The Bootle Boy

by Les Hinton

  Each Wednesday, Blake Brownrigg would gather cadets for our weekly ‘cadet lecture’, although the word ‘lecture’ gives an inflated idea of these events. Most of the time, we listened to the more elderly and less occupied staff members telling stories about the old days. Brownrigg was a semi-retired columnist whose job was to oversee our training. When he failed to dragoon someone to spend an hour talking to us, which was often, we would have to listen to him reminisce. Most often he repeated stories of his spell in public relations, when Maureen O’Hara and Peter Lawford made a film in South Australia called Kangaroo. It had been a flop, he told us, mainly because the film misunderstood Australia. His principal contribution had been persuading the director to remove a scene in which a mob of marauding kangaroos attacked and destroyed a country town.

  These people were the informal faculty that shaped my further education. Over the next six years, everything I learned came from people such as them — and the books in my bedroom. They weren’t teachers in the school and university sense, forcing their knowledge on me. They answered my questions helpfully enough, but most of the time I watched them in action and learned painful lessons when my frequent mistakes irritated them. The subs were the most easily irritated and the sub-editors’ room the toughest classroom at The News. I was landed there, in a mist of cigarette and pipe smoke and beery breath, when I was 18. The subs were older, more experienced, and crustier than the rest of the staff. Terrorising new boys put a shine in the eyes of every sub. Arch Bell, the chief sub-editor, was towering and quick-tempered, with a mysterious growth on the back of his neck that would redden when a deadline was approaching. Bell once handed me sheets of copy with instructions attached. I followed his instructions closely, or I thought I had. Twenty minutes later the door into the subs’ room flew open, to his storming arrival. He loomed over me, and growled: ‘Jesus Christ, Hinton, don’t you know what stet means?’

  The room went into a hush. The sub-editors lined up around the desk kept their heads down, but I knew they relished my predicament. I was the only person in the room who did not know what ‘stet’ meant, and my ignorance had left a big hole in the paper and delayed the entire edition. Stet is a word with Latin roots that means that edited cuts should be ignored. It was common in the age of hand-written editing.

  I wish I’d had the wit to question why 100 words of copy would be topped by two decks of inch-deep type across three columns. Or why I had been handed so many pages of copy that had been firmly crossed out. And, of course, why, on each of those pages there appeared clearly, in capitals, the word ‘STET’.

  Everyone grumbled about sub-editors, but they were the editorial assembly line, the craftsmen who made the paper happen. They made everything fit, shaped every page, placed and trimmed every story, selected and sized every photograph, filtered out mistakes and bad language.

  They seemed so awesome and fierce when I was a teenager. Arch Bell was a passionate man, but generous beneath the bluster, and lived for his work. Indeed, within months of retiring he was dead. Marty Ryan gave me the first lesson in writing a picture caption: ‘Son, it’s no use simply saying what’s in the picture — we can see that. Say something more.’ Ryan lost an eye in the war flying bombers over Europe. He wore an eye patch, not a black and glamorous one, but a white dressing to treat the unhealed wound. Jack Fahey taught me about headlines: ‘There better be a bloody good reason if you ever again give me a headline that doesn’t contain a verb.’ Fahey was a big, vulnerable man who would announce to the office the joys of sobriety each time he went on the wagon, which was never for long. Norm Sewell, his white hair always groomed, had a huge midriff around which he was able — just — to fasten the suit jacket he always wore. Sewell hated florid prose. He once disapproved of a re-write of mine: ‘This makes my skin crawl, lad. Keep it simple, always keep it simple.’ Sewell left the office early one day, grey and unwell, and died that afternoon.

  These heroes are almost all gone now; ghosts from a lost world, but their shadows have stayed, along with the lessons they passed on to a boy standing at ground zero in his career.

