The Lighterman by Simon Michael

Author:Simon Michael [Michael, Simon]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781913028763
Publisher: Sapere Books
Published: 2019-08-18T16:00:00+00:00

PART THREE

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

1942

Today is Izzy’s nineteenth birthday and, happily, it coincides with the hottest day of the year. It was already balmy at half past six when Izzy and Charlie stepped from Tower Pier onto the deck of Union Jack’s tug, The Fairweather, to start work, but it is now early afternoon and the temperature has climbed throughout the day. According to the thermometer on the inside of the tugboat’s wheelhouse it is just touching 88°F. The lads have long since dispensed with all clothes except their trousers, in both cases rolled up to their knees, and, in Izzy’s case, his cap. Both still wear heavy boots; however hot it is, they know that to move cargo and boats in bare feet is to invite injury.

Izzy casts off the stern ropes on each of the two barges in turn and walks for’ard across the deck of the leeward barge. Charlie waits by the head rope on the other barge. Izzy nods, and they simultaneously cast off the head ropes on both barges and swiftly lash the two together. They work well together, quickly and efficiently. Charlie is now almost as competent as his older cousin.

Union Jack had at first been reluctant to employ the sixteen-year-old even when shorthanded.

“’E’s a big strong lad, I grant you, but ’e ain’t been doing it long enough,’ he said a few times, despite Jonjo’s insistence that Charlie was the brightest apprentice he’d ever had and that he picked things up very fast.

Then, a couple of months back, Union Jack’s brother-in-law Ernie suffered an injury, leaving Jack in need of a lighterman at short notice, and he’d taken a chance. Since then he’d used Charlie on several occasions, and while Charlie loved working with Uncle Jonjo, it made a pleasant change to spend time with another Master, especially one whose family had been working the river for centuries.

The skin on Charlie’s face, the V of his neck and his lower arms, olive coloured even after a winter covered by clothing, are now deeply bronzed by the sun. What little puppy fat he still had when he started working on the river in the winter of 1940 has now been replaced by hard, knotted muscle. While his mother, Millie Horowitz, is a competent but unenthusiastic cook, Aunt Bea lives to feed her large household in Shadwell and would happily spend her entire life in the kitchen, producing meal after meal. Whatever time of the day or night the men return, there’s always something on the stove or in the oven keeping warm for them, often courtesy of Bea’s ancient uncle in Poplar, a kosher butcher. Despite rationing, there’s always an extra chop or two or half a chicken wrapped up in the brown paper bags Charlie collects for her. Since Charlie started living at Juniper Street, under Aunt Bea’s loving ministrations he has filled out and acquired his adult musculature.

Despite the fact that Charlie has less time to go to the boxing gym, the hard work

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