Frankly Grown-up

By mick_stringer
- 450 reads
Frankly Grown-up
A recollection by Mick Stringer.
It is said that we have two ages. Whilst our biological and
chronological age advances inexorably into dementia and decrepitude,
our internal age shifts but slowly, if at all. It is the true core of
our being, a fixed reference point set by a handful of defining
moments.
Thirty-one years ago I was, and, inside, I still am, twenty three years
old. For a couple of years I had been employed at the Bowden Aluminium
Refinery, working my way up from a junior position to become a grandly
titled Senior Cost Clerk. I had my own, battered desk in the general
office, squeezed into a corner between the switchboard and the telex
machine, from where I could look out through a grubby window, onto the
metallic anarchy of the scrap yard, stretching away in a series of
jagged heaps to the gatehouse on the site perimeter.
Of course, that was only my day job. In the evenings I taught and acted
with a small theatre group, played guitar in a smoke-filled folk club
and scribbled untidy volumes of poems, plays and short stories. It
would be only a matter of time, I thought, before I would exchange the
fluorescent tubes and angle-poise lamps of the office for the bright
spotlight of fame, my ledgers for a lucrative publishing contract, and
my dingy bedsit for a penthouse suite. I was destined to become a
"somebody" - a star, a phenomenon, a household name.
Meanwhile, there was work to be done. One of my duties was the ordering
and control of supplies for the site maintenance department and I
exalted in my encyclopaedic knowledge : of welding rods of every
dimension; of bright steel rounds and black hex sections; of japanned
bolts and chromed slot-headed screws; of cloths, wipers, oils and
greases and, most importantly, of industrial gases. These last were
ordered and delivered twice a week and my principal contact in the
department was a man called Frank.
Technically only an unskilled labourer, Frank had been with the company
for longer than anyone could remember. His big, rounded frame and
brown, deeply creased face were a permanent and comfortable feature of
the place - like an old, well-used leather sofa in the second best room
of a grandmother or aged aunt. He was the friendly company donkey -
steady, uncomplaining and a great mover of heavy or difficult objects.
If a typist needed a pack of foolscap from the top shelf in the
stationery room, Frank would reach up and grab it with an easy grace,
miraculously failing to transfer a single spot of grease from his big
oily hands to the brown paper wrapping. If a bulging filing cabinet
needed moving, to allow the retrieval of an errant requisition pad or
goods received note, Frank would hug it in his great thick arms and
hold it away from the wall until ruler or window pole could be
effectively deployed. If a car needed a push start, or a bolt was
rusted to a shelf; if a roller towel was jammed or a blocked gutter was
leaking dirty water into the office stairwell, then Frank could be
relied upon to employ the right degree of science and "welly" to get
things moving. He was never heard to utter a bad word against anyone
and the sight of his thick black hair and loose blue overalls - always
unbuttoned to midway down the chest - reassured us that the world was
spinning smoothly or, if it wasn't, "ruddy well soon would be."
When he wasn't shifting immovable objects, Frank looked after the gas
bottles. In a small shed, at the back of the main foundry, he
marshalled the heavy metal containers into well-drilled rows,
separating the empty from the full and the sound from the faulty,
keeping the oxygen away from the propane, and the acetylene from the
hydrogen and CO2. Promptly at 9.30, every Tuesday and Thursday, he
would telephone his requirements to me, his round vowels and soft
Yorkshire consonants mined unhurriedly from the rich seams of his
tar-lined throat. He liked his Woodbines, did Frank.
"Good morning, Michael. This is Frank here, maintainence."
"Morning, Frank. What can I get you today?"
"Not a lot today, Michael. Three oxy, two DA and one propane. And
there's a faulty cutter valve for collection on service
exchange."
"Right you are, Frank. PO req. B379. Let me have the GRN when they come
in."
"Will do. Thank you, Michael."
That pretty well summed up our social intercourse. Twice a week, unless
Christmas fell on a Tuesday or Thursday. Fifty weeks a year, taking the
annual shutdown into account.
Then one morning something in his voice made me ask,
"Are you all right, Frank. You sound a bit distant."
"Not feeling too clever today, Michael. Be all right, though."
But he wasn't. The news arrived in the general office in the usual
disjointed way. There'd been an incident in maintenance. Nurse had
called the ambulance - we clustered around my grubby window to watch it
come and go - and Frank had been rushed to hospital. His wife had been
called and was on her way to the infirmary. A bad business. Poor old
Frank.
By the end of an unproductive workday, we'd pieced together the full
story. Frank had complained of chest pains during the morning but had
put it down to a dodgey breakfast egg and was sure he'd be fine after
he'd had a bit of lunch. He'd insisted on pulling the empty gas bottles
out to where the delivery lorry could easily pick them up, as heavy
overnight rain had turned the normal distribution area into an oily
quagmire. When the wagon had arrived, he'd helped the driver to drop
the new bottles and pick up the old and was on his way back to his shed
to make out my delivery notes when he'd collapsed. At first he was
thought to have slipped in the mud, but the sudden pallor of his face
and the noisy rattle in his throat told a different story. Later
enquiries to the hospital elicited only that he was "very
poorly".
The next morning, having given us time to settle at our desks, Lawry -
the maintenance foreman - came and stood in the doorway.
"Frank died at five o'clock this morning," he announced,
solemnly.
It was the five o'clock that struck me the most. A cold, grey time in
the late autumn, when the day is only a distant promise, the air is
still and chill dews fall. There was an awful finality about that five
o'clock. It was as if warm, deep-throated Frank had stopped, like a
seized up piece of machinery, at that fixed point in time - and there
were no big oily hands to get him going again. Incongruously, I
imagined him lying in his pyjamas. It couldn't be real. But it
was.
Lawry and I represented the company at the funeral. We borrowed one of
the firm's Hillman Minxes and joined the cortege outside Frank's neat
little terrace house just a couple of streets away from the foundry. We
made up quite a caravan behind the two black funeral cars : a couple of
baby Austins, an old Ford Popular and a Morris 1000 Shooting Brake, as
I remember. As we passed the foundry gate, Lawry glanced in the
mirror.
"We're all here now," he said, softly.
I turned and looked through the rear window. The gas delivery lorry had
joined our little procession and, maintaining a perfect ten yard
distance from the car in front for the full two miles to the cemetery,
added its driver's dignified tribute to a departed friend and
colleague.
Of course, the day job won out. A break for university and a good
degree followed by an accounting qualification, opened up a career
which took me far from the nuts and bolts of maintenance costing, into
international boardrooms and the high, polished offices of big City
institutions. In the external, chronological age, I have reached the
top and, by most reckonings, made my mark.
On the other hand, inside, the unfulfilled twenty-three year-old still
has a long journey ahead. As my mind slips back through the years, and
views again that unlikely funeral procession, I cannot help but feel
how much remains unaccomplished.
But Frank was real and fully grown. Now he was somebody.
(c) Mick Stringer 2001
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