One Summer

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Book excerpt

Chapter One 

Nathan Forrest lived in Westburn, a town built by the river, its fading glories sprung from shipbuilding and marine engineering, many of its 80,000 souls sustained by stoicism and God’s Mercy. The workers were crammed into tenements and drab estates on the edges of the town; the better off enjoyed a spacious suburb to the west. The working people felt compensated by the beauty of the river and the views of the mountains. The middle classes took it all for granted.

Nathan saw only High Summer in Westburn, and was blind to winter coming. In 1958 orders replacing wartime losses had dried up, but the yards held on, building new ships.

When he left the Army, Nathan had mastered welding and now worked on the submarines building for the Royal Navy. Had he lifted his eyes he might have seen that this way of life was mouldering. But Nathan made good money and did not worry that class solidarity was dying, and management control of the business of shipbuilding was slipping.

The yard managers knew how to build ships, but they hadn’t a clue about leadership and had no respect for the men. At ten o’clock every morning, they sat in warm offices, drinking tea and nibbling biscuits served on Company china by liveried tea ladies from the Management Restaurant; the staff obtained refreshments from the Staff Canteen. The men took an unofficial break, hiding in draughty corners of part-built hulls and steel fabrications, sneaking a bite of egg roll, slurping hot, sweet tea from a thermos flask or a tea can. Sometimes the men’s meal was disrupted when an aggressive young manager, or an old management hard case feeling his oats, raided the hiding places, chasing the men back to work.

One Thursday, a senior manager, an old warhorse, ambushed a tea boy brewing up for his squad and booted the tin tea cans to the ground, trampling them underfoot. The boy, cowering from the manager’s rage, tripped on an upturned tea can and fell. It looked as if the manager had pushed the boy to the ground, and Nathan was outraged when the boy got sacked. The fury of the men erupted in a wildcat strike, emptying the yard in twenty minutes. Nathan joining the hate-filled throng milling at the yard gate, refusing to disperse until management summoned the police.

The following Monday, management’s stomach for the fight collapsed and the Tea Boy Strike ended when the manager apologized and the boy was reinstated.

But sometimes the unions sank low. A young manager saw a workman defecating inside a steel fabrication and dismissed him. Nathan was sickened by the man’s filthy habits and agreed with the firing, but he doubted the judgement of the Unions, when the shop stewards fought and had the miscreant reinstated. Nathan retreated again from life in the yard and backed farther into his private world.

Some of Nathan’s friends went abroad, but Nathan was impervious to the creeping rot killing the yard: the struggles of management and unions, and the ending of the old way of life. He turned aside from the decay surrounding him; Nathan was content and did not want to shift overseas, and have to deal with changes to his trade, and the way he lived. He was an elite welder earning good money, supporting what really mattered to him: his life outside the yard as a Jazz musician. It would have been better for Nathan were the yards to implode through sudden, unexpected crisis, driving him out of his crumbling niche, opening his eyes to the truths of his situation. Nathan was far from stupid and could have worked out the uncertainties and difficulties lying ahead; but he was indifferent to the struggles for respect; and heedless of the slow death rattle rising from shipbuilding and his people.

Nathan wrapped himself in a comforting blanket of tolerable wages and his other life in Jazz. It would take a great storm to set Nathan free.

Nathan was twenty-five of lean build and stood at five-foot ten inches. He dressed in sober, dark wool jackets and slacks. The cut was hip. Hip for Westburn and working class: drape jackets with sack back and narrow pants and well-polished loafers. He liked soft, solid coloured shirts and wool ties. With his dark hair cut short and neatly parted, he came close to the look favoured by some American Jazz musicians he’d seen at concerts in Glasgow.

That Friday, with the working week over, Nathan walked out the yard gate with Leo, an alto saxophone player and co-leader of the band. He offered to pick up Nathan and drive him to the Friday night gig, but Nathan preferred to walk.

Later that evening, Nathan went down the four stairs leading from the main door of the terraced house where he lived, looked across rooftops and through tall chimneys, free of smoke so close to mid summer. Nathan’s eyes rested on the masts and funnels of vessels in the harbour, then moved on to the silhouettes of ships anchored in the river. He paused outside the house for a minute, taking in the views of the cranes; tall, sinister skeletons perched over the frames and hulls of part built vessels. And below them, invisible from the heights of Galt Place was the sub, a black, deep-sea creature, cramped and packed with weapons and machinery. He hated all of it; was sick of the hard drinking and coarsened lives that went with it and yet, grudgingly, Nathan admired the innovation and industry that created it. Perversely, he was proud of the ships that his people, the working class, built there.

Nathan and Leo were welders on the sub and would be back inside its confined spaces on Monday morning, bulky in pigskin jackets and gauntlets, the moleskin trousers: all this kit to protect them from burns; and the heavy boots with steel toe caps. Nathan seldom lost the feel of the tight beret on his head and the welding hood that fitted snugly over it. Monday to Friday, he stared through the dark window of the hood at the blue arc of the burning welding rod.

Nathan headed west to the affluent suburb and Westburn Rugby Club. At the end of Galt Place he turned to let his eyes linger on the full sweep of the small terraced villas and the house where he lived with Ma. Galt Place was elegant when built early in the 19th Century.

Now, carelessness and neglect enveloped Galt Place. Year by year, ruin gained. Peeling paint, crumbling stonework, stained windows, shabby entrances and stairs assaulted his eyes. But the quality of Victorian craftsmanship survived in the elegant bay windows, the deep eaves, ornate sofit boards and solid, hardwood doors.

Ma cared for their house, keeping paintwork and fitments neat and clean. She struggled against the indifference and despair of her neighbours. Nathan often wondered how long Ma and he could hold back the flood tide of decay.

