I followed him into the hallowed magnificence reserved for the chosen few. He sat at the enormous table. ‘What happened last night?’ was his opening gambit. For a moment I didn’t understand; then the events of the night before came back to me and I told him as much as I knew. In a quiet voice he filled in the rest. At about three o’clock in the morning he had been called out of bed by the police. The front door of the office was wide open and on entering they’d spotted the pile of mail unposted and the girl’s coat slung over the back of the chair. The secretary dutifully posted the letters and put out the lights. Nobody gave going into the factory itself a thought and it was only when the women arrived in the morning to start work in the card room that the girl had been discovered in a half-full skip of bobbins, fast asleep. Again the secretary was called back to the mill and, observing that the girl was on the verge of a breakdown, instructed the other girl in the office to take her home and call a doctor. Then I arrived, the only one in Shaw apparently unaware of the calamity at the Rutland Mill.
The secretary gave me a severe rollicking, ending with the fatal words, ‘Get your cards,’ which in everyday parlance means, ‘You’re sacked.’ I was appalled by what had happened to the girl and ashamed at my cowardice in not going to find her. Anyway, head down, I shuffled from the boardroom and sat at my desk, still in heavy shock. Then the secretary came back and sat in his place, and, probably from force of habit, on seeing him in his familiar seat I opened the enormous ledger and started, in a daze, to enter the numbers in the correct columns. The fact that I had just been given the sack never entered my mind and the secretary didn’t press the matter; we both carried on as if it had never happened. The girl didn’t return to work, so in all probability the secretary had concluded that he couldn’t afford to lose two members of his staff in one day.
When I travel back in time to when I was just gone sixteen years of age, one particular incident in that historic year of 1939 springs immediately to mind. It was not the declaration of war but something more significant in my life than the inevitable conflict to come.
It all began to snowball one Sunday afternoon, when I found myself in a friend’s house. How or why I was there I’ve completely forgotten, but one thing sticks in my mind: in the front room there was an upright piano and anything musical had always attracted me. I should add that I played the mouth organ, which hardly entitled me to call myself a musician. Any fool can press a piano key and get a result, and we all do it, but when my friend sat down to play, I listened with awe as he knocked out a popular dance tune. What impressed me more than anything was that he never once looked down at his hands, and without a break in the music he looked towards the door and said, ‘Come in, Arthur.’ Another youth entered, carrying a violin case, which he opened, and after a few tentative tuning notes they segued into ‘The Blue Danube’. Then with more panache they went into a swing version of the same thing. I was transfixed, absolutely spellbound. If only I could play the guitar, we could form a British Hot Club de France. Surely the guitar wasn’t too difficult to learn? I desperately wanted to be a part of the action and before I could stop myself I blurted out that I played the drums, which wasn’t strictly accurate: all I possessed was a pair of drumsticks from my Scout days. The next Sunday afternoon I brought them along. I was the last to arrive and I was introduced to another member of the group, who played the bass, which belonged to his father, who fortunately was in hospital for a month or two. In a short time we were into the first few bars of ‘Red Sails in the Sunset’. I was perched on the arm of the settee, drumming on the seat of a chair, and I’ll tell you something: it wasn’t at all bad—we were definitely in the groove. My friend on the piano had a healthy pile of sheet music and the rest of us busked it.
After a few more Sundays we were really swinging, to the extent that I was encouraged to do sixteen-bar breaks. I’d no idea where these came or how long were sixteen bars. I just beat time until they all stopped playing and the pianist said, ‘Take it away, man,’ and I went into a drum routine, starting on the chair seat, ‘rack-a-tacket’ on the back of the chair, on the linoleum part of the floor to the arm of the settee, all to the accompaniment of ‘Yea, man, go for it.’ It was heady stuff.
