大象传媒

My parents and I lived on the outskirts of a northern mill town in Lancashire. My daily journey to school consisted of a tram ride that took me within a quarter mile of the town's centre, a trip of nearly three miles. Each day my mother gave me the return fare of three (old) pence, one-and-a-half pence each way. I would be eight at the time, in 1940.
The trams kept to the same route, with the same crew of driver and conductor. One of the trams that ran this line had, for its conductor, an elderly gent who had been called out of retirement as the younger employees had been conscripted. His frame, though tall, bordered the skeletal.
His winter attire, abandoning all pretence at uniform, comprised of a pair of mitts, his copper-blackened fingers protruding like withered bindweed, a long, tasselled scarf, clogs designed for hill farming, topped by an ill-fitting Balaclava helmet that swung from under his peaked cap as if it were chain mail. The helmet's aperture framed a pinched, aquiline nose that supported a steadfast dewdrop, quivering to the rhythm of the tram's bogies. A mesmerising Sword of Damocles to a sitting fare.
The school dinners of unremitting pom (ersatz potato), and for pudding, tepid sago, were hardly satisfying. Often I would be driven to spending my return fare on a teacake or two unwashed carrots at the local shops in my dinner-hour to partially placate my hunger.
Should the weather be fine after school at four o'clock, having squandered my return fare, I would run home, my clogs echoing off the terraces. Sometimes my run would be delayed if the siren sounded and I would shelter under a railway bridge that spanned the road. I recall shrapnel from the AA guns, the shards, still hot, spinning over the granite sets to steam in the wet gutter.
But if the weather was wet, which it always seemed to be, I would board a tram and hide under the stairs whilst the conductor was upstairs collecting his fares. Eventually I would be found and put off, but at least I had reduced my run.
My main adversary was Old Balaclava. We came to know each other well. Never failing to check under the stairs, he would pitch me off at the next stop. Once I played my ace card, an Irish penny, King George V face up, but he turned it over to expose the harp; off I went into the rain again, penny impounded. I could never win against Old Balaclava.
One morning, as my parents prepared to go to the mill, and I to school, my mother broke the news that she had heard that Old Balaclava had been killed last night, with his driver. A bomb had landed beside their empty tram as it approached the town's terminus, destroying the tram, leaving the pair full of glass.
''Oh, good'', I blurted, thinking of a new life of prodigality with impunity. A resounding whack around my ear quickly exploded that invention.
I am now, perhaps, older than Old Balaclava was at his sudden demise, but when I think of it, I am still regretful at that unfeeling outburst toward an old man doing his bit.

Is there
a poppy waiting
to pair
with a pin,
for him?

John Brian Leaver
Whalley
Lancashire.

漏 Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.