No More Silence. David Whelan
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my ‘sannies’ – thin, black canvas plimsolls that were worn winter and summer as the ultimate badge of deprivation. Ironic, isn’t it, that those flimsy little shoes have become so fashionable today.
The daily third-of-a-pint ration of milk at Cleddens Primary School and free school dinners were the only real sustenance we were enjoying by this time, and even school dinners were an indicator of your status. Privilege came in a different colour from poverty. Blue dinner tickets were full price – 2 shillings, or 10p – paid for by those from the good working-class homes who could afford them. Pink dinner tickets were cheaper, for those who could afford to pay only part of the cost. My dinner ticket was brown – a free dinner and yet another stigma. This sense of disenfranchisement was heightened because the free dinner tickets were allocated last. We had to stand in line, in front of the class, while those who paid got their tickets first. Then the poorest children were dealt with. Even at that age I was conscious it was a humiliating procedure. It seemed an intentional part of the system – as if we had to be kept in our place. Perhaps they believed that it would have been inappropriate to offer us any hope of another way of life. There was, however, no one to champion us against these injustices.
By now, my mother had truly lost her way. Our first family Christmas was a bleak, almost Dickensian affair. On Christmas morning I stood with my nose pressed against the window of the living room, looking out at my peers racing up and down the street on their new bikes and scooters, their squeals of laughter echoing against the glass. I couldn’t be part of their world. I had a Beano album and an orange. Our Christmas dinner would be fish fingers and tinned creamed rice. I turned from the window to a room devoid of festive decoration and my heart sank. Naturally, I told a very different story of our Christmas when I returned to school after the holidays. I regaled my friends with tales of all the great presents I had received. They, of course, knew the truth.
CHAPTER 6
‘Where’s Yer Whore of a Mother?’
‘Despite considerable casework and support to this family, there has been a serious and consistent deterioration. In order to bring some measure of stability to the two youngest members of the family, it is proposed to ask Quarriers Homes to admit them into care’
SOCIAL WORK REPORT
‘Ma! Ma! Maaammy! Please wake up!’ I pulled her, heaving at her shoulders, pleading with her to come back from whatever dark place she had gone. I was sure Ma was dead. I was 11 years old, small for my age and terrified. I couldn’t rouse her. A loud, long and insistent wail came from somewhere deep within me, summoning Irene. My sister, barely two years older than me and every bit as scared, flew into the room.
‘She’s dead! Ma’s dead!’ I told her. Even at that young age Irene was infinitely more practical than me. She applied her hand to Ma’s face. ‘She’s warm, Davie. Stop greetin’,’ she said. ‘She’s not dead.’
I followed Irene’s line of vision to the bedside table, where a scattering of pale-blue capsules lay spilled from the open top of a small brown bottle. ‘She’s taken too many of her pills,’ explained Irene, still matter-of-fact. ‘Ma! Ma! Get up,’ shouted Irene, dragging Ma up from the pillows. She still refused to be roused. ‘Davie, quick, water!’
I leaped from the bed to the kitchen and filled a jam jar, spilling half of its contents on the floor as I dashed back to the bedroom. Irene tried to force some of the water into Ma’s mouth, but it dribbled from her lips onto her nightdress.
I had lost all hope when, like the sound of a trumpet blast from the cavalry riding to the rescue, Jeanette’s voice called from the front door, ‘Irene! Davie!’ By some miracle, known only to the forces that protected our mother, Jeanette had come to visit. Jeanette always knew what to do! We had missed Jeanette’s presence and influence on life at Katewell Avenue. Just a few weeks before, she had moved out of the family home for reasons I’ll explain.
Jeanette, however, hadn’t abandoned us. She knew that Ma was a terrible mother and she returned often to ensure that we were being looked after. This was one of those visits, and I have never been so glad to see Jeanette as I was on that dreadful morning. She took charge immediately. It was in the days before telephones in the home were commonplace, so Irene was despatched to the police station and I was told to dry my tears and go to the living room. I sat on the sofa, rocking, wrapped in my own arms, listening to Jeanette’s entreaties. Suddenly, there was a groan. It was Ma! Jeanette’s voice, soothing and authoritative, was bringing her back. The groans grew louder, drowned now by the sound of an approaching siren. Within minutes, the house was filled with big men in uniforms. Irene had by now returned, and Jeanette emerged from the bedroom. We three sat together on the sofa as Ma was carried from the house on a stretcher.
‘It’s OK, Davie,’ said Jeanette. ‘It’s OK.’
The three of us moved to the window, in time to see Ma being carried from the building into the back of the ambulance. Her eyes were open, but she saw nothing. The vehicle drove off quickly and disappeared round the corner of Katewell Avenue. It was 10 a.m. on 4 January 1969, and, unknown to us, it was the beginning of the end for us as a family. The hospital doctors would pump her stomach of the tranquillisers, but she would be transferred to a psychiatric hospital and kept there for almost a year. I wouldn’t see her again until she visited me at Quarriers.
For the moment, the Social Work Department’s immediate task was to ensure the welfare of her two youngest children. Jeanette was of course settled in her own place. For reasons I’ll soon explain, Jimmy and Johnny were no longer in the picture. Irene and I were the problem. The solution was to put us with a foster family until the officials decided on our long-term care. Ma’s short journey to hospital that day would be the catalyst for our much longer journey … to Hell. Irene and I would soon be on our way to Quarriers.
When I look back, I realise that Ma’s overdose had been a long time coming, the result of a combination of heartache, weakness and her inability to cope with the family dysfunction she created. As I said, Jimmy and Johnny had gone by the time Ma was taken to hospital. Their departure – to approved schools for delinquents – had been the final blow to her fragile psyche. Jimmy had been breaking into the homes of our neighbours, stealing shillings from their electricity meters. It had been a bitter-cold winter, and with Ma’s home-economic skills our money had, as usual, been spent on other things. Jimmy was not unlike his father in character, a smoker and a bit of gambler, but there was enough good in him to bring home some of the stolen shillings to put in our meter. During that winter of 1968 we were kept warm with ‘stolen’ electricity. The house was a lot colder when Jimmy went away on what Ma described to us rather quaintly as a ‘long holiday’.
Jimmy’s departure had been a blow, but it was the loss of Ma’s beloved Johnny that had tipped her over the edge. He had eventually been caught stealing the doormats that masqueraded as carpet in our home. Johnny might have been a thief, but you could not fault his sense of honour. He gave himself up to the police after his friend and partner-in-crime was arrested. Poor Johnny … all he wanted was to make our home more comfortable. He was sent to a particularly tough approved school. That experience, added to what our father had done to him, affected Johnny for the rest of his life. He would never speak of those days, even when he was an adult. It was years later, after I had emerged from my own nightmare at Quarriers, that I realised Johnny had probably suffered as I had. We shared the same haunted look, claimed the same dark secret. We differed only in one respect: I survived. Poor Johnny didn’t.
The last days of Johnny’s tragic life will find their proper place later in this story, but for now, when I recall Ma’s overdose, I realise it was arguably one of the most defining days of my life. I remember that look in Ma’s eyes as she was being taken away in the ambulance. There was no light in them. They were unfocused, looking at something only she could see. They were certainly not looking in our direction. If truth be told, I know now that Ma hadn’t been looking in our direction in any meaningful way for a long time. If she had been a normal mother, putting our needs first, she might have recognised that her actions were placing us on a dangerous path. If she had cared, how different might our lives have been? If only … if only … but what can you say? If she had realised her shortcomings, she