IT'S FURTHER THAN YOU THINK
Up Ivegate, past the Co-op on the left, keep going along Sunbridge Road and you find yourself on level but high ground. All streets on the left drop steeply away as they descend to Thornton Road. At the junction of one of these side streets stands the premises of Thomas Crossland Ltd - Rayon Waste- Tops and Noils, a fairly typical Victorian stone building. To anyone walking along Sunbridge Road it would seem to be an imposing two story office building, built to impress, yet beyond this facade are the warehouses and and sorting tables for the re- cycling of the rayon waste. Standing in the cobbled yard at the rear however you would see a tall five story warehouse with two columns of loading doors each topped with a hoist, such is the steepness of the hill.
The rayon waste arrives in huge canvas bales of compressed recycled fibres and is hoisted through these doors to the warehouse and from there to the sorting tables. Here they are set upon by the sorters who’s nimble fingers and massive patience turn the unruly compressed mass into orderly hanks of fibre of differing lengths ready for spinning, a tedious occupation, even the most indifferent things found amongst the waste livened up the day…….non so much as the thumb though, well dried and still with a bit of hand attached……that occupied thoughts and tongues for quite sometime. It must have been late in the year as the days were short but it was the usual end of day at Thomas Crossland Ltd. As if the volume switch had turned up a notch, the lethargy turned down and the workers found another gear as they pushed into the already crowded cloakroom at the first sound of the clocking off bell. Some were in a rush, handbags in hand ready to head for the street, hurrying to claim their place in the rush hour bus queue. Others dawdled, mainly the younger ones, catching up, jostling and joking, enjoying that frisson of freedom that comes at the end of yet another working day. They pushed into the already crowded cloakroom picking up coats, hats and bags before they too shuffled off into the dusk.
Maureen……a middle aged lady who had worked as a sorter for the last two months or so, was short and just a little bit plump, she was neither shy nor pushy but had an open friendliness which made her popular at the sorting table. She had been trying to put on her lipstick to a constant interruption of…… ‘Goodnights’, ‘Hello’s’ and ‘How are you’s’ when she suddenly became aware of the silence and realised she was alone in the cloakroom. She was putting the final touches to her makeup when the silence was re- enforced by darkness, total darkness, the lights had been switched off, the cloakroom having no windows to the street did not even admit the glow of the street lamps. She was not a nervous woman, in fact just the opposite but as she fumbled her way from the darkness she encountered more darkness and the realisation that she was alone and that somehow she had delayed too long and was now locked in the building. She screamed but the sound seemed frail within the huge space as it echoed back at her.
Leaning against the wall fighting back her urge towards hysteria she gathered her thoughts, she inhaled the familiar odours of the sorting room and as her eyes adjusted, she could just make out the faint light from the street. This began to reassure her and she made her way towards the street door without too much trouble and began banging and shouting but sadly the door was solid and muffled her frantic efforts and the street outside was by now deserted.
She had to keep reassuring herself, she had things to do which were now perceived as urgent, the idea of waiting for the morning seemed unbearable and she was already feeling embarrassed by her own carelessness at getting into this predicament in the first place.
‘The loading bay’ she thought, and began to grope towards the back of the building. ‘Please don’t be locked’ she pleaded to herself. She had to negotiate her way across the familiar sorting room and then the less familiar warehouse until she could see the chink of light from the city’s glow around the loading doors and finally the relief, ‘Of course the doors would be locked but they opened from the inside.’ She thought, remembering having seen the steel locking bars. So, Maureen’s evening out was again a possibility, she was no longer condemned to a night of shivering in the dark. She smiled as she heaved open the heavy loading doors. It was scarcely daylight when the warehouse manager opened the main doors as he had done every working day for the past twenty five years. He entered the building from Sunbridge Road and made his way to his office at the back of the building. As he moved along the corridor he had an uneasy feeling, he passed the door to the sorting room but then as he approached the next door along which was the warehouse door, he hesitated. He felt uneasy,
his senses were warning that something was wrong.
This was the first time he had varied his routine, he opened up the warehouse when normally he would have gone straight to his office to put the kettle on. Did he sense something amiss behind the warehouse door? Was it intuition, a thought pattern triggered by the eerie light? He pushed open the door expecting the heavy darkness of the windowless warehouse but instead he was confronted by the delicate light of morning filtering across the empty space. It emanated from the open loading doors, open, three stories above ground level, open, yet supposedly locked from the inside. He hesitated, then cautiously crossed the threshold, shivering almost imperceptibly as he moved towards the light and the open doors. He was just a little scared, he knew the loading bays were closed up every night, it was one of his regular and final checks before he left the premises, yet here it was open, the focal point of this dingy warehouse.
That floor to ceiling inanimate rectangle of light drew him forward as if it issued a silent command. Displayed along its sill like props on a stage, he saw a stylish ladies handbag with what looked like a carelessly discarded raincoat and a toppled carrier bag that had spewed out its contents. These were only the hors d’oeuvre of the drama to follow. He stepped forward raising his eyes to the brightening sky before slowly looking down into the cobbled yard. He gasped and jumped back: it was a face drained of colour that turned away from the scene before it and with a trembling hand he dialled ..nine..nine….nine.
John Loker - June 2022