  CHAPTER 8

  Frank and Lilian

  It was quiet at home on Thursday 13 May 1965, the day I left Adelaide for London. Quiet, except for Mum’s loud sobbing. Dad was at the bottom of his garden, crouched in the cool morning sun on his weeding stool beneath the orange tree he had planted when we moved in. His transistor was tuned in to horse-racing news, and a few magpies pecked in the grass. Dad’s weeding stool was one of his sanctuaries when Mum was upset or angry; other times, he sat in the car with a beer, reading westerns. Mum was never easily consoled, and Dad was no good at it anyway.

  Dad got the worst of it when Mum was in a bad mood. He usually sat wordlessly, waiting for her mood to pass. The only time I saw him lose his temper was when Mal had left home, and we thought Mum would starve to death. She was so hard on him one day that he gave a sudden cry of rage, shoved his plate of food across the table, scattering peas and chips, and stormed upstairs. Mum was so shocked she apologised to him later, which was very out of character.

  While Dad hid in his weeds, Duncan was on his bed looking solemn, and I was alone with Mum in my room, where she was making a ritual of stripping my bed, acting out her pain by eliminating all evidence of me from the home I was abandoning.

  She removed everything — sheets, blankets, the single pillow — until there was only a naked mattress and an empty wardrobe and the bare blue walls I had painted myself. She did it slowly, folding and refolding into a perfectly neat pile, now and then sitting to sob some more. She was not a teary woman and never wept for effect, so it was shocking when she cried. Her body would shake and rock, her mouth would freeze into a wet gape, and her crying was like a scream.

  The emotion of that day had been building for weeks. A couple of nights before, when I came home late after seeing a girl, she hammered on my chest with her fists and wept. ‘You’ve been out all night with that tart,’ she said. This was not entirely true; the night had not been so eventful as Mum appeared to think, and it was harsh describing my sweet friend Josephine as a tart. I stood there until she exhausted herself. Mum may have been a distant wife, but she was an intense mother.

  My departure was no surprise to my parents. For four years, each Friday, I had collected my weekly pay from the cashier’s counter and made a deposit into a savings account at a bank branch across the street from the office. When I had enough, I was going to flee the bucolic comfort zone of Adelaide with my pal Rex Jory and head for London. I even took Mum’s advice on the return fare: ‘Make sure you have enough to get back if things go wrong.’

  But in my mother’s dreams, I was going to marry, and stay in Adelaide. She had high hopes when I was seeing a lovely blonde with a double-barrelled name whose grandfather was a knight; but I liked her more than she liked me. But still Mum had hoped each date with a girl would anchor me. By the time I said goodbye to Josephine, Mum was in despair.

  Adelaide was the first permanence of my parents’ adult life: a red-brick bungalow with white-framed windows, our own car in its own garage, the tidy concrete driveway Dad had laid himself, the garden he proudly created in the rich soil that had nurtured orchards and vineyards before houses like ours consumed it.

  For me, a restless 21-year-old, it was bland suburbia, far from where I wanted to be. For them, it was a destination. Our home looked like a department store showroom with its Danish-style furniture and shiny blue Formica kitchen tops. It was impeccable, dustless, even soulless unless you accepted the deep but unclear importance that keeping it that clean represented to my mother. She was house-proud even when she wasn’t at home: years later, when we took her on holiday, she made the hotel beds before we checked out.

  After so many rootless years, they needed the unthreatened rhythm of Adelaide. But it was their fault I was leaving. I had spent my childhood travelling the world with them. They had had enough of it,
but I wasn’t ready to stop. London was 10,000 miles from Adelaide, but in 1965 it felt to me like the heart of life.

  Australia, even in its own mind, was a far-flung British province. Some resented the old country, others felt deeply attached to its monarch and traditions. Australians could never read enough about Britain. Newspapers were full of the news and excitement of London. It was the height of Swinging London and Carnaby Street, and the dawn of what would be known as the ‘Permissive Society’, which, looking back on it, seems quaint. London, I had also decided, published the world’s best newspapers.

  Adelaide, by comparison, was a Victorian freeze-frame, where the pubs closed at 6pm, and housewives dressed up to go shopping in the city, wearing hats and long white gloves. Everything exciting was happening somewhere else.

