Up the Chimney (Feb 2017)
(1457 words / 5 mins)
My name’s Charlie Black and here I am again in Aldbrough Hall. It’s very fancy, blimey, the chandeliers, one of ‘em could light up the whole street where I come from! It seems like they only do things on a grand scale. Just look at the tables! Well the one in the dining room is big as us two up two down all together. My place isn’t in the rooms though, no, my place is up in the chimbly, and for that I’m grateful it’s on a grander scale. Less rubbing on me knees and elbows. Look at them here, they’re hard as the soles on old Felix’s feet they are. And rough as his chin. Have to be, cause that’s how I get up the chimblys, like a caterpillar I go, up up up round the crannies and up to the top, until I gets a breath of fresh air and I like to give a wave out the top, at the pigeons and such as live up there. Then whoosh, I slide me down to the bottom, just like them helter skelters at the fairground. Oh, I’d like to get me up to the top of one of them.
Anyhows, that’s not what I wanted to tell you, I’ve got a story, I’ve always liked a good yarn, they kept us living some nights in the workhouse. Listening to each other’s stories, who knows whether they was truth. But this story, I’ll swear on Ma and Pa’s graves if I knew them, it’s true alright, and it’s a bloody belter, and being here in this place has just brought it to mind. It was Jacob who’s told me and he can’t half tell a story, and mebe he added a bit here and a bit there, just to keep us proper listening but that’s why I went up the chimbly rather than those mills, what’s there to compare in the cotton mills when it comes to old stories? I ask yer!
So, as Jacob started, so will I……….
It was April, 1853. There had been blizzards and snowfall the likes of we hadn’t seen in a few years and they’d went on until March. Blizzards so bad the snow was blowing through the insides of the workhouse as well as down the streets. There were a three week rule on us little ‘uns then, we’d be out of the place as soon as we could to apprentice and work so as not to get sick. We all wanted the Journeymen to take us as their boy sweeps, at least we’d get a bath and some kind faces in the church once a week, not to mention food and warmth. So little Solomon Hooper, he was happy as the lark the day he was taken to be apprentice.
Anyways, that April, after the cold and snow was drifting aways we was flat out to work to clean out the chimneys in the big la-di-da places, they’d been burning their coals hard that winter and they was desperate for a clean.
Solomon, he were a good climber, small and light, and bricky, when you’d been brought up like us in the workhouses, there’s not much as scares yer. He was in the grandest room of the whole house, the Master had put out sheets to catch the soot pile and Solomon was awaiting his time to climb, stripping bare so as to get the grip better, and his Master, he’s telling him such as:
“There’s been problems with this one lad, belching out smoke and some queer noises, could be a nest or som’at so get it out o’ there n’ bother.”
“I’ll do that Master, I in’t bothered by nothin’” he says. He was brave was Solomon, as I said.
“Up yer go lad, this one splits twice so you’ll need to tek each crannie in turn, give us yer holler” and Solomon’s holler was
“Highhhhh……uuuuup!”
(Us workhouses, we were hanging on Jacob’s every word.)
He was up the chimney fast as a stoat and his Master was waiting. Probably inspecting the fancy ladies in their stills on the walls, having a nosey round the silver and didn’t notice the time. Yer see, Solomon had found something as was blocking the chimney on the left side and he were trying to shift it. He’d gone to put his hand in where his hold should be and found a soft where it should ha’ been hard. So he’d steadied, back up to the wall, slowing his breathe and concentrated through his fingers. He felt around and under the sides and over and gave a little pull and it gave way and something was soft and falling through his hands, from down below he heard cries and shouts from his Master but he carried on, his fingers reaching up to the next hold to steady again had struck another softness, and this one felt like hide. His first thinking was it’s some stupid animal as has got itself wedged in here but as his hand reached up that bit further, and felt into the darkness above and around ‘is head, he knew it were no stupid animal. He’d felt a shoe, and there were still a some’at attached to it…. And then, he knew it, it were a chil’, some bairn had been stuck in there and left to his death.
(We were all still, gaping at Jacob.)
Well, Solomon, he shot back down and out that chimney like he shot out into the world on the day he were born to it! And in his shock and terror it took ‘im some time to notice as what was all around ‘im.
“What was it? Tell us Jacob!” we’d all hollered, leaning into Jacob for the next bit. So Jacob took a breathe and told us……
He’s there, ‘is Master, surrounded in soot and papers, all floating around ‘im, all over the room they was, and it took Solomon still a while to notice what it was, but when he did, blimey he let out a holler
“HIGHHHHHHHH UUUUUUUUPPPP!!!!!!!”
(We all joined in this ‘un!)
‘Cos it were monies! Well, no one could have known it was there, they’d not have had the chimney swept if they had, so Solomon and his master were on their knees grabbing what they could and shoving it into thems sacks.
Then Solomon remembered, there was still someone else in the room, up the chimbly. What would he do? His old Master, he thought that Solomon had cleared the blockage. The Lord and Lady as they were, they thought the chimneys had been swept. Solomon, he thought just for a minute, but his master was mad as hops and on ‘is way out.
Jacob told us this story and he stopped, and us boys were all awaiting, we wanted to know if little Solomon got his monies and what of the foot he’d grasped. So we asked him and he says to us to look out, just look out. So me, Charlie Black, I asked him outright. I said to Jacob:
“He’s real, this story ‘bout Solomon Hooper it happened, so there’s a body we need to know ‘bouts”. And Jacob he just looked at all us boys, he were building us up, he were holding us tight in ‘is fist till the very end of ‘is story, and I tell yer, when yer all huddled together, to keeps warm and yer can feel the little ‘un next to yer shaking with fear from the story and the cold, yer got the tension alright.
“Tell us ‘bout Solomon and what he found Jacob!”
“Tell us!” we shouted,
“Who were it?” we were asking
“DId they find ‘im?”
“Were it a sweep? A young ‘un?” asked little George, eyes wide as a sweeps brush.
And Jacob finished ‘is story ……and Solomon never went back, and he never said to his Master a word, and he never climbed another chimney.
And there weren’t a breathe to be heard or a heartbeat to be felt in the workhouse boys.
I’ve kept thinking on this, ever since. Were it a sweep forgotten? Or a thief more like, trying to make the getaway. I’m Charlie Black and I’m about to go up the big chimbly in Aldbrough Hall, and as I’ve looked me way around this room, I’ve seen a portrait, a lad, not much older than me.
“Who’s that?” I ask Felix,
“That’s the long lost son of Lord and Lady La-di-da” he replies.
And here I stand now, in front of a chimbley, I’m usual bricky as yer like, but I’m not so sure about climbing today as it ‘appens.
