The middle-aged, bespectacled man behind the desk at the Juvenile Employment Bureau studied Billy’s job application card whilst Billy studied his face, thinking how much he resembled Dr Crippen with his small moustache and his wire-framed specs. The clerk looked up.
‘What kind of job are you looking for, Mr Hopkins?’
‘What kind are you offering today?’
‘Well, let’s see now.’
He consulted his box of tricks.
‘Here’s one. Lift operator at Dobbin’s.’
‘No. My brother tried that. We all felt he was getting a bit above himself.’
‘A comedian, eh? I notice that under ‘previous experience’, you’ve put down ‘shoe-shining’. How would you fancy a job in a shoe shop?’
‘No thanks. I’ve had enough of the shoe trade.’
‘There’s a job here at Atherton colliery. What about a career in mining?’
‘After a grammar-school education, I think that’s a bit beneath me.’
‘Your jokes are killing me. Let’s be serious for a minute.
First I need to know if you’re manual or non-manual.’
£ I thought I’d like to be a writer.’
‘Ah, at last. Now we’re getting somewhere. A writer? I see. A pen-pusher. That’s non-manual.’
‘I would have thought pushing a pen was manual.’
‘Look, don’t try to tell me my job.’
‘Sorry. I don’t just want to push a pen. I want to write imaginative stories; stories that I’ve made up out of my head.’
‘Ah, then you’ll want a job on a newspaper.’
‘I’d love one if you have one.’
‘The best way to go about it is to start on a little paper like the Cheetham Gazette and write about local events, like football matches or what’s on at the local flea-pit.’
‘Good idea. I’ll take it.’
‘But unfortunately, we don’t have any jobs like that just at the moment. I see you’ve written “ballroom dancing” as one of your hobbies. Why not a job writing about that on a paper like The Dancing Times?’
‘Sounds great. Right up my street.’
‘However, we don’t have any such job on our books.’
‘Look, this is ridiculous. What jobs do you have on your books?’
‘There’s one here working on the Manchester Guardian .’
‘But that’s the best quality newspaper in the country. Well, second, anyway, after The Times. I’m not ready to write for that yet.’
‘Oh, it’s not as a writer.’
‘Well, what is it as?’
‘A copy boy - a sort of messenger boy. But you’d be mixing with the top journalists in the land. Maybe you could work your way up the ladder.’
‘If there’s a chance of getting on the staff some day, I’m willing to start at the bottom. What’s the deal?’
‘Pay, thirty-five shillings a week,’ he said, reading from the card. ‘Hours five p.m. to one a.m. And you get Saturday night off.’
‘I’ll give it a go. But that’s my ballroom dancing gone for a Burton.’
‘Good. The job’s yours. Take this card of introduction and ask for Mr Fogg, who’s head of the post-room and will clear up any questions you may have. And good luck.’
Frank Fogg was a short, disabled old man with a pronounced, bouncing limp and a withered left arm.
‘Are we pleased to see you,’ he said. ‘We’ve been short- handed for weeks now. It says on this paper that your name’s William Hopkins. But that’s much too formal. What do we really call you?’
‘My friends call me Hoppy.’
‘Then Hoppy it is,’ he said, ‘though I’m the one you should be calling Hoppy, eh?’
He pointed to the other copy boy sitting at the table in the centre of the room. A tall, handsome, fair-haired youth about eighteen years of age, he was impeccably dressed in neatly pressed flannels, white silk shirt, dark tie and smart sage-green jersey; well groomed right down to his manicured fingernails, and probably his toenails as well.
‘This is Miles Harrison, your opposite number; you two will be working very closely together.’
‘Hi, Hoppy,’ said Miles, smiling and extending his hand. ‘Good to know you.’
‘Hi,’ replied Billy shyly.
‘Our job,’ said Mr Fogg, ‘is to act as a communication centre between the writers and the printers. We are their go-betweens.’
‘You mean messenger boys?’ said Billy.
