‘That was amazing,’ she said. ‘They were such good people.’
‘I really liked meeting them. Even if I still don’t know why I’m doing this.’
‘What’s your fear?’
‘That it will bring up lots of feelings I don’t want to deal with.’
Debra didn’t say anything to that, but she did rub my shoulders a little harder.
We drove to the hotel we’d booked for the night. It was part of a big function centre close to Clayton-le-Moors, the town on my mother’s birth certificate. The car-park was full and there was a queue of people at reception. They all looked as if they were there for the same event: nearly all female, middle-aged, loud with strong northern accents, over-excited, super friendly, singing out to each other as they queued.
Others already booked in, wandered through, carrying super sized glasses of white wine – great buckets of the stuff which they eagerly downed while they walked. It was 6.30pm and the atmosphere was one chardonnay off a riot.
‘What’s going on?’ I asked one of the guests.
‘It’s a party!’ she said. ‘We’re the Daniel O’Donnell North West Association. You know Daniel?’
I confessed ignorance, which produced a pained look.
‘You know. The singer. From Ireland.’
I shook my head in apology and asked: ‘So, what sort of singer is he?’
‘Oh, a fantastic singer.’
‘I mean, what sort of music?’
‘Oh, all sorts. Country. Love songs. Ballads. All sorts.’
She smiled, pleased to have banished a little of the world’s Daniel O’Donnell-related ignorance.
After bundling our bags into the room, Debra and I headed into Clayton-le-Moors for a pub dinner. We both spotted fish pie on the menu, which we knew – after two weeks in the UK – would consist of tiny flakes of fish drowned in white sauce. It would be entirely stupid to order the same thing again, so we both said, ‘Let’s have the fish pie.’
This time around the amount of fish was so tiny I decided the chef was a devotee of homeopathy, bringing to the white sauce a mere memory of fish, whispering the word as he stirred – ‘fish, fish’ – or maybe just humming a few bars of ‘I Do Like to be Beside the Seaside’ as he flung a litre of béchamel into the microwave. The beer, though, was fantastic – a flat, warm brew, with a vague after-taste of dead rat. My enjoyment proved I must be still genetically English.
By the time we returned to the hotel, the concert was over and Daniel himself had taken up a position in the corner of the foyer, being photographed with fans. There was a queue which revellers were enthusiastically joining, each person giving Daniel a kiss just as the camera went click. The whole scene was one of great happiness. Back in our room I looked up the Daniel O’Donnell North West Association to discover Daniel had a considerable list of achievements – fourteen Top 20 albums in the UK and more than 3.5 million sales – so the incredulity which had greeted my ignorance was justified. The Association’s manifesto closed with this line: ‘He is also our friend, how lucky are we!!’ I found that sentiment pleasingly cheerful and optimistic. The members of the fan club were seizing all available joy.
Somewhere below us the fans were still there, laughing, clutching each other, a bit pissed, but not really pissed, posing for picture after picture with the ever-patient Daniel.
There were lots of grim things about the north of England – things my mother did well to escape. She’d missed out, though, on this: these gutsy, loving people, so keen on having a good time.
My ambition the next day was to spend considerable time at the Lancashire Records Office. I felt guilty, though, about Debra. Our trip wasn’t turning out to be much of a holiday. She’d spent the last five years working on what had turned out to be a hit TV show: she was the co-creator and head writer of the comedy-drama Offspring, which meant a constant shuttle between Sydney and Melbourne. She deserved a relaxing break. It seemed she wasn’t going to get it.
We’d been in the north two days and had yet to see the sun. The weather varied between full-on rain and a sort of defeated mist. It was as if the whole place had been photographed in black and white. This part of Lancashire was also sliced and diced by motorways; to drive five minutes down the road, you needed to get on and off the M65 two or three times. I was becoming convinced the M65 consisted of concentric loops connected by further loops of the M65, meaning you never really got anywhere.
