My thanks to NaughtyAngel1369 for al her help with this story. The story is set in the 1960s when things were a lot different. It reads a lot better following her assistance. I hope you enjoy it.
Chapter 1 - A Working Man's Tale
My given name is Charles or Charlie Givens, but due to circumstances I have been nicknamed Gimpy for so many years now that I respond to that name as well. My father was a farm labourer and mother was a stay at home housewife and mum, to myself and my three young sisters. The tale I'm writing now starts during my childhood in the late fifties and through to, well, we'll all have to wait and see when. It will depend on whether you get bored with me or I think that we have reached a point where I have exhausted my own patience.
I'm conscious that many of you reading this tale will be a lot younger and perhaps with limited knowledge of that time and what it was like. It was a time when here in the UK, people were born, lived and died in the same area. Imagine if you will, car ownership was rare, most families relied on public transport, Television was limited to two channels and in black and white, few families had a phone installed. I could go on but I hope you get the picture for times were hard; we were the post war baby boomers.
Don't get me wrong, I am not bemoaning or trying to live in the past, but to appreciate the story, you need to understand that computers, mobile phones, the internet, instant communications and video games were only a glimmer on the horizon. OK, so we didn't have the advantages of today's youngsters, but I think, all in all we have had the better start in life than today's generation. To my mind, the post war baby boom generation have had and taken the best this world will have to offer and I have a fear that our legacy to our children and grandchildren is less bright.
The reason for my nickname goes right back to when I was just five years old and in my first year at the Catholic primary school. We were a catholic family though not very devout, but if you were a Catholic, you went to a Catholic School!
It was November 5th 1953 and my parents took me to a Guy Fawke's night firework display organised by the local council. It was a cold November evening and we were standing well back from the bonfire when the fireworks display started. A rogue rocket went up in the sky trailing a red and orange tail, when it suddenly veered downwards and dived straight towards us. My father, pulled me away, but the rocket struck my right leg and exploded showering me with flames. I was told afterwards that I was lucky not to lose my leg or sight, if my father had not acted so quickly and doused the flames with his donkey jacket, I would have been crippled for life. As it was, I had scars on my hands and right side of my face that will live with me forever. My right leg was not only afflicted with burns, but was broken in two places. The hospital was great and managed to save my leg but the result was that it was always shorter than my left and once the plaster was removed I walked with a permanent limp, due in part to the muscle damage.
That was how on my return to school some three months later I was quickly nicknamed Gimpy Givens. It could have been worse, despite four operations, the right side my face would be scarred forever, so I could have been called scar-face.
Kids can be very cruel and school bullies always seen to pick on the weakest to test their power. There were a few in my primary years, but when they realised that I would fight back, they moved onto easier targets.
It was when we moved up to secondary school in August of 1959 that my particular nemesis called Bullet Barnes arrived at our School. His dad was ex army and had just moved into town. Bullet wasn't his real name, but because he was a big lad for his age with a blonde crew-cut hairstyle, he was given this name by one of the PE teachers and it stuck. He was two years above me in school and more than six inches taller. He made my life a misery for the remainder of my school years. I tried to fight back and had many a scrap with him, but when your two years younger and a lot smaller than your opponent, there was only ever one winner.
I was not academically minded at school and there are many excuses I could put forward as to why, but I refuse to do so. I got used to being the butt of the teacher's jokes when I failed to answer questions that the rest of the class seemed to know. Ever since, I have loathed the Holy Fathers who made up the bulk of the teachers in our school. I guess I started to believe them when they called me stupid. By the time I reached secondary school, I was streamed into a class where the students were destined to be the steel workers; fodder for the shipyard's that needed a steady stream of strong, fit young men to help build the ships which carried Britain's exports all over the world. I wasn't all that strong and because of my limp, I would never be quick or agile enough to work in the yards. The one talent I did have was that I could draw, people, still life or animals and I could draw them accurately. Nowadays, in a different school and different environment, that talent may have been nurtured and given the chance to blossom, but not in the early sixties.
I met a girl in school when I was fourteen and I thought she was stunning. Her name was Holly Miller and her family had recently moved to our town. She had long red hair and green eyes, at least that was what I noticed at that first meeting. Her father was a teacher at our school and she was seated next to me for registration every morning.
We got on well and she was the only one to call me by my given name, other than my mother. We were inseparable and everyone was aware that we were close. My father had passed away when I was eleven and my mother struggled to make ends meet. I never had new clothes, but this didn't bother me except when Holly asked me to take her to the School Christmas dance. I was too ashamed to admit that I didn't have the money or clothes to wear, so I told her I had something else on that night. She wasn't very pleased about my refusal and went off and asked Bullet Barnes if he would take her. Despite being two years older than Holly, he accepted straight away. Holly was quite the most beautiful girl in school with long red hair and even at just fourteen had well developed breasts that had every boy and some of the masters staring at her in admiration and lust. The night of the dance, I stood outside the school gates and watched as he escorted her. The way she looked up at him and smiled made me want to go over and fight him, even though I knew he would beat me without breaking sweat.
