sussed where he wor heading, but it worn’t my place to blather. Eric said that women worn’t meant to know everything, which wor why they wor always trying to. Eric wor a philosopher on all things women. Mother picked at her old nail varnish as she waited for t’ water to boil.
‘Will you be late again tonight?’
She wor fishing again. I leaned over my boots so I wouldn’t have to look her in t’ eye.
‘No, so long as we don’t break down.’
I wanted to keep my options open. Maybe I’d go see t’ Matterhorn Man.
‘Those vans do seem to break down a lot,’ she said. ‘Someone should get them seen to.’
The Corona Soft Drinks depot wor t’ last in a row of gun-metal-grey industrial units up in t’ city’s northern suburbs. As soon as I stepped into t’ depot it lifted my morning bones; the metallic acridity of nails, rivets, corrugated panels, the headiness of t’ exhaust fumes, the saccharine odour of t’ pops – lemonade, limeade, cream soda – and squashes – orange barley, lemon barley, blackcurrant.
Going on twenty vans wor being readied. From Craner’s office came t’ chink of change being checked.
‘Morn, Mr Craner!’
The gaffer didn’t take kindly to me being so chirrupy first thing, which wor why I greeted him thus. Irritate the morose bugger.
Behind me came t’ jangle of nudging bottles on t’ end of a forklift. Coke, Tango orange, Tango lime – empties all being stacked; or full crates – orangeade, dandelion and burdock. Someone else wor dragging a crate along t’ floor – Tango lemon, Tango lime, malt vinegar.
I punched the clock, took our float and sought out our van. The load had still to be sorted and signed off, the engine checked for petrol, water and oil. That wor every van boy’s job.
I lifted up the bonnet and withdrew t’ rapier-dipstick, wiped it, slid it back into its sheath, withdrew it slowly, assessed the oil-line level, wiped it on a rag and then reinserted it. While I wor busying wi’ this I could see Craner in his office, balancing on his swivel office chair, chalking up crew names on t’ wall blackboard behind his desk. Cos he could barely reach the board wi’ his short arms outstretched the names sloped off at one end. I could make out my own initials alongside a capital ‘E’ for Eric.
I wor screwing on t’ radiator cap when from behind me came t’ unmistakable sound of glass splintering on concrete. One of t’ new lads, balancing too many bottles up each arm. He’d learn. If he lasted. The lad’s face puckered up like a butchered pig as dandelion and burdock meandered toward a sludge patch of oil. The crash brought Craner out of his office.
‘You! Yes, you, fatso! Chuck some bloody sawdust over that spill,’ Craner barked, his voice eaten up by its own echo. I grinned at Fatso, who wor just gawping at Craner like a friggin’ idiot. It wor t’ same here as in school: being podgy – especially being nearly friggin’ immobile – you worn’t part of t’ main gang. Craner pushed his glasses further up his nose and seeing me smirking, shouted in his favoured mocking tone, ‘Still here, Mr Thorpe?’
I unhinged the bonnet support strut and let the bonnet crash down. Craner flinched.
‘Good as gone, Mr Craner, good as, just waiting for Eric.’ I nodded toward t’ toilets. ‘He’s just taking a dump.’
I climbed into t’ cab to wait on Eric. In truth, I wor wary of Craner. Craner and Mitch went way back. I gobbed out onto some sawdust by t’ van wheel. It brassed me off, being in Mitch’s grip, but I also knew that Craner owed Mitch for summat. A little back-scratching, a little palm-greasing, and here I wor, my first proper job. Most times Craner wor holed up in his depot fiefdom, so it worn’t as if he could come check up on me. Although wi’ Craner you never knew, Craner seemed to have his spies everywhere.
‘Boo!’
‘Jeeeesus fuck, Eric!’
‘Ready?’
‘MIS–TER FAW–LEY!’
‘Craner wants you, Eric.’
‘The four-eyed fart. BE RIGHT WI’ YOU, MR CRANER!’
Eric scuttled over to Craner, flattening his hair wi’ one hand and tucking in his shirt-tail wi’ t’other. Craner liked to make you feel t’ wrath of God wor about to fall on your head, then deliver some quiet little aside about owt and nowt. Craner’s way. Eric wor playin’ out the game. He picked up the round-book and the float, and turned to grin at me, swinging t’ van keys round his forefinger.
‘Ready, Mr Thorpe?’
‘Ready, Mr Fawley.’
We wor done by late afternoon, so I got Eric to drop me off in town. I waited for t’ van to turn at the lights, then hurried on up Woodhouse Lane.
To see t’ Matterhorn Man.
I’d first met the Matterhorn Man that summer, just shy of my sixteenth birthday. He lived at 5 Blandford Gardens, a short cul-de-sac Victorian terrace. Almost no one in t’ Corona round-book had a proper name; most wor identified by some peculiar or particular feature: fist knocker, fishing gnome, third blue door, rabid mutt, buck teeth woman.
I’d been idly peering through t’ front bay of 5 Blandford Gardens when I spotted a mural covering one entire wall, a photo of a mountain, rising snowcapped against a blue block of sky. Same as I’d seen on a calendar in our local Indian takeaway.
So I scrawled in t’ round-book: ‘Matterhorn Man’.
Matterhorn Man wor a thin, gimlet-eyed Scot wi’ a small, dark moustache and sideburns. One bottle of Coke and a bottle of tonic water every week.
Most weeks our van would reach Blandford Gardens in t’ early afternoon. Often as not the Matterhorn Man would open t’ door in his cordless dressing gown, holdin’ it together wi’ one hand while he fished in a small velvet drawstring pouch for change. Then one day he said, ‘Come in a wee mo’, won’t you?’
Not wanting to appear rude or owt, I stepped into his hallway. Onto t’ hallway runner wi’ t’ wear hole. He skedaddled into t’ kitchen out back and came back wi’ t’ change and an empty. His dressing gown fell open. He had a lean, hirsute torso and thin, dark legs. His underpants wor a washed-out mauve.
Every week he held me up, rummaging for change, proffering up titbits about himsen. So I learnt that his name wor Jim, that he wor twenty-six year old, the sixth of eight brothers and sisters, all t’ rest of ’em still up in Scotland save for t’ one, who’d emigrated to Canada. That he worked the graveyard shift in a bikkie factory, ‘putting the hearts in Jammie Dodgers’, and that’s why I always caught him half-dressed, or in his dressing gown, and that he used to have a lodger, but they’d argued over t’ rent and so Jim lived alone now.
As Jim wor placing a florin into my grubby palm, he murmured quickly, ‘Why don’t you drop by a wee bit later on?’
‘What?’
The question took me unawares, surfacing all of a sudden like a shark from t’ depths. I felt t’ blood whooshing to my cheeks. In Jim’s face I saw