‘That’s another way of putting it, I suppose,’ said Mr Fogg.
‘It’s a crude way of putting it,’ said Miles. ‘We are essential cogs in the production machine. We are the conduit which facilitates the flow of communication and information between the various parts of the network structure.’
‘What happens,’ continued Mr Fogg, ‘is that the teleprinters upstairs chatter out the news on every conceivable subject. It’s then dropped down a chute to us and we make sure it reaches the right sub-editor, who then writes it up in King’s English. Show him how it’s done, Miles.’
Miles collected all the strips of news items from the table and placed them between different fingers.
‘Home - Parliament,’ he listed, ‘Sport - Entertainment - Foreign - Local Government - War - Science. See, I have eight items in eight finger spaces. Now follow me.’
Miles led the way into a large room - quiet, with an atmosphere like a reference library - in which numerous sub-editors, eye-shades on their foreheads, were busily writing up the day’s news.
‘We now collect their finished copy,’ Miles whispered, ‘and we send that up on a pulley to the compositors working upstairs on their linotypes.’
Billy examined a piece of finished copy and found it a mass of strange wiggles and hieroglyphics.
‘Is this in code, Mr Fogg?’ he asked when they were back in the post-room.
‘It is a kind of code between the sub-editors and the compositors - they seem to understand it well enough, though.’
‘And that’s all there is to the job?’ asked Billy. ‘Carrying bits of papers to and fro.’
‘Oh, no,’ said Miles. ‘Along the main corridor - we call
it the Holy of Holies - there are all the VIP leader-writers - the editor, A.P. Wadsworth, the Miscellany writer, Gordon Phillips, the deputy-editor, J.M. Pringle and other big writers like Wainwright, Derek Senior, Crozier and the features editor. Miss Linley.’
‘And what do we have to do with them?’ asked Billy.
‘We collect their leaders and so are privileged to be the very first in the whole of Britain to read what the Manchester Guardian has to say about current events.’
‘Big stuff, eh? And is that it?’
‘There’s more,’ said Miles. ‘A.P. Wadsworth and Gordon Phillips always consult me and ask my advice as they’re writing their main leaders. I’ll show you later on in the night.’
‘That reminds me, Miles,’ said Mr Fogg. ‘Isn’t it time to collect those items from Miss Linley?’
‘Oh, yes, Mr Fogg,’ said Miles. ‘Perhaps Hoppy could collect them as his first assignment.’
‘Be glad to,’ said Billy, anxious to contribute and be accepted as one of the team.
‘Right then,’ said Mr Fogg. ‘Ask Miss Linley, who’s in the fifth office along the corridor, if you could have the long stand and the big weight.’
‘Rightaway,’ said Billy, eagerly.
He soon found Miss Linley’s office. He knocked lightly on her door.
‘Come!’ she called.
‘Good evening, miss,’ he said. ‘Mr Fogg asked if you could let me have the long stand and the big weight.’
Miss Linley was a middle-aged lady with greying hair. She had obviously been very pretty when younger. She smiled happily.
‘You’re new here, aren’t you?’ she said. ‘What’s your name?’
‘Yes, Miss Linley. New here tonight. Everyone calls me Hoppy.’
‘Welcome aboard, Hoppy. Fm expecting an important phone call from London any moment now. If you could just stand outside and wait for a while, I’ll be with you shortly.’
Billy took up his stance outside her office door. Half an hour passed by . . . nothing happened. He stood his ground. Another quarter of an hour. Nothing.
‘Strange,’ he said aloud, shaking his head. Then the penny dropped. He knocked on her door again.
‘Come!’ she called.
‘Thank you for the long stand and the big weight, miss.’
‘You’re welcome, Hoppy,’ she said, laughing.
Back in the post-room, Mr Fogg and Miles were waiting. When Billy appeared, they both roared with laughter.
‘What kept you?’ chuckled Mr Fogg.
‘Now we’ll go and have a conference with the editor and the Miscellany writer,’ said Miles, still chuckling.
