his first
vote, and now they'd betrayed him. He didn't stay beyond picking up his
sandwich box and beret. The wooden door swung open one more time as the sun
rose above the roof tops around the plant. It occurred to him that this was the
first time he'd seen it rising like this in many years. By now he'd normally
have been at his machine for at least half an hour and the sun was always going
down when the shift finished. He placed the beret onto his head and smoothed it
into place. Without turning back he walked away, no one called him back, and no
one noticed he'd gone.
Through all the turmoil, The Thames lapped
religiously against its muddy shores, marking time with the tides, impervious
to change and erosion. Lap, lap, lap, it drummed out its rhythm, oblivious to
the desperate times now reflected on its surface. The great waterway,
the place he'd come to as a boy, was no longer dark and cold, but a mirror to
the flaming dance of hell that had gone on in his mind.
Above the river a gentle breeze pushed the
tide up towards Parliament. Early morning was still lingering above the offices
of huge conglomerates, bouncing off the glass exteriors that rose skyward
attempting to touch the wisps of white clouds. Every so often a bird danced
across the skyline and etched a dark silhouette against the pale dawn. The
streets were waking now with traders and salesmen racing against time to beat
the rush hour traffic. He walked at a brisk pace, a habit from his army days,
his arms swinging smartly in a strong, steady stride. A car had never stood
outside the house, if he couldn't walk or catch a bus somewhere, he didn't go.
He was a “young man”
again,
“Mornin.” The
voice came from the shop door in front of him. It was a stranger's voice and
for the first time in his life he ignored another man's greeting. It was well
known that no one had a bad word to say against him, and he'd never as much as
sworn in front of friends. He strode on; his head was clear now. The flames of
anger that had been torturing him, the destruction of his life, and the
memories that had tormented him disappeared. The steady tapping of his work
shoes on the concrete once again rapped out the rhythm of his walk, the beat of
his life. He crossed the road and set foot on the grass verge lining the
riverbank, never missing a step. In a few hours' time a thousand other
footsteps would leave their mark on the earth and cover all trace of his
existence. The footsteps of people who would never know his name, never know he
was my hero.
Without faltering
or looking back, without deviating from his fate or ever showing fear, my
father, my hero, simply walked into the Thames.
posted by Unknown @ 05:00
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