by John Meadows
Hands shot up and down, faces becoming contorted while silently mouthing “Sir, sir.”
I developed a strategy of sometimes asking the person with a hand up first, sometimes choosing at random, and not forgetting to target those less confident pupils who kept their hands down most of the time. Usually, I could coax the answer from them with an encouraging “See, you knew the answer after all.”
Some of the more street-wise soon realized that they could disguise the fact that they didn’t know the answer by thrusting a hand in the air as quickly and as confidently as possible, and hiding amongst the forest of hands. I had the attitude that if I could be out-witted by a seven-year old then perhaps teaching shouldn’t be my chosen vocation after all. It was sometimes great fun pointing straight at the first hand up and seeing the stunned, dumb-struck expression. You could almost hear them thinking, ‘I was first with my hand up. You weren’t supposed to have picked me’.
“Who was not happy to see the prodigal son return home?” I asked.
The vast majority of the children threw their hands in the air so quickly that I would have needed photo-finish equipment to separate them. A few pupils sat a little hesitantly, arms poised, wondering whether to have a go. One little boy, Mark, seemed to have confusion etched all over his face as he agonised over the answer. I gestured to him and said, “Come on Mark, I’m sure you know the answer to this one.”
The rest of the class were by now almost bursting to answer, as they wriggled and stretched, while suppressing the urge to blurt out the answer.
“Have you been paying attention to the story this morning?”
“Yes,” replied Mark.
“Well, come on then. Who was not happy to see the prodigal son return home?” I repeated.
Mark was becoming increasingly exasperated; his face contorted as he struggled to answer the question. The boy sharing his desk Craig was almost on his feet, stretching his arm upwards as if he was trying to reach the ceiling. At that moment Craig could resist no longer and cupped his hand over his mouth and whispered something into Mark’s ear. Mark’s face suddenly lit up; all his anxiety disappeared in an instant. With a relieved smile, he enthusiastically threw his hand in the air and shouted, “I know it,” and, after pausing, announced proudly, “It was the fatted calf.”
Baby’s Ear
On another occasion, after we had finished a history project, I was marking a test and I came across the words ‘baby’s ear’. I asked Craig to come to my desk, and I pointed at the paper and said, “I can’t quite make out what this says.”
He looked at me and confirmed, “baby’s ear.”
“What’s baby’s ear,” I asked, completely puzzled.
“Queen Baby’s ear,” he stressed.
“Oh, you mean Queen Boudicea?”
I smiled to myself; it was a mispronunciation almost as funny as the previous week, when during a Bible-reading a little girl referred to ‘Epiphany’ as ‘Eppi Fanny’.
Just while we have touched on the subject of Boudicea, I would like us to fast-forward in my virtual time-machine to when I was teaching at the Deanery High School in Wigan, many years later. Several staff would take part in a light-hearted lunchtime quiz; which was usually the cause of much laughter, as each question would be a starting point for quips, witticisms and anecdotes. A question came up about Boudicea, and I asked Martin, the Head of History, “How come the Boudicea we learned about at school has now become known as Boudicca?”
“It is the original spelling and pronunciation,” he informed me, and then added dryly, “Which is why now I keep well away from any projects about King Cnut.”
Chapter Three
Three Flew into the Cuckoo’s Nest
“Get me a pint, quick,” pleaded Bill desperately, as he burst into the pub and plonked himself down exhaustedly in the midst of our group. “What a day I have just had, rounded off by the most bizarre lift into town!” I handed him a pint, most of which disappeared in one gulp. He had just finished a 12-hour shift, 7am to 7pm, at Rainhill Psychiatric Hospital, and had come to meet everyone in the Market Hotel in St Helens town centre.
