Short Story: A Green Door

Short Story: A Green Door

The wait was over. Arguably the most exciting single moment the three boys would experience in their young lives was about to take place. It was no accident. This was no fortuitous coming together of abstract forces of fate. Not a chance. This theatre, staged on a balmy summer’s day in an alleyway in the slums of Liverpool, was premeditated, prepared, and planned weeks in advance. How, then, did Charlie, George and Tony, three ten year old boys, whose lives were enveloped in the daily drama of survival within the brutal poverty of working class life in the 60s, come to be standing in silent homage to a vision, their heads filled with feelings of wonderment, confusion and uncertainty.

Minutes earlier the three boys had raced, with desperate urgency, to the green door, which was located halfway up the long, undulating alley. Their demeanour shifted once they arrived at the door. A nervous anticipation supplanted their boyish enthusiasm. Their smiles turned to glassy grins.

‘Be there on time,’ Charlie had warned, ‘you won’t get a second chance.’

The green door had been chosen as a calculated act of irony. True, it was the only door that had been painted and so was easily recognisable but it was also the back door of the Murphy’s. The Murphy’s. Among most people in the street, the very name provoked a range of emotions from amusement to jealous contempt. Mr Murphy had a job working with the council. He was one of the very few dads in the street who had a job and he, his wife and their three sons, Michael eighteen, Peter fifteen and Leslie fourteen, made extraordinary efforts to ensure everyone knew of their good fortune and moral fortitude. The family advertised their relative affluence, a ridiculous word since they were only marginally better off than everybody else, as the just reward for hard graft. They were decent – no social security parasites here - hard working and a cut above the rest of the dross living in the street, or so they would have us believe. Of course, everyone knew that the door had been painted, free of charge, by Mr Murphy’s friends from the council maintenance department.

All the kids humoured the Murphy boys. They were so gullible. Charlie was often the instigator of the calculated abuse that masqueraded as friendship. Sod the hard graft number, Charlie would think to himself. His experience of successfully ripping off the Murphy boys suggested a less strenuous, less stressful yet more successful way to make a dollar. Often, he would engage in some complicated heart rending tale to draw one of the boys in, once ensnared, he would describe the path of kindness and righteousness open to the boy – which usually involved the passing of coinage - it rarely failed. However, we must recognise and acknowledge that Charlie was generally not motivated by malice, self interest or personal indulgence. When he conned food from the Murphy’s larder it was often inspired by the higher ideal of providing for his two brothers and four sisters. When he stole from the department stores in the town centre, rarely would he personally profit from such petty crimes. He did consider himself to be in the mould of a latter day Robin Hood, and this notion was endorsed and reinforced by all of the other kids in the street. He was a hero! Precocious, astute, eloquent and articulate, possessing a wisdom far beyond his years, Charlie was an enigmatic figure in a world of daily brutality and hardship. The following year he would be the first person in the whole district to gain admission to a grammar school and his destiny would be sealed.

It was in a similar vein of inflated compassion and consideration for his mates that Charlie had arranged the ‘experience’ for George and Tony. Charlie told himself that this was something he would do for them. When he first ran the plan past the two boys they reacted with eye popping incredulity.

‘It’ll never ‘appen,’ Tony said, ‘she won’t do it.’

Charlie responded with the confident indifference of a master at work,

‘Green door, 4 o’clock, last day o’ school.’ That was four weeks ago.

A week after announcing his plan, Charlie made the approach to Shirley. In poverty, as in wealth, there exists a complex myriad of shades. Charlie, whose mother had died at the age of thirty two, leaving his dad to look after seven children, knew the corrosive effects of grinding poverty. Violence, emotional and physical, was a daily visitor to the lives of the Evans’ family. It was both relentless and merciless. On the positive side, it fine tuned the survival instincts of Charlie and his siblings. In one of those crazy ironies of life that we find in all societies, those who suffer most tend to become the strongest and most able within the community. And so it was with the Evans’ family.

