Ta Voix

“In this Black Country, including West Bromwich, Dudley, Darlaston, Bilston, Wolverhampton and several minor villages, a perpetual twilight reigns during the day, and during the night fires on all sides light up the dark landscape with a fiery glow… From time to time you pass a cluster of deserted roofless cottages of dingiest brick, half swallowed up in sinking pits or inclining to every point of the compass, while the timbers point up like the ribs of a half decayed corpse. The majority of the natives of this Tartarian region are in full keeping with the scenery — savages, without the grace of savages,
coarsely clad in filthy garments, with no change on weekends or Sundays, they converse in a language belarded with fearful and disgusting oaths, which can scarcely be recognised as the same as that of civilized England.”

— Samuel Sidney, Rides on Railway. 1851

The turkey looks like it’s been torn inside out, gutted in the candlelight. There’s something primal here, something old hanging in the air; the ripped meat gone cold, bread soaked in gravy, wine stains on the tablecloth, and the smoke of dying candles.

Most people are watching Frozen in the other room, taking a break before someone cracks open a board game. Granny and Mum have gone to find some brandy, and it’s just me and Grandad at the table. He still has his hair, and he’s combed it today. Out of the usual paint-stained overalls and work boots, his collar is tight around his nutbrown neck. A heavy golden watch shines dark around his broad wrist, and a signet ring glints on his right hand – his father’s ring. As far back as I can remember, he’s always worn that ring, every day, but the watch is for special occasions.

‘Is it still special for you?’ I ask. He looks at me. ‘Christmas, I mean.’

His eyes move slowly, from mine, to the shredded turkey. ‘Not like it used to. It’s the food, more than anything. Back in the old days, it was a lot of money. We ate better on Christmas than any other day. Even though we kept some animals, meat was still hard to come by. All through January, Nanny Stanton would cook up the odds and ends – chitlins – cause it was all we could afford. She’d even cook the trotters, boil ‘em all day in a pot so they were soft. The kitchen would stink.’

‘Trotters? What did they taste like?’

‘Not as bad as tongue.’

We sit in silence for a long moment. I pour myself another drink, and he stares into space.

‘How about the presents? That must have changed a lot.’

‘You only ever got one. Well, one, then satsumas, bit of chocolate, but only one present.’

‘Do you remember what you got?’

He’s silent again. ‘I remember one year,’ he says, ‘I must have been seven or eight. I really wanted a train set. The Flying Scotsman. It was red and green.’

‘You get it?’

‘She got me a saxophone. Wanted me to be able to play down the working men’s club on a Friday night.’ I laugh. Grandad collects train memorabilia, he’s spent a fortune on it. I wonder why.

Silence falls once more, and it’s unbearable. We’ve always been close, but I don’t think I’ve ever sat with him like this and really asked about his childhood. Now I have, I can’t stop. I want to know more, I need to. I have to understand the things I’ve read about in dried ink on the graffiti scrawled pages of school books, or seen in BBC Four documentaries, with black and white film and accentless narrators. It’s all sprawling statistics, child malnutrition, declining industries and employment figures, and sweeping statements about hardships and misery, but it’s in the little things where life is made. Something feels lost. The colour drained from their full, happy lives. Sunday dinners, Christmas presents, vegetable patches.

‘You kept animals? When was this?’ He’s quiet again, I almost don’t think he’s gonna answer, but he does. This time he doesn’t stop.

‘They must have moved in late 1944, or ‘45, ‘cause I was born in a house on the other side of Bilston. Mum, you remember my mum, she married me’ dad Harold in 1933, at St Leonard’s Church, then they lived up the road from there with some cousins, but when I was born, they went out to Stowheath Lane. It was a lovely house, end of terrace, four-bed.’

‘Just for the three of you?’

