Three Blind Mice

Prologue

               I was four when I lost my mother to cancer. I don’t recall the grief my grandmother, Mary Ellen and my Auntie Mary must have gone through. The only memory I have is of standing in the cold February snow, shivering, my tiny milk-teeth chattering away whilst staring down into my mother’s open grave. I remember being surrounded by a mass of people dressed in black, looking mournful and huddled together like an unkindness of ravens, their faces featureless, erased from my memory, but my mind still achingly carries their tearful sobs, just as they carried on that winter breeze back in 1939.  Some were sobbing inconsolably; bewildered as to why God had taken their beloved Ellen at such a tender age, for she was only twenty-seven when she was taken from her ‘three little angels’.

               My recollection of that dreadful morning is still vivid, and if I dwell on it for too long the bewilderment and pain I felt back then, comes rushing back with vengeance.

               As I cast my mind’s eye back, I recall the icy pool of muddy water that had settled in the bottom of her open grave. I also recall a faint voice, faded with time, ‘Your mother has gone to sleep with the angels Billy....’ - It was probably my gran.

               ‘Don’t put my mummy down there,’ I shrieked, ‘she’ll drown!’ I could feel my face burning as the bitter cold air snapped at the warm tears rolling down my hot rosy cheeks.

               ‘Quiet’, my father snarled, as he took hold of my hand and squeezed it until the tips of my fingers turned purple, achieving the opposite effect as I howled in pain, reaching out to my gran for comfort, but my father just wouldn’t let go, silently and stubbornly holding his ground, surreptitiously enjoying the unnecessary pain he was inflicting on both me and his heartbroken mother-in-law.

               See my father was the complete opposite of my good-natured, softly spoken, selfless and loving mother. Always caressing and doting, she was everything any child could wish for. I have no photographs of my mother to look back on, but the image I retain is of a very pretty young woman. From her button nose that wrinkled when she smiled, to her long flowing auburn locks that spilled down the back of her petite frame. Her smile was warm and understanding and she had a knack of raising people’s spirits when they were down, especially mine. I still remember her sitting me on her lap and singing lullabies as she gently rocked me to sleep.

               Some might say she was a ‘Plain Jane’, but Gran said she had that unassuming beauty that would turn heads. To me, well she had the face of an angel. Her emerald eyes would twinkle and dimples would form in her cheeks when she smiled, and her laugh was so contagious. She was the centre of my tiny universe and no one was going to take her from me...or so I had thought.

               God only knows what she saw in my father; I guess he must have been on his best behaviour during the ‘honeymoon phase’, for in all earnest he was a malevolent man at the best of times and he never needed an excuse to exact his wrath.

               Small in stature, standing at no more than 5’ 6” with his hobnail boots on, he still commanded respect and instilled fear amongst the hardest of the Miles Platting men, a place and an era where both men and women alike, solved their quarrels with fists rather than reason. I remember my father boasting he was from a family-line of boxers; his grandfather, John Thomas and his father, Jack were both bare knuckle fighters in their day and good ones from all accounts.

               Jack had introduced my father to boxing at an early age, who then worked his way up the amateur rankings at the Adelphi Lads Club in Salford, where he grew up. He gave the sport up shortly after I was born due to a damaged retina, which probably explained the thick, round pebble, wire-rimmed glasses he wore. I say wore, they spent most of the time perched precariously on the top of his prematurely balding head. The only time he actually used them to see was when he rode his rusty old bicycle. I guess he considered they portrayed a weakness, a weakness that was unacceptable to him if he was to uphold his ‘hard-man’ image.

               Although he was short in stature, he was thick-set, and had a neck like a Rottweiler, and the temperament to go with it. His hands were coarse and as tough as his boots, hardened through years of working as a labourer on building sites. When I annoyed him, which was more often than not, his lashing tongue wasn’t enough to quell his anger and so he would strike me from behind when I was least expecting it. At times he’d hit me so hard I was never too sure if he’d punched me or kicked me. And from what I can remember, he only ever seemed to have two expressions, one of contempt and the other was anger. If he felt anything remotely positive, he certainly didn’t show me.

               So what do you do at four when you’ve lost your mother? What do you feel at four when you’ve lost your mother? For a while I didn’t know I’d lost her, not forever – for nobody told me my mother wasn’t coming back. I spent an age waiting, waiting for the angels she was sleeping with to wake her and bring her back to me. To a child so young, time seems to standstill - I must have waited an eternity for my mother; but that kind of eternity doesn’t last forever, and the agonising pain and bewilderment slowly dissolves into a dull ache and a kind of acceptance...eventually!

               All said and done, I guess the whole experience of my mother dying must have been harder for my brother and sister, for they were both older than me, John being seven and my sister, Mary was six - too young to deal with the grief, but just old enough to comprehend the insanity that had enshrouded our tiny world.

               Another thing that sticks in my mind, is my sister dressing me on the morning of the funeral. I don’t recall her face, but the sound of her sniffles in an attempt to hold back her tears will remain with me forever.

               My mother’s terrifying ordeal started the year before, in 1938, when she found a lump in her breast. After some tests she was admitted to Ancoats, a large inner-city hospital - half a mile north of Manchester city centre. The doctors used the term ‘pioneering surgery’; it turned out to be more like butchery. Critical, but stable, she was then admitted to the Christie hospital in Didsbury, South Manchester, where after an intensive treatment of radiation, using radium tipped needles, she ultimately lost her fight. I believe she died in agony.

               Losing our mother so young had suddenly and mercilessly changed the course of our lives, yet little did we know that fate had more sinister surprises in store for us all!

Chapter 1

               The first few years of my life were spent at number nineteen Fraser Street, Miles Platting, where I was born, on May 27th 1934.

               The  house  we lived in  humbly  displayed  a  decayed red  brick  edifice,  in  dire  need  of  attention and  had  been  for  many  years.  Wooden  sash  window  frames  throughout  complimented  the  crumbling  brickwork,  riddled  with  both  dry  and  wet  rot, the tired and tarnished windowpanes casting more shadows than light back into the dark, dank rooms. And  finally,  its  crowning  glory,  a  ramshackle  slate  roof,  which not  only  failed  miserably for years  to  offer  adequate  protection  from  the  natural  elements,  but  was also  covered  in  a  thick  blanket  of  soot,  not  unlike  the  thousands  of  other  roofs  in  and  around  Miles  Platting;  an  old industrial  northern  town,  densely  packed  with redundant textile mills,  gasworks,  chemical  factories,  and  a  nearby  tannery. 

               The  house  was  characteristic  of  the  many  thousands  of mid-Victorian, back-to-back slum-houses,  linked  by  hundreds  of  narrow,  claustrophobic  cobbled-stone  streets,  meandering  around  the  outskirts  of  the  city-centre.

               The  houses  in  Fraser  Street  backed  on  to  the  houses  in  Berkshire  Street.  A  narrow  ginnel  separated  the  opposing  back  yards  by  few  paltry  feet,  allowing  just  enough  room  to  serve  its  purpose,  as  a  pedestrianised  thoroughfare.  The  ginnel  was  typically  cobbled  and  inadequately  irrigated  by  a  narrow  trough,  which  ran  straight  down  the  centre,  from  one  end  of  the  row  to  the  other  and  was  greeted  by  a  much  neglected  and  insufficiently  sized  iron  grate,  congested  with  years  of  decaying  household  waste.  Hence,  when  it  rained,  which  was  more  often  than  not  in  the  aptly  named  ‘Rainy  City’,  the  ginnel  would  flood,  sending relentless torrents  of  filthy  and  disease-ridden  rainwater  into  the  back  yards  and  many a time  into  the  already  damp-riddled  houses.

               The  air  in  Fraser  Street  and  the  surrounding  area  was  not  something  to  be  desired,  for  more  often  than  not,  a  thick,  black  cloud  of  smog  hung  obstinately  over  the  roof  tops,  caused  by the endless  rows  of  back-to-back  terraced  houses, as  the  community  burned  their  fair  share  of  the  incriminating  carbon-based,  sulphuric  combustible;  more  commonly  known  as  coal. 

               The  sanitary  works,  which  was  just  a  stone’s throw  away,  also  tended  to  emanate  a  nasty niff,  together  with  the  local  tannery,  where  cowhides  were  stripped  and  boiled  to  make  all  sorts  of  fine  leather  goods  for  the  nobility,  living  elsewhere!

               This was truly a place where time had refused to move on, obdurately stuck in a Dickensian era, with its rundown and obsolete textile mills, deserted by the abhorrent and perfidious beneficiaries, lay derelict and deserted on a sea of putrid waste. Dogs and children left to roam in feral packs, and once proud and assiduous men now sitting in the taprooms all across Miles Platting, drinking themselves to oblivion, their wives and children waiting nervously at home, dreading kicking-out-time and their troubled husbands’ return.

               The inside of our house was as bleak as the outside. From the worn and undulating cold flagged floor that greeted you as you walked in straight off the street, to the plaster-bare, damp and rotten brick walls. I remember there was a table that sat under the window sill, but there were no dining chairs. One day, not long after our mother had passed away, our father had to break them up to use as firewood, as we had ran out of coal and no money to buy more. The only place to sit was on an old, pale-brown and well-worn leather armchair, veined with years of dirt and soot, which sat hugging the heat from the out-dated, cast-iron cooking range, consisting of a small coal fire on one side and a cast-iron oven on the other, with a retractable kettle stand above the fire grate. I still recall helping my house-proud mother to blacken the cast-iron frame with some Zebra lead grate-polish and plenty of elbow grease, but that was before the cancer set in.

               We also had an old brown-veneered upright piano, which sat along the edge of the partition wall, which separated our house from number seventeen.  It wasn’t worth much; I think my father bought it for my mother for about two pounds from a local second-hand dealer. Although she had never had piano lessons, my mother had a gift for playing by ear and used to entertain her friends and neighbours on a Saturday evening, and started teaching me in-between chores, whilst my brother and sister were at school.

               The only other items that served as a distraction was a tarnished, fan-shaped art deco mirror, which hung by a rusty chain over the piano, with a small black and white photograph of my mother wedged in the bottom left corner, and an old dome-shaped wireless, which sat on an occasional table in the farthest corner of the room. The wireless was powered by a battery accumulator, as we didn’t have the luxury of electricity in our house, not unlike most of the houses in the area. I remember my brother and I used to take the battery to a hardware store on Garret Street every Saturday morning to have it charged up. We used to have to leave it there and take a replacement until the following week. Mr. Mallon, the owner of the shop, must have had a soft spot for John and me, because he used to regularly give us a quarter of Dolly Mixtures - for nothing, ‘Don’t say I never give ya nowt,’ he’d say, with a wink. The only snag was, they had an odd, faint aftertaste. Years later I came to realise what it was - Paraffin! No wonder Mr. Mallon gave them away!

               Upstairs was no different, following the same theme as downstairs, the floorboards were rotten and our bed was worse still. We shared a single cast-iron bed, with an old straw, tri-coloured mattress, which had probably hosted a few dead corpses before it made its way to us. I say tri-coloured; with no bottom sheet, the top end of the mattress was grey, on account of our seldom washed hair rubbing against it as we tossed and turned in the night. The middle was the colour of stale cheese, courtesy of the countless merged and dried-in urine patches, all three of us had a claim to, and the lower end was black, the same colour as the soles of our feet, as we walked shoeless around the house. And when we were caught short in the night, if we had woken to the fact, we had to use an old tin bucket that had a permanent place at the top of the stairs; hence, we literally didn’t have a pot to piss in!

               During the winter months work in the building trade would be virtually nonexistent. In those days mortar consisted of lime, sand and water and if the temperature dropped below freezing the mortar would be rendered useless. Each morning during the cold snaps, my father would throw a bucket of water down the back yard. Ingenious, but simple, if the water froze he knew there would be no work that day.

               Our situation was grave just after our mother passed away. My father had no money coming in and he couldn’t even afford to replace the gas mantel, (the gas lamp’s equivalent of today’s electric light bulb) costing just thrippence, which he needed to light up the front room.

               Innately proud, to the point of self-destruction, my father had thus far staved off going cap-in-hand to the Board of Governors, which consisted of six or seven local businessmen who formed a panel to help the destitute of Miles Platting. But I think sitting in the dark that evening must have been the final straw.

               The next morning, my father had just been out the back to check on the water he’d thrown down in the yard. It must have been a weekday, because my brother and sister were at school.

