Denis (poor little lad)

One day, when I was still quite small, pappi took me to work with him. He was wearing his dark green [? – and cf earlier ‘coming home from work’ memories…] overalls that smelt of washing soap and oil, and a black cap with a little stiff peak that he pulled down over his eyes a little bit. I remember sitting on his lap on the tram, feeling the judder and bump of the tram as it crossed the rails (?), and feeling a bit sick from the chocolate bar that he’d given me, telling me “Don’t eat it all at once.” Naturally, I had devoured the whole thing at speed, barely stopping to chew. I looked out of the window, because it took my mind off my tummy ache and the horrible smell of all the cigarette smoke inside the tram. The sky wasn’t properly light yet, and it seemed like dark clouds were hanging low over the street. I couldn’t see very well, and I had to keep wiping fog off the inside of the window where it had steamed up from all of the passengers’ breathing and smoke. As a city employee, pappi travelled for free, and I travelled free with him: I felt proud and special when he held up his travel pass for the conductor to see; she’d smiled and nodded to him in a friendly way, and I had tried to catch her eye and have her smile at me too – I liked her face and red lips and her dark hair, and she was all smart and clean in her uniform. It occurred to me that I wished my mummy looked all smart and colourful like this lady. […]

It was raining quite hard, and the outside of the glass was covered in raindrops that ran together as the tram moved and jarred along. Sometimes the tram driver would ring his bell, and sometimes there was a little fzzzzzt and a flash of blue electricity from the top of the tram. After a while the sky got a bit lighter, and I could see that we’d left behind the apartment buildings and were moving past factories and warehouses. Soon, pappi let me stand up on his legs and pull the little cord that rang the bell to ask the driver to stop at the next [stop]. When we stepped down onto the wet pavement, with the dark clouds moving fast underneath a wet sky, I could feel the raindrops, small and sharp, against my cheeks. The air smelt of tar and coal smoke, and there was another, sharper smell – something I couldn’t identify that smelt like hot metal and paint and the iron-like smell you get in your nose when you have a nosebleed.

We had to cross the road to get to the stop for our second tram. I stood at the side of the road holding pappi’s hand, [confused/stunned/dazzled…?] by the numbers of people passing and crossing the street, which was thronged with horse-drawn and motor wagons, buses and trams, all rattling and grinding and speeding in different directions, a ceaseless blur of motion and intention. It made me blink and shy away from the road, but suddenly pappi said “Now,” and jerked at my hand, half-dragging me into the road in the midst of the traffic. My boots scrabbled across the rough stones of the road, the toes bouncing and scraping in the grooves where the tram lines ran.
We waited at the tram stop behind a queue of men all wearing identical-seeming dark grey trousers, jackets and hats; all with the same heavy boots, scuffed but solid; all with the same short back and sides haircuts, and the same weather-wrinkled necks. Only the repairs and the discolouring stains were different. As we moved forward as the tram arrived, I was squashed between pappi and the back of the nearest man, and all I could see for a moment was a white patch of sky above the funnel of their dark clothing. The man in front of me smelled bad, and I turned my face away from his clothes.

It was noisy on the second tram. We had to climb up the curving staircase as the back as the tram jerked and wobbled away from the stop, my face level with pappi’s boots as they ascended the worn wooden stairs with their embossed metal edging. Once we reached the swaying top deck, there was a chorus of greetings from men wearing the same kind of overalls as pappi. Through the fog of cigarette smoke they called “Aye aye!” and “[nickname based on his surname, with a ‘y’ added at the end], and “Wakey, wakey!” and “Eh, what? Eh what? Eh? Eh?” (to which pappi replied “What, eh? What, eh?”, and they all laughed and winked. Pappi was transformed from his usual still, quiet self into a more relaxed, tactile, smiling version of my father; he grabbed men’s elbows as he spoke to them, and laughed with his mouth open. Once, he took off his cap and slapped somebody on the chest with it. I tried to stay out of sight behind his legs and the bottom of his jacket: these men were all big and gruff and jolly and frightening, and I didn’t want them to laugh at me or to see how silly and small I was – if they did laugh at me, pappi would laugh with them, I knew. They were a gang that I wasn’t in: big men who knew things about cigarettes and drink and work and ladies and secret things that I couldn’t imagine. My cheeks were red and hot with embarrassment.

The tram swept round a curve and, before I could react and steady myself on the rocking wooden floor, I overbalanced and banged my mouth against one of the shiny metal handrails that looped above the back of the tram’s seats. My mouth went numb and I could taste blood in my mouth, and tears came into my eyes with the shock and pain of it. Fortunately, the tram passed immediately into a dark space, and no-one could see me cry or hold my hands to my face while I shook my head and moaned. My head started aching immediately, and I knew that my whole day was spoiled. The tram stopped, and the men all started moving in the near dark, back towards the staircase. I hung back in the gap between the staircase and the side of the tram, then followed them all down the stairs. Pappi hadn’t said my name or tried to find me in the darkness. I felt like crying all over again. My jaw was starting to throb.

I stood on the platform downstairs and looked for pappi, wondering if he had forgotten that I had been with him. But no, there he was on the edge of the group of men standing there in the gloomy interior of the tram terminus, shaking hands with a big fat man wearing a suit and waistcoat. When they’d finished shaking hands pappi looked back at me and jerked his head sideways to indicate that I should join him.

There was a great block of trams parked in the [gloomy] centre of the terminus. The space inside the building seemed huge and high to me, with great, windowless brick walls climbing into the shadowy roofspace. The roof was all zigzaggy, with some small skylights in the angled sections {???}; the windows were grimy with dirt and spiders webs and pigeon poo, and let in very little light. There were a few electric lights in the offices that ran around the bases of the brick walls, but otherwise the only light seemed to come from the massive doorways at two ends of the building.

There was a line of men formed across each of the two entrance doorways, and, at the far end from where we had come in, there was a brazier full of burning wood. As I watched, the men all raised their hands and waved as a blue tram passed by in the street with its bell clanging.