Jimmy, a small child with jet-black hair, was incredibly strong, a little battler by all account, a child who let nothing stand in the way of him doing anything he chose to do. It was a good trait to have, considering the fact that his family were so poor. You see, his father had died when Jimmy was only four years of age, leaving his wife, their poor bedraggled mother, to rear him, his two brothers (Bill and Jack) and two sisters (Doreen and Kathleen) on her own. In those days, in the nineteen twenties, and especially so in the impoverished northeast of England, life was incredibly hard, and there was no social welfare system to fall back on, to help you out. It was survival of the fittest, nothing more nothing less. However, she tried, their poor mother tried so valiantly to eke out an existence, a decent life for herself and her five children, to give them some semblance of the carefree, happy childhood all children so truly deserve.
Although his father had died when he was so young, Jimmy insisted that he remembered him quite clearly, and nothing gave him more pleasure than listening to his mother recounting stories about him. Each evening, tucked up snugly in bed, Jimmy listened to the stories. “Mum, tell me the story about the time dad found that piece of coal, you know, the one that was a big as a house.” This was Jimmy’s favourite story, he must have heard it a hundred times, but he never tired of it.
Smiling, his mother replied, “Okay, but only if you promise to go asleep as soon as it’s over.”
“Yes, yes, I promise,” said Jimmy, settling deeper into his bed, ready for his all-time favourite story.
Staring down at her son, the mother saw her beloved husband’s eyes staring up at her. Wiping away a tear, she began her story…
When the story was finished, his mother leant over and kissed Jimmy on the forehead (he was already fast asleep), then glancing across two her other sons, she saw that they too were sound asleep. After blowing each of them a kiss, she made her way out of the room, pulling the door closed behind her.
Whispering goodnight to her daughters who were sharing a bed in the other room, their mother listened but received no reply, for they also were fast asleep. Shuffling down the old rickety old stairs, to the front door, the mother slid the two bolts into their night-time positions, then returning upstairs she silently entered the girl’s room where she climbed into bed – alone. Crying, missing her husband so desperately, she also fell fast asleep.
Next morning, Jimmy, as per usual, was first to awaken. It was five-thirty. After donning his clothes and having the quickest of washes in the wash-handbasin on the tallboy he wiped his face dry in the towel, then creeping silently across the landing, he made his way downstairs to the kitchen. Pantry would better describe it, for it was TINY. Jimmy, however, had no idea that it was so small, but then why would he? Everyone’s kitchen was of the same size, where he lived. It was normal, quite normal as far as he was concerned, and that was that.
After pouring some oat flakes into a bowl, a cracked and ever so chipped affair, Jimmy poured in a smidgeon of milk. Then grabbing hold of his spoon, mixing the two together, he scoffed the lot back with such gusto one would have been forgiven for thinking he hadn’t eaten for a week.
The breakfast being over, Jimmy donned his duffle coat and gloves, picked up the coal bucket and shovel and then headed for the front door. Sliding the bolts back to their daytime positions, he opened the door and stepped out into the darkness of the early morning. It was cold and bleak outside; a weak, waning moon hung low in the sky and a coating of frost covered everything in sight. Shivering, pulling up the hood of his coat, Jimmy made his way down the lonely, cobbled street…
Although Jimmy tried so hard to be quiet, not to awaken anyone in the small, terraced houses bordering the street, his old galvanised bucket every now and again let out a bang and a clatter so loud he feared it would awaken them all. It, the bucket, like everything his mother owned, was well past its best. Stilling the bucket with a gloved hand after it made a particularly loud clatter, Jimmy felt the cold of its metal leech its way through his warm woollen gloves. He shivered.
“Hello, Jim,” a cheery voice called out from the darkness.
Scanning the street, squinting, trying to see through the watery moonlight, Jimmy saw a shape, the outline of another child. It was Eric, his best friend Eric. “Oh, it’s you,” he said, gloomily.
“What’s up, Jim?” Eric asked, sensing his mood.
“Oh, it’s nothing really…”
Placing his own bucket onto the timeworn old cobbles (it banged and clattered so loudly Jimmy feared everyone in the entire street might be awoken) and folding his arms, Eric said, “Come on, out with it, Jim.”
Pointing to his bucket, Jimmy said, “Pick it up, Eric, I’ll explain along the way.”
As the two friends made their way down the desolate street (taking special care that their buckets remained silent), Jimmy began speaking, he said, “Eric, you know, I won’t always be poor… We – all of us won’t always be poor…”
Smiling, Eric replied, “I know that, Jim. There’s a rainbow out there, somewhere, with a pot of gold at the end of it. And our names are inscribed upon it.”
“I mean it, Eric, I really do!” Jimmy insisted, thinking his best friend was not taking him at all seriously.
“I know you do, Jim,” he replied, “I really do.”
Stopping alongside a fence bordering the street they had just entered Eric leant down and tugged at its base. It lifted. “Go on,” he said, “You first. I’ll pass the buckets in to you.”
Being so small, Jimmy passed easily under the fence. Eric, however, was another matter. “Here you are, Jim,” he said, passing the buckets in through the opening. Then crouching down, on all fours, he began crawling under the fence, but he got stuck. “Are you holding it up all the way?” he called out in frustration, from his undignified position below.
