Free Life Without Armour by Alan; Sillitoe Page B

had nothing left to give me.
    My test results were consistently high through the last two years at school. At the final assembly before leaving, held as usual in the large gymnasium, the headmaster called me on to the stage, and gave me a black leatherbound copy of the Holy Bible. Taking it home, I noted the label inside which said that it had been awarded to me for ‘proficiency in Biblical knowledge’.
    Such a reason puzzled me but, glad to have the Book, it has been read many times, more often perhaps than any other, and is still within arm’s reach on my desk fifty years later.

Chapter Twelve
    The clock had stopped. ‘They’re making all these precision objects for shells and what-not,’ I thought, ‘and they can’t even get a clock on the wall that works.’ I was wrong. The passage of time in the classroom had been rapid compared to this.
    No sooner was my foot in the door that first day than a man came to me and said I was now a member of the Transport and General Workers Union, and that threepence a week would be stopped out of my pay. I didn’t want to belong to a union, was my response, further informing him that he should, in the current exhortation to the unwanted, go and get dive-bombed, because he would get no money out of me. There seemed something ignominious in belonging to an organization of which so many others were members, indicating that I was a follower of Marx (Groucho) from a reasonably early age, but the convenor, if that’s what he was, laughed and said I had no option, because it was the law these days. The stoppage was automatic, and no one could avoid it.
    My father, who worked in another shop, or department, came to see how I was getting on and, finding nothing to pick fault with, went back to his work. My job was ‘burring’ hundreds of brass shellcaps with a sharp chisel. When segments were milled out of them, burrs were left which had to be prised away from the edges by hand, leaving all parts of the object smooth. They covered the surface of a large low table, and I tackled the task as if invading and subduing a hostile country, clearing a way here, a route there, until the two avenues into the mass of resistance met, and my pincer columns succeeded in their fell design. Having mopped up those pieces which had been surrounded, another clear road was driven towards the enemy capital, subsidiary columns put out on the way should relieving forces seek to thwart my plan of attack.
    In a couple of hours the table was empty (I had the job to myself) till someone came along with more boxes, which they did very soon, to reoccupy my beloved tableland with their barbaric forces. Such ‘piece work’ was paid for at so much a hundred, and the more I did the more I earned, but they had to be neatly done, or the examiners would send them back.
    My father got up every morning at half past six, and fifteen minutes later called me out of the bed which I shared with my two brothers. After he had lit the fire and the kettle had boiled, I would bump sleepily down the stairs. My mother never rose with him, for it was the time of day when he was, to put it mildly, volatile. After a breakfast of tea and bread-and-jam, while listening to the news, we went down the street in silence, clocking-in just before half past seven.
    In my pocket was a cheese or potted meat sandwich to eat in the few minute tea-break at ten. I went home for a hot dinner at half past twelve, varying the moment of my exit so as not to walk up the street with my father. An hour later I was back, working without a break till half past five.
    My first wages came to one pound twelve shillings and sixpence, by today’s values about twenty-five pounds, but in those times a reasonable amount for a youth of fourteen to earn. On Friday night the wage packet was put unopened into my mother’s hand, and she gave back half a crown for spending money (about two pounds fifty pence) which may