Poetry Magazines - The best collection of poetry magazines online - Simon Armitage

EGGO WAS LARGE; loud at cards in the canteen, watching not playing - he would have made a fair-sized football crowd on his own highly critical, given to roars of laughter and abuse. His mates tolerated him, made him their punchbag. You couldn’t be a more clumsy-born docker than Eggo.

     Another docker was dying. He was unconscious in the Infirmary. A tobacco cask had fallen on him, and there was little chance of his surviving. It was all in haste: casks sent up in threes instead of twos or fours, and the third cask had slipped out of the rope strop, and he was underneath. It was never safe with three. Once again the dockers were told to obey the safety regulations.

     Always somebody was getting injured always some docker it seemed who had a family to look after. One man I worked with fell through a hatch and broke his collarbone. Another man was killed outright loading timber ashore. He caught his foot in the strop as the crane swung it back to the boat, and he was taken up, dangling head down, and he fell on the Dock. Another man was killed in the ‘meat boat’ when a frozen carcase fell out of the net on him. It was all in haste. On pay days you put money ‘on the drum’, in the ‘pen’ for the widow and family.

     The ‘pen’ was a long low hall inside the dock gate where you went first thing in the morning for a job. You didn’t know what the job was going to be. You had to watch points, watch where the old hands, like Eggo, stood: see who they offered their books to - then it was usually too late, the job had gone, and you were left with the rubbish, the lower-paid jobs.

     The stevedore clerks, about half-a-dozen, paraded along a narrow, railed platform and stood there like fairground attendants offering darts or hoops or coconuts to try your luck with. It was up to you to choose which one you worked for, which one you played the game with. You might be lucky. You might get an easy job: the ‘alley boat’ for example, where the cargo of aluminium was discharged on machinery, and It was clean and well paid. No, that’s gone: one of the ‘cream’ gangs has got that, probably taken Eggo along with them. The dockers shuffle about. The experienced ones know pretty well beforehand what each clerk has to offer. If they miss the job they want, they ‘blow out’ and wait for the next call at ten o’clock. But you’ve got to get a job if you want any money. You can’t afford to be too choosey. “Come on, son,” says a clerk, leaning forward for my book as I am pushed towards him in a slight surge of the crowd. Once he’s got your book, that’s it: and before I know what’s happened that is it. I’m working for him. The crowd moves back. The clerk tells me the berth of the ship and the number of the hold I’m to work on. I still don’t know the type of cargo.

     You get a lift in a lorry: grab the rope and jump on. It’s a big place, and nowhere to walk: railway lines, and trucks shunting about all over the place. You bang on the side of the lorry when you want it to stop. When you find the right hold, you find the cargo.

     It’s cattle cake. ‘Bag work’. Cattle cake in 1½ cwt. sacks. Four or five days’ work, average money. You work in a gang of eight, four pairs. “Get ‘old theesel’,” says my mate, halfway through the morning, “they be waitin’ on we.” You have got to keep up with the rest of the gang. We are digging a hole with our hooks and hands, taking the bags beneath us, so that later we can pull the bags down on the strop, Instead of lifting them all the time. About twelve bags in each hoist, neatly stacked and bound by the strop which is looped on to the crane hook. Up they go, swaying above us, swinging ashore where they are off-loaded onto railway trucks and the strop swings back alone to the next pair as we are building our next load. The hook eases the bag free, and you lift with hook and hand, constantly stooping. “Get the idea, my old cock?” says my mate. “You just foller me.” Sometimes there is nothing finer in this world than to sit down to a bacon sandwich and a mug of tea.

     Cattle cake, fishmeal, cattle cake, timber, fishmeal, timber, cattle cake, fishmeal, cattle cake. Slowly you might improve. Cargo after cargo. One day I’ll get on the ‘alley boat’ and earn some money.
But today it’s cattle-cake again, and the stevedore has come on board, offering overtime, work until half-eight tonight? It’s a fine morning and things are going well. I could do with the money, and I might get a decent job off him next time. “Yeah, I’ll have it.”