A couple of Sundays later we were at the stage of getting together a programme for dancing and suggesting names for the band. There was ‘The Oldham Serenaders’ and ‘The Swinging Four’, but the favourite was ‘The Blue Rhythm Band’. I have no excuse for what happened next. Whatever possessed me to even consider we were ready for public scrutiny? But on the spur of the moment, unbeknownst to the rest of the band, I placed an advert in the Oldham Evening Chronicle: ‘THE BLUE RHYTHM BAND WILL PLAY AT ANY FUNCTION, DANCES, WEDDINGS, ETC. MODERATE TERMS’ and to my astonishment it was in the local paper that same evening. I couldn’t wait to take the cutting with me to show the lads next Sunday. My troubles, however, were just beginning. On Wednesday, only two days after the advert had appeared, I received a reply. I was absolutely flummoxed: it had never entered my head that somebody would write back—my thought process had ended with the advert.
Fortunately the letter contained a telephone number. Good, I only had to tell them that we had another engagement on that particular Saturday. Yes, that was it—simple. Standing in a telephone booth, I dialled the number and a very attractive woman’s voice answered. No, she hadn’t sent the letter; she was only the secretary to Mr Flintock, the secretary of the club. Her voice was so pleasant and seductive that I found myself discussing terms for an evening of dancing at a municipal hall in Hollinwood. Having agreed a fee, I was now a worldly business tycoon and ended the conversation by saying I was looking forward to seeing her at the dance.
It wasn’t till I’d walked halfway down the street that the enormity of my brashness came home to me. If only I had the address of the recruiting officer of the French Foreign Legion, I could be halfway to Sidi-Bel-Abbes by Sunday. Alas, this was not to be, and when I faced the lads on Sunday I confessed abjectly and fully. They looked at each other, and then the pianist said, ‘We’d better get down to it.’ We had only one Sunday left before we took to the road. Oh, how I loved my comrades at that moment, and how much I was looking forward to a week on Saturday! I was in the lofty realms of euphoria again, leaving myself wide open for the sucker punch. It was later that evening when the bombshell burst: I didn’t have a drum kit. I certainly couldn’t turn up at our debut with a pair of drumsticks and an old kitchen chair. Once more I fell on my feet. The pianist’s brother ran a musical instrument shop and I hired the accoutrements for the Sunday only and on the condition that I returned them in good order. I agreed and walked away with as much as I could afford, which unfortunately didn’t include a bass drum, but already I had an idea about that.
The days dominoed down to the fateful Saturday, and to seven o’clock in the evening, by which time the dancers were already changing their shoes in the cloakroom. The communal hall itself was a barn of a place, with chairs all round the dancing area and a stage where we would soon be performing. We were late, through no fault of our own: three trams had refused to take us on board. Normally tram conductors were in the main accommodating, but we were an odd collection. I was laden down with the big drum that I had borrowed from the Scout troop and a hired gold-glitter snare drum under my arm. The rest of the kit was packed in a suitcase crammed with the foot pedal for the big drum and a stand for the snare drum, not forgetting a carrier bag of sheet music. One witty conductor asked which one of us was Oscar Rabin.
Eventually thirty minutes later we were on the stage, busily sorting out our instruments. The bass player helped me with my stuff and picked up what he surmised was the stand for my snare drum. He looked at it curiously and then nudged me with it and whispered, ‘What’s this for?’ Now he’d opened it out I understood. In my hurry to get out of the musical instrument shop I’d hired myself an ordinary music stand instead of the stand to hold my crowning glory, the gold-glitter snare drum, but the music stand would have to do for tonight.
I carried on tightening the ropes on the big drum, flicking my finger against the skin to satisfy myself that it was taut enough for a quick step. All this time there was a puzzled silence from the waiting dancers. They were mostly middle-aged women—it must have been some kind of Mothers’ Union anniversary, or something like it. I fixed the foot pedal on to the big drum and balanced the gold-glitter snare drum on to the music stand, giving it two experimental taps to make sure that it didn’t bounce off. The pianist had opened the lid