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Authors: Chris Stewart
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winding through the woods, had been closed to traffic for months, so we had this idyllic spot entirely to ourselves.
Shivering a little and bored, I followed Jim into the hut. He had made himself a cup of tea, which he was drinking from an enamel mug as he pored over yesterday’s
Sun
.I sensed that he had no desire to chat, lost as he was in the paper. I sat down on the wooden bench and, in the absence of anything more edifying to read, leafed through an older copy of
The Sun
that lay to hand. Jim was engrossed in the sports pages. I have never been interested in sport, of any hue, and I didn’t want Jim to catch me studying the topless models, which seemed to be just about the only other content of the paper, so I devoted my attention to what tiny sensational nuggets of news there were. After five minutes I could have repeated the lot by heart. I fidgeted for a bit and looked around the inside of the hut. In one corner were stacked the shovels, pickaxes and sledgehammers that I supposed would be the tools of my new trade. A gas ring provided the heat for the tea, and a big bucket on a box would have been intended, I supposed, for washing up. But it was still not even seven o’clock, so, to kill some time, I decided to go for a walk. I was sixteen years old, you will remember; there was time enough and more for killing, then.
Out on the bridge site I was confronted with the incomprehensible and arcane paraphernalia of civil engineering: the great bundles of steel rods, drums of unfamiliar oils, machines that smelt of stale diesel and mud, and a monster concrete mixer set amongst its mountainous landscape of sand and gravel. It was hard to make head or tail of it all, so I wandered up the road and into the woods. For half an hour I walked through the dripping woods, delighting in the dappled light on the great limbs of the trees, and all in a green sheen from the canopy of fresh summer leaves above. The beech hangers of the North Downs in Surrey have a special beauty all their own and, on this bright summer morning, it was all mine for the taking. I took it and went back to the hut.
Jim grunted and barely looked up from his paper. A car drew up outside, breaking the silence, and a minute later the door banged and a man burst in, stamping his boots on the wooden floor and sniffing loudly. He was a thin, powerfully built, middle-aged man with a crooked nose, tar-blackened stumps for teeth and a strand of black greasy hair hanging over his forehead. I rose to greet him, proffering my hand. ‘How do you do?’ I began.
He stopped dead; his jaw dropped; he considered me for a long, long moment in amazement and distaste. I looked at Jim in the hope that he might break this impasse by introducing us …
‘Oo’s the cunt, Jim?’ said the man.
I just did not know how to react to a thing like this; it was so far from any of my previous experience. I wondered if I ought perhaps to hit him, but it didn’t seem like a good idea at the time, so I didn’t. I just stood rooted to the ground like, well … a cunt.
In a moment, more cars arrived, more banging of doors, the sound of shouted oaths, and with a thunderous stamping and laughing and coughing and farting, an unruly mob of big, dirty, foul-mouthed men in cement-spattered clothes crashed through the door. The hut was instantly filled with their enormous and oppressive presence as they lumbered and barged about in the narrow space between the tools and the tea table. I shrank a little into my corner. I was learning fast: I’d have been a fool to go for the formal introduction again.
There was big Frank, who drove the lorry; Terry, the toothless foreman carpenter, a past master of the filthy story; incomprehensibly Irish Mervyn, the digger driver; Jim Riley, a sinewy work-worn labourer, all bad temper andunpleasantness; and Scott, who drove the drott. Then there was Belgian Andy, in charge of the mixer, whose entire conversation revolved around sex; and a particularly fat
Shivering a little and bored, I followed Jim into the hut. He had made himself a cup of tea, which he was drinking from an enamel mug as he pored over yesterday’s
Sun
.I sensed that he had no desire to chat, lost as he was in the paper. I sat down on the wooden bench and, in the absence of anything more edifying to read, leafed through an older copy of
The Sun
that lay to hand. Jim was engrossed in the sports pages. I have never been interested in sport, of any hue, and I didn’t want Jim to catch me studying the topless models, which seemed to be just about the only other content of the paper, so I devoted my attention to what tiny sensational nuggets of news there were. After five minutes I could have repeated the lot by heart. I fidgeted for a bit and looked around the inside of the hut. In one corner were stacked the shovels, pickaxes and sledgehammers that I supposed would be the tools of my new trade. A gas ring provided the heat for the tea, and a big bucket on a box would have been intended, I supposed, for washing up. But it was still not even seven o’clock, so, to kill some time, I decided to go for a walk. I was sixteen years old, you will remember; there was time enough and more for killing, then.
Out on the bridge site I was confronted with the incomprehensible and arcane paraphernalia of civil engineering: the great bundles of steel rods, drums of unfamiliar oils, machines that smelt of stale diesel and mud, and a monster concrete mixer set amongst its mountainous landscape of sand and gravel. It was hard to make head or tail of it all, so I wandered up the road and into the woods. For half an hour I walked through the dripping woods, delighting in the dappled light on the great limbs of the trees, and all in a green sheen from the canopy of fresh summer leaves above. The beech hangers of the North Downs in Surrey have a special beauty all their own and, on this bright summer morning, it was all mine for the taking. I took it and went back to the hut.
Jim grunted and barely looked up from his paper. A car drew up outside, breaking the silence, and a minute later the door banged and a man burst in, stamping his boots on the wooden floor and sniffing loudly. He was a thin, powerfully built, middle-aged man with a crooked nose, tar-blackened stumps for teeth and a strand of black greasy hair hanging over his forehead. I rose to greet him, proffering my hand. ‘How do you do?’ I began.
He stopped dead; his jaw dropped; he considered me for a long, long moment in amazement and distaste. I looked at Jim in the hope that he might break this impasse by introducing us …
‘Oo’s the cunt, Jim?’ said the man.
I just did not know how to react to a thing like this; it was so far from any of my previous experience. I wondered if I ought perhaps to hit him, but it didn’t seem like a good idea at the time, so I didn’t. I just stood rooted to the ground like, well … a cunt.
In a moment, more cars arrived, more banging of doors, the sound of shouted oaths, and with a thunderous stamping and laughing and coughing and farting, an unruly mob of big, dirty, foul-mouthed men in cement-spattered clothes crashed through the door. The hut was instantly filled with their enormous and oppressive presence as they lumbered and barged about in the narrow space between the tools and the tea table. I shrank a little into my corner. I was learning fast: I’d have been a fool to go for the formal introduction again.
There was big Frank, who drove the lorry; Terry, the toothless foreman carpenter, a past master of the filthy story; incomprehensibly Irish Mervyn, the digger driver; Jim Riley, a sinewy work-worn labourer, all bad temper andunpleasantness; and Scott, who drove the drott. Then there was Belgian Andy, in charge of the mixer, whose entire conversation revolved around sex; and a particularly fat
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