The Church and the Tradesman - 1. The Apprentice

178 St. James’s Walk was a three-storey Georgian townhouse that overlooked Regents Park. It was a prestigious address in the heart of London and only a brisk walk away from the West End or trendy Camden Market. The house was owned by one of the big record labels and used by their artists when visiting England to record, promote or tour. It had recently been renovated but the plain, featureless façade at the front disguised an opulent and surprisingly spacious interior.

It was nine o’clock on a cold and misty Saturday morning when Bob parked the van on the gravel driveway next to the Mercedes SL. We were met by the security guard who led us into the house through the side entrance where we were signed in.

“Andy Richardson,” I said as he checked my name against the job sheet and scribbled into a book. “And this is Bob the builder.” The burly South African didn’t smile at my joke, he was officious and humourless, probably ex-army, they all were in that business.

“You’ll be working in the residence, which is occupied at the moment so you’ll need to be discreet,” he said. He never told us who was staying there but our boss Sidney had mentioned the day before that it was an American pop singer in London for the Brit Awards ceremony on Monday. I don’t know where Sidney got his information from, but he was rarely wrong about anything.

I wasn’t really interested in catching a glimpse of some egotistical pop star. I disliked pop music along with all of the plastic performers who mimed to the sickly lyrics. I just wanted to get through the day as quickly as possible. It was a Saturday and only eight tedious hours separated me from my alter-ego; the next day was my fun day.

I was an apprentice plumber working for a family run business in Islington, North London. I had been lucky to get into the trade; most of my mates from school were either on the dole or working in low paid dead end jobs. A trade offered me the chance to get somewhere in life, and it was the best that anyone coming from my school could hope for. That’s what everyone seemed to think anyway. Maybe I should have been grateful for the opportunity to earn a decent wage and have a reasonable lifestyle. Bob seemed to think so. He had done all right for himself.

He had a nice looking wife who had just knocked out his third nipper and was still able to afford to go out for a drink with his mates on Sunday lunchtimes after playing football. He owned his own house somewhere in the arse-end of Bedfordshire, a simple two up, two down effort, in a modern town where all the Londoners went to live. The ones who had done all right for themselves.

I was always told that if I worked hard and kept out of trouble then I would be able to have the same lifestyle as Bob, and that’s what everyone expected me to do. He was good to work with and easy-going with an occasional sense of humour. He also lived and worked well inside the rules and therefore a valuable asset for the company. He could be trusted to work on his own and they knew that no matter what problem he faced, he would somehow find a way around it. He had a slightly different take on it; he saw himself as a bit of a rebel, who drove a hard bargain. He wasn’t going to be taken for granted. They always did though, which was why he was working on a Saturday, when everyone else, including the bosses, had the day off. I was the other exception, but I was still learning the trade, and Bob was the bloke supposed to be teaching me. They put me with him because he was safe and apparently, I needed to be kept in line and play by the rules. If I did that, then I could do alright for myself.

That was the problem; Bob and I had different expectations from life, and away from work lived contrasting lifestyles. Even as a teenager, I knew that I was never going to be a family man and I had no intention of ever meeting a nice girl and getting married like my parents were expecting. I had other plans, which I had to keep to myself because they didn’t belong in Bob’s world. As nice as he was, he would never have understood the real me and probably wouldn’t have wanted to work with me either. If Sidney had known, then I doubt if I would have even been offered the job in the first place.

It was unlikely that Bob or any of the other blokes who worked at Jays Plumbers even knew anyone who was gay. Poofs were people who they laughed at but would have very little contact with in their lives. Queers weren’t interested in football and certainly didn’t play the game, or any other sport for that matter. They didn’t go to the pub either, at least not the same pubs that normal blokes went to. Occasionally they would allow one to cut their hair and then laugh about their near death experience with their mates afterwards as if they had just been in a cage with a Lion.

I guess that I must have broken the mould a little because I didn’t quite fit into their preconceptions. For a start, I was quite good at sport and reasonably athletic. At school, I had played rugby and even made it into the school team as a fly-half. I quite liked watching football and sometimes went to the pub after work for a couple of jars and a laugh with the blokes. The Frog and Duck was our pub, it was just along the road from the firm, and where most of the out of hours’ work took place. If we got back late and needed to see Sidney, that’s where we would usually find him. All the work took place on site, all the materials were kept at the firm, and all the important stuff was handled at the Frog. It was where I had been interviewed for the job as a fresh-faced seventeen-year-old, where they took the bank manager for lunch, and where we had our annual Christmas drink-up. I was considered to be one of the lads and to an extent, I enjoyed the camaraderie that came with belonging to a trade.

* * * * *

There was another trade that I belonged to. None of the blokes at work had even heard of ‘Trade’ at Turnmills until it began making headlines for all the wrong reasons. A politician had died; suffocated in a bizarre sex act after returning from the club. I had seen a few of them in there, public figures even. Wide-eyed and drugged up; I had also seen them on television preaching family values. Their secret lives were safe, we all had something to hide, some perhaps more than others. I had heard even of high court judges although it seemed unlikely, it wouldn’t have surprised me, anything was possible in that place.