‘No, we ended up living with Mercy, Aunty Rose’s daughter. She’d moved out to Australia with her husband, that Tommy Kilford, before the war, but they’d been burnt out. Or flooded? Poor sods came back with nothing. I tell you, even though it was a big house, it was cramped with seven of us. Us three, Mercy and Tommy, and their two.’

‘Must have been nice though? Mates in the house. You play with them much?’

‘No, they had some problem. They weren’t allowed out.’

‘Oh?’

‘Genetic. Didn’t know what to call it back in them days. They weren’t exactly close family, there were so many of us, half of Bilston really, but we had the extra room, so we took ‘em in. That’s just how it was, you look out for family.’

‘Right.’

I thought he was done, but he carried on. ‘I used to play with Roy Potts from across the road, well, until he ended up in the hospital.’

‘Hospital! What happened?’

‘I shot him, in the head.’

‘What?’

‘There was this rough ground behind the house, like a bomb dump, but it was covered in all sorts. Rubbish, slag from the steelworks me’ dad worked in, lots of scrap metal. We’d play with bows and arrows out there, and one day he got hit, but it didn’t come out.’

‘What happened?’

‘Well, he went home, and when his mother saw him, she took him to hospital, on the bus to Wolverhampton. With an arrow sticking out the back of his ‘head.’

‘You made that up!’

He laughs, looks away again. We’re the only ones left in the kitchen now, the TV’s off, and there’s chatter from the next room, but neither of us move. This time, I know he’s gonna continue.

‘You got to remember, this was at the end of the terrace, so it had a big garden, and the war was still on, so it was full of vegetables,
and Dad kept a few pigs, and some chickens, down by the out-buildings.’

‘Outbuildings?’

‘Yeah. A toilet, and a washhouse, and a coalhole, with a copper over it. Was always freezing, goin’ to the toilet, and Mercy and me’ mum had so much washing to do out there, so me’ dad got his cousin, George Pritchard, and that Tommy Kilford, and they joined ‘em all together. Made an outside toilet and a washhouse. Had to do the whole job at the weekend, cause they all had work. Dad worked in the steelworks with George.’

‘What about Tommy? Didn’t he work with your dad in the Steelworks?’

‘No, but he was a right grafter that Tommy Kilford, worked five jobs, did everything. They don’t make grafters like they did in ‘em days. Shame really, they spent ages working on that house, me’ mum was really proud of it, but they knocked ‘em all down. The entire street. Slum clearance.’

They’re talking about presents in the other room. Uncle Ian always gives us records; his music taste is famous. And so, the endless debate goes on, whose sound is the best, whose is worst, who’s going to love this and that. One of the best things about Christmas really: music.

‘You ever learn to play?’

‘Play?’

‘The saxophone? You ever learn to play?’

He laughs, his eyes crinkle up around the edges. ‘No. It ended up goin’ to me’ mums’ cousin, George Morgan. He used to play piano down the working men’s club with Auntie Lil on a Friday night. Well step-auntie.’

‘There’s so many of you, I can’t keep the names straight.’

‘Granny used to say that. Her dad was a Methodist, war hero, and her Grandad was the Mayor of Wolverhampton. She used to say my family was massive, and they were always down the pub, every night. I think that all came as a bit of a shock.’

It’ll be time to go back through soon; everyone’s waiting for us. His ring catches the lights of the tree, and holds them there, like coals in a dying forge. I wear mine on the left – eighteenth birthday present. I wonder why, for a moment, they who ate chitlins and pig trotters, lived in houses deemed unfit for living in, wore gold rings? Family tradition, I suppose. It adds a flash of colour.

‘Things haven’t changed that much then.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I’m always down the pub on a Friday night.’

He laughs again, and suddenly I see it. The ash from dead forges seems to glow once more, dotting the black and white film with flashing sparks of gold. Lives that, to me, were once lived in the dark, deemed savage and miserable, have been pulled back into fullness, light, warmth and colour. For a long moment, while we sit and drink around the Christmas table, it really doesn’t feel so distant.