Faded Dreams (33 page)

   ‘Aye, I
do
remember that, Billy…and all the times I took me little “second-man” with me to Liverpool Docks,'  his face lit up, momentarily. ‘Them were the days weren’t they? But let’s not forget them other times… times when I’ve been a rotten dad. I’m asking ya to forgive me now Billy… afore it’s too late.’

‘There’s nothing to forgive dad, and let’s have no more talk about you not being a proper dad.

You’re the best dad in the world, always
have
been and always will be.' Completely at ease, Bill took the only father he had ever known in his arms.

   'We might have been poor but you made sure we wanted for nothing,' he went on. 'You put clothes on our backs and made sure we had plenty to eat, even gave us the food off your plate. And what about all them toys you made us? And all them times you made us laugh,’ he caught his breath in a sob, ‘I’ve…I’ve always loved you, dad… always will.’  

   Their tears mingled unashamedly until they could cry no more and by the time the eavesdropping Florrie walked in, her eyes red and puffy, their conversation had turned to football and the successes and failures of The Rovers. Joe took a pot of steaming tea from her. She paused and gently touched his face.

   ‘
My
Florrie,’ he murmured, reaching for her hand and pressing it to his lips

   ‘
My
Joe,’ she replied, stroking his wispy hair.

   Bill lowered his eyes not wishing to intrude on this precious moment and wondered how many times they had uttered that same intimate loving exchange over the years.  The tenderness and devotion flowing from one to the other answered, once and for all, his questions about their turbulent marriage. For all its ups and downs it had been something quite exceptional.

   On Monday morning with only the briefest of goodbyes, he left for London. Joe watched his beloved Florrie bustling about the room running her duster over the furniture and said he didn’t think he’d see Bill again.

   ‘Of course you will, don’t talk so damned daft.’ She sat down on the side of the bed, doing her best to sound cheerful. ‘He’ll be back again next weekend and he says he’ll be able to stay a bit longer then.’

   ‘I’ll not be here next weekend, I’ll be in yon bone-yard with me mam and dada afore then. I
mean
it Florrie… shuddup interrupting...I’ve tried to talk to our Billy…to explain a thing or two about how I’ve treated him...he’s a grand lad, cock…he’ll make sure you’re all right when I’m dead an’ gone.’

   ‘Now don’t start all that again, you’re not going anywhere for a long time yet, you’re like a cat with nine lives.’

   ‘Just shut your mouth love and listen to me,
will
ya? It’s hard enough trying to talk as it is,’ he stopped, and breathed as deeply as he was able, his eyes unnaturally glassy, his voice laboured. ‘I’ve been a bad sod all-round, Florrie… God knows you’ve deserved better. I’ve made every bugger’s life a misery one way or another…even your mam who were good to us… an’ it’s no good you denying it.’  

   ‘Joe there’s no need for all this and anyway, I’ve made enough mistakes of my own, but it doesn’t do either of us any good to fetch them up now. We’ve stuck together through thick and thin… haven’t we?’ She waited till he nodded. ‘Well then… that’s all that counts.’

   Ravaged by disease and only too aware that he had used up his ninth life, Joe still had things that had to be said if only he could find the right words. He fixed his eyes on her worn but still bonny face, the tip of his tongue brushing across his dry lips to cut short a solitary tear’s lonely journey to his chin.  

   ‘Florrie… about our Billy?’ He couldn’t continue but Florrie knew him so well he didn’t have to.

   ‘About…our… Billy,’ she repeated his words slowly but deliberately, ‘our Billy’s been your lad since the day he were born. After all these years can’t you see he’s a
Pomfret
just like you, you silly old thing?’

   She stroked his thin white hands, gently at first and then rubbing them vigorously in her mounting distress till he winced forcing her to relax her grip.

   Seeing him in all his frailty she was unexpectedly conscious of her own power. And yet perhaps this was how it had always been, perhaps she had always been the stronger one, protecting and reassuring not only her children but her temperamentally fragile husband  too. Perhaps it was only her resilience that had held the family together through thick and thin.