During university holidays, all of our friends from school days would come home from university. The top priority, apart from regular sessions in the pub, was to find a temporary job. Delivering Christmas post was a regular earner, and during the summer we usually ended up working in some ‘Dante’s Inferno’ of a bottle factory, a building site or perhaps a hospital. Norma was hoping to find a job in a beauty therapy salon. Jeff, who was studying Fine Art at Newcastle University, was still unemployed and studying the bird table. I was studying Textile Design at Leeds University, and still looking for a summer job. Bill was training to be a teacher. Yes, it was the same Bill who had grabbed me in the street during his brief incarnation as a policeman. I think his change of career was more to do with the fact that he had heard that the all-female Rolle College in Exmouth in Devon was accepting male students for the first time. Our group of school mates were dispersed throughout the country, including Oxford. We hitch-hiked to visit each other and, invariably, Devon was the most popular destination.
We were just settling down around a table in the pub when Bill made his dramatic entrance.
“Because of my size, they decided to put me on the secure ward... As a member of staff, I hasten to add,” he said. Bill then stood up, and paused for dramatic effect. From his jacket pocket, he pulled something out with a flourish and banged it on the table, rattling the drinks.
“That’s the key they’ve given me,” he said theatrically, pointing to a huge black metal key. It looked like something from a medieval dungeon in a Robin Hood film.
Rainhill Hospital had always had a mysterious, eerie reputation. It was as if it was the Castle of Vlad the Impaler in Transylvania; feared by the local village peasants in Hammer Films. It was surrounded by a high brown sandstone wall, and, when travelling on the bus to Liverpool, we would often look from the upper deck to see if there was anything to behold in this other world. As kids, if anyone did or said anything slightly crazy, we would say things like you should be in Rainhill, or Rainhill Loony Bin as it was invariably known in those gloriously politically-incorrect days.
A Tall Tale
After another gulp of his next pint, Bill continued with his story.
It was his first week at the hospital, and he told us that he was working with Big Walter, who was well-known to us in Blackbrook. He was the archetypical ‘Gentle Giant’. His name was Walter Mountford, and I am not exaggerating when I tell you that he was over seven feet tall. I remember once standing next to him and, even though I am six feet tall, I only came up to his shoulder. There were stories that he had been invited for trials at St Helens Rugby League Club in the early 1960s but was rejected on the grounds that he was too big and posed a danger to other players. That must be some kind of a record, turned down by a rugby league club for being too rough. This is how Bill told us his story:
I had worked a couple of shifts and one morning I heard whispers along the corridor that Walter was on his way over, returning to work after a holiday. I looked along the tiled-corridor of the Victorian Building to see quite a few patients congregating outside their wards. The echoing sound of a heavy door being unlocked reverberated and, as it opened, the morning sunlight flooded in. However, it was quickly blotted out by an enormous silhouette which filled the door frame. “It’s Walter!” whispered the patients to each other, which spread like a wave. He didn’t need to say a word as he slowly made his way along the corridor. He was like a ‘fee, fi, fo fum’ pantomime giant. The patients disappeared into their wards left and right, like rats jumping off a sinking ship. By the time Walter reached me, the corridor was empty and silent.
He greeted me with a crushing handshake. He welcomed me warmly, and we chatted during the day. At the end of the shift, he offered me a lift into St H
elens. We walked out together to the staff car park, and I couldn’t help but wonder what type of car such an enormous man must drive. Unbelievably, we stopped at the side of a Hillman Imp. As Walter put his key in the lock, he couldn’t help but smile at the incredulous look on my face. “Get in, it’s open,” he said with a nod.
I opened the door and struggled to squeeze into the passenger seat. I looked to my right and couldn’t help but notice a small detail. The car did not appear to have a driver’s seat. Walter then opened the driver’s door and started to get in. ‘Where’s he going?’ I thought with an open-mouthed gaze. He then went through what must have been a well-rehearsed routine, which, at one brief moment, brought us both face to face. I must have had an expression of bemused amazement as I looked at Walter’s broad mischievous grin. Within a couple of seconds he was in his driving position... from the back seat! The steering wheel was unlocked and extended back, and the extra-long gear lever was set at a customized angle. At that point Walter could keep a straight face no longer and he let out a huge roar of laughter, which from a seven foot, twenty-stone man inside a tiny Hillman Imp reached a decibel level higher than any car stereo.