  On our way to the ship, everyone was silent as Dad reversed down the drive in his Hillman Minx. I scraped that car when it was new and took it to a garage for a secret paint job. Dad spotted it right away doing the Sunday wash and got his revenge soon after when he found a nylon stocking on the back seat and showed it to Mum. I told her the truth — the girl took if off to walk on the beach — but she wasn’t convinced.

  The beaming white liner that was taking us away, SS Orcades, was at Port Adelaide. Everyone came aboard with Rex and me to see our windowless two-bunk cabin. There was no anti-terrorist security then, and the ship was full of people saying goodbye.

  In the 1960s, before flying was routine, there was no quick way to Britain, except for the wealthy, and therefore no mercifully swift farewell in the airport terminal. A ship’s departure was ceremonial. And very long.

  Orcades crept away from the dockside in slow motion, with a soulful, shuddering blast of its horn. The air was thick and bright with thousands of coloured streamers connecting passengers on deck with people they were leaving. Farewell streamers were a tradition in the days of big ocean liners, and every departure had an atmosphere of festive sadness.

  As the ship edged away, the streamers tightened and then broke. Their happy colours became streaks of litter in the harbour’s water. Shouts from the disappearing docks slowly died in the throbbing of the ship’s engines. I feel bad now remembering how delighted I was to be leaving, and how I wished the ship would hurry up.

  My family stood together in a tight group. Mum clutched the broken streamers and cried. Her hair, not yet grey, was permed in place for the occasion. Mal had her arm in Mum’s. Dad, hands in his pocket, looked dazed. Duncan, who was 16, looked abandoned. He told me later that Mum wouldn’t leave until the ship had vanished over the horizon. I don’t know how Dad felt. I didn’t know how he felt about most things. Mum’s big emotions crowded out his.

  From that day, we were a long-distance family. They visited me in London and the United States, and I went home again, but never for long. I felt guilty about this, and tried to make up for it by visiting them more as they grew older.

  My quiet father was an onlooker in my upbringing. I don’t remember a moment of advice from him, or much reproof. I remember, once or twice, when he put me to bed, feeling the brush of his moustache when he kissed me goodnight. He only hit me once, lightly across the back of the head with a rolled newspaper when we were crossing a street on the way to the cinema. I can’t remember why, but it was a shocking moment. When we entered the cinema, a song was playing with the lyric, ‘Oh, my papa, to me he was so wonderful’. He was, in his muted way. He didn’t often use words to show his feelings. He made things for people he loved. When I was interested in amateur dramatics, he built me a beautiful box for my stage make-up with my name carved on the lid. When Mum wouldn’t let me have a sheath knife, he carved a full-size Bowie knife from a log. Mal and Duncan both have furniture he made. There was never any ceremony. He would make something and quietly present it.

  For years, he did the football pools. We would study his face for any signal of success as he listened to the results on his radio. These were given gravity by the solemn lilt of the presenter’s voice and the glorious names of competing teams: Tranmere Rovers, Heart of Midlothian, Partick Thistle, Wolverhampton Wanderers, Hamilton Academical, Stenhousemuir. The biggest Littlewoods prize was £75,000. We were overjoyed the day Dad won £11.

  Dad was short, about five foot five, with an oversized, beaky nose. On parade, he marched in the back row so he could skip to catch up without breaking everyone’s stride. He stroked his moustache perpetually while reading his Zane Grey westerns. He read every inch of the newspapers. Long after I became a journalist, he would catch me out spotting stories I had missed. On payday, when he came home happier than usual, he would throw banknotes into the air.

  Lilian, my mum, was extremely sharp, but not particularly knowledgeable, or curious about the world. She did not read much, but loved crosswords, was unbeatable at Scrabble, and could quote long passages from the Bible and snatches of poetry learned long ago. With her energy, fury, and inarticulate ambition, she was not easy to live with. She had a hard edge, which showed in her dark and frightening eyes when she was angry. When upset, she sometimes shouted, and her vocabulary could be educational for a boy; other times, she would sink into sulks that lasted for days. It wasn’t always clear what she was angry about. Sometimes she was wound up so tightly any small thing made her snap.

