Charles and Charlie , livre ebook

Charles and Charlie
Book One of the Stoker Trilogy
Tod Benjamin
Austin Macauley Publishers
2020-10-30
Charles and Charlie About the Author Copyright Information© Dedication Prologue May 1926 Chapter One The First Ten Years Chapter Two Life with Charles Chapter Three 1926, The Collick Estate Chapter Four 1928—The Northern Chapter Five Millie and Charlie Chapter Six The Camera Club Chapter Seven Xmas 1928 Chapter Eight Stephen Collick Chapter Nine 1929 And the End of Innocence Chapter Ten Margret Chapter Eleven 1930 Chapter Twelve Charlie Meets the Mabeys Chapter Thirteen Marriage and Enfield Chapter Fourteen The World Upside Down Chapter Fifteen Dealing with It Chapter Sixteen Autumn 1930—A New Start
About the Author
Tod Benjamin’s first novel was published in 2017 at the age of 81, after a long and varied life of three careers. Firstly, a five year management course led to five years as a department store manager. That was followed by twenty-five years in the chemical industry, a career that took him all over the world.
Retirement to Bournemouth to play golf and to write created the opportunity for his third career. He began to write seriously. Now, unable to play golf, he devotes most of his time to writing. With an amount of poetry, some short stories and three novels completed, Charles and Charlie, his second novel, is the first of The Stoker Trilogy. Book two, The Tallyman , continues this saga of the first half of the twentieth century through the 1930s, and the third volume, The Soldier , completes the story through World War 2
Copyright Information©
Tod Benjamin (2020)
The right of Tod Benjamin to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.
Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
Austin Macauley is committed to publishing works of quality and integrity. In that spirit, we are proud to offer this book to our readers; however, the story, the experiences, and the words are the author’s alone.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.
ISBN 9781528980364 (Paperback)
ISBN 9781528980371 (ePub e-book)
www.austinmacauley.com
First Published (2020)
Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd
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Dedication
My sincere thanks go to all those who helped me in my efforts to establish historical facts honestly and chronologically while researching for this work. In particular, I must mention the staff at London Metropolitan University: Peter Fisher, Louise Slater and Lucy Bradley; and also Willie Watkins of the Clove Club; and not forgetting the staff of London Metropolitan Archive and the Islington Museum.
Very special thanks, though, are due to three dear friends whose knowledge of their subjects was extraordinarily valuable: Wendy Hallowell, on the complications of childbirth; Sandra Cook, on Catholicism; and my cousin Bernie Brandon on pharmacy.
Prologue May 1926
The strong, sweet smell of leather still permeated the semi-basement that held the cobbler’s workshop and, behind it, the kitchen of the flat the boy had been born in fifteen years earlier.
As he stood by the opened door at the top of the stairs leading down from the upper ground floor, the teenager felt the familiar strong odour rise and swamp over him. He had spent many hours down those stairs, watching the shoemaker create shining footwear from old, broken, worn and often dirty boots brought in by neighbours and local factory workers. Eagerly had he learned the skills of the trade from the tall man of few words who had been his gruff but kind mentor.
Today, though, the odour was sour. There was no sound of cobbling. There was stillness.
He closed the door gently so as not to disturb the silence and walked slowly into the darkened front room. His mother sat upright on the big sofa, in black from top to toe, weeping silently. He sat down beside her and placed his arm around her shoulders. For a few moments she remained rigid, but then she sagged against him, surprising him, the silent weeping becoming heavy sobs. No words passed between them. None were necessary. For him, none were possible.
The future, until now as certain as each day, was suddenly an unknown. Life had always been straightforward. He cycled to school each day; he did his homework, played sports, read books and horsed about with his pals. He ate the food that was put before him, and he slept in his own room. He completed, as well as he could, whatever household chores were demanded of him; he went to scouts every Thursday and attended Mass each Sunday. He enjoyed the occasional family days out on weekends or during school holidays.
And, in between, he spent many, many hours downstairs with the quiet cobbler.
Some time passed before the sobbing subsided. Yet more time elapsed before Millie Stoker gathered herself together and spoke. When she did, to her son’s surprise, she had instantly recovered her normal poise and firm tone:
“It’s only us, now, Charlie, it’s all up to us. He’s gone, and he won’t be back.”
She paused just long enough for the words to be absorbed.
“We’ll get someone to take over the workshop, and I’ll get myself a bookkeeping job. You are to finish your schooling. I don’t want to hear any nonsense about you doing the cobbling. You are to finish your exams and go to college. It’s what your father and I struggled for, and it’s what is going to happen. This tragedy will not ruin your chance in life. Now, I want you to go and do your homework.”
His mother was not a big woman in any physical sense, but she was possessed of great inner strength, she had an aura. His father had been tall and broad-shouldered, a gentle giant, but it had always been she who was unquestionably in charge of the household. Charlie stood up, already five feet ten inches tall, all arms and legs, and graced with the blond hair and winning smile of his recently departed father. He stared at the woman in black for a moment, contemplating argument, but the set of her face was enough to discourage him.
“Okay, Mother.” With his hands clenched fiercely at his sides, he bit back the “but I—.”
Somehow, today, a gush of words was not available to him. He turned and walked into his own room. The atmosphere throughout the house was as dark as the front room curtains. He sat on the edge of his bed, eyes closed, long arms hanging between his legs, his hands linked by their touching fingertips.
The events of the past couple of days had changed life for ever. No more could he build on the dream. His grand idea of a great shoe-making business was dead. But, he asked himself, had it ever really been alive ? He had never received any real encouragement from his parents. His mother had always said he was to go to college, but she never said what he would do afterwards, did she? Did she expect him to be a bookkeeper like Granddad Ockie? Or a bank manager? She’d done all that stuff, but it was dull stuff. He wasn’t interested in those jobs, nor even being an engineer like his father, stuck in a printing works. But he did love polishing up the leather shoes and chatting with the customers in the cobbler’s shop downstairs. He would have to have a serious talk with her soon. After all, he was coming up to sixteen now, not a boy anymore…nearly six feet tall, a grown man. But he had not had the courage to say that in the front room, had he?
Chapter One The First Ten Years
Millie Stoker came from Shoreditch, just a mile down the road from the house on Amhurst Road. She had been born Mildred Cowper into a devout Catholic family, the second child of Horace Cowper, a dour and diligent clerk/bookkeeper at the local auctioneers and valuers, and his Irish wife, Doris, a seamstress. Brought up to observe the virtues of orderliness in all things and carefulness in financial matters, Milly had upheld those values throughout the years of her marriage.
In the last year or two, she had become resigned to her life. In fact, if she were honest with herself, she had become content with her life; she had felt secure. Charles Stoker had been her ideal husband. He had swept her off her feet when they first met eighteen years earlier, with his big frame, his blond hair, and that lady-killing smile. The son of a marine engineer from Liverpool, he had been raised from the age of eight in Islington. He had served a five-year apprenticeship in a printer’s tool room to become a qualified engineer and toolmaker whilst also studying in the evenings at Finsbury Technical Institute to gain a degree from London University. With his acquired knowledge of photography and the printing industry, he had had a promising future in the old Battersby printing works in Clerkenwell, owned by the wealthy Collick family.
She had been an intelligent, smartly dressed, nineteen-year-old, who worked in a nearby bank. He had always maintained that he had first been attracted to her by the sight of her neatly turned ankle, espied through the window of the tool room as she dismounted from the tram one morning. He had boldly asked her to accompany him to the printworks’ annual ball, where he had whirled her round the ballroom floor with grace, charm and sparkling eyes.
They had been married within nine months. At first, a small flat in Hoxton had met thei