“Your face was a picture,” he laughed as he tapped me on my right shoulder.
“Do you offer lifts to many people?”
“All the time,” laughed Walter as we set off towards the front lodge, “I love to see the look on their faces.”
If Walter thought my face was a picture, you should have seen the expressions on people next to us at traffic lights!
In the pub we all laughed at Bill’s tall story and shook our heads in amazement. “They still have vacancies at the hospital,” announced Bill, knowing that one or two of us were still looking for summer jobs.
“I don’t think they would give me a job in the high security ward,” replied Jeff, pointing at the key on the table. “I couldn’t even lift that!”
“I don’t mean in the secure block, there are lots of different types of wards,” Bill added reassuringly.
“How do we apply,” I interjected.
“Just go to the main office and they will give you a form to fill in.”
Jeff and I exchanged faintly dubious smiles, as if to say ‘a job is a job,’ and we decided to go for it. Norma was sitting next to me and she just raised her eyebrows, with an expression of dismay bordering on horror. As a child, she had lived in Edge Street, which was in the shadow of the high perimeter wall of the hospital. While growing up, Norma had heard endless stories about the asylum; most of which were, of course, grossly exaggerated in the minds of all the local children. She was often teased by her three brothers about the dangers lurking the streets. The woeful look she gave me in the pub was as if I had volunteered to spend a night at the Castle of Count Dracula.
Brad and Janet
The following morning, Jeff and I caught the bus to Rainhill, and Norma came with us for moral support; but she also had a morbid curiosity to finally venture behind the high walls. We approached the front lodge with trepidation, and were directed to the appropriate office building. After all those years of trying to catch a glimpse over the wall from the bus, we were now walking in the grounds. I don’t know what I expected to see, but my first impression was one of calm tranquillity: beautifully manicured lawns, lots of trees, colourful flower beds, and plenty of benches, most of which were occupied by patients enjoying the morning sunshine. They seemed to have an air of other-worldliness about them. We knew that they were patients because nearly everyone was wearing a dressing gown. One or two were wearing their everyday clothes, most of which were from a bygone era.
As we continued along the tarmac path to the main entrance, a man, who had been sitting alone on a bench, stood up and blocked our path. He was smartly dressed and wearing a tie, but his pin-striped de-mob suit indicated that he was a patient rather than a member of staff. We stopped a couple of feet from him, wondering whether to speak, or just to give him a wide berth. Norma squeezed my hand a little tighter. At that moment he put his hand in his jacket pocket and took out a paper flower, which he handed to Norma with a smile and slightly distant expression. He then sat down quietly on his bench.
“Thank you,” we all said together, but there was no further reaction from him, as he just looked back along the path towards the front lodge.
We explained to the receptionist that we were students looking for vacational employment, and she asked us to take a seat in the corridor. We waited for about five minutes, which gave us time to peruse our surroundings. It was very quiet, the silence broken only by the hollow sound of doors being opened and closed and the occasional distant voice echoing along the corridor. All of the tiling on the floor and walls seemed to be original and matched the Gothic-horror style Victorian building, which had the atmosphere of a place lost-in-time. We sat quietly, if slightly nervously, like waiting for a dental appointment.
Norma turned to me and whispered, “You know, I remember the man who has just given me the paper flower. When I was young, from about six to twelve years old, he used to sit near the shops making flowers and giving them away as gifts. And he is still here after all these years.”
A door along the corridor opened and a tall, dark sombre-looking man emerged and approached us.
“Good morning, I am Mr Johnson the personnel officer,” he announced in a deep voice, “I believe you are looking for employment.” His tone and delivery was reminiscent of Vincent Price on ‘Thriller.’
“I have the application forms here,” he continued, and Jeff and I stood up to take one each. Norma remained seated because, after all, she was only there to give us moral support. The last thing she wanted was a job in the dreaded Rainhill Hospital. However, he took a few steps towards her and offered her a form.
