Clifton Chronicles 01 - Only Time Will Tell Read Free Page A

every Monday. Once Stan had finished his porridge, Harry would be allowed to lick the bowl.
    A large brown pot of tea was always brewing on the hearth, which Grandma would pour into a variety of mugs through a silver-plated Victorian tea strainer she had inherited from her mother. While the other members of the family enjoyed a mug of unsweetened tea – sugar was only for high days and holidays – Stan would open his first bottle of beer, which he usually gulped down in one draught. He would then rise from the table and burp loudly before picking up his lunch box, which Grandma had prepared while he was having his breakfast: two Marmite sandwiches, a sausage, an apple, two more bottles of beer and a packet of five coffin nails. Once Stan had left for the docks, everyone began to talk at once.
    Grandma always wanted to know who had visited the tea shop where her daughter worked as a waitress: what they ate, what they were wearing, where they sat; details of meals that were cooked on a stove in a room lit by electric light bulbs that didn’t leave any candle wax, not to mention customers who sometimes left a thruppenny-bit tip, which Maisie had to split with the cook.
    Maisie was more concerned to find out what Harry had done at school the previous day. She demanded a daily report, which didn’t seem to interest Grandma, perhaps because she’d never been to school. Come to think of it, she’d never been to a tea shop either.
    Grandpa rarely commented, because after four years of loading and unloading an artillery field gun, morning, noon and night, he was so deaf he had to satisfy himself with watching their lips move and nodding from time to time. This could give outsiders the impression he was stupid, which the rest of the family knew to their cost he wasn’t.
    The family’s morning routine only varied at weekends. On Saturdays, Harry would follow his uncle out of the kitchen, always remaining a pace behind him as he walked to the docks. On Sunday, Harry’s mum would accompany the boy to Holy Nativity Church, where, from the third row of the pews, she would bask in the glory of the choir’s treble soloist.
    But today was Saturday. During the twenty-minute walk to the docks, Harry never opened his mouth unless his uncle spoke. Whenever he did, it invariably turned out to be the same conversation they’d had the previous Saturday.
    ‘When are you goin’ to leave school and do a day’s work, young’un?’ was always Uncle Stan’s opening salvo.
    ‘Not allowed to leave until I’m fourteen,’ Harry reminded him. ‘It’s the law.’
    ‘A bloody stupid law, if you ask me. I’d packed up school and was workin’ on the docks by the time I were twelve,’ Stan would announce as if Harry had never heard this profound observation before. Harry didn’t bother to respond, as he already knew what his uncle’s next sentence would be. ‘And what’s more I’d signed up to join Kitchener’s army before my seventeenth birthday.’
    ‘Tell me about the war, Uncle Stan,’ said Harry, aware that this would keep him occupied for several hundred yards.
    ‘Me and your dad joined the Royal Gloucestershire Regiment on the same day,’ Stan said, touching his cloth cap as if saluting a distant memory. ‘After twelve weeks’ basic training at Taunton Barracks, we was shipped off to Wipers to fight the Boche. Once we got there, we spent most of our time cooped up in rat-infested trenches waiting to be told by some toffee-nosed officer that when the bugle sounded, we was going over the top, bayonets fixed, rifles firing as we advanced towards the enemy lines.’ This would be followed by a long pause, after which Stan would add, ‘I was one of the lucky ones. Got back to Blighty all ship-shape and Bristol fashion.’ Harry could have predicted his next sentence word for word, but remained silent. ‘You just don’t know how lucky you are, my lad. I lost two brothers, your uncle Ray and your uncle Bert, and your father not