               ‘Right, get yer coat,’ he said to me, as he slammed the backdoor shut in anger.

               ‘Where we goin’ dad?’ I asked, as I struggled with my oversized coat.

               ‘Never you mind...just get yer coat on.’

               My father took me down to Holland Street, via Royal’s Bridge, one of many foot-bridges that stretched across Rochdale Canal. I remember running ahead to give myself enough time to throw stones into the polluted water below, as I had done so on numerous occasions whilst out walking with my mother.

               As I cast my first stone and followed its trajectory with my gaze, I spotted a huge rat paddling towards the icy embankment, whipping up an incandescent rainbow of colours in its wake as it pushed its way through the toxic soup of chemicals from the neighbouring factories and decaying debris, which consisted of discarded bicycle frames, old rubber tyres and rotting carcases of adventurous dogs and accident prone cats, which probably died of toxic poisoning way before they had a chance to drown.

               ‘Dad...dad look...a rat!’ I yelled, as I pointed in the general direction of the embankment.

               ‘Come ‘ere or you’ll be bleedin’ joinin’ it,’ he ordered, as he marched towards me with his fists clenched. If it weren’t for the fact he was angry all of the time, I may have thought I had done something to annoy him.

               Having been marched at my father’s angry pace, we soon reached a gargantuan red-bricked Victorian building with disproportionately sized, colossal sash-windows, which sat back off the road in a formal court yard, guarded by high, black wrought-iron railings. I remember feeling anxious and paranoid as I looked up at the formidable building, convinced someone was staring back from beyond the green velvet curtains, twitching as the cold February breeze wafted through an open window.

               ‘Right, keep yer mouth shut once we get in ‘ere, d’you-‘ere?’ he instructed, as he took me by the scruff of the neck walked me through the mammoth arched open doorway into a long, empty and capacious hall.

               The great cavernous hall was as foreboding as the edifice. The hard, highly polished parquet floor and dark wood-panelled walls served to amplify our footsteps as my father steered me towards a long oak table at the far end. Just as we reached the table, a tall, slim and well-attired young woman stepped out of a side room doorway.

               If my memory serves me well, she wore her auburn hair in a bob and was wearing a black pencil-skirt and a white blouse. I remember she had long slender legs, adorned with black nylon stockings, the ones with the seams running down the back, and black patent leather court shoes.

               To me she looked nothing like the women I was used to seeing on the streets of Miles Platting, where, as a general rule, with their gruff manner and unkempt look, they tended to wear tightly pulled hair-nets, skin-toned, wrinkled stockings and unassuming shapeless dresses, protected from the inevitable dust and muck by the obligatory pinafore, as they went about their daily grind of donkey-stoning their front steps, washing their windows and complaining about anything and everything to anyone who would listen.

               Startled by my father’s presence, she enquired in a stern, but eloquent voice ‘Can I help you?’ adjusting her expensive looking tortoiseshell glasses as she peered down her nose at me. For a moment I was taken aback, for she must have had a squint. As her left eye settled on mine, her right seemed to dart about my person, her mind obviously registering the spectacle before her; a dishevelled, snotty-nosed, solemn looking scamp, with mousey-blonde matted hair, dirty knees and scuffed shoes, so badly scuffed you could be forgiven for mistaking them for sandals. My coat was two sizes too big, handed down from one of the neighbour’s kids no doubt, yet my chunky-knitted, miss-shaped grey tank-top barely reached my navel, betraying the tired and grubby snake belt that was holding up my navy blue bell-bottom shorts, my coat hiding a considerable sized hole in the backside.

               My father pulled his flat cap from his balding head and held it in front of his waist with both hands, nervously threading it through his gnarled, stubby, nicotine coated fingers. ‘Erm...’ He nervously coughed, which I found most disconcerting, for I had never ever seen my father uneasy with anyone before.

               ‘Err...I need to...’

               Before he could finish his sentence the woman cut him cold, ‘There is nobody here I’m afraid, you will have to fill out a form and somebody will be in touch,’ she announced. I’m assuming by my father’s tired looking Donkey Jacket, well worn hob-nail boots and patched up trousers and his scruffy side-kick, she figured that he was there for one the one thing he had vowed he would never lower himself to - assistance.

               With that, she made her way over to the other side of the table and pulled open a drawer, ‘Ah yes, fill this form out...in capital letters of course,’ she continued, re-emphasising CAPITALS as she thrust the piece of paper towards my father. Pausing, she snatched it back from my father’s outstretched hand. ‘Are you a local resident?’ she asked searchingly, as an afterthought.

               ‘Yes...err...Fraser Street,’ my father replied, as he pointed in the general direction of our house, whilst nodding to reaffirm his answer, just in case she’d misheard him.

               ‘Good, good, then fill this in.’ She impatiently thrust the paperwork back into my father’s hand, as if to imply he’d taken up more of her time than he should.

               ‘Erm...’ my father looked along the table, presumably searching for a pen.

               The woman, as if frozen in time, continued to stare at my father disapprovingly with one eye and me with the other, before her expression changed to one of realisation. ‘Oh a pen,’ she muttered to herself as she riffled through the open drawer. ‘Pen...pen...pen...ah, here we are!’ she exclaimed, in a high pitch, her final word engaging with hall’s acoustics, giving my ignorance reason for me to look over my shoulder in search of the perpetrator.

               She pulled a fountain pen from the drawer and placed it on the table in front of my father, ‘Leave the pen and form on the table when you have finished please.’ With that, she slid the drawer shut and swiftly marched off to a side door on the opposing side of the hall. ‘Oh...’ As she grabbed the brass door-knob, she turned and looked to my father, ‘Somebody will be in touch with you in due course,’ she informed him, before gliding through the doorway, closing the heavy oak door firmly behind her. An eerie echo of the door shutting amplified around the otherwise silent vacuum of the great hall.

               I remember looking at my father as he adjusted his glasses and read out aloud the questions from the piece of paper. ‘Name...address...’ He worked his way down the page as he stood hunched over the table until he reached the more probing questions, ‘Source of income...Am I working?’ ‘If I was flamin’ workin’...I wouldn’t be ‘ere,’ he remarked out loud, before glancing over to me, his magnified, dull-grey, spiteful cow-eyes burning into me as he realised I was listening to him thinking aloud.

               Once he’d finished proof-reading his answers he placed the form squarely on the table and laid the pen on top.

               ‘Right, come on you,’ he snarled, as he yanked at the sleeve of my coat and marched me back down the hall. I remember being both puzzled and frightened, for my father seemed more annoyed than before we came in, and I thought I had been on my best behaviour.

               ‘Any nonsense from you and yer gunna ged it, d’you-‘ere?’

               I just nodded as a matter of course, as I had learned to do so many times in the interest of self preservation.

               Sure enough, a few days later a man came to the house from the Board of Governors. It must have been a Saturday, for my brother, sister and me were at home.

               ‘Mr. Harris I presume?’ a rather austere looking gentleman enquired, smartly dressed in a buttoned-up beige mackintosh, a double-breasted grey pinstripe suit, the whitest shirt I’d ever seen, complimented by a smart navy-blue tie, tied in a Windsor knot. On his head he wore a bowler hat and was holding up a large open umbrella to stave off the rain.

               ‘Yes.’

               ‘I believe you requested our services,’ the man continued, lifting his bowler hat in gesture, as he wrestled with the wind to keep his umbrella in situ.

               My father looked at him with a blank expression, his mind pre-occupied with the commotion of us three, crying with hunger in the background.

               ‘The Board...The Board of Governors...You filled in a form!’ the man insisted, as he lowered his bowler hat, whilst gesturing to my father to invite him in out of the rain.

               My father’s expression changed from one of bewilderment to one of relief. ‘Come in...Come in,’ he said, as he stood to one side.

               The man snapped shut his umbrella, and with a smile, he walked past my father into the front room. His expression soon changed when he took one look at my brother, sister and me, half dressed and bawling our eyes out.

               ‘Quiet,’ my father snarled, before offering to take the man’s coat. 

               ‘No I won’t if you don’t mind Mr. Harris, I shan’t be stopping long,’ the man insisted, as his eyes furtively darted around the room, making a mental inventory of my father’s meagre possessions.

               Much taller than my father, the rather gaunt, elderly gentleman introduced himself as Mr. Rawlins. ‘I believe you filled in one of our forms requesting assistance,’ he said, frowning as he rummaged through his coat pockets.

               ‘Aye,’ my father replied, not committing himself to say any more than he had to, probably through embarrassment rather than shrewdness.

               Mr. Rawlins then pulled out what I assume was the form my father had filled in, unfolded it and started scrutinizing it, ‘You’ve put down you’re a builder’s labourer Mr. Harris?’

               ‘That’s right,’

               ‘And you’re not working because of the...weather?’ Mr. Rawlins looked in the general direction of the front window and observed the rain lashing against the dirty, tarnished windowpane, barely visible behind the half drawn, heavy, red velvet drapes, sagging under their own weight on a stretch of elastic. The wind was whistling through a gap in the rotten frame, as a small pool of rainwater slowly expanding in the middle of the sill, spilling over the edge and down into the piss bucket our father had placed on the table.    ‘There’s bin no work for weeks...it’s bin too bloody cold,’ my father replied defensively, annoyed at the fact the very morning a representative from the board chose to come the weather had turned milder, albeit wetter.

               Mr. Rawlins stood rooted to the spot as he took a second, more meaningful look around the room. A repugnant expression formed on his face as his mind absorbed the dreadful conditions we were living in.

               Mr. Rawlins folded up the form and placed it back in his pocket. His demeanour seemed to change as he pointed to my late mother’s piano. ‘I can see you are not a man of means Mr. Harris...’ he said, in a rather disparaging manner, ‘...but surely you could sell that piano before coming to the board for assistance.’  

               My father looked perplexed, as it must have taken a moment for it to register with him just exactly what Mr. Rawlins was implying.

               ‘And for that matter, there is a perfectly good wireless over there, which I imagine would fetch a few bob,’ he continued, glancing over to the corner of the room.

               My father’s hopeful mood changed to one of annoyance. Instantly stiff with rage, he protested, ‘For one, the wireless is broke,’ as he thrust his arm out in anger and pointed to the accumulator battery lay on the floor under the occasional table, giving Mr. Rawlins cause to flinch, ‘...and for the other the piano won’t fetch much, anyroad that’s my late wife’s piano and it’s the only bloody thing I have left of hers.’

               An awkward silence enveloped the room as my father lowered his arm. At that very moment, and for the very first time in my short life, I saw a different side to my father; a softer, more human side. For at that very moment, a single solitary tear trickled down his cheek. Maybe this one tear was for our dead mother? Or maybe it was for his grief-stricken, vulnerable and hungry children? Maybe he was a more considerate soul than he portrayed himself to be? Maybe this is what our mother had seen in him when they first met? Maybe he started a family with the best of intentions? Maybe he did dote on me before I was old enough to take in the world around me? Or maybe the cruel twist of fate was just too much for him? But, when all said and done, these were all just maybes, and this one, heart-rending moment ended just as abruptly as it had began.

               I remember Mr. Rawlins started shaking his head unsympathetically as he made his way to the front door. Breaking the silence he insisted, ‘I’m afraid we won’t be able to help you Mr. Harris.’ As he reached the door he glanced over and pointed to my mother’s piano, ‘Sell that piano if you’re desperate,’ he concluded, in a moment of miscalculated bravery, for the imperious Mr. Rawlins’ slapdash and callous comment was like showing a red rag to a bull.

               My father’s anger re-stoked, he sprang past the reckless Mr. Rawlins and swung open the front door. And from the look on the pretentious Mr. Rawlins’ face, I don’t think he was too sure as to whether my father was going to hit him or not. And just leaving enough room for the now chary Mr. Rawlins to shuffle past him, my father glowered at him and hissed, ‘If I ever see you again I’ll brain ya!’

               Aghast, Mr. Rawlins, with his mouth open wide, didn’t dare say a word, at least not until he was a few yards down the street, ‘If you lay a hand on me I’ll...I’ll get the police!’ he hollered back, as he quickened his pace, stumbling forward as he struggled to put his umbrella up.

               ‘Go on, sling-yer-uk,’ my father retorted, before slamming shut the front door so hard, it made the wall behind the piano shake, sending the mirror, with the picture of my mother, crashing down on top of it, the din of the vibrating piano strings drowning my father’s coarse language.