Nathan liked walking through Westburn on the way to a gig, the Bach trumpet safe in its case tucked under his arm. He walked down the steep hill of Ann Street and entered The Square, past the old Empire Theatre, shabby now that it was closed and abandoned. There was no theatre, no variety shows or musicals in Westburn and had Nathan read the signs on billboards and in the local newspaper, he might have predicted that his great passion, Jazz, would struggle to be heard, as amateur folk groups mushroomed in popularity capturing gigs from musicians like himself. Had he looked closely he might have noticed that some venues for young people already preferred record hops to live musicians. He stared for a minute at the regal Municipal Buildings, raising his head to see the top of the Royal Tower soaring above.

Walking westwards, Nathan crossed the Great Divide of Westburn: Lord Nelson Street, lined with the symbols of authority: the Sheriff Court, the Grammar School, the established Protestant churches and in particular, the Town Kirk and its clock chiming the quarter hours, reminding Nathan’s people that they did not belong west of this line. These buildings like Forts on Hadrian’s Wall, a deterrent to entry by working class barbarians into middle class Valentia.

Nathan turned towards the river passing his old school that he habitually referred to as ‘The Borstal for Retarded Tims.’ His time there ended on a sour note when the School Chaplain, Father Brendan Toner, a cruel Irishman humiliated him in front of the class. It was a about a week before he was due to leave. Nathan was fourteen.

“Are you Catholic boy?” the Chaplain said.

“Yes, Father.”

“Are your parents Catholic?”

“Ma mother wis. She’s dead. Ma father’s dead. Ah don’t know if he wis a Catholic.”

Behind him, Nathan heard the titters of the class.

“And were they married?”

Nathan felt the swelling in his throat and tears coming. He didn’t answer.

“Who brought you up, boy?”

“Ma did.”

“And tell me boy, who is Ma; is she Catholic?”

Nathan fought back the tears, silently cursing the brute. The class was laughing now.

“Ma’s ma Grandmother.”

“Ah,” the priest sighed. “Born out of wedlock. Why in Ireland, boy, a good Catholic family would’ve taken you in and fostered you.”

Cold rage took hold of Nathan; he’d had enough. “Ma an’ me, we’re a good Catholic family.”

The priest cuffed Nathan, hard and he staggered from the force of the blow. “Do not speak back to me, boy”

Nathan ran for the door, turning as he opened it. “Ya fuckin’ ol’ cunt,” he shouted.

He never went back to school and he finished with the Catholic Church.

The walk on the Esplanade by the river and the views of the mountains to the northwest banished the memories of the Irish priest. Nathan was a lone raider walking in the West End. He imagined the residents preferred that people like him, working class and Catholic, stay away. They were happy enough tolerating the tradesmen and the cleaning women who worked in the houses; and they did not mind too much the deliverymen bringing goods. Nathan liked to think of the consternation the residents of the West End might feel of a Sunday afternoon when his people came in large numbers, dressed in their Sunday best, family groups and friends walking and having a good look.

He laughed imagining the residents’ sense of relief when the working classes began their slow retreat on a Sunday evening to the crowded enclaves of tenements and the new estates established at the frontier of Westburn.

The vibrating chords of the bass and swish of rhythm brushes faded; the melody of Tenderly stayed with Nathan for a few moments as the last couples left the dance floor.

“Thank Christ it’s over,” he said.

He hated that gig, Westburn Rugby Club’s Summer Ball. He’d heard that Catholics were barred, but as he’d given up his Faith and didn’t like rugby, so what?

What Nathan loathed was the boorish behaviour of the members; they ignored Nathan and Leo, and the other members of the band: the hired help brought in for their entertainment. And he did not like the snobby, aloof women: big, horsy bints, all bum and tits.

The Club had once been a grand Victorian residence; its rooms beautifully proportioned, retaining many of the original features, a sweeping staircase leading to the upper floor. Nathan could not help but admire the style and elegance of the place.

Nathan returned from the lavatory, glancing into the bar where two of the hearties lay, passed out. One of them, Eric, had pissed into his cavalry twills. Nathan was glad it was Eric; a perfect shit. There was a pool of vomit soaking into the seat of the chair where his head rested at an awkward angle.

Earlier, Eric, dandified in an English cut Donegal tweed jacket and striped Club tie, drunk and querulous, but still on his feet, had demanded the band play Scottish Country-dances.

“We don’t do Scottish Country-dances,” Nathan said.

Eric worked at the yard, a ship’s draughtsman. Once, Nathan had pointed out an error in one of his drawings. The weld was in the wrong place. Eric hated that.

“I’m speaking to you,” Eric said, nodding at Leo.

Leo pointed to Nathan, “We lead the band. Like he said, we don’t do Scottish Country-Dances.”

“This is ridiculous” Eric said. “You’re being paid to entertain us.”

“Ah tell ye, Mate,” Leo said. “We’ll leave right now, an’ ye can shove yer money up yer arse.”

Nathan opened the valve on the Bach and let the accumulated spit drain on to the floor; Eric swayed back. “So, what’s it to be?”

“Damned common riff raff,” Eric muttered, staggering away.

Nathan removed the mute, and then dried off the Bach trumpet. Leo had his Conn alto in the case, Chuck covered the bass and Joe finished packing the drum kit.

“Let’s go, Nathan,” Leo said.

Chuck and Joe were outside putting the bass and drums into the back of Leo’s beat up Humber estate car.

“No’ bad for this fuckin’ place,” Nathan said to Leo as they walked to the main door of the club. He looked in the bar again. Eric and the other hearty still lay there, passed out. “Gentlemen, eh?”

“Money’s good, Nathan. Don’t knock it.”