Green eyes

by Sid Chaplin

Sid Chaplin (b. 1916) was born in the North-East of England in the family of a miner. He was fourteen when he had to give up schooling and start mining. He was a miner when the General Strike of 1926 broke out and it influenced his outlook considerably.

He failed to get any regular education though he studied for one year at special courses for workers and then at a special worker's college. He gained most of his knowledge from reading. He considered himself to be particularly endebted to Dickens, Fielding, Tolstoy and Gorky. He also got a lot from the miners some of whom were excellent story-tellers. When he began writing short stories he tried to follow their way of telling a story.

In 1939 Chaplin was elected the head of the local branch of the National Miners' union. In 1950 he began contributing for the magazine "Coal" and sometime later he got on the stuff of the Coalmining National Administration of the two big counties.

He began writing in the 40ies. His first collection of stories "The Leaping Lad" was published in 1948. But he was actually recognized as a writer when he published the novel "The Day of the Sardine" in 1961 and "The Watchers and the Watched" in 1962. He also wrote an autobiographical story "The Thin Seam" (1951). The novel "Sam in the Morning" was published in 1965. Sid Chaplin's short stories are mostly about the miners. The writer describes their life, their problems, worries and joys with profound understanding, great sympathy and respect. The stories of Sid Chaplin are also noted for peculiar humour and irony that make some really dramatic stories not sound sombre. The writer is not so much concerned with the plot but with the characters who are always flesh-and-blood and true to life.

"Green Eyes" is a character story. It portrays a man who seems to be hating all and hated and feared by everybody.

But the important thing is if there is still something human and kind left in the man's heart.

There is one more question that you can't but ponder over while reading and having read the story: what makes people become like the one who is described by Sid Chaplin in his story?

1 My Uncle Bill is the right lad for a fight. "A fight a day," he says, "keeps the doctor away." Fight! he'll fight any time, anywhere, the result of having the disposition of a bull-terrier.* When he sees a face he doesn't like, or hears a voice that grates on his nerves, look out! the fight's due to start any minute. As my Aunt Sally says every time he comes up the street with a black eye and a bloody nose, and the other man goes the opposite way on a stretcher. "God help us all, here he comes again. Oh, what a one is my man!"

2 And, true, what a one is he. Getting on for fifty now, but still with a waist like a whippet and muscles like whipcord. And his face a bit broken up with blows that got there in some of his fights, and the blue pock-marks of blasting-powder, for my Uncle Bill is a miner.

3 Don't think he's a common corner-end rowdy. Oh no! Always a faithful husband and a good father to his kids, although he's had to move around a bit, from pit to pit because sometimes he hits out down pit as well. Once knocked a manager flat on his back, then sat him in a barrel of axle-grease for his sins. He went to goal for that bit of work, and that's how he stared here, at the Deepdown Pit.

4 The day he came out of goal, he had a good square meal first of all, the kind my Aunt makes plate piled up with new taties;* brussels-sprouts, Yorkshire pudding and slices of beef; then he packed up his bag, gave her a big kiss, and one each for the bairns,* then took the road with a pound note from the kitty in his pocket.

5 He wandered up the dale from colliery to colliery, but it was the same tale everywhere he went. No work for him. He was black-listed. And all the time he was wandering further away from home. Eventually he crossed the Pennines* into another county, and one day found his way to Deepdown. It stood on the banks of the river, the old pulley-wheels spinning in the sunshine and the long black greasy ropes cutting through the air, from the engine-house, built of great squares of stone, to the wheels and then down through the black shaft that pierced the strata. The village was older than the pit, built of limestone, the houses dotted the hillside. He went straight down to the colliery offices and got a job. The manager was a proper sport, he said. A little fellow who said, "thou", a Quaker born and bred. He found lodgings and started work the next day. The men were chummy, the money was good. He sent for Aunt Sally and the bairns; then later for my Da and Ma.

6 Uncle Bill lived at the top of the hill in a street called High Row; Da got a house beside the river; we were flooded out every spring. My earliest memory is of the water swilling into the back-kitchen, and Ma putting me on the table out of the way.

7 For a long time my Uncle Bill had no fights. High words often, and some of them with my Ma, and for a long time Uncle Bill and my Da never spoke to each other. Until one morning, going to work, a man told Uncle Bill that my Da had a worry. "A worry?" said Uncle. "What and who's this worry?" "Skimpy," said the man. "The big brute, he's always in the backshift when your young 'un is in the fore-shift. That means he gets in from work as your brother goes to bed. But not to sleep. Skimpy gets washed, then plays his gramophone till three o'clock i' the morning. This happens every night, and your Fred's fit to drop when work-time comes. Walks to work wi' his eyes shut. One day your Fred goes next door and politely asks Skimpy to stop playing his machine so much, but Skimpy laughs and throws him over the garden gate. So your Fred is off works a coupla days,* he's got so many bruises.

8 "Next day Fred's missus knocks at the door, but Skimpy won't let her talk. Tells her to scram while the scramming's good. So scram she does, but only after she's called him every name under the sun from a filthy goat to human ape. But the more she says, the more he laughs. So that's that, but another week or two and your Fred's a nervous wreck and in the hospital or the asylum."

9 My Uncle Bill was in a sweat. Being the eldest brother he felt he was responsible for Da; but this Skimpy was a hard nut to crack. Skimpy had been a prisoner-of-war in Germany. After half-killing two or three of the guard, they put him in the mine to work, without any boots, they say, as a special form of punishment. Anyway, he once worked a shift at Deepdown barefooted to win a bet. After the war he went to the devil.

