The Splayed Thumb: a True Ghost Story

February 1st, 1988. My first proper job, secured in the traditional manner:

• advert in the 'wanted' column of the Express & Star,
• a hand-typed CV, posted,
• an interview in person,
• and a letter in the post confirming I'd landed the role:
  • (junior sales clerk at a builders' merchant in Wolverhampton);
• all followed by a mad dash to get 'suitable' work clothes (no 60s modernist flamboyance, here by order of the mother), and
• a bus pass (so that if I spent all my wages on booze and fags—or wasted it—I could still get to work [again, by order of the mother]).

Like every job I've held since, I discovered that cliques didn't contain themselves to school playgrounds or subcultures. In no particular order of venomous secrecy, flocks of gossipers formed within the:

• Trade Counter staff (a department I'd eventually—and regretably—supervise);
• drivers, one of whom's wife was the cleaner, Olga;
• office staff (wherein I, on £55/week aged 17, thought I was King Midas):
  • with its own less defined. but nonetheless present cliques:
    • accounts;
    • light side sales;
    • heavy side sales;
    • de management;
    • and us trainees/bottom-feeders.
• yard staff, similarly defined:
  • heavy side (brick, blocks, plaster), and
  • light side (bathrooms, kitchens, plumbing, ya-da, ya-da, ya-da).

As part of my learning curve/training/lackey duties, I spent time learning the ropes in every single department. This often included getting the orders for and fetching the sandwiches every morning, the gaffer's 20 Rothmans and wearing my own path to and from the coffee machine.

It was during this tour of duty that I began to get to know Fred (or so I thought).

Meet Fred: he of the eponymous digit

Fred (surname Reader) was an amenable old fella, and something of a dying breed, even back then. He was well beyond retirement age, had been there for an eternity and showed no sign of hanging up his chocolate brown uniform just yet.

He was also something of an enigma; most people offered him genuine and well-earned respect, especially the customers. But he proved a source of consternation to any of our staff whose heart wasn't as committed to the job as his.

There were also those who wondered why Derek, the branch manager, tolerated his ofttimes festidious or, paradoxically, rule-circumnavigating ways of getting things done.

Perhaps Derek was so lenient because nothing phased Fred; nothing or no one was going to change his erratic nature, not after so long. For an old fella, he could lift unbelievable loads, hardly ever stopped between jobs and possessed stamina that his squat, square frame belied.

In a swarm of chocolate brown uniforms, you could always pick out Fred by his inveterate sky blue woollen docker hat (exactly like the one worn by my Action Man 'Commando', which, at the time, was wrapped up for prosperity with my 'army' of Action Men in the pebble-dashed shed at home).

If, on the rare occasion, his hat was not squeezed tight over his whitening, thinning bonce, you could always tell him ambling across the yard by his awkward gait: not exactly a limp, more of a roll of the left hip that agitated his entire upper body exaggeratedly.

As I inferred earlier, he'd been at the builders' merchant from the start (Fred, not my Commando Action Man). Since old man Walter Tipper had incorporated the eponymous business (nowadays, just "Tipper's") on the outskirts of the city (then only a town), there'd been a Fred.

Before that, Fred had been in the navy (hence, I guess, the ever-present docker hat and resemblance to Commando Action Man). In true services-instilled fashion, he'd memorised practically every item we sold by its code number.

For the stock for which he was responsible (and some he wasn't), he didn't need stock sheets. At any given time, he knew:

• how many rolls of lead we had, and in what gauges;
• how many lengths of downpipe we had, in what lengths and which colours;
• what stock we needed reordering from Osma (from the hundreds of items we carried) even before John, the rep, turned up every week;
• every location of kitchen or sanitaryware in the light side warehouse.

Dutch kitchens, beer and a fortitous introduction

More fascinating—to me as a naive 17-year old, anyway—than his encyclopaedic knowledge of our stock profile was Fred's splayed thumb. I'd never seen anything like it. But, with typical Brit stoicism, I daren't ask him about it, although I was both dying to and often found myself obliviously staring at it.

From the knuckle beyond the metacarpal (the middle one) on his left thumb, two individual thumbs protruded at 45° to each other, complete with their own first and second phalanxes and thumbnails.

I once mentioned Fred's thumb to Keith, the warehouse manager (who I eventually went to work alongside in sales at rival merchant, Carvers). He'd never asked Fred about it and, from those who'd been there longer, suspected that Fred never spoke about it. So, with much tongue-biting and sheer willpower, I let it consciously slide.

One evening, while Keith was on holiday and I was looking after his warehouse, a Dutch lorry arrived with an artic. full of bespoke kitchen units and appliances. In his broken English, he demanded we unload him there and then, otherwise he was off to the next port of call on his 'run'.

I was stumped - one half of his lorry was full of assembled kitchen units and appliances. It would take an hour with two people unloading, and I was Home Alone.

And it wasn't only the kitchens that would head off up the M6 with him. This was a regular driver (which was probably why he turned up at 5 pm expecting to be unloaded by the vacationing Keith). Smuggled in in the kitchen units on his trailer were crates of an, at the time, uncharted Dutch beer in the UK, Grolsch.

Those ceramic pop-top bottles? They would fascinate me almost as much as Fred's thumb.