‘No tricks!’ said Billy.
‘No tricks, honest.’
They arrived outside the office of the big white chief, A.P. Wadsworth, and Miles tapped gently on the glass door.
‘Yes,’ barked Wadsworth. ‘Come in.’
‘I’ve come for the usual consultation, sir,’ said Miles.
‘That’s the new copy boy, eh?’ said the editor. ‘Welcome to the Manchester Guardian staff. Right, Miles, what’re you waiting for? Fire away, then.’
‘Pies are on the menu for supper tonight, sir. Cheese and onion, meat and potato, steak and kidney, plus the usual veg.’
‘Yes, yes. What do you recommend?’
‘Cheese and onion looks good, sir.’
‘Very well, then bring that for me. Oh, and collect tonight’s editorial, will you?’
‘See what I mean about the editor consulting me before he submits his editorial?’ said Miles.
As they walked back to the post-room, Billy read the editorial hot from Wadsworth’s typewriter.
'Five years!' it said. ‘ We look back today upon five years of the sternest struggle which the British people have ever fought, a war for our national survival , for the rights of free peoples and for the life of civilisation itself . . .’
‘This is pretty good stuff,’ said Billy. ‘I think he deserved the steak and kidney instead of that cheese and onion.’
‘Right,’ said Miles. ‘But we must make sure there’s some of that left for us at twelve o’clock.’
So Billy joined the staff of the Manchester Guardian , and it was not long before he had the routine practices of the job at his fingertips. After he’d been there over a month, he began to wonder when he might get the chance to write something.
‘When I joined the staff here, Mr Fogg,’ he said one day, ‘I hoped to become a writer.’
‘Yes,’ said Fogg. ‘I thought that might be the case. But you know, Hoppy, you’re going about it the wrong way. You wouldn’t believe it to look at me, but I too joined the staff here over thirty years ago with the same idea.’
‘What happened, Mr Fogg?’
‘Well, about twenty years ago my bicycle and I got into an argument with a GPO van which left me like this. But before that, I had big ideas about becoming the next C.R Scott. And then I found out the truth.’
‘And what’s that?’
‘All the writers on this paper, even the reporters, are time-served journalists. Most of them have honours English degrees, many of them Oxbridge. Working your way up from the rank of copy boy isn’t on. Look at me - aged sixty and still a copy boy after all these years. The only thing I’ve got to look forward to is retirement, a gold watch and a nursing home. Do you really want to become a writer?’
‘I really do, Mr Fogg - it’s my one great burning ambition in life.’
‘Then go and study for a degree. Become an expert in something so that you can write with authority and knowledge. Don’t let anyone or anything distract you from that purpose. When you’re young, you’ll find all kinds of temptations around you trying to pull you off your chosen path. Don’t let them. Stick with your goal. Don’t stay as a copy boy all your life, taking restaurant orders from the leader writers and acting as a go-fer for the rest of the staff. Start as a door-mat - and you’ll end up as a doormat.’
‘So there’s no chance for me to become a writer on this paper?’ said Billy miserably.
‘Sorry to be so blunt, Hoppy. You may have some talent for writing but you’ll never develop it as a messenger boy. I’m sorry for you, but it’s for your own good. I’m really doing you a big favour telling you all this.’
‘What about Miles? Have you told him the same thing?’
‘Don’t talk to me about Miles! He has delusions of grandeur and is living in cloud-cuckoo land. His real name is Harry Miles but he’s switched the names around to Miles Harrison. Says it sounds posher and more impressive. That’s Miles to a T. All image and no substance. He goes home at night looking more like the editor than the editor.’
This statement about Miles was true. Billy had taken to accompanying him on the same all-night bus after work. For these public appearances, Miles wore an immaculately tailored military-type raincoat, and a smart trilby; he carried a leather attache case with the words ‘MILES HARRISON: MANCHESTER GUARDIAN’ blocked in gold letters on the side for all the world to see. When they boarded their bus, they each carried a freshsmelling copy of the next day’s paper straight from the presses, and talked to each other about the night’s events as if they had written and produced it personally.