It was nicknamed ‘the church’ by the faithful, because of its unusual opening hours. Four o’clock on Sunday morning until one o’clock in the afternoon enabled it to start when the other clubs were just finishing and many of the patrons would warm-up at tamer venues before heading to the main event. It was the first and only nightclub in the UK to be given an all-night licence, granted by a panel of judges. It made you wonder.

It was touted as strictly members only, but no membership cards were issued, and there was no dress code. To be allowed in, your face had to fit and you had to be known or recognised by the doormen. You also had to be gay and Axl Rhodes from ‘Guns and Roses’ and Madonna were two celebrities recently turned away by the doormen for not fitting the criteria. One of the blokes at work had told me about it after reading it in the daily gossip.

“I wish someone would just blow that fucking place up,” he said. I didn’t, I had been in there at the time. It would have been pointless arguing with him, he lived in a different world and his hatred was fed by the tabloids. They had been trying for weeks to get in, but members of the press were usually recognised and denied entry along with the other non-believers. I felt sorry for them because they didn’t have what I had and would never be able to understand, or even know what they were missing. I had ‘Trade’ while they had the ‘Frog and Duck’, and the only thing that those two places had in common was me.

* * * * *

Once we had been signed in, the security guard led us through the residence to the boiler room in the basement. Our job was to get it working and restore heat and hot water to a very luxurious but rather cold house. Bob was good, and after a quick inspection, he estimated that we would be out by two o’clock. That didn’t surprise me but I wasn’t convinced, he would often underestimate how long a job would take. An unexpected problem could add hours to this and Bob would never leave without finishing. I knew that whoever was staying in that house was going to have hot water and heating, before Bob and I went home, no matter what.

The security guard informed us that the guest was upstairs and then asked us to be quiet. Bob who had probably been awake since five, wasn’t impressed and as usual was quick to complain.

“If you want the job done, then we’re gonna ave to make some noise,” he said. Plumbing can’t be done silently.” He was right of course, but despite his hard-line rhetoric, I knew that he would try his best because he didn’t like to rock the boat. His bark was always worse than his bite, in fact, he didn’t bite at all, he just wanted people to think he did.

“Why can’t we just take it through the front door?” I asked. “It’s got to be easier than carrying it all around the back.”

“You know what these silly fuckers are like. They don’t want us carrying tools through the front, frightened we’re gonna damage something.”

“Like what? We can put dust sheets on the carpet.”

“I know, look, I’ll ask the security bloke.”

I knew he wouldn’t, but it wasn’t Bob who would be doing most of the unloading. That would be my job. The stairs to the basement were close to the main entrance at the front, but tradesmen and deliveries usually had to go around the back, past security. In our case, it would mean almost double the journey from the van to the boiler room and it wasn’t necessary.

“I’ll go and ask him,” I said, but Bob grabbed my arm and pulled me back to the van, before lighting his cigarette.

“Leave it,” he said, “you know what he’s gonna say. They’re all the fucking same. I ate these bleeding bar lambs.”

“And I hate cigarette smoke,” I said backing away but he ignored me.

“I told him I wasn’t gonna do this job, you know?”

“Who?”

“Sidney, I’m fed up of doing him favours all the time.”

“But you’re still here, what did he say?”

“They’re in shit street, they haven’t got anyone else. No one good enough anyway.”

“What about Barry?” I said.

“Don’t make me laugh, Barry couldn’t handle a job like this. Not properly anyway.”

“Francis?”

Bob laughed, Francis obviously didn’t even deserve a comment as far as Bob was concerned.

“So is he gonna pay you more for today?”

“You’re fucking joking, like getting blood from a stone as it is.”

‘I bet he didn’t even ask’.

“If you’re the only one who can do it…properly, then he should pay you a bit more,” I said. “He’s probably charging these people three times what he’s paying you.”

“I doubt it, boy.”

“They’re a record label, Bob. It’s February and they’ve got no heating, they’ll pay anything.”

I could tell that he was getting annoyed, he would always call me boy when I annoyed him. I was nearly twenty-one and practically fully qualified, although nowhere near as good as Bob, as he was always quick to remind me.

“Come on, let’s get some of this shit inside.” Bob trod his cigarette butt into the gravel and opened the side door of the van. The shit he was referring to were our tools of the trade, and he grabbed the smallest bag and headed to up the driveway to the side entrance.

The security guard had already laid plastic floor covering over the carpets from his room to the basement stairs. It didn’t look as if he was going to allow us through the front entrance, and I knew why. They didn’t trust us—or anyone else—not to steal anything. Workers had to use the side entrance past security whenever they left the building.

I didn’t like being treated in this way, it was demeaning and insulting. I wasn’t a thief and neither was Bob. I was laughing as I carried two work boxes and followed him downstairs. “We’re good enough to come out on a Saturday and fix their heating, but they don’t trust us not to nick anything.”

“It’s not that they don’t trust us in particular,” said Bob, “that’s just the rules, they’re not gonna change them for us.”

