Gerry Rawlings Remembers

Jamie Hyde sits on a crate in the alley behind an aging bakery. It’s ten of the morning, late afternoon by a baker’s clock. The sun throws a slanting light across the bricks on the far wall of the alley. The wheelie bins are rank and the flags smell of piss.

Jamie cuts a cheroot to match the length of his tea break and stows the other half in his dungarees. He lights up and blows smoke at the murky blue. The muppets might whinge about the reek of a cigar, but it smells like rosewater compared to bum piss or sour bins.

He himself has nothing to complain over. His shift is winding down with nary a mixer nor oven taking a piss. No small thing, since there weren’t a piece of kit in the place younger than himself. The bakery is a flour-dusted slice of the past and Jamie keeps the ancient thing running.

Without his hand on the spanners, the old bakery would wheeze to a standstill inside of a fortnight. The boss lady, Missus Roberts, allus says she’s lucky to have him, but that’s true turned about.

Rising in the dark for wages beats being on the dole. He’ll never be rich, but who asked to be? The pay is enough for a little flat, plenty of tucker, and a pint down’t pub. Life is grand.

His dead father would’ve sneered at the idea of a Missus being the gaffer. After the Tories closed the Newmarket pit, he’d sneered at most everything, beginning with Thatcher and ending with Jamie’s old mum. By the time he come around to Jamie, the old man had nothing left to give save the back of his hand.

Jamie was born two years after pit closed. When he was just a sprog, he watched his dad shuffle off to the queues. The dole line scared the boy, but his father scared him more.

Mum told him the pit closing up were like switching on a hoover. It sucked the love right out of those poor men. Jamie doubted there was much love in the old man to begin with. So the boy had slunk about like a ghost, keeping well out of reach of the old man’s swing.

From the time he could first grip a spanner, Jamie learned to tear apart any machine he got his mitts on, no matter how old. Soon enough, he was putting them back together again. Later came trade school. What school didn’t teach, he learned himself.

Now Jamie is a few years shy of forty, the age his dad was when pit closed. Mum and dad dead, and Jamie the last of the family. The black lung took his father and coffin nails the both of them. That’s why Jamie sticks with the little cigars, his compromise with the Grim Reaper.

Leaning back, Jamie sends another cloud of smoke drifting skyward above the stinking alley. He watches it fade away, hears a murmured voice, then the sound of leather scraping over the flags.

An old man is walking up the alley. An over-sized mac floats around his spare frame. The slanting sun cuts him in half at his weskit. A nimbus of wild hair gleams silver above while his trousers are in shadow below.

Jamie recognizes the old fella. The lads call him Gerry the Gent. Totally mental, but not a bad fella. Gerry isn’t one of the tramps who piss everywheres. He don’t dive the bins and throw shite all over for Jamie to clean up.

The old man draws closer and Jamie can make out some of the git’s word salad.

“That’s the thing now, more than any man can know, nor any woman. The good woman and child. How can we know what can’t be known? Aye, cannot reckon the depth of it. Like the sea it is, dark and deep. More than a man, more than a woman…”

The old man stops in the center of the alley and his words drain away. He stands in profile to Jamie, still as a statue.

“Ey up Gerry! Not seen you in ages. How you been keeping?”

The old man turns to Jamie’s voice, as if he hasn’t seen the younger man sitting there plain as a wart. Gerry’s grey eyes blink and search about, as if trying to pin down a disembodied ghost.

He’s a tidy fella for a mental case. Gaunt cheeks shaved clean, no piss stains down his trousers. The lace-up brogues peeking out under his cuffs have a bit of polish on them. Might be off his nut, but he keeps up appearances.

“Are ya peckish, Gerry? Only I’ve got a few bits haven’t made the grade. It’s jelly donuts today if you’ve a fancy.”

He reaches down, fishes up a brown bag, and holds it out. Circles of fry oil have soaked through the rough paper. The old man’s eyes snap to the proffered sack.

“Jelly donuts, jelly donuts. Call ’em Bismarcks in the colonies. Bismarck, crafty old bastard he was. Goaded Napoleon Three into a stupid war, took the Frogs apart in six months. Franco-Prussian war they called it. Rout is what it was. I’m fond of jelly donuts.”

Jamie is so surprised he nearly loses his grip on the bag. Old Gerry reaches out a bony hand and plucks it away. For just a tick, he smiles at Jamie, his eyes clear and bright. Then those grey eyes cloud over and he turns away. Holding the greasy bag away from his kit, the old man shuffles off without another word.

 * * *

The lunch-and-a-pint crowd have thinned to nothing by the time Jamie steps into the Nags Head. The barstools are empty save for a few of the regular blokes.

