GEORGE FULLER
This piece is part of a diary, based on tape recordings made at the time, and is a personal account of working and living as a bricklayer in Berlin, one of the many 'Englanders'. It is also an attempt to understand some of the people involved and the history and wider developments (reunification of Germany, and arrival of the unregulated European Union labour market) which formed that time.
German speakers, please excuse my German - it's Englander builders' pidgin.
A BRICKLAYER IN GERMANY
As the bus swerved, moving fast in the Sunday afternoon traffic, going into Berlin our shoulders kept touching. She turned to me. "My name is Dinah. I don't know if you have somewhere to stay but I have friends who have cheap places: 20 Marks a night." I thought she might be offering me a room in her place; already I'm facing temptation over which way to go. But I'm staying at Janet's place - at least I'm looking after her flat until she gets back from visiting friends and relatives in England.
When we got off the bus at the Zoological Garten Bahnhof (railway station) I took out my diary and a pen. "I'll be staying round my friends for three weeks so I'll give you a ring soon." Dinah neatly wrote her address and telephone number in my diary. Then we discovered we were catching the same tube train. Two young men sitting on seats opposite smiled at us - me, holding my rucksack and tools, and Dinah, the neat blonde, carrying a suitcase and my spirit level. They said they were carpenters from Glasgow, had been in Berlin for five weeks and everything was going fine - work not too hard and wages paid regularly. This seemed a good omen. They hadn't heard of the NuewBahnhof Strasse job but my labour agencies pay rate, 30 Marks (£12) an hour, was "right fine." At the Kottbusser Tor U Bahn, Dinah and me got off. Outside we shook hands, then went in opposite directions, when we were about a hundred yards apart she waved back - which was friendly.
As I walked along the wide streets of post-war blocks of flats, with my rucksack and spirit level festooned with Lufthansa airline labels, any German could see I was an Englander Maurer coming to work as cheap labour on their building sites; doing Germans out of jobs. But I wasn't afraid that Germans would give me dirty looks or shout "Fuck off Auslander!" I might have been more wary in a less racially mixed district of Berlin. But Germany seemed civilised; like Britain when everyone had jobs. Maybe the Germans preferred 'Englander' immigrants to Poles and other east Europeans.
I went into Janet's block of flats, forgetting to look at the notice-board to see what floor she lived on. I clambered up the stairs until I reached the fifth floor, dripping sweat. I thought I would recognise her door, because last year I helped her move in. But every door was identical, so I had to go downstairs and outside again to find out which floor she lived on.
Janet opened the door with a smile then went into her small kitchen to make coffee, calling, "How was your flight, what time are you starting in the morning?" Jenny was about forty-four, stockily built, with short brown hair, cut in a fringe across her forehead. She mostly wore jeans and woolly jumpers. Her broad face often had what I took for a stern "don't give me any male bullshit" look - especially if I started talking about the blokes and goings-on on a building site; a lot of the time she looked fed up. But Jenny did like going to Berlin's Irish pubs - and restaurants of any nationality - talking and drinking. We did that a few times last year; I paid because she helped me out with accommodation and she didn't make much money with her part-time job at a hostel. We both enjoyed the nights out - apart from the hangovers next morning.
She brought me my coffee then sat down in front of a word-processor saying, "I've got to finish this before it goes out of my head." While she tapped the word-processor's keys I unpacked my gear. My money-belt containing my passport and other documents I put under my mattress in the corner of the room; my ear-plugs under the pillow in case the trains on the S Bahn, only a hundred yards away, kept me awake; my cheese sandwiches, for Monday on the Bahnhof Strasse job, I put in the fridge.
Then I unrolled my brand new 'four seasons' sleeping-bag. It would be too hot for sleeping in during June but I would use it as a quilt. A sleeping-bag is a good investment - a lifesaver. Last year, my first job, which I got through an advert in the Daily Star was a rip-off, though not because of the Dutch labour agency but because of the English leader/ interpreter of the six-strong bricklaying gang. He was an ex-British army man who'd been stationed in Germany and could speak some German. He wasn't a very skilled bricklayer but he used his position to exploit the rest of us: hardly laying any bricks, and going in his car with his young mate on drinking sessions. As the labour agency gave him all our wages to share out, there wasn't much left when it came to the rest of us.