10 One mild form of his devilry was poaching. Of course everybody around here does a bit of poaching now and again, but he didn't play the game properly at all. Any decent poacher keeps out of the keepers' way; what's an odd rabbit or two? But Skimpy had to flaunt his poaching, bragged about it in the Black Bull* in front of the keepers. As bold and as brazen as brass. And they didn't like it, naturally. So one night, two or three of them set a trap for him, gave him a good hiding, took his bag of rabbits and sent him packing.

11 The same night he walked into the Black Bull, went over to the head keeper, and told him he'd get his own back before long. The keeper said nothing, being a wise man, just finished his pint and walked out. Half-an-hour later Skimpy walked out too. The next morning the keeper was missing. They found him lying in a ditch with his head knocked in. Skimpy was arrested and charged with murder. But they couldn't pin anything on to him. Everybody believed him guilty, and when he was released everybody shunned him. So from that day to this he'd lived alone, silent, morose and savage.

12 This was the man my Uncle Bill had to deal with. And, as luck would have it, who should pass them but Skimpy. It was three o'clock in the morning and the electric street lights lit up his face. My Uncle Bill swallowed something in his throat, then shouted, "Hey, you!" The great hulking figure of a man stopped and growled, "Well, what d'ye want?" Uncle walked up to him, put his hand on to Skimpy's arm (a good way of finding out what Skimpy's muscles amounted to) and said, "Ah* want a word or two with you." "Carry on," said Skimpy. "Well, it's this way," he said, "my brother happens to live next door to you, and you happen to be a pretty poor kind of a neighbour. He can't get to sleep for this gramophone of yours goin' the hurdy-gurdy business all night. And when he asks you to stop it, you throw him over the garden gate." All the time Uncle is saying this he's half-paralysed with fright. For Skimpy had a face fit to frighten the bravest man alive. He was completely bald, his head was for all the world like a ball of lard in the grocer's shop. His eyelashes were missing and his eyes were like green scummy wells. And the arm that Uncle felt was like a steel rod.

13 "That's an old tale," said Skimpy. "What d'ye think you're gonna do about it?"

"Blast the bloody livin' daylights out of you," said my Uncle Bill. All he could see was that great round hairless face; all his fear was gone; his greatest ambition was to smash it into a bloody pulp there and then.

14 Skimpy's eyes never flickered. Not one tell-tale muscle twitched. But the eyes cleared of the scummy clouds, and for a moment a murderous resolve showed like a danger light.

"Ah'll see ye at shift's end," he said. He gently freed himself from Uncle's hand and left him standing.

15 He was waiting at the pit-head when Uncle finished. "Come here, Cummerland,"* he said.

"No," said my Uncle. "There's a quiet spot down by the river."

"For what?" asked Skimpy. "It's for talking, my lad, not fighting." And all the while swinging his heavy pit-lamp, and my Uncle watching him like a cat watching a mouse. You can ima­gine them, both as black as night, with their eyes shining; Skimpy like some great hairless ape and Uncle straight as a die, leaning forward ever so slightly and his feet set to get in the first one.

16 And then he nearly dropped with the surprise of it. "Listen," said Skimpy, "Ah've been thinking all t'shift. You're right. Ah'm wrong. Your brother'll get his sleep in future. Satis­fied?" And before my Uncle Bill could stammer out "Aye", he was gone. And for the first time in a fighting life my Uncle was pleased at not having to light. He knew Skimpy could lick him with one hand tied up, but it wasn't that that had worried him. It was the blazing hell that he's seen for a moment in Skimpy's eyes; hell under the hatches. And he couldn't reckon it up, why Skimpy, should apologise as quiet as an old sheep. He went about in a kind of daze all the rest of the day, then, after supper, decided to clear things up with a pint of amber ale. So away to the Bull he went.

17 The Bull was packed. Darts, dominoes and beer competed, with beer an easy winner. But one corner was empty, as if a ring had been drawn around it and a notice put up, Trespassers Will Be Prosecuted. Skimpy's corner. And there, silent as ever, feet sprawled out, and the pint glasses all in a row in front of him, sat Skimpy.

18 He looked up and saw Uncle. "Come here, Cummerland," he said. Now for the fun, thought my Uncle Bill. Now he's in his cups, it's me for the good old flat on the back. He walked into Skimpy's reservation, his body in a cold sweat. But no running away for my Uncle Bill.

"Sit down," said Skimpy. "Thanks," said Uncle, and obeyed. Skimpy's head was down now. He could see the whole whitish-yellow expanse of it, with a blue vein ticking and throbbing. "Mebbe,"* said Skimpy, "you've thought Ah'm yellow, eh?"

19 "Can't say I have," answered Uncle.

"Would you like to know the reason Ah didn't lash the hide off yet this morning, Cummerland?"

"Wouldn't mind knowing," said Uncle.

"For this simple reason," said Skimpy. "Ye* reminded me of twenty years gone. Ah once looked at a man the way ye looked at me this morning. Same way. That's why Ah didn't tan the hide off ye, see?"

20 He looked my Uncle Bill square in the face, "Have a pint on me?" Once again my Uncle looked into those green eyes. And he saw something there that made him understand; the eyes of Skimpy were the eyes of the crucified.

"Thanks, mate," he said, "reckon I will," and lifted the glass, "Cheers!"

And the Black Bull became as quiet as the transept of a cathedral as all eyes left darts and dominoes and amber ale to see the first smile for years breaking like Eastertide over Skimpy's hairless face as he returned the compliment.