Shirley was not so lucky. For sure, her family were poor, actually, in many ways worse off than Charlie’s family, but this was a legacy of the cruel hand of fate. Her father was selfish, distant and a loner. He was a lowly clerk in a shipping company. At first sight he cut a weird sartorial figure. Trilby, suit, tie and polished black shoes. Closer inspection revealed the trilby was old, worn and dirty. The same suit had been his garb every working day, according to Charlie’s dad, for over fifteen years. The tie was shiny, the knot too tight and lay under a shirt collar that was frayed and dead. His shoes bore the evidence of too many amateurish attempts to rebuild the soles. In short, his appearance was a cloak that failed to conceal his poverty.

Shirley’s mother was a kindly soul whose blind generosity would occasionally jeopardise the welfare of her own kids. In truth, she wasn’t quite the full shilling and this particular attribute appeared to be the dominant gene transmitted to Shirley and her five siblings. Charlie would regularly steal food and give it to Shirley, or one of her sisters, in the sure belief that their need was greater than his.

When Charlie posed the question and explained in minute detail what he wanted Shirley to do, she agreed without a moment’s hesitation. The enthusiasm and immediacy of her response surprised Charlie – he had imagined he would have to deploy a range of convincing arguments to persuade her and if all else failed, resort to a little bribery. Her instant agreement disturbed him. He knew she wasn’t the brightest but she was fourteen and he had expected, indeed hoped, that her instincts would provoke a refusal. Charlie believed that getting one over the Murphy tribe, with their smug complacency, albeit misplaced, was almost a noble act of gallantry. This situation with Shirley was altogether different. He suspected that her compliance was rooted in the gratitude she felt for all the occasions he had offered his outstretched hand to help, a hand frequently containing coinage or some food parcel. This troubled him. He really didn’t want to take advantage of Shirley and he seriously considered telling her to forget it. However, before he could mouth any resistance, she had danced away to join her sisters in a skipping game that celebrated the judicial and violent demise of an otherwise long forgotten working class criminal

Back in the alleyway, Charlie prefaced the proceedings, prior to the arrival of Shirley, with the invocation of the mantra,

‘for what we are about to receive, may the Lord make us truly thankful.’

Now Charlie, though an altar boy, was not a believer in God. His calling, as his priest described it, was purely driven by a calculated desire to get his hands on some of the ‘goodies,’ cakes, biscuits and the like, arranged on a table in the vestry, and shared among the altar boys after the last mass each Sunday. Tony and George laughed nervously at Charlie. They never quite knew when he was being serious and when he was trying to be funny. George was a little envious, sometimes to the point of resentment, at the popularity that Charlie enjoyed. Tony on the other hand had an unabashed admiration for him. After all, it was always Charlie who organised the adventures, for sure get them into trouble, but he always seemed to be able to extricate them from any serious consequences. Like the time they had attempted to raid the pub till. Tony and George were cousins, and though neither of their fathers’ had a job, George’s estranged mother managed a pub and the two cousins would spend most weekends there. On one occasion Charlie had come up with the plan to hide in the pub cellar, rob the till after closing time and leave by simply walking out of the bar into the living quarters. Charlie hadn’t bargained on the trap door from the cellar to the bar being locked at closing time. The three boys were stuck and not a little frightened, less about being in the dark in the damp cellar, more about how they would explain being in the cellar at all. It was Charlie who thought of using the beer crates to create a ladder to the outside trap door and make their escape.

‘Yeah,’ Tony thought to himself, ‘he’s pretty neat, is Charlie.’

For today the boys had one focus, one thought, one purpose. To be there, ready, and prepared for when Shirley arrived. Tony and George huddled together, close but separated by a distance induced by vague and ill formed feelings of guilt and moral doubt. Charlie stood to one side, resolute. He reassured the others that Shirley would arrive and she would be ok, after all she had agreed to do it, actually wanted to do it. This reassurance caused a momentary grin to flash across the faces of both Tony and George.