The other blokes seemed to be dependent on our leader and his car. The leader and his sidekick didn't want me to desert but I had an old sleeping-bag and just enough money for the train fare from Magdaberg to Berlin. With no money for lodgings, I slept out in my sleeping bag for one night in Berlin. The next morning I phoned some numbers from 'Bricklayers Wanted' adverts I'd written in my diary back in England. With the first call I got the job at the Alte Krankenhaus plus a sub on my wages and a bunk in a Portacabin.
Janet switched off her word-processor then sat down on her bed.
"So how are you keeping then?" I asked.
She kicked off her shoes and leaned her back against the wall. "Oh just the same. Pissed off with this flat, pissed with my job, and pissed off with the Germans. I can't wait to get out of here. My brother in Sussex is going to help me get back home. What I want is a little cottage in the English countryside. I don't see why I can't have what any middle class woman in England has a right to expect. Where my brother lives most of the women own a horse. Why shouldn't I have some of it?" Janet opened a battered tobacco tin and deftly rolled a thin cigarette. "I'll never get anywhere here. All I am to the Germans is an Englishwoman and I'll never be anything else."
She sucked on the roll up and blew a thin cloud of smoke across the bedsit-flat. I sat on my mattress looking at Janet; her attitude to the Germans perplexed me. Working on a Baustelle (building site) with Germans they seemed steady and easygoing, with a few exceptions, likely to shake you by the hand and say "Alles klare" (all is clear - or OK) and hand you a can of beer in the course of the day. Most of the German Poliers (foremen) were like your favourite uncle in comparison with some of the - "if you don't like it you can fuck off down the road" - slave drivers you get in England.
But Janet had lived in Berlin for twenty years now. She'd arrived as a student of German literature and spoke the language like a native. So I thought maybe I had just a superficial impression off Germans and my ignorance was bliss. But on the other hand, maybe Janet, being out of England so long, was seeing England through rose-tinted glasses, and making a distorted comparison with Germany.
As an S Bahn train thundered past the block of flats Janet rolled another cigarette and looked across at me. "I've fallen out with the crowd at The Barge, (a nearby Irish pub). They're accusing me of being in on the rip-off of their building business. Remember I told you about my boy friend, the Dublin-Jewish businessman who ripped off that little Irish firm last year? They're saying because I was his girlfriend I must know where he is. I don't know where he fuckin' is. I wasn't his only girlfriend anyway. She lit the cigarette. "Last I heard, eighteen months ago, he'd gone across the Polish border in a stolen car. 'When we get him we're gonna kick his head in.' That's what they're saying in The Barge. And the Germans don't really like the English that much. They're taking the Irish side against me. I've phoned every prison between Berlin and Poland and there is no sign of him."
She got up from the bed and went to the kitchen to make two more cups of coffee - talking over her shoulder. "The German police want me to make a statement about all the threats to kick his head in - why should I risk my skin? If he'd stayed and faced the music he would only have got four months...what's the point of running?
Janet's tone when speaking about her ex had softened from the previous year; in her flat in an old brick tenement near Templehof Lufthafen, as planes roared overhead she'd been saying: "He can't face up to his responsibilities. He fiddled the firm to buy himself a car and he was cheating on me. He told me on the phone he was having a business meeting when I'd just seen him going into his flat with two German women. I went round but he wouldn't open his door. I heard the women asking what was the matter and him saying, 'It's nothing just a crazy woman who keeps pestering me.' The little shit. It will be best if he gets caught, then he'll have to face up to all the damage he causes." That was last year.
Janet stood up and emptied the ash tray while I washed the coffee cups. Then we both washed our faces and combed our hair - smartened up for our drink in The Barge - the scene of all the intrigue and infighting. She said, "Don't worry, they won't have a go at you. They'll know you are a stranger." As Janet put on her jacket and checked she had her door keys, she said her relationship with her ex had been fine really. "We had been free to come and go as we pleased, and sexually he was very good for me."
When we got to The Barge, none of the parties to the dispute were there. We sat on the high stools at the bar but only had a couple of beers each as we were both broke.
Back at Janet's flat I laid on my mattress in the corner, Janet in her bed by the wall. I was thinking about when would be the best time to phone Lucille in London, and hoping that everything would be OK on the site the next day. That the blokes would be OK; not too many young blokes racing to see who could lay the most heavy concrete blocks; not too many 'chancers', who if you're working with them and they make mistakes get shirty if you try to put them right. It's all right for me to talk - I only did two years of my five-year apprenticeship - but I'd got the advantage of thirty-years working experience, much of it gained in the '60s and '70s when there was full-employment, and the foremen would let you learn from your mistakes and not sack you on the spot, as often happened with the '80s and '90s 'chancers'.
