If I Don’t Write It Nobody Else Will

I sauntered into the kitchen.

Mother said, ‘Hark at that! What have you done to him now?’

And taking John by the hand, she brushed past me, opened the door and shooed Jack away, and he went without further argument. While she was gone I noticed a near stranger in the room. It was my brother Vernon, and he was looking at me as if he could smell something nobody else could. My father was sitting in front of the fire, reading The Green Final, a newspaper someone had left in the tram on his way home from work the night before. My father wasn’t actually reading it as he was in the middle of an argument with Vernon, which I had inadvertently interrupted. Vernon was on one of his visits, and he always seemed to upset Dad, who was used to overlookers and managers berating him at work but was definitely against being taken to the cleaners by his eldest son.

‘Dad,’ said Vernon, ‘you don’t understand…’

I didn’t wait to find out what was beyond my father’s comprehension. I’d seen the signs on his face, which was the colour of a Cox’s orange pippin.

I went to Mother and John at the front and listened attentively while she discussed the price of bread with Mrs Turner, our neighbour. I’ve no idea how the battle in the kitchen went, but for the next few days we were three in the bed. By the time Vernon came upstairs John and I were usually asleep, but what I did learn during his stay with us was that his real home was with his Grandma Stacey in a beautiful house where everyone had a chair to sit on at meals and he didn’t have to stand at the table as we did to eat. The way Vernon had always spoken of Grandma Stacey, Great-grandpa and Great-grandma Wilson you’d think they were all closely related to royalty, and his disdain for 36 Leslie Street and all its occupants was plain for all to see. Poor deluded Vernon. It never crossed my mind that if he was related to the Staceys, so was I.

Birthdays came and went like any other day; we neither received nor sent cards, as they were unaffordable luxuries—in fact I don’t think newsagents in our area even stocked them. But Christmas was something else. A few days before the ‘big one’, most houses began their preparations: sagging paper chains of merry colours criss-crossed the room from gas mantle to any other protuberance on the opposite wall, and small Christmas trees, festooned with tinsel and cotton wool, always sprouted in practically every home and certainly where there were children.

One particular Christmas Vernon, John and I had been saving for months to buy a present for Mother. Vernon was now permanently home but much more likeable, so he hadn’t been completely brainwashed and he didn’t argue with Dad as he would have in the past. On Christmas Eve the ‘old ’uns’ had gone out for the evening and with our pooled resources Vernon (ten), John (six) and I (eight) stole out of the house into the darkness of the Mucky Broos. Puffed, we dropped to a stroll by the chapel round by Robin Hill Baths and made an excited final burst up Barker Street to the lights of the shops. It was then that we received our first shock. There was a phalanx of people, almost a solid wall of Christmas Eve shoppers, all in good humour but unfortunately for us impenetrable. The three of us held hands tightly, John in the middle hemmed in by a sea of raincoats, great coats, long jerseys and scarves. To say we were frightened would be an understatement. It was only about seven o’clock and the shops didn’t close till nine. To add to our folly, none of us had any idea what sort of present we were looking for. Panic-stricken, I held tightly on to John’s hand—if I let go I might never see my brothers again. John wasn’t tall enough to see above the midriffs and I wasn’t tall enough to look anyone in the eye. Desperately we tried to retrace our steps—after all, we could always postpone giving a present until Easter—but there was no way out. There was a sudden surge of people behind us and we found ourselves in an ironmonger’s shop. Thankfully it was fairly empty, which was hardly surprising, as nails, baths, hammers and bicycle chains are not at the top of everyone’s Christmas shopping list, but it would do for us: the sooner we got back to the sanctity of the familiar and peaceful Leslie Street the better. Pointing to a saucepan up on a shelf, Vernon asked the price. He seemed to know what he was doing, and John and I watched him, our mouths agape with admiration. Vernon took a knotted hankie out of his pocket and watched the man count out the contents; Mother would have a Christmas present after all.