“Oh no thank you,” she said to him politely, “I haven’t come for a job.”
“But the receptionist told me on the phone that there were three of you, and I have brought out three applications,” he stated in a monotone, and continued to hold out the forms in front of her. As he didn’t look as though he was about to move, I suggested to Norma that perhaps she should just take them.
“You can complete the forms here and now,” he told us as he handed each of us a biro from his top pocket and gestured for us to sit back down on the bench.
“Just fill it in,” I whispered to Norma, “Just to keep him happy.”
“Oh, that’s him being happy is it? I wouldn’t like to see his unhappy face,” she whispered.
We spent about ten minutes completing the applications, and just as we finished the personnel officer appeared, right on cue.
“Please follow me into the office.”
We were beginning to feel like Brad and Janet in ‘The Rocky Horror Show’. The office was rather sparse, with only a couple of the office staff working at the typewriters. Mr Johnson sat behind a large wooden desk which was festooned with piles of paper, files, jars of paper clips and other office paraphernalia. We sat on old, sit-up-and-beg style uncomfortable wooden chairs. He quickly read the application forms, and started rubber-stamping. He asked us a few cursory questions and picked out relevant information. He noted that I had worked at Nutgrove Old Folks’ home, which was only half a mile away, and that Norma had experience of dealing with the public in a variety of jobs.
“Well, this all seems fine,” he announced, still expressionless, as he stood up and, with a cold, limp handshake, said, “Welcome to Rainhill Hospital.”
Jeff and I both replied with a grateful thank you. We had a job. Norma fully intended to tell him that she wasn’t interested, but was stunned into silence by the suddenness of it all, as she returned his handshake politely.
“When would you like to start?”
“As soon as possible, we need the money.”
“I presume you would all prefer to be on the same shift?” he asked as he
walked over to a wall chart. After a moment’s consideration, he turned and said, “The day after tomorrow, at 7 am. Please report to the front lodge.” With that we were ushered out of the office and made our way along the corridor.
As we emerged into the sunlight, all I could say was, “7 o’clock, bloody 7 o’ clock,” as my body clock was still in student mode. I realized that Norma was still in shock at the prospect of working in a psychiatric hospital.
“Just ring him tomorrow,” I said reassuringly, “and say that you’ve changed your mind.”
“Oh, I may as well just take it... after all it’s a job. I’m just worried what mum and dad are going to say about me working at Rainhill Hospital.”
“When do they get back from holiday?” I asked.
“During our first day at work, which at least that gives me time to decide what to tell them.”
On our first morning, Jeff and I got off the bus from St Helens at quarter to seven. Norma was already waiting for us, as she lived with her parents in Rainhill and had arrived from the opposite direction. We reported to the lodge and were duly escorted to the main hospital block; where we were welcomed by a lady from personnel. Over a cup of coffee, she took us through various formalities; after which followed a brief induction course, including a tour of the hospital. We were greeted with brief smiles of acknowledgement from various staff, including nurses, doctors, cleaners, and catering staff pushing trolleys. Patients tended to fix us with a stare, sometimes a smile, as we felt eyes following us.
“Is that bacon I can smell?” I asked as we walked along a corridor
“Amongst other things,” was the personnel officer’s sardonic reply.
I think she must have meant the full English breakfast, with a hint of urine permeated by Dettol. A heady combination!
At the end of our introductory tour, we returned to the administration office to be allocated to hospital departments. Jeff and Norma were told that they would be working in the geriatric wards, and I would be at the Benedict Clinic, a new annexe in the hospital grounds which hadn’t been included in our morning tour. It was a rehabilitation centre which treated patients who were suffering from a variety of ailments including depression, various syndromes, and addiction to drugs or gambling. Norma, Jeff, and I were issued with white coats. I was tempted to ask if we would be having stethoscopes to drape casually round our necks. I decided it wasn’t the time to be flippant.