But at that moment and on the spot? I was at a loss. Tipper's always closed at 5:30 on the dot, the trade counter, yard and warehouses 30 minutes earlier so that the day's receipts could be totted up, ready for invoicing the next morning. What was I to do with this delivery load?

I went to Fred, told him the score and he, in turn, took me to Derek, the branch manager. He told us to get it unloaded and he'd pay us two hours overtime (then, unheard of). So Fred and I unloaded the kitchens, paid for the crates of Grolsch (and made a tidy profit on them thereafter), and were done by 6:15 pm. Happy days.

The story of the thumb

Back then, I lived in Portobello, WV13. Fred just on the other side of Willenhall (from Wolverhampton) in Short Heath. Conscious of the lateness of the hour and inconsistencies of public transport, Fred offered me a lift to Portobello island. I gratefully accepted.

It's impossible to ignore a splayed thumb when it's sat at the ten of the ten-to-two posture on a steering wheel, especially when you're stuck in the passenger seat in rush-hour traffic on the A454. Fred noticed me looking (and looking away, pretending to stare at something imagined out the Honda Civic passenger side window) and began to chuckle.

This wasn't the reaction I'd expected. Without prompting, he began to tell me how he'd got it.

Whilst loading a torpedo on a destroyer 'during the war', the shell had slid back along its channel as the boat hit a huge wave. Fred instinctively put his hand in the way to stop it connecting with something hard (and, possibly, blowing everyone below deck to smithereens).

From the knuckle up, the shell split Fred's thumb in twain, literally split the bone down the middle. His thumb mended, but, thereafter, was splayed in a V shape from the middle knuckle up.

A solid bond

After that conversation, and stopping behind to unload that lorry, Fred and I clicked. Many a night thereafter he'd hang around a little longer to give me a lift home. On those journeys, we'd talk about anything, everything. And, somehow and at some point, Fred divulged his only dream: to own a BMW.

At work, he became more of a mentor than the managers in the office, to whom I reported directly. As much as I loved my sales role, both contract sales and in the showroom, I was secretly elated when I had to take over either Keith's or Fred's roles when they were on holiday.

It was by working so closely with them that I'd learned enough to take over the running of the Trade counter (aged only 18) after both the supervisor and assistant supervisor left within a month one another after both having worked together for years.

Keith also had more about him than managing a warehouse. He moved into sales at a small 'light side' merchant, before moving into sales at Walter Tipper's main rival, Carvers.

When another job came up at Carver's (and, coincidentally, as Walsall college informed Derek of my less-than-100% attendance at the company-sponsored B-Tech in business studies), Keith called to ask if I'd be interested. I jumped at the chance, had a 5-minute interview and took the job. I hardly saw anyone from Tipper's again.

The world moves on…

The Carvers thing didn't last long. Most of the sales team came from posher parts of Wolverhampton (yes, they do exist). I didn't fit in, and it showed.

I moved on, eventually finding myself working in a factory on the Willenhall/Wednesfield border. The walk home, 1.8 miles that made a cross-section across the A454, was a killer in winter, but beautiful in the summer (especially as it passed The Neachells at the junction with said A-road).

It was one late summer evening that I saw Fred again, probably five years after I left Tipper's. I'd just crossed the zebra crossing on the A454 Willenhall Road/Moseley Road junction. Driving towards me (from Portobello island towards Wolverhampton), was a brown 3-series BMW.

What do you know? Behind the wheel: Fred!

The setting sun was sinking towards the horizon (and behind The Neachells); its cooling, concentrated rays glinted across the windscreen and filled the car's interior with brilliant yellow light.

Fred still sported his sky blue docker hat, beneath which resided a smile almost as brilliant as the setting sun in the fruit salad sky above. He raised his left hand as the BMW headed to Town and gave me a great big wave, splayed thumb and all.

I smiled, waved back, and found myself overwhelmed by an all-encompassing inner peace and gratitude to whatever powers had helped Fred achieve his lifelong dream. And, no: the feeling had nothing to do with the four pints of Stones bitter circulating my system via Sue behind The Neachells' bar.

Stopping for a(nother) celebratory pint in The Royal Oak—well, it was on my way home…ish—I drank to Fred's health, knowing it would have been rude not to. One led to several more and, by the time I got to work the next morning, I'd forgotten all about it.

…but it's a small one

A few weeks later, my dad and I were in Willenhall doing the weekly Saturday shop. Dad would buy his bits, me mine and we'd always meet in the bookies before heading off to see Pete at the Prince of Wales.

I can't remember why, but that Saturday morning I ended up in the town's greasy spoon. Possibly hoping to get a bacon butty to soak up the previous night's intake of 1664.

Who should I bump into? Olga, the cleaner and driver's wife from Tipper's, who I'd not seen since leaving Tippers.

After the obligatory niceties were exchanged, I remembered seeing Fred in his brown BM earlier that month. Filled with unexpected joy, I told Olga about his driveby in the 3-series. She went stiff, and looked at me as if I'd gone doolally.

"Jason," she said. "Our Fred? It can't have been. He died two years ago, stroke. I thought you knew."

I forewent the sandwich. And while no one can ever corroborate Fred's post-mortem driveby on that late summer evening, similarly, no one will ever convince me there's nothing on the other side again.