Our Christmas mornings were predictable yet wonderful. Like most other children on Christmas morning, we woke well before our normal reveilles in eager anticipation of the most exciting day of the year. Our stockings, which had hung over the fireplace the night before, were now at the foot of our bed. Kneeling quickly up in the bed, we took a stocking—it didn’t matter which as they were all the same, each lumpy with an apple, an orange and some nuts. This was only the prelude: there would be more goodies under the tree downstairs. This Christmas morning, when it was light enough, we marched into Mother’s bedroom—she was still in bed but Dad was downstairs lighting the fire—and Vernon and I pushed John forward. He proudly held out the saucepan as we all piped ‘Merry Christmas, Mother.’ After we were dressed, and it didn’t take us long as we all slept in our shirts anyway, as we clattered downstairs we could see the rosy flickering on the kitchen wall reflected from the cheery fire in the grate. Dad hurried upstairs with a cup of tea for Mother and the hurly-burly of another Christmas Day began.

Every year our main present was always a Cadbury’s Selection box, which we joyously received as if it was a surprise, but the real surprise was usually a present we could all share. This year it was a Meccano set, which we pounced upon eagerly because, according to the blurb, with Meccano we could build anything. For the rest of the morning screws and nuts littered the floor as we salivated at the delicious aroma coming from the stove as Mother cooked the dinner. And what a meal it turned out to be: Yorkshire pudding with onion gravy to start with, followed by rabbit, roast potatoes and cabbage. When the table was a ruin of bones, bits of cabbage and dirty plates, we all thanked Mother, who said it was much easier to cook now with a new saucepan. Even to this day I bet that if we were all granted a wish for something to eat our answer would be unanimous: a rabbit.

For the evening party we all went down to Grandma Ashton’s for the traditional fun and games in which we children and the adults took part. When we arrived at 8 Houghton Street, there was already a Christmassy feel about the evening, with laughter, warm spicy smells, holly around the picture of Uncle Stanley, mistletoe in a strategic position over the door, and on the table Mint Imperials, mince pies and, best of all, luscious black Pontefract cakes like the buttons on an undertaker’s overcoat. Cups of tea for the ladies, something stronger for the men; we had sarsaparilla from large stone bottles, which when empty would be filled with boiling water to warm many a cold bed.

The games were the same as last year, but who remembers, and what does it matter? We children were led one at a time into a darkened kitchen; I was the first to go. I was told to kneel, facing a large white cloth, behind which the light of a torch shone through, and was instructed in a sepulchral voice to put my nose against the light and follow its every movement. My nose never left the light, which I followed slowly up the cloth, and as my head cleared the top a cold, wet sponge was slapped into my face, I yelped, everybody in the kitchen laughed and I joined them. John and Vernon both yelped as I did, and I laughed before the grown-ups because I knew what was going to happen. This was turning out to be a really great Christmas.

Gleaming with excitement at the thought of the next romp, the three of us were in the kitchen, which was now lit by candles. Auntie Emmy started to blindfold me, and so I assumed that I was to be first again for whatever was in store. She led me from the kitchen into the front room, where I was helped to step up on to a plank of wood, and again the sepulchral voice informed me what was to happen: ‘You are going on a flight and you must be very brave.’ Already I was trembling, especially when the board I was standing on began to rise up and up and up, until finally I banged my head and the sepulchral voice went on, ‘You have just hit the ceiling, and now you must jump.’ I was petrified: I couldn’t possibly jump down from where I was at the top of the room. But they urged me on, and eventually I took a deep breath and gave an almighty leap. There was a roar of laughter as Auntie Emmy took off the blindfold and the realisation dawned that I had only really been lifted about six inches. Sheepishly I smiled—it was such a simple mind-over-matter diversion. Auntie Emmy had been kneeling in front while I was blindfolded and as the three-foot plank was being slowly lifted by Dad and Joe Waterhouse, an uncle in waiting until he married Auntie Emmy, Auntie Edna had bumped a book on top of my head, which I took to be the ceiling, and the illusion was complete.

Vernon was next. He wasn’t petrified at all and when Auntie Edna banged the book on top of his head, he just smiled and whipped off his blindfold to loud groans of disappointment—he must have remembered last year’s party. John didn’t have a go as he was already fast asleep, and it was time for us to be taken home, leaving the grown-ups to their own Christmas games.

Grandma Ashton’s seemed to be a meeting place for all our relations. I recall evenings when Dad, Uncle Joe and two other men I cannot bring to mind played cribbage for a ha’penny a point. Before the cards were even shuffled, the curtains had to be drawn and the front door locked, as gambling was illegal—such was our respect for the police, which in this present day sounds overcautious, as the players neither lost nor won more than tuppence an evening.