Cliff Knowles is behind the bar, taking up a fair bit of space. Always a good trencherman, seven decades have left him portly and bald. The old pubman spots Jamie and slaps two meaty palms to the bar. Jamie slides onto his regular perch and sets a pastry box atop the well-worn bartop.

“Well now, if isn’t the devil himself, come to tempt a poor fat man. How ya keeping, Lad?”

“Like Iron Maggie’s bones, the bitch. Yourself?”

“Champion, lad. Now tell us wot the devil’s packed in’t lovely box.”

“Victoria sponge. Bit squashed at the edges. You don’t have to eat it.”

“The devil lies! Course I have to eat it. Give over.”

The big man’s fingers flip open the box, revealing disks of golden cake stacked one atop the other.

“Look at that. The workingman enjoys wot the posh cast aside. That’s a beauty, that is. Two pints worth or I’m a thin man.”

He turns and draws a pint of bitter, spins a coaster to the bar, and lands the pint in front of Jamie.

“Cheers, Cliff.”

Jamie draws down a third of the pint and lowers the glass. Jamie’s eyes study the backbar and Cliff studies Jamie.

“You’ve the look of a lad might be cogitating on something. Out with it.”

“What do you know about the Franco-Prussian war?”

The barman’s eyebrows rise. A smile creases his craggy face.

“I see we’re to have some substance in our conversation. Good on ya for brightening an old man’s day. We’d better consult the experts.”

“You mean google it?”

A sneer curls over the barman’s lips. He sweeps out a hand.

“Do ya see a computer anywhere hereabouts? No, you don’t, nor telly neither. Can’t abide the things. Be right back.”

Cliff disappears through a doorway behind the bar. Jamie hears him rummaging about in his cluttered office. He downs another third of the pint before Cliff reappears with a heavy book held open. He plops it on the bar and spins it around for Jamie to read.

“Go on then.”

Jamie looks down at the tome. It’s an Encyclopedia Britannica decades older than himself. He marks the entry with a finger and flips to the title page.

“This is from nineteen fifty-five.”

“So it is. Not much has happened since then and I were alive to see it. Read on.”

Jamie flips back and begins reading. Cliff maintains his station behind the bar. Jamie closes the book, reaches for his pint, and drains it.

“Damn me if the old fella weren’t spot on.”

“You’ve lost me now. Which fella are we talking about?”

“That’s why I come down’t pub. You know all the local blokes. Thought you might know this one.”

Cliff shakes his head and points a thumb at a table across the room.

“It’s Toby you’ll be wanting. He knows every alley rat round about.”

The big man bellows.

“Toby Saunders, a moment of your valuable time, if you please.”

A mound of corduroy and wool rises from a chair and lumbers across the floor. He is more than half as wide as he is tall. An empty pint precedes him, held out like an alms can. He’s speaking before he reaches the bar.

“What are you on about, Mister Knowles?”

“Jamie here is looking for an old fella. Thought you might know him.”

“I might, I might at that. But knowledge is power as they say.”

The barman nods, lips pursed.

“A pint, Toby, and no more. If you’ve got the goods, I may throw in a slice of this sponge.”

Toby smiles, holding out his empty glass.

“Fair all around. Say on, lad.”

Jamie tries to find the thread of the thing, then starts over for the newcomer.

“I’m looking for this bloke comes by the alley back of me bakery. Tall old fella, ’bout my height, great mane of white hair. Goes about talking to himself most of the time, but no harm to anyone. Thing is, he’s clean, not pissed and stinking like t’others.”

Toby takes a long pull on his newly filled pint and gives over to contemplation. He squints at the ceiling, nods his head, a little smile playing at the corner of his fat mouth.

“Ah, for chrissakes, Toby, spit it out.”

“A good slice of the sponge you said, not a stingy little sliver?”

“Aye, you can have the half if you help the lad.”

Toby gives a brisk nod, all business now.

“Right. Our man, does he wear a long mackinaw and one of them old-fashioned waistcoats?”

“That’s him, spot on.”

Toby holds up a cautioning hand.

“Lots of old gents in waistcoats around. Full up to the neck we are with ’em. This bit is important, now. Did ya get a look at this fella’s shoes?”

“That I did. Old lace-up boots like brogues. Even had a bit of polish on them.”

“That’s the clincher, then. Gerry Rawlings is yer man. Has to be.”

Cliff runs a thumb across his jaw and gives Toby a hard look.

“The name pays for the pint, but not the sponge.”

Toby waves a hand.