               Cold, hungry and starving, our father was at a loss as what to do with us.

Chapter 2

               Our father had no alternative, but to swallow his pride, and so after that day our gran and Auntie Mary took over the responsibilities of looking after us. Our father would take us to their house each weekday morning on his way to work. It was a pretty simple task, as they lived six doors down at number seven. Gran had ‘flitted’ from a one-up, one-down on Berkshire Street, only weeks before my mother’s death. I still remember helping her and Auntie Mary move their meagre belongings, using a handcart they had hired from a young entrepreneurial lad called Jo, who kept a few of these carts in his back yard at the bottom of our street. He must have made a small fortune, for there was always one family or another wheeling one of his carts, full of furniture, as they flitted from one house to another, usually because they owed rent they couldn’t afford to pay.

                ‘Eeh, look at the state of you three, come over ‘ere by the fire, you look froze to the bone!’ Gran exclaimed, as she summoned us over with a huge toasting fork. ‘I’ve just made you some toast.’ she announced, as she pulled me and my sister into her warm pinafore for a cuddle.

               ‘Mmmm you smell of totes,’ I said, in a muffled voice, whilst I gently nuzzled into her, my nostrils flared and my mouth salivating as my senses basked in the wonderful aroma.

               ‘John’, Auntie Mary muttered, as she acknowledged my father’s presence, even though she couldn’t bear the sight of him. She skirted around him with a huge plate of toast she and Gran had just made over the fire.

               John acknowledged her with his usual grunt, before taking off his flat cap and sitting down on one of the two rickety dining chairs by the table, which, like ours, was strategically placed under the window sill for light, ‘That smells bloody marvellous,’ my father said, as he reached over for a piece Auntie Mary had just lavished with dripping.

               ‘Now come on kids, help yu’self while it’s still ‘ot,’ Gran instructed, as she ushered us over to the pile of toast.

               After scoffing down his toast and dripping and taking a huge slurp of his tea, Auntie Mary had begrudgingly poured from the teapot, my father stood up, placed his flat cap back on his head and his bicycle clip around the bottom of his right trouser leg, and left.

               ‘He’s an ignorant bastard!’ Auntie Mary cussed under her breath, as she peeked through the lace curtain at my father mounting the bicycle he used to ferry himself to and from work.

               ‘The children!’ Gran yipped, as she plonked herself down where John had been sitting, before pulling me up onto her lap.

               ‘Well he is,’ Auntie Mary retorted, rushing out of her seat and coming to an abrupt halt by the fire-place. One hand resting on the mantel-piece, she stared into the flames and continued. ‘I hate him! He was a bastard with our Ellen, and he still is with the kids for that matter.’

               I just stared up at her as a knob of hot dripping slid off my toast and glided down the front of my shirt.

               Gran turned her attention to a wart that had been persistently growing for some time on the end of my chin.

               Viruses were commonplace back then, the odd wart or two being no exception, but Gran seemed to have a cure for just about any ailment; Epsom salts for sore feet and muscle cramps; an ice cube for a bee sting and nose bleeds; a mustard plaster for bronchitis; garlic for heartburn; parsley for bad breath, unless she’d just cured your heartburn; a warm compress of vinegar and alcohol for earache, Boric Acid for conjunctivitis, you name it, Gran could probably cure it, well the less serious ailments anyhow.

               ‘Mary, be a pet an’ pass us the camphor form the shelf in the kitchen love,’ she said, whilst taking my chin in her hand, carefully avoiding her hand coming into contact with the growth. ‘Eeh, look at the state of y’u Billy,’ she remarked, her frown melting to a warm smile as her eyes settled on mine.

               ‘It’s nearly all gone mam...Am goin’ shoppin’ later, so I’ll pick some up then,’ Auntie Mary announced, as she passed Gran the last of the camphor oil with a handful of cotton balls.

               ‘Now hold yer ‘ed still Billy...there’s a dear.’

               As Gran applied the oil I winced with the pain.

               ‘There you go, it’ll soon be gone, you’ll see,’ and with that Gran lowered me off her lap, stood up and wandered off into the kitchen to dispose of the contaminated cotton balls and empty bottle of Camphor oil.

               After being fed, Auntie Mary would walk my brother and sister to Corpus Christie, the local Catholic school on Varley Street, whilst Gran took care of me.

               Gran was a sociable and bubbly character. She was known to her friends as Polly Mac, Polly being a nickname for Mary and Mac being short for McEvoy, her married name. She was a widow, her husband, Alexander, who everyone addressed as Alec, had passed away the year before, in the May, shortly after my fourth birthday, due to an accident at the iron foundry where he worked in Ancoats. The story goes, he’d caught a chill and wasn’t feeling too good, but with no sick-pay in those days he still had to go to work. Not possessing an alarm clock, like most in those days, my grandfather used to pay Sylvia, the local knocker-upper, a few pence a week to wake him up for work. Sylvia, a great hulk of a woman and a voice to boot, used to tap on my grandfather’s bedroom window with a long bamboo stick each weekday morning around five. She would then stand there, sporadically shouting the time, until my grandfather slid open the sash-window and popped his head out.

               This particular night I’d slept at theirs. They only had the one bed so I slept in between them.

               ‘Morning, Alec.’ 

               ‘Syl.’ My grandfather coughed and spluttered.

               ‘Blimey, you sound awful.’

               ‘Bit rough this morning, Syl.’

               ‘You wanna get back in bed.’

               ‘I wish.’

               With that, Sylvia shouted, ‘See ya tomorrer,’ and walked briskly on to her next customer, a few doors down.

               ‘What’s S’up Alec?’ Gran mumbled, with one eye open, as she lay in bed, still tucked-up nice and warm next to me.

               ‘Nowt,’ my grandfather snapped, obviously irritable, ‘Go back to sleep,’ he groaned as he slid shut the sash-window.

               Gran threw back the bed sheets, taking care not to uncover me and sat herself upright. She shuffled herself around and lowered her feet onto the cold wooden floorboards ‘D’you wan’ a cuppa-tea?’ she yawned, as she slipped on her dressing-gown and pushed her feet into her slippers, before turning her head to check on me.

               ‘Aye.’ My grandfather stretched, ‘Ow.’

               ‘What’s the matter?’

               My grandfather clasped his forehead, ‘My bleedin ‘ed,’ he replied, wincing in pain.

               ‘Let’s ‘av-a look at yer.’ Still drowsy, Gran made her way over towards the window and stood in front of my grandfather, ‘Jees! yer sweatin’ cobs Alec,’ she exclaimed, as she touched my grandfather’s forehead with the back of her hand.

               ‘Leave me alone Poll’, I’ll be right.’ My grandfather pulled his head away from Gran’s hand and rubbed the back of his neck as he grimaced with the pain.

               ‘A think you’d better go back to bed.’

               ‘Give over Poll, you know I’ve gotta go to work. Anyhow, that bastard Wainwright’s got it in fo’-me, he’d love fo’-me to have the day off, just so he could gi-me me cards.’

               ‘But you don’t look well at all.’ Gran argued.

               My grandfather ignored her plea and got dressed, before heading down the stairs.

               After taking me downstairs with her, Gran set about making my grandfather and me and some breakfast.

               ‘Am off.’ my grandfather said, as he took down his coat from the back of the kitchen door and put it on.

               ‘What about yer breakfast?’ Gran asked despondently, as she lowered the frying pan onto the lit gas ring of the cast-iron stove.

               ‘I’ll get summat at work,’ he replied, as he pulled a half smoked dimp from his coat pocket and lit it with a match he’d struck on the kitchen wall. He then sauntered into the living room and headed for the front door.

               Gran hurried after him, ‘Are you sure you should be goin’ in, in that state Alec?’

               ‘Stop mytherin’ woman, ‘av told yer, I’ll be right.’

               With that, my grandfather pecked Gran on the cheek and left.

               During that fateful morning, whilst my grandfather was carrying a ladle of molten-iron over to one of the white-hot moulds he fainted and fell face first onto the mould. Apparently he was still conscious, even with third-degree burns to his head, both arms and his chest. Apparently he survived long enough for his work mates to hand-cart him down to Ancoats hospital. Gran never forgave herself for allowing my grandfather to go to work that morning.

               She never had much luck my gran, before or after her husband’s tragic demise. Infant mortality was extremely high amongst the poor in the inner-city areas, and Gran had more than her fair share. She lost six children in less than ten years, between 1901 and 1909, and all but one to the childhood diseases that were rife back then. Two died from scarlet fever, two from the measles, one from tuberculosis and one was a cot death, and all before their third birthdays’. She had buried all of her children, bar Mary, and all this before my mother, Ellen was even born. My Auntie Mary, born in 1906 and my mother, born in 1911 were truly the lucky ones. She even went on to lose two more, a girl named Lilly and a boy named William, twins, who both died of pneumonia in 1919.  

               Well-known and well-liked around Miles Platting, when she wasn’t looking after us three, she’d be frequenting the local pubs, namely Fletcher’s on the corner of North Porter Street and The Heywood on Oldham Road, where she could be found on many an evening entertaining the locals, most of whom were her friends. With her giddy personality, she could be heard laughing and singing as she downed a pint of her favourite tipple – Chester’s.

               After school, we would wait for our father to return from work. Gran would then serve up tea, which usually consisted of a round of bread and ‘tater-ash’ or broth, either homemade, or when money was really tight, from a soup-kitchen on Garratt Street, where you could buy hot meals and puddings for pennies and take them home to eat, as long as you supplied the necessary utensils to carry them back in. I still remember Gran carrying a pan of stew back to the house, whilst I carried sticky-toffee pudding in a large bowl, nibbling away at the edges as I trailed behind her. Casting my mind back, I can still smell and taste the pudding to this very day.

               Friday was usually stew-and-dumpling. I hated dumplings, so I would wait until Gran wasn’t looking before placing it in one of my shorts pockets, or my brother’s school blazer, which was usually hung on the back of the chair. More often than not, she would catch me out, for there would usually be gravy streaming down the outside of my shorts pocket, or my brother’s blazer.

               ‘Not again Billy,’ she would say, as she pulled bits of gravy-sodden dough from my pocket, before rubbing away vigorously at the gravy stains with a damp cloth.

               After tea we would return home. Our father would herd us in front of him with his bike, slamming the hard, solid rubber tyre of the front wheel into one of us if we weren’t walking fast enough, which being the smallest, was usually me. Then, no sooner had we got in the house, he would send us to bed.

               ‘Right you three, ged up them flamin’ stairs...an’ I don’t wanna hear a sound out of yer, d’you-‘ear me?’

               ‘Yes dad,’ we’d chorus, fully versed that if we gave him any nonsense we would be in for a good hiding.

               Whilst we lay quietly in bed, we could hear him in the kitchen getting ready to go out. He would religiously have a wash and a shave from an enamel bowl that had a permanent home on top of the slop stone, a brown stone-slab with slightly raised edges, which sloped at a gentle angle to allow water to drain down a hole, the waste pipe and into a bucket, which my late-mother used to use to prepare and wash food on. Above the slop stone was our only source of water, a stand pipe that offered up only cold water. To heat the water you had to fill a copper boiler which was situated in one corner of the kitchen, next to a heap of coal under the stairs; when we had coal that was, usually there was just coal dust.

Many-a-time we could hear him cursing impatiently, as he tried to light the tinder he had meticulously positioned under the copper boiler.

               ‘Light yer bastard...light!’

               I remember us giggling away to ourselves, at least until we heard him yell, ‘Quiet, or I’ll come up there wi’-me belt.’

               That usually did the trick.

               Once washed and shaven, he would put on his only suit and best shirt, one that Gran had ironed for him no doubt, before leaving the house, slamming shut the front door behind him, our signal to get up and play!

               One night, whilst my father was cursing the boiler, I had crept down to ask for a drink of water.

               Hearing the wooden stairs creak and groan under my tiny feet, my father directed his attention to the bottom of the stairs, ‘Get back up them flamin’ stairs....Now!’

               Through thirst, rather than courage, I stood still in the shadows, just out of sight, but not out of earshot, as my laden breath gave me away.

               ‘Who is it? Show yu’self,’ he demanded.

               As I stepped out of the shadows I started to cry.

               My father was fuming, ‘What av a told yer, get back up them stairs!’

               Whether through an act of defiance, or sheer fear, I just stood there, slowly shaking my head.

