Not Ready for Retirement

Sometimes the thickest gloves or the longest scarf would not make a difference against the icy bite of Coventry’s dark winter mornings.

Noah held his lighting stick as it bounced on his shoulder. His arm hooked between the steps of his faithful wooden ladder as he cut through the damp alley onto the main street.

He had braved almost thirty winter mornings and nights. Noah felt it was his purpose to help his community to see in the dark during those bleakest of times. Once all the streetlamps were lit on one side of the road, he would cross over to the other side and start again. There were horizontal bars just below the lamp that held the ladder so he could reach the glass lantern. The ladder had a narrowed top to rest comfortably onto the width of the bar. Once he had given life to the lamp, it would form a glowing sphere of light that allowed you to read a book from nearly twenty feet away.

Like clockwork, every morning, he would walk down Fisher’s Lane and see a child at the upstairs window of the house in a crowded row of terraces. She would smile and wave at him, and he would smile and wave back. He never met this child and didn’t know her name, but there was something familiar about her. It felt as if he had a grandchild that he had never met.

One evening after dusk had settled, Noah had finished turning the streetlamps on; he had met some of his fellow lamplighters at the local working men’s club for a celebratory drink, as he was due to retire in a month. He wasn’t all that excited about it. What was he going to do with himself? He had never married or had children; he came close once, but it didn’t work out. Still had loads of life left in him. He could have gone for another thirty years if circumstances allowed it.

He arrived and stood with clammy hands at the club’s beaten door. He wasn’t ready. He took a slow step towards the door, but a gust of wind knocked him a few feet sideways down the road. He took this as a sign and kept going. As he walked towards home, he didn’t look back and held his head low as he wore his brown flat cap and his hands sat in the side pockets of his worn blue pea coat. There were no gusts of wind before or after.

Upon awakening the following morning, he noticed The Coventry Post rolled up with string outside his front door. Sitting down for his morning tea and toast, he removed the string from around the newspaper. The front page read in large bold letters:

‘German Bomb Hits Local Working Men’s Club: 13 Dead,’

The newspaper fell between Noah’s trembling hands when he saw the photograph.