After my rejection, she and Bullet became an item and were rarely seen apart. He always made a point of pulling her close to him whenever I was around. He would look over me with a smirk on his face. One of the last fights I had with him was when I was fifteen and overheard him bragging to his mates and their girlfriends that it was only a matter of time before he fucked Holly and that he had already had her half way there. He was staring at me as he said this and his eyes were challenging me to do something about it. I didn't disappoint him and I think he thought I was easy meat as he skipped away from me, taunting me to catch him, something he knew that I could never do. In the end they must have gotten bored as they moved away leaving me with calls and laughter about Gimpy Givens and his gimpy leg ringing in my ears. Holly did get to hear about this incident and my attempt to defend her honour and she came over to thank me in full view of the school. She told me. "Ignore him! Bullet Barnes has never got past first base with me. I'm sorry that you got involved, but it was very sweet of you." With that said, she leaned over and kissed me on my right cheek ignoring the scar, then left.
I left school at the age of fifteen in the summer of 63 and went straight to work for a local building firm. I only got the job as the foreman was a friend of my mother's. Well, he was more than just a friend and he felt that he owed her. As I wasn't any use for scaffold or ladder work, I was shown how to use the cement mixer and drive the tipper or fork truck as circumstances arose. I was still only about five four in height but I was growing fast. By my sixteenth birthday, I was five eight and had put on a lot of muscle. Lifting cement bags into the mouth of the mixer and shovelling sand and cement soon built me up. There wasn't a lot of spare time, but on my lunch hours, I took to drawing my fellow workers as they ate their sandwiches and drank their tea. I always showed them the results of my efforts and many of them took them home for their wives to see.
At seventeen, I was now as fully grown as I would be and topped out at five nine and weighed in at thirteen stone. It was all muscle and I had grown in enough to be confident in my own abilities, but I was still a virgin. It wasn't as if I didn't try, but when the girls I approached y saw my scarred face they backed off. It hurt, believe me it hurt a lot.
This was the swinging 1960's, everyone was talking about the Beatles, The Stones, The Animals and the Mersey sound. Mini skirts and long hair were the fashions. Carnaby Street ruled and everything was buzzing. Somehow, it all passed me by. I was into music and along with my mates, spent most of my waking hours thinking about girls and in the evenings trying to get into their knickers. At this, I was spectacularly unsuccessful. I always seemed to end up with the nice girl who was saving herself for Mr Right or at the other end the one who looked like she had been short changed when the beauty genes were distributed.
It was Christmas, just before my eighteenth birthday when Holly Miller came back into my life. Unfortunately, so did Bullet Barnes. My mates and I were in our local pub playing darts and having a few beers when in walked Bullet followed by some of his cronies and their girlfriends. I picked out Holly straight away and my stomach lurched. She was drop dead gorgeous. Her hair was still blonde, but no longer long, she had it cut page boy style and it accentuated her long neck. She had on a long coat, but when she took it off to reveal a short mini dress that did nothing to disguise her figure, I for one let out a gasp. She looked around as if checking to see that everyone had noticed her, she needn't have worried, even the old men supping their stout had stopped talking in admiration. She hung up her coat and Bullet handed her a drink. It was my turn to throw, with a chance at double top to win, but I was still in a turmoil, brain dead and tummy churning, so it was no surprise that I missed with all three darts, much to the amusement of my best pal, Andy Connor. He picked up his darts and proceeded to throw a one fifty one finish to win the game. The loser had to buy, so I went to the bar and ordered the round.
Bullet must have recognised me and shouted out to his friends. "Well if it isn't Gimpy Givens! How's it going Gimpy, still scarred and limping I see?"
I ignored him; he was clearly drunk and itching for a fight. I picket up our beers and he grabbed my arm causing me to spill some of the beer out of both glasses. He laughed at that and I turned to put the glasses down, he pulled me by my shoulder and spun me around, causing the rest of the ale to spill over his jeans. I laughed and ordered two more pints as he tried to throw a punch at me. I ducked easily under his wild swing and told him, "Bullet, you're drunk and in no condition to start a fight, just sit down with your pals and relax."
He was not having any of that and swung again at me. This time I reached out and grabbed his fist in mine and squeezed. He howled as I increased the pressure forcing, him down onto his knees. "I'm a lot bigger now and stronger as you can feel, so why don't you do as you're told and sit down!"
This time he did as he was told and sat down muttering oaths and swearing he would get me back. I just laughed and resumed playing darts. A short while later, I felt a hand on my arm and looked round to see Holly smiling at me. I felt as though my heart had stopped as I gazed into her deep blue eyes. "Are you not going to say hello to me?" she asked.