Right you are, Cliff. Just catching me breath. The name you can take to the bank. The rest is more what you might call hearsay.”

“You’re not before the bar just now, Toby, so spare us. Speak it out or you’ll find yourself in t’street with no cake in those fat hands of yours.”

Toby’s face is a mask of sorrow. He turns his mournful eyes to Jamie.

“You’re my witness, lad. Thirty years and more I’ve known this man. You see how he treats us?”

Cliff clears his throat and slides the cake further down the bar.

“You always were hasty, Cliff Knowles.”

Toby turns back to Jamie.

“As I was about t’say, yer man Rawlings worked for the railways. He was a shunter, a fella who moves train cars and such about in the yard. Come from over to Wakefield if the gossip has it right.”

“I’m from Wakefield. Me dad worked the Newmarket pit ’til they shut it down.”

A few heartbeats of silence come and go, the pause after looking at a dead mate in his coffin. It’s Toby that breaks it.

“It were a damn shame what they did, putting all those men out like that. Still, water ’neath the bridge. But tell me now, why the interest in Gerry Rawlings?”

“I don’t rightly know, truth will out. He comes by the alley, same as the drunks. They know I give out cakes and such, the wobbly bits gone wrong in the ovens. But he’s not like the drunks. Clean for one, like I said. And there’s something familiar about him. His eyes for one. It’s like I’ve met him afore, but I know I haven’t. Eerie it is. There’s a word for it.”

“The Frenchies call it déjà vu, lad.”

“That’s it. You wouldn’t know where he stays?”

“I believe I do. It’s them horrible council flats for seniors, off the roundabout by t’old chip shop. Can’t remember the name. Cliff?”

“You mean Golden Lane. It’s horrible alright. Just shoeboxes stuffed with old folks.”

Toby eyes the cake and smacks his plump lips. Cliff laughs and raps a knuckle on the bar top.

“Fair’s fair, then. Just let me get a knife.”

* * *

It’s a week before Jamie sees Gerry Rawlings again. There’s no sun this day, the clouds pressing down low and dark. Jamie is perched on his crate, smoking away his break. He sees the old boy come muttering down the alley, mac wrapped tight against the damp.

“Down to the spires, pressing right down, cuts a man off from everything it does. Dark and deep, sea in the sky, waves breaking over…”

“How are you this morning, Mister Rawlings?”

That stops the old man’s gibbering. He freezes still as a statue.

Gerry stares at Jamie. Those grey eyes, too familiar by half, do not waver.

“Have I got your name right? Gerry Rawlings?”

The smallest nod, just the once.

“Sorry to say it, but I’m empty-handed today.”

No response, not even a flicker.

“Was wondering, Mister Rawlings. Not meaning to pry, but have you a home to go to?”

The old man looks up at the low clouds. His mouth works soundlessly. Then he’s shaking the silver mane of his hair and the words start to flow.

“They offered him a home, old Bonaparte, after they shamed him at Fontainebleau. An island it was for Napoleon, a rock named Elba. A home they called it, a good home, warm climate. Exile is what it was. Bonaparte couldn’t stick it. Couldn’t make it work. Had to leave, had to try again. You’re a good lad, Jamie. You always were.”

And then the old man is gone, stalking away with his mac clutched tight. Jamie watches him go, dumbstruck, smoke curling up from a forgotten cheroot.

* * *

A fortnight passes. Jamie still smokes in the alley, the tramps and bin-divers come and go, but not a murmur of Gerry Rawlings.

Jamie rolls the cheroot between his fingers while he rolls the memory round in his head. Gerry’s words are stuck in his brain, nagging him, like something wedged in your teeth you can’t get at. 

How could Gerry know his name? Jamie tries to sort it, can’t recall introducing himself to the crazy old man. Why would he? It’s not like they ever have what you’d call a normal conversation.

He feels like a terrier worrying a knotted sock. The worry carries through until the end of his shift. Leaving the bakery, he finds himself walking towards the council flats called Golden Lane.

Jamie pokes around the first doorway, reading the names beside a row of dingy call buttons. Some are printed, others scrawled or scratched out altogether. He runs a finger down the list, but there’s not a Rawlings amongst them.

He’s about to try the next entryway when he hears something rattling up the walk. He turns and sees a black woman pushing a trolley. The trolley is loaded down with jugs and buckets. Dustpans and cleaning tools shake and rattle.

The black woman wears a bright headscarf and a long, blue smock. The name Azaria is embroidered above her left breast. The woman is smiling at him, a bright, wide smile. When she speaks, her voice is cheery as a bird.

“Alright, Lad, you looking for someone?"