“Oh, so they trust us, but nobody else?” I said as I put the boxes down outside the room and turned to walk back. “They don’t trust anyone more like.”

He wasn’t listening and he wasn’t interested. His balding head was already buried deep into the silent boiler as he put his glasses on to examine the settings. It was what he enjoyed the most. Sometimes I would stay to watch and learn but I knew that he would be quicker on his own, so I left him mumbling to himself and headed back to the van. I had estimated another two journeys, but when I stepped outside it was starting to rain and the van was a good twenty metres from the entrance.

‘Sometimes I hate this bloody job’.

“Can I move the van nearer?” I asked Bob, after completing my second trip carrying a box of pipes and ends. I expecting him to be a little hesitant. Bob never liked anyone else driving his van, even if it wasn’t actually his van.

“You’re wet,” he said.

‘He’s smarter than he looks sometimes’.

“It’s raining, that’s why I wanna move the van.”

“They said it was gonna rain today,” he said as he reached behind the boiler with a pair of pliers. “This is a fucker to get to.”

He didn’t answer my question, but he seemed to have his work cut out trying to reach the nut to the exit valve. They were usually at the back of those old boilers and Bob had short arms. “Do you want me to try?” I said. I was taller and had a longer reach than him. “I can do this while you move the van.” It seemed logical, but Bob never worked that way.

“It’s okay, I can manage. You don’t need to bring everything else, just the drills now.” It was his way of telling me, that he didn’t want me driving the van. Even though I was insured to drive the company vehicles and I had been driving for three years. Sometimes Bob wasn’t the easiest person to work with, but he was the only one who could do this kind of job…properly.

* * * * *

“So what do you think?” I was holding the torch over the top of the boiler casing as Bob fiddled with the inlet valves. He was too close for my liking, although it was necessary. I could feel his breath on the side of my face as he grunted.

“Little fucker’s jammed,” he said, “stuck fast. I knew this fucking job was gonna be trouble. Keep the torch on it.”

My arm was aching, I would rather have been doing his job, but I knew he would never let me. He eventually backed up and I was happy to rest my arm and put some distance between us. There was nothing wrong with Bob, he always kept himself clean and tidy and he didn’t smell, but he was a bit old and a little hairy. He also had false teeth; I don’t know why that bothered me, except that they used to cluck when he ate anything. That wasn’t likely to be a problem that day though, it didn’t look as if we would be stopping for lunch.

It was gone ten o’clock and Bob still hadn’t located the fault. It was a bad omen, usually, when this happened we were in for a long day or even a late evening.

“Who do think it is then, this pop star?” I said.

“Michael Jackson.”

“Really?”

“How do I fucking know? Okay, I’m gonna try again.” He said grabbing another wrench. “Come on, I need some light.”

It was unlikely that this so-called pop star would be a big name like that, but I was interested to find out who it was, even though we probably wouldn’t get to meet him or her.

‘Maybe it’s someone older, one of the old gits from Bob’s generation’.

“It could be Mick Jagger?”

“He’s English, you dumb fuck.”

“Oh yeah. Well, how about Dolly Parton?”

“I wouldn’t mind meeting her.”

“Yeah, I know. You like her, don’t you Bob?”

“Don’t take the piss boy, she’s better than the crap you listen too. All that bleeding house shit; it’s just a load of noise. There’s not even any lyrics.”

“They don’t need lyrics, it’s mainly for dancing to.”

“Not my sort of dancing. Got it,” he said as he released the valve, there was a gentle hiss from the escaping air but no water and that was a bad sign. “Fuck it. We’re gonna need the rest of the tools from the van.”

“You mean ballroom dancing?” I said as I headed to the stairs laughing. He threw a rag at me which missed by a mile.

My smile soon dropped when I passed the security guard and looked outside. It was raining even harder now and my only protection was a light jacket. I looked at the guard and was surprised to see him smiling. I had never seen one of those blokes smile before.

“That’s England for you,” he said.

‘Smarmy git’!

I could either wait for it to ease off or make a dash for it and hope for the best. I didn’t want to hold up the job and get away late, and it didn’t look as if it was going to stop anytime soon. I opted for the latter and ran to the van. After grabbing what we needed, closing the door and walking back loaded down with another two bags, I was drenched. The security guy was still smiling but I was spared a laugh, that would have been way beyond his jurisdiction.

“Be careful not to drip any water on the carpets won’t you?” I knew that was coming. “When you fix the boiler, you’ll be able to dry off by the radiator.”

‘When we fix the bloody boiler, I’m outta here mate’!

I had my head down trying to keep the drips on the plastic floor covering while muttering a few well-chosen obscenities as I headed across the hall to the stairs. I didn’t even know that he was there until I heard him laughing at me. He was sitting halfway up the main staircase dressed in a big red ski jacket and a blue woolly hat with a bobble on the top.

“Oh my God, who the fuck are you?” he said, “did you just swim here or something?”

I recognised his face straight away, he looked exactly the same as he appeared on TV, although I usually switched channels whenever I saw him.

‘I don’t believe it’!