By Neil James
The air is heavy in the room where my great-grandfather died. I wait – for a whisper, a chill, a flicker in the darkness. But there is nothing. Only shadows, crumbling brick and the weight of silence. Fate finds a place for everyone, and this dank factory basement was his. Hopstone Pottery Factory, Stoke-on-Trent, 27th March, 1929. Three men trapped in this shadowy vault as the building above them burned. I read Ernest Shaw’s story in the library archive, traced his life on microfilm, downloaded his death certificate. But words and numbers don’t hold what I’m searching for. I need to feel. To connect. To make sense of his life.
I close my eyes to imagine the moment. The second he smelled the first curl of acrid smoke and saw the glow of flames creep under the door. Did he cry out? Beg? Try to bargain with God? I need to feel his fear, to slip through the centuries, but all I grasp is more distance. I’ve watched countless celebrities cry on genealogy shows, and I feel guilt for not doing the same. This man’s genes are within me. Without him, I don’t exist. But the pictures in my head are just that: pictures.
Lindsey is our tour guide at the Hopstone Museum. She speaks with the youthful conviction of recent study, and I wonder which books shaped her grasp of this city’s industrial past. Her bones are not fired from Staffordshire clay, and her stories are recited not lived, but she’s doing her best to bring history to life.
She’s good at her job. I used to be good at mine too – until I wasn’t. Nine months have passed since I held my P45, but it still feels like last week. The manager’s well-rehearsed speech, the silence in the office as I packed my things, the handshakes from colleagues who promised to stay in touch but never did. People say a lot of things, don’t they?
When our group of six reaches the basement, shelves still stacked with pottery wares, Lindsey’s soft Irish lilt shifts from sprightly to sombre.
“In 1929, the factory caught fire, and three men died in this room.”
A respectful hush descends.
“They were stacking saggars, containers for firing pottery, and had no way of knowing that flames were sweeping through the rooms above. By the time they realized the fire was outside the door, it would’ve been too late.” A half-smile creeps across her lips. “Some people say this room’s haunted, but I’ve never experienced anything down here myself.”
I can’t resist interjecting. “One of those men was my great-grandfather.”
There is an audible gasp, and the group turn towards me.
“Really?” says Lindsey. She bites her lip.
“Yes,” I say. “His name was Ernest Shaw. I only know because I’m researching my family tree.”
“Oh wow!” says one of the Americans, a man with white hair and a goatee. “Imagine finding something like that!”
“I’ve been using on an ancestry site for the last six months, and I’ve found so many names and dates, but I wanted to actually see the places my ancestors worked and lived.”
“Literally walking in your great-grandfather’s footsteps…” Lindsey adds.
“Absolutely. It makes him more real to me.”
But does it? Because despite walking the same cobbled ground that he did, and breathing the same musty air, I feel no closer to knowing him. If there are ghosts in this room, I cannot see them.
The tour ends in the gift shop, where Hopstone bookmarks and pottery trinkets sit in neatly arranged rows under tasteful ceiling spotlights. Lindsey wishes me luck with my ancestry research and the American and I chat about local history as we cross the car park. I recommend two more pottery museums nearby and he shakes my hand warmly.
“You take care now,” he says before rejoining his companions who trail behind. From my car, I watch them shuffle towards the bus stop as the digits on my dashboard clock change. Instead of chasing the past, I try to root myself in the present – the hum of traffic, modern jazz on the stereo. Anything to remind me I can still feel. That I’m not just a redundancy number.
*
Early afternoon and the traffic’s light as I head in the direction of home. My wife Helen’s long since moved on from ‘You need a project’ to ‘You need a job.’ My dole money isn’t contributing enough to the household, and my days and evenings spent hunched over a laptop, while she watches Love Island, are apparently adding even less to our marriage.
At three o’clock, I park outside the school and position myself amongst the other parents idly chatting on the yard. As the school doors open, and the children are dismissed, my son smiles the instant he sees me, knowing that, as he runs, I will scoop him into my arms, swing him skyward, then kiss his cheeks as I lower him down.
Josh is my flesh and blood. My anchor. The flicker of light in the haze. He doesn’t care that I’m unemployed and doesn’t yet realize that both of us will one day be nothing more than names on certificates. For now, we have each other, and these are the moments I live for.
When I bury my face into his mop of blonde hair, I inhale the same scent I’ve known since he was born. As he lifts his head to grin at me, I suddenly see the resemblance. There’s something about the tilt of his smile, the shape of his eyes that reminds me of a grainy photograph I found in my father’s attic. The resemblance is only passing, but for the first time since my search began, Ernest Shaw isn’t just a name or story. I see him in the curve of my boy’s cheek and the sparkle in his gaze.
As I stare into my son’s eyes, generations stare back.
* * *
Neil James is a writer from Stoke-on-Trent, England and the author of ‘Stoke and I:The Nineties’ (Pitch Publishing). His fiction has been published by Literally Stories, Twisted Sister Lit Mag and The Fiction Pool. He can be found occasionally talking writing, but mainly complaining about football on Twitter/X at @TrouserdogSCFC