While they waited, few words were spoken and there was little eye contact among the boys. There was a furtiveness in their movements that reflected a mild discomfort. George was pushing an empty baked beans can with his foot, attempting to slowly but deliberately crush it.

‘It stinks ‘ere,’ George muttered.

Charlie looked up and down the alley and felt a little embarrassed. It wasn’t quite an open sewer or dustbin but it could well be taken for one or the other. The three foot wide passage was neither a safe nor pleasant place. The six foot high walls on either side were threatening to collapse at the merest touch. Unevenly bowed and disintegrating, the walls provided a modesty wrapper around the ‘back yard’ of each small terraced house. The full length of the alley was littered with a carpet of working class detritus - a mixture of rotting food, dog excrement, the dried pancake of a drunk’s vomit and invisible cat pee, its distinctive odour penetrating through the thick blanket of smells emanating from the carpet. Tony was looking blankly at the worn, crumbly red brick of the opposite wall of the alley, thinking about nothing very much. Charlie was scrutinising the freshly painted green door, for the first time noticing that the door, like the assemblage of rubbish in the alley, was rotten. This brought a smile to Charlie’s face. His dad’s constant gibes at the pretensions and delusions of the working class were encapsulated in his oft repeated phrase ‘fur coat no knickers.’ This seemed to resonate perfectly with the incongruence of the gleaming green paint on the dilapidated apology for a door, the door proclaiming the House of Murphy to the world, or at least that portion of it that might venture down this back alley.

Suddenly Shirley appeared at the bottom of the alley. Shirley had clearly washed for the occasion. The habits of personal hygiene were difficult to acquire and maintain in slums that had no hot water, or bathroom or toilet other than the small brick shed in the back yard. A large deep porcelain sink with a single brass tap provided the sole source of water in each house. The slight pinking of her cheeks told Charlie that she had splashed some cold water over her face before leaving the house. Her thick black hair flowed freely over her shoulders and she had decorated it with a thick pink, plastic head band thrust deeply into the front of her head. She wore an old green cardigan over a white vest. Her skirt was long and flowing. All of these clothes were second hand, at least two sizes too big for Shirley and in the style of at least one previous generation. She looked both ridiculous and pretty and Charlie, recognising the efforts Shirley had made, felt quite moved that in a sad, quite pathetic way, she had done her best to look nice for them.

Shirley walked smartly to the green door, stood on the step in the recess and faced towards the opposite wall. For a considerable time not a word was spoken. Shirley looked at Charlie but didn’t say anything. Charlie looked at Shirley and thought she looked magnificent. George and Tony stood transfixed, shaking with nervous excitement. Shirley was quite tall and this scene had all the possibilities of farce. Standing on the step, with her back leaning against the green door, Shirley was at least a full foot above the heads of all three boys. How was this going to work, thought Charlie.

‘Who’s first?’ Shirley spoke quietly but firmly, exuding a confidence and control that surprised Charlie.

George jumped, almost leapt towards her. At this point the impact of Shirley standing on the raised step became all too evident, much to George’s delight. He pushed his face against Shirley’s bosom. Shirley put her hands around his head, tilted it away from her chest and then leaned over and kissed George full square on the lips. The kiss lasted no more than a few seconds but to George it seemed an eternity. When Shirley had finished she moved her head away from George and, without ceremony, gently pushed him away from her. Not that George was particularly conscious of being pushed away. In a dreamy gait, with his eyes darting between Shirley’s face and bossom, he staggered back to the other wall and without once taking his gaze off Shirley, leaned back until he came to rest, slouching against the wall. This dreamlike state was only slightly disturbed by the sharp, though not loud, ‘Next’ issued from Shirley’s lips. The manner and tone with which she spoke reminded Charlie of the lady on the till at the Coop. He smiled, gently.