As you drove around in circles, you’d look over various hillsides, each of which featured a huddle of blackened terrace houses – the ‘barracks of industry’, as someone called them. Nothing seemed to have changed since the 1860s, except they’d demolished the factory around which the barracks had been built, leaving you wondering why there was suddenly a row of tightly packed houses clinging to an otherwise empty hillside. Who lived there now and how were they employed?
These were the leftovers of the Industrial Revolution – the stinking, noisy, smoky era described by Dickens, Ruskin and Engels: rows of hastily built tenements, two rooms upstairs, two downstairs, filled with families of seven or eight children, everyone over twelve years of age working in the mills. It was a world of steam-powered factories belching smoke; blackened buildings; overflowing sewers; deafening noise; the stench of ammonia and dye; tanneries and piggeries built between the houses; children enduring twelve-hour shifts. It was the horrors of this part of England – the ‘dark Satanic mills’ – that created the labour movement, socialism, even Marxism.
This was not the world into which my mother was born, but it’s the world in which her grandparents lived. Today I was in search of their son: Harold, born in 1900, give or take. Would I find his name among the criminals whose records were kept at the Preston archives? I put the address into the GPS and we set off on the usual route through fog and driving rain, on and off the M65, sometimes heading north, sometimes south. Some months later, we came across Preston, a big town with an exhausted air. Hyphenated place names are so common in Britain – Stokeon-Trent, Stratford-upon-Avon – I wondered if Preston should consider one: Preston-past-its-Prime.
After some poking around the back streets, we found the Lancashire Records Office – a modern slab of a building, strangely elevated on a series of concrete poles, as if the occupants were hoping it would take off. It seemed a relatively rational response to life in Preston.
Debra settled down in the lobby with a novel while I perched myself in the document room, flipping through random records, trying to spot any mention of my grandfather. First, I checked an archive of papers from the Burnley police department, including a Register of Charges, each page consisting of a single offence: ‘That on this day, at so-and-so-time . . .’ It was a catalogue of human misery: beaten-up wives, fist fights outside pubs, people who’d broken into a shop at night to steal food – all recorded in a police officer’s flowing script.
There was also a Book of Orders. I attempted to flip though quickly, trying to spot the name Sudall, but it was hard not to be snagged by other lives. ‘I am the wife of the defendant,’ one entry read. ‘He smacked my face and ran me out. I never went back. He has been cruel to me on previous occasions.’ The woman said she was willing to accept a pound a week from the man and custody of the child, a deal which the court endorsed. The grime of the time seemed to seep from the pages.
It was fascinating, but, an hour in, I’d found nothing. I asked the two librarians for their advice, telling them the story of my mother, her fake past and journey to Australia, and the rumour that my grandfather may have been a wrong ’un. Maybe I hadn’t been clear about the dates, because one librarian asked, ‘Do you think he was transported?’
I replied, ‘I’m talking 1930s. I know you lot think we’re all still convicts, but . . .’
She smiled a little nervously, unsure of my tone, and her colleague stepped in to save the moment: ‘Is it a relief when you take off the ball and chain? Does it chafe on your ankle?’
As usual in Lancashire
a joke.
After a little more colonial banter, they suggested I consult the Calendar of Prisoners, in which the accused were listed alphabetically. The first to be sent up from the storeroom was for the Lancashire City Sessions Court, 1929. I flipped through, using the index at the start of the records for each day. I’d been at it about forty seconds when something caught my eye:
1. Sudall, Harold, 30, traveller.
Offence – on the 12th Feb., 1929, breaking and entering the dwelling-house of Romei Alberto with intent to steal therein.
Tried before Recorder, 4 April, 1929.
Verdict – Not guilty.
So this was it – the source of the rumour mentioned by my aunt – a charge, but one for which he’d been found not guilty. I copied the page and kept going. Maybe this brush with the law had taught Harold a lesson. I was ploughing through the Calendar at speed, my eye darting to the spot on each page where, alphabetically, you’d expect to find a ‘Sudall’. There was week after week of nothing and then his name grabbed my eye once more.