               ‘No...No? I’ll give you NO!’ And in one venomous act, he picked up his cut-throat razor off the slop stone, by the side of the enamel bowl, rushed at me, and in one long swipe he cut the head of my wart clean off.

               Well there was blood everywhere! Suffice to say, I got no sympathy from my father, and was sent back to bed, my vest and underpants covered in blood.

               Apparently Gran went berserk when my sister told her what had happened, but in those days there was little she could do, hence nothing much changed, not for the time being, apart from the bitterness between Gran and my father, which just grew.

               Thankfully, the nights were getting lighter as the summer crept in; for there were many occasions when my father would let the penny gas meter run out, leaving us in the dark. More often than not, after he had gone out, we would get up and play hide and seek. There wasn’t much else to do, due to the fact we had nothing to play with. We didn’t even have pillows to play pillow-fights, and a few old coats substituted blankets on the bed we shared. Thinking on, what there were plenty of, were huge, black, shiny beetles. I can still hear them scurrying around in my mind, as they did back then on the bedroom floor after dark.

               This routine went on for some months. Unbeknownst to us, our father was seeing another woman and had been for quite some time. He must have struck up a relationship with this other woman not long after our mother had passed away, or even whilst she was terminally ill, something I shall never know for sure. Gran didn’t get to learn about this until after another catastrophe in our young lives; for she used to stay away once we had gone home, due to the fact my father had made it clear he didn’t want her round at the house, threatening to ostracise her if she didn’t abide by his rule.

               That catastrophe happened on one of those nights after my father had gone out. It was getting late and the house was dark when my sister felt her way down the shadowy rickety staircase to the kitchen, to put a pan of water on the stove to make a cup of tea for us to share in the only cup we possessed, our father’s enamel shaving mug.

               ‘What yer doin’?’ Mary yelled, as she ran back up the stairs and into the bedroom.

               ‘Gerroff me, gerroff!’ I screamed.

               Whilst Mary was preparing the pan of water, my mischievous brother had wrapped one of our father’s old coats around me and had tied the sleeves so I couldn’t get loose. As he stood on the bed, with his arms out stretched, he dangled my waiflike body by my bony ankles off the end.

               ‘Stop it John, leave him alone.’        

               ‘No, he likes it.’

               ‘Help!’ I screamed, as John swung me from side to side.

               Just as my sister lunged forward to grab me, John dropped me. Landing straight on my head, he managed to knock me out - stone cold. The next thing I remember was looking up at my sister as she held my head in her lap.

               ‘Billy, Billy, wake up,’ she screamed, as she held my head steady with one hand, whilst slapping my face with the other, in an attempt to revive me.

               No sooner had I come round, John yelled, ‘What’s that smell?’

               ‘Shit!’ Mary dropped my head back on the floor, shot up and ran out of the bedroom, closely followed by John.

               ‘Wait, Mary, Mary what is it?’ John yelled, as he scurried down the stairs after her.

               As Mary reached the bottom of the stairs she was greeted by a thick, back plume of smoke. ‘No!’ she shrieked.

               The thing was, our father had left his towel he had used whilst shaving next to the stove, which then caught fire whilst the pan of water was boiling away.

               Mary started choking, ‘Quick, get Billy.’ She turned and pushed past John. They both sprinted back up the stairs and into the bedroom, where I was still laid outstretched on the floor, feverishly struggling to break free. ‘Quick Billy!’ Mary yelled. ‘Get up... GET...UP!’

               My sister threw herself down onto her knees in front of me. She turned and screamed at John, ‘Ged it off him, quick!’

               John scurried over and started pulling at the arms of my father’s coat, ‘I can’t...I CAN’T!’ John was struggling to break me free of the homemade straitjacket he had used to incarcerate me.

               ‘Hurry up!’ Mary was hysterical.

               The smoke by now had crept up the stairs had reached the bedroom!

               ‘Please hurry,’ Mary pleaded, as floods of tears rolled down her cheeks. ‘Hurry John, hurry!’

               Mary started tugging at one sleeve, whilst John tugged at the other. By now I too was in hysterics. Oblivious of the impending danger, I was baffled as to why my sister was panicking, screaming and crying, which in turn set me off.

               Both of them were now crouched over me, desperately pulling with all their might. It was like in a tug-of-war, only I was reluctantly spectating from beneath them.

               Then all of a sudden the knot slipped, sending John and Mary flying in opposite directions, but no sooner had they landed on their backs, they were back on their feet, like a pair of spring-loaded Meerkats.

               ‘Grab him John!’

               John took hold of my left hand, which was now free, and fuelled with adrenalin, I leapt to my feet.

               ‘Come on!’ John yelled, as he yanked me out of the bedroom doorway.

               Mary followed screaming, ‘Hurry!’

               All three of us scrambled blindly down the stairs, through the thick, black choke filled smoke and out through the front room as fast as our little legs would carry us. As we left the house through the front door I remember looking over my shoulder and seeing the flames taking hold of the table in the kitchen. I also remember witnessing literally hundreds of beetles scatter from their tiny hideouts beneath the rotten skirting-boards, running for their lives as we were and heading in my direction, which sent an instant chill down my tiny spine.

               ‘Come on.’ John yanked at my arm again, pulling me out of the doorway and in the direction of our Gran’s house; my little legs were going ‘ten-to-the-dozen’ as I tried desperately to stay on my feet.

               ‘What’s going on?’ Fred, our next door neighbour yelled, as he came bounding out of his house, undoubtedly panicked by all the commotion he must have heard through the thin partition wall.    

               Speechless, all three of us ran past Fred, without even giving him the courtesy of a glance, we continued up to our Gran’s front door. Petrified of the consequences, we stood there in just our underwear and bare feet, quiet and motionless, whilst a few of the neighbours, who had been roused by Fred’s booming voice, came out of their homes to see what the commotion was.

               As we stood three abreast, with sooty-black faces and shaking with fear, Mary stepped forward and tapped softly on Gran’s door.

               It’s strange thinking back, but everything at that precise moment seemed extremely surreal, at least to me. It was as if we were in a different dimension to the mayhem we had just left behind. Maybe it was me, maybe it was the fright I’d just had, my brain working overtime, bringing the world around me to a grinding halt, but whatever it was, for a moment, just a moment, there was a calm surrounding us, as if someone or something was protecting us, and it was something I was going to experience again in the future.

               It felt like an eternity before Gran’s front door finally creaked open.

               ‘Who is it?’ our Auntie Mary enquired, as she opened the door just enough to peer out, a blade of light from the front room gas lamp slicing through the gap in the doorway, illuminating our petrified, Al Jolson faces.      

               We just stood there, looking very sorry for ourselves, whilst shivering through fear, rather than the cold, our heaving chests and forlorn faces betraying any hint that this was no more than just a late-night social visit.

               ‘Mary, what’s the matter?’ our auntie quizzed, as she flung the door wide open, whilst holding my sister’s gaze, in search of an immediate answer.

               As we stood there traumatised, Auntie Mary stepped out onto the pavement and placing her hands on her knees, she crouched down to our eye-level. Just as she did, through the corner of her eye, she caught a glimpse of the fire that had taken hold of our house. Instantly, she spun round on the balls of her feet and stood bolt upright, her eyes widened and her jaw dropped as she stared open-mouthed. ‘What the...,’ she muttered under her breath in disbelief.

               ‘It wasn’t us auntie,’ Mary proclaimed, the tremor in her voice contradicting her plea of innocence as she ran up to Auntie Mary and threw her arms around her waist for comfort.

               Just then Gran came bounding out. She had heard the racket Fred was making as he screamed out his neighbours names, whilst he thumped on their doors. The moment she saw our house ablaze she shrieked ‘Mother of God,’ before religiously crossing herself.  She then turned to me and John and with her arms outstretched she flung herself at us, pulling us into her bosom. ‘Boys, boys come here, my God...are you alright?’

               We both nuzzled into her and started balling our eyes out. Holding us with a tight grip, Gran turned her attention to our sister, ‘Mary, Mary, what the hell happened?’

               Mary was now also crying, inconsolably.

               ‘Get hold of these two while I see if I can help,’ Gran insisted to Auntie Mary, as she peeled John and me off of her, as we stood there trying to cling to her for dear life.

               Auntie Mary ushered us onto the road in front of their house, whilst Gran ran over to Fred, who had just thrown a bucket of water through the open doorway of the burning inferno.

               ‘It’s no good Polly, the fire’s too intense,’ Fred yelled, as he backed away, flinging his bucket to one side in despair.

               Most of the residents in our street had come out by this point. A lot of them were in their nightwear, as it was getting on for about eleven at night. Some were frantically knocking on the neighbour’s doors that were still oblivious to the tragedy that was unfolding around them.

               Powerless to do anything, Polly edged her way through the heaving crowd of onlookers, back to where we were stood in the road with our auntie.

               ‘Where’s John? I can’t believe he’s gone out an’ left em,’ our gran yelled in disbelief, as she peered over her shoulder, back towards the onlookers.

               ‘What d’you expect?’ Auntie Mary grumbled, as she held us all tightly in her arms.

               Just then we heard our father’s voice above the din of the crowd and the roaring fire, ‘John, Mary.’

               ‘Where the hell have you bin?’ Gran screamed, as she squared up to him.    

               ‘What the hell happened?’ our father snapped back, as he scowled at my brother, Mary and me, his eyes settling on my sister’s, as he waited for an answer.

               ‘I’ll tell you what happened...you...You left these poor kids on their own, you...you...’ Gran started crying, ‘...You bastard! How dare you?’

               Just then a fire engine turned the corner into our street, its siren drowning out the din of the neighbour’s voices and the roar of the fire.

               ‘Bout bloody time,’ Gran bawled, as she wiped away her tears with back of her hand. ‘Come on Mary, we’ll have to get these three out of the cold, hopefully Joan ull be still up.’

               With that, Gran and Auntie Mary took us round to Joan’s house, Gran’s best friend, who lived two rows down in Naylor Street. I remember looking back as we were about to turn the corner and seeing a silhouette of my father as he stood motionless. His face looked contorted and menacing as he brought a lit match up a Woodbine hanging from his lips.

               I didn’t know it at the time, but that was the very last time I ever set eyes on my father, and it was many years later before I found out he had moved just half a mile away, down to Ancoats, to live next door to his mother and father, Jack and Elizabeth, and had started a new family with a new wife, May, the girl he was courting whilst we were still living in Fraser Street. At last we were free of the tyrant, or so we thought!

Chapter 3

               It was August and the weather was extremely hot and dry. It’s funny how you only recall the sunny days when you look back, the drizzly days weren’t worth remembering. My brother, sister and me were now living with our gran and Auntie Mary. The council had boarded up our house. Black scorch marked bricks surrounding the windows and door remained a constant reminder to everyone on our street of that fateful night. Our neighbours at number seventeen and twenty-one were lucky, for the fire fighters had managed to contain the fire before it took hold of theirs’. Gran had moved into Auntie Mary’s bedroom to make way for us three, and to make ends-meet she had taken on extra work, washing laundry for a chap named, Bernard, who owned the pawn shop at the top of our street. To this day, I still remember the burning sensation in the back of my throat as I stood watching Gran scrubbing away at bed sheet after bed sheet with a bar of red carbolic soap in a tin bath, in the back yard, which I think she found more convenient than the Dolly Tub, for she could get more sheets in it at a time. Sometimes she would let me have a go of the posser, which looked similar to a three-legged stool, that was used to agitate the sheets, but this was hard graft and impossible for a boy of my size to use, no matter how hard I tried. And after all that slogging away, she would then have to re-fill the bath with buckets of fresh, hot water she had heated in the copper boiler in the kitchen. And after running the sheets through the mangle, she would finally hang them to dry on numerous string lines zigzagging across the backyard. No wonder Gran looked older than her years!

               Poor, Auntie Mary did what she could to help with the laundry, but she had problems with her left wrist, due to being knocked down by a lorry a couple of years earlier.

               The story goes, one April morning back in 1937, it was raining hard, and Auntie Mary was heading to the local shops on Butler Street for some household items. She had just started to cross at the end of our street when this lorry came tearing around the corner. The driver had swung his lorry into our street and mounted the pavement, before hitting Auntie Mary head-on.  Concussed, her face covered in blood, she was rushed to Ancoats hospital where she received treatment for a broken cheek bone, a broken humerus and a broken ulna. Although her bones mended, she was left with a six inch scar on her left cheek, from her cheekbone to her jaw line, and damaged tendons in her left wrist.