Tony, with less enthusiasm than George, slowly moved toward Shirley. There was a nervous hesitation about his movement, anticipation had gone and in its place a desperate anxiety impaired him, to the point where he found he had to drag his legs the last two steps to reach Shirley. Lips dry, stomach churning, crazily excited, this was not the way he had imagined it to be. When he finally stood before her, she took immediate control and repeated the drama that had unfolded seconds earlier with George. This time Shirley held the kiss for what seemed ages, all the time looking over Tony’s tilted head towards Charlie. Tony’s reaction was dramatic. Charlie took a step toward him, convinced that he was about to faint. Tony wavered a little but just about managed to remain upright with the support of Shirley and Charlie.

‘You okay?’ Charlie shouted.

Tony did not answer. For a few moments he didn’t seem to know where he was, he made quick, jerky movements with his head and this scared even Charlie. ‘Sit down,’ Charlie blurted out, and with the help of Shirley they sat Tony down on the damp, filthy cobbles. After a short time Tony recovered a semblance of composure. Looking down he muttered a vague, ‘thanks Shirl,’ and then raised his eyes to stare at Shirley, who, by now, had returned to her position on the step.

‘Are you ready Charlie?’

Shirley spoke the words softly, affectionately and there was a movement in her posture that suggested a kindness, borne of admiration and respect.

‘It's alright,’ he whispered, ‘I’m ok,’ and he turned and walked slowly down the alley.

Tony sitting on the ground, George, leaning on the wall, were utterly bewildered. They looked at each other, then at Charlie, and simply could not believe what they had witnessed. After a few seconds George slowly helped Tony to his feet, without once taking his eyes off Charlie. They started to walk after Charlie, slowly dropping their gaze to the alley floor, though neither were quite sure why.

Shirley stood motionless on the step, leaning on the green door, tears trickling down her face. She watched Charlie walk down the alley, saw how he carefully negotiated the filth on the alley floor, noted that he did not turn around and was thankful for that.

‘Why Charlie’?

Without any audible sound, Shirley mouthed the question slowly, painfully.

She glanced at her cardigan, her vest, her skirt. She had scrupulously washed them, made an attempt at ironing them a week earlier and neatly folded them away in a drawer. She had swore that she would wreak vengeance on any of her sisters if they had worn them.

She had come to the green door with one focus, one thought, one purpose. For three weeks she too had felt the excitement of joyful anticipation. She didn’t care about Tony or George, but Charlie was something else. She had only agreed to do it because it was Charlie who had asked. It was Charlie she wanted to kiss, to express her gratitude for the countless acts of kindness that Charlie had shown towards her and her sisters. It was he who had always protected them from the cruel indignities inflicted upon them by almost everybody in the street. The vicious name calling was the most difficult to bear. It wasn’t their fault they didn’t have soap, toothpaste, nice clothes that fitted, scent to make them smell nice. That they had to beg and even borrow bread on a Sunday, a Sunday, when even the poorest of the poor had something resembling a roast dinner, was so bitterly, bitterly painful. This particular experience was knitted into a skipping song the other girls in the street would sing. Such cruel, cruel people.

Charlie was different. The more she thought the more upset she became. Shirley realised that all the deprivation, bullying and name calling she had experienced for most of her life were as nothing compared to the devastation she felt at this moment. Why had he not wanted to kiss her, was she not good enough for him? She made an involuntary movement of her head toward her shoulder and sniffed. After a while she walked slowly down the alley. She would not, could not, ever forget this day.

A year later and the Evans’ had moved. Charlie had started at the Grammar school and, within six months, all of the residents of the street had been rehoused. The street, alley and green door demolished. What transpired that day travelled into local folklore, with grand embellishments afforded by the imagination of both George and Tony. Surprisingly, no reference was ever made to Charlie’s behaviour by either of them.

As for Charlie. Years later he actually saw Shirley in a discotheque in the town centre. He desperately wanted to approach her, explain himself to her but most of all, to give her that kiss. However, six years at the grammar school had exposed the shallowness of his bravado, induced a more reserved demeanour and a less forthright character. He was embarrassed and ashamed.

He walked away.