  Mum was on the front line of every battle: difficult neighbours, inept schools, and whenever Army high-ups messed up our accommodation or travel arrangements. When she argued with our neighbour in Germany about a shared garden, she dug up the entire lawn and planted vegetables. It was a land grab. Mum might have been a little mad, but people didn’t mess with her.

  In our house, she made the rules. She hit me often, but never with real intent. She mostly used one of her shoes, and, whenever she raised it in anger, I fled. When she caught me, cowering in the corner of a room, she would be satisfied with one swipe so long as I followed it with a cooperative cry of pain.

  No one got sick in our house. Missing school or work was not an option. No cold, however severe, kept me at home. A morning vomit after something you ate? ‘You’ll be fine.’ Flu symptoms? ‘Here’s a glass of water — off you go.’ And off I would go, with an extra handkerchief and my nose stuffed with a lump of Vicks VapoRub.

  For years, our home was a pocket of Prohibition. I had never seen Mum drink, but she did often tell a story of being sick once after too much crème de menthe. Whenever Dad arrived home with whisky on his breath, the atmosphere was combustible. I was a teenager when I found out most families had alcohol with Christmas dinner; we had water with our goose, followed by a cup of tea.

  In Adelaide, however, the temperance was overwhelmed by our new Australian life. At first, my mother would react with alarm when guests, in the local tradition, arrived bearing bottles of chilled beer and flagons of wine. Meanwhile, her elder son was learning the ways of Australian newspapers, a world not known for abstinence.

  I began arriving home dizzy after a couple of schooners in the Strathmore Hotel, next to the office. When Mum didn’t complain about my beers, Dad seized the moment and started lacing his coffee with whisky. Mum sat silent and scowling in front of the television.

  I think my drinking gave Dad cover. He felt safer when we had a beer together. Dad was a master at retrieving a bottle of West End Bitter from the freezer just as it was beginning to crystallise. We would share one in the garden on a hot Sunday afternoon. Even Mum relented and was known to have an occasional shandy — one-quarter beer, three-quarters lemonade — but only ever one.

  Mum didn’t drink, but was a helplessly hooked chain-smoker. The house was filled with tobacco accoutrements: cigarette holders, fancy table-lighters, ashtray souvenirs collected on our travels, and a wooden cigarette-box into which I would place neat rows of filter-tipped du Mauriers when guests were expected. Mum liked fancy cigarette brands; in Bootle, she had rolled her own or bought Woodbines. When she went out, I filled a brown leather-covered ci
garette case for her handbag and topped up the fuel in her silver Ronson lighter. The fingers of her right hand were stained dark-brown and the insides of her teeth were black. The haze and smell in our house meant nothing to me. I never smoked, but on a train it made no difference to me whether I travelled in a smoking carriage or not.

  After a heart attack at the age of 47, Mum quit, but a stroke 18 years later left her with slurred speech and a severe limp for the rest of her life.

  She loved her children intensely, but the love didn’t overflow. I would wrap my arms around her while she washed the dishes, pressing my head against her back, and say, ‘Do you love me, Mum?’

  Every time, her answer was the same: ‘Give me one good reason why I should.’

  But I knew that’s what she would say, and I knew she was saying ‘yes’.

  She was ambitious for her children, but she didn’t have big dreams for us. To her, success meant a secure job — any job — and a house in a nice neighbourhood, and a steady, safe, respectable, law-abiding life. That was far better than the wandering, out-of-control existence of an Army sergeant’s wife. Or living in Bootle.

  She drove us hard at school. It was agony when I was eight and struggling to master the times-tables. She made me recite them over and over every night until I got them right, which I never quite did.

  Duncan went to university, earned degrees, and became a teacher. I pressed on more haphazardly, but I knew I had pleased her the day she could show the neighbours a story in The News with my by-line. When Marilyn married a soldier, her heart must have sunk, but in the end the sergeant’s wife was happy to have a lieutenant colonel as a son-in-law.