“Yes, I am.”
“Then why am I stuck?”
“Because you’re too big,” Jimmy replied. “I told you only last week that this would happen. “You are growing too fast. The hole is too small for you.”
Huffing and puffing Eric would hear none of it, and he tried ever harder to pass through the small space below. Rip! Accompanied by the sound of fabric ripping, Eric suddenly passed through the gap.
“There, I told you I could do it,” he said triumphantly, trying to forget about the sound he had just heard. “Come on,” he said, “we have a good way to go, yet.” With that he began making his way down the steep incline ahead of them.
From behind, Jimmy’s eyes were drawn to the very real consequence of the ripping sound, a sound they had both heard whether Eric admitted it or not – a tear in the seat of his pants. “Eric, wait!” he called out, but Eric, being Eric, would hear none of it, and he barrelled on, slipping and sliding his way down the steep, slippery slope.
By the time Jimmy had caught up with him, at the bottom of the slope, his best friend had come to realise the errors of his ways. Feeling acutely embarrassed, Eric asked, “You wouldn’t happen to have a pin handy, would you?”
Laughing, Jimmy rummaged through his duffle coat pockets, to see if he had anything resembling a pin. Withdrawing his gloved hand, he sorted through the various items spread out upon it. There was a pencil, a rubber, two blackjack sweets, a half-eaten sherbet fountain, a three-quarters licked gobstopper, his prized ten-in-one scope – and a pin. It was Eric’s lucky day. “Here you are,” he said, separating the pin from a sticky bit of something that might have once been a piece of liquorice.
With the problem of the torn trousers thus sorted, the two Friends began the task they were actually there for – to collect coal, the coal their families so desperately needed to keep warm. You see, from the moment they had passed under the fence, they had been within the grounds of the local coalmine. Now, well within it, at the base of the largest of its many slagheaps, where the best bits of coal tended to fall and collect, silence and subterfuge were paramount. The only problem, however, was that the owners of the mine also knew this, and men, guards, patrolled it day and night, to stop the likes of them taking even the smallest piece of coal.
This was a bone of contention for Jimmy, because the slagheaps were not actually used, they were just left to grow bigger and bigger – like forever, and in his young mind he could see no problem, no problem at all, in gathering the pieces of coal that collected there.
“Hurry up, Eric” said Jimmy, when had almost filled his bucket with coal.
“I’m going as fast as I can,” Eric replied. Then stopping, cocking his head to one side, he said, “Did you hear something?”
With a lump of shiny black coal in his hand, Jimmy froze with fright, but he heard nothing, not a single thing. Finally, picking up enough courage to speak, he said, “No one’s there. It must have been a bit of coal falling down the slagheap.” Relieved, the two boys resumed their coal collecting duties…
When their buckets were full, Jimmy and Eric began the long climb back up the slippery slagheap. It would have been a hard enough task for a full-grown adult to do at the best of times, but for two small children, encumbered by buckets filled to the top with coal, it was a slow and painfully torturous process. With the bitter cold cutting deep into their aching fingers, and with their toes completely numb it was going to be a very slow climb indeed.
After climbing for over thirty minutes, the two boys were barely thirty feet higher from where they had started. It was beginning to get bright; the weak, watery moon was gone, replaced by a golden globe rising slowly above the eastern horizon. Although its rays were pitifully weak, they were warm enough to begin melting the frost. This was a double-edged sword, for although the boys fingers and toes were beginning to warm up nicely, so too was the slagheap, and the more it warmed up the slippier it got.
Then he heard it again; Eric heard the same sound as before. Looking over his shoulder, down to the base of the slagheap, he saw a guard, a guard who was staring up at them.
“Oi! You two!” the man hollered. “What do you think you’re doing?”
The two boys stopped dead in their tracks, hoping they might disappear, blend into the slagheap – but they did not.
Shouting up again, the guard said, “You’re trespassing! You do know that? And trespassers get shot!”
Well, that certainly did it, on hearing those words Jimmy and Eric dropped their buckets, coal and all, and scorched their way up the remainder of the slagheap so fast the guard was left speechless. He was also left incredibly hurt when the two buckets, tumbling down the slagheap, smashed into him, knocking him for six.
Eric had no problem passing under the fence, this time. He shot through the gap as if he had lost several pounds in weight, and he kept on running, way ahead of Jimmy, heading for home. It was only when he had entered the relative safety of their street did he allow himself the luxury of slowing down, allowing his friend the chance to catch up.
Puffing and panting, the two boys struggled to catch their breath. People were beginning to stir now, people with questioning faces, wondering why they were covered in coal dust – but without any coal.
Embarrassed that they had returned empty-handed, Eric suggested, “Same time tomorrow?”
Smiling, Jimmy replied, “You bet!”
“But we have no buckets!” Eric bemoaned.
With a mischievous little grin, Jimmy replied, “That guard has another thing coming if he thinks he’s keeping my bucket! Don’t worry, Eric, we’ll get our buckets back, and he’ll get his comeuppance! See you tomorrow, bye.”
