NOTES
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Needless to say, an uneasy night followed the revelations of the previous evening. In the morning, Windlock was as amiable as usual and I certainly didn't let my eagerness to escape his clutches deprive me of another enormous breakfast. But after the feast, I hastily bundled into a bag the few items of new clothing I had bought with the previous day's generous National Assistance and left, lying to Windlock that I would see him in the evening. |
| I walked into town and, not yet knowing my way around very well, found myself passing Headrow Clothes, where I was supposed to be starting work at about that time. For some extraordinary reason, I turned round and walked in ! Tom the Timekeeper greeted me cordially and showed me where to clock on. I descended into the murky depths and entered the clips dungeon, where Joss and the one-eyed man were already lying among the sacks in gloomy silence, smoking and waiting for the exact minute at which to start pretending to work. They grunted morosely as I came in. |
| When the hooter went for eight o' clock, they took up their stations - Joss behind his baler and George, as I now knew his name to be, behind his sack frame. "Right, this is 'ow tha goes go on" said George. He strolled over to a bogie, dipped his hand in and pulled out a bunch of worsted clips. "This is worsted. Alt worsted goes int same sack, alt 'Arris tweed goes in another sack, alt silk in another and so on. Don't put much in each sack - tha'll never lift it, lad. When there's enough int sack, tha's to sew it up wi' this sack needle and string. Then tha's to weigh it on these scales and tie a label on it wit weight written on it." Having demonstrated these procedures, he tossed the half-full sack onto the great mountain. |
| As I helped him with these tasks throughout that long first day, he and Joss gradually became a little more friendly and talkative. I learned, for example, that George had lost his eye as a small child, sitting on his mother's knee. Her sewing needle had slipped. It also soon became apparent that these two were staunch Labour supporters of the old-fashioned Northern kind, instinctively hating all bosses, especially their own and regarding it as positively immoral to do any more work for the bloated capitalists' benefit than the very minimum that you could get away with. But, of course, this was the full extent of their political consciousness. Any talk of actually trying to change anything rather than simply playing a personal game of cat and mouse with your bosses marked you out as a weirdo. |
| Another thing I soon learned was that all the holes in the sacks had been made by rats. It was they that caused all the mess by pulling out the contents of the sacks of floor sweepings (which were bagged up separately), searching for the apple cores and half-eaten sandwiches that they knew to be there. They were also fond of soiled sanitary towels. The cleaners were in the habit of leaving sacks of these in our department for the boilerman to put in his furnace next door. I later realised that the state of the floor - what there was of it between the mountains of sacks and waste paper - was partly a result of the large quantity of rat droppings all mixed up with the rest of the litter. |
| At lunch time, the canteen manageress, Maggie, introduced herself. She was a formidable lady, a miner's wife, but she took to me and we got on very well. She explained that George took an hour off from his own duties every day (illicitly, of course) to peel spuds for her and that he got free meals in exchange. It was made clear that I would be expected to enter into the same arrangement when George retired in a couple of weeks. Incredibly, the canteen was situated in another part of the cellar complex. |
| I also made the acquaintance of the hoist operator. He was an ill-tempered and embittered man whose old war wound in his leg prevented him from doing any other sort of work. He was generally detested and feared and in fact had a lot of power because his hoist travelled through all floors of the factory and down to our cellar and his services were much in demand for the transportation of goods. If you upset him too much, he made it very difficult for you to do your job, by parking his hoist in the cellar and refusing to move when he got a call from your floor. However, he took a great liking to me from the start, and I to him. This was to prove very useful. |
| By the time five o' clock came, it looked as though I might be doing my two weeks in this job after all, so there was nothing for it but to return to Windlock's luxury hostel and risk his attentions. When I got there I found members of the committee in the dining room with a police detective. "I'm very sorry, Victor", said the magistrate, "but I'm afraid you can't come back here tonight. Something terrible has happened." She was almost crying as she invited me to to inspect a large number of documents spread out over the table. These were all bills, reminders, threats of legal action, summonses etc. A truly amazing amount of money was owed for groceries alone, but the largest amounts were for such items as furniture, carpets, the installation of the luxurious bathroom and the car. The total amount ran into thousands, an unimaginable amount to owe for such items in those days. "But where is Mr Windlock?" I asked. The magistrate was unwilling to say anything further about the affair. The other residents were nowhere to be seen and it transpired that they had all been put into temporary accommodation at the expense of the committee. In my case, as I had got a job and was considered rehabilitated (they had only known me for 48 hours!) it was thought appropriate to set me up with a bedsit of my own. This had already been done (accommodation was as easy to find as jobs in those days) and the magistrate's daughter was detailed to drive me over to my new home. |
| In the car, she proved to be totally lacking in the discretion shown by her mother and told me the whole story. The police had called on one of the committee members earlier in the day and asked her if she knew the whereabouts of Windlock. Having given them the address of the hostel, the informant then immediately telephoned Windlock to ask him what it was all about. Windlock professed complete ignorance of what the problem might be. Later the police called the committee member again to say that they had not found Windlock at home. They asked her and other committee members to accompany a detective to the house and to go in with him. |
| They found that Windlock had packed and left in a great hurry as soon as he had heard that the police were on to him. A search uncovered all the bills etc. The police explained that he would have disappeared before long in any case. For years he had been moving from town to town, sweet-talking local charitable types into forming committees and raising large sums of money with which to set up hostels for homeless young men in large rented houses, with himself as both warden and treasurer! His line was that a taste of relatively luxurious living in congenial surroundings with no immediate pressure to find work always had a dramatically reforming effect on young male drifters. His powers of persuasion were such that the big-hearted folk he roped in always believed every word he uttered and put all their trust in him as a great reformer of young men's characters. Once a hostel was open, he inspired the committee to continue to work hard to raise funds from which he could pay the exorbitant bills incurred in the running of the places. No bills were ever in fact paid and windlock embezzled every penny from the hostel funds. He used the same powers of persuasion on the providers of goods and services and on the owners of the houses in order to hold them at bay for a remarkably long time, before eventually being obliged to move on. He generally stayed several steps ahead of the police, but had had a narrow escape on this occasion. |
| My bedsit was on the top floor of a house in Harehills Lane. It was small and very sparsely furnished but it was the first home of my own. The rent was £2 a week and the first two weeks had been paid for by the committee. I felt very happy about the turn of events. It was now November, shortly before my 23rd birthday. It looked as though I unexpectedly had an opportunity of avoiding winter on the road, and I was beginning to fall in love with Leeds. |