10. Sudall, Harold, 30, salesman
Previous conviction – Once fined for obstructing police.
Offence – Stealing on the 14th May, 1929, one handcart and other articles, the property of Beatrice Marion Shanks.
2nd charge – Receiving.
Tried before Recorder, 29 July, 1929.
Plea – Not guilty.
Verdict – Guilty of receiving stolen property.
Sentence – 9 months h.l. [hard labour].
It was a jail sentence, and a fairly long one.
I pushed through another pile of records with no result and found I’d run out of time, the library about to close. I’d have to return in a day or two. That night, back in the hotel, I searched the local newspaper archives, using the information from the court documents. Both Harold’s cases had made the news. In the first – the one where he was found not guilty – the jury accepted his alibi that he was elsewhere, visiting a sick friend. In the second case, he’d taken off with a handcart loaded with shirts – ‘to the value of £75’ – which must have been quite a haul.
At the time of their father’s conviction, Molly would have been twelve, Bertha ten, and my mother just four years old.
My mother, it seemed, had been running away from more than I’d thought.
Chapter Seventeen
The next day, I’d arranged to visit my other surviving relatives: Bertha’s daughter-in-law, Margaret, and her two sons, Andrew and Lee. The death of Margaret’s husband, my cousin Colin, had only happened about six months before. I was worried about intruding on her grief, but her email expressed enthusiasm for our visit.
As we drove towards Margaret’s house, Debra posed a question: ‘When are you going to tell her about Harold and the one-man crime-wave that was your grandfather?’
‘She might already know.’
‘Bet she doesn’t. Your other cousin didn’t.’
‘Well, I’m not going to blurt it out as soon as I get in the door. Guess what? The grandfather of your children was a thief. There’s petty-criminal blood in our veins.’
‘But you should tell her what you’ve found.’
‘Yes, but I think I’ll wait until the second pot of tea.’
Again the GPS took us to a tidy bungalow in a seaside town – in this case, Morecambe, the town where my aunt Bertha had owned her business, the Sunshine Hotel. Margaret’s two sons were outside when we drove up: both in their late thirties, friendly and good-looking. They ushered us inside, where Margaret greeted Debra and me with hugs and delighted exclamations of ‘Finally!’ and ‘I’ve been looking forward to this,’ before showing us into the living room. Already, Margaret had some photographs splayed out on the coffee table and some stories to tell.
She started on a quick climb of the family tree, while I wondered when to introduce the topic of Harold and my fresh discovery of his criminal past. My restraint lasted about a minute and a half.
‘Did you know that Harold was in prison? I’ve just been to the Archives . . .’
I offered the photocopies I’d taken the day before. Margaret picked them up and studied them with interest. Her two sons read over her shoulder and then Margaret handed back the photocopies with a shrug.
‘I didn’t know any of this.’
‘So Bertha never mentioned that her father had done time?’
‘That’s not really surprising. If her father had been sent down it would have made Bertha clam up like an oyster. She was very cut-above and plum-in-the-mouth.’
‘So she pretended to be posh, just like my mum?’
‘Well, she was quite grand,’ said Margaret.
Lee, the older son, laughed. ‘Grand? Bertha was a real Hyacinth Bouquet,’ he said – a reference to Keeping Up Appearances, the sit-com about a woman who pretends to be posh.
‘She had one voice for the family and then another for people she wanted to impress. I’d come in and she’d say, “’Ello” to me, common as muck, then maybe I’d have a girlfriend walking in just behind, someone unexpected, and it’d be, “Oh, helloooo,” then lots of “rath-er”.’
Lee and his brother laughed as if they found the scene more ridiculous than objectionable. Lee was a great story-teller and performed a few more scenes pretending to be his grandmother, alternating between a Lancashire burr and a Hyacinth Bouquet bray.
And how did Bertha behave towards my cousin Colin, her only child?