Northmoor Council School, built before the Boer War, was about half an hour’s walk from across the Mucky Broos up Chadderton Road, past a huge black shiny boulder on the left, which was reputed to be a meteorite from outer space, awesome in itself and, even more frighteningly, said to be bewitched and evil. I never walked by it without crossing my fingers, looking straight ahead, although I watched it out of the corner of my eye in case it did something untoward. That was my daily journey to school, my first small step on the road to education, but after that fatuous fanfare I can recall only very little of my early schooldays.

Question: ‘How old were you when you enrolled?’

Answer: ‘Don’t know.’

Question: ‘What was the name of the headmaster?’

Answer: ‘She was a headmistress.’

Question: ‘What was her name?’

Answer: ‘No idea.’

It would be a very dull interview indeed. I remember the headmistress, a motherly, plumpish lady with white hair, for one unforgettable incident. Every morning, first thing, the whole school assembled for prayers, which culminated with a hymn: the headmistress stepped on to a podium, took up her baton and raised it—this was the only still moment of her performance—and then, crash, bang, wallop, we were off…Arms flailing about, she conducted with gusto in a way reminiscent of a flight controller on board an aircraft carrier guiding a drunken trainee pilot down on to the deck. Not only was it fascinating to watch, but on one particular occasion there was a highlight yet to come. So frenetic was her conducting that there was a flash of colour beneath the hem of her frock and a voluptuous red garter made its appearance, slid down her leg and rested round her ankle. We all waited for the other garter to appear, but we were disappointed. Sadly the garter never appeared again and I assumed she had bought herself a pair of braces. That is my only recollection of the headmistress. In fact I cannot bring to mind other members of the staff, even though they stood behind the headmistress at prayers.

I invariably looked forward to playtime, unless it was raining, when I would have to stand shivering under a sheltered bit of the schoolyard with the others who didn’t possess raincoats. No one except the staff was allowed to remain in school during playtime. Worse still, we could see the teachers staring through the rainspattered windows in order to keep an eye on us, steaming cups of tea in their hands, and biscuits. As we watched enviously there was a sound of thunder, but in fact it was the rumbling of a mass of small stomachs at the sight of the biscuits. When the weather was good playtime would be a blessing—a shrieking, screaming, laughing riot of sound, skipping ropes for the girls and tennis balls kicked all over the place by the lads. One of the more popular games was Jubby. Kneeling, we flipped marbles or glass alleys into a small dent in a corner of the school yard and then we—unfortunately I have forgotten what we did then, but we enjoyed it.

Alongside the ‘Jubby bandits’, another line of kneeling ragamuffins played in pairs a game of Skimmy On. This entailed skimming tab cards alternately at two other cards leaning up against the wall. If you knocked one over, you scooped up all the cards that had missed the target: then another card was placed up against the wall and round two was on. To see these lines of ‘skimmers’ and their intense concentration was like observing Northmoor’s version of one-armed bandits in Las Vegas. Incidentally, those tab cards, better known as cigarette cards, came in most packets of cigarettes. They disappeared about fifty years ago, if not more, and as cigarettes are not politically correct I don’t envisage those wonderful educational cigarette cards coming back, more’s the pity.

Another memory of Northmoor’s is when, after school had ended one day, I dashed out into the pouring rain. It was bucketing down and I was in two minds as to whether to run back into school or swim home. I did neither and, ducking my head, I raced across the street, only to find that the pavement was dry. When I turned round I discovered that the monsoon on the other side of the street was still pelting down. I stared at this phenomenon, a solid wall of rain two yards away. After a short time I rushed off home to relate this extraordinary experience. I expected amazement or at least astonishment, but all I got in reply was a bored, ‘It didn’t rain here.’ That’s all I can remember about Northmoor Council School…funny about the garter, though.