   ‘Our Billy were
always
your lad and always will be. He thinks the world of you, same as all of us, Joe.’

   ‘All as I can say Florrie is this...you’ve always bin me sweetheart,' he clamped his lips tightly as his tired watery eyes overflowed. 'I’ve never loved any girl like I’ve loved you....I...I don’t want to leave ya.’

   ‘Well there’s never been any other fella for me and never will be,’ she bent to kiss him, ‘I’ve always loved you and it’s just like you’ve always said… there’ll never be
another
Joe.’

   ‘Nay there won’t, will there?’ A contented smile crept across his face, ‘I think I’m ready for a sleep now, cock…go and have a sit-down for yourself.’ He closed his eyes for the last time.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

A Week Later…The Final Curtain.

   ‘I don’t care if you bury me or burn me.' All through his life Joe had joked about his funeral. 'You can even kick me around till you lose me for all I care,' he’d laugh, 'that’ll not cost you as much money.' 

   But his last 'performance' was so extraordinary that everyone said it was just a pity he wasn’t there in person to appreciate it or he would have been selling tickets.

   As if to reward his own enthusiastic attendance at the funerals of every Tom Dick and Harry in Blackburn, the church was crammed with every Tom, Dick and Harry who had out-lived him.

   After an unexplained wait of thirty minutes with endless verses of 'Abide With Me'  there followed anxious moments for the mou
r
ners during the procession down the aisle. One pall-bearer, head and shoulders shorter than the rest, buckled under more than his fair share of Joe Pomfret while those at the ends of the pews waited for poor old Joe to land on top of them. At last the coffin arrived at the altar the vicar addressed his flock.

   ‘Welcome to St Michael’s on this sad occasion.  I apologise for the delay which I am told was unavoidable due to the hearse running out of petrol on Penny Street. There was the subsequent wait for a replacement vehicle but now that Joseph  has arrived, we can begin.’

   How on earth had the vicar kept his face straight? Oblivious to the fact that half the mourners were struggling to hide their amusement, he started the service with that dreary intonation that priests  reserve for such events.

   But with Joe determined to make them laugh right up to the end, the congregation was finding it hard to concentrate. There were the whispered comments.

   ‘Just fancy!  Joe Pomfret, changing hearses halfway up Penny Street.'

   'It’s a wonder he didn’t stop off at The Waterloo for his last pint!

   Even Florrie in the black limousine behind the hearse had muttered, ‘I knew this’d happen. He could never be on time for anything. I used to tell him he’d be late for his own funeral.’

   People were still tittering when it came to the hymn. Joe would certainly have had something to say about the incompetent organist searching for the notes of Fight The Good Fight With All Your Might,  then fighting with all his might
to pound them in the same order, and at the same speed that they wanted to sing them.

   Above the caterwauling it was easy to imagine Joe’s cheery voice, ‘
Well, bugger me, what a din!
Sounds like the cat's got its tail fast in the organ. And is this the best yer can do for Joe, Joe, The Sheik of Cow-heel Row?'

   They could almost hear his laughter, soaring, reverberating in the rafters, drowning out  the sombre sound of the sermon.

   He might have been disappointed that his final appearance did not warrant a boiled ham tea at The Co-op but Florrie had better things to do with her money. The mourners were invited back home to share a variety of refreshments and a variety of memories, sharp enough and funny enough to dampen the sadness. The grief would come later but for now Joe’s presence was strong enough to help them through.

   There were times when he had been a tyrant, a relentless erupting volcano but everyone, except maybe Betty, had long since forgiven him. Today they remembered his generous nature, his sense of fun and his lopsided observations of the world about him that had entertained them for hours on end.

   ‘Joe and my husband  Fred, were like brothers,’ said Hettie, her eyes misting over, ‘they were just like
that,’
she crossed one finger tightly over the other to denote their closeness. ‘We’ve had some good times, me and Florrie, and Joe and Fred. Joe’d have done anything for Fred, he’d have give him his last penny.’