     By five I’m fucked. I sit In the canteen with my feet up, wondering. If I don’t go back now, they won’t be able to get a stand-in. It’s a lovely evening as I wander back. The mate I was working with has gone home, and I’m joined by another man in the hold. He is small and wiry and sensible, and he understands why I’m dumb. We work on. I follow his lead as he selects the next bag to take. He makes the job as easy as possible, not wasting a movement. We are always slightly ahead, never having to rush, always ready when It’s our turn to strop up. We hardly exchange a word. The hold empties. By eight we’re finished. He was a good bloke. I say goodnight to him and go home. I’m too tired to eat. I’m getting punchy. At times, being tired, I just feel hate for the whole bloody system. Timber, fishmeal that clings to you, cattle cake.

     One day I’m on timber, lifting long lengths. I feel the other end drop and when I look up, my mate’s disappeared. For a moment I thought he’d gone over the side onto the dock which is about fifty feet below, but he had fallen.backwards onto a lower deck. He was only shaken and bruised. He returned to work after tea-break.

     The hold of the ‘dirt boat’ is like an open-cast mine. The ‘dirt’ is rubber dust, the stuff they make tyres of, and you shovel it into a huge bucket. Some blokes prefer that job, and work on It most of the time, ‘on the shovel’. It’s well paid and a machine takes most of the dust, but there is still a terrible lot of shovelling involved, and the dust gets into you. But it’s the first sight of these jobs that scares me, the never-ending size of them. Bananas that go on for ever in the darkened holds where spiders gambol. Frozen regiments of muslinshrouded meat in refrigerated depths. Grain, and tea chests, and tins, and cattle cake: In the canteen I drink pints of scrumpy-shandy to stay human. Eggo looms, growling at the bar, spending his ‘alley’ money. He bumps into me. It’s a portent. Next day I’m working with him, for the first time; unloading tobacco, for the first time.

     The docker in the Infirmary died. He didn’t wake up. It’s in the local paper. Nobody says much about it, not even Eggo, as we descend. There’s a good pay rate on tobacco. One bloke is singing as we enter the hold.

     We work in threes, and I’m with Eggo and another bloke I don’t know. Three threes in the gang. Eggo assumes leadership of our trio as we start work. It’s trickier than bag work. You have to really dig your hook into the wooden cask, and you lift with both hands on the hook, three of us lifting together. Sometimes though you can slip the strop under the tilted cask. We send the casks up in twos and fours. And Eggo has to have his say, constantly. He’s the expert, working with novices. “Don’t stand there, stand over ‘ere. Not that cask, this.” And he knows the other dockers, and can shout with familiarity at the docker on deck who is guiding the crane to us, usuaIly an older docker who is past lifting. They all swear and laugh at Eggo. And even when the other member of our trio threatens to stick his hook up Eggo’s arse, Eggo just laughs.

     Will I escape with my life? The rule is never to stand beneath the hoist as it’s going up, but sometimes you can’t avoid doing so. And Eggo rabbits on: “Come over ‘ere, my cocker. Come on. We’ll take this one next.” He doesn’t know what he’s doing any more than I do. “‘urry yerself.” If only a cask would fall on Eggo; but he probably wouldn’t notice. The other trios complain that we are slowing the job up.

     We never settle to the job, never get a rhythm going, always in a slight panic. As the day goes on, we are having to drag casks across the hold. We send up now two, now four. And then three:

     “What are you doing, Eggo?” I said, when he let the first three go
“We’ve got to keep up with ‘em, mate,” he replied, head down.

     Nobody else says anything. Mainly we continue to send up twos and fours, but every now and then a three goes up. It’s obvious that the third cask is not secure. “Let’s just get it finished,” said the other bloke. It’s all in haste.

     I couldn’t leave, even if I wanted to. I’d never live it down. Anyway the job’s nearly done. It’s all part of the work, and the last person to complain is the stevedore. He’s only too glad to get the job finished on time, or before time. There is no-one to enforce the safety regulation. So we work on, and whenever we can’t get four together on time we let three go up, and every now and then I have to go under the hoist to drag another cask across. I blame Eggo. If only he would stop shouting. I let him know what a bastard I think he is.

     The sun was going down as we came up. On deck there was a cool breeze and lights from the ships flickered in the water. It was quiet, with the occasional voice over the water, and we were finished. Lap of water as I walked along the quay towards the gate, tender colours In the sky. I had to admit it, I was too chicken for this job. A gull turned above me and seemed to voice agreement. Then as I got back on the road near the gate, a car slowed beside me, and a voice very calmly said: “D’you wanna lift, mate?”

     Jesus, it was Eggo!