Every Saturday morning Dad sent me up to Grandma Sykes to see if she wanted any errands to be done. This was odd, because he and Mother were reluctant to send me on errands at home. Many years later my father told me that he would never send me out on errands because of my woolly-headedness. I would very likely not remember which shop I was going to, and even if I arrived at the right place I would have forgotten why I was there. Why, then, did Father send me to Grandma Sykes to see if she wanted any errands done? It couldn’t be because he disliked her—after all, she was his mother. Perhaps he just wanted me out of the way for a time. When I arrived at Grandma Sykes I asked her about it, but she just smiled, shook her head and sent me off on an errand, which was no answer at all. It must have been preying on my mind, because I went into the butcher’s and asked for five pounds of King Edwards, and by the time I reached the greengrocer’s I’d forgotten the potatoes and came out with a cabbage. Grandma sighed heavily, took the cabbage from me, donned a shawl over her head and we made our way to the shop together. As we walked, she casually remarked that she and Granddad Sykes together with Aunt Marie, Dad’s younger sister, and Uncle Ernest, Dad’s brother, would soon be moving in with us. This information was of such importance that it banished all the other rubbish from my mind.

Two or three days later, the invasion was upon us. They hadn’t far to come, as they lived in Tilbury Street, which ran along the top of Leslie Street. Everything they owned was carried from their house to ours—the cost of a removal van would have been infinitely more than the value of their assets. My father and Granddad Sykes staggered down the path lugging a large double bed, followed by Grandma Sykes and a neighbour edging sideways holding a mattress between them as if inciting the watchers to jump out of their bedroom windows on to it, Aunt Marie, with an armful of blankets and not far behind Uncle Ernest, hidden under a moth-eaten armchair, slipping and slithering in front of me. ‘Every little helps,’ they said, handing me an ashtray—‘A Present from Hastings’—and a three-legged stool which must have been handed down through generations of farmers.

Stanley Taylor, who was walking out with Aunt Marie, lurched along the uneven ground with a ragged, worn-out carpet on his shoulder. Mercifully it was rolled up, and so its threadbare condition was hidden from the critical watchers. As the column made its way to number thirty-six it must have been reminiscent of Dr Livingstone’s first expedition into darkest Africa. Within a few more hours the Tilbury Street house was stripped bare, and that evening the changeover was complete. Granddad and Grandma Sykes, Aunt Marie and Uncle Ernest had finally made 36 Leslie Street their new home.

So now there were nine residents: Granddad Sykes’s family in the front bedroom, and in the back bedroom Dad and Mother in their corner and John, me and Vernon in the bed opposite. Nowadays it would be deemed overcrowding but to Father it was halving the rent.

Our house, like millions of others, had four rooms, two up and two down, but the hub of all this domesticity, the nerve centre, the engine room, was the kitchen, the one room that was communal. Nine of us ate our staggered meals there. Washing up, washing clothes and washing ourselves took place at the sink, which was next to the stove. Breakfast time was the busiest period before the workers left. No one wide awake enough to converse muttered ‘Look at the time’ or ‘Is there any Shredded Wheat?’ It was feverish, like a railway buffet when the train is due in. During melancholy moments I fervently wished we could have our kitchen back and our own bedroom, but almost immediately I would be ashamed of my uncharitable thoughts.

Grandma Sykes was my favourite. Once I returned home from my primary school, stiff-legged, tearful and as far down in the depths of despair as I’d ever been because I’d messed my pants and had been sent home to get myself cleaned up; it was this disgusted dismissal in front of the class that had been the final straw. However, when I entered our front door I was met by Grandma Sykes. She was on her own and when she saw me she wasn’t cross or anything. She just said, ‘Come on, let’s get you cleaned up.’ Then she lifted me on to the draining board, and took off my shoes and stockings so that I could put my feet in the sink. ‘By jingo,’ she remarked as she peeled off my pants. ‘What have you been eating? Any farmer would pay good money for this lot.’ In spite of myself I chuckled, and by the time I’d been cleaned and dried, and had half a slice of bread and dripping in my hand, I felt a wave of warm affection for her. I stood in front of the fire, watching the steam rising from my damp, clean pants, and when everybody came home that evening Grandma didn’t utter a word about the drama that had taken place earlier in the afternoon; it was our secret. So as far as I was concerned, I’d be happy for Granny to stay with us for ever.

Granddad didn’t say much. He and Uncle Ernest worked at the same place, and when they came home in the evening, Granddad washed his hands and face at the sink, followed by Uncle Ernest. Then they’d sit down for their supper, which was usually a plateful of baked beans, and as I had eaten much earlier the sight of Granddad and Uncle Ernest slurping their way through those delicious baked beans had me salivating. To be hungry was the norm, but it didn’t help to be constantly reminded of it.