‘He was never treated properly,’ Margaret said. ‘When it was high season in the hotel, she’d just rent out his bedroom. She had this piece of plywood made up that would fit over the bath, and she’d make him sleep there – on top of the bath. He always said he had to spit in his own dinner otherwise Bertha would wrestle it from his hands and send it off to a paying customer.’
Lee and Andrew were both looking at their mum, shaking their heads, imagining all that their dad had been through. Suddenly we were on the verge of re-enacting Monty Python.
‘Have I told you chaps about my mother and her lackadaisical attitude to parenting?’ I could have said.
‘“Lackadaisical attitude to parenting?”’ they could have replied. ‘Thy be lucky. Our father Colin had to sleep on t’bath and spit in t’plate of own food.’
I could have added a new game to add to my set, this one called Whose Parent Had the Worst of It?. Instead, we sat talking about Harold, his time in prison and how it might have changed his own children and his children’s children. And then we all went out for lunch.
Driving back to our hotel afterwards, Debra tried to put together the picture so far.
‘Of the three sisters, Molly seems like the sweet-natured, compliant one. That’s the case, too, with your grandmother, Annie. Then you have this other personality type – Bertha and your mother.’
‘Exactly,’ I agreed, ‘a kind of self-centred fierceness. They were going to look after themselves and climb out of whatever hole they were in.’
‘Your mother took it further, though.’
‘Yes, Bertha pretended to be posh. But she still saw her mother and she still saw her sister.’
‘Your mother’s response was more dramatic.’
‘Yes, but she was also the youngest. Maybe the older ones had more of a normal start before Harold turned to crime, and the children started shifting house all the time.’
For a while we drove along in silence.
Then from Debra: ‘Reconstructing family history is like looking at a fossil and trying to picture the whole animal. You have the foot or the jawbone, then have to infer the rest from the fragment you’ve found.’
I agreed with that. I would never be able to properly summon up my mother’s early life, but it still seemed worthwhile to ask the obvious questions. Was it really necessary for my mother to deny her past so thoroughly, right down to the existence of her own siblings? After all, in denying them, she had also denied their progeny – these people I’d just met, people who were not only warm and friendly, bu
t smart and manifestly successful.
If my mother thought the only way to make something of yourself was to leave, then those who’d stayed had proved her wrong.
The next day I headed back to the records office, leaving Debra to visit Accrington’s sole tourist attraction, the Haworth Gallery, which, she later told me, was closed for the day. From her point of view, the holiday was definitely falling short of a week in Paris. Back in Preston, I ordered another pile of documents. The fourth volume I searched was the County Borough of Blackburn Quarter Sessions Calendar 1931–1935 and there he was, yet again.
4. Sudall, Harold, 34, salesman
Offence – on 10 May 1933 obtained by false pretences 14 rolls of felt from Mercer and Sons Inc.
Plea – Not guilty.
Verdict – Guilty.
Sentence – 6 months h.l.
It was again a fairly lengthy sentence. My grandfather stood convicted of ‘false pretences after a previous conviction of felony’. The order was given: ‘that the above named convict be imprisoned and kept to Hard Labour in His Majesty’s prison at Liverpool for the term of six calendar months, commencing on the said ninth day of October, one thousand nine hundred and thirty three.’
An hour later I found another passing reference. This time it was in a Register of Persons sent to Gaol. It was a handwritten list with not much detail, just the name Harold Sudall and the annotation ‘breaking and entering; stealing money’. The document told me the name of the police officer who was to ‘convey the prisoner’: it was a PC Coupe. Somehow the name conjured up the scene – PC Coupe at the wheel of a 1933 van with Harold handcuffed in the back, on a round-trip from Liverpool Prison back to Liverpool Prison.
A few volumes more and I had another strike. This time it was eight charges of false pretences. He was found guilty on one of them: obtaining one pound, five shillings and sixpence ‘under false pretences from Laura Cousins’.
Flesh Wounds Page 16