Eric Sykes - If I Don’t Write It Nobody Else Will

When we acquired electricity at home is a mystery. It seems that one day we were holding the taper to the gas mantle to bring soft light to the room and the next we clicked a switch on the wall and a brighter light shone from a sixty-watt bulb. I can’t recall any major upheavals in our lives at 36 Leslie Street—no electrician tearing up the skirting boards for wires and connections. Now we had a wireless plugged into the mains no less, and you can’t do that with gas, but our listening was rationed because of the expense, unless it was something special; and on Sunday 3 September 1939, a fine, warmish day, sitting on the steps to the backyard, face turned upwards to the sun to take advantage of the passing summer, I heard Mr Neville Chamberlain, our Prime Minister, informing us all that from today we were at war with Germany. I was only sixteen years old, so I accepted the news with equanimity; I didn’t honestly believe it concerned me. The next day the air-raid sirens wailed over the land and I still wasn’t convinced it was real; in any case it was common knowledge that it would all be over by Christmas. Here a very strange thing occurred. Aunt Marie received a letter from her brother, Uncle Ernest, who was in the navy, assuring her that there would be no war. It was dated 21 August 1939, but ironically the letter was delivered the day after war was declared. In his letter Uncle Ernest told Aunt Marie that he was now serving on HMS Adventure , which in the past had been in reserve but now was commissioned on active service.

Contrary to popular expectation, the war was not all over by Christmas, and war in the air and on the high seas was taking a heavy toll of British lives; and at home Uncle Ernest was constantly in our thoughts.

During this moment of history, when I was still filling inkwells at the Rutland Mill, only once was I in trouble. Next to me, the girl on my desk was new, a little older than me but very self-assured. I didn’t really get on with her, as she treated me like a minion—‘Bring this’, or ‘Pass me that’ or, once when I sneezed, ‘For heaven’s sake, use a hankie’; and while I appreciated the fact that she was slightly superior in office seniority, she had been with us only for a few days whereas I was an old hand. Anyway, one dinnertime I happened to mention that the cotton mill was a frightening place at night, especially now that the war was in full swing and all the windows were blacked out. Ken Smith, the senior clerk, was about to leave the office and as he was passing he said that the mill was a frightening place during the day. Clever Clogs snorted. He looked at her and continued. ‘Some time ago, he said, when he was doing my job, as he was about to enter the passage a man walked towards him carrying an arm on a piece of paper, followed by two other workers who were supporting the man who had lost it. He’d had an accident with a fan belt and there was blood all over that passage, and that was in the middle of the morning, he said, and some say that his ghost still comes along the passage at night. The story scared the pants off me. A cotton mill at night is never silent: it creaks and groans, and somewhere in the factory something falls to the floor. But when he’d gone she said she wasn’t afraid of the dark.

‘You’re pathetic,’ she said.

That did it. ‘All right,’ I replied. ‘Go up into the mill tonight, then.’

She said she couldn’t tonight as she was going to the pictures and that was that.

But the following night when everyone else had gone and the factory was deserted apart from us, as she was stamping the mail she gave the last stamp a violent thump, turned to me and said, ‘I’ll be back in ten minutes.’ As she stormed out of the office, I thought, What’s the matter with her? Then it all came back to me—my challenging her to go into the empty black mill. I dashed after her to the beginning of the long stone passage that led to the steps up to the card room and stared into the blackness, but it was too late: there was no sign of her. I hadn’t a torch or anything—it had never really occurred to me that she would take up the dare. I gulped. Then again, she was so cocksure and I hadn’t forced her. Tentatively I called her name. The silence was deafening, so I called again, louder, but to no avail. So I shrugged and wondered if she’d gone home, leaving me standing there like a bridegroom wondering if it isn’t too late to call it off. But when I went back to the safety of the bright office, I saw her coat over the back of the chair, so I knew she had gone into the card room. Suddenly I’d had enough. If she wanted to play silly games, that was up to her. I had a tram to catch, and when she returned to the office full of triumph I wasn’t going to be sitting there to applaud, and she could put that in her pipe and smoke it.

However, when morning inevitably came there was a strained atmosphere in the office when I arrived. The girl was not there, but more remarkably the secretary was, and he looked as if he’d had a serious illness and hadn’t yet shaken it off. ‘Come into the boardroom,’ he rasped, and I followed him into the hallowed magnificence reserved for the chosen few. He sat at the enormous table. ‘What happened last night?’ was his opening gambit. For a moment I didn’t understand; then the events of the night before came back to me and I told him as much as I knew. In a quiet voice he filled in the rest. At about three o’clock in the morning he had been called out of bed by the police. The front door of the office was wide open and on entering they’d spotted the pile of mail unposted and the girl’s coat slung over the back of the chair. The secretary dutifully posted the letters and put out the lights. Nobody gave going into the factory itself a thought and it was only when the women arrived in the morning to start work in the card room that the girl had been discovered in a half-full skip of bobbins, fast asleep. Again the secretary was called back to the mill and, observing that the girl was on the verge of a breakdown, instructed the other girl in the office to take her home and call a doctor. Then I arrived, the only one in Shaw apparently unaware of the calamity at the Rutland Mill.

The secretary gave me a severe rollicking, ending with the fatal words, ‘Get your cards,’ which in everyday parlance means, ‘You’re sacked.’ I was appalled by what had happened to the girl and ashamed at my cowardice in not going to find her. Anyway, head down, I shuffled from the boardroom and sat at my desk, still in heavy shock. Then the secretary came back and sat in his place, and, probably from force of habit, on seeing him in his familiar seat I opened the enormous ledger and started, in a daze, to enter the numbers in the correct columns. The fact that I had just been given the sack never entered my mind and the secretary didn’t press the matter; we both carried on as if it had never happened. The girl didn’t return to work, so in all probability the secretary had concluded that he couldn’t afford to lose two members of his staff in one day.

When I travel back in time to when I was just gone sixteen years of age, one particular incident in that historic year of 1939 springs immediately to mind. It was not the declaration of war but something more significant in my life than the inevitable conflict to come.

It all began to snowball one Sunday afternoon, when I found myself in a friend’s house. How or why I was there I’ve completely forgotten, but one thing sticks in my mind: in the front room there was an upright piano and anything musical had always attracted me. I should add that I played the mouth organ, which hardly entitled me to call myself a musician. Any fool can press a piano key and get a result, and we all do it, but when my friend sat down to play, I listened with awe as he knocked out a popular dance tune. What impressed me more than anything was that he never once looked down at his hands, and without a break in the music he looked towards the door and said, ‘Come in, Arthur.’ Another youth entered, carrying a violin case, which he opened, and after a few tentative tuning notes they segued into ‘The Blue Danube’. Then with more panache they went into a swing version of the same thing. I was transfixed, absolutely spellbound. If only I could play the guitar, we could form a British Hot Club de France. Surely the guitar wasn’t too difficult to learn? I desperately wanted to be a part of the action and before I could stop myself I blurted out that I played the drums, which wasn’t strictly accurate: all I possessed was a pair of drumsticks from my Scout days. The next Sunday afternoon I brought them along. I was the last to arrive and I was introduced to another member of the group, who played the bass, which belonged to his father, who fortunately was in hospital for a month or two. In a short time we were into the first few bars of ‘Red Sails in the Sunset’. I was perched on the arm of the settee, drumming on the seat of a chair, and I’ll tell you something: it wasn’t at all bad—we were definitely in the groove. My friend on the piano had a healthy pile of sheet music and the rest of us busked it.