Sixty a Day Man by Andy Larter

“Put ’em on t’ side,” Grandad croaked. He must have heard the kitchen door click open and shut.

He’d sent me to Mrs Byrne’s on the corner of Wightman Street for twenty Senior Service. “You can earn yer tea,” he said. “But mind I want change.” He gave me two half crowns. “Should be a bob.” He jabbed the stem of his briar at my face. “Think on.”

Mum had taken our Shirley to the chest clinic for another check up and Dad was working late, so Grandad was keeping an eye on me.

There was a packet of Senior Service already on the sideboard. It was open and the top layer inside sloped like organ pipes to a gap where two had been removed. I studied the embossed, navy blue logo of a sailing ship in full rig on the packet then put the new one next to the open pack. Three Castella cigars in an open box nestled next to a tin of Ogden’s Redbreast Flake tobacco. 

Mum once asked, “Is there anything you won’t smoke, Dad?” 

“Woodbines,” replied Grandad. “Weedy bloody things.”

Now the back door was open and he stood on the top step, gazing over the great dish of the city. He turned so I could no longer see the X of his braces, took his briar in his hand and pointed to the table and coughed out a plume of smoke.

“I’ve made ye a sandwich.” He spluttered, coughed and gobbed into the yard. 

I lifted a doily to reveal two doorstep slices on a plate. 

“Get that down ye and then ye can mek us a pot o’ tea.” 

His spitting had put me off any food and I remembered that once he made me sit at the table until I’d eaten the slippery white fat I’d trimmed from a slice of boiled ham. 

“You can keep out of this,” he told Mum. “He has to learn.” 

Mum wept silently. Grandad crossed his arms and scowled. “All of it,” he growled, a cigarette fastened like a barnacle to the corner of his mouth. I sat for ten or fifteen minutes listening to the clock. He took his pipe, lit it and I heard the burbling sound of him sucking on it. Eventually, Mum showed me a shilling that shone like her tears so I swallowed and  gagged. 

“I’d of been thankful for that when I were thy age,” he sneered. 

Later, I heard Dad tell Mum that he’d gladly shove him under Jonas Elliot’s coal wagon. When I thought of Mum crying, I wanted to watch the old bastard glow on the fire and hear him sizzle, to smell the tar that would surely burn off him. 

He watched now as I peeled back a corner of the top slice of bread. Onion. And a little cheese. I looked up at him and thought the corner of his mouth lifted like a little smirk. He turned away before I could be certain.

“And don’t forget the crusts.” 

I didn’t care for cheese and onion. And he knew. But I wasn’t going to defy him. I was on my own anyway and wouldn’t want to increase any bad feeling between him and Mum. But onion and cheese was better than the streaky smoked bacon he frazzled to hell, fried and fragile. The smell of that made me think of sweeping out the fire grate. 

When I bit into this sandwich my nose and eyes burned: he’d smothered the bread with mustard as well. He came to the table and put his pipe down in the ashtray. There was black cinder in the bowl. All that burnt stuff must be in his lungs and guts now I thought. 

“That’ll ‘appen put hairs inside yer chest,” he said. 

He struck a match, lit a cigarette and hacked out a cloud of blueish smoke. 

“That’s better,” he barked through smoke and phlegm. I watched his shoulders rise and fall in time with the ticking of the clock. “Now where’s me change?”

“I put it next to your cigs.”

He put the coin in his pocket then returned to the back door, the cigarette glued to his bottom lip. He thrust his hands deep in his pockets and, as I snaffled at the sandwich, I heard him rattling coins together. Actually, I was enjoying the sandwich but I wasn’t going to tell him. And I took pleasure at this enjoyment because he’d thought I wouldn’t like the food. Even more reason not to tell him. I grinned as I chewed and savoured. 

“Are you ready for a drink o’ tea?” I asked. 

He looked at me as though he’d forgotten I was there. He might have been disappointed I’d eaten the food so quickly. “Aye,” he muttered. “Get goin’.” 

As I filled the kettle and put it on the hob, he returned to his surveillance of the chimneys, high rises and church spires across the cityscape. The gas popped as I lit it and I emptied the spent leaves from the teapot. As I lifted the tea caddy from the shelf, I wondered what he saw every day from his spot at the top of the back steps. I watched him light a cigarette from the one that had burned down to a tiny tab. He rubbed the shreds of tobacco into a pouch he kept in his back pocket. He kept it so he could roll more cigarettes. “Waste not, want not,” he said. 

“I’m a sixty a day man. I like a pipe and a cigar an’ all,” he once told my mother, “and I’m not stopping. One of the few pleasures left me.” Pleasure? Did he know the meaning of the word? 

Mum wheezed and coughed after her years living with Grandad. Working at Hemsworth’s didn’t help I suppose. All that fluff flying from the looms and the smoke from the engines must have contaminated her breath. And that’s where he worked too but he wasn’t allowed to smoke indoors for fear of igniting the aniline dyes. He still managed three packs of untipped a day though. Sometimes more of a weekend. To say nothing of the pipe he smoked as an end of work treat and a cigar as he read the Evening Chronicle after his tea.  

Before the kettle boiled, I poured some hot water into the teapot and sluiced it out. Then I put in six spoons of leaves, let the water boil for a count of ten and poured steaming water on the tea. I stirred and covered the teapot with the cosy. I knew he watched me even though he said nothing. “And think on,” he called, “nobbut a peck o’ milk.” Very carefully, I put a few drops in his pint pot. “I like to taste Typhoo.”

I’d already poured mine when his tea was mashed to his taste. He liked it strong enough to support a spoon and I considered spitting in the mug before pouring but thought better of it. Instead I dropped three spoons of sugar, stirred the chestnut coloured liquid and handed it to him. He removed yet another cigarette from his mouth, slurped and sucked his teeth. 

“Not bad,” he grumbled. He stepped right outside, put the mug on the wall at the top of the steps and blew smoke upwards. 

He always managed to rile me with his scornful comments. “Not bad?” He’s not really paying me any attention, I thought, except to criticise. Perhaps I can pretend I’ve got nicotine lungs, make him jump and spill his tea. Give him a scare. Get a tiny bit of payback. So I crept to the back door and, as I heard a match strike, I coughed as loud as I could manage. 

“Faa,” he cried and I heard his mug shatter. When I looked outside, he lay twisted on the path at the bottom of the steps, a brown stain on his shirt and a trickle of blood from nose to neck. He seemed to be glaring at the smouldering cigarette that was just out of reach of his pallid lips. I hadn’t expected this to happen. I bit my finger. Then I noticed Mum and our Shirley coming up the street.

“Dad,” howled Mum as she dashed forward. “What’s up?”

She knelt beside him and our Shirley stood with her thumb in her mouth staring. 

The wind had gone from his sails all right.

Andy Larter

Image: Pixabay.com – a lit cigarette with smoke curling from the end