Before I slept I read a few pages of the latest Le Carre novel, The Night Manager, a story of crooked arms-dealers and corruption in government circles. Le Carre seemed to have made a smooth transition from the Cold War to The New World Order.
I got up on time, about 4.45 a.m., and crept around the flat so as not to wake Janet. I filled my thermos-flask with tea and got my cheese sandwiches out of the fridge. Then I humped my tools and working gear onto my back, let myself out and walked to Kottbusser Tor tube station. When I got to NueBahnhof Strasse I saw about a dozen tower cranes.
NueBahnhof Strasse was in what used to be Communist East Berlin. Cobblestones were showing through holes in the tarmac and there were bullet and shrapnel marks on the shabby buildings. I was born on the 27th of March 1945 and the war ended on 15th May '45, so I would have been a baby, a few weeks old, when the Red Army and the Wermacht fought in that street. As I walked beside the building site hoarding, I looked up and saw the main contractor's name on the cranes' jibs. It tallied roughly with the name the Dutch labour agent had given me over the phone, so I took it I had found the right building site.
Behind scaffolding I could make out the facade of a large, late nineteenth-century office building. It was under refurbishment, and large extensions were being built onto each side. I couldn't see the yellow hut where the labour agent had said I would find Tom McClowen, the carpenter who would put me to work. There were only a lot of orange ones, so I asked some workers unloading a lorry, "Enshuligun wo sind Englanders?" (Excuse me where are Englanders?). At first they shrugged their shoulders as if there was no such thing or maybe they didn't understand my German. Then one of them held out his wrist and tapped his wristwatch with his fingers, "Sieben Ure" - seven o'clock. I'd got to work an hour early. I asked them for the toilet and one of them gave me a key and pointed. When I came out I gave back the key and looked further down the street to make sure there were no other likely building sites. Then I crossed the road to a bakers shop that was selling steaming cups of coffee.
As I drank my coffee, dozens of workers trooped onto the building site and several came into the baker's shop. It was crowded but quiet as workers read tabloid newspapers and some smoked with an air of Monday morning gloom. A couple of blonde young women with bare, sun-tanned shoulders, wearing trousers with waist to ankle fishnet panels, showing naked flesh, came in with a Pekinese dog. They were joined by two blonde young men in light grey suits. The group laughed, sharing a joke at the end of their night out. The workmen hardly raised their eyes from their newspapers.
At around 6.50 a.m. I was sitting on the windowsill of the baker's shop when I saw three blokes coming my way through the throng carrying yellow bricklayers' spirit levels. I took it they were Englanders. "Are you working on the job over the road?" A man with them, long grey hair and an earring, walking with a bad limp, looked at me with a cheerful smile. "Are you a new starter?" He had an Irish accent. He jerked his thumb. "Follow me. I'm Tom McClowen."
We walked along to the far end of the site, then up a scaffolding staircase giving access to yellow Portacabin offices and mess rooms, stacked like giant shoe boxes four high. When we came to the Englanders' mess room, about fifteen men were already waiting to get in and change into their working clothes. Tom McClowen went down to the Bauleiter's (site manager's) office for the key, he came back with several but none fitted. He went back down again and after ten minutes returned with a heap of keys in his cupped hands. He tried each one but none fitted. The twenty Englanders, (to the Germans anyone from Britain and Ireland is an 'Englander' until they're told different) who seemed to be mainly long-haired young carpenters from the Republic of Ireland, grey-stubbled carpenters from the north of England, and four miscellaneous bricklayers were by now sitting on the stairs dozing, thinking they might not work at all that Monday. Then a couple of young clean-cut Germans, wearing blue overalls and white safety helmets, arrived with an electric drill and drilled off the lock.
When we'd put on our working clothes and boots one of the German workers gestured with his hand, "Come". The other one couldn't speak English but he tried to make a commanding presence by talking loudly in German. As we followed them I put my hand to my bare head. I always wore a safety helmet in England, though many workers couldn't stand them, I felt naked without one. I shouted to the leading German, "Wo ist Helm?" (Where is helmet?) pointing to my head. He waved his hand dismissively. "Im Kellar," meaning don't worry yourself, we'll be working in the basement, nothing can fall on you. We were soon in a newly-built basement about a third of the size of a football pitch, smelling strongly of fresh concrete. I saw metal brackets had been fixed in the ceiling in readiness for installing piping and air-conditioning trunking. I could easily have jabbed my skull on one of the brackets.
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