The One About Mr Brack

Ah, Mr Brack, where to start. Brackenbury is an old Lincolnshire name and they are all distant cousins of a sort.

As a nipper, I inherited a morning paper round when I was 9, I think. Or rising 9, anyway. Then the evening round, and finally, Sundays. December Sunday supplements in the driving hail and snow. It took 3 goes back to the Post Office to get them all out before 11. Dad would occasionally troll me from the warm car to make sure I got the last of them delivered, in the sleet. Thank you, Mr Page, for your SFT and ST subscriptions. A neon satchel all by themselves.

I had my favourite customers, obviously. Honey Dixon, Mr Peart & Ernie (thanks for the mint Viscount biscuits and the tips!) George Sands (who still wore 1940s belt and braces in the 80s). Mrs Welch, whose husband had a stroke in his 20s a fortnight after they married and she was still taking care of him in their little cottage, with their golden labrador who would take the paper then bring the money in a little cotton bag on a Friday evening.

My favourite first customers were Mr and Mrs Brackenbury, up Gravel Pit Lane. They lived in a tied cottage and had a silver MkII Ford Escort. Mint. A real beauty. They weren’t my favourite customers for any particular reason, other than that they plainly adored each other. Both born in the 20s, they had lived the kind of life that no longer exists. Small, self-contained. Remarkable. Mrs Brack (Marjorie) used to leave me 10p every week. 10p is 10p when you are 9. It’s a bag of goodies.

When I was 14, Marjorie died. Heart. They had family, but Mr Brackenbury asked if I would take names at the funeral. That’s a Northern thing, btw, taking names. So, anyway, turned up and took names, in my school skirt and blouse. It was a nice do.

Mr Brack was obviously distraught after she died. The tied cottage was deemed to big for a single man and so they wanted him out. LOVELY. He had to move into a little pensioner’s one bedroom prefab thing down a very dead end lane from our parents (they are actually perfectly comfortable for one person, but still). He got himself a Jack Russell, called Jack, in an astonishing show of imagination. By this stage I was 16 or so, and working at the local airstrip in the kitchens, and to my utter dismay, Mr Brack sold the Ford as he couldn’t turn it around in the lane and got a bike, to go and clean the men’s bogs, on the airstrip. I said to our mother, Absolutely not. It’s an outpost for riggers. (I had cleaned up in there more than once.) I even went to speak to him about it. He was there, in his working trousers, and his braces, with a high viz vest and a flat cap. He said, I like keeping busy. I was outraged.

Soon, I was at university and on weekends, Mr Brack would walk by, a load of sticks and twigs on his back for kindling. Jack died, and he thought it was an unfairness to get a puppy. On Sundays Mum would make him a cooked breakfast if we were having one and I would plate one up and run down with it. Mum is great with mushrooms - something I will forever regret not learning from her - and I remember one breakfast in particular was a pile of poached field mushrooms in milk and butter, with sausages. Mr Brack, immaculately turned out in a jacket as it was a Sunday, was not expecting it (or me, a towering 5’5” student by then) and as I was unwrapping it in his galley kitchen, ‘Get it while it’s hot!’ he hid his face then said, ‘May I be permitted to thank the chef’ and kissed me on the cheek. I made the cake for his little 80th birthday party. His grandson turned up and couldn’t stop telling everyone about how he had ‘400 head of beast’ in South Yorkshire. I could have one inch punched him in the face. Mr Brack sat there, silent by the fire, smiling, emperor in his own kingdom for a day. Offering everyone cake.

One morning, early, I was looking out at Mum’s garden over a cup fo tea (48 years in development as of January 2025) and Mr Brack was taking cuttings in the mist. I said to Mum, what’s George up to out there? Mum said, ‘Oh, he’s just taking things for Marjorie’s grave. He asked and I said take what you like, no need to ask’.

Mum gave me a shot across the bows when the end was nigh. Heart, again. It was a miracle he lasted that long alone. I was in London by that stage. Mum went to the service. No one took names.