I saw very little of Aunt Marie. She was very rarely home by the time I went to bed. She worked in a shoe shop along with a man called Stan Taylor, and it wasn’t long before they were courting. She never brought him home to meet her parents, but that was understandable—where would he sit? And a meal was out of the question, unless he brought his own. Many, many months later they were married and the mystery man became my Uncle Stan. I met him for the first time at some family gathering or other and I took a shine to him from that moment. I secretly observed him standing in a little group of relatives. He had a perpetual smile on his lips, and occasionally he would nod at something.

The discussion was apparently about Stanley Baldwin, our Prime Minister—I knew that because Granddad talked of little else. Everyone put in his four pence except Stan. He didn’t utter a word, but nodded now and again, raising his eyebrows at something or other. I was waiting for him to join in but he didn’t, and I came to the conclusion that he must be a very wise man who kept his counsel; or to look at it another way he could be stone deaf and couldn’t hear a word anybody said. Anyway, Aunt Marie was the first to spread her wings. When she and Stan married they went to live in a little village called New Longton, not too far from Preston, away from Oldham for privacy but close enough in case of emergencies.

Uncle Ernest was next to go. Still in his mid-teens, he enlisted in the Royal Navy and in peacetime that seemed like a pretty smart move—sailing the high seas, three meals a day, not much pay but regular, and when he’d served his twelve years he’d still be young enough and with sufficient skills to obtain a steady job ashore. So his departure from 36 Leslie Street left only Granddad and Grandma. Two down and two to go, but already I was missing Aunt Marie and Uncle Ernest. Is there anything so fickle as a child’s thoughts?

As a child I was a very sickly specimen. In fact my father told me many years later that a doctor, shaking his head sadly as he looked at me, said, ‘You’ll never rear him.’ Naturally, being but a few months old, I was totally unaware of the doctor’s opinion and I simply continued to live. On the other hand when John came into the world he must have shone like the evening star. He was a beautiful baby, radiant, healthy and, judging by his ever-present smile, comfortable with his surroundings. It was inconceivable that any germ or virus would defile such a perfectly healthy child. Hospitals weren’t full of little ‘uns like John; the wards were more likely to be occupied by people like me. On the other hand, it is all clearly logical if you think about it: what self-respecting germ is going to be satisfied with a stale crust when there’s a leg of lamb on the table? Poor John happened to be the latter, and he was carried off to hospital with scarlet fever. I was mortified, and the atmosphere at home was dark and sombre, as if the gas mantle had gone out and we didn’t have enough for the meter. Weeks seemed like months, but it all ended happily when Mother collected him from hospital, and although it was foggy outside the sun was in our hearts. But it left me with a sobering thought: if scarlet fever could happen to John, was I next in line, and would Dad start worrying all over again if it was possible to rear me?

Illness struck once more, and to everyone’s astonishment it wasn’t me. It was Vernon this time and, more serious than scarlet fever, he had the dreaded diphtheria, which was high up on the mortality list. Why Vernon? He’d always looked pretty healthy to me—after all, he’d virtually been brought up at the Staceys’ on a more balanced diet, too costly for Leslie Street. Prunes and custard don’t encourage diphtheria, so why him? Truthfully if I could have changed places with Vernon I would not have hesitated. I felt better equipped to deal with illness than either John or Vernon.

On that black day the clang of the ambulance bell opened practically every front door in Leslie Street, not out of idle curiosity but because the residents were bonded together by a genuine concern and sympathy for the grieving household. Inside 36 Leslie Street, as we waited apprehensively while a burly ambulance man was upstairs preparing Vernon for his admittance, something extraordinary happened: a little black bird flew in through the open front door into the kitchen, turned and flew out again. My stomach was gripped by a cold foreboding. It was a bad omen. A few moments later, the ambulance man made his way carefully downstairs, carrying Vernon, wrapped in a blanket, his face white and bloodless, and his eyes closed as his head lolled against the ambulance man’s chest. I was convinced that I’d never see Vernon again, but, God be praised, as usual I was being over-dramatic. After some weeks, or it may have been longer, Vernon was cured and discharged from hospital. Dad walked him home and what a joy it was when he arrived! Mother, John and I shared a huge smile of welcome. In those long-forgotten days in the north-west we were certainly not demonstrative, but our faces said it all. We were a whole family again. It had been a harrowing time—first John smitten by scarlet fever, and then Vernon struck down with diphtheria—and the most I could contribute was a runny nose.