               The scar was tragic, for Auntie Mary was exquisite. Delicate and unpretentious, she was a real English Rose amongst the Miles Platting thorns, and she defiantly had those same unassuming qualities my mother had. Slim and petite, with short jet-black hair, the lightest blue eyes I’ve ever seen, with a pale, unblemished complexion, rosy cheeks and the most immaculate manners. I suppose if I was to sum her up in one word it would be – class. Even with the scar, there was no shortage of interest from the opposite sex, but she’d made a promise, a promise to our mother on her death bed that she would help Gran look after us three and she stuck to it, leaving many a man broken-hearted when she rebuffed their advances.

               Auntie Mary did receive some compensation from the haulage firm, but it was a pittance compared to what she should have got, for she was duped by her ‘shark’ solicitor, who had advised her to settle out of court. From all accounts, he must have taken a back-hander from the haulage firm.

               Having gone through so much in our short lives, Auntie Mary had decided to take us to Blackpool. I think it was one of those spur-of-the-moment things, because she could ill-afford to, what with little money and all. But, with the little money she did have left from the compensation, she decided we all deserved a day out. Unfortunately, Gran couldn’t spare the time to go with us, what with the extra work she had taken on.

               I remember the trip like it was yesterday. The weather was still fantastic, the sun was beating down, the sky was a sea of blue, not a cloud in sight, and it was only nine in the morning. I remember our auntie buying ice-cream for us all, from a vendor situated underneath the iron and glass canopy outside Victoria station. As we made our way onto the platform my ice-cream started dribbling down the back my hand. Dismayed, I stopped and leaned forward to look at the sticky mess, when all of a sudden my ice-cream slipped off the cone and onto the station platform. Instinctively, I crouched down and reached for the melting blob.

               Rushing back towards me, Auntie Mary yelled, ‘Leave it Billy, you silly thing,’ before coaxing me away from the mess on the floor. The next thing I remember is throwing a tantrum.

               ‘Shut it,’ my brother demanded, before slapping the back of my head, sending my little flat cap tumbling onto the platform floor, slap-bang in the middle of the reservoir of ice-cream.

               ‘John, pick it up, now!’ my sister insisted, as she glared at my brother.

               ‘Pick it up y’self,’ he replied defiantly.

               Poor Auntie Mary, we hadn’t even left the station before all hell broke loose.

               ‘Behave please,’ Auntie Mary pleaded, as she crouched down to pick up my flat cap, bashfully aware that other commuters were staring.

               Just then my sister caught sight of the train, ‘It’s coming, the train, yeah.’

               My ears instantaneously pricked up and my eyes widened. Intoxicated with excitement, John and I surged forward through the now preoccupied crowd as they reached for their burdensome bags, parked suitcases and platform trolleys.  As we reached the edge of the platform to get a better view, we were greeted by a magnificent hulk of a steam train, puffing and hissing as it lumbered its way towards us; thick, black smoke billowing out of its smokestack, filling the vast void of the station’s colossal wooden canopy as its steam powered whistle shrieked, intensifying our elation to new euphoric heights.

               ‘Yeah, we’re going to Blackpool!’ John and I chorused, although I think I pronounced it Black-poo!

               Auntie Mary, in an attempt to take control of the situation, picked up my flat cap and stood up, calling out our names as she wrestled her way through the undisciplined crowd, ‘John, Billy...come here...right now!’ she beckoned anxiously - straight down a passing commuter’s ear. ‘Im so sorry,’ she said timidly, as she hurriedly side stepped him, pre-occupied with searching for us.

               As the train gradually ground to a heart-stopping halt, Auntie Mary frantically forced her way towards the edge of the platform, temporarily blinded as the gargantuan engine spewed gallons of semi-vaporised steam onto the station platform. As she reached the edge, both John and I were uncloaked as the vapour dispersed. In a fusion of anger and relief, Auntie Mary snatched at us, pulling us into the safety of her warm embrace. ‘Don’t ever do that to me again,’ she insisted, her nerves carrying in her voice.

               After what seemed like forever, she released us from her emotional grip, before crouching down in front of me. After composing herself, she placed my flat cap firmly on my head and took my chin in her hand, ‘Remember what I told you Billy, if anyone asks you’re four,’ she said, in a calm, quiet, but insistent tone.

               See the thing was, under-five’s got on the train for free, and not having much money, it was a little easier on the purse strings if Auntie Mary didn’t have to pay for me.

               I just nodded, tears remerging as my attention refocused on my crushed and empty ice-cream cone.

               Once on the train, we found our seats and settled down for the exciting journey ahead, but it wasn’t long before I started to play up.

               ‘I want a ice-cream,’ I insisted, as I pulled myself up onto my feet on the train seat.

               ‘No Billy, you’ll have to wait ‘till we get to Blackpool, now sit down,’ Auntie Mary insisted, as she tried to pull me back down into a seated position.

               ‘No, I want a ice-cream!’

               Blushing, Auntie Mary tugged harder, ‘Sit down Billy, yer showin’ me up.’

               As she looked around the carriage she realised every passenger in our vicinity were staring at her. Embarrassed, she acknowledged the agitated onlookers with a bashful smile.

               But I was having none of it, and whilst wrestling with my Auntie Mary it came out, ‘If you don’t buy me a ice-cream...’ I drew a deep breath, ‘...I’m gunna tell everyone I’m five!’ I yelled at the top of my voice.

               Well, you should have seen Auntie Mary’s face, it was a picture.

               The journey soon ended and we all made our way towards the seafront. Auntie Mary soon found a spot on the already heaving beach, where she sat me and my brother down, before taking my sister off to help her bring back a deck chair one could hire for a ha’penny from one of the deck chair attendants peppered around the beech.

               Auntie Mary crouched down and took my brother’s chin in her hand and stroked his cheek with her thumb, in an attempt to win him over. ‘Now you and Billy play nice, while me an’ yer sister grab a deck chair.’

               See the problem with John was he had inherited some of his father’s traits. Although affectionate with our sister, he could be somewhat sadistic with me at times.

               Crouched in the sand, both John and I started digging with our hands, but it wasn’t long before he started getting mischievous. John had a certain impish look he used to give before setting about me. Over time I got to know this look and would prepare myself, but with me being so young I often missed the signals.

               All of a sudden John sprang to his feet and pounced on me.

               ‘Gerroff!’

               ‘No, you’re gunna gerrit!’

               No sooner had he declared war, he scooped up a handful of sand and forced it into my mouth. I lay there, struggling to free myself and more importantly - struggling to breath.

               ‘Ha ha.’ John was enjoying every second of his torturous antics, whilst I was going redder and redder, literally choking to death.

               Just as unconsciousness and death were imminent, a man sitting close by dragged my brother off me, snatched me up with one arm, turned me over with the other, so I was facing the sand, and slapped the hell out of my back.

               ‘Breath for Christ sakes, breath,’ the man hollered.

               I started coughing and spluttering, whilst spitting out chunks of wet sand. Once again I was the centre of attention, and once again I was completely oblivious to the crowd of people looking-on in horror.

               My eyes swollen and my face covered in soggy sand, the man set me back down.

               ‘Where’s yer mother?’ the man snarled, as he stared at John.

               Terrified, John pointed at Auntie Mary as she approached us with my sister, both of them treading gingerly through the sea of people lay on the beach, trying not to hit any of them with the deck chair as they went.

               ‘What on earth happened?’ Auntie Mary asked, with a real disquiet tone, as she set the deck chair down in the sand next to me.

               ‘You need to sort this little sod out,’ the man declared, as he held John by the scruff of the neck.

               As John stood staring down at the sand, Auntie Mary picked me up.

               ‘Are you alright Billy?’ she asked, as she pulled out her hanky.

               Red faced, my eyes bloodshot, I just nodded as she wiped away the sand coated snot from my nostrils.

               For Auntie Mary’s sake, the rest of our time on the beach went without a hitch, mainly due to the fact she had put John well-and-truly in his place, and I was still smarting from the terrifying ordeal.

               After the beach we went for a stroll down the promenade. I say stroll, it was more like the scene from Benny Hill when the credits roll. John and I ran amuck through the gift and sweet shops. We drooled over row-upon-row of pic ‘n’ mix. Shop-after-shop had endless supplies of our favourite sweets, from Aniseed Balls to Black Jacks, Refresher Bars to Fruit Salads, Mojos to Wham bars, Dolly Mixtures to Fruit Flavoured Jelly Snakes, you name it, they had it. We truly were in Heaven. But poor Auntie Mary wasn’t! By the time we’d finished she must have been exhausted, and a nervous wreck for that matter.

               As we sat on a bench overlooking the shops, my brother and I gnawing on some Blackpool rock, our auntie spotted a photographer’s studio.

               ‘Right kids; let’s go an’ get your picture taken.’

               All three of us just stared at her with a gormless look on our sticky faces. We didn’t have a clue as to what she meant, for we had never had our photograph taken before.

               After agreeing the price, Auntie Mary escorted us behind a wooden screen in the bottom corner of the studio, where there were one-piece swim suits, aka ‘Skinnies’ hanging up.

               ‘John, Mary, strip down to your underwear for me please,’ Auntie Mary instructed.

               She then started undressing me. We looked apprehensive as Auntie Mary helped us into the ridiculous looking costumes.

               As we tentatively stepped out from behind the screen the photographer exclaimed, ‘Don’t you three look a picture,’ in an attempt to win us over with his charm I’m sure.

               Auntie Mary lined us up in front of a huge, rather rudimentary painting, which depicted Blackpool Tower and the pier. ‘Right, Mary, John, Billy, just stand there fo’-me, and be still, the nice man is going to take yer picture.’

               We stood there like frightened rabbits staring into the headlights of an oncoming car, but instead of headlights, it was a large camera, mounted on a tripod.

               ‘Smile.’

               Flash

               I remember seeing that photograph years later. We truly did look like frightened rabbits, standing awkwardly, three abreast; our arms by our sides and our fingers outstretched, like three little soldiers stood to attention, well to a fashion, as we sported our ill-fitting, one-piece costumes, basin haircuts, knobbly knees and bare feet. Not one of us had conjured up a smile for the camera. Gran must have been in stitches when she saw it, which for a moment must have taken the edge off the anxiety she must have been feeling, for she was only too aware of the looming danger of losing her only Grandchildren and possibly forever!

Chapter 4

           September was fast approaching, but this wasn’t going to be one of those ordinary, mundane, colourless Septembers that all school children dread as the summer dwindles and the school bell rings. No, this was the September when Nazi Germany forced Britain’s hand, culminating in a declaration of war. And our nemesis – fate, wasn’t just coming for us this time, but tens of thousands of other children the length and breadth of Britain, for evacuation was imminent.

               Everyone in Britain was talking about Hitler and his Nazi Party and had been for some time. People were worried sick after ‘The Munich Pact’ had failed. The pact was intentionally an appeasement toward Nazi Germany. The year previous, Neville Chamberlain, the Prime Minister at that time, had attended a conference held in Munich to negotiate terms, permitting Nazi Germany to annex Czechoslovakia. The agreement was signed by Britain, France, Italy and Germany. When Mr. Chamberlain returned to Britain, people rejoiced, believing the agreement would bring to an end any chance of war.  

               However, on Sunday, September 3, 1939, everyone’s hopes were dashed. Germany  had  invaded  Poland  two  days  earlier  and  so  the  Prime  Minister  had  no  option  but  to  issue  an  ultimatum  to  Germany.  The  British  Ambassador  in  Berlin  handed  the  German  Government  an  official  note  stating  that  unless  they  heard  from  them  by  eleven  o’  clock,  and that  they  were  prepared  to  withdraw  their  troops  from  Poland,  a  state  of  war  would  exist  between Britain and  Germany.  However,  Hitler  did  not  respond  and  so  at  eleven  fifteen,  Neville  Chamberlain  addressed  the  people  of  Britain  on  the  wireless.        