‘Before APW sent up his copy to the compositors tonight, he asked my advice,’ said Miles in a voice that all the bus could hear, ‘and I told him the first option would be the one least likely to give him ulcers.’
‘Yes,’ said Billy, ‘and I thought the Low cartoon tonight was particularly apt, so I told the illustration editor that she ought to go ahead with it.’
At that point, the bus conductor came round collecting fares.
‘My son was hoping to become a reporter,’ the conductor said, addressing Miles. ‘What would you advise, sir?’
‘Tell him to drop me a line with a small example of his work. That’s me,’ he said, pointing to his name on his case.
‘Thank you, sir. Oh, no, never mind the fare. Have this one on me,’ he said, giving a broad wink.
In fact, the idea of a copy boy writing for the great newspaper was not entirely barmy. Gordon Phillips welcomed stories for the tailpiece of his Miscellany column and a payment of ten shillings was made for a successful entry. Billy managed to get one published during his time there.
FEROCITY AT THE THEATRE Emerging from the Opera House the other night after a performance of King Lear, two theatre-goers were overheard to say:
‘Some say Wolfit takes the cake but is Giel-gud!’
‘Yes, and some say Gielgud takes the cake but you should see Donald Wolfit!’
‘Rather a ferocious contribution, I think,’ said Gordon Phillips after he’d read it. ‘Nevertheless, I’ll accept it. You write rather well, by the way. Shows promise!’
This from the great man himself! God had spoken!
It was about this time that Adele began to make her feelings known.
‘Look, Julian,’ she said, ‘if we’re going to continue as partners, we need more practice. The odd afternoon session at the Ritz and the Saturday-evening hop at Harrigans - well, they’re just not enough if we’re going to get anywhere.’
‘But it’s my job, Adele,’ he said.
‘Some job! A glorified messenger boy! Sometimes you even dress like one. We need to get a decent suit and maybe change our hairstyle. Then we’d be getting somewhere. But I really do wish we would change our job. Can’t we get one with decent hours so that we can spend more time together? And not just for dancing either. The settee and I are wondering when you’re going to come back to us.’
‘Funny you should say that, Adele,’ said Billy. ‘I’ve been thinking exactly the same myself. And as for my job, I had hopes of becoming a writer one day but there’s no chance of coming up through the ranks. Not on the Manchester Guardian , anyway.’
‘It’s just a dead-end job for dead-beat characters,’ she
said. ‘You can get a job with better pay and higher status if you really look. My dad’s always telling me that without money, you’re nothing in this world and nobody’ll respect you. And anyway, I don’t want my friends saying I go round with a messenger boy.’
‘Dead right, Adele,’ he replied. ‘At the Guardian I’ve learned how to carry bits o’ paper between my fingers, carry messages, read out the menu every night till I can say it in my sleep. “And what would you like tonight, sir? Steak and kidney, meat and potato or cheese and onion? Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Right away, sir. Three bags full, sir.” And all for thirty-five bob a week. I can see myself still doing it at sixty, like old Mr Fogg.’
‘Now you’re talking sense,’ she said. ‘So what are you going to do about it?’
‘The only way to become a writer and to get on the writing staff of a paper like the Manchester Guardian is by going to college or university.’
‘I hope you don’t,’ she said quickly. ‘There’s no money in books, study and all that. Besides, that would take you away from me. It’s here that I need you - partnering me on the dance floor.’
‘And on your front-room settee as well.’
‘Trust you to think of that.’
‘ “In the spring a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of sex”, Tennyson said that.’
‘And in your case, not only in the spring.’
‘I think you’re beginning to understand me at last,’ he said.
At Christmas that year, Billy reached the end of his tether as general dog’s-body and glorified waiter. Early in the New Year he handed in his notice at the newspaper and began to look for another job.