   ‘Joe would have give
anybody
his last penny,’ his brother-in-law, Walt, joined in. ‘He were a right character. Never a dull moment with Joe around, especially when he’d had a pint or two. Do you remember when me and Nellie got married and he ended up in jail for fighting at the wedding reception? What were all
that
about?'

   ‘Oh don’t fetch
that
up,’ Nellie’s stony stare was enough to silence her husband. Nobody wanted reminding of her brother flirting with another man’s wife.

   Betty changed the subject. ‘I remember when he used to dress up in that top hat and black frock coat and…’

   ‘Yes,’ Bill interrupted, ‘he’d tell us it was a real lion-tamer’s weskit with real lion-tamer’s blood on it…’

   ‘He’d make us and our friends come closer to have a look at the lion-tamer’s blood,’ Ellen joined in, ‘we used to be frightened to death even though we never saw any blood.’

   She nudged Nellie’s arm and asked, ‘Was it really true, Auntie Nellie, was he
really
an assistant lion-tamer at The Tower Circus?’

   Nellie didn’t say yes and she didn’t say no, but everyone realised the truth and recognised the lie. They were still chuckling about Joe as the assistant  lion-tamer when Betty asked if her aunts had ever had the chance to meet their Gypsy ancestor, Great-granny Feasby who had told fortunes on Epsom Downs, according to their dad. Nellie and Annie exchanged
glances and stifled their amusement; this was one of their brother’s tall stories that must be laid to rest with him.

   ‘To be honest, love,’ Annie said, ‘Great-granny Feasby was a weaver… nothing more. She never went out of Blackburn in her life, unless you call “Mill Hill” out of Blackburn and I don’t reckon there were much call for fortune-tellers on Mill Hill Railway Station!’

   More laughter, except from Florrie who had gone into a state of shock and disbelief.  All of this was unreal. Hettie was here… talking about old times… helping her brew tea for everybody. Everybody was here… everybody except Joe. Where was he? She looked around the room half-expecting to see him. Had she buried him just an hour ago? Why were folk laughing and joking and her Joe not yet cold in his grave?

   The mourners spilled into the backyard for a glimpse inside his shed, an Aladdin’s Cave where the antiques he had scrimped and saved for lay chipped, scratched and rusted beneath piles of garden paraphernalia. 

   The pottery King Charles Spaniels that had spent years with their noses stuck in the air observing the family’s trials and tribulations from the top of the piano, now had their noses stuck in a useless, wheel-less, wheelbarrow.

   There was the creamy-white statuette of the once-elegant Prince Albert  now with his toes  missing, lying on top of an equally pale stony-faced and clearly not amused, Queen Victoria.

   On a ledge stood two battered photographs. Bill dusted them off with the back of his sleeve, removed their broken frames and glass  and put them in his inside-pocket for later. There was more to see.

   His father’s illegally acquired treasures, spirited away in the boot of his car, were balanced in a precarious pile - traffic cones, street-name signs, red warning lights that had once stood proudly on guard at road-workings. Bricks and timber plundered from nearby building sites in the feint light of approaching dawn and carted in a squeaky barrow as he exchanged noisy greetings with unwilling witnesses - the milkman or the postman.

   Against the wall lay a one-arm-bandit - or fruit machine - unscrewed from the lobby of a pub just outside Southport during a darts team ‘Ride Off’. That was the time he’d arrived home with his leg in plaster of Paris after a game of beach football and had no wages for the next six weeks.

   Then there was the deckchair he'd smuggled aboard a different charabanc on a different day and propped against crates of empty beer bottles for the homeward journey. There had been shouts of, “Good lad, Joe!” and “By God he’s a daft bugger, is that Joe Pom!”  Yes, they were always sure of a good laugh with Joe Pomfret,  and Joe willingly basked in their admiration.