Jamie straightens up and returns the woman’s smile.

“That I am, a fella named Gerry Rawlings.”

The smile vanishes from the woman’s face.

“Are you family to Mister Rawlings?”

Jamie shakes his head.

“No, just friends in a manner of speaking. I haven’t seen him in a bit, so I thought I’d look him up.”

The woman’s face is solemn.

“What’s your name, Love?”

“It’s Hyde. Jamie to my friends.”

“I’m Azaria, Jamie. I work here as you see. I’m sorry to be the one to tell you, but Mister Rawlings passed away just yesterday.”

Jamie stares at her, his eyes blinking. He’d not really expected to find the old man, much less find him dead.

“How did he die?”

Azaria purses her lips and shakes her head.

“In his sleep, the poor dear. He just slipped away. Happens all the time. Mister Rawlings was a gentleman. Never caused anyone any worry. Sure, he had troubles with his mind, but many of the old ones do.”

A pause passes between the two of them, the awkwardness of death. Then Azaria speaks.

“Jamie, perhaps you can help. We’ve got no next of kin for Mister Rawlings, no family at all. Anything you could tell us we’d be grateful for, I’m sure. For the arrangements, you understand.”

Jamie sees those grey eyes in his mind, hears the last words Gerry spoke to him. He nods his head.

“Aye, if I can do anything, I’d be glad to.”

Azaria’s smile is back, one of relief.

“I’ll just push the trolley inside and then we can go up to his room. Half a tick.”

She pulls a ring of keys from her smock and opens the door. The trolley rattles in protest as she bounces it over the sill and up against a wall. Then the door clicks shut, and she is back beside him.

“It’s just the next over. This way.”

Jamie follows her along a cracked walkway.

“Did you know Mister Rawlings well?”

“Not what you’d call well, exactly. He’d come by the bakery once or twice a week, out back where I take smoke breaks. We’d chat a bit, in a manner of speaking. Talked to himself, mostly.”

“Yes, Mister Rawlings lived in his head most days. Still, he always had a smile for me. Here we are then.”

The key ring clanks as she opens the door.

“Lift’s out, I’m afraid, but it’s just up one.”

Azaria leads them up a dingy stairway and then down a dark hall. She stops before a door. A pasteboard name plate reads Rawlings over the number 210-B. The keys clank again, and Azaria pushes open the door.

The front room is spare and small. The walls are bare. The only furniture is an old club chair with a small table beside it. The chair faces a window that looks out over empty concrete. There’s nothing else, no telly, nothing.

“The bedroom’s in here.”

Through a narrow doorway, Jamie’s eyes take in a boxy little room, a single bed against one wall. The bedcovers are pulled tight and smooth, but not enough to hide the sag that runs down the center.

A few worn suits hang in an open closet, and on the floor he sees Gerry’s old brogues, still sporting their bit of shine.

Azaria’s voice breaks the stillness.

“He didn’t have much, the poor dear.”

There’s a small writing table beside the bed and a single hardback chair. Atop the table is a cheap cardboard scrapbook. Jamie steps to the table and lifts the cover. Then the world shifts and reels, and the floor with it. Jamie sinks into the chair.

“Jamie, you alright, Duck?”

He cannot answer, can barely hear her voice. Eyes stare at him out of the scrapbook, the same grey eyes he sees in the mirror every dark morning. He grows older as the pages turn, a flip book of his childhood.

His own eyes stare up at him and Gerry’s eyes as well, from photo after photo. His younger self squinting into the sun, solemn in a boy’s jumper. Standing on a dock with the sea behind. A graduation photo, ranks of boys and a red circle around his own head. He forces himself to close the book and sags back in the chair.

Azaria is still speaking, and he struggles to hear her words.

“Sorry… bit of a shock. What were you saying?”

“Do you think you could help us then, with the funeral and that?”

Jamie looks down at the book, then at the empty bed. The world swims back into place, clearer and sharper than before. Time ticks forward. He nods his head.

“Aye, that I can. That I can do.”

Marco Etheridge

Marco Etheridge is a Pushcart Prize-nominated writer of prose, an occasional playwright, and a part-time poet. He lives and writes in Vienna, Austria. His scribbles have been featured in many lovely reviews and journals in Canada, Australia, the UK, and the USA. Notable recent credits include Coffin Bell, In Parentheses, The Thieving Magpie, Ligeia Magazine, The First Line, Prime Number Magazine, Dream Noir, The Opiate Magazine, Cobalt Press, Literally Stories, and The Metaworker, amongst many others. Marco’s first volume of collected stories, “Orphaned Lies,” is available worldwide.