               Everyone was aware Mr. Chamberlin was about to make his speech to the nation. And I can still see Gran and Auntie Mary stood by Gran’s battery accumulator wireless, which stood pride of place on a  robust buffet sideboard in one corner in the front room, or as Gran liked to call it, the parlour.  I didn’t realise at the time, but thinking back, the air was thick with anticipation as Gran slowly and meticulously turned the black tuning knob, the wireless crackling and hissing, whooshing and swishing, as she desperately and painstakingly tried to hone in on the BBC. Her efforts finally bearing fruit, as a barely audible, elderly gentleman’s voice (Neville Chamberlain’s), with his reserved and cut-glass accent, filtered through.

               ‘That’s it mam!’ Auntie Mary declared anxiously, as Gran timorously released her adept grip from the knob.

               They both then stood upright and motionless as they listened fixedly and anxiously to the torturously convoluted announcement, ‘...I am speaking to you...from the cabinet room...at Ten Downing Street...’

               ‘Auntie Mary?’  -  That was me, completely oblivious to their fretful deportment, in want of attention, as I tugged at her skirt, the kind of attention any child seems to want at the most inconvenient of times, especially as my brother and sister weren’t around to bother, probably playing outside with the other kids in the neighbourhood.

               ‘Shush Billy,’ my auntie chastised, as she pulled her skirt from my grip, before refocusing her attention back to the announcement on the wireless.

               ‘...This morning, the British Ambassador in Berlin handed the German Government a final note, stating that if we heard from them by eleven ‘o’ clock, that they were prepared at once to withdraw their troops from Poland, a state of war would exist between us....I have to tell you know...that no such undertaking has been received, and that consequently this country is at war with Germany.’

               Crestfallen, Gran turned off the wireless-set, scuttled over to the fireplace and started wringing her hands.  ‘You know what that means...,’ she said, her voice thick with emotion as she looked over to Auntie Mary, who was still fixed to the spot by the wireless-set, ‘...We’re going to lose the kids, that’s what,’ she continued, not giving my auntie a chance to respond.

               Gran covered her face with her hands and started crying.

               ‘Come here mam.’ Auntie Mary rushed over to console her, ‘It won’t be long, you’ll see,’ she assured her, as she wrapped her arms around Gran and gave her a hug.

               There was a moment of tension as Gran shook uncontrollably in Auntie Mary’s arms, whimpering as she tried to catch her breath between sobs. Completely ignorant of the situation, I sprinted over Gran and wrapped my arms around her legs, more for my own comfort than hers no doubt.

               I remember Gran pulling away from Auntie Mary’s embrace and looking down at me, as she said tearfully, ‘Well they can’t take Billy...he’s not well.’

               The thing was, I’d caught whooping cough, which is highly contagious, and so there was no way I’d be evacuated with my brother and sister.

               ‘And if that so-called father of theirs hadn’t registered them for evacuation, none of ‘em would be goin’!’ Gran insisted, in a moment of anger.  

               Gran was referring to the fact evacuation was voluntary and it was down to the children’s legal guardian to decide as to whether to evacuate them or not. And although my father was absent from our lives, he was still our legal guardian, and he must have seen this as the perfect opportunity to get one over on our gran. Not only that, it also meant he wouldn’t inadvertently bump into us with his new wife, not if we were miles from home.

               Through the months leading up to the much anticipated evacuation, Gran, like hundreds of thousands of other parents and guardians, had been bombarded with information and instructions issued by the government. One day back in the spring, leading up to the war, my brother had brought home a sealed envelope from school addressed to Gran. Inside the envelope was a letter advising what was needed to be done in the event of a full-scale evacuation. Within the guidelines was a list of belongings the children were required to take with them. Gran was worried sick; with little money coming in there was no hope of acquiring such luxuries as a haversack, plimsolls, nightwear and a change of clothing; the list seemed endless.

               I still remember Gran’s reaction when she read the letter.

               ‘Where the hell do they think I’m gunna find the money to pay fo’ that lot?’ she remarked, as she stared at the letter in disbelief.

               ‘What is it mam?’ Auntie Mary enquired, whilst she poured two cups of tea from a rather robust looking steel teapot, which was always on standby for any unexpected guests, which was more often than not, for not only was Gran popular, but Auntie Mary was too.

               Deflated, Gran handed the letter over to Auntie Mary, ‘They must think I’m a bleedin miracle worker!’ Gran moaned.

               As Auntie Mary worked through the instructions within the letter, her expression changed from one of concern to one of disgust.

               ‘Are they havin’ a laugh?’ Auntie Mary threw the letter on the dining table in anger, before looking Gran straight in the eyes, ‘Surely they can’t expect us provide three children with that lot, not on the money we’re on?’

               See, Auntie Mary’s compensation was almost gone and she was struggling to find a job, what with her wrist and unemployment being so high. And my father was nowhere to be seen.

               Around the time of the letter, Gran had been advised that John and Mary’s school would be coordinating the evacuation, if war was declared. It had been decided by the powers that be, that the children of Corpus Christie and the other schools in the surrounding area, were to be evacuated to Hazel Grove, a suburb just outside of Stockport, close to the Peak District National Park.

               On Monday, the 4th of September, following Mr. Chamberlain’s announcement, Gran got us up extra early. After dressing and feeding us, both Gran and Auntie Mary got my brother and sister ready for their ‘big adventure’.

               ‘Now then, you’ve got some sandwiches and there’s some Garibaldi’s, oh and an apple each for the train,’ Gran said to them both, whilst wrapping the food in some newspaper.

               Gran choked back the tears as she tried to conceal her anguish.

               ‘They’re gunna be alright mam,’ Auntie Mary assured her. ‘Oh I’m alright, just ignore me,’ Gran sighed, as she picked up a hair-brush off the kitchen table.

               ‘Are you sure you’re gunna be alright takin’ these two to school on your own,’ Auntie Mary enquired out of concern, as she helped my sister on with her coat.

               ‘Stop mytherin’ Mary, I’m fine, anyway, it’d take wild horses to stop me from seein’ em off.’

               See, Auntie Mary had volunteered to look after me whilst Gran took my brother and sister to school, but she too was starting to get upset. ‘Won’t be a mo,’ she announced, as she rushed out of the kitchen and into the living room. We could hear our auntie sobbing as she riffled thorough her hand bag.

               As Gran finished brushing my sister’s hair, she said, ‘Let’s ‘av-a look at yer.’ She lifted my sister’s chin and crowed, ‘Eeh, don’t you look a picture!’

               ‘Here you go you two, now put it somewhere safe, and mind y’u don’t lose it,’ Auntie Mary insisted, as she handed them a shilling each that she had been keeping back specially.

               ‘Right, we better get goin’, Gran sighed, as she blew into her hanky.

               Auntie Mary crouched down and hugged my brother, ‘Now you be good John and look after yer sister, there’s a love,’ she said, as she pulled away and stood up, ruffling John’s hair as she did.

               Gran mopped her tears with her hanky before taking off her pinafore and swapping it for her coat, hanging up on the back of the kitchen door.

               Auntie Mary turned her attention to my sister, ‘Come ‘ere you,’ she sighed. With a heavy heart, she crouched down to give my sister a big hug.

               ‘Right, let’s be ‘avin-yer.’ Gran said, as she picked up the food parcels, wrapped in newspaper and bound with string, off the kitchen table and handed one each to my brother and sister.’

               Auntie Mary’s eyes started to well-up again. She pulled her hanky from her cardigan pocket as she followed Gran, my brother and my sister to the front door, with me in tow.

               ‘You two be good now, d’you-‘ere?’ Auntie Mary croaked, clearing her throat as she choked back the tears.

               John and Mary nodded as they chorused, ‘Bye auntie.’

               Gran reached for my auntie’s hand for comfort and squeezed it gently, before stepping out onto the pavement.

               ‘Right, we’d better be off,’ she announced, as she adeptly slung her headscarf around her head and tied it under her chin.

               Auntie Mary couldn’t stand it a minute longer, ‘Wait mam, I’m comin’ with yer,’ she declared, as she rushed back towards the kitchen.

               ‘But, what about Billy?’

               ‘He’ll be alright mam, besides, he’s much better than he was...an’ the fresh air ull do ‘im good,’ Auntie Mary hollered, as she reached for hers and my coat, hanging next to Gran’s pinafore on the back of the kitchen door.

               Quick as a flash, Auntie Mary threw on her coat and dashed back to where I was stood, by the front door.

               ‘Right come on Billy, get yer coat on.’ Auntie Mary insisted, as she impatiently ushered me out of the house.

               I remember on the way to school that morning we passed a flat-bed truck parked at the end of Naylor Street, and on the back there were three men hoisting a huge, silver, lozenge-shaped, helium bloated balloon, attached to a winch by a steel cable. I didn’t know it at the time, but it was in fact a barrage balloon, something everyone was going to get used to seeing, at least in the urban areas, for the balloon was one of hundreds going up and around all the big cities in Britain, some as high as five thousand feet. The ingenious, but simple and rudimentary idea being to create a field of obstacles for the Luftwaffe, Germany’s equivalent of the Royal Air Force, forcing the enemy’s planes to either fly higher, or into range of concentrated anti-aircraft fire – effective against the dive-bombers, useless against high-level bombers.

               I remember I couldn’t take my eyes off it as it climbed, heading for the black and heavy rain-filled clouds above.

               As we had arrived earlier than necessary, there were only a dozen-or-so parents and children peppered around the school yard when we entered the school gate; but it wasn’t long before Corpus Christie was transcended upon by hundreds of parents and children, most of whom were going through one level of stress or another.

               Mothers and children were clustered together in their own little cliques, muttering to one another as they waited anxiously for the school bell to ring. Some parents were sobbing, as the reality of separation set in, whilst others were laughing and grinning, blissfully aware they’d have one, two and in some cases four less mouths to feed, at least for the foreseeable future.

               I remember some of the more hardy children were laughing and giggling, and playfully running and jumping for joy. I think those kids saw it as a holiday; after all, most of them hadn’t been any further than the city-centre before, let alone to the countryside.

               Other children were inconsolable, terrified at the thought of being separated from their parents, after all, some were younger than me, and I was still only five!

               As the school yard reached full capacity, the school bell rang. The continuous drone of hundreds of individuals chatting away freely to one another, which thinking back bared an uncanny resemblance to a squadron of low-flying German bombers, something I was going to hear quite frequently before very long, soon settled down to a more placatory hum.

               The school teachers stood a yard or so abreast at the top end of the school yard, in front of the entrance to the old Victorian, limestone clad school hall. As the children made their way to their respective teachers, Mary asked Gran if I could join her in her class line-up, to which Gran agreed, as she and Auntie Mary were busy consoling other depressed parents.

               As I’d never been to school, I found the boisterous atmosphere overwhelming, so I held on to my sister’s hand as tightly as I could as we made our way to her teacher.

               As Mary and I lined up, the teachers, with their registers open and their pens poised, battled for compliance from their respective pupils, sporadically hollering the names of some of the more, shall we say - zealous children.

               ‘Paul, Gerard, stop that and get in line,’ Mary’s teacher, Mr. Gilligan roared, as he pointed with his pen at two boys jostling each other for a place in the line.

               Once everyone had calmed down, each teacher took their register, whilst the parents stood at the bottom end of the school yard, in undisciplined clusters, still chatting freely to one another. Everyone was accounted for, the children’s respective teachers then handed each of them a brown luggage label. Attached to each label was a piece of string, which they were then instructed to lace through a buttonhole on their coat and tie in a knot. Each label displayed the individual’s respective name, address, date of birth and the town they were from, in this case Miles Platting.

               ‘For those amongst you that are proficient at tying knots, find the ones that are not...and help them!’ Mr. Gilligan bellowed, as he strolled down his line of pupils, inspecting them one at a time. ‘You boy,’ he screamed, as he brought his register crashing down on Eric Braithwaite’s head.

               Eric winced as he spun around to face Mr. Gilligan, feverishly rubbing his scalp, his lips clenched tight so as not to cry out in pain and infuriate the strict Mr. Gilligan any more than he had.

               ‘Don’t let me catch anyone else trying to tie their label around their neck! he roared, ‘necks are for shirt collars...Necks are for ties...’ he paused, came to a standstill and looked up and down the line, scrutinising his pupils, ‘Necks are for the hangman’s noose...’ He quipped as he smirked, his eyes settling on Tommy Radcliffe, one of the more, shall we say, taxing boys in the class. ‘...Necks are not for luggage labels!’

               Just then Mr. Gilligan turned his attention on me, ‘And whom may I ask is this little scamp?’ he enquired, his piercing blue eyes burning into me as I stood there, quivering with fear.

               ‘He’s my brother, Sir,’ Mary replied, as she squeezed my hand tightly for reassurance.

               ‘And pray tell, what is he doing in my class, Mary Harris?’ Mr. Gilligan quizzed, as he approached.

               ‘I’m looking after him ‘till we go sir.’

               Mr. Gilligan crouched square on and stared me straight in the eyes, ‘Until we go? Is he not coming with us then?’ he boomed, unnerving me as he continued to play to his audience.

               ‘No sir.’ Mary retorted, instinctively defending her little brother.

               Mr. Gilligan looked mystified, for all the younger children around the area were being evacuated with their respective siblings. ‘What is your name young man?’ he enquired, his voice softening to a more comfortable level.

               ‘Billy, sir,’ my sister replied, as she squeezed my hand again, prompting me to stay quiet.

               Mr. Gilligan, still in a crouched position, turned his head and looked at Mary, ‘So why is he not going with you Mary?’ he asked searchingly, in much more mellow, more concerned manner.

               Just at that moment, through nervousness and fear, I blurted it out, ‘Cause I got ‘oopin’ cough!’

               And in a split second, Mr. Gilligan’s soft expression turned to one of astonishment, ‘Whooping cough? Whooping cough!’ Get this child away from here right now Mary Harris,’ he roared, as he shot up and pointed in the general direction of the mass of parents at the bottom of the school yard.

               Mary reacted instinctively and marched me back down the yard to Gran and Auntie Mary.

               Once each and every pupil was sporting their new makeshift I.D. tag and had been meticulously checked by their respective teachers, they dispersed, giving them a little time to say their farewells to their respective parents and guardians.

               It wasn’t long before the infuriating drone was back, but now it was louder than ever, amplified by the high stone walls around the school yard.

                ‘Let’s ‘av-a look at yer,’ Gran insisted, as she placed her hands on my brother’s shoulders, examining  his face, before checking behind each of his ears. ‘Look at the state o’ yer ‘air!’ she yipped, as she wet the tips of her fingers with the tip of her tongue and smoothed down a tuft that was sticking-up on the crown of John’s head.

               ‘Graaan!’ John moaned, fearful his mates would see.

               Her hands back on his shoulders, she pushed John away to arms length and focused on his face, ‘You’ll do,’ she sighed. She did the same with my sister, brushing her fringe out of hers eyes, whilst examining her face, ‘Oh Mary...’ She pulled my sister into her, and whilst softly rocking her, she whispered, ‘What am a gunna do without my little angel,’ before squeezing her affectionately.

               Barely able to make ends-meet, a lot of the parents of Miles Platting couldn’t meet the requirements on the list the government had concocted. Most, just like Gran, only had enough to rustle up some food for their children’s journey to Hazel Grove. Just like Gran, many were saying how ridiculous the list was, and how did the government expect them to meet such demands.

               For the few that did have the means of obtaining some of the items on the governments list, they too fell way short. Not one solitary sole had a haversack; in fact, of the children that did have things like a change of clothing, their parents had to use old pillowcases, or gym bags to carry them in. One lad, Joey Murphy, had an old hessian potato sack!

               It wasn’t long before they were off. Out of the care of their parents, a handful of teachers, assigned to ‘escort duty’, took responsibility for getting the children to Hazel Grove, via London Road train station, which is now Manchester Piccadilly station.

               I think I must have kicked up a fuss to go to the station, because I recall walking with my Auntie Mary as we trailed behind Mary’s class. I think Gran must have been too inconsolable to make the journey with us.

               I can still remember as we walked behind Mary’s class, in crocodile formation, as the teachers led the children, who were now with their respective siblings, down to London Road station, which was approximately half a mile away from the school.

               Everyone, children and teachers alike, including John and Mary, were chorusing the popular songs of that time, as they marched the streets of Miles Platting towards the city centre.

Run-rabbit-run-rabbit Run! Run! Run!

Run-rabbit-run-rabbit Run! Run! Run!

Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Goes-the-farmer’s-gun,

Run-rabbit-run-rabbit Run! Run! Run!

Run-rabbit-run-rabbit Run! Run! Run!

Don’t-give-the-farmer-his Fun! Fun! Fun!

He’ll-get-by without-his-rabbit-pie

So run-rabbit-run-rabbit, Run! Run! Run!

Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do.

I’m half crazy, all for the love of you...

               You get the gist.

               At the entrance to London Road station, as the children passed through, Mr. Phillips, the head teacher, conducted a head count. He concentrated hard; for he needed the total number of pupils to correlate with the number he had gleaned from the school registers that morning.

               ‘153...54...55,’ he muttered under his breath, as one pupil after another passed through the archway of the station. ‘...203...204...205.’ A sense of relief passed over Mr. Phillips face as his count corresponded with the number he had written down on a scrap of crumpled paper he had pulled from his pocket. ‘All accounted for Mr. Rawlins,’ he declared with a sigh of relief.

               I remember watching the children, led by Mr. Thorpe, as they made their way in single file to platform nine, where there was a long line of carriages waiting to ferry them to Hazel Grove.

               ‘Now stay in line, and don’t go near the edge of the platform, or you’ll have me to answer to,’ a stern Mrs. Philbin growled, as she palmed each child’s shoulder, in an attempt to speed up the process of getting the children onto the station platform.

               Once the last of the Corpus Christie children had passed through the platform turnstile, Mr Phillips, who was bringing up the rear, signalled with his trusted pea-whistle and a raised hand for Mr. Thorpe to stop. As Mr. Thorpe brought his pupils at the front of the line to a stand-still, he looked over the sea of children and witnessed the feared, but respected Mr. Phillips part the huddled mass, not unlike the scene from The Ten Commandments, where Moses parted the Red Sea, as he made his way towards to the front.

               ‘Right Mr. Thorpe, let’s get these children onto the train.’ Mr. Phillips instructed, as he marched towards the first carriage.

               I remember staring through the turnstile, searching for John and Mary as the children surged into the carriages, my attention distracted by the sound of my Auntie Mary sobbing inconsolably into her handkerchief.

               As I stood and watched the carriages, hauled by a little tank engine, pull out of the station and slowly diminish into a tiny dot in the distance, I savoured a thick slab of Nestlé’s milk chocolate Auntie Mary had got for a penny from one of the many vending machines dotted around the station foyer, amongst the enamel signs advertising Camp Coffee, Earle’s Cement, Mazawattee and Bovril. And once the train was out of sight we made our own journey, back to the house.

               I remember it seemed to take forever to walk back, what with Auntie Mary subdued with her heavy heart, and me, well I was more upset I wasn’t going on the ‘big adventure’ with my brother and sister. 

Gran’s house was a very woeful place to be that night, for it seemed like half the women of Miles Platting were crammed into the front room, lamenting over their little Johnny, or Sally, or George, or whoever their absent children were.

               A week or so later, Gran received a post card from Hazel Grove.  Like all impoverished families back then, we didn’t have a telephone, and so it was received with great anticipation.

‘It’s from John and Mary,’ Gran chirped.

               ‘What does it say?’ Auntie Mary quizzed, as she impatiently hurried into the front room from the kitchen, hastily drying her hands on her pinafore.

               I remember staring up at them both, their sombre moods discarded, as their faces lit up in a moment of elation.

               Gran held the postcard outstretched as she focused on my brother’s handwriting.

               Dear Gran and Auntie Mary, we miss you loads. Mr. & Mrs. Walton chose us to stay with them. Mrs. Walton wants us to call her Auntie Lil, she’s really nice. We have our own bedrooms and Mr. Walton keeps chickens. We start school next week, can’t wait to see Peter Leech. Will write again soon, lots of love, John & Mary X X X.

               Gran’s eyes started to well up.

               ‘What’s the address mam?’ Auntie Mary quizzed eagerly, as her gaze closed in on the postcard.

               Gran offered the postcard to Auntie Mary, whilst wafting her hand in front of her face, ‘You read it Mary...I’m all of a tizz.’

               Auntie Mary took the postcard, and holding it close to her face, she scanned the card for the senders address.

               ‘It ses, Seven, Church Grove, Hazel Grove, Stockport...’ Auntie Mary lowered the postcard and smiled at me, ‘...That sounds nice, Church Grove...dunnit Billy?’ she cooed, her face beaming as she grinned at the thought of my brother and sister living somewhere nice in the country, and for a moment, just a moment, forgetting the pain of missing her nephew and niece.

               Things were a lot quieter around the house now, and around the streets of Miles Platting for that matter. The men carried on being woken by Syl, ready for a hard day’s graft and the women carried on with their labour intensive lives, but without their usual cheeriness of course. Even the neighbourhood dogs seemed depressed, as they traipsed the streets looking for feral cats to pick on, which didn’t always go in their favour, as the cats of Miles Platting were hard as nails.

               One thing there was plenty of, was paid work for women, now the young men of Miles Platting and the rest of Britain of course, were being recruited into the Army, Navy and Air force, before you could say - Your Country Needs You - Part Two!

                Auntie Mary soon found a job, at Stross’s, a Jewish manufacturers at the top end of Prussia Street, off Oldham Road, as a machinist, making waterproof paraphernalia for the Ministry Of Defence, and started bringing in a good wage, I think it was around two pounds a week, which was good for those days.

               And me, well I soon recovered from the Whooping Cough, although Gran hadn’t told the authorities, and kept me busy helping her around the house, well as much as a five year old could. And the job I loved best of all, was going with Gran once a week or so to the local coal yard, a few streets up on Whatmough Street. As soon as we entered the yard I would shout, ‘Blacky!’ - That was the name of the coal merchant’s horse. He was a fine looking specimen, a heavy dray horse. It must have been fifteen hands high and although covered in coal dust, if you gave him a rub, you could see his shiny coat beneath.

               Jimmy, the coal merchant, used to give me a carrot to feed Blacky whilst he weighed out a quarter hundred weight of coal. Gran said you had to watch him though, because he used to soak the bags in water, so when he filled it and threw it on the scales, you’d end up paying for the water as well as the coal. Not that it bothered me; I just loved watching Blacky take the carrot off me, which thinking on, was probably a devious ploy of Jimmy’s, so Gran would be more watchful of me, than the scales.

               Once weighed, Jimmy would throw the bag into one of the trolleys he had to hand, ready for Gran to lug back to our house. And I’d do my bit, carrying the odd lump of coal to ease Gran’s burden.

               The following week I’d drag the empty trolley back with Gran, only to go through the same routine, which I never minded, because it meant I got to see Blacky again.

               As I was now well again, Gran took me to a municipal building on Every Street, in Beswick, to collect my gas mask. The government was fearful of chemical attacks by the Luftwaffe and so had made it mandatory to carry gas masks at all times. Apparently, I wasn’t the only one who hadn’t been issued the essential contrivance, in the first few days of the war, due to rushed initial batches being either sub-standard or having missing parts, i.e. rubber straps or even missing mesh canisters. But all’s well that ends well, and although I didn’t receive the Mickey Mouse version, intended for children of my age, which gave the macabre precaution the appearance of a game, with its red, rather than black rubber mould, blue rimmed ‘goggled’ eyepieces, instead of the one-piece acetate visor, a bright-red, deflated balloon that protruded from the nose area and the snout, sporting a blue, cylindrical, metal gas canister, instead of the standard black version, I was still chuffed with my lot, because the one thing you could do in either, was make fart noises, which soon got on Gran’s and Auntie Mary’s nerves.

               After that day I had to carry the mask around with me whenever I went out with Gran or Auntie Mary. It was issued with a brown cardboard box, which served as a case to carry the mask and a piece of string, which served as a makeshift strap. People did look funny walking around with these boxes hanging by string from their shoulders’. Some of the more affluent eventually bought a nice leather case for theirs, but I doubt many, if any in Miles Platting could afford such a luxury.

               As the weeks went by, correspondence flowed between number seven Fraser Street and number seven Church Grove. John and Mary had been issued their gas masks and things seemed to be going well for my sister, but I think my brother was too much of a handful for the retired police inspector, Mr. Walton and his ailing wife Lily, because a week before Christmas my brother was sent back to us with a letter from Mrs. Walton, which explained although my sister was ‘a treasure’, John was the complete opposite, I think the term ‘little terror’ was used.

               Gran didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. She was certainly overjoyed to see John back home, especially as there was no sign of Nazi Germany’s Luftwaffe bombing us, which by the same rule left Gran feeling a little cheated that she had been made to send my brother and sister away in the first place.

               His first night back, John told me what being an evacuee was really like, well his version anyway - As we lay tucked up warm as toast in our auntie’s bed, under a patchwork woollen blanket and fresh linen sheets, the wind howling and the rain pattering against the naked window pane, the pitch black room hosting the usual childhood imaginary shadows and unsettling sounds, he began with a whisper, ‘Don’t ever go to Hazel Grove, Billy,’

               ‘Why?’ I asked, my voice barely audible, as I instinctively attuned my tone to his.

               ‘Cause they hate us,’ John murmured softly, his face a hairs-breadth from mine.

               ‘Why?’ I asked, as a lay on my back, my tiny fingers tightly clutching the fold of the bed sheet, Auntie Mary had tucked neatly under my chin, my eyes wide open, staring into the abyss of the night.  

               ‘They fink we’re refugees,’

               I thought for a moment as I tried to digest the word refugee, ‘What’s a effigy?’ I asked, puzzled.

               ‘Dunno...but Tommy Radcliffe ses the girl he lives wiv has six fingers on each hand....he reckons if you drink enough of the water up there you’ll grow extra fingers....which is handy really.’

               I tried to count the fingers on my left hand with my index finger on my right, but I couldn’t count past three.

               ‘Tommy ses she plays the piano an’ that’s why she’s so good.’

               I thought for a moment before asking, ‘D’you fink I’ll be able to play a piano when I grow up?’

               ‘Only if you go to Hazel Grove, Billy...but don’t go, even if Gran tells yer to, ‘cause they make y’u sleep in the cellar wiv the rats, an’ make y’u ged up in the dark to ‘elp ‘em feed the chickens.’

               ‘Did you feed chickens, John?’ I quizzed.

               ‘Yea, an’ cows,’ he replied.

               I paused for thought, before I quizzed, ‘What do cows eat?’

               John replied with a titter, ‘Refugees!’

               Christmas’39 was a little subdued for us, as we were all missing Mary so much. How I would have loved to have been able to swap my doting sister for my sadistic brother, who was up to his usual shenanigans, picking on me whenever Gran and Auntie Mary had their backs turned.

               I don’t suppose he was all bad though, and he did make me laugh the time we went to see Santa with our Auntie Mary, at Lewis’s Department store in Manchester Piccadilly.

               It was the first time I recall going to the city centre and it had been snowing hard that particular morning. The sky was peppered not only with snowflakes, but with balloons too – barrage balloons!  

               As we stepped off the trolley-bus on to the well trodden snow, it was like stepping into a different era, a different world even. In stark contrast to the black, bleak and dank streets of Miles Platting we had just left, was the rich, colourful and cheery shopping centre of Piccadilly, which was simply awe-inspiring, to a five year old at any rate.

               I remember Lewis’s sat proudly opposite Marks & Spencer’s, separated only by tram lines that ran all the way down the centre of the cobbled, Market Street. Competing for the best dressed seasonal windows, the shop fronts dazzled, with a festoon of holly, ivy, brightly coloured baubles and twinkling Christmas lights.

               Freeing myself of my auntie’s grip, I traipsed over to one of Lewis’s colossal store windows and peered through at the fur coats, posh frocks and the latest and trendiest hats that adorned the shop mannequins. And for a moment, as my eyes drank the magnificent finery, I imagined Gran ‘dressed-to-the-nines’ in the poshest frock, the finest fur coat and the shiniest court shoes in the window, with her cardboard gas mask case hanging gracefully from one shoulder. Oh how I would have loved to buy such things for my gran.

               Auntie Mary soon brought me back to reality though, as she took my hand, and with John in-tow, we entered the store.

               Lewis’s was heaving that morning, for it was the last Saturday leading up to Christmas Day, but with this being the first Christmas of the war, most of the male customers were in some type of uniform or another and everyone was lugging the obligatory gas mask. I guess a lot of them must have been on leave, and some were possibly based close by in Ardwick.

               Auntie Mary cautiously picked her way through the crowd as she steered us through the sea of cardboard boxes everyone was hauling, over to a flight of stairs leading up to the first floor. A feeling of nausea filled my stomach as a fusion of boot polish, mothballs, a sickly-sweet floral scent and putrid rubber filled my nostrils, a far cry from the odours I was accustomed to - burning coal, stale urine, damp dogs and the fumes emanating from the boiled cattle bones at the tannery.

               Once upstairs, on the third floor if my memory serves me, we waited patiently in the queue, but with there being so few children about, most in faraway places like Blackpool and Hazel Grove, it didn’t take long to get to the front.

               At the front of the line, John insisted on climbing onto Santa’s knee first, whilst I stood patiently with Auntie Mary.

               ‘And what’s your name young man? a rather jolly, red suited, white-bearded and typically rotund Santa asked, as he propped John up with one arm wrapped around my brother’s waist.

               ‘John,’ my brother replied awkwardly, as he shuffled about to get comfortable.

               ‘And what would you like for Christmas John?’ Santa enquired, in a jovial manner, whilst winking at me.

               ‘My sister to come home,’ John replied, as he stared deeply into Santa’s bespectacled eyes, his glasses betraying his geriatric years, as they magnified his off-white and tired eyes, buried beneath deep wrinkled and heavily veined bags.

               ‘And what’s your sister’s name? ‘Santa asked, his voice melting to a softer, more compassionate tone.

               Mary...Mary Harris,’ my brother replied.

               Santa paused for thought, probably unsure as to whether Mary was an evacuee, or God forbid - dead!

               Reengaging with John, Santa continued, ‘And where is Mary?’  

               ‘Hazel Grove,’ my brother announced abrasively, mystified as to how Santa could not know this.

               ‘Hazel Grove eh? And why is she in Hazel Grove, young man?’ Santa quizzed, uncertain as to whether or not our sister was an evacuee.

               ‘Cause she was vacuated!’ I yelled out, whilst holding tightly to Auntie Mary’s hand.

               Santa started laughing, I presume at my mispronunciation, but John didn’t see anything funny in his sister being so far away. ‘I’m afraid I can’t help you with that one son,’ the old man replied, as he chuckled away to himself.

               Well John was fuming, and no sooner had Santa finished speaking, John leapt off his lap, turned, and kicked him right in the middle of his shin bone.

               ‘JESUS FUCKIN’ CHRIST!’

               Everyone in the line was stunned, including me. It was one thing to kick Santa, but it was something else to hear Santa cursing! I couldn’t believe my own ears, but it didn’t stop me erupting into a fit of the giggles all the same.

               That was the first and last time I ever saw Santa at Lewis’s, and the last time I spent Christmas in Miles Platting for that matter.

Chapter 5

               Christmas was over and people were going about their usual daily grind. Many people had relaxed their habit of carrying their mask everywhere they went. They didn’t see the point as Nazi Germany hadn’t invaded and it didn’t look like it was going to, at least for the foreseeable future.

               I remember one particular morning the snow lay thick on the ground and my brother and I had the whole of Fraser Street to ourselves. We played up and down that street for what seemed like hours, despite no gloves, nor long trousers. We had snowball fights, built snowmen, made snow angels, terrorised the neighbours less than surefooted dogs and sledged the length of the street, ten, maybe twenty times over, using our Gran’s coal shovel as a makeshift sled.

               Eventually, with frostbite imminent, our hands and legs chapped and red-raw and our backsides saturated and numb, we succumbed to Jack Frost and dragged ourselves back to the house.

               Inside the house, we walked through into the kitchen, where our Gran and Auntie Mary were huddled together, studying a telegram that had just arrived. The air seemed thick with tension, and our Gran was clutching her hanky, as if she’d been crying.

               ‘Now look at the state of you two,’ Gran declared, as we stood in the doorway to the kitchen, shivering and looking very sorry for ourselves. ‘Get up them stairs an’ get changed this instant,’ she demanded, with a petulant toss of her head.

               I must admit I was a bit bemused by her temper, for she seemed more than happy for us to get out from under her feet a couple of hours earlier.

               After we changed and returned downstairs, our Gran met us at the doorway leading to the front room. ‘Come over to the fire an’ get warm,’ she said affectionately, her mood different again. She then knelt down in front of us and started rubbing, first my hands, then John’s, whilst inspecting our fingers, ‘Well at least you haven’t got frost bite you silly things,’ she concluded, tutting as she shook her head.

               ‘Watch they don’t get Chilblains mam,’ Auntie Mary warned, as she joined us by the fire.

               ‘They’ll be fine...won’t ya boys,’ Gran beamed, as she tried to conceal her obvious anguish, her eyes bloodshot and moist where she’d wiped away her tears.

               Gran groaned as she got to her feet, before giving Auntie Mary a furtive glance, ‘Boys...’ she paused. Looking pensive, she fished in her pinafore pocket for her hanky.

               ‘I’ll tell ‘em mam,’ Auntie Mary insisted, as she directed us over to the dining table.

               Setting herself down on one of the dining chairs, she momentarily  closed her eyes, composed herself, then gazed into both mine and John’s eyes, seeking our undivided attention, ‘John...Billy...I’ve got something to tell you...’ She looked solemn as her gaze flitted between mine and my brother’s eyes. She closed her eyes again and drew a deep, sharp breath, before staring deep into my brother’s eyes, ‘John...you’ve got to go back to Hazel Grove.’ Beads of tears filled her eyes as she witnessed the horror on my brother’s face.

               John started to wail.

               Auntie Mary pulled John into her arms for a hug, ‘Shush...Eh, you’re a big boy now, and anyhow, it’s not that bad...you’ll get to see all your friends again,’ she whispered, as she choked back her tears...And anyhow,’ she glanced at me through her blurry eyes, ‘...Billy’s going with you.’

               It was my turn to wail!

               Gran rushed over to us and we all huddled and cuddled and cried, then cried some more.

               I never did find out exactly what the letter said, but years later I heard it was my father who had complained to the Board of Governors and insisted John was sent back to Hazel Grove, and that I was to go with him.

               A week later, Gran and Auntie Mary took John and me to London Road station. My mind is a blank as to how we got to the station and onto the train, but what I do recall is staring out through the heavily misted carriage window as the train left the urban outskirts, the network of steel tracks running in all directions, diminishing one by one as they veered off, bound for other destinations and the last of the dark, grimy, soulless factories traded for a chocolate box vista. A myriad of snow peppered fields stretching as far as my eyes could see.  As I re-run the journey in my mind it amazes me the things I still recall. I still remember the chestnut Shire horse stood under a large oak tree at the far end of a field, my thoughts turning to Blacky back at the coal yard; I remember a small group of ramblers, stood by a picket fence, waving their crooks as they watched me speed past; I remember the wild hare jumping triumphantly, as if mocking its own freedom, or was it mine? I remember the instant chill as I slid opened the carriage window and the pungent earthy smell of the countryside assailing my nostrils. I remember the rush of air as I forced my head through the gap and the suffocating sensation as I found it impossible to breathe, my eyes instinctively squinting as I witnessed wisps of white smoke tumble over the snow driven fields. And after all that, what sticks in my mind most of all was - Mr. Chad! With some words I couldn’t make out embellished above his head. Mr. Chad being the bald headed figure, with a prominent nose peeking over a wall, my brother had etched into the condensation on the carriage window with his finger. Funny the things you remember!

               Sat across the aisle from us were three British soldiers, who had boarded half way through our journey. Preoccupied by a child of similar age, stood on the station platform eating a chocolate bar, I hadn’t noticed the ‘sqauddies’ get on. They must have been tired, for they were all soon napping. Their heads rhythmically bobbing and swaying in unison to the carriage’s hypnotic rocking motion as the train rumbled to its next destination.

               I remember thinking how smart they looked in their black berets and green, heavy wool-serge uniforms, their crisp, pleated pocket jackets ironed to perfection, their shoulders displaying black badges with red insignias, none of which I could read. One had his legs outstretched, his impressive highly bulled boots resting on the opposing seat. The youngest of the three had a green, lozenge kitbag lodged between their knees.

               As the train braked, the steel wheels screeched and the carriage groaned and creaked as we jolted to a standstill by a huge, freestanding enamel sign - Hazel Grove.

               The three soldiers woke abruptly, startled by the sudden jolt. The elder of the three, sporting a handlebar moustache and three white v-shaped stripes on the right sleeve of his jacket, tipped me a wink as he